Russia essay plans

causes of the FebRev (how tsar gone & PG in)

Tsar’s Corruption

• Tsar 1906 “The All-Russian Emperor possesses the supreme autocratic power…god himself commands obedience”

• Kenez “It is not only that [Tsar] did not have the brains and character to survive, but he also lacked the means”

Economic Hardship

• Grand Duke Nikolai “I have no rifles, no shells, no boots”

• (transport strained). mid-1916 30% railway stock unusable; cities relied. fixed by printing money +400% inflation

WW1 Impact

• Grand Duke Nikolai “I have no rifles, no shells, no boots”

• Rozianko urged Tsar to not assume supreme commander of military Aug 1915: “The people must interpret your move as one inspired by the Germans around you”

Strikes

• • 1. International Womens Day strike Feb 23: Petro bols Shliapnikov feb 25 “what revolution? Give them a pound of bread & the movement will peter out” 

• Tsarina Alexandra dismisses FebRev “This is a hooligan movement, young people run and shout that there is no bread, simply to create excitement”

causes of OctRev (how Bols overthrew PG)

Weakness of anti-force pro-people PG

• W.H Chamberlin “conspiciously lacking in all the means by which a state normally enforces its authority”

• “The Soviets had power without authority…the Provisional Government authority without power.”

promise of peace

• Grand Duke Nikolai "I have no rifles, no shells, no boots”

• Gorky in June 1917 “there is no longer a capital, it is a cesspit. No one works, the streets are filthy, there are piles of stinking rubbish in the courtyards...” 

promise of land

• Izvestia peasant Mandate “all land...shall be confiscated without compensation and become the property of the whole people” 

• Lenin finland station april theses “the people need land...- leave the landlords still on the land…We must fight for the social revolution”

promise of bread

• Rosenberg - “(PG) unable to satisfy conflicting claims on its economic, social, and cultural resources”

• Lenin - “the people need bread..and they give you..hunger, no bread..”

Lenin decrees/reforms / consolidation of Bols power

peace: Brest Litovsk

• Grand Duke Nikolai "I have no rifles, no shells, no boots”

• trostky speech pre-signing feb 1918 “we hereby notify all peoples and their governments of our intention to withdraw from the war... It is our belief that other nations will soon follow our example” 

land: 1917 lenin land decree

• Izvestia peasant Mandate “all land...shall be confiscated without compensation and become the property of the whole people” 

• Lenin finland station april theses “the people need land...- leave the landlords still on the land…We must fight for the social revolution” 

bread:

• International Womens Day strike Feb 23: Petro bols Shliapnikov feb 25 “what revolution? Give them a pound of bread & the movement will peter out” 

• Lenin finland station april theses “the people need bread..and they give you..hunger, no bread..”

Cheka

• stands for “All-Russian Extra-ordinary Commission for Struggle Against Counter-Rev and Sabotage”…”looting the looters”

• • 2. feb 1918 given power to shoot “looters, profiteers & counter-revolutionaries” as well as “burzhooi” (“former people”, bourgeoise, well dressed, rich)

causes & events of Russian Civil War 1917-1922

causes:

dissatisfaction with PG & Cheka

• stands for “All-Russian Extra-ordinary Commission for Struggle Against Counter-Rev and Sabotage”…”looting the looters”

• W.H Chamberlin “[PG] conspiciously lacking in all the means by which a state normally enforces its authority”

economy & withdrawal from Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

• Lenin finland station april theses “the people need bread..and they give you..hunger, no bread..”

• Lenin “The Civil War, which was caused by the furious resistance of the propertied classes, who realise full well that this is their last and final fight for private property

events:

red V white

• Central Executive Committee’s resolution 1918 “Supported by the entire working population of the country, the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army will crush and throw back the imperialist predators trampling the soil of the Soviet Republic!”

• Former White Soldier 1918 “All the Bolsheviks we captured with weapons in their hands were shot on the spot: individually, in dozens, in hundreds. It was a war of extermination.”

Red won & war communism

• Lenin 1923 “And now there can be no doubt that in the main we have been victorious.”

• War communism during Civil War; russian peasant “The land belongs to us but the bread belongs to you; the water belongs to us, but the fish to you; the forests are ours but the timber is yours” 

stalin ascent to power

strategic political positions & influence

• Archie brown historian about General Secretary 1922 “subtle control of both the party's machinery and its ideological apparatus, making him the ultimate arbiter of Soviet policy."

