1922-53: Stalin

Lenin’s Testimony:

  • Dec 1922 Lenin gave his ‘testament’

  • Gave opinions on Politburo members, v critical of Stalin

  • Other Politburo members more afraid of Trotsky, mastermind of Oct Revolution and civil war hero

  • Decided not to read this testimony out

Trotsky:

  • Charismatic, great orator, intellectual

  • Criticided: decline of internal party democ/debate/discussion/increase of bureaucracy/appointment due to loyalty>merit

  • Absent from Lenin’s funeral (ill and told wrong date)

  • Advocated for permanent revolution and revolution abroad

  • Other Politburo members found him aloof/overly ambitious/potential to be too dominant

Stalin:

  • Seemed methodical/unspectactular/unthreatening

  • General Secretary, appointed supporters to key positions, gathered info/files on other members

  • Delivered a speech at Lenin’s funeral, praised Lenin as a god-like figure, committed himself to continue his work

  • Socialism in one country

  • Nationalistic appeal

  • Reminded Party members that Trotsky had been a Menshevik until 1917

  • Politically astute, underestimated by others

The Establishment of the Stalinist Dictatorship:

  • Stalin great control of the Party, could deliver the votes in decisions of the CC/Politburo

  • Forced Trotsky out of his position as Commissar for War 1925

  • 1927 Trotsky expelled from the party

  • 1929 Trotsky deported

  • Stalin maintained/extended on party unity

  • Centralised control

  • Asserted personal dominance, Party Congress meetings held less often

The 1936 Constitution:

  • Stalin called it ‘the most democratic in the world’

  • Considerable autonomy to the regions, but still central govt control

  • Elections every 4 years, not contestable, only approved Party member names were on the ballot papers

  • Civil rights, free speech, mostly ignored

  • Some elements of the Stalinist Dictatorship were undoubtedly established by Lenin early 1920s. However, Stalin’s rule was a personal one in which he was above the Party

Results of the NEP:

  • Econ recovery led by an increase in grain to cities

  • End to revolts and civil unrest

  • Revival of Kulaks and emergence of NEP men, traders, and speculators

  • Industrial production slow to recover, peasants hoarded grain bc there were few consumer goods to buy

  • Grain procured by govt end of 1927 was 75% of 1926 levels

  • Stalin ordered grain crisis, aimed to develop large-scale collective-esque farms

The Five-Year Plans:

  • Dec 1927 1FYP announced

  • SU to modernise to catch up w industrially advanced Europe/USA

  • SU to become self-sufficient

  • Export grain to pay for machinery/expertise from abroad

  • SOCIALISM IN ONE COUNTRY

Industrialisation:

  • FYPs high targets for each industry

  • Broken down for regions and specific factories

  • Failure to meet targets could lead to arrest

  • Pressure for quantity>quality+exaggerate production figures

  • Huge propaganda campaigns—>FYPs as part of the revolutionary struggle

Targets vs Reality: 1FYP 1928-32

COAL:

1927-28= 35m tons

1932 Target= 75mt

Amended target 1932= 95-105mt

1932 actual production: 64mt

OIL:

1927-28: 11.7mt

1932 target= 21.7mt

Amended 1932: 40-55mt

1932 actual: 21.4mt

IRON ORE:

1927-28: 6.7mt

1932 target: 20.2mt

Amended 1932: 24-32mt

1932 actual: 12.1mt

PIG IRON:

1927-28: 3.2mt

1932 target: 10mt

Amended 1932: 15-16mt

1932 actual: 6.2mt

ELECTRICITY TREBLED BY 1932

  • 1930s huge growth maintained

  • Magnitogorsk, huge industrial complex built 1929

  • Dnieprostroi dam construction 1927-32 increased electricity by 5x

  • Many projects displaced peasants

  • Living conditions for workers deteriorated

FYP Dates:

First FYP: 1928-32

Second FYP: 1933-37

Third FYP: 1938-41

Fourth FYP: 1946-50

Fifth FYP: 1951-55

Sixth FYP: 1955-60

Seventh FYP: 1959-65

The Stakhanovite Movement:

  • Began during the 2FYP 1935, new stage of socialist competition

  • Named after Alexei Stakhanov

  • Alexei mined 102 tons of coal in 6 hours (14x quota) 31st Aug 1935

Collectivisation: 1928-40

Main Features:

