Under totalitarian systems of any type or scale fear is a constant and there is no escape from it. Every totalitarian system — both the individuals running it and the system, structurally — instinctively understands how all this works.
New Normal totalitarianism is no exception. Day after day, month after month, the masses have been subjected to the most destructive psychological-terror campaign in the history of psychological terror. It has absolutely nothing to do with a virus, which even the New Normal authorities admit. No, we are way past rationality at this point. We are witnessing the birth of a new form of totalitarianism. Pseudo-medical totalitarianism. Pathologized totalitarianism.
A form of totalitarianism without a dictator, without a definable ideology. You can find this myth in Krushchev's secret report on Stalin's crimes delivered to the 20th Party Congress in , or in the works of open anti-communists such as Robert Conquest and Solzhenitsyn. This myth says that virtually the entire population of the Soviet Union was reduced to a stunned silence by the terror, and either said nothing about the repression, or blindly believed in and supported the terror.
This myth also claims that the victims of the repression were completely innocent of any crimes, including opposition to Stalin. They were, instead, victims of Stalin's excessive paranoia. Since there was no serious opposition to the regime of Stalin, according to this myth, the victims were not guilty of such opposition.
In order to refute these myths one simply must turn to various dossiers and case histories which have recently come to light and been published. For example there is the case of the world-renowned physicist and future Nobel laureate, Academician David Landau. It would seem that this young physicist and scholar, who was busy with his own work, not a member of the party and seemingly uninvolved in politics, would have been guilty of nothing and therefore arrested without any foundation.
Recently the dossier of his case was published. During the investigation Landau was presented with an anti-Stalinist leaflet which he had helped to reproduce and was getting ready to distribute. The communist Kopets, who was a colleague of Landau, admitted to having written the leaflet. He arranged for it to be reproduced and attracted Landau and other students and physicists into this conspiracy.
They intended to distribute the leaflet at a May Day demonstration in Recently many examples of such leaflets have been published. They were written by people we know little about, but people who wrote from a consistent communist position, and who called for a struggle against Stalin and his clique because they had betrayed socialism.
The content of these leaflets can only be interpreted as a call to overthrow the existing political system, or to be more precise, Stalin and his clique.
Of course these are isolated incidents, but prior to the unleashing of the Great Terror there was a much more widespread, more serious, and well-organised opposition to Stalinism as a regime which had veered ever more widely away from the ideals of socialism. This battle against Stalin began back in with the formation of the Left Opposition. The inner party struggle unfolded in ever sharper form throughout the 20s. Thousands and thousands of communists took part in this opposition, openly in the early days and then, after opposition groups were banned, in illegal underground forms against the abolition of party democracy by the Stalinist party clique.
They spoke out against forced collectivisation and the erroneous methods of industrialisation which were leading to great deprivation for the vast majority of the Soviet people. They spoke out against the growing system of privileges and social inequality. The bureaucracy had usurped political power from the working class and was consolidating its position and privileges. A significant change took place in the level of opposition in when it became clear that the adventurist policies of the Stalinist leadership had led the country to an extremely sharp economic and political crisis.
At that time in , not only the old opposition groups became more active, but they were joined by layers of newly-formed opposition groups. Among those perhaps the most interesting is the so-called Riutin group. Riutin was an old Bolshevik who underwent a very complex evolution. During the s he was a fervent Stalinist but by he came to the conclusion that he had been wrong on many points and that a new struggle had to be taken up against the Stalinist bureaucracy.
He sought ways of uniting with the Left Opposition, with Trotskyists. The Riutin group published a document of more than pages called the Riutin platform. It exposed both the economic and political crisis throughout the country on all basic questions. Stalin and his clique feared this document so much that they refused to distribute it to members of the Central Committee who were discussing Riutin's expulsion.
The Central Committee proceeded to condemn Riutin and vote against the platform without having read it. At the same time, thousands of Trotskyists who had not capitulated remained in exile or in prison throughout the country. Among them were many prominent party members. Two choices stood before each of these oppositionists.
Either they could sign a letter of capitulation and return into the fold of the bureaucracy to secure positions — or they could refuse to sign such declarations and remain languishing in prison camps or in exile in the furthest reaches of the Soviet Union.
It is interesting to note that dozens and dozens of oppositionists in exile were brought back into Moscow when the first Moscow Trial was being prepared in Not a single one of them who had refused to sign a letter of capitulation agreed to give false testimony.
For that reason, they were not included in the first Moscow Trial, but were murdered during the secret pre-trial interrogations.
Stalin and the Kirov Murder. It is an excellent source for basic background information on the subject. Accessed May 2, Nikolai Bukharin, member of the Soviet politburo and Central Commitee and editor-in-chief of Pravda newspaper was the central victim of the Moscow show trials.
The following transcript involves Bukharin defending his allegiance to the Soviet cause and his condemnation of terror. Let me relate to you how I explained this matter. Comrade Mikoian says the following: On the most basic question, he, Bukharin, has differences of opinion with the party: In essence, he stuck to his old positions.
This is untrue. In no way have I stuck to my previous positions — not on industrialization, not on collectivization, [and] not on village restructuring in general. But with regards to stimuli in agriculture, this question was not clear to me until the matter came round to the legislation on Soviet trade.
I consider the entire problem, as a whole, was resolved after the introduction of laws on Soviet trade. Prior to this, this problem, very important but not all-embracing, was not clear to me. When this matter became pertinent to product turnover in [illegible] and Soviet….
I would like to make one more remark. I do bear responsibility for this. But the question involves the degree of responsibility; it is a matter of the quality of this responsibility.
I bear responsibility for this fact. However, it is necessary to establish the degree and nature of this responsibility. I am not shifting responsibility from myself; more than anyone else, I accept the gravity of this responsibility.
However, I would like to say that the measure of responsibility, the characterization of this responsibility, is absolutely specific in nature, and it should be expressed as I have expressed it here. This is an obvious lie. Some victims claimed they would rather have been killed than sent to endure the torturous conditions at the infamous Gulag labor camps. Many who were sent to the Gulag camps were ultimately executed. Some experts believe the true death figure is at least twice as high.
Because many people simply vanished, and killings were often covered up, an exact death toll is impossible to determine. To further complicate the matter, prisoners in the labor camps commonly died of exhaustion, disease or starvation.
Trotsky was sentenced to death in absentia during the Moscow Trials. He was living in exile in Mexico when he was assassinated with an ice pick by a Spanish communist. During World War II , Stalin was responsible for the executions of war prisoners and traitors, especially Polish nationals. His reign as dictator also made his people completely dependent on the state. Surprisingly, the legacy of the Great Purge, and Stalin himself, is lined with mixed reactions.
While most Russians regard the event as a horrific incident in history, others believe Stalin helped strengthen and propel the Soviet Union to greatness, despite his barbaric tactics. Great Purges, New World Encyclopedia. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present.
The notorious prisons, which incarcerated about 18 million The Romanov family was the last imperial dynasty to rule Russia. During the Russian Revolution After overthrowing the centuries-old Romanov monarchy, Russia emerged from a civil war in as the newly formed Soviet Union.
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