I'd argue they were totalitarian and not conservative. The funny thing about Totalitarianism is that it does not really care about being left or right and seems to share the same values : https://news.emory.edu/stories/2021/09/esc_left_wing_authoritarians_psychology/campus.html
Totalitarianism is a made up word by a CIA stooge (who was an actual anti-Semite, before the word lost all meaning) cooked up to draw parallels between the USSR and Nazi Germany so as to propagate red scare propaganda.
In Hannah Arendt analysis it does not matter for what purpose the tools of state power are utilised, merely that they are utilised. It does not matter if the state has broad support from the population, all that matters is that the state acts. This is an infantile worldview.
The word itself is without any meaning beyond "descriptor of enemy state". Any definition is either so broad as to describe every nation-state or so narrow that it could just be replaced with the name of the state one is trying to foster fear of.
People who tried to conserve Soviet Union can arguably be called left wing conservatives.
I'd argue they were totalitarian and not conservative. The funny thing about Totalitarianism is that it does not really care about being left or right and seems to share the same values : https://news.emory.edu/stories/2021/09/esc_left_wing_authoritarians_psychology/campus.html
Totalitarianism is a made up word by a CIA stooge (who was an actual anti-Semite, before the word lost all meaning) cooked up to draw parallels between the USSR and Nazi Germany so as to propagate red scare propaganda.
In Hannah Arendt analysis it does not matter for what purpose the tools of state power are utilised, merely that they are utilised. It does not matter if the state has broad support from the population, all that matters is that the state acts. This is an infantile worldview.
The word itself is without any meaning beyond "descriptor of enemy state". Any definition is either so broad as to describe every nation-state or so narrow that it could just be replaced with the name of the state one is trying to foster fear of.