Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The Revolutionary Totalitarian Personality
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1964
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://sta.uwi.edu/fss/politicalscience/staff.asp * http://www.palgrave.com/br/book/9781137473479#aboutAuthors
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2015057315
Descriptive conventions:
rda
Personal name heading:
Tudoroiu, Theodor, 1964-
Birth date: 19641101
Found in: The revolutionary totalitarian personality, 2015: ECIP t.p.
(Theodor Tudoroiu, Lecturer, Department of Political
Science, University of the West Indies, Trinidad &
Tobago.) data view (b. Nov. 1, 1964)
================================================================================
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS AUTHORITIES
Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave., SE
Washington, DC 20540
Questions? Contact: ils@loc.gov
PERSONAL
Born November 1, 1964.
EDUCATION:Université de Montréal, Canada, Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
McGill University, political scientist; University of the West Indies, Trinidad & Tobago, lecturer, Department of Political Science.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Dr. Theodor Tudoroiu published The Revolutionary Totalitarian Personality: Hitler, Mao, Castro and Chávez, an examination of the psychological personality of totalitarian leaders. He is currently lecturer at the Department of Political Science of the University of the West Indies at St. Augustine, and was a political scientist at McGill University. Tudoroiu holds a Ph.D. in political science from the Université de Montréal, Canada.
In 2016, Tudoroiu published The Revolutionary Totalitarian Personality, in which he discusses the concept of revolutionary totalitarian personality. He uses the case studies and biographical narratives of active dictators within the twentieth century—Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, and Hugo Chávez—to describe and expand on the political psychology of revolutionary totalitarians and how they use their dominant personality and charisma in guiding their countries toward a totalitarian regime and building and maintaining that type of government. Writing in Choice, S. Mitropolitski noted that Tudoroiu “offers a conceptual framework in political psychology that explains the rise of totalitarian political regimes around the globe.” Tudoroiu focuses primarily on Hitler (a politically right wing ideologist), and Mao and Castro (more associated with the left), then intuitively addresses conditions and effects of Chavez.
Through extensive research, Tudoroiu examines the political trajectories of these famous leaders and their revolutionary tendencies that developed within a modern context. Tudoroiu labels the revolutionary totalitarian personality as malignant narcissism, borderline personality disorder, and paranoid personality disorder. These leaders use charisma to create a relationship with the citizenry, bordering on cult status, which allows for non-democratic rule. They are able to impose a new system of rules and establish order. However, once in power, rather than continuing that revolutionary attitude, these new rules are enforced with brute force. Externally, the revolutionary ideals apply to foreign policy and in extreme cases leads to devastating military consequences. While Tudoroiu’s case study subjects span various geographic, social, and cultural contexts, their personality traits are similar. He even describes the family life of his subjects.
Tudoroiu also explores how ideological development in Latin America and the Middle East provide conditions that allow and encourage the growth of radical movements. Although the personality of the totalitarian leader is important, it functions within the revolutionary process, and is not likely to withstand a toppling by foreign military intervention. In his book, Tudoroiu offers a new interpretation of how revolutions get started and are led, presents forms of totalitarian ideology and political development, assures readers that totalitarianism is not extinct and can persist in today’s geopolitical world, and declares that totalitarian regimes still exist and are still possible under similar forms, such as religious totalitarianism.
Researching and lecturing about post communist governmental upheaval and regime change, Tudoroiu explains that despite variables, totalitarian regimes begin similarly, usually with fraudulent elections, street protesters, and implementation of new leadership claiming to reject current governmental traditions and political elitism and aim to do things differently. The political outsiders attempt to replace the ingrained government. However, what usually follows is corruption, fraud, and nepotism, and the new leadership is often ineffectual, causing disruption in government and dissent among the citizenry that was expecting real change. In reality, rather than real change, the “revolution” was nothing more than one group of political elites vying for power over another group. A writer commented in the Wilson Quarterly: “The democratic revolutions so beautifully named in the euphoria of mass street demonstrations, Tudoroiu writes, have proven to be not much more than a ‘limited rotation of the ruling elites within undemocratic political systems.’”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Choice, October 2016, S. Mitropolitski, review of The Revolutionary Totalitarian Personality, p. 289.
Wilson Quarterly, winter 2008, review of The Revolutionary Totalitarian Personality, p. 87.*
Dr Theodor Tudoroiu earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from the Université de Montréal, Canada. He is currently Lecturer at the Department of Political Science of the University of the West Indies at St. Augustine.
The Revolutionary Totalitarian Personality
Hitler, Mao, Castro, and Chávez
Authors: Tudoroiu, Theodor
This book uses the case studies of Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, and Hugo Chávez in order to introduce the concept of revolutionary totalitarian personality, and to show that this type of personality is decisive in choosing a totalitarian regime-building project and in shaping the ensuing totalitarian process.
