Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union

Homo Sovieticus

The perfect soviet citizen

October Revolution

1917, tsarist regime falls and is replaces by Lenin aiming to bring Marxism to Russia

Fall of Lenin

Survives a number of assassination attempts, dies in 1924

Rise of Stalin

Isolates the old Bolsheviks, cultivates a cult of personality, uses fear, photo manipulation etc.

Economic change under Stalin

Five year plan, industrial state (effective). Collectivisation on farmlands, attack on the Kulaks

Cost of economic change

Holodomor - Ukraine suffers starvation (manmade famine)

Stalin Terror

Show trials, purges, NKVD, gulag system

Stakon

Alexi Stakhonov - ‘stakhonovite movement’. Encouraging workers to work hard and produce more for the country

The Soviet Union in wartime

Nazi-Soviet Pact (broken when the Nazis invade), Stalin disappears for 2 weeks. Known as ‘the great patriotic war’. 20 million civilians died

Stalin death

1953

Khrushchev

1956 - secret speech. Began a process of de-stalinisation and cultural ‘thaw’

Brezhnev

1964-82. Period of detente, 1979 Afghanistan war (10 years), stagnation, hierarchical system but economic stability ‘golden era’

Gorbachev

A reformer. Thatcher “A man we can do business with”

Gorbachevs 2 policies

Glasnost - openness. Perestroika - restructuring

Congress of peoples deputies

An elected body (but not entirely democratic or free), broadcast on live television across Soviet Union

Boris Yeltsin

Elected President in June 1991. Soviet Union collapses in December 1991

Gorbachev’s legacy

Reformer? - visionary, Nobel peace prize laureate, ended substantial international conflict. BUT leader of a totalitarian state, led collapse of a global superpower, ended Brezhnev stability

Boris Yeltsin (l)

Energetic and capable politician, public disagreements with Gorbachev, elected president, took Russia on a path away from the Soviet Union

Shock after the collapse

Mass privatisation, 2000% rise in inflation from 1992, savings for millions wiped out, how do you make a communist system capitalist

The Oligarchs

gained financial power from the shock and the privatisation, this economic power offered political clout

1993 Coup

September 1992 Boris Yeltsin orders a dissolution of parliament which he has no legal right to do. MPs refuse to leave the building. Yeltsin orders use of military force to reclaim parliament

1993/95 parliamentary elections

Defeat for Yeltsin, rise in support for communists

PM and Yeltsin

Putin appointed PM in 1999, December 1999 Yeltsin resigns and putin becomes acting president

Yeltsin legacy

Ended soviet oppression, shock therapy deeply controversial, nurtures a system for later corruption, drunkard

Hosking Violence

“Violence as a political tool became simply routine” (Hosking 2018)

NKVD order 00447

“Targeted a medely of ‘socially dangerous elements’”