SETTING THE STAGE Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin were among Lenin’s revolu-tionary supporters. They both helped create the Soviet state. After Lenin died, thesetwo men became bitter rivals for control of the Communist Party. The outcome of thisstruggle would determine the future course of the Soviet Union. Stalin, Lenin’s suc-cessor, would aim at dramatically transforming the government and controlling everyaspect of citizens’ lives.

Stalin Becomes DictatorJoseph Stalin was a quiet man who rarely received much publicnotice. During his early days as a Bolshevik, he changed his namefrom Dzhugashivili (joo•guhsh•VEEL •yih) to Stalin, which means“man of steel” in Russian. The name fit well. Stalin was cold, hard,and impersonal. Lenin, unsure of his successor, began to distrustStalin. Lenin believed that Stalin was a dangerous man. Shortlybefore Lenin died, he wrote, “Comrade Stalin has concentratedenormous power in his hands, and I am not sure that he alwaysknows how to use that power with sufficient caution.”

From 1922 to 1927, Stalin began his ruthless climb to the head of the government. In 1922, as general secretary of the CommunistParty, he worked behind the scenes. He shrewdly moved his follow-ers into strategic government offices. By 1924, he had placed manyof his supporters in key positions. By 1928, Stalin was in total com-mand of the Communist Party. Trotsky, forced into exile in 1929, was no longer a threat. Stalin now stood poised to wield absolutepower as a dictator.

Stalin Builds a Totalitarian StateLenin and Trotsky promoted a worldwide Communist revolution.Stalin, however, focused on Russian development. He coined thephrase “socialism in one country” to describe his aims of perfecting a Communist state in Russia. To realize his vision, Stalin wouldtransform the Soviet Union into a totalitarian state.

The term totalitarianism describes a government that takes total,centralized state control over every aspect of public and private life.Totalitarian leaders, such as Stalin, appear to provide a sense of secu-rity and to give a direction for the future.

Totalitarianism challenges the highest values prized by Westerndemocracies—reason, freedom, human dignity, and the worth of theindividual. As the chart on the next page shows, all totalitarian statesshare basic characteristics.

BackgroundWhile in exile, Trotskypublished articles and books criticizingStalin’s regime. In1940, Stalin’s agentsmurdered Trotsky in Mexico.

Joseph Stalin

1879–1953

Stalin was born in bitter poverty in Georgia, a region in southernRussia. Unlike the well-educatedand cultured Lenin, Stalin wasrough and crude.

Despite having millions ofRussians killed, Stalin tried tocreate a myth that he was thecountry’s father and savior. Stalinglorified himself as the symbol ofthe nation. He encouraged peopleto think of him as “The GreatestGenius of All Times and Peoples.”

Many towns, factories, andstreets in the Soviet Union werenamed for Stalin. A new metal was called Stalinite. An orchid was named Stalinchid. Childrenstanding before their desks everymorning said, “Thank ComradeStalin for this happy life.”

■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■HISTORY MAKERS

TotalitarianismCASE STUDY: Stalinist Russia

2TERMS & NAMES• Joseph Stalin• totalitarianism• command

economy• collective farm• kulak• Great Purge • socialist realismMAIN IDEA

After Lenin died, Stalin seized powerand transformed the Soviet Union into atotalitarian state.

WHY IT MATTERS NOW

More recent dictators have usedStalin’s tactics for seizing total controlover individuals and the state.

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Other totalitarian governments besides the Soviet Union emerged in the twentiethcentury. In the 1920s and 1930s, two other European dictators—Hitler in Germanyand Mussolini in Italy—were shaping their visions of a totalitarian state. AfterCommunists formed the People’s Republic of China in 1949, Mao Zedong used tactics similar to Stalin’s to establish totalitarian control. The North Korean dictatorKim Il Sung ruled over a totalitarian Communist state from 1948 to 1994.

By 1928 Stalin began taking great strides to build a totalitarian state. He hadachieved personal power and was ready to begin overhauling the economy.

Stalin Seizes Control of the EconomyWhile Lenin’s New Economic Policy (NEP) was a mixture of free enterprise and statecontrol, Stalin’s economic policies involved total state control. His plans called for acommand economy—a system in which the government made all economic deci-sions. Under this system, political leaders identify the country’s economic needs anddetermine how to fulfill them. To modernize the Soviet state, Stalin ushered in revo-lutions in industry and agriculture.

An Industrial Revolution In 1928, Stalin outlined the first of several Five-YearPlans for the development of the Soviet Union’s economy. The government would takedrastic steps to promote rapid industrial growth and to strengthen national defense.Stalin announced, “We are fifty or a hundred years behind theadvanced countries. We must make good this distance in tenyears. Either we do it or we shall be crushed.”

The Five-Year Plans set impossibly high quotas, ornumerical goals, to increase the output of steel, coal, oil,and electricity. To reach these targets, the governmentlimited production of consumer goods. As a result, peo-ple faced severe shortages of housing, food, clothing, and othernecessary goods.

CASE STUDY: Stalinist Russia

PATTERNS OF CHANGE: Totalitarianism

SKILLBU ILDER : Interpreting Charts1. Based on the chart, how are individuals in a totalitarian state molded into obedient citizens?2. How would your life change if you lived in a totalitarian state?

• Exercises absolute authority • Dominates the government

• Helps unite people toward meeting shared goals or realizing a common vision• Encourages people to devote their unconditional loyalty and uncritical support to the regime• Becomes a symbol of the government

• Justifies government actions• Glorifies the aims of the state

• business • labor • housing • education• family life • youth groups • religion • the arts

• Demands total obedience to authority and personal sacrifice for the good of the state• Denies basic liberties

• Relies on mass communication, such as radios, newsreels, and loudspeakers, to spread propaganda

• Builds up advanced military weapons

• Uses force, such as police terror, to crush all opposition• Targets certain groups, such as national minorities and political opponents, as enemies

Key Traits Description

The number oftractors in theSoviet Unionincreased from25,000 in 1927 to483,000 in 1938.

Dictatorship and One-Party Rule

Dynamic Leader

Ideology (set of beliefs)

State Control Over AllSectors of Society

State Control Over theIndividual

Dependence onModern Technology

Organized Violence

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Under Stalin’s totalitarian regime, the government controlledevery aspect of the worker’s life. Officials chose the workers,assigned them jobs, and determined their working hours. Workersneeded the police’s permission to move. The secret police wereready to imprison or execute those who did not contribute to theSoviet economy. These forceful means of making the Soviet Uniona modern industrial nation took a great toll on people’s personallives. Many families and marriages broke up.

Stalin’s grim methods, however, also produced fantastic eco-nomic results. Although most of the targets of the first Five-YearPlan fell short, the Soviets made impressive gains. A second plan,launched in 1933, proved equally successful. From 1928 to 1937,industrial production increased more than 25 percent.

An Agricultural Revolution Stalin’s agricultural revolution wasalso successful—and far more brutal—than his industrial revolution.In 1928, the government began to seize over 25 million privatelyowned farms in the USSR. It combined them into large, govern-ment-owned farms, called collective farms. Hundreds of families worked on these farms, producing food for the state. The govern-ment expected that the modern machinery on the collective farmswould boost food production and reduce the number of workers.

Peasants resisted fiercely. Many killed livestock and destroyedcrops in protest. Stalin used terror and violence to force peasantsto work on collective farms. Soviet secret police herded them ontocollective farms at the point of a bayonet. Between 5 million and10 million peasants died as a direct result of Stalin’s agriculturalrevolution. Millions more were shipped to Siberia.

Resistance was especially strong among kulaks, a class ofwealthy peasants. The Soviet government decided to eliminatethem. Thousands were executed or sent to work camps.

By 1938, more than 90 percent of all peasants lived on collec-tive farms. Agricultural production was on the upswing. That yearthe country produced almost twice the wheat than it had in 1928before collective farming.

Weapons of TotalitarianismTo dominate an entire nation, Stalin, like other totalitarian lead-ers, devised methods of control and persuasion.

Police Terror Dictators of totalitarian states use terror and vio-lence to force obedience and to crush opposition. Stalin beganbuilding his totalitarian state by destroying his enemies—realand imagined. Stalin’s secret police used tanks and armored carsto stop riots. They monitored telephone lines, read mail, andplanted informers everywhere. Even children told authoritiesabout disloyal remarks they heard at home. The secret policearrested and executed millions of so-called traitors.

In 1934, Stalin turned against members of the Communist Party. He launched theGreat Purge—a campaign of terror. It was directed at eliminating anyone whothreatened his power. Thousands of old Bolsheviks who helped stage the Revolutionin 1917 stood trial. They were executed for “crimes against the Soviet state.”

The state had the authority to punish even the most minor acts. The police arrestedthe director of the Moscow Zoo because his monkeys got tuberculosis. The police

BackgroundMany peasants hadonly recently wontheir own land. Forcenturies, they hadstruggled against thenobles. Now theywere forced to submitto yet another land-lord—the Soviet government.

THINK THROUGH HISTORYA. SummarizingWhat methods didStalin use to bringagriculture understate control?A. Possible AnswerEstablishment of collective farms; use of terror and violence; destructionof the kulaks

Vocabularypurge: a systematiceffort to eliminate a targeted group of people.

The Buildup of the Soviet Economy

0

30

60

90

120

150

193819331928

Met

ric

Tons

(in

mill

ions

)

■ Coal Production

■ Steel Production

1st Five-Year Plan

2nd Five-Year Plan

INDUSTRY

10

15

20

25

30

35

193819331928

10

20

30

40

50

193819331928

Met

ric

Tons

(in

mill

ions

)A

nim

als

(in m

illio

ns)

■ Livestock

1st Five-Year Plan

2nd Five-Year Plan

1st Five-Year Plan

2nd Five-Year Plan

■ Wheat

AGRICULTURE

SKILLBU ILDER :Interpreting Graphs1. How many more metric tons of

coal were produced in 1938than in 1928?

2. What do the graphs showabout the contrast between theprogress of industry and live-stock production under Stalin’sfirst Five-Year Plan?

PATTERNS OF CHANGE 777

Source: European Historical Statistics

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themselves were not above suspicion, especially if they did not arresttheir quotas of “criminals.” Every family came to fear the knock on thedoor in the early morning hours, which usually meant the arrest of afamily member.

When the Great Purge ended in 1939, Stalin had gained total con-trol of the Soviet government and the Communist Party. Historiansestimate that he was responsible for 8 million to 13 million deaths.

Indoctrination and Propaganda Totalitarian states rely onindoctrination—instruction in the government’s beliefs—to moldpeople’s minds. Party leaders in the Soviet Union lectured workersand peasants on the ideals of communism. They also stressed theimportance of sacrifice and hard work to build the Communiststate. State-supported youth groups trained future party members.

Totalitarian states also spread propaganda—biased or incompleteinformation used to sway people to accept certain beliefs or actions.

Soviet newspapers and radio broadcasts glorified the achieve-ments of communism, Stalin, and his economic programs.

Under Stalin, art also was used for propaganda. In 1930, an editorial in the Communist Party newspaper Pravda explained the purpose of art: “Literature, the cinema, the arts are levers inthe hands of the proletariat which must be used to show themasses positive models of initiative and heroic labor.” Socialistrealism was an artistic style that praised Soviet life and Communistvalues. Yevgeny Yevtushenko, a Russian poet, described this form ofartistic expression:

A V O I C E F R O M T H E P A S TBlankly smiling workers and collective farmers looked out from the covers of books. Almost every novel and short story had a happyending. Painters more and more often took as their subjects statebanquets, weddings, solemn public meetings, and parades. YEVGENY YEVTUSHENKO, A Precocious Autobiography

Censorship Many Soviet writers, composers, and other artists also fell victim to offi-cial censorship. Stalin would not tolerate individual creativity that threatened the con-formity and obedience required of citizens in a totalitarian state. The government alsocontrolled all newspapers, motion pictures, radio, and other sources of information.

Religious Persecution Communists aimed to replace religious teachings with theideals of communism. Under Stalin, the government and the League of the MilitantGodless, an officially sponsored group of atheists, spread propaganda attacking reli-gion. “Museums of atheism” displayed exhibits to show that religious beliefs weremere superstitions. Yet many people in the Soviet Union still clung to their faiths.

The Russian Orthodox Church was the main target of persecution. Other religiousgroups also suffered greatly. The police destroyed magnificent churches and syna-gogues; and many religious leaders were killed or sent to labor camps.

Comparing Revolutions In its immediate and long-term effects, the RussianRevolution was more like the French Revolution than the American Revolution. The American Revolution expanded English political ideas into a constitutional government that built on many existing structures. In contrast, both the French andRussian revolutions attempted to destroy existing social and political structures.Revolutionaries in France and Russia used violence and terror to control people.France eventually became a constitutional monarchy, but the Russian Revolutionestablished a totalitarian state that lasted for decades.

1984

George Orwell wrote the chillingnovel 1984 in response to the threatof two totalitarian regimes. Theywere Communist Russia underStalin and Nazi Germany underAdolf Hitler. The novel depicts afrightening world in which personalfreedom and privacy have vanished.The sinister slogan “Big Brother IsWatching You” appears every-where. Even citizens’ homes havetelevision cameras that constantlysurvey their behavior.

Orwell intended his novel,published in 1949, as awarning, not as aprophecy. Hesounded an alarmabout a world that atotalitarian statecould create throughmodern technology.For millions ofpeople in the SovietUnion and NaziGermany, the worldof totalitarianismwas not fiction. Itwas terrifying fact.

SPOTLIGHTON

THINK THROUGH HISTORYC. MakingInferences Whatforms of art did Stalinencourage?C. Possible AnswerLiterature, films, andfine art that served apolitical purpose—glorifying the goals ofthe Communist state

Vocabularyatheists: people who do not thinkthere is a god.

