CHAPTER 27: DICTATORSHIPS AND THE SECOND WORLD WAR (1919-1945)

SECTION ONE: AUTHORITARIAN STATES

Conservative and radical dictatorships in 1920s and 1930s Europe  similar and
different
 Conservative: limited in scope
 Radical totalitarian dictatorships: bases of communism and fascism, were
new frightening developments aimed to radically reconstruct society

Conservative Authoritarianism and Radical Totalitarian Dictatorships

Conservative Authoritarianism:
 Was the traditional form of anti-democratic government
 Catherine the Great in Russia, Metternich in Austria
o Relied on obedient bureaucracies to control society
o Political opponents often jailed/exiled, yet older authoritarian
governments were limited in power and objectives
 Didn’t have the ability or desire to control many aspects of
their subjects lives
 If people didn’t try to change the system, they were
allowed a good amount of independence
 Authoritarianism was revived after WWI, especially in Eastern Europe
o New kinds of dictatorship started to emerge that went further than
authoritarianism
 Soviet Union, Germany, and Italy
o Communist and fascist parties began to become well established in
major European nations, challenging democratic Rule
Totalitarianism:
 A radical dictatorship that exercises “total claims” over the beliefs and
behavior of its citizens by taking control of the economic, social, intellectual,
and cultural aspects of society
 Fascist and communist similarities were emphasized
 Violent political repression and intense propaganda to gain power
 Elicited from WWI
o WWI required the governments to limit individual liberties and
intervene in the economy during total war
 Totalitarian leaders were inspired by this state of gov during
total war, disregarding human life to expand the power of the
state for social control
 Communist and fascist similarities:
o Rejected parliamentary government and liberal values (liberals
wanted to limit state power and protect that of the individual)
 Totalitarians believed that individualism undermined equality and unity;
rejecting democracy in favor of one-party political systems
 Charismatic leader (Stalin Soviet Union, Mussolini Italy, Hitler Germany)
 o All created new political parties to promote idolized visions of
collective harmony
 Used force and terror to intimidate political opponents
 Imperial expansion to exploit other lands
 Censored mass media and used propaganda campaigns to advance their
goals
 Massive projects of state-controlled social engineering to replace
individualism with a unified “people” capable of exercising the collective will

Communism and Fascism

Similarities:
 Shared desire to revolutionize state and society
Differences  need to look at how their ideologies (guiding political philosophy)
were linked with their use of state-sponsored repression and violence
 Soviet Communists:
o Followed Marx  international brotherhood of workers
 Communist utopia ruled by the revolutionary working class,
economic exploitation would disappear and be replaced with
radical social equality
o Stalinism  communist system under Stalin’s rule
 State intervenes in all aspects of life to pursue social leveling
 Force to destroy upper and middle classes
 Nationalized private property, pushed rapid industrialization,
and collectivized agriculture
o Build a new world around the destruction of class differences
 Fascism:
o A movement characterized by extreme, often expansionist
nationalism, antisocialism, a dynamic and violent leader, and
glorification of war and the military
o Mussolini and Hitler
o Striving to build a new community on a national level
o Were usually extreme nationalists and racist
o Glorified war and military
o Nation = highest embodiment of people
o Leader = materialization of the people’s collective will
o Wanted to improve workers lives
 Similar to communists
 Intervened in economy, but didn’t try to level out classes or
nationalize private property like the communists
 Vision of a community bound by nationalism
 All social strata works together to build harmonious national
community
o New national community based around racial homogeneity
 o Eugenics: a pseudoscientific doctrine that maintains that the selective
breeding of human beings can improve the general characteristics of a
national population, which helped inspire Nazi ideas about “race and
space” and ultimately contributed to the Holocaust
 Popular in the western world in the 1920s and 1930s 
legitimate social policy
 Fascists pushed these ideals to the extreme (Nazis)
o Nazis and Eugenics:
 German nation had to be “purified” of groups deemed “unfit”
by the regime
 Led to the Holocaust (attempt to kill all Jews in Germany and
Europe during WWII)
 (Soviets (communists) sometimes persecuted specific
ethnic groups, but they justified these attacks based on
class rather than race)
 Because they both championed the overthrow of existing societies,
Communists and Fascists were sworn enemies
o Clash of ideologies that was in part responsible for the horrific loss of
life to come
 How did they achieve popular consensus?
o Hitler nor Stalin achieved the total control that each sought, and they
didn’t rule alone
 Had large state bureaucracies and cooperation of large
amounts of ordinary people

SECTION TWO: STALIN’S SOVIET UNION

Stalin consolidated his power and eliminated his enemies in the mid 1920s
Five-year plan: a plan launched by Stalin in 1928, and termed the “revolution from
above,” aimed at modernizing the Soviet Union and creating a new Communist
society with new attitudes, new loyalties, and a new socialist humanity
 Means included constant propaganda, sacrifice by the people, harsh
repression (purges and executions), and rewards for those who follow the
party line
1930s  Soviet Union is a dynamic modern totalitarian state

From Lenin to Stalin

1921  Lenin and Bolsheviks had won the civil war, but they ruled a devastated
land (farms in ruins, no food supply)
 Southern Russia: drought and war produced an extreme famine
 Industrial production broken down completely
 Riots from peasants and workers
 Open Rebellion from previously pro-Bolshevik sailors at Kronstadt
o Lenin repressed them
New Economic Policy (NEP): Lenin’s 1921 policy to re-establish limited economic
freedom in an attempt to rebuild agriculture and industry in the face of economic
disintegration
 Replaced war communism with New Economic Policy
 During civil war, Bolsheviks seized grain without payment, and now peasant
producers were allowed to sell surpluses in free markets, private traders and
small handicraft manufacturers were reappearing
 Heavy industry, railroads, and banks remained nationalized
 Political and economic success
o It was a compromise with the Soviet Union’s large peasant majority
o Lenin knew he wasn’t strong enough to take over their land and turn
them into state workers so he made a deal with them (as they were
the only people who could possibly overturn his government)
o 1926 industrial output surpassed and agricultural production equaled
pre-war levels
 1924  economy recovered, government relaxes censorship and repression;
Lenin dies without a successor  intense power struggle within the
communist party
o Stalin and Trotsky contenders for leadership
 Joseph Dzhugashvili  Stalin “steel” in Russian
 Good organizer yet poor speaker and writer, no
experience outside of Russia
 Trotsky  great and inspiring leader who planned the 1917
Bolshevik takeover and created the victorious Red Army
o Stalin wins because he was more effective at gaining the support of
the party
 Was general secretary of the party’s central committee in 1922
and he used his office to win friends and allies with jobs and
promises
 Also won because he related Marxist teaching to Soviet
realities in the 1920s
 “socialism in one country”  theory that appealed to
more members than Trotsky’s doctrine of “permanent
revolution”; Russian-dominate Soviet Union had the
power to build socialism on its own
o Trotsky was arguing that socialism would only
succeed in the Soviet Union if socialism swept
across Europe
 Was seen as selling their country short,
and risking conflicts with capital
countries
 Stalin’s willingness to break with the NEP and “build
socialism” appealed to young party militants who hated
the capitalist NEP
Stalin’s come to power impacted many non-Russians in the Soviet Union as well
  Communists had inherited many ethnicities from the former Russian empire
 Lenin argued that these groups have the right to self-determination even if it
differed from the Soviet state
 1922  Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
o Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
o Ukraine
o Belorussia
o Transcaucasian Republic
 Later split into Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia
 Five Central Asian republics were established in the 1920s and
1930s
 Stalin wanted a more centralized Russian control over these regions, way
different from Lenin
o This view dominated state policy until the Soviet Union broke up in
the early 1990s
o Soviet republics were granted some cultural independence but no
political autonomy
 Allowed non-Russian languages in regional schools and
government institutions
 No right to succeed, authority remained in Moscow with the
Russian Communist Party
 Stalinists established a Communist empire on the imperial holdings of former
tsars
Stalin achieves supreme power between 1922-1927
 Allied with Trotsky’s enemies to crush his rival
 Moved against all who challenged his power, including some former allies
 Condemned “deviation from the general party line” at the party congress of
December 1927
o He and his followers were ready to launch a revolution, radically
changing the lives of millions of people

