Revel's great subject was totalitarianism, not just its practice butalso its intellectual methods, deceits and disturbing psychologicalattractions. In books such as "The Totalitarian Temptation" (1976) and"How Democracies Perish" (1983), he dissected the mind-set of Westernintellectuals who, living in democracies, found much to admire in gulagcountries like the Soviet Union and Cuba and much to detest in freeones—the U.S. most of all.
Why was that? "The totalitarian phenomenon," Revel observed years ago,"is not to be understood without making an allowance for the thesisthat some important part of every society consists of people whoactively want tyranny: either to exercise it themselves or—much moremysteriously—to submit to it.