Dialectica dintre totalitarism şi democraţie în reflecția politică a lui Tzvetan Todorov

The contribution intends to examine the relationship between totalitarianism and democracy in the reflection of Tzvetan Todorov (1939-2017), the French-Bulgarian historian of ideas. The subject, that became a recurring one – especially after the fall of Berlin’s wall – in many writings of the scholar, is closely connected to that of historical memory, to the political values on Modern Age Europe, to the risk that new ideologies may nourish forms of despotism in the present time and threaten again the principles of liberal democracies. Fundamental, in this investigation, is the notion of progress, together with the idea of a linear development of history, subjected to a steady criticism by Todorov, which avails himself of the contribution from a part of the French political thought’s tradition.