  • Unification of several villages into collective farms w/ equipment and livestock pooled

  • Procurement of grain, feed industrial workforce+pay for imports of industrial equipment

  • Thousands of party activists+soldiers+OGPU implemented forced collectivisation

  • Destruction of Kulaks to force peasants into submission

  • Increase in control over the peasantry by the state, classifying anyone who opposed as kulaks

  • March 1930 over ½ of peasants had land collectivised, 90% by 1939

Collectivisation Results:

  • Massive opposition, burning crops, killing livestock

  • Collectives run inefficiently by managers who knew little of farming

  • Decline in food production, although state procurement+grain exports increased

  • 1932-33 Ukraine famine 3m+ deaths, total loss 10m

  • Soviet Union did not recover pre-war levels of grain production until 1939

  • Millions driven off the land, many forced into labour camps to build

  • Aim of feeding industrial workforce+exporting grain achieved

  • Destruction of traditional peasant way of life

Class:

  • Encouraged communal living

  • Private life faced public scrutiny. Community interests>individual

  • Mask of conformity to preserve private identity, hence leaderships fixation on purges of hidden enemies

  • War Communism introduced harsh labour discipline, backtracking from Land/Workers Decrees equality

  • Seven day working week and longer working hours under Stalin

  • 1930s bonuses and payment by results introduced to boost productivity (+Stakhanovite movement)

  • Collectivisation resulted in a huge deterioration of living conditions in the countryside

  • Overcrowding and poor sanitation in urban living

Women:

  • Communist rev promised women access to jobs and aid w/ childcare

  • Divorce made easier, mainly initiated by men

  • Abortion legalised

  • Nurseries provied as women worked more

  • Women kept doing the majority of housework

  • 1930s falling birth rate, set back progress, propaganda showed Stalin as a father and women as mothers>workers

  • Divorce made harder again by Stalin

  • Financial incentives to large families

  • 1940, 43% of the industrial workforce was women

Young People:

  • By 1941, 90% of people under 50 were literate

  • Youth group, The Pioneers established 1922

  • All Pioneers took an oath to the Communist Party and wore a special uniform

  • Komsomol encouraged its members to assist the police, do voluntary social work, and set up political clubs to instil socialist values

  • 1940, Komsomol had 10m members

  • Some young people still sought Western media

Religion:

  • Marx said religion was the opium of the people designed to keep the WC quiet

  • Lenin had tolerated religious worship as Russia culturally was v religious but diid launch a campaign to weaken the power of the Orthodox church

  • Orthodox Church’s land was seized, Church schools taken over

  • Monasteries turned into schools/hospitals/prisons

  • Many priests lost their lives

  • Under STALIN there was the destruction of rural churches, bells/icons/relics confiscated

  • Caused huge opposition, religious protesters branded as Kulaks

  • By 1940, only 500 churches open for worship, 1% of the 1917 number

Minorities:

  • From 1938, Russian had to be taught in all schools

  • Russian sole language of the Red Army

Soviet Culture:

  • Oct Rev led to an influx of artistic creativity

  • Lenin believed art and literature should serve the people

  • Stalin even clearer that culture was the serve a social/political role promoting socialist values

  • 1930s those who did not conform to Stalin’s standards were purged

  • The Soviet Union of Writers: 1934- all writers had to be members. All had to strive for socialist realism, their work had to be understood by the WC, characters had to be socialist role models or caricatures of class enemies.

  • Many writers sent to labour camps or killed themselves

Propaganda:

  • Lenin+Stalin both appreciated the value of propaganda esp visual propaganda to reach the masses

  • Stalin used posters/cinema/radio

  • Stalin portrayed as Lenin’s worthy successor, hero/saviour of the soviets, and a father figure guiding the people through collectivisation/industrialisation to the future socialist paradise

  • Stalin’s image was made by the Communist Party machine which controlled media

  • Stalin, unlike Lenin sought icon status, becoming the personification of the nation

Opposition: Faction, Terror and the Purges

  • 1933 almost a million CP members executed from the Party

  • 1934 Stalin began a systematic purge of senior members of the Party and govt

Main Purges:

  • 1934 Kirov, popular figure, potential rival to Stalin. Used as a pretext for arrest of members (Trotskyite and Zinoviev-Kamenev factions)

