Totalitarian States
Russia, Italy, Germany
Cultural Pessimism in Art
“Great Nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts: the book of
their deeds, the book of their words, the book of their art. Not one of these
books can be understood unless we read the two others; but of the three, the
only quite trustworthy one is the third”
John Ruskin
Post Impressionism
Cezanne Large Bathers 1899-1902
Cubism
Les Demoiselles de Avignon 1907
Seated Woman 1908
Picasso
Bottle of Pernod (Table in a Café)
1912
Harlequin
1915
Picasso
Girl Before the Mirror 1932
Italian Futurism 1909
Luigi Russolo Dynamism of a Car 1912-1913
Umberto Boccioni
Dynamism of a Cyclist 1913
The Charge of the Lancers 1915
Muscular Dynamism
Marcel Duchamp (1887 – 1968)
Nude Descending Staircase 1912
Duchamp and Dada
The Fountain 1917
L.H.O.O.Q. 1919
George Grosz (1893-1959)
A Winter’s Tale 1919
Grey Day 1921
Surrealism
Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory 1931
Marc Chagall
I and the Village 1911
Di Chirico
The Disturbing Muses 1925
Dali
Soft Construction With Boiled Beans
(Premonition of Civil War) 1936
Guernica 1936
Russia : The First Totalitarian State
1920 -1940
The Civil War 1918-1922
Bolsheviks
vs
Russians, nationalities, foreigners
March 1918
First Challenge for New Regime
Bolshevik Party renamed Communist Party
Brest Litovsk signed – Lenin had no choice –
this promise (along with Land and Bread) is
what enabled him to defeat Kerensky
Civil war ensues immediately
Multiple Russian groups to the right of Lenin
Tsarist reactionaries
Liberals
Bourgeois businessmen
Zemstvo members
Cadets
Social Revolutionaries
Mensheviks
First institutions
Oldest – the party founded in 1903
Soviets of 1905 and 1917
Council of People’s Commissars day of the Revolution
Cheka December 7, 1917 – the first of the new
regime
Red Army set up by Trotsky January 1918
Reasons Bolsheviks win
Anti-Bolshevik forces never unite
Red Army effective
Distribution of land to peasants
Red Terror
response to foreign intervention and civil war
aims at the physical extermination of all who oppose the new
regime – class was enough
Kronstadt sailors (1921) an example from the left results in a left
wing repudiation of communism in western Europe
First Social Policy:War Communism
Nationalization of some industries; most still controlled
by worker committees
Food production the largest problem – less being
produced (62% of land)
Govt. requisitions and military seizure
Kulaks hated in countryside.
Class war between country and the city workers
Resistance to war communism develops
Don river valley – Kornilov and Deniken
Middle Volga – Social Revolutionaries
Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan declare independence early 1918
The New Economic Policy 1921-1927
peasant resentment, drought, famine, ruin of
productive facilities force rethinking
NEP conceived as compromise with capitalism, a
“strategic retreat”
characteristics:
state controls “commanding heights” of the economy – state owns
basic productive industries
private trading for profit allowed
trade between town and the country encouraged – moves
peasants beyond subsistence agriculture
middlemen sell things at market price
kulaks are favored
newly rich bourgeois class emerges
Evaluation:
Problems in Industry and Agriculture remain
NEP eliminates worst problems of war and
revolutionary period
BUT
as late as 1928, production levels in certain
key industries still at 1913 levels
Stalin’s Answer: The Five Year Plans
Centralized planning first introduced 10 years
after the revolution
Bolsheviks not clear on “what next?” aspect of
Marxist revolution
Engels had introduced the theoretical link
between large cooperative model vs smaller
competitive units
Rational planning had been introduced as
World War I dragged on
Planned society has both theoretical and
practical antecedents
First Five Year Plan 1928-1932
Goal: strengthen the country; economic self-sufficiency
Objective: build up heavy industry, no loans from abroad;
agricultural revolution (collectivization to promote investment
of capital in agriculture – mechanization)
reverses Russian policy since Emancipation and Stolypin 1929 revolution in the country; by 1939 collectivization
complete
Fails to increase agricultural output; frees up labor force
for industry but millions die
despite famine of late 20s; early 30s, Stalin still exports cereal
to pay for industrial goods imported from the west
Gosplan central administrative agency-coordinates financing,
production, wage scales, prices – estimates generated at the
lower levels and passed to the top
System intricate and inefficient – lots of paperwork
Second Five Year Plan 1933-1937
worldwide depression impacts grain price and
western industrial plant becomes too expensive to
purchase
Stalin fears specifically the hostility of Germany
and Japan and so 2nd 5 year plan even more
committed to self sufficiency for military reasons
industrial growth in USSR 1928-1938 unmatched
in Western experience
Specific Achievements
industrialization east of the Urals for the first time
trade with Asian peoples developed
iron and steel production quadruples
coal production increases 3.5X
80% of industrial plants built
world’s largest producer of farm tractors and railway
engines
with the opening of the interior “frontiers” railways
carry 5x freight of 1913
gross industrial output 3rd to US and Germany
Evaluation: Second Five Year Plan
in part Russia survives German occupation
because of this eastern development;
in part because the industrial output first
equipped the Red Army
Third Five Year Plan
Problems
interrupted by World War II
Rates high because starting point so low
Quality shoddy
Efficiency low
Per capita production low
Social Costs
Kulaks and millions others lost their lives
Proliferation of gulags
Austerity with respect to food, housing, consumer goods
1/3 national income reinvested in industry
propaganda plays a role in keeping people working hard for
low wages – future
Effects of Totalitarian Regime in Russia
Food rationing ended 1935
