The role of the Individual in a Regime of terror - Essay Example

The Role of the Individual in a Regime of Terror Stalinist Russia fell into a of terror whenthe social rules began to become violated on the whim of the state. In order to assert his own reality upon the people of his nation, Joseph Stalin began to use arrest and torture as a way in which to create a sense of control over the thoughts of his people. The pain of the individual in these circumstances was an example to the masses in order to create a culture of fear. When fear for personal safety and position within the community is in jeopardy, values and principles will begin to erode until the thoughts of those in authority become an overriding force.

The individual is a vital part of the experience of terror as it is the willingness of the individual to abandon principles and join the collective that allows for the control to be asserted through terroristic techniques to control a culture. Terror is a method of control through which an authority sacrifices some in order to instill the fear that anyone could be next. The force of terror is not what is done to those who are directly hurt by terroristic actions, but in the flow of fear that engorges the sense of security with sludge that disrupts the belief of safety within a culture.

That kind of fear will drive out principles, loyalties, and faith in the system. There are two kinds of victims in a terrorist regime. The first is the victim who is directly assaulted, their life torn asunder in order to serve as an example to the masses. The second victim lies within the masses, each individual life structured by the fear that he or she may be next within a collective of fear. The strongest power of terror as a force among a people is in the spread among the masses of those fears.

It is the individual’s need to preserve his or her self that becomes the fuel that spreads that fear across a culture. Ulam discusses how the control of people through terror will occur. He states that “absolute power joined to an ideology…is the root cause of the evil of our times” (Ulam 316). He goes on to relate how the tragedy of Stalin’s regime is in how not only the physical being of the individuals within the realm were conquered, but the minds of the people were spiraled toward the control of Stalin.

Ulam states that “through terror Stalin almost succeeded in imposing his own version of reality on an entire nation” (320). The effect of creating a state of terror is to create a control on how individuals will act within that state. Stalin creates a world of his own by instilling within the people a fear of being contradictory to his vision. Although individuals were taken and tortured, they were not directly killed because it was through their continuation in a state of agony that the example was made to the rest of the nation.

Marx stated that “The classes and the races too weak to master the conditions of life must give way…they must perish in the revolutionary holocaust”. This belief backs the idea that in order to create revolution, some must be sacrificed who cannot conform to the spirit of that revolution. This statement suggests that revolution means conformity and it is through oppression that revolutionary thought is propagated. What happens to the individual is the key to the creation of terror. The mass terror story is only as powerful as the story of the individual who serves as an example.

Terror engulfs a culture of people when fairness becomes immaterial to experience. A sense of security is created in a state through a sense that the world is fair and that as long as the rules are followed, safety is achieved. Terror becomes a tool of ideology when the state of fairness becomes unstable. The individual, however, has the opportunity to create their own stability within difficult circumstances. In Gulag by Anne Applebaum she relates the stories of those working in the prison camps, suggesting that work ethic was relatable to the level of experience that the individual had within the camps.

This type of story shows that when faced with the mechanics of terror, the sense of fairness becomes shifted and the experiences of the individual become defined by a new set of rules. As she discusses the case of a woman who works hard and is eventually put in charge, it is shown that despite her disagreement with the political framework that had ended in her imprisonment. Her political belief system became secondary to her desire to have purpose. Shalamov relates the experiences of prisoners with prosthetics as guards take them from those who wore them.

Each individual is stripped and the piece of his human body that has been manmade is taken. At the end of the recitation is related that the pieces taken from the individuals could almost make up another whole human being. The guard asks the narrator if he would be contributing his soul, but the narrator states “No” I said. “You cannot have my soul”. In this case, the individual has made a monumental stand against the state. While the power of terror is based upon the idea that the individual will be willing to join the collective mind when threatened, when the individual makes a statement and lives with the purpose of not being re-trained towards the collective thought, he or she has become one of those that will help to defeat the imposed realities on his or her people.

Terror strips away the ability of the individual to create his or her own reality and asserts the reality of authority over that of the individual. Belief systems, principles, and all of the values of an individual become vulnerable to the effects of terror. It is the small deviances, at that point, that become critical to saving the ‘soul’ of a culture. As shown by Applebaum, however, when the individual dissenter begins to cooperate they become a part of the collective mind through their willingness to conform.

Survival is the key to terror and as the individual begins to feel their survival is in jeopardy, they will shift their beliefs towards conformity. As those who are put into direct jeopardy are revealed for their willingness to conform, the still free members of society will adjust and conform in order to not experience the pains of those who are chosen to be tormented as an example. Simply killing a mass group of people has no effect as it will enrage the collective or simply be forgotten too quickly.

In creating examples, the regime holds on to their control and is able to assert their belief systems over that of the individual in order to create a collective mind that supports their authority. Stalinist Russia utilized this power of the use of terror in creating a reality for its people. Works Cited. Applebaum, Anne. Gulag: A History. New York: Anchor, 2003. Print. Marx, Karl. “People’s Paper, April 16, 1853”. Journal of the History of ideas. 12.1, (1981). Print. Shalamov, Varlam. Kolyma Tales. Trans. John Glad.

New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1980. Print. Ulam, Adam B. Ideologies and Illusions: Revolutionary Thought from Herzen to Solzhenitsyn, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976. Print.