  • 1936 Zinoviev and Kamenev confessed to treason and murder of Kirov

  • 1937 several Bolshevik leaders and most of the military and naval high command were shot

  • 1938 Bukharin, Rykov and more senior Bolsheviks with Yagoda (former head of NKVD) were shot

  • 1940 Trotsky assassinated in Mexico

Opposition: Faction, Terror, and the Purges

  • From 1937-38 onwards, terror more directed at ordinary citizens

  • Population required to inform on hidden enemies

  • Quotas of victims to be arrested in every region

  • 1/18 of the population arrested during the purges

  • 100,000s were executed/died in. prison

  • Campaign to deport national minorities like Poles/Germans from the regions near the SU’s Western borders—>fears they would joi an invading army

  • 100,000+ Poles shot

Stalin’s Rule:

  • Encouraged reverence for Lenin

  • Portrayed himself as continuing Lenin’s work

  • Loyalty to Lenin=loyalty to the Party

  • Late 1920s gained his own authority as head of the Party

  • key features est by Lenin: one-party rule, secret police, terror, show trials

  • Purges as a complete break from Lenin’s regime, led to the development of a very personal way of ruling

  • New class of officials=the nomenklatura, completely loyal to Stalin—> 1939 Party Congress, complete subservience to Lenin

The Economy:

  • SU had undergone an economic transformation by 1941

  • Fast becoming an industrialised, urban society

  • Development of heavy industry enabled the country to withstand Germany

  • Production of consumer goods persistently neglected

  • Agriculture failed to recover from the crisis of collectivisation

  • 1941 collectivisation was still not producing as much grain as it had under NEP

Social Life:

  • Nearly all peasants lived/worked in the Kolkhoz (est late 1920s) supervised by party officials

  • Millions of peasants moved to the cities, became educated and benefited from state welfare

  • Food scarce, housing overcrowded

  • Late 1930s- priority given to rearmament

  • As a result, living/working conditions became harsher

  • Stalinist soc was hierarchical, privileged elite of party/govt, military, police officers, Stakhanovites

The Impact of the Invasion:

  • 22nd of June 1941 Nazi Germany invaded the SU in the largest German military operation of WW2

  • Govt unprepared due to so many senior officers being purged in the 1930s

  • W/i 24 hours 1200 soviet aircraft destroyed on the ground

  • 3 weeks, 1m+ troops killed/injured, 20m+ living under German rule

  • Ruthlessness of a highly centralised regime was an advantage, v v effective wartime govt emerged

  • Was conduced by the State Defence Committee

  • Stalin put himself as military command but left his generals to direct campaigns

  • Stalin’s first wartime speech addressed his ‘brothers and sisters’

  • He appealed in the name of the motherland

  • This was the Great Patriotic War

Wartime opposition:

  • Thousands who had suffered in the 1930s did collaborate w/ German forces

  • Stalin transfer over 1m people from diff ethnic groups b/c he expected disloyalty

  • Ukrainians, Germans and Chechens among those uprooted and moved East

  • Purges continued in wartime

  • Terror exploited on the frontline

  • 1942 when Stalingrad was on the edge of defeat, deserters and retreaters shot

  • W/i a few weeks, 13,000 executed for such crimes

  • Returning prisoners of war viewed w/ distrust b//c they’d been tainted by Western values in captivity, many transferred directly to soviet labour camps

The Political Impact of the War:

  • Stalin addressed the grievances of the army officers by reducing the role of the political commissars attached to army units

  • Stalin restored special badges of rank in the army

  • Much of the armed forces were encouraged to join the CP

  • By 1945 half of CP members were from the army/navy

  • Nationalism was ride in wartime propaganda but once they won Stalin called it a victory of communism over fascism

  • The idea of the people’s war was played down and the Great Patriotic War was hailed as a victory for Stalin and the Soviet Socialist system

Economic Impact:

  • End of August 1942 Leningrad was surrounded and besieged

  • October 1941 German forces had made it to the outskirts of Moscow

  • 50% of the countries coal/iron/steel was in German hands

  • The FYPs had put the economy on a war footing, the centralisation of the system and emphasis on heavy industry/armaments were valuable for the war effort

  • Huge evacuation of people to and the creation of military-industrial plants in the Ural Mountains beyond the reach of German forces

Economic Policies/Events:

