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Talk:Examples of totalitarian regimes

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Latest comment: 3 months ago by TarnishedPath in topic Requested move 26 March 2026

Cuba

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Latest comment: 6 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

This section names a single professor. It does not provide alternative POVs. No history of the debates. Nothing. It's very weak and honestly not neutral given the almost complete lack of more than a single professor's opinion. -- GreenC 03:41, 17 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Arguing vs. demonstrating

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Latest comment: 6 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

There is a fine line between arguing for totalitarian, versus demonstrating historiography. A few of these sections take the former approach. They simply list sources that called it totalitarian. This is arguing for the term. It is not a neutral or object historiographical analysis of how the term has been used over time, showing all of the positions for and against. -- GreenC 18:23, 24 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Rewrote a significant part of the table in prose

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I (the user Opostylov) rewrote a significant part of the table in prose, however, due to the OCD I prefer to make edits anonymously (so they wouldn't affect my editing history), so I can't paste what I wrote in the article for now, so I'll leave it here, and then I'll log in and paste it to the article when I feel to:

The Marxist-Leninist "communist states" which existed mostly during the Cold War and in most cases were supported by the Soviet Union were the examples fitting the Western theories of totalitarianism the most. According to Steven Saxonberg, "all Marxist-Leninist regimes have totalitarian ambitions", even though they do not always succeed in consolidation of their power and establishment of totalitarianism.[1]

The following Marxist-Leninist dictatorships have been defined as totalitarian without debates in academia: Maoist regime in China led by Mao Zedong,[2][3][4] the rule of Enver Hoxha in the People's Socialist Republic of Albania,[5][6][7] the Neo-Stalinist[8] Democratic Republic of Afghanistan which was supported by the USSR in the Soviet-Afghan War,[9][10][11][8] the Somali Democratic Republic under Siad Barre,[12] Democratic Kampuchea under Pol Pot,[13] and the regimes of Mengistu Haile Mariam in Ethiopia, who emerged as the leader of the communist military junta known as the Derg and its Commission for Organizing the Party of the Working People of Ethiopia and later founded the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia and Workers' Party of Ethiopia as its totalitarian party.[14][15] The latter is listed by Steven Saxonberg as an example of "failed of totalitarianism" due to its inability to consolidate control all over the country and the defeat in the civil war. The other two regimes he lists in the same category are the Sandinist Junta of National Reconstruction in Nicaragua and the People's Revolutionary Government of Grenada which was destroyed by the U. S. invasion following a factional split within the government.[1]

There has also been a consensus that North Korea under Kim Il Sung and his son Kim Jong Il, which was founded as a Stalinist regime in 1948, provides an example of totalitarianism.[16][17][18][19][20] However, it is more contentious as to when to mark the beginning of totalitarian period and whether it has ended. Thus, it was suggested that North Korea moved from Stalinism to true totalitarianism only in 1967, with the establishment of the Ten Principles for the Establishment of a Monolithic Ideological System.[21] It has also been suggested that the beginning of Songun politics iunder Kim Jong Il in 1994 marked the transition of North Korea to post-totalitarianism: while it did not lead to the regime achieving more political or social pluralism, it transformed the party-dominant totalitarian system to a one where the party competes with the army.[22]

Similarly, Fidel Castro, known for arrests of both his opponents and supporters and suppressing alternative communist movements, is regarded as a totalitarian dictator,[1] but the chronological boundaries of totalitarianism in Cuba are less clear. Professor Paul C. Sondrol described Castro as a "totalitarian dictator",[23] and suggested that in leading "a political system largely [of] his own creation and bearing his indelible stamp", Castro's leadership style warranted comparisons with totalitarian leaders like Mao Zedong, Hideki Tojo, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Saddam Hussein.[23] It has been suggested that 1961, when Castro declared the country to be Marxist-Leninist and began political persecution of the diddidents, marks the beginning of the totalitarian period.[24] There have been more varied suggestions regarding the distinguishing the post-totalitarian period from the preceding one: among the suggested dates were 1968, "when Che Guevara's death and an economic crisis led Castro to largely abandon his dreams ofexporting his revolution to Latin America, and any notion of establishing an alternative Leninist model to the Soviet one,"[25] and between 1971 and 1985.[26]

