Russia Key Topic 4

Part 4 – The Rule of Stalin

Past Paper Questions:

Assess the view that Stalin’s character and abilities were the main reason why he was able to become the leader of the Soviet Union.

‘Between 1928 and 1941, Stalin’s economic policies were a disaster for the Soviet Union.’ How far do you agree?

‘Between 1928 and 1941, Stalin’s agricultural policies were ultimately successful.’ How far do you agree?

‘The growth of the police state was the most important reason why Stalin was able to consolidate his power.’ How far do you agree?

‘Stalin’s leadership and political skills were the most important reasons why he was able to consolidate his power.’ How far do you agree?

Assess the reasons why Stalin was able to come to power by 1929.

‘Stalin came to power by 1929 because of his position as General Secretary.’ How far do you agree?

Assess the importance of the purges in maintaining Stalin’s control over the USSR in the period 1929–1941.

To what extent did the First Five-Year Plan change the Soviet Union and the lives of its citizens?

‘The Second Five-Year Plan utterly failed to achieve its aims’. How far do you agree?

‘The leadership contest that occurred after Lenin’s death was simply based on who had the least weaknesses’. How far do you agree?

Assess the view that Stalin’s propaganda failed to achieve its goals.

To what extent was the murder of Kirov significant in the development of the Great Terror?

‘The impacts of the purges were primarily political’. How far do you agree?

LEADERSHIP RIVALS

1.1 Character and abilities of Stalin

Stalin was born in Gori, Georgia in 1878, from a peasant background, he was practically minded, shrewd, effective administrator, ruthless and heavy handed. He spoke bluntly, often coarsely and could be dominating or overbearing.
Stalin the name is derived from the Russia word steel known as ‘stal’ man of steel.
The historian Robert Service has claimed that Stalin had ‘a gross personality disorder’, that is, a personality that was not predictable. However, more recently the historian Stephen Kotkin has questioned the idea that Stalin was a madman, instead arguing that he was more intelligent, resourceful and rational than people have given him credit for.
In 1905, Stalin represented local branches of the Bolshevik Party, Georgia and South Russia, at conferences.
In 1912, Stalin was elected to the Central Committee of the Bolsheviks, where he excelled as an administrator and debater.
Prior to 1917, he organised and conducted robberies to fund the party’s activities. He orchestrated and supervised a 1907 bank robbery in Tiflis that killed 40 people and netted the Bolsheviks more than 340,000 roubles. Up to this time, Stalin had been arrested on eight occasions and sentenced to time in prison and exile. This may be where he honed his ruthless nature.
Stalin’s management skills were evident in the role he played as a military commander in the Russian Civil War.
From 1917 to 1922, Stalin was the Bolshevik specialist manager of national minorities' issues, having been appointed commissar for nationalities in the first Soviet government. This gave him a position in the Sovnarkom (Soviet government) and he was able to manipulate this position to gain the loyalty of those he was overseeing.
Stalin used this office to build personal support. He filled the Orgburo and key leadership positions with friends and acolytes, while working behind the scenes to forge alliances within the Politburo itself.
Stalin was appointed General secretary of the Central Committee, which was the most senior of all management posts. He also served as chairman of the government and the Council of people's commissars (Sovnarkom). In this role he helped draft a constitution for the Russian Social Federative Socialist Republic.
During 1922 alone more than 10,000 provincial officials were appointed to the Orgburo and Secretariat by Stalin, showing his ability to advance the careers of those who were loyal to him.
In his testament, Lenin concedes that Stalin is one of ‘the two outstanding leaders’ in the Central Committee. Though he criticises him at length, claiming that he is ‘too rude’ and recommending that the Party finds a way to remove him from his post as Secretary-General.
Stalin was often referred to as ‘Comrade Card-Index’ or the ‘Grey Blur’, highlighting his lack of the charisma and distinction you would usually expect from a leadership candidate.
As a manager of people, Stalin was adept when dealing with those involved in the power struggle after Lenin's death, especially Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev. By 1927, Stalin controlled Party Congress, which allowed him to expel his main rivals from the party.
Stalin was also adept at planning for the future. He introduced a planned economy with the ‘Great Turn’, resulting in collectivisation and the first 5-year plan. He also planned out the stages of the terror and the introduction of a police state. Finally, Stalin was able to plan and prepare Russia for Nazi invasion in the period from 1939 to 1941.

