dec 12, 1941 - Stalin's Secret War (1941-1946)
Totalitarianism
Description:
During the war Stalin is
1) Giving freedom to peasants
2) Not interfering with military
3) He is fighting his own secret war…
a) Who is a threat to him
b) He identifies that the 5,000,000 soldiers taken by Hitler are his threat; Hitler and Germans might turn them to go against Stalin
As escapees come back into Soviet lines, he has the NKVD watching them (they are arrested, shot, or sent to Gulag system)
- Millions of them met this fate
- By this time, at the end of WWII, about 10 million people in Gulag slave labor camps
This is STALIN'S SECRET WAR
Totalitarianism
-Every individual is controlled by the government or a single person (whoever is in power)
-Actual thoughts controlled by the government
-If you can't trust anyone/have real conversations with anyone, the only thing in your head is what Stalin wants you to think
-Three major explanations are usually offered, often in combination. First, the social-economic backwardness, including what Trotsky called the poor quality of the "human raw material." Next, the autocratic historical tradition. And, finally, the attempted utopian transformation of a society guided by inherently unrealizable ideas - that is to say Marxism, or Marxism-Leninism.
By end of war, society is in this state
Cult of personality
-Destroyed human decency and trust
-Stalin becomes God essentially
-Everyone looks up to him
Added to timeline:
SS 201 Midterm 1 Timeline
Date:
