'The Bolshevik state under Lenin, between 1918 and 1924, was just as ruthless as the Communist state under Stalin, between 1928 and 1941.’ (25)

P1: ruthless to the people
- use of secret police
- Yezhovschina

AGREE:
- Cheka (est Dec 1917) under Lenin
- Sep 1918, Sovnarkom enabled Cheka to questions arrest
- Arbitrary imprisonment and death penalty; interrogation, no questions asked
- periodically harassed and arrested Nepmen as speculators and class enemies --> showed they were keeping capitalistic tendencies under control
- 1918 --> Romanov assassination
- official 1918-20 records say Cheka killed 13,000; estimated closer to 500,000
- SRs arrested in large numbers
COUNTER:
- Stalin took the Terror to a new level
- Yezhovschina 1937-8; 1.5mil arrests; 950,000 - 1.2mil deaths
- NKVD order 00447 --> rid of anti-soviet elements (Kulaks, criminals) shot or sent to labour camps
- innocent people killed due to the quotas having to be met
- estimated 600,000 to 800,000 victims
- purged the army
- Trotsky assassinated 1940

P2: ruthless politically
- ban on factions
- purge of party

AGREE:
- Lenin 1921 ban on factions; penalty for factionalism was expulsion from party
- constituent assembly closed on first day, jan 1918
- 500 SRs killed in Petrograd
- 'Chistka'
- 1921 5000 mensheviks arrested for counter-revolutionary activities
- 220,000 members were purged or left the party
- show trial of SRs --> 34 of their leaders condemned as terrorists and 11 executed
COUNTER:
- Kirov murder 1934
- show trials - Foreign journalists invited to prove that USSR and Stalin were facing opposition from 'enemies of the state'
- Shakhty trial 1928 = claimed that Managers and technicians had supposedly questioned the pace of industrialization and were trying to sabotage the Soviet econ - 55 arrests, 5 executed; 1931 --> 50% of engineers at Shakhty had been arrested
- show trials of Kamenev, Zinoviev, Aug 1936
- March 1938 = Bukharin, Rykov, Yagoda

- 1932 ryutin manifesto, brutally shut down and arrested, 24 expelled, ryutin killed in prison 1937
- leads to purge of party april 1933, 18% gone
- 1934 kirov murder, to deflect blame from himself he accuses others
- 70% of 17th party congress (he got outvoted) were shot
- 1936 trial of 16, z&k
- 1937 trial of 17, radek
- trial of 21 bukharin etc. all tortured and shot or sent to gulags
- purge of army to prevent them rising against him, 8 senior officers and 512 of high command

P3: econ policy + effect on people
- war communism, grain
- great turn/5yp

AGREE:
- war comm caused 50% of casualties of the civil war
- famine
- grain requisitioning hard on peasantry --> kulaks had all their stock seized 'enemies of the people'
COUNTER:
- dekulakisation
- collectivisation
- Impact on the peasants: death toll, human coasts of dekulakisation and famine were horrendous --> millions died or fled - way of life for 500 years vanished
- famine 7mil dead