European satellites of the USSR which were established and became a part of the Warsaw Pact organization after World War II may also be regarded as totalitarian during their Stalinist phases. Thus, Czechoslovakia becomes totalitarian from 1948, when the Stalinist coup d'état overthrew the republican government,[27][28] until its de-Stalinization which occured between 1956[29][verification needed] and the Prague Spring of 1968;[30][31] Stalinist Hungarian People's Republic under Mátyás Rákosi from 1949 to 1953 is widely regarded as totalitarian,[32][33][34][35] the same label is used to the People's Republic of Bulgaria.[36] However, according to the Czech political scientist Michal Kubát, who relies on the mainstream theories of Juan Linz, these countries along with East Germany were only quasi-totalitarian. Kubát distinguishes these regimes from the Polish People's Republic, which he describes as authoritarian and similar to Titoist Yugoslavia;[37] similarly, Saxonberg describes Poland as not totalitarian, noting that it made significant concessions to the civil society.[1] Yugoslavia has also been described as totalitarian by some authors,[38][39][40] but the applicability of the label has been contested.[41][42]

The Mongolian People's Republic, the only "communist state" other than the USSR established prior to the Cold War, has also been described as totalitarian.[43]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 https://www.google.com/books/edition/Transitions_and_Non_Transitions_from_Com/zQw-RWxrPSUC?&pg=PA44
  2. ↑ "The Roles of the Monolithic Party Under the Totalitarian Leader". The China Quarterly. 40: 39–64. 1969. doi:10.1017/S0305741000044544.
  3. ↑ The Cultural Revolution and the History of Totalitarianism
  4. ↑ Gleason, Abbott (20 March 1997). Totalitarianism: The Inner History of the Cold War. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-028148-9.
  5. ↑ Mullahi, Anila; Dhimitri, Jostina (2015). "Education Issues in a Totalitarian State (Case of Albania)". Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences. 174: 4103–4107. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.01.1161.
  6. ↑ Bedini, Belina (2014). "The Legitimation of the Albanian Totalitarian Regime". Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences. 5 (16): 500–505. doi:10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n16p500.
  7. ↑ "Albania's EU aspirations still hampered by totalitarian past | DW &#124". Deutsche Welle. 22 March 2012.
  8. 1 2 S.Margolis, Eric (2001). "2: The Bravest Men on Earth". War at the top of the World: The struggle for Afghanistan, Kashmir, and Tibet. New York: Routledge. p. 15. ISBN 0-415-92712-9.
  9. ↑ Tucker, Ernest (2019). "21: Middle East at the End of the Cold War, 1979–1993". The Middle East in Modern World History (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge. p. 303. ISBN 978-1-138-49190-8. LCCN 2018043096. During their first few months in power, the Communists remade Afghanistan into a Soviet-style totalitarian state...
  10. ↑ Kirkpatrick, Jeane J (1981). "Afghanistan: Implications for Peace and Security". World Affairs. 144 (3): 243. JSTOR 20671902. ...the Communists violently seized power in Kabul and, with the help of growing numbers of Soviet "advisers," began forcibly to impose upon the people of Afghanistan a foreign ideology and a totalitarian system
  11. ↑ Roy, Olivier (2018). "3: The Sovietization of Afghanistan". In Hauner, Milan; L. Canfield, Robert (eds.). Afghanistan and the Soviet Union: Collision and Transformation. New York: Routledge. p. 51. ISBN 978-0-367-01216-8.
  12. ↑ "Mohamed Siad Barre | Socialist leader, military dictator, dictator | Britannica".
  13. ↑ Crimes Against Humanity-Klas-Göran Karlsson and Michael Schoenhals
  14. ↑ The Ethiopian Revolution 1974–1987: A Transformation from an Aristocratic to a Totalitarian Autocracy. Cambridge University Press. 8 April 1993. ISBN 978-0-521-43082-1.
