Problems of transition from totalitarianism to democracy in the works of the french political scientist and sociologist Raymond Aron

Many well-known scientists studied totalitarianism. The result of their research was the emergence of a number of global theories, including the creation of a theory of totalitarianism. Within the framework of these theories has been given the typology and characteristics of totalitarian regimes; the origins, formation and practice of one-party regimes have been studied in detail. Most of the researches were limited to the study of varieties of the totalitarian regime, a comparative analysis of modes within a single theory. Raymond Aron was one of the few scientists who studied not only the theory and practice in detail, and as one of the pioneers of the theory of totalitarianism gave a description of these regimes, but also thought about the future of the existing regimes. The purpose of the article is to show the view of the famous French sociologist and political scientist Raymond Aron on the problems of transition from totalitarianism to democracy. The sources of research were the works of the French scientist, devoted to the analysis of known regimes. The brightest of them are “Democracy and Totalitarianism”, “Class Struggle”, “History of the Twentieth Century”, “Memoirs”, “Stages of Development of Sociological Thought”, “Opium of Intellectuals”, “Biased Viewer”. A red thread through all the works of Aaron is the idea of the danger of “slipping into totalitarian” constitutional-pluralistic regimes (like the Western democracies). He admits that this danger is very real, and not a possible alternative. Based on a real threat, the scientist identifies and gives a detailed description of the characteristic features of various modes. Matching and comparing them with each other, he finds the weaknesses of each of them. And he reflects on the possible future of each of them. Speaking about democratic regimes, he states that the likelihood of coming to power, at various stages of its historical development, of one-party governments is very high, but believes that this is only a temporary and necessary step. As for the alternatives of totalitarian regimes, the scientist's forecasts here are not so unambiguous and optimistic. Especially in relation to the Soviet regime. R. Aron believes that there are only two versions of the development of events. The first is the forcible overthrow of the existing regime from the outside, as happened with the national-socialist and the second is the changes within the regime itself, not excluding radical, such as revolutions and coups. In this way, the French sociologist and political scientist made a solid contribution to the study of various types of regimes, considered various theories and schemes for the transformation of totalitarian regimes. He outlined the main problems of getting out of totalitarianism. Raymond Aron's study represent a significant value to the world of science.

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