Stalin, Mao, and the Age of Authoritarian Communism Maxwell Slate dissects how Stalin and Mao transformed communist ideology into instruments of totalitarian control, creating systems that betrayed Marx's vision while claiming to fulfill it. The episode examines Stalin's Five-Year Plans, collectivization famines, and Great Terror, alongside Mao's Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. Slate demonstrates how both leaders used permanent revolution and ideological purification to maintain power, resulting in tens of millions of deaths and establishing communism's global reputation as synonymous with authoritarianism, surveillance states, and systematic human rights violations.

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