HY 150 BISK
TOTALITARIAN INSTITUTIONS
http://users.ju.edu/jclarke/hy150bisktotalitarianism.htm
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AUTHORITARIAN ALTERNATIVES: RUSSIA, ITALY, AND GERMANY, 1917-1939
To justify
participating in World War I, Woodrow Wilson and others invoked the ideal of
making the world safe for democracy. Most of those who embraced this rationale
thought of democracy as being linked intrinsically to free elections and liberal
notions of individual liberties—freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and so
on. Ironically, the war fostered conditions that encouraged the rise of
totalitarianism. For example, the stresses and strains of fighting the war
precipitated the Russian revolution of March 1917, which eventually gave the
Bolsheviks their great opportunity to seize power eight months later. Subsequent
events led to the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin.
The war also opened opportunities for the fascists. Mussolini began his
transformation from Socialist to Fascist while campaigning for Italian
intervention in the conflict. Economic hardships that stemmed in large part from
the war and disappointment with the peace settlement of 1919 set the stage for
the growth of Mussolini’s Fascist movement and his formation of a government in
1922.
Hitler’s Nazi party is, of course, the other major version of fascism that
benefited from factors closely related to World War I. Other causes
undoubtedly played a role, but it seems very unlikely that the Nazis could have
gained power if the war had not occurred (or perhaps if the Germans had won).
Less obvious is the role of World War I in building up the power of the modern
state. Faced with the exigencies of waging war, governments accelerated the
development of bureaucratic organizations and techniques for controlling and
mobilizing their populations. Rejecting ethical and constitutional limitations,
the totalitarian regimes carried governmental oppression to terrible extremes.
The full horror of totalitarianism was not generally perceived right away.
Indeed, those regimes attracted considerable praise from admirers in the Western
democracies who were impressed by propaganda about efficiency and
economic growth. For instance, during the Great Depression of the 1930s, dynamic
images of economic growth projected by the Soviet Union made it appear to be a
viable model for many reformers who thought capitalism was failing. Such images
have, of course, been generally discredited. Subsequent disclosures of Stalin’s
bloody tyranny permanently tarnished Soviet communism. Moreover, during the late
1980s and the early 1990s, the collapse of Communist regimes made the earlier
portrayal of Soviet communism as a viable model seem ironic if not ridiculous.
Heavy reliance on central planning could produce impressive growth at Russia’s
stage of development in the 1930s, but in the long run it proved to be far
inferior to reliance on markets to determine what is produced and at what
prices.
Read "Impact of the Russian Revolution: Ideology Matters"
http://users.ju.edu/jclarke/wizzm2.html
TOTALITARIAN INSTITUTIONS CREATED BY LENIN AND STALIN
When Tsar
Alexander II abolished serfdom in 1861, slavery still had four more years of
legal existence in the United States. In most other ways, however, the United
States was a modern nation, developing even more rapidly under the urgent
demands of the Civil War. But the Russian Empire, even without serfs, was barely
beginning to undertake those transformations that had ended the feudalism and
produced the modern industrialized societies of the west, with their relatively
high material standards of living and freedom for citizens. Even trial by jury
was an innovation in Russia, made by the same reforming tsar.
In the half-century before World War I, Russia had begun radical and rapid
economic change. The social changes that occurred, however, were largely
by-products rather than intentional reforms, and political change was nearly
nonexistent. Even the main thrust of Russian foreign policy—to the south, toward
the Mediterranean—had been unchanged for more than two centuries and had
embroiled Russia in the complex and explosive affairs of the Balkans. The
necessarily full mobilization of the Russian armies in the tense days of August
1914 was more a sign of weakness than of strength. After the first great
offensive, which rendered an invaluable service to the Western democracies by
forcing Germany’s attention eastward, Russian forces were in retreat and
disarray. No one seemed to know what to do, least of all Nicholas II, who
thought of himself as the loving father of the Russian people whom they adored
and loved in return. The Romanov fantasy house of cards was about to come
tumbling down. From its ruins and the failure of its liberal successors would
emerge the new totalitarian Soviet state—the creation of Lenin, Trotsky, and
Stalin.
