Stalin's Russia Consolidation & Maintenance of Power

Use of Force #1

The NKVD

• 1933-34: centralized security through NKVD → united police, secret police, boarder guards & labour camps

  • reported directly to Stalin → controlled surveillance, arrests & enforcement

• Special military tribunals: bypassed normal legal processes

• Vague crimes & labels (e.g. “counterrevolutionary activity”) enabled arbitrary arrests & created constant insecurity

• Reign of fear: suspicion and fabricated charges suppressed opposition

Use of Force #2

Great Purge/ Great Terror

• Decree against Terrorists Acts (1934): became a tool for political murder

  • show trials staged to expose “enemies”

• Old Bolsheviks: Kamenev & Zinoviev forced into public confessions → set precendent, legitmized wider purges & spread terror

Great Purge/Terror #2

The Ryutin Affair

• culminated in a massive Purge of the Communist Party membership → over a 3rd of members were expelled for suspected disloyalty

Use of Force #3

Administrative Purges & Systematic Terror

• Early Purges: administrative, non-violent → party card inspections expelled, “suspicious” members

  • loss of membership → loss of jobs, housing, rations, enforcing compliance through pressure

• 1934 turning point: purges escalated into systematic terror

  • Targets expanded to political enemies, colleagues & Party members

• Escalation:

  • Alec Nove: Harshness stemmed from enemies created by forced modernization

  • For Stalin & circle: terror was a necessary tool to preserve the Revolution & control

Kirov Affair

• Kirov was assassinated by Nikolaev → seen as a rival: charismatic, respected, critical of Stalin

• death provided a pretext for Great Purges → removal of Kirov eliminated a potnetial rallying point for opposition

• w/in hours of Kirov death, Stalin enacted Decree Against Terrorist → gave NKVD sweeping poweers to execute “enemies” w/out standard trials

• Objective: to eliminate all potential dissent and consolidate absolute authority

Legal Methods #1

Stalin’s Authoritarian Control

USSR under Stalin → dictatorship disguised as a socialist democracy

1. Party Monopoly: real power rested w/ Communist Party → increasingly equated w/ Stalin himself

2. Bypassing institutions: Stalin used Party dominanace to eliminate rivals & enforce conformity, valued loyalty over competence

Legal Methods #2

1. Constitutional facade: 1936 “Stalin Constitution” promised rights like suffrage & self-determination → actually entrenched authoritarianism

2. Elections as propaganda: Robert Conquest notes, “elections were staged & symbolic w/ only party-approved candidates

L

Legal Method #3

• General Secretary (1922-1953): Stalin transformed role from administrative to central post of authority → controlled Party membership & appointments

• Head of Government (1941): As Chairman of the Council of the People’s Commissars → oversaw the executive branch & directed the war effort

• Supreme Commander of Armed Forces: took personal command of the Red Army (WWII) → added military power to his political dominance

Stalin centralized political, governmental, and military control around himself → unparalleled concentration of power

Charisma & Propaganda #1

Stalin’s Cult of Personality

• deliberately constructed by the Communist Party

• ideological link between Stalin & lenin was strategically crafted during 1920s consolidation of power

• 1930s crises (collectivization, First Five Year Plan, purges) intesified CoP

  • propaganda deified Stalin as a visionary genius, cultural expert, & father of the nation

Stalin’s Cult of Personality #2

1. 1930s CoP: Stalin depicted as “Father of the Nation” & mastermind of all Soviet Successes

2. Propaganda saturation: portraits in schools, factories, offices & homes

3. Fitzpatrick: cult blurred boundaries between individual & state, a core feature of Stalinism

4. Top-down control: orchestrated by the Party to enforce loyalty

5. Impact: devotion often stemmed from fear, cult was crucial in legitimizing Stalin’s rule

Historiography

• Historians like Robert Service argued this continuity was carefully cultivated myth, not rooted in Lenin’s actual wishes

  • fusion of Stalin with lenin provided a powerful ideological justification for this authority across the Party & broader society

Stalin’s Cult of Personality #4

• Stalin used USSR’s WWII victory to strengthen CoP

  • portrayed as Saviour of the Motherland → assumed title Generalissimo

  • celebrated in victory parades & military iconography as a national hero

• Propaganda controlled all media: newspapers, cinema & radio saturated culture with his image

Stalin’s Cult of Personality #4

Stalin as a Secular Deity

• Stalin’s image was treated in quasi-religious terms

• Russian icon worship traditions were redirected towards secular adoration of Stalin

  • Portraits of Stalin replace saints in processions & homes

• Stalin’s birthday celebrations (from 1929) grew increasingly elaborate → surpassed religious holidays