• Kotkin historian on network “build a personal dictatorship within a dictatorship through his role as General Secretary”

cult of lenin & ideological alignment

• stalin section of death of lenin speech at first 2nd all-union congress of soviets 1924 ,“we vow to you, comrade lenin, we shall fulfil your behest with honour”

• “lenin’s humble discipline”

manipulation & suppression

• stalin suppressed lenin’s final testament helped by Zinoviev & Kamenev “Stalin is too rude…i promose…removing stalin from that position and to appoint another man…more patient, more loyal, more polite”

• tricked trostky into missing funeral; Stalin’s secretary Boris Bazhanov “Stalin was true to himself: he sent a telegram to Trotsky, who was in the Caucasus undergoing medical treatment, giving a false date to the funeral”

exploiting divisions between L & R

• left (trostky, zinoviev, kamenev) rapid industrialisation/control; rigt (bukharin, rykov, tomsky) NEP/prosperity. stalin moderate “socialism in one country”. Robert Service “image of himself as neither a revolutionary extremist nor a conservative"

• w/ L, then R, Trostky removed. Stephen Kotkin “aligning himself with both left and right wings of the party when it suited him.

reasons/events/impacts for purges & show trials 1934-1939

reasons: cleanse opposition, generate fear

• Robert Service on Stalin’s motives “a desire to use his victims as scapegoats for the country's pain”

• Nadezhda Khazina ‘Hope Against Hope’ 1971 “The only purpose of terror is..to plunge the whole country into a state of chronic fear”

events: Great Terror 36-38, show trials

• Douglas Northrop “going to the Ashgabat marketplace and rounding up all men who wore beards, on theory that they were likely to be mullahs.”

• Vyshinsky’s closing speech “I am guilty of nothing, nothing, nothing”

impacts: total control, death

• ‘R.Conquest “the one fundamental drive... is the strengthening of his own position... led him to absolute power”

• Stalin “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”

Five Year Plans

state control of economy

• reaching targets, British Embassy 1932 "A record of over-staffing, overplanning and complete incompetence at the centre; of human misery, starvation, death and disease among the peasantry.”

• Robert Service “The Gulag, which was the network of labour camps subject to the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD), would be expanded and would become an indispensable sector of the Soviet economy”

forced rural collectivisation

• Robert Service “Ahead lay campaigns to spread collective farms and eliminate kulaks, clerics and private traders.”

• Stalin “kulaks, break their resistance, eliminate them as a class and replace their output by the output of the collective farms and state farms.”

modernisation of the soviet union

• Mikhail Cheremnykh “(June 1930 increased goals) for pig iron, from 10M to 17M tons…for tractors, from 55k to 170k.. for other agricucltural mcahinery and trucks, an increase of more than 100%"

• 2. Stalin “No comrades... the pace must not be slackened! On the contrary, we must quicken it as much as is within our powers and possibilities”

How USSR secured WW2 victory

wartime production & Lend-Lease Aid

• In 1940, they manufactured 15k guns. The production increased very quickly…122k in 1944..3 times Germany’s output2

• [Nikita Khrushchev] “If the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war,"

strategies & Operation Barborossa

• July 28 1942 Stalin Order No.227 “not one step backward...cowards must be liquidated on the spot”

• german invasion of SU fail: Hitler “we have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down." WRONG

battles won

• Napoleon Bonaparte “battle of moscow; first big russia win “The russians showed themselves worthy of being invincible”

• Stalin 1945 victory speech “comrades! the great patriotic war has ended in our complete victory!”

groups impacted by stalin

women

• zhenotdel dissolved; Wendy Goldmen from Bols Women Book “the era of Bolshevik femininism had ended”

• women maternal+work+pregnant poster in factory

education

• Stalin speech in Kremlin to high edu workers may 17 1938 “progress of science…smash the old traditions, standards and views”

• 20 Rules printed in Vchtelskaya Gazeta (Department of Ed SU publication) Jan 1944. Rule 3 "obey unquestioningly the order of the school & the teacher" 

orthodox church

• marx idea both lenin & stalin; religion is “opium of the people”

• 1925 anti-rel propaganda Dmitry Moor people dying carrying cross mockery