Stalin and Hitler ruled over regimes considered totalitarian by the definition that they maintained extreme control on political, social, and economic aspects of life in their respective countries with the purpose of pursuing their own ideological ends. Although these two regimes are very similar in many respects they, like red apples and green apples, are clearly in-exchangeable.
             The Soviet Union, under Stalin, was ruled with an iron fist. Death was the punishment exacted for being useless to the ends of the government. Stalin was the government, and the government was Stalin. Zero factionalism could be expressed, else one would meet death. He maintained complete control over everything. Stalin's goal was to bring Russia up to par with the standards of the western world. In lieu of this ideology, Stalin actively took over the economy. With the express intent of making industry a staple of the economy in Russia, Stalin sold all grain produced by Russia, and injected that money into the industry of the country (at the cost of his people having grain to consume). He then set up Gosplan, a central economic planning agency, whose duty was to create broad goals for all sections of business in Russia. Thus, Gosplan became the economy of the Soviet Union. This was an inefficient form of economic control which, due to its lack of dependence upon producer and consumer choices, traded the well-being of the people for the good of the ideology. Through this intense control of the economic and political aspects of life, Stalin, too, controlled the social lives of his people. Gosplan determined where one would live and work, and a belief in the ideology that Stalin preached caused citizens to report any insubordination to Stalin and his ideals. Those that resisted would simply be killed. The KGB, the Russian secret police, were Stalin's agent that was responsible for carrying out most of Stalin's ordered death in the ...