Claustrophobia: Totalitarianism and the Great Depression, 1920–1936

Abstract

This chapter focuses on two of the three-tiered political identities, specifically the power of individual control (localism) and the force of nationalism. After the Great War, the 1920s roared with the possibilities of wealth, pleasure, the good life. Women seemed to be at the center of things: the “flapper,” homemaker, and female suffrage worlds. Yet national ambitions of Germany, Italy, Japan, and the Soviet Union were put on the fast track of totalitarianism working by way of fascism, monarchical dictatorship, and communism. The policies of those four placed thousands of people in “iron houses” to be suffocated, or, more likely, executed. To deal with these tragedies, the long shot seemed perhaps to be the wide-ranging individualism of Lu Xun, the “duende” of Garcia Lorca, and the initiative of countless others to try to exorcise nationalism run amok.