In 1952, Barr wrote a piece for the Times Magazine, "Is Modern Art Communistic?," in which he tried to argue, in effect, that "democratic" is a totalitarian standard for judging art.
Nor is it a totalitarian state; by Soviet standards it is an amicable federation.
The former East Germany was a closed, totalitarian state, with a standard of living barely half that of West Germany, a state imprisoned by the lies of the system imposed upon it.
Enforcement of ethical standards in a totalitarian environment, as I witnessed it in the Soviet Union, is often arbitrary and sometimes leads to draconian measures like the death penalty for financial crimes.
Even by the standards of post-totalitarian nations, with their lingering paranoia and tendency to be consecrated to the memory of official ideology and legitimacy of power, this incident was quite stunning in its audacity.
Chinese bloggers derided him then as "a master of directing totalitarian group calisthenics," whose "blockbusters create standards for pompous state ceremonies," and similar criticisms are now surfacing.
All these factors make it clear that a situation simply did not exist in which totalitarian government, at least by 20th-century standards, could have had any meaning.
On the communist side, the standard was set by the increasingly totalitarian regime of Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union.
Hemon also does much to demolish the perception that growing up in a totalitarian society (granted, Yugoslavia was fairly liberal by Communist standards) is necessarily hell for the kids.
And we will beat it without abandoning the standards of justice that distinguish decent societies from totalitarian regimes.
