Power as Exercised in Totalitarian Regimes of the Stalinist Era

Mao Zedong, fo under(a) of the hoi pollois Republic of China, in one case verbalize that Every communist must kitchen range the integrity g everyplacenmental condition grows bulge come to the fore of the barrel of a gun. Zedongs allegory accurately imageizes the oppressive personality of the commie authorities of the Stalinist era. Such undemocratic arrangements maintain control over its citizens finish the exercise of coercion, reward forms, voltaic pile media, and propaganda. This variant of undemocratic authorities sought to denudate its citizens of individual rights and integrate them into the frame as parts of the Stalinist simple machine.In unrivaled Day in the feel of Ivan Denisovich, b privation lovage Solzhenitsyn illustrates how the Stalinist wear upon camps, or gulags, utili izzard various modes of surveillance, the constant dehu whileization of political prisoners, manipulative reward systems, and back up barbarity and force to maintain contr ol over prisoners and uphold the ideology of Stalinism. An early(a) lieu of the Stalinist violence structure is offered in Andrezej Wajdas controversial movie ho social occasion, firearm of marble in which a young movie maker tries to uncover the virtue some a former case icon, Birkut, who fell to unimportance and encounters frequent metro in her attempts to do so.This direct illustrates how the Stalinist government manipulated the media and criminalise controversial literature, film, and ar 2rk to portray misguided government success and brainwash its citizens into obeying the inhibitory regime. This paper testament analyze the divergent mechanicss of power employed by the Stalinist totalistic regimes interpret in Solzhenitsyns novel and Man of Marble and will further evaluate how the study of power in specific historic situations enables historians to look the motivations of those in power and the effectiveness of certain(p) power structures to achieve its goals and leave for its citizens.In Solzhenitsyns One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, the labor camps are show as a microcosm for the totalitarian defer in exis 10ce. Gulags became the Soviet governments method of transforming individuals under its control into acquiescent p depositers existing simply to physically restore the Soviet dry land and streng then the deliverance while embodying the ideology of the Stalinist system. The prisoners were forced to work in severe stomach conditions, consume very bitty food, tear very little clothing, and were supercharged to sight on one another to break their individual situations.The majority of the prisoners in the chapiter are helpless victims who should not pull down be imprisoned the Soviet politics ease up unjustly punished them for they provide free labor. At the camp, m whatever of the officials rape in treating the prisoners with excessive cruelty. The Captain is sentenced to ten days of solitary confinement becau se he has worn an unauthorized jersey under his uniform in station to tarry warm. They also think nothing of steal part of the meager rations of the prisoners so that they throne hire more than for themselves.The prisoners cannot receive qualified medical care for the rule of the hospital is to admit nevertheless two race a day no depend how many may be sick. turn over for example, the exchange between Buynovsky, who jokingly announces the Soviet decree, and Shukhov which shows the absurd pompousness of the Soviet government Since then its been decreed that the lie is highest at one oclock, Shukhov replies, Who verbalise that? and Buynovsky replies The Soviet government. () For the char sourers laws are both needed and arbitrary. The Soviet people have little to say in their government and they do what it tells them to do.Buynovskys joke reveals the Soviet regimes delusion of grandeur. Shukhovs forced false confession to existence a traitor to his country also exem plifies the manner in which the Soviet government tailors the truth to fits its needs. The Soviet regime imagines itself stronger than not only the sun still also humankind itself. Furthermore, Volkovoys differing responses to Buynovskys charges exemplify the craft in which the entire Stalinist give tongue to thrives. He ignores Buynovskys assertion that spoil searching in subzero temperatures turn updoors violates an expression of the Soviet Criminal Code, showing his lack of concern for right and wrong.He is all told indifferent to others opinions of state-sponsored actions. Yet when Buynovsky goes a abuse further and accuses Volkovoy of being a giving Soviet citizen, Volkovoy becomes violently indignant. He wittingly violates Soviet law and is thus, in a way, a bad Soviet citizen, but he is unwilling to admit as overmuch. He cares much more well-nigh make himself look good than making his country look good. Though he disrespects his countrys laws with his action, he wants, hypocritically, to be seen as an ideal Soviet citizen. The labor camp also attacks its prisoners spiritually.By transposition their names with a combination of earn and numbers, the camp erased all traces of identicalness. For example, the camp guards insinuate to Shukhov as Shcha-854. This elimination of names represents the bureaucratic destruction of individual personalities. In Man of Marble, Andrezej Wajda attempts to expose how propaganda, through national icons, was utilize to present a false moving-picture show of devour success and how these national icons were withdraw and fell to obscurity when they offered the slightest hint of discontentedness with the norm.The film begins by showing propaganda films that value Birkut as a devout worker who slaves away at brick laying for the officials. Then, Agniezka effect to interview the director, who was hired by the government. He tells her about the reality of making the film such as how Birkut was given more f ood and water un the the like the other bricklayers. This is an example of reward power in which the government manipulated Birkut, elevated him to the status of national icon, and gave him additional food and water to examine that he would continue to work effortful for them thereby sustaining that exalt workers image common to the Stalinist ideology.Wajda uses these two scenes to deconstruct the false imagery that propaganda gives to its viewers. He illustrates how officials manipulate these kinds of situations to their own political good. The character of Agniezka, the young filmmaker, resists this form of government exercise of film and art by embarking on an endeavor to uncover the truth about a once great Polish national icon that fell into obscurity, Birkut. She encounters frequent resistance from others regarding the subject matter of her film but despite the controversy, she continues her work and unleashes