History Paper 2

(Stalin) Conditions for Emergence of Authoritarian Rule

War:

• 1914-21 WWI: ~1.8 million military deaths

• Civil War: 7 to 10 million total deaths (mostly civilians from disease and starvation)

• 1921 Famine that killed ~5 million people

1921 Economic:

• industrial production fell to 20% of its 1913 levels

• Total grain harvest plummeted to 37.6 million tons, from 80.1 million tons in 1913 (more than a 50% drop).

1924 Lenin’s Death & Political Vacuum:

• ww1 Destroyed trust in the Tsarist and Provisional governments, allowing the Bolsheviks to ban all rival parties in 1921 and create a one-party state.

• 1924 Lenin’s Death: Left no rules for picking a successor, creating a leadership vacuum that Stalin filled using his General Secretary control over party jobs.

(Mao) Conditions for Emergence of Authoritarian Rule

• 1920-1949 Rural Inequality & Weak GMD Rule:

  • 80% = peasants

  • 10% landlords owned 70% farmland

  • Nationalist government (GMD) relied on corrupt warlords

• 1937-1945 Second Sino-Japanese War:

  • GMD suffered over 3 million military casualties fighting Japan

• 1937- 1945 PLA used guerrilla warfare to grow from (1937) ~40,000 to (1945) 1.2 m troops

• 1942-1943 Henan Famine: Henan province —> 2 to 3 million peasants to starve to death; the GMD army still forcibly collected heavy grain taxes,

• 1946 - 1949 Chinese Civil War:

  • GMD army suffered from low morale + mass desertions (Exhausted from fighting Japan) —> losing over 1.5 million troops to defection.

• 1948 - 1949 Hyperinflation:

  • GMD printed massive amounts of paper money (To pay for the Civil War)

  • inflation of over (1948) 1,000%

  • Shanghai rice prices: 3 million Yuan —> 63 million Yuan

  • wiping out urban middle-class savings.

• 1949 1China’s overall food production had dropped by 25% compared to pre-war 1936 levels, leaving millions starving and ready to support Mao's takeover.

Compare and contrast the conditions in which two 20th-century authoritarian states emerged, each chosen from a different region. (Stalin & Mao)

Thesis: Stalin and Mao capitalized on catastrophic warfare + economic collapse

Stalin= exploited an entrenched one-party bureaucracy

Mao= harnessed mass rural class division within a fractured state.

P1: Impact of War

• Ts: Both leaders emerged from wars that destroyed the legitimacy of traditional rulers

  • Russia: ~1.8M WWI deaths + 7-10M Civil War deaths, collapsing Tsarist and Provisional rule

  • China: 3M+ GMD casualties in the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45), exhausting Chiang Kai-shek's forces before the 1946–49 Civil War (1.5M GMD defections).

• However: War left Stalin a post-conflict power vacuum, whereas ongoing invasion gave Mao an active arena to build a mass army.

  • Evidence: Russia’s wars ended by 1921, while Mao used the 1937–45 Japanese invasion to expand the PLA from 40,000 to 1.2 million troops.

• Rebuttal: This timing difference is merely a symptom of the same overarching catalyst: military exhaustion made existing regimes incapable of maintaining order.

Paragraph Two: Political & Social Structure (Difference + Nuance)

• Topic Sentence (Difference): Stalin rose inside a centralized, elite-driven dictatorship, whereas Mao rose by mobilizing an exploited peasant majority in a decentralized state.

  • Evidence: The 1921 bans on rival parties and internal factions created an elite succession vacuum upon Lenin's death (Jan 1924); conversely, 80% of China’s 500M people were peasants paying 50%–80% harvest rents to landlords (10% of the population) under corrupt warlord-backed GMD rule.

• However (Similarity): Both environments lacked democratic institutions or legal checks to restrain authoritarian ambition.

• Rebuttal: The absence of democracy operated in opposite directions—enabling bureaucratic manipulation from above in Russia, while fueling armed peasant revolution from below in China.

Paragraph Three: Economic Collapse (Similarity — No Rebuttal)

• Topic Sentence (Similarity): Severe agricultural failure, hyperinflation, and mass famine discredited moderate economic solutions in both states.

  • Evidence: By 1921, Soviet industry fell to 20% of 1913 levels, grain harvests dropped from 80.1M to 37.6M tons, and the Volga Famine killed ~5M people (sparking the 1923 NEP Scissors Crisis). Similarly, the 1942–43 Henan Famine killed 2–3M peasants, 1949 food output fell 25% below 1936 levels, and 1948 hyperinflation (over 1,000%; Shanghai rice jumping from 3M to 63M Yuan in two months) ruined urban middle-class savings.

(Stalin) Methods to establish Authoritarian Rule

By mastering party bureaucracy, manipulating ideology, and isolating his rivals one by one

• 1922 General Secretary —> control the nomenklatura (party job appointments), filling regional committees with ~10,000 loyal officials who owed their careers to him.

