Can the individual's identity survive within an authoritarian collectivist society? Discuss in relation to the Soviet Union (1917-1953)
In this poster presentation I will attempt to explain my poster, which is dealing with the given theme of identity, this written presentation is meant to expand upon the ideas that were presented within my poster. My poster is a visual representation of my essay that I have written which was entitled “‘Can the individual identity survive within an authoritarian collectivist society?’ Discuss in relation to the Soviet Union 1917-1953”. In this poster and in my essay, I try to convey the message that is present within both pieces of work, that it was impossible to maintain an individual identity in the face of a totalitarian regime, which sought to control every aspect of the people’s lives in order to mould them into a ‘labour army’ that would “unquestionably obey the single will of the leaders of labor”- Vladimir Lenin.
In my poster the traditional propaganda portraits used in the USSR of Lenin and Stalin have been juxtaposed with the pictures that display the terrible reality of the victims of the Bolshevik repression. In the USSR under Lenin and especially Stalin those of whose individual identity, that was in opposition or contradicted the line that was forcibly dictated by the state, where “subject… to discharge and confinement in concentration camps”- Lenin. As dissenters where ruthlessly eliminated, especially during Lenin’s red terror of 1918-1922 which saw the consolidation of his authoritarian counter revolutionary grip over Russia, and Stalin’s ‘Great purge’ which was in place throughout the 1930s reaching its zenith in 1936-1938.
In my poster I have placed all the photos of the people suffering in the Soviet Union together in an attempt to portray how all individuality is lost within a repressive system of forced collectivization in the USSR. Blending their lost individual faces into the dominate faces of ‘glorious’ leaders, in order to portray how the only individual’s identity that could survive within the Soviet Union was that of the red Tsars; Lenin and Stalin.
