#2 Stalin's totalitarianism

What changes occurred in Russia under Stalin's totalitarianism

and the theme is total control.

Economically, Stalin will establish a command economy where the government makes all

economic decisions. Therefore the government has total control over the economy

and since Stalin is in control of the government, Stalin makes all the decisions

Here is Stalin sitting down making decisions with his cigarette

He's always smoking a cigarette. He was famous for that.

He comes up with 5 year plans and these were these drastic steps to promote industrial growth

Here is some propoganda about that. Here is a farmer beating a horse to plow

And they are going to replace this with a brand new tractor

And he set impossibly high quotas. I mean you had to produce this much steel, coal, or electricity

per month and in order to achieve this goal

people required to have shortage of consumer goods

so there was rationing as well

And he funds this with collective farming

he seized 25 million privately owned farms

Kind of what Lenin did at a much grander scale

and he combined all the farms into large government

owned farms. He called them collective farm

which eliminated the kulaks which were a class of wealthy peasants

You can see right here these marching men

and the farmers fighting against these little kulak.

Politically, he begins to have what is known as the Great Purge

since he sees power, he's going to eliminate anybody else

who could have challenged his power.

So he launches a campaign of terror

where he focused on the Old Bolsheviks

and he actually killed 8 million of his own people

And you see right here this is a very famous picture

where the propogandists eliminated this old Bolshevik

and this was the original picture but this is how it

was published in textbooks

because he was part of the Great Purge

and he uses propoganda. He uses the type of

Socialist realist art that always promoted Soviet life

and communist leaders

Here's some of that Socialist realist art

These big strong people faming and doing

You can see this women right here grabbing wheat

and this man right here working in a factory

promoting labor.

But socially, what he does is he has a lot of censorship.

The government controlled newspapers, motion pictures,

radio this was the basis of the book 1984.

They could make you believe anything like 2+2=5

and this was a theme in the book 1984

There was actually a slogan of the 5 year plan

which was actually completed in 4 years.

The plan was used to torture the main character in the book 1984.

So women actually had more rights in the Soviet Union

in 1917 than they did in the United States

They gained equal rights, they had more access to education

and they were actually in military.

Here is a very famous picture of a female

sniper in the Soviet Union

and women were just granted the right to fight in combat

here in the United State in 2013.

Education. They were also a little bit more advanced

They learned about communism in free public schools

And here is a picture of these kids going to school

And they really promoted education for everybody

So that is how life in Russia changed under Stalin's totalitarianism.