Stalin's Economic Goals

A totalitarian regime is one in which the leader has complete control over everything that goes on within the state. There are no independent institutions, and no other parties besides the party that is ruling the state. The leader of the regime must be charismatic to win the approval of the people and convince them that everything is running smoothly in the government. Totalitarian leaders often have a secret police that will terrorize and kill people if asked by the leader. A totalitarian government must be a strong one. Anyone that is suspected of being able to cause an uprising or rebellion must be put down immediately. A totalitarian state must have an exclusionist ideology, or an "us or them" ideology. Everyone is either on your side or against you, and if they are against you they must be eliminated as soon as possible. The government must also control the education system and the media. This ensures that children will grow up being in favor of your ideologies, and no one will receive any information

from the media that the leader does not want them to. The last quality that a totalitarian regime must have is putting the state before the citizens who live in. Everything must be done for the good of the state. Joseph Stalin exemplified all of these characteristics in his totalitarian regime in the Soviet Union from 1920 to 1940. (Pauley 1)

Stalin's economic goals are a good example of his totalitarian

characteristics. He tried to gain more control over the nation by using collectivization, which is turning all farms over to government control. The Kulaks, or successful peasant farmers, were forced to turn their farms over to the government. Kulaks that resisted were either shot, or sent to work camps in Siberia. Stalin's regime attempted to eliminate those who were not helping with his economic goals, such as the handicapped. He has a "if you don't work, you don't eat" mentality. He also eliminated any chance of rebellion by eliminating all of the educated people in his nation. Stalin's enemies included opportunists, capitalists, the clergy, rightists, the middle class (bourgeoisie), rivals, and nationalists. (Pauley 152)

Stalin got rid of his enemies be carrying out a series of purges. He did this in stages, one in 1934 and another in 1938. This was to let the population build back up in between. (Pauley 152) Many of the purges were against Stalin's own party members whom he felt threatened by. To make it look like these people were being arrested for a legitimate reason, Stalin gave them show trials. The accused were not given lawyers, were tortured, and not allowed to sleep until they made a confession. Ninety-nine percent of the people who were arrested were convicted, and either sentenced to jail, work camps, or killed. (Pauley 154-155)

Stalin also did not trust his military. He carried out a series of military purges as well, so by 1941, over one third of Soviet Union officers had been killed. This number was higher than any number of Soviet officers killed in war-time. (Pauley 156) Besides the Kulaks, communist party members, and the military, the general soviet population was another target for purges. This time was known as the

"Great Terror" because anyone could be arrested or killed by Stalin's secret police. Soviet Union citizens could write letters to the government claiming that someone who they did not like had done something to go against the regime. This was all it took for them to be arrested or killed. When the purges had finally come to an end seven million people had been arrested, one million of them killed. Between three and eight million people were still in labor camps, where ninety percent of them had died by 1938. (Pauley 157)

Stalin was able to use his charismatic character to convince people that the purges were actually a good thing. He claimed that people who were being killed were the ones to blame for the failures of collectivization and industrialization. The Russian peasants were mostly uneducated and poor and this made sense to them. They did not want to believe that their government was actually to blame for the hard times they were going through. (Pauley 158) The speech that Stalin made about the new Soviet Constitution shows how charismatic he could be. He claimed that now that the Kulak class had been eliminated, agriculture was no longer backwards and medieval. He also said

that the Soviet Union now had a large industrious base, because of the new technology and equipment it had obtained. He even went so far as to say, "Thus the complete victory of the socialist system in all spheres of national economy is