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.
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