Russia under Joseph Stalin
From the late 1920's, Russian society entered almost a decade of darkness, in which the government and the people were commanded by paranoia, fear and terror. Under the newly introduced leader Joseph Stalin, soviet life was subject to greater control and manipulation as Stalin focused upon gaining control over the economic, social and political workings of the nation.Since coming to power, Stalin had always ruled with a heavy and often cruel hand. His introduction and enforcement of the five year plans led to the deaths of millions and cruel measures such as the transformation of prisons into labour camps and prisoners into slaves astounded many. However, cruel and heavy handed rule can not be classified as totalitarianism. Stalin was supremely influential but he was not yet law.Russia's gradual slide into totalitarianism began when Russian culture began to change from emphasizing the proletariat and the peasants in the 1920's to 'the cult of personality' of the 30's. Under this change, Stalin became the key
Thus Stalin had gradually taken a stranglehold on Russian society, transforming it into a full fledged Totalitarian nation solely under his rule. The communist party itself was not of a totalitarian structure as it had accommodated different viewpoints throughout its history, for example whether to accept the terms of Brest Litovsk or the virtues of NEP. As all independent sources of media had been removed, the peoples of Russia had little choice but to accept what the government told them as true. The most astounding aspect of these trials were the way in which those tried 'admitted' guilt for crimes they could not have committed knowing full well the outcome would be execution as shown by Sieglebaum when he stated that "sentences became based on hypothetical events. It is estimated that deaths resulting from these purges ranged between 8 and 30 million. From 1933-37 over one million party members were expelled and all members of Lenins Politburo except for Stalin and Trotsky ended up on trial. "the purges were a way of persuading the population that all resistance to the governments fiscal demands would be crushed" - Christian. Thus the arts became servants of the state. These members of the secret police were also purged to provide a scapegoat for Stalin in order to clean himself of blame for the excessive purging. "The paranoia of Stalin reached such extreme heights that the purgers themselves were infact purged to ensure that they posed no threat to Stalin. Whilst already having almost complete control of economic activities under the 5 yr plans, Stalin began to take a firm grasp upon Russian culture. Such examples of this included Newspapers carrying less 'real' information, instead becoming a tool of propaganda for the government, few scientists were to present theories until granted Stalin's approval and art was harnessed by Stalin to solely project images of an ideal life under Stalin. There was no longer any forum for debate or any discussion of alternative policy as Ulam reinforces "it was a time when issues did not exist, where problems were not allowed to exist". A major characteristic of totalitarianism rule is that no opposition is allowed against the ruling power. However this all took a drastic turn in the mid 30's as Molotov states "Until 1937 we lived the whole time with opposition after that there no more opposition groups".
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