totalitarianism, a 20th century term for tyranny

[AREN5 at aol.com]

Jbf wrote:

>The Romans had a very efficient system of delators who reported to the 
>emperor.  This system worked well enough for most governments for over 
>fifteen hundred years without much technology.  Secret police haunted the 
>coffeehouses of Vienna in the 1840s.  Nicholas I had his system of informers 
&
 >secret police that Stalin used as a model after the Decembrist revolt 
nearly 
>threw him out.  All the bureaucrats of Europe & Asia kept their people under 
>control with terror & ignorance & the religions allied themselves with 
>Caesar. 

This is true but...
    The Roman system worked until they overextended themselves...why do you 
think they split into east and west?
    even though secret police and spies existed, people under pre-twentieth 
century totalitarian regimes still had a measure of personal freedom, very 
unlike the Stalin and Hitler versions were one's life, and every aspect of it 
was devoted entirely to the state.