the truth about Stalinism.Moreover, Birkut is fundamentally er ased from entrepot because he refused to change with the existing political system that was overwhelmed with corruption, manipulation, and exploitation. Birkut spoke against that system and essentially the Stalinist government of Poland at this time, erased aspects of the nations incorporated memory in tack together to control its citizens. This kind of erasure from memory appeared to be the standard penalty for those who refused to conform. dish out the scene in which Birkut is trying to bear Witek who has been accused of treason.The bureaucrat informs Birkut to dont try to take things into your own hands. make it to us. Trust the peoples Justice. This direction reveals how the government attempted to integrate its citizens to in full that their existence became that of automatic obedience, the trust in the Soviet regime would be so solidified that there would surely be little resistance or rebelliousness and the utter submission to their power. At a union meeting where Birkut again tries to book of facts the hobbyion of Witek, he shouts that a dreadful injustice has been committed.Trade union officials then turn off his microphone and a chorus begins Socialism will concur by force of example, onward sturdy workers This line is quite possibly the just about important in the film for it exemplifies how the Soviet regime would glorify workers like Birkut and channel his intense labor and a glorified image of him through the mass media to encourage citizens to abide by the socialist ideology. However, subsequently on as the film reveals, Birkut becomes demoralize and turns to drinking. His smell is now in ruins. Birkut in the first place came to prominence for supposedly breaking the item-by-item shift brick-laying record.However, the newsreel director who recorded the force confides to Agnieszka how he manipulated and outright fabricated aspects of the issue for propaganda purposes. Yet poor guileless Birkut in the beginning accepts e verything he is told at face value. As a result, when he falls out of favor with the Party for championing workers rights, it is wrenchingly difficult for him to gear up to behavior when essentially persona non grata. on that point mere difficulty that Agniezka experiences in her quest to finish her film exemplifies how the government employs censorship to hide the truth.The propaganda newsreel claiming to chart Birkuts life only demonstrates the parading of his image, as he acts out the role of labor hero, admires his marble stature, and the sempiternal posters, which produce his form, and appears before the public as a crowd-pleasing vision of physical glamour. The proliferation and repeating of images of the idealized citizen were designed to eclipse any suggestion that the state may have no other basis for position other than the manipulation of these icons.The power of the state to appear to dissolve the individual into the mass is disturbingly echoed twenty age posteri or in exchanges between Agonies and two women who belonged to the coevals of the 1950s the television editor tells Agniezka that, Ive selected everything to do with Birkutalthough the rest is pretty much the same, while Agonies, attempting to divert incredulity as to why she is particularly implicated in Birkuts statue in the museum when, as the museum guide points out, there are so many others like it, says, I like this onealthough its all the same. unuttered in this proliferation of idealized effigies of model citizens and leadership is the constant presence of state ideology. The collective memory that she unearths crumbles the seamless portrait of Birkut though revealing the painful, lived-through process of molding his image, which the fount newsreel only parades as a finished product.In flashbacks, Birkut is shown to be force-fed for weeks before the event, shaved, and groomed, when to smile, and cautiously directed by Burski who ironically tells him to act more like a w orker, and cursorily turns his camera away when Birkut collapses, bleeding from the hands, upon pass completion of the task. Agniezkas investigation of the manipulation of Witek and Birkut is correspondent with the excavation of the very foundations of the communist system itself, which claimed popular support upon the basis of the patronage of the worker.Her disinterment of the hidden infrastructure of totalitarian power reveals its construction on unsatisfying myths and rituals. Better to growl and submit. If you were stubborn, they broke you. (41) This recite exemplifies how the Stalinist regime used barbarism and force to ensure obedience. Throughout history, individuals and groups have exercised various forms of power in order to control others and their surroundings. It is important to analyze how power is exercised, constituted, and contested in specific historical situations because the world will learn how to use power to produce the greatest results in a given situat ion.In a totalitarian regime as those depicted in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and Man of Marble, the individual operates as part of a social machine on the principle of automatic obedience. This is the highest take of the institution of power, the creation of an efficient mechanism in which individuals act predictably on the principle of utter submission. The oppressive nature of the Stalinist regimes depicted in the said(prenominal) novel and film illustrate how the absolute power employed by the system was most ineffective because it builds resentment and resistance from the people who experience it. He was a newcomer.He was unused to the hard life of the zeks. Though he didnt know it, moments like this were particularly important to him, for they were transforming him from an eager, confident naval officer with a ringing join into an inert, though wary, zek. And only in that inertness lay the chance of surviving the twenty-five years of imprisonment hed been senten ced to. (65) This quotation exemplifies how the gulag transformed once proud individuals with fulfilling lives into components of the Stalinist machine and illustrates how the prefatory need to abide was motivation passable for the prisoners to obey those in power.A man that at was formerly a imposing Naval officer was now being integrated into the masses and stripped of his individuality and identity to join the Soviets source of free labor. The passage suggests that by submitting to the hopeless status of a zed without resistance, one would almost surely survive the brutality of the camp. Works Cited Man of Marble. Dir. Andrezej Wajda. Poland 1977 Solzhenitsyn, black lovage . One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. New York Farrar, Straus, and Giroux Inc, 1991. The Definition of Totalitarian. www. dictionary. reference. com/browse/totalitarian