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THINK THROUGH HISTORYB. Evaluating Whatwas one of the mostextreme methodsStalin used in theGreat Purge?B. Possible AnswerIt kept people in aconstant state of fearthrough the use ofmass arrests andmass executions.Millions died becauseof Stalin’s desire forabsolute control.

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HISTORY THROUGH ART: Posters

Revolution and Nationalism 779

The slogan on the aboveposter reads, “DayLaborers and YoungCommunists—Join theTractor Shock Brigadesfor Spring Sowing.”

This profile of Stalin isimposed on a shadowyimage of Lenin. Miniatureportraits of otherCommunist leaders trailoff in the background.

Propaganda Through ArtLow-cost printing techniques made socialist realism

posters an important form of propaganda in the SovietUnion. People might not listen to the radio or go topropaganda films. However, if they left their houses, theycould not avoid viewing the posters plastered on buildingsand walls in every town.

Images of energetic laborers, such as the special groupscalled “shock brigades,” urged Soviets to work harder.Portraits glorifying Stalin were also popular subjects ofSoviet posters.

Analyzing Issues What mes-sages do you think these posterscommunicate?

SEE SKILLBUILDER HANDBOOK, PAGE R12

Comparing How do the Sovietposters resemble the billboards ofmodern-day advertisers? Supportyour answer with examples.

Connect to Today

Connect to History

The slogan on this poster reads,“Young Communists[are] the ShockBrigade of the Five-Year Plan.”

CLASSZONE .COMNET ACTIVITY

For an Internet activity on Propaganda inArt . . .

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Daily Life Under StalinStalin’s totalitarian rule revolutionized Soviet society. Women’s roles greatly expanded.People became better educated and mastered new technical skills. The dramaticchanges in people’s lives had a downside, though. As servants of a totalitarian state,they would make great sacrifices in exchange for progress.

Soviet Women With the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, women won equal rights. After Stalinbecame dictator, women helped the state-controlledeconomy prosper. Under his Five-Year Plans, theyhad no choice but to join the labor force in increas-ing numbers. Young women performed the samejobs as men. Millions of women worked in factoriesand built dams and roads.

Given new educational opportunities, womenprepared for careers in engineering and science.Medicine, in particular, attracted many women. By1950, they made up 75 percent of Soviet doctors.

Soviet women paid a heavy price for their risingstatus in society. Besides their full-time jobs, they

were responsible for housework and child care. Motherhood was also considered apatriotic duty in totalitarian regimes. Soviet women were expected to provide the statewith future generations of loyal, obedient citizens.

Education Under Stalin, the government controlled all education—from nurseryschools through the universities. Schoolchildren learned the virtues of the CommunistParty. College professors and students who questioned the Communist Party’s inter-pretations of history or science risked losing their jobs or faced imprisonment.

Education was not merely indoctrination. Stalin’s economic plans created a highdemand for many skilled workers. University and technical training became the key to a better life. As one young man explained, “If a person does not want to become acollective farmer or just a cleaning woman, the only means you have to get somethingis through education.”

By the mid-1930s, Stalin had forcibly transformed the Soviet Union into a totalitar-ian regime and an industrial and political power. He stood unopposed as dictator andmaintained his authority over the Communist Party. He also ushered in a period oftotal social control and rule by terror, rather than constitutional government. His network of laws and regulations guided every aspect of individual behavior.

Like Russia, China would fall under the influence of Karl Marx’s theories andCommunist beliefs. The dynamic leader Mao Zedong would pave the way for trans-forming China into a totalitarian Communist state, as you will read in Section 3.

This Soviet womanworked in a textilefactory duringStalin’s regime.

THINK THROUGH HISTORYD. Evaluating Whatwere the pros andcons of women’s newroles in Soviet societyunder Stalin?D. Possible AnswerPros—more job andeducational opportuni-ties. Cons—mother-hood considered apatriotic duty; limitedfreedom as a worker.

2. TAKING NOTES

Which method do you think wasmost influential in maintainingStalin’s totalitarian rule? Why?

3. CONTRASTING

How do totalitarian states andconstitutional governments differ?

THINK ABOUT• the chart explaining the key

traits of totalitarianism• what you have learned about

constitutional government in theUnited States

• what you learned about theSoviet Constitution on page 774

4. THEME ACTIVITY

Economics Role-play anindustrial worker in a steel mill, apeasant on a collective farm, or astudent at a technical school.Write a secret journal entrydescribing what your life is likeunder Stalin’s economic plans.

1. TERMS & NAMES

Identify• Joseph Stalin• totalitarianism• command economy• collective farm• kulak• Great Purge• socialist realism

Section Assessment2

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Weapons ExamplesPolice TerrorPropagandaCensorshipReligious Persecution

Create a chart like the one belowlisting the weapons of total-itarianism. Cite examples from Sta-linist Russia for each method shown.

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