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The resources used to show how some European countries and the Soviet Union incorporated totalitarianism are Sources of the Western Tradition, by Perry, Peden, and Von Laue, Alain Resnais' film Night and Fog, Alexander Solzhenitsyn's A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. The latter two will be used to show the effect of totalitarianism and the relationship of the film to the novel. It will be necessary to see how the European countries and the Soviet Union came to this point of totalitarianism before you can understand the power that the ruling class had over the masses. The Sources of the Western Tradition will be used to establish this historical background and corroborative evidence on totalitarianism. The seeds of totalitarianism were planted in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. It was then that a new breed of thinkers rejected "the Enlightenment belief in the essential rationality of human beings. " Friedrich Nietzsche, a writer of this period led attacks on democracy, universal suffrage, equality and socialism.
He "called for the emergence of the overman or superman, a higher type of man who asserts himself, and lives life with a fierce joy. The overman aspires to self-perfection. He was critical of the Western rational tradition. Another man of this period who supported irrationality and social thought was Gaetano Mosca.
Mosca believed that "a class that rules and a class that is ruled" characterize all societies. Those that ruled believe they have the "right to its privileges and power, and the masses become resigned to their lowly station. " The minority rulers who took power seemed to have a high level of organization, while the masses they controlled were unable and powerless to unite against the ruling class. These thoughts came from Most's principal work Elements of a Political Society, which was later, translated under the title The Ruling Class. Vilfredo Pareto, a countryman of Mosca also believed in non rational politics. It was his belief that throughout history that those in power spoke to the people not about the reality of a situation, but in a way that what get them what the rulers wanted in they end. He focused on the elitists of society. "The elite exists in all societies and governs them even in cases where the regime in appearance is highly democratic. " He believed that men could not governed by reasoning, without the use of force.
That force is the basis of all social organization. While Pareto and Mosca were focusing on the elitists, Gustave Le Bon concentrated on mass psychology. In his work The Crowd, Le Bon writes, "The substitution of an unconscious action of crowds for the conscious activity of individuals is one of the principal characteristics of the present age. " Those in power would lead not by logic, but by the emotional elements of the periods. He believed that crowds were powerless to reason and allowed judgments to be forced upon them. "Crowds being only capable of thinking in images are only to be impressed by images. " The ideas put forth by Nietzsche, Mosca, Pareto, and Le Bon were employed by the twentieth century dictators, who used these theories for the purpose of seizing and maintaining the power the had over the masses. They did not lead to the start of World War I, but their ideas helped further the war. The principal causes of World War I were belligerent, irrational and extreme nationalism.
One's country was placed above everything and war was embodied as heroic and "as the highest expression of individual and national life. " The war was the turning point in western history. It led to the formation of the Soviet Union and the emergence of Fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany. When World War I ended the face of Europe and Russia changed. The world had never seen such absolute tyranny and total control. "The Nazi regime aspired to shape a "new man, " one who possessed a sense of mission and was willing to devote body and soul to the party, its ideology, and its leader, Der Fuhrer, who was endowed with attributes of infallibility. " While Hitler was controlling the masses in Germany, Joseph Stalin was assuming control of the leadership of Soviet Russia, which was left vacant after Lenin's death in 1924. "The product of violence and revolutionary agitation since youth, Stalin started a second revolution far more brutal then Lenin's. " The Soviet prisoners, who were called zero, were watched over by the squad leaders, their deputies and the soviet guards. Those in the Soviet labor camps who were political enemies of the state were there for twenty five years and the others such as Ivan who were convicted as German spies were given ten years.
In either case if you survived you had a chance of getting your freedom. This was not the case in the German concentration camps, in fact beginning in 1942 the Jews were systematically exterminated. The concentration and labor camps are no longer, but the world should never forget what happened to the people who were held prisoner or the millions who lost their lives. Bibliography: The Origins of Totalitarianism (Hannah Arendt. -- 1 st ed. ) Harcourt, Brace, 1951 Linz, Juan J. 1975. "Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes. "
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Research essay sample on Le Bon Labor Camps
