Individuals During Stalin's Regime

A leader is defined as a guiding or directing head. Stalin was the leader of the party that was in charge of the Soviet Union. He created a totalitarian regime which brought great suffering to the Russian people. The individual Russian played two distinct roles under Stalin. One role would be that of a person who under Stalin’s system was no different than the person who is standing next to them. Everyone was treated equal in all facets. The other role the individual Russian played was that of a victim. We are able to see by many different accounts that an individual had different roles to play and under Stalin, each role came with a price that sometimes lead to death. The role of the individual Russian played a huge role in Stalin’s aim at creating a stronghold on a nation that ended up imprisoning and killing millions of its own people
During Stalin’s regime, the individual Russian was the center of his grand plan for better or worse. Stalin wanted all of his people to be treated the same. In the factory the top producer and the worst producer made the same pay. He wanted everyone to be treated as equals. His goal to bring the Soviet Union into the industrial age put tremendous pressure on his people. Through violence and oppression Stalin tried to maintain an absurd vision that he saw for the Soviet Union. Even as individuals were looked at as being equals, they also were viewed as equals in other ways. There was no one who could be exempt when the system wanted someone imprisoned, killed, or vanished. From the poorest of the poor, to the riches of the rich, everyone was at the mercy of the regime. Millions of individuals had fake trumped up charges brought upon them, either by the government or by others who had called them o...

... middle of paper ...

...ense of worth in which they were as they had to change who they were to survive in a troubled time. Stalin in the end was not looking to eradicate or find a neat “final solution” because since his plan did not go as planned, he has to constantly try and adapt and tweak his idea till it became something completely different all together. The Russian people allowed Stalin to rein supreme over them, and if enough people had revolted, there could have been a different outcome. Most people accepted their fate and in the end they died from it.

Works Cited

Applebaum, Anne. Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps. London: Allen Lane, 2003. Print.
Ulam, Adam B. "The Convolutions of Terror." Ideologies and Illusions: Revolutionary Thought from Herzen to Solzhenitsyn. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1976. 311-20. Print.
"Leader." Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, n.d. Web. 24 Feb. 2014.