Stalin's Russia: Economy, Terror, Propaganda & Foreign Policy

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the economic policies, state terror, propaganda methods, show trials, and foreign policy decisions of Joseph Stalin's regime in the Soviet Union.

Socialism in One Country

Stalin's policy of strengthening socialism within Russia by rapidly developing and growing the domestic economy rather than prioritizing worldwide revolution.

Command Economy

An economic system adopted by the Soviet Union where all major decisions regarding what goods to produce were determined centrally by the state.

Collectivisation

The Soviet policy of combining small individual farms into large state-owned collective farms, originally planned to be voluntary, where produce was owned by the state.

Kulaks

Wealthy peasant farmers who resisted surrendering their private land and crops to collectivisation, prompting Stalin to announce the 'liquidation of the kulaks as a class' and deport approximately 5 million to gulags or Siberia.

Holodomor

The 1932 man-made terror-famine in Soviet Ukraine caused by drastically elevated grain quotas, which resulted in the starvation deaths of an estimated 5 million people.

First Five-Year Plan (1928–1932)

Stalin's initial economic plan, which set unrealistic targets while focusing on developing heavy industry (such as coal and steel), infrastructure, and agricultural machinery.

Second Five-Year Plan (1933–1937)

The second economic initiative focused on heavy industry and farm machinery, incorporating massive industrial projects like Magnitogorsk and beginning weapons production toward its end.

Third Five-Year Plan (1938–1941)

An economic plan that prioritized national rearmament and consumer goods, which ended prematurely in 1941 due to the Nazi invasion.

Alexey Stakhanov

A Soviet coal miner who reportedly extracted 102 tonnes of coal during a single 6-hour shift, celebrated as a 'hero of socialist labour' and used as a propaganda model for production.

Stakhanovites

Soviet workers inspired by Alexey Stakhanov who routinely exceeded state production targets and were promoted by state propaganda as heroes.

Internal Passports

Identification papers issued by the Soviet secret police that restricted internal movement, preventing citizens from leaving the specific area where they lived and worked.

NKVD

The Soviet state secret police organization that replaced the Cheka, responsible for operating forced-labour gulags, carrying out torture, enforcing quotas, and conducting executions.

Pravda

The primary official newspaper of the Soviet Communist Party, which achieved high readership across the USSR due to rising literacy rates and served as a central propaganda outlet.

Cult of Personality

A propaganda campaign that elevated Stalin into a revered leader, exaggerating his historical role in the October Revolution, altering photographs, and renaming Volgograd to Stalingrad.

Show Trials

Publicly staged legal proceedings combining terror and propaganda, in which former high-ranking Bolsheviks were coerced into confessing to fabricated treasonous crimes before being executed or sent to gulags.

Andrey Vyshinsky

The state prosecutor during Stalin's Moscow Show Trials who offered no concrete evidence and famously demanded that the court 'Shoot these rabid dogs!'

Trial of the Sixteen (1936)

The first major Moscow show trial, in which 16 prominent Old Bolsheviks, including Lev Kamenev and Gregory Zinoviev, were accused of Sergei Kirov's murder and plotting against Stalin, then executed after confessing.

Trial of the Seventeen (1937)

The second show trial, involving Yuri Pytakov, Karl Radek, and 15 officials connected to the Five-Year Plans, accused of operating an 'Anti-Soviet Trotskyist Centre'; 13 were executed and the rest sent to gulags.

Trial of the Twenty-One (1938)

The third show trial, which convicted defendants including Nikolai Bukharin and former NKVD head Genrikh Yagoda of plotting to assassinate Lenin and Stalin and collaborating with Western powers; 18 were executed.

Secret Red Army Purge (1937)

Stalin's internal military purge targeting commanders who had served under Trotsky, which resulted in the execution of the military's highest-ranking leaders and the dismissal or execution of another 30,000 officers.

The Great Purge

A sweeping campaign of political repression and state terror under Stalin that resulted in roughly 24 million interrogations, 1.2 million executions, and 13 million deaths in the gulag system.

Popular Fronts

Alliances that European communist parties were directed by the Comintern to establish with other anti-fascist and democratic political parties during the 1930s.

Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact

A 10-year non-aggression agreement signed between Hitler and Stalin in 1939 that secretly partitioned Poland and provided the Soviet Union with time to prepare for war.

Order No. 270

A wartime directive issued by Stalin stating 'There are no Soviet prisoners of war, only traitors,' enforcing advance at all costs through penal battalions and NKVD blocking detachments.

Tankograd

The wartime nickname for the Chelyabinsk tractor factory located east of the Ural Mountains, which was converted to mass-produce Soviet tanks during World War II.

Yalta Conference

The 1945 wartime meeting where Stalin secured diplomatic agreements from the United States and Britain recognizing Eastern Europe as part of the Soviet sphere of influence after the war.