Hello, I’m Yang Zhao. Today we begin Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism. Reading it independently requires some background.

When Arendt wrote the book in 1951, and even in her preface to the second edition in 1967, she assumed knowledge many readers today may lack: Soviet communist and Nazi fascist totalitarianism, who Hitler was, and how Hitler and the Nazis rose in Germany.

She likewise assumed readers knew what happened after the Communist Party took power in Russia in 1917, how power passed to Stalin after Lenin’s death, and what Stalin and the Soviet party had done by the end of World War II.

 

To grasp the scale of totalitarianism, think of Hitler and Stalin. This was more than dictatorship or autocracy. Arendt insisted on totalitarianism as the proper name for a distinct twentieth-century phenomenon.

Chinese translations cause difficulty: one term emphasizes extremity, the other concentration of power. Both translate totalitarianism, but stress different things.

I prefer the character meaning “extreme,” because Arendt’s concept derives from the total domination she repeatedly emphasizes.

After seizing power, the Nazis drove Germany step by step toward World War II. The absence of resistance reflects total domination: everyone was enclosed in a system of absolute obedience; no Nazi command could be refused.

 

Total domination also exceeds outward obedience. During Stalin’s Great Purge, why did defendants in show trials confess even knowing they would die?

Stalinist rule, later influencing Eastern European communist parties, demanded admission of error and confession. Refusal doubled the offense: first disobedience, then refusal to acknowledge it.