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Without any claim to be exhaustive, but only based on my personal experience as a player, I suggest the following path bibliographic literary on totalitarianism in general and about the array of Stalin - and in particular Soviet . Very often, the literature has the ability to represent nature of a phenomenon so as to ensure their understanding to the same extent historiographical survey although in different ways. And 'this is the case of novels that are posted here.

For a definition of Totalitarianism Hannah Arendt's theory click HERE
Clicking on the cover, you can read the reviews on this aNobii

Arthur Koestler Darkness at Noon

Arthur Koestler, Hungarian-born writer, left the Communist Party during the period of Stalinist purges and published in 1941 the novel "Darkness at Noon" in which they told the story of a high official of the Soviet Communist Party , Rubasciov, star of the October Revolution, who was arrested for counterrevolutionary activity and submitted to the system of Stalinist purge (torture, extortion of confession and a false conviction). Koestler was inspired by the trial and the sentencing to death of Buckarin which took place in 1938. The story is one of the most tragic developments in the municipality where the individual as a subject endowed with free thought and personal identity, is canceled in the name of a place like faith total, absolute and unquestioned. Rubasciov should be deleted because it wants the greatest good of the party and in the interrogation Dostoevsky with his inquisitor and executioner, Gletkin, will lead to the final tragedy.
Darkness at Noon on wikipedia


George Orwell's Animal Farm

satirical novels of British writer George Orwell offering an allegory of the Soviet totalitarian regime in the Stalinist period, published in 1945 . The story tells of a farm animal and revolt against the man who oppresses them under a regime of harsh exploitation. Liberated from human exploitation create a society based on Marxist principle "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." At this point, the story recounts, also in allegorical form, the events of the history of Soviet communism. The novel is not only a condemnation of the atrocities of totalitarianism in general and of the Soviet Union in particular, but also very exciting.

The name was Eric Arthur Blair, Orwell was , was also a journalist and political activist orientation Marxist orientation that remained even after the events of the Stalinism of the '30s that led him to break with Soviet communism, and to devote his work to a harsh polemic against the Stalinist communism.
Animal Farm on wikipedia


George Orwell 1984

very complex novel and set in the near future (written in 1948 and set in 1984) in which Orwell describes a totalitarian society dominated by a single party, led by "Big Brother", which exercises full control over the mind and behavior of individuals. Through a series of linguistic and cultural tools (the doublethink, the Thought Police, Newspeak, etc..), The party has created an illusory reality in which they live all members of society. For example, the Newspeak is a language consisting of words unique and strictly limited to elementary concepts in which we lose the possibility of a critical thinking individual. The same place as the leading work to manipulate the information already published books and newspapers and which contains the predictions made by the party, in order to make those forecasts in line with what really happened then. History is constantly rewritten to accord with the directives of power. The novel is a dystopia in which the author manages to portray a society in which condenses when the characteristic features of all forms of totalitarianism (Nazi and Communist), although many are indications that the author was inspired to Soviet totalitarianism.

1984 on wikipedia

Aleksandr Isaevich A day of Ivan Denisovich

Aleksandr  Solženicyn   trascorse,  durante i l periodo staliniano, 11 anni di reclusione in un campo di lavoro forzato siberiano, poichè in una sua lettera venne riscontrata la presenza di espressioni non ortodosse su Stalin e riacquistò la libertà solo nel 1956. Nel 1970 vinse il premio Nobel che non ritirò because he feared that the authorities would allow him to return home. His literary reputation is linked to the story "A day of Ivan Denisov is , 1962, describing everyday life in a day, as well as a political prisoner was held in the Gulag , the Soviet concentration camp whose name is an acronym dellla expression, very bureaucratic, Directorate of main corrective labor camps. They are the horror physical and psychological, which reduced the Gulag system of individuals, the traits that permeate the whole story.
A day of Ivan Denisov is on wikipedia

Milan Kundera The Unbearable Lightness of Being

novel by Milan Kundera published in 1984. The novel tells the story of four characters sentimental and existential and is set in Prague in 1968, between the hopes of the Prague Spring, a trial communism human face, and the Soviet invasion that crushed the attempt by violence. The title alludes to the paradox that the existence requires that we give it a meaning, but it is impossible for us to give life meaning. This step is partly explained the title: " [...] If you took it himself, but in the end it was said that in reality it was only natural not to know what he wanted. You never know what you should want because we live only one life and one can not compare with their previous lives, or correct it in future lives. It 'better to be with Tereza or to remain alone? There is no way to determine what decision is the best, because there is no comparison. The man lives now everything for the first time without preparation. As an actor enters the stage without ever having tried. But what value can have life if the first test is already life itself? That is life always like a sketch. But even "sketch" is the right word, because one is always a rough sketch of something, the preparation of a framework, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch of nothing, an outline with no picture.
"Einmal ist keinmal. Tomas to himself, "repeated the German proverb. What happens only once it's as if it never happened. If man can live only one life, it is as if he did not live at all. [...] "
Unbearable Lightness of Being on my-lybraryblog