Paper 2: Stalin's Emergence + Consolidation

Stalin’s rise in the party

1917 after he return from exile in Siberia

• appointed editor of Pravda

• leader of Petrograd Soviet

1919

• appointed to Politburo

• made Head of Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate

• Appointed to secretariat

• made liaison between Politburo and Orgburo

lenin dies

• 1924, having been out of politics for the last two years due to strokes

• this caused a power vacuum → Troika: Stalin, Kamenev, Zinoviev

• had not named a specific successor

Stalin is made General Secretary

• 1922

• chose who was a party member and slowly replaced members with his supporters

• trotsky was not at Lenin’s funeral but Stalin was and delivered the address - further cementing his image of Lenin’s successor

• used charm to win his way within the party

1920s

• 1925: trotsky is forced to resign as war commissar

• 1926: united opposition ( kamenev, Zinoviev, Trotsky) removed from Politburo

• 1927: Kamenev, Zinoviev and Trotsky removed from party

• 1928: NEP abandoned and first Five year plan introduced

• 1929: Trotsky exiled

• 1940: assassinated in Mexico

Repression and Terror

• linked with Stalin’s idea of a “revolution from above”

• Dekulakisation → killed 5 million

• expansion of gulags and forced labour camps

• deliberate food seizures to feed industrial revolution, army and export

• Famine 1932-33: 7.5 mil deaths

  • mainly impacted Ukraine and used as a form of genocide to break peasant power and destroy ukrainian nationalism

Sergei Kirov

• friend of Stalin and leader of Leningrad

• speaks against collectivisation and is murdered by Leonid Nikolaev December 1934 (he was also rumoured to be having an affair with Nikolaev’s wife)

• Stalin used this to accuse latent in-party opposition and justify a party purge of senior figures

• Stalin is believed to have masterminded Kirov’s murder

• decline in role of Politburo + Secret Committee in 1936

Moscow Show Trials

1936-8

Trial 1: august 1936

• Zinoviev + Kamenev accused of killing Kirov and attempting to kill Stalin

• confessed to false charges under threats to their family

Trial 2: January 1937

• 17 lesser figures accused of plotting with Trotsky + conspiring w/ germany

• 13 shot, 4 sent to gulags and died

Trial 3: march 1938

• trial of the 21

• Nep supporters on the right → Genrikh Yagoda (ex secret police leader), Bukharin accused of plotting to kill Stalin

many secret trials of generals → severely weakened the army → 30,000 officers and 81 of 103 generals executed

dead men were docked out of photos

continuation of Cheka

• GPU 1922

• OGPU 1923

• NKVD 1934