Joseph Stalin and Totalitarianism

Totalitarianism is state regulation of nearly every aspect of public and private behavior. Totalitarian regimes or movements maintain themselves in political power by means of secret police, propaganda disseminated through the state-controlled mass media, personality cults, regulation and restriction of free discussion and criticism, single-party states, the use of mass surveillance, and widespread use of terror tactics.propaganda disseminated through the state-controlled mass media, personality cults, regulation and restriction of free discussion and criticism, single-party states, the use of mass surveillance, and widespread use of terror tactics.

Stalin rid himself of all potential rivals in the party, by having many of them executed. To ensure his position and to push forward "socialism in one country," he put the Soviet Union on a course of crash collectivization and industrialization. An estimated 25 million farmers were forced onto state farms. Collectivization alone killed as many as 14.5 million people, and Soviet agricultural output was reduced by 25 percent, according to some estimates.

The "Five Year Plans" were a series of nation-wide centralized exercises in rapid economic development in the Soviet Union. The "Great Purge" campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin during the 1930s, which removed all of his remaining opposition from power.