  • W/o state coercion this couldn’t have been achieved in such little time

  • Thousands of factories were moved East or built anew

  • Nearly all industrial production was geared towards military needs

  • Railways were built to connect new industrial bases w/ war fronts

  • Factories put under martial law to tighten labour discipline and productivity

  • Harsh punishments for poor work and lateness

  • 72 hour weeks became standard

  • Strict rationing introduced

  • By 1943 industrial production exceeded Germany’s

  • USA provided thousands of planes, tanks, and military vehicles and 5m tons of food

  • Prison camp labour produced much weaponry as well as most of the arm uniforms

  • Prisoners were worked to death

  • 8.6m troops lost their lives in the war

Social Impact:

  • 25m lives lost mostly through starvation

  • Leningrad besieged for over two years, w/ no heating/lighting/water

  • 800,000 died in the city in the winter of 1941-42 more than the combined losses of the UK/US in the whole war

  • Propaganda emphasised patriotism to drive the invader out of Mother Russia

  • Most people responded, ready to undergo extreme hardship>surrender

  • Most experienced harsh conditions of the 1930s and were prepared to do so again for a brighter future

  • W/ the countryside stripped of men/horses/machinery, 4/5 collective farmers were women, often pulling the ploughs by hand

  • Churches were allowed to reopen and did much to raise morale and support the war to defend the ‘Holy Mother Russia’

  • Govt propaganda exploited nationalist feeling, invoking memories of great Russian heroes and of the Civil War

  • The war brought govt and people together and Stalin emerged as the nation’s saviour, held in even greater awe and fear than before

High Stalinism and the Revival of Terror:

  • Most of the Soviet people had made huge sacrifices during the war in hope of securing a better future

  • USA was the new enemy post war

  • Russia had to prepare for a new international struggle, the Cold War

  • The country was sealed off from the West

  • Censorship increased

  • NKVD was strengthened

  • Stalin abolished the Defence Committee to strengthen his power and demoted several high-ranking army generals

  • Marshall Zhukov was hugely popular so Stalin saw him as a rival

  • Zhukov was posted away from Moscow

  • Stalin made himself the Minister of Defence

  • Stalin increasingly bypassed both the govt and the Party and relied on his own advisors>the central committee or politburo

  • There was not another Party Congress until 1952

Terror and the Destruction of Supposed Opposition:

  • Stalin revived the use of terror as a political weapon

  • The terror did not reach prewar levels but many thousands were executed every year for counter-revolutionary activities

  • Both before and more so in the war Stalin was portrayed as the embodiment of the nation as well as leader

  • He was recognised as the father of the peoples of the USSR

  • Stalin the Georgian was portrayed as a great Russian, following a line of heroes from Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great and Lenin

  • Stalin’s birthday was the biggest celebration in the Soviet calendar, flags with his image were carried in procession in the Red Square

  • His cult of personality peaked post war where he was seen as an exceptional genius snd a present man of the people, ever-present, all-knowing, and benevolent

  • On Stalin’s 70th birthday a giant portrait of him was suspended in the sky over Moscow and lit up at night by search lights

The Leningrad Affair:

1941 Stalin turned on the Leningrad party organisation b/c its leaders were showing a sense of independence and solidarity which developed during the wartime siege. Two of the leaders were viewed as possible Stalin successors, Stalin had serval officials arrested, made to confess and shot

The Doctors Plot:

Cold War bred suspicion of foreigners, citizens could be arrested for the briefest of contacts with a foreigner. Stalin esp wary of the 2m Soviet Jews. Stalin had supported the new Jewish state of Israel created 1948, but Israel was pro-America, so he became paranoid about the pro-Israeli feeling among Jews. 1952 Stalin announced a conspiracy by the Kremlin Doctors to murder him and others, 7/9 of the doctors were Jewish. 100s of doctors arrested and tortured into confessions and 1000s of ordinary jews were arrested and deported to labour camps in remote parts of the SU

The Power Vacuum on Stalin’s Death:

  • March 5th 1953

  • Genuine grief felt

  • Stalin representative of stability

  • Stalin laid to rest next to Lenin

  • Stalin had not set up a successor

  • Party Congress of 1952 the Politburo was announced to be replaced with a larger Presidium, it is believed that this was to promote newer members so there would be no clear successor

  • Regardless, the three main contenders for power appeared to be Beria (head of the secret police), Malenkov and Molotov