The Five-Year Plans

Party congress of 1927 = ratification of Stalin’s consolidation of power = end of NEP
= marks a new era of socialist five year plans
1. Staggering economic objectives
a. Industrial output to increase by 250%
i. Heavy industry (preferred sector) growing faster
b. Agricultural production increase 150%
c. 1/5 of peasants were to give up private land and join collective farms
2. “second revolution” needed because …
a. Ideology
i. He and his supporters were committed to socialism and
understood it; feared the return of capitalism
ii. Wanted to promote working classes and abolish the NEP’s
private traders
 b. Economy
i. Fragile economic recovery stalled from 1927-1928  needed a
new plan for industrial/agricultural growth
ii. Economic development would allow the USSR to catch up to
the west industrially and overcome traditional Russian
“backwardness”
c. Independent peasantry
i. Peasants wanted to own the land for centuries, and they finally
had it. Stalinists thought that eventually land owning peasants
would embrace conservative capitalism and pose a threat to
the regime
ii. Communists (urban dwellers) feared that the “class enemy”
(peasants) would be squeezed to provide the money needed
for all-out industrialization
3. To resolve these ^^^ issues, the collectivization of agriculture was put in
place
a. The forcible consolidation of individual peasant farms into large state-
controlled enterprises in the Soviet Union under Stalin
i. Essentially agricultural factories
ii. Peasant’s tools, livestock, and produce were held in common
and central planners began to control all work
b. Kulaks: the better-off peasants who were stripped of land and
livestock under Stalin and were generally not permitted to join
collective farms; many of them starved or were deported to forced-
labor camps for “re-education”
i. The measures highlighted in the collectivization of agriculture
was mainly focused onto the Kulaks, as they had beneffitted
most from the NEP
ii. Small in number, but were a great enemy to progress in Stalin’s
eyes
iii. Stalin called for their “liquidation” and seizure of land
c. Forced collectivization led to disaster
i. Peasants who were opposing slaughtered their animals and
burned their crops instead of turning them over
1. 1929-1933  number of horses, cattle, sheep, and goats
in the Soviet Union fell by at least half
ii. Collective farms weren’t successful
1. Output of grain barely increased over the first five-year
plan
2. Unable to make any type of substantial financial
contribution to the Soviet Industrial development plan
d. Collectivization was more rapid and violent in Ukraine than any other
Soviet territory
i. Drive against peasants turned into an assault on all Ukrainians
who had sought independence from Soviet rule after WWI
 1. Stalin viewed peasant resistance as unacceptable anti-
Soviet nationalism
e. 1932, collectivization and deportations continuing, party leaders set a
minimum on Ukraine grain deliveries that were unreachable, and
refused to relax those quotas or allow food relief when Ukrainian
Communist leaders were reporting starvation
i. Man-made famine in Ukraine from 1932-1933, which claimed
3-3.5 million lives
f. Cruel but real victory in Stalinist ideologies
i. Millions had died, but by 1938, government representatives
had moved 93% of peasant households onto collective farms,
neutralizing their political threat
1. Peasants had still won something: the right to limit a
family’s labor on the state run farms and cultivate tiny
family plots in which they gained most of their food
from
a. In 1938 these plots produced 22% of Soviet
agricultural produce on only 4% of the land
4. “Gosplan”: huge State Planning Commission
a. Created to set production goals and control the deliveries of raw and
finished materials
b. Difficult task, production bottlenecks and slowdowns often resulted
c. Favored heavy industry over the production of consumer goods,
leading to shortages of basic necessities
d. Despite problems, Soviet industry produced 4x as much in 1937 than
in 1928
i. No other major country had ever achieved such rapid
industrial growth
5. Steel = an important part of the Stalinist age
a. Soviet state needed heavy machinery for rapid development, as an
industrial labor force was being created overnight as men and women
began working in huge steel mills across the country
i. Independent trade unions lost most of their power
ii. Government could assign workers to any job anywhere in the
country
1. Internal passport system ensured people could only
move with permission
2. If factory managers needed more help, they would call
on collective farms who would send “unneeded”
peasants over the years
iii. Rapid industrial growth led to urban development
1. 25 million people (mostly peasants) migrated to cities
during the 1930s
2. Workers typically lived in bad conditions in hastily built
industial cities (Magnitogorsk (Magnetic Mountain City)
in the Ural Mountains)
 a. Some benefits right to job, education leisure,
skills ; yet this information was published in a
state-censored publication so we must be weary
The Great Industrialization drive from 1928-1937 was an awe-inspiring
achievement, purchased at enormous sacrifice on the part of ordinary Soviet
citizens.

Life and Culture in Soviet Society

Daily life was difficult
 Lack of housing
o Millions were moving to the cities, but the government built few new
apartments
o A lucky family would receive one room for all of its members with a
kitchen and toilet all in the same room
 Shortages of goods
o Because consumption was reduced to pay for investment, there was
no improvement in the standard of living before WWII
o Average non-farm wage bought ½ as many goods in 1932 as in 1928
 1932  wages rose slowly
 1937  workers still only able to buy 60% of what they
bought in 1928 and less than that of 1913
 Collectivized peasants facing hardships
Ideology was still good!
 Appealed to communists and ordinary citizens  saw themselves as heroes
for creating the worlds first socialist society when the rest of the world was
crumbling to capitalism and denigrating into fascism in the West
o This is what attracted westerners to Soviet communism in the 1930s
 Soviet workers were receiving more benefits
o Old-age pensions, free medical services, free education, day-care
centers for children
Communism opened possibilities for personal advancement
 Rapid industrialization required skilled workers, engineers and plant
managers
 1930s  Stalin breaks with the egalitarian policies of the 1920s and
provided incentives for those who could serve his needs
o Paid masses of unskilled workers and collective farmers very low
wages, but offered high salaries and privileges to the growing
technical and managerial elite
 This group joined with political and artisanal elites in a new upper class
whose members were rich and powerful