In the spring of 1917, there were probably no more than five thousand Bolsheviks
in all of Russia. Few of the common people had heard of Marx, fewer still knew
anything about Marxism, and almost none knew the names "Bolshevik" or "Lenin."
The collapse of the tsarist regime created a vacuum that moderate liberal
elements were unable to fill. Moderates were too few and the problems of Russia
too many; they were too hesitant and the situation too demanding. Lenin
understood what had to be done, and he was ruthless enough to do it.
When the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in 1917, few People in the world took
notice and fewer still gave Lenin and the Soviets much chance for success or
even survival. Within a decade, however there was little doubt that the Soviet
dictatorship had established itself as a new model for effecting rapid and
radical social and economic change. This model brought new hope to the working
classes and new fear to established governments because of its threat to export
the socialist revolution to the rest of the world.
Totalitarianism was not invented by the Bolsheviks, however; its roots extended
deep into the history of nineteenth-century Europe and beyond that to the era of
the French Revolution. Totalitarian elements already existed in Western Europe,
ready to be assembled by those who wished either to reform society or to resist
undesirable reforms. World War I had left unwanted changes in many countries,
and those reactionaries and revolutionaries who wished to undo these results or
to take matters in different directions admired the totalitarians’ methods.
Fascists, Nazis, and other authoritarians saw the possibilities of fighting the
Bolsheviks with their own methods, destroying in the process the despised and
distrusted liberal democracies that seemed incapable of solving the world’s
problems.
The Characteristics of the Totalitarian State created in Russia in
response to the need for rapid modernization under conditions of severe and
chronic underdevelopment in a Darwinist world of international competition
include:
* Command economy stressing rapid industrial growth regardless of
the material and human costs
* Militarized, secret police state capriciously extending terror
to its citizens for purposes of keeping the ruling group in power and to
motivate production
* Collectivized agriculture to ensure political control and to
control production
* Soviet/Communist imperialism culminating in the expansion after
World War II
* Control of cultural/intellectual/political life through Socialist
Realism
* Creation of a mass political movement (Dictatorship of the
Proletariat) that does not participate in the making of decisions but
participates in the carrying out of those decisions.
* Attempt to substitute "social motivations" [e.g., parades,
celebrations, awards, calls to social responsibility] in place of private
self-interest and profit.
These items characterize the nature of the Totalitarian State created by Lenin
and Stalin. Present-day reforms in Russia, and for that matter, Khrushchev’s,
Gorbachev’s and Yeltsin’s earlier reforms, are trying to deal with the
consequences of the institutions Lenin and Stalin established.
The Dictatorship of the Communist Party and Stalin’s Totalitarianism were
responses to the continuing crises in Russia in the 1920s and early 1930s. World
War I, which began these developments in Russia, was the greatest crisis that
Western society had ever experienced, but just a decade later, in the 1930s, the
countries that had fought in that war faced a now struggle for survival in a
different kind of conflict—an economic one. The Great Depression demanded
drastic measures. Even long-standing democracies were tempted by the lure of
totalitarianism; less mature ones were completely and tragically seduced.
To those who watched the masses succumb—in many cases enthusiastically—to the
totalitarians, it seemed that humankind had gone even more mad than before.
French existentialist Albert Camus, whose own country was occupied by the Nazis
during World War II, later wrote,
Those who claim to know everything and to settle everything end up killing everything. The day comes when they leave no other rule but murder, no other science than the . . . arguments which occasionally serve to justify murder.
Artists and intellectuals after World War I seemed less interested than those of the nineteenth century in why human beings behave as they do. These thinkers had come to accept a number of gloomy assumptions about the human condition, and their major concern now was simply how one should live amid such chaos.
JOURNAL 14 QUESTIONS
After
reading the material above, and the article "Impact of the Russian Revolution:
Ideology Matters" at
http://users.ju.edu/jclarke/wizzm2.html,
answer the following questions in your journal:
1. Why was the Communist Revolution in Russia important?
2. What is the relationship between Communism and Fascism?
3. What is the nature of Totalitarianism?"
4. How does ideology matter? Please refer to the article.
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