  15. ↑ "Ethiopian Dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam | Human Rights Watch". 24 November 1999.
  16. ↑ "North Korea country profile". BBC News. 9 April 2018.
  17. ↑ "Kim Jong Un's North Korea: Life inside the totalitarian state". The Washington Post.
  18. ↑ Palmier, L.H. (1992). Détente in Asia?. St Antony's Series (in French). Palgrave Macmillan UK. p. 124. ISBN 978-1-349-12480-0. Retrieved 2023-03-10.
  19. ↑ Cite error: The named reference britannica was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  20. ↑ Saxonberg, S. (2013). Transitions and Non-Transitions from Communism: Regime Survival in China, Cuba, North Korea, and Vietnam. Transitions and Non-transitions from Communism: Regime Survival in China, Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam. Cambridge University Press. p. 304. ISBN 978-1-107-02388-8. Retrieved 2023-02-13.
  21. ↑ Change and Continuity in North Korean Politics. Taylor & Francis. 3 November 2016. ISBN 978-1-134-81104-5.
  22. ↑ Asian Military Evolutions:Civil–Military Relations in Asia. Bristol University Press. 2024. p. 232. ISBN 9781529229325. The third assessment of the post-Kim Il-sung North Korea is the 'post-totalitarian state' thesis, which suggests that Songun politics transformed North Korea from a party-dominant totalitarian system to a post-totalitarian state... The outcome was increasing institutional (but not social) pluralism... In post-totalitarian North Korea, the party and the military become equal peer institutions that compete for political and policy influence...
  23. 1 2 Sondrol, Paul C. (1991). "Totalitarian and Authoritarian Dictators: A Comparison of Fidel Castro and Alfredo Stroessner". Journal of Latin American Studies. 23 (3): 599–620. doi:10.1017/S0022216X00015868.
  24. ↑ Transitions and Non-Transitions from Communism. p. 139. I would argue that the "totalitarian" period started around 1961, when Castro declared the country to be Marxist-Leninist. It was at that time that he started purging people who disagreed with his policies...
  25. ↑ Transitions and Non-Transitions from Communism. p. 139.
  26. ↑ Cuban Communism. Cuba's transition to democracy, markets, and the rule of law will not be easy for a country that has experienced the likes of a Fidel Castro and decades of totalitarian and post-totalitarian rule."; "The foregoing typology may be applied to the Cuban regime as follows. A transition to post-totalitarianism began between 1971 and 1985.
  27. ↑ Balík, Stanislav; Hloušek, Vít; Kopeček, Lubomír; Holzer, Jan; Pšeja, Pavel; Roberts, Andrew Lawrence (17 July 2017). Czech Politics: From West to East and Back Again. Verlag Barbara Budrich. ISBN 978-3-8474-0974-8.
  28. ↑ Dijk, Ruud van; Gray, William Glenn; Savranskaya, Svetlana; Suri, Jeremi; Zhai, Qiang (13 May 2013). Encyclopedia of the Cold War. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-92310-5.
  29. ↑ https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/3/oa_edited_volume/chapter/3057030
  30. ↑ https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/id/789c0f69-ddb2-41ca-8a8c-1f1dc424e824/9783631878323.pdf
  31. ↑ https://is.muni.cz/el/fss/podzim2019/POLb1116/um/Linz_Stepan.pdf
  32. ↑ Bihari, Mihály (2013). "Magyarországi pártrendszerek (Történeti és analitikus bemutatás)" [Party systems of Hungary (historical and analytical presentation)]. Politológia: a politika és a modern állam: pártok és ideológiák [Political Science: Politics and the Modern State: Parties and Ideologies] (in Hungarian). Budapest: Nemzedékek Tudása Tankönyvkiadó. p. 367. ISBN 978-963-19-7628-1. OCLC 1081799738. Az egypárti diktatúra első szakasza 1949 nyarától 1953 nyaráig (az első Nagy Imre-kormány kinevezéséig) tartott. Ennek az időszaknak azegypártrendszere olyan totalitárius egypártrendszer, amely összekapcsolódott Rákosi Mátyás despotikus személyi hatalmával. [The first phase of the one-party dictatorship lasted from the summer of 1949 to the summer of 1953 (until the appointment of the first Imre Nagy government). The one-party system of this period is a totalitarian one-party system connected with the despotic personal power of Mátyás Rákosi.]