• his stoic, distant demeanor, reinforced an aura of mystique → made him appear otherworldly

Historiography #2

1. Jan Plamper: argued that the sacralization of Stalin filled the spiritual void left by the collapse of traditional religion → offered a secular object of devotion

2. Sheila Fitzpatrick: public opinion was mixed

   1. urban population was relatively passive & discontented

   2. rural populations → often hostile due to collectivization

Stalin’ authority rested less on genuine adoration than on awe, fear & strategic elimiation of rivals

Kulaks

• affluent peasants with more land/livestock in late Imperial Russia

• Under Stalin: the term became politicized → labelled peasants resisting grain requisition, bringing labor or holding surplus

  • portrayed as the class enemy of socialism & the proletariat

• Fitzpatrick: term was arbitrary & inconsistent to justify repression → used to stigmatize a broad section of rural society

Nature & Extent of Opposition #1

Pesant Resistance & Dekulakization

• Acts of protest: “kulak terror” (arson, sabotage, killing officials) & mass livestock slaughter

• 1929: Stalin called for “liquidation of kulaks as a class”

  • Dekulakization campaigns: confiscation, arrest, deportation, execution

• Peak of Holodomor (1932-33): famine in Ukraine caused by collectivization & grain requistions

Nature & Extent of Opposition #2

Gulags Under Stalin

• Gulag: Soviet forced labour camp network, expanded massively under Stalin

• 1929-1953: millions imprisoned for political, criminal, or fabricated charges

  • served punitive & economic roles: cheap labour for mining, logging, construction & infrastructure

• Conditions: overwork, malnutrition, extreme climate, brutality → high mortality

• Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago (1973): exposed scale and ideology of the system

Historiography: Was the Holodomor a genocide?

• Fitzpatrick: caused by state requisitions, not a genocide

• Conquest & Applebaum: famined deliberately engineered to crush Ukranian nationalism

  • local officials blocked aid & movement

• 2006: Ukraine officially recognized Holomodor as genocide, supported by many Western historians

Foreign Policy #1

Spanish Civil War

• Spanish governemntr appealed for help after fascist coup → Stalin hesitatd,fearing provoation

  • faced pressure as sole communist leader n Europe

• intervention was limited by symbolic → support helped Republicans

Foreign Policy #1b

Moscow Gold (1936)

• Spain sent 510 tons of gold to Moscow as payment for gold

  • publicly presented as support but effectively a transaction

• Beevor: USSR inflated costs, charging 661 million for its assistance

  • loss of gold crippled Spain’s wartime finances & strained Soviet-Republican trust

Historiography: Spanish Civil War

Antony Beevor: Soviet aid had mixed motivations

1. suggests Stalin aimed to establish a pro-Soviet regime in Spain

2. presents intervention as a genuine attempt to defend a legal government

• Beevor argues both views as overly simplistic & propaganda goals likely infleunce scale & style of Soviet involvement

  • Soviet press romanticized Spanish struggle → perpetuated narrative of “international solidarity.”

Foreign Policy #2

Nazi-Soviet Pact: diplomatic coup for both powers

• publicly (10-year non-aggression treaty)

  • secretly → involved a protocol to divide Eastern Europe into German & Soviet spheres of influence

• For Stalin: pact allowed rebuilding of Red Army & offered territorial spoils (Baltic States, Eastern Poland)

• Consequences: Hitler betrayed Stalin w/ the invasion of Poland → eventually defeated by Stalin

  • Soviet occupation of eastern Poland → culiminated in Katyn Massacre of 1940 (4,000 polish officers executed by NKVD)

Foreign Policy #3

Baltic Annexations & Winter War (1939-40)

• USSR forced Estonia, Lithuania & Latvia into “mutual assistance” treaties → annexed in 1940

  • Finland refused territorial concessions → Winter War (Nov 1939)

• War revealed: post-purge military weaknesses (i.e. poor leadership, disorganization, low morale)

  • Stalin’s buffer zone strategy secured land but bred hostility → Finland allied w/ Germany

Foreign Policy #4

Grand Alliance (U.S) → negative cohesion alliance

• “Marriage of Convenience”: brought together nations with profoundly different ideologies under a common enemy

  • USSR’s collaboration w/ Western powers was pragmatic but entrenched in mutual suspicion

Foreign Policy Results

Postwar Isolation

1. Policy of anti-cosmopolitanism emerged as a cutlural/ideological campaign aimed at severing Soviet intellectual & cultrual life from Western influence

   1. citizens were discouiraged from foreign contrcts, & foreign literature was censored

2. Economic recovery: framed as continuation of wartime resistance → required collective sacrifice, vigilance & loyalty

   1. narrative justified suppression of alternate worldviews