La Rivoluzione bolscevica e la dialettica dei totalitarismi: potenzialità e limiti della «storiografia transpolitica» di Ernst Nolte, in Marco Stefano Birtolo (a cura di), Rivoluzioni, Quaderno monografico della rivista on line e cartacea «Politica.eu», 2019, pp. 92-132. La rivista è promossa dal Dipartimento di Scienze Umanistiche, Sociali e della Formazione - Università degli Studi del Molise. [ISBN 9788896394298; ISSN 2421-4302].

This paper analyses Ernst Nolte’s interpretation of Bolshevik revolution, and underlines the characteristics of his methodological approach to historical research. According to the German historian, the Russian revolution (1917) determined an ideological dialectics that characterized the first half of the 20th century: following the mechanism of “challenge and response” Nolte has interpreted the birth and the developments of Nazism as a response to Bolshevism, a violent and excessive response (Schreckbild). Thus, Nolte explains the historical development of the Nazi totalitarianism in relationship to the Soviet totalitarianism, and speaks about a "European civil war" (europäische Bürgerkrieg 1917-1945). In this paper the criticisms that several historians have made to Nolte’s point of view are also discussed: this debate is known as “Historikerstreit.” I underline, therefore, the features and the limits of Nolte’s “deconstruction of revolutionary mythology.”