Stalin’s death triggered an authentic but incomplete detotalitarization process

Evidence

Not the end of the war but Stalin’s death eight years later was decisive. In retrospect, it seems that this death was not merely followed by a successor crisis and a temporary “thaw” until a new leader had asserted himself, but by an authentic, though never unequivocal, process of detotalitarization. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 37

Categorization

• QUESTION: How does a totalitarian system undergo ‘detotalitarization’ — is that concept transferable to how other totalizing systems partially unwind?