HIS2117 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Complete Control, Scapegoating, Totalitarianism
17 Feb 2017
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In order to understand the terror, must break down the logic. Appeal to popular support by blaming leaders and bosses. If the little people help the party mobilize. Fed on fear of the masked enemies. Was an effort to try to regain control over a chaotic situation. Targeted in the mid 1937 by a decree that ordered all local nkpd to draw up lists within 5 days of socially harmful elements. Extremely harmful = shot, less so = labour camps. Had quotas to meet in each category. People living in the margins of the society. Who had not abandoned their oppositional activities. People who had been expelled from their village. New town would sometimes not give passports. Had been eluded by the governments itself. Nearly half of the executions of the period were in this category. Was not a logic of surveillance or political control or getting rid of the opposition. Was not a punishments for a crime.