1.2 Strengths and weaknesses of rivals - Trotsky

Born, Leon Bronstein, in 1879, Trotsky was disliked by many members of the party for his Ukrainian/Jewish roots.
Ambitious and flamboyant, Trotsky made no effort to build a power base within the party and relied on people to appreciate his talent and charisma.
As a young revolutionary, Trotsky was drawn to the Mensheviks and it was as a Menshevik that he became chairman of the St Petersburg Soviet during the 1905 revolution. It wasn’t until 1917 that Trotsky was officially known as a Bolshevik, therefore he was not seen as one of the ‘Old Bolsheviks’.
Trotsky founded the Red Army in 1918 and made it into a highly successful fighting force capable of winning the Russian Civil War. He travelled 65,000 miles during the course of the war on his personal armoured train, giving excellent speeches and motivating the soldiers.
As Head of the Red Army, Trotsky had a powerful position on the Sovnarkom, which gained him great prestige as a hero. However, it also made senior Communists jealous of the attention he received.
In 1922, Lenin offered the position as his deputy (Deputy Chair of the Sovnarkom) to Trotsky, however he refused, saying that he wanted to concentrate on his writing.
In his testament, Lenin described Trotsky as a man of ‘outstanding ability’ and ‘personally perhaps the most capable man in the present Central Committee’. Though he did also note that Trotsky had shown ‘excessive self-assurance’ and ‘excessive preoccupation with the purely administrative side the work’.
Trotsky became isolated by the formation of the Troika, but he did nothing to prevent it, thinking that he could stay above these elements of grubby politics. When the Troika voted to suppress Lenin’s testament, Trotsky did not oppose them.
Trotsky was on the far left of the party. This meant that he could not ally himself with those on the right. Furthermore, it meant that he supported the idea of a permanent revolution, which was unpopular in the party as a whole.
Removed from ministerial office in January 1925, Trotsky was expelled from the party on 12 November 1927.
Trotsky’s failure in the propaganda war of the 1930s meant that he was in no position to persuade the politburo of the central committee to vote for his proposals.

1.3 Strengths and weaknesses of rivals - Zinoviev

Zinoviev had been a close colleague of Lenin since 1903 and was one of the founding members of the Bolshevik party.
Zinoviev was seen as disloyal to Lenin, because he had opposed Lenin’s plans for the timing of the October Revolution in 1917. Him and Kamenev were the only two central committee members who voted against the armed revolt.
Zinoviev then betrayed Lenin again, as he thought it was important to share power with other socialist parties like the SRs. When Lenin refused, Zinoviev resigned from the Central Committee and Lenin wrote a proclamation labelling him and Kamenev ‘deserters’.
He rose to prominence as chairman of the Petrograd Soviet in 1917 and chairman of the Comintern between 1919 and 1926.
Zinoviev lacked revolutionary heroism and he spent the Russian Civil War residing in the most luxurious hotel in Petrograd.
Zinoviev joined Kamenev and Stalin in the Troika group to oppose Trotsky, failing to recognise that Stalin was his most dangerous adversary until it was too late.
Zinoviev was head of the St Petersburg branch of the Communist Party, though he did not succeed in building up an effective powerbase in the city.
Zinoviev was also head of the Comintern, which had been set up by Lenin to encourage and coordinate Marxist revolutionaries in other countries. This was a prestigious post, which boosted his status and authority within the Communist Party.
Zinoviev is barely mentioned in Lenin’s testament and Lenin seems to dismiss him as a leadership candidate, pointing to the ‘October episode’, where he opposed Lenin twice regarding the revolution. Though he does say that Zinoviev should not carry personal ‘blame’ for this.
After finally realising how dangerous Stalin was, Zinoviev switched sides to form the United Opposition Group along with Kamenev and Trotsky. This was a strategic mistake however, as it made him appear weak and valueless and by opposing Stalin directly he could be accused of factionalism.

1.4 Strengths and weaknesses of rivals - Kamenev

Kamenev had been a close colleague of Lenin since 1902 and was one of the founding members of the Bolshevik party.
In January 1914, Kamenev travelled to St Petersburg to take charge of the Bolshevik version of Pravda and the Bolshevik faction of the Duma. He was arrested in November and sentenced to exile in Siberia, where he spent two years, before he was finally freed following the successful February Revolution of 1917.
Kamenev was seen as disloyal to Lenin, because he had opposed Lenin’s plans for the timing of the October Revolution in 1917. Him and Zinoviev were the only two central committee members who voted against the armed revolt.
Kamenev then betrayed Lenin again, as he thought it was important to share power with other socialist parties like the SRs. When Lenin refