HOW CAN WE "RECONCILE" COMMUNIST AND NAZI LEGACIES?
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through much of their existence were no less oppressive and regimented
than those in Nazi Germany, if not more so. Arguably, the average, gen–
tile, apolitical German under Nazism was less repressed, deprived or in–
timidated than the average Chinese or Soviet citizen under Communist
rule. And if we compare the levels and quality of propaganda, or institu–
tionalized mendacity, the deliberate and systematic misrepresentation of
social and political realities and groups, it is hard to say who did more
damage to truth and common human decency, the Nazi or Communist
propagandists. On these grounds, too, it is far from clear why moral
judgment should weigh more heavily against Nazi Germany than Stalin's
Soviet Union or Mao's China. But if Hitler was less impelled to terror–
ize the average German than Stalin or Mao their own citizens, this was
so because he had far more popular support than Stalin or Mao, and
other Communist leaders.
It is not my purpose to call into question the uniqueness of Nazism
and its major moral outrage, the Holocaust, the key source of the deci–
sive moral delegitimation of Nazism. However, I want to explore the
persisting differences between the moral assessments of these two types of
systems.
The most obvious divergence between such moral assessments has
been the widespread reluctance of scholars, publicists, and public figures
to apply moral categories and criteria to the analysis of the Communist
as opposed to the Nazi case. Illustrative of these attitudes has been the
enduring scorn (in the media and among the liberal intelligentsia) heaped
upon former President Reagan for calling the Soviet Union an "evil
empire." Similar terminology and moral indignation directed at the So–
viet Union and Communism by Solzhenistsyn contributed to his un–
popularity among the Western liberal intelligentsia. It has been a part of
conventional wisdom, in liberal, educated American and Western Euro–
pean circles, that a strong, morally informed critique of Communism is
somehow inappropriate, unenlightened, and in poor taste.
For example while many Western intellectuals and social scientists
believed that an "authoritarian personality" type might be the key to
understanding the Nazi movement and system (as well as right-wing
movements in general), the possibility that similar types might have been
attracted to Communist systems (or left-wing movements) was hardly
ever entertained. Also, American academics ra-rely, if ever, disputed the
applicability of the concept of totalitarianism to Nazi Germany, whereas
the idea of Soviet (and other Communist) totalitarianism generated in–
tense, bitter and prolonged debates - precisely because of the moral di–
mensions and the implications of the concept.
Even the standards applied to the methodology of studying the two