• 1924 Stalin delivered the main speech at Lenin’s funeral (deliberately giving Trotsky the wrong date so he missed it)

• 1924: suppressed Lenin’s Testament, which had called for Stalin’s removal.

• 1924 - 1925 "Socialism in One Country": Stalin promoted appealing to Russian pride and stability

• 1924-1927 Formed the Triumvirate with Zinoviev and Kamenev to strip Trotsky, then turned on Zinoviev and Kamenev when they formed the United Opposition, expelling all three from the party in 1927.

• 1928- 1929 After siding with Nikolai Bukharin to defend Lenin's New Economic Policy (NEP), Stalin abruptly attacked the NEP during the 1928 grain procurement crisis, calling for rapid industrialization and removing Bukharin from the Politburo in 1929 to become sole ruler.

(Mao) Methods to establish Authoritarian Rule

• 1927-1931 Etablshed Eight Rules of the Red Army (forbidding stealing or mistreating peasants), winning local peasant loyalty.

• 1930 Mao arrested and executed ~2,000–3,000 rival Red Army officers in Jiangxi, accusing them of being Nationalist spies to crush internal opposition to his leadership.

• 1934 -1935 The Long March: Mao led ~86,000 Communists on a 6,000-mile retreat to Yan'an

• 1934-1935 Mao forced ~30,000 party members to study his writings and write public self-criticisms, eliminating Soviet-backed rival Wang Ming and creating a cult of personality around "Mao Zedong Thought."

• 1937–45 Guerrilla Warfare & United Front: Using the Second United Front against Japan to rebuild, Mao expanded the CCP from ~40,000 members (1937) to 1.2 million (1945) while avoiding costly pitched battles against Japanese forces.

• 1946–49 Land Reform & Civil War Victory: Mao’s 1947 Land Law confiscated landlord property for poor peasants (winning ~5.4 million peasant militia recruits), allowing the PLA to defeat Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists and proclaim the PRC on Oct 1, 1949.

Methods to Establish Power (Stalin & Mao)

Thesis: While both Stalin and Mao combined ideological manipulation with the elimination of internal rivals, Stalin seized an existing state from within via bureaucratic maneuvering, whereas Mao conquered power from the outside through mass peasant mobilization and warfare.

Paragraph One: Ideological Adaptation (Similarity + Nuance)

• Topic Sentence (Similarity): Both leaders reshaped orthodox Marxism to fit national conditions and build broad political support.

  • Evidence: Stalin promoted "Socialism in One Country" (1924–25) to appeal to Russian pride and stability over Trotsky’s "Permanent Revolution"; Mao adapted Marxism to China's rural reality via "Mao Zedong Thought" (1942–44), focusing on the peasantry rather than urban workers.

• However (Difference): Stalin used ideology to defend an existing regime's stability, whereas Mao used it as a revolutionary blueprint to overthrow a government.

• Rebuttal: This operational difference is simply a symptom of their shared strategic goal—both treated Marxist theory pragmatically as a flexible tool to justify their personal authority.

Paragraph Two: Bureaucracy vs. Armed Force & Mass Mobilization (Difference + Nuance)

• Topic Sentence (Difference): Stalin established power through bloodless institutional control from above, whereas Mao relied on disciplined guerrilla warfare and peasant mobilization from below.

  • Evidence: As General Secretary (1922), Stalin controlled the nomenklatura (~10,000 loyal officials) and recruited ~500,000 workers in the Lenin Enrolment (1923–24); conversely, Mao enforced the Eight Rules of the Red Army (1927), led the 6,000-mile Long March (1934–35), and used the 1947 Land Law to recruit ~5.4 million peasant militia for the Civil War victory (Oct 1, 1949).

• However (Similarity): Both manipulated public perception and propaganda to build personal legitimacy—Stalin by delivering Lenin’s funeral eulogy (1924) and Mao by glorifying the Long March.

• Rebuttal: Propaganda remained secondary to their structural power bases; Stalin could not have won without controlling party appointments, just as Mao could not have taken Beijing without winning a civil war.

Paragraph Three: Elimination of Internal Rivals (Similarity — No Rebuttal)

• Topic Sentence (Similarity): Both systematically purged and isolated internal Communist Party opponents to secure undisputed leadership before consolidating state control.

  • Evidence: Stalin suppressed Lenin’s Testament (May 1924), formed the Triumvirate to expel Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev (1927), and removed Bukharin (1929). Similarly, Mao executed ~2,000–3,000 rivals in the Futian Incident (1930), sidelined the Moscow-trained "28 Bolsheviks" at the Zunyi Conference (Jan 1935), and forced ~30,000 members into self-criticism during the Yan'an Rectification Campaign (1942–44) to crush Wang Ming.