Socialisme, Communisme, Totalitarisme : quelle différence pour une recherche historique du point de vue moral ?

Abstract

Socialism, Communism, Totalitarianism: What difference for a historical research from a moral point of view

The essay focuses on recent developments in the field of history of socialist/ communist regime in Bulgaria. The author considers this form of disciplinary knowledge as a set of discourses and draws his research material from a number of interviews with researchers (mostly historians, but also anthropologists and sociologists) in the field. The attempt is made to elucidate the “moral base” and potential political implications of the existing demarcation and differentiation between different approaches to this still burning subject.The accent is put on the individual (and collective) choice of labeling the epoch – socialism, communism, or totalitarianism. Those three labels are used in order to construct three ideal types of historical-sociological research and to indicate the methodological specificities of every type of research as well as its particular objects of study. Finally a point is made on the danger which a close relationship between a study and politics represents to the relative research autonomy.

Keywords: discursive strategies, ideal types, moral positioning, research autonomy, communist regime