Name________________________________
Date___________________________


                             Comparing Totalitarian Political Systems


Totalitarian: A government with total control over people's lives. They use harsh laws, secret
police, armed conflict, no freedom of speech, and government propaganda to control the people.
Propaganda means media that tries to brainwash citizens into supporting the government
(nationalism) using images, radio announcements, books, and speeches that are biased towards the
state.


                                             Examples


Communism: Joseph Stalin’s type of totalitarian government in the Soviet Union where the government
controlled the economy


                                          Characteristic

                                  Description (summary or quote)

                                              Source



Harsh Laws


Government control of the economy (called a command economy), like forcing workers to industrialize
quickly and moving peasants onto collective farms



“Joseph Stalin” from The Great Big Book of Horrible Things by Matthew White



Secret Police


The NKVD or KGB arresting people and shipping them to work camps and prisons in Siberia


“By 1939, the network of forced labor camps, prisons, and colonies held 2.9 million people…”



“Joseph Stalin” from The Great Big Book of Horrible Things by Matthew White





Armed Conflict



1) Fighting against the people of Ukraine for protesting the collectivization


2) Almost every loser in Stalin’s earlier climb to power (Bukharin, Amenev, Rykov, and Zinoviev…)
was arrested, beaten into confessing, paraded through show trials[1], and shot.”

1) “Addendum to the minutes of [December 6, 1932] Politburo [meeting] No. 93”

Soviet Archives Exhibit, Library of Congress (adapted)


2) “Joseph Stalin” from The Great Big Book of Horrible Things by Matthew White



No Freedom of Speech


“Stalin expanded Lenin’s political prisons…The system was packed with outcasts, troublemakers,
complainers, dissidents, and other dangerous enemies of the state”



“Joseph Stalin” from The Great Big Book of Horrible Things by Matthew White


Propaganda


Poster of men swinging hammers in a factory


Powerpoint from class



Fascism: Adolf Hitler (Germany), Benito Mussolini (Italy), and Francisco Franco’s (Spain) type of
totalitarian government where the government controlled everything except the economy


                                          Characteristic

                                  Description (summary or quote)

                                              Source




Harsh Laws






Free market control of the economy with the government banning unions and strikes





Secret Police










Armed Conflict










No Freedom of Speech









Propaganda







________________________________

[1] Fake trials that were designed to find the defendant guilty (no real use of evidence or
lawyers)