Staff
DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
Dr. Theodor Tudoroiu
Senior Lecturer
Email: theodor.tudoroiu@sta.uwi.edu
Tel/Ext: (868) 662-2002 Ext. 82671
Tudoroiu, Theodor. The revolutionary totalitarian personality: Hitler, Mao, Castro, and Chavez
S. Mitropolitski
54.2 (Oct. 2016): p289.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Tudoroiu, Theodor. The revolutionary totalitarian personality: Hitler, Mao, Castro, and Chavez. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 203p bibl index afp ISBN 9781137473479 cloth, $95.00; ISBN 9781137473486 ebook, contact publisher for price
54-0935
JC480
2015-25956
MARC
Tudoroiu (Univ. of West Indies at St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago) offers a conceptual framework in political psychology that explains the rise of totalitarian political regimes around the globe. He introduces the concept of revolutionary totalitarian personality as part of authoritarian personality literature. This type of dominant personality is decisive in choosing a totalitarian trajectory. Its main dimensions include malignant narcissism, borderline personality disorder, and paranoid personality disorder. Despite the conceptual importance of the leader's personality, the author acknowledges the importance of structural factors in the revolutionary process and in termination of totalitarian regimes through foreign military intervention. Tudoroiu illustrates his book with three case studies of analytical biographical narratives on Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, and Fidel Castro. These cases suggest the presence of revolutionary totalitarian personality in quite different geographic, social, and cultural contexts, thus emphasizing personality as the main explanatory variable. Theoretical generalizations are further tested on the case of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. Possible implications of this innovative approach to totalitarianism is the present political and ideological development in Latin America and the Middle East, where structural conditions seem to encourage the rise of radical movements. Summing Up: ** Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.--S. Mitropolitski, University of Ottawa
Mitropolitski, S.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Mitropolitski, S. "Tudoroiu, Theodor. The revolutionary totalitarian personality: Hitler, Mao, Castro, and Chavez." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, Oct. 2016, p. 289+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA479869155&it=r&asid=15b60025f0dba824de848027138f30d3. Accessed 13 Aug. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A479869155
Postcommunist shuffle
32.1 (Winter 2008): p87.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2008 Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
http://www.wilsonquarterly.com/page.cfm/About_Wilson_Quarterly
THE SOURCE: "Rose, Orange, and Tulip: The Failed Post-Soviet Revolutions" by Theodor Tudoroiu, in Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Sept. 2007.
STARTING IN 2003, WHEN democracy seemed to be spreading to the most improbable nations, revolutions broke out in three former Soviet republics. The Rose Revolution toppled a blindsided Eduard Shevardnadze in Georgia and replaced him with a 36-year-old former New York lawyer. The Orange Revolution of 2004 in Ukraine installed a Westernized Viktor Yushchenko as the true winner of disputed elections, supplanting a thuggish clique later suspected of nearly killing him by dioxin poisoning. And the Tulip Revolution in 2005 in Kyrgyzstan sent authoritarian president Askar Akayev hightailing to Russia, succeeded by an opposition leader promising constitutional reform.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
The revolutions followed a common pattern: a fraudulent election, massive protest demonstrations, and the installation of a new "revolutionary" leadership. All three were hailed in the West as proof that a new civil society had grown strong enough in the post-communist countries to check fraud and corruption. In former Soviet republics with incomes as low as that of Swaziland, enthusiasts saw the birth of a new era of Jeffersonian democracy.
Alas, writes Theodor Tudoroiu, a political scientist at McGill University, all three regimes now represent "nothing more than failed revolutions." In fact, no fresh heroes rose from the grassroots, swept into power by a newly robust civil society and banished Soviet-era apparatchiks. The "revolutions" were really the product of a split in the "political elite" surviving from the Soviet era. The Rose, Orange, and Tulip revolutions were initiated and controlled by "outs" seeking to replace the "ins."
Georgia's new leader, Mikhail Saakashvili, once the justice minister under the regime he overthrew, has ripened into a little Napoleon Bonaparte, accumulating outsized powers and fending off lurid charges of murder and corruption. Ukraine's president, a former prime minister and head of the national bank under the regime he defeated, did little after winning power, and finally was forced to offer the office of prime minister to a leader of the clique suspected of trying to kill him. Kyrgyzstan, whose president has polished coercive institutions to a brighter shine than in the Soviet era itself, is mired in corruption and nepotism and has suffered business-linked killings and political assassinations.
The democratic revolutions so beautifully named in the euphoria of mass street demonstrations, Tudoroiu writes, have proven to be not much more than a "limited rotation of the ruling elites within undemocratic political systems."
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Postcommunist shuffle." The Wilson Quarterly, vol. 32, no. 1, 2008, p. 87+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA174010750&it=r&asid=eff4d752a4364939363dd97d146e1b39. Accessed 13 Aug. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A174010750