Living standards improved - better than 1927
No unemployment
No cycle of boom and depression
No oppression of women and children in early
industrial period
Safety net minimum
No economic equality
No stock exchange
Stakhanovites (labor heroes) compete to increase
productivity and raise personal wages
Totalitarian Art
The Elusive Ideal
Workers
The Reality:Russia’s Totalitarian System
No free press
No free labor unions
No freedom of association
Art, literature, and science vehicles for
propaganda
Purges
Italy the First Fascist State
Problems in Italy Prior to WWI
Parliamentary politics
“Trasformismo”
Widening the suffrage among a largely illiterate population
Anticlericalism/Papal Ban on Political Participation
Eased in 1907
Industrialization in the North
Poverty and Illiteracy in the South
Irredenta
Promises with regard to Albania
Anti-parliamentary ideology, nationalism,
irrationalism
“Futurism” nihilism
Gabrielele d’Annunzio and Filippo Marinetti
Problems added by World War I
Terms of the Treaty of London
Italy would receive Austrian lands – Tyrol, Trentino, Istria,
Trieste
Colonies increased in Somaliland and Libya
Catholics and socialists (peace party) vs
extreme nationalists (war party)
Opening second front costly
600,000 lives
Caporetto another embarrassment
Peace failed to meet expectations
Italy received no mandates
Wilson refuses to recognize Treaty of London
Unemployed Soldiers
Problems of Postwar Italy
Wartime Debt
Depression and Unemployment
Social Unrest
Land seizures in countryside,refusal to pay rents, peasants burn
crops - worry landowners
Strikes in industrial cities, plant seizure; demands for worker
control
Government Ineptitude
No addressing of problems
Shifting coalitions of liberal, moderates, Christian Socialists
(Catholic) and Socialists joined by Mussolini’s Fascists (35) in 1922
Benito Mussolini (1883-1945)
Professional revolutionary,
socialist, journalist
Nationalist, corporal in war
Founder of Fascio di
combattimento
First condemned war profiteers
Called for taxes on capital and
profit
Later upholder of law, order,
property
The Appeal
Nationalists like the rhetoric the symbols of
power
Middle class pinched economically – don’t want
anything to do with labor unions or socialists
propertied classes frightened – willing to lend
financial aid
Techniques
beatings, bullying, castor oil treatment for
socialists, Christian socialist mayors
Mussolini declares loyalty to church and king
(former anti-clerical republican)
March on Rome, October 1922
Blackshirts threaten government takeover;
Mussolini remains in Milan
Liberal coalition government (happy enough to use
Mussolini’s fascists to control the left) try to
declare marshal law
King refuses
Cabinet resigns
Mussolini declared premier
Italy remains a constitutional monarchy with
Mussolini at the head of a coalition government
with one year’s emergency powers
Mussolini as Premier
2/3 law solution to unstable coalition government where
largest party rarely in the majority
1924 fascists get over 60% of the seats thanks to electoral
fraud
Matteoti, a socialist deputy is assassinated after blowing
the whistle
Where the trains ran on time
Italian parliament bypassed
Press censorship
Labor unions destroyed; no right to strike
All political parties except the Fascists
eliminated
Personal style of Il Duce
Equestrian poses
Vigorous action,
Military uniforms
Strong Leader
Flaming hoops
Italian Fascism in the 20’s
Criticized democracy - historically outmoded,
accentuates class divisions, empty talk
Criticized liberalism, free trade, laissez faire
capitalism – inefficient, selfish
Criticised the Marxist materialism, class
consciousness
Replaces these with national solidarity and state
management of economic affairs under leader
Makes peace with the Catholic Church - Lateran
Treaty of 1929
The Corporative State:
“born of a need for action”
Economic life divided into 22 areas/corporations
Labor, industry, government to determine wages prices,
working conditions, industry policies
National council to devise plan for Italy – self
sufficiency the goal
Government representatives more equal than others
Minister of corporations was the head of the structure
1938 Chamber of Deputies replaced by the Chamber of
Fasces and Corporations (economic parliament
representing economic not geographic regions)
members chosen by government not the people
corporative state = state control of economy within a
private enterprise system
The Challenge of the Depression
economic controls didn’t help very much
public works projects launched
economic self sufficiency the goal
hydroelectric plants built since Italy had no coal
“battle of the wheat”
reclamation of swamp land
no fundamental change for peasants
extremes of wealth and poverty remain
Substituted psychological exhilaration and
imperialist adventures
Palmer and Colton’s Critique
Mussolini’ Corporative State
“failed to provide either economic
security or material well-being for which
it had demanded the sacrifice of
individual freedom.”
Foreign Policy Record
1934 attempted coup by Austrian Nazis who demand union with Germany
Mussolini mobilizes troops on the Austrian border; stops Hitler for 4 years
1935 war with Ethiopia to avenge the defeat at Adowa in 1896
League of Nations imposes sanctions but not on oil; Britain unwilling to risk
general war; French admire Mussolini
1936 Mussolini consolidates Italian African Empire despite Haile Selassie’s
personal appeal – League weakness exposed
1936 50,000 Italian troops sent to fight on Franco’s side in Spanish Civil
War; Rome-Berlin Axis formed; anti-Comintern Pact signed
1938 Mussolini accepts Austrian Anscluss and attends Munich Conference
April 1939 Mussolini invades Albania
1940 Mussolini invades France; invades Greece and North Africa; eastward
push towards Suez from Libya
1943 Allies conquer Sicily; 21 year Fascist regime falls; Mussolini
establishes Italian Social Republic in Northern Italy; Marshall Badaglio tries
to make peace in August; Germans occupy Italy.
Artist’s Perceptions
Futurist Portrait
DiegoRivera, 1933