  33. ↑ Mezey, Barna; Gosztonyi, Gergely, eds. (2003). "A szovjet típusú államberendezkedés Magyarországon (1949–1956)" [The Soviet-type state system in Hungary (1949–1956)]. Magyar alkotmánytörténet [Hungarian Constitutional History] (in Hungarian). Budapest: Osiris Kiadó. pp. 467–468. ISBN 963-389-532-4. OCLC 1014875954. ... a párt nemcsak megszervezni igyekezett a társadalmat, hanem megpróbálta saját képére és hasonlatosságára formálni, s ellenőrzése alá vonta a termelést és az elosztást. ... A magyar társadalom ellenállása csupán néhány évig biztosította a valóban totalitárius berendezkedést. [... the party not only sought to organize society, but also to shape it in its own image and likeness, bringing production and distribution under its control. ... The resistance of the Hungarian society ensured a truly totalitarian system for only a few years.]
  34. ↑ Körösényi, András; Tóth, Csaba; Török, Gábor (2007). "A kommunista korszak tradíciója" [The tradition of the communist era]. A magyar politikai rendszer [The Hungarian Political System] (in Hungarian). Budapest: Osiris Kiadó. p. 21. ISBN 978-963-389-963-2. OCLC 1088039656. A politikai hatalom totális jellegűvé vált ... A rendszer totalitárius jellege abban ragadható meg, hogy a pártállami kontroll a politikai szférán messze túlmenően minden létszférára – a gazdaságtól a kultúrán keresztül egészen az iskolai és ifjúsági szocializációig – kiterjedt. [Political power has become total in nature ... The totalitarian nature of the system can be grasped in the fact that party-state control extended far beyond the political sphere to all spheres of existence, from the economy through culture to school and youth socialization.]
  35. ↑ Romsics, Ignác (2010). "A rákosista diktatúra" [The Rákosist dictatorship]. Magyarország története a XX. században [History of Hungary in the 20th Century] (in Hungarian). Budapest: Osiris Kiadó. p. 337. ISBN 978-963-276-179-4. OCLC 1081699371. Nem kétséges, hogy az 1949 – re kialakult magyar rendszer ... kimeríti a totalitarianizmus fogalmát. [There is no doubt that the Hungarian system formed by 1949 ... exhausts the concept of totalitarianism.]
  36. ↑ "A History of the Peoples Republic of Bulgaria. The Regime and Society". February 2025.
  37. ↑ Kubát, Michal (June 2006). "Theories of Non-Democratic Regimes and Eastern Europe 1944–1989". Czech Journal of Political Science (2).
  38. ↑ Mihaljević, Josip; Miljan, Goran (February 2020). "Was Tito's Yugoslavia not totalitarian?". Istorija 20. Veka. 38 (1/2020): 223–248. doi:10.29362/ist20veka.2020.1.mih.223-248.
  39. ↑ Thompson, M. R. (1 June 2002). "Totalitarian and Post-Totalitarian Regimes in Transitions and Non-Transitions from Communism". Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions. 3 (1): 79–106. doi:10.1080/714005469.
  40. ↑ Sunic, Tomislav (1995). Titoism and Dissidence: Studies in the History and Dissolution of Communist Yugoslavia. P. Lang. ISBN 978-3-631-47778-6.[page needed]
  41. ↑ Flere, Sergej; Klanjšek, Rudi (June 2014). "Was Tito's Yugoslavia totalitarian?". Communist and Post-Communist Studies. 47 (2): 237–245. doi:10.1016/j.postcomstud.2014.04.009.
  42. ↑ Flere, Sergej; Klanjšek, Rudi (August 2020). "What typological appelation is suitable for Tito's Yugoslavia: Response to Mihaljević and Miljan". Istorija 20. Veka. 38 (2/2020): 231–244. doi:10.29362/ist20veka.2020.2.fle.231-244. CEEOL 911179.
  43. ↑ Morozova, Irina Y. (2009). Socialist Revolutions in Asia: The Social History of Mongolia in the 20th Century. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-78437-9.[page needed]

Requested move 26 March 2026

[edit]
Latest comment: 3 months ago12 comments9 people in discussion
The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. There is consensus against moving the page. An alternative proposal was put to move to List of totalitarian regimes; however, this failed to get sufficient support. (closed by non-admin page mover) TarnishedPathtalk 02:14, 10 April 2026 (UTC)Reply

Examples of totalitarian regimes → Totalitarian regimes – More simple. ~2026-18852-39 (talk) 18:08, 26 March 2026 (UTC) — Relisting. Jeffrey34555 (talk) 01:09, 3 April 2026 (UTC)Reply

  • Oppose This article used to be called "List of" and that caused constant problems with editors creating a table. This caused constant problems, as seen in the extensive talk discussions, of not explaining why it is totalitarian just dumping a couple newspaper sources that used the word. Attempts to limit it to high quality sources failed over many years, it was a constant battle and it never worked. What counts as "totalitarian" is extremely debated you can't have a black and white "list" - you need to explain it with pro and con arguments and historiography - actually explain the POVs in full on paragraph length prose, no tables no "list". Furthermore, people attempted to create a comprehensive accounting of everything in history going back forever, and it was impossible to deal with. It is beyond the scope of Wikipedia to have a comprehensive list of every 14th century eastern european kingdom some historian might have once called totalitarian in nature. This is why it is no longer called a "list", and why we clearly state up front that these are only meant to be examples. -- GreenC 04:59, 27 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
Also this article has seen extreme levels of edit warring from IPs, red accounts etc.. going on for years. Major agendas by right and left wing zealots It was not until we got rid of the table ("list"), and renamed the article to be about examples, that things finally calmed down in the past year or two. Because frankly it's easy to pop a name into a list, or delete one, and hard to research and write prose. Don't return to the dark ages and make the same mistake that caused years of problems on this page. -- GreenC 05:06, 27 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose. I think the current article title is a better descriptive title of the article content. DrKay (talk) 07:03, 27 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
  • Support after reworking: the previously existing table may be rewritten in prose with featuring various opinions similarly to List of cults of personality (my nick is Opostylov, i wrote above why I write logged off)
~2026-19068-70 (talk) 13:02, 27 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
btw, @Plasticwonder, my version was better and not redundant: you've thrown out Mengistu, Afghanistan andd a lot of my text without a clear explanation; also, it was better since it categorized all of these regimes as "Marxist-Leninist"". Imo, the section "Other states" shouldn't exist as it is, since almost all of the states can be categorized by ideologies - theories of totalitarianism focus on "totalitarian ideologies". Thus, it is better to have Cuba in "Marxism-Leninism", the ISIS, Talib Afghanistan, Iran (there are voices for that) and the others in "Islamism", which I think is regarded as a "totalitarian ideology"; Hussein and Assad, Gaddafi and maybe Nasser (not sure, I added him to the table, but with only like 3 sources) thus can have a block titled "Arab Socialism". There may be a section for states which don't fit into these categories but which nevertheless have sources calling them totalitarian, like the Duvalier family and the National Reorganization Process, but these sources diverge from the traditional theories of totalitarianism (Duvalier lacked a "totalitarian ideology", Videla lacked totalitarian mobilization mechanisms like the single-party system), so obviously section about these states will be different. ~2026-19068-70 (talk) 13:14, 27 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
(i voted "support" for "list", now it is "definitions", even though the article does not concern definitions - what happened? is it even allowed to change the proposal like that?) ~2026-19346-18 (talk) 03:26, 28 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
No. It is not permitted to hijack discussions in that way. I have undone it. DrKay (talk) 07:30, 28 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Requested move 27 March 2026

[edit]
Latest comment: 4 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: procedural close. Two discussions should not be open at the same time. DrKay (talk) 07:32, 28 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

Examples of totalitarian regimes → Definitions of totalitarianism – Standartization such as definitions of fascism, Definition of terrorism, Definitions of economics, Definitions of philosophy. etc ~2026-19162-90 (talk) 20:46, 27 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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