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From: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Nicaraguan Parallel
Message-ID: <199@gargoyle.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 23-Sep-85 18:33:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.199
Posted: Mon Sep 23 18:33:40 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 27-Sep-85 06:48:51 EDT
References: <193@gargoyle.UUCP> <28200092@inmet.UUCP>
Reply-To: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Organization: U. of Chicago, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 28

In article <28200092@inmet.UUCP> janw@inmet.UUCP writes:

>The isomorphism (structural identity)
>between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia has always fascinated me.
>Here are two regimes with quite different ideologies, brought
>to power by different social groups, in two dissimilar cultures,
>yet as alike as two peas in a pod, and growing even more alike 
>the longer they existed. And quite *unlike* any repressive
>regime before 1917. I see this as  one of the central
>facts of this century, and a challenge to any political
>theorist. To my mind, it disproves, for example, both
>Solzhenitsyn's explanation of Communism as something produced
>by Marxist ideology, and Richard Pipes's explanation of it as
>something flowing from a thousand years of Russian history.
>I believe totalitarianism to be an *invention*, as specific
>to the 20th century as television or atom bomb. It is a perfect
>machine for its purpose, which is to permit the group in power
>to stay in power. Once perfected, it is imported by country
>after country.

This is fine; but one must be disinformed to regard Nicaragua as
totalitarian, in my opinion.  The reasonably open and democratic
elections held last fall have no parallel in Soviet history since
1917, and are sufficient to draw a sharp distinction between the two
political systems.  Not to mention other differences.  If this is
totalitarianism, it is a strange variety indeed.  
-- 
Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes