Dictatorship of Dread

This chapter describes Stalinism as a dictatorship of dread. It shows how Joseph Stalin's slave state destroyed and uprooted millions in a series of violent interventions that showed no regard for either human lives or dignity. Kolkhoz peasants were bound to the land, while draconian disciplinary laws tied workers to the factories. The Bolsheviks' public sphere left few possibilities for eluding the Stalinist regime's prescribed rituals and rules of language. This chapter also considers how Stalin used violence to subjugate even the elite of the Bolshevik Party, along with his destruction of the Communist Party, his annihilation of the army officer corps, and the self-destruction of the state apparatus because of his reign of terror. Finally, it emphasizes Stalin's omnipotence as a ruthless despot, his implementation of a system of mass murder, the end of mass terror, and the different situations of violence during his rule.