Deutschsowjetische Bloodlands? Zum methodologischen spatial und imperial turn der aktuellen Totalitarismustheorie

authored by

Sebastian Huhnholz

Abstract

Timothy Snyder's book Bloodlands was sceptically received by a considerable part of the community of German historians. It was intensively criticized, among other places, in this very publication. It is not difficult to see, however, that this reception was a result of an basically normative discomfort with Snyder's comparison between National Socialist and Stalinist mass murder between the rise of Hitler and the death of Stalin. The heritage of the Historikerstreit still makes itself felt. The critique of Bloodlands by historians of the Holocaust and the Second World War reveals itself, in this connection, as a questionably self-referential and moreover national methodology based upon morally grounded, politically motivated, and intellectually unrealisable ideals. This presumption for redemptive history conveys the impression of a kind of special German right to paternalism in the field. In all this it has been neglected that Snyder has presented not an analysis of ideological motives but rather a structural analysis of totalitarian mass murder that is sensitive to the concept of space. In so doing he takes up the major themes of classical political totalitarianism theory and brings them into harmony with the most recent international imperial histories and interdisciplinary studies of the politics of space.

External Organisation(s)

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU)

Type

Review article

Journal

Journal of modern European history

Volume

12

Pages

427-447

No. of pages

21

ISSN

1611-8944

Publication date

01.11.2014

Publication status

E-pub ahead of print

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

History

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 16 - Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.17104/1611-8944_2014_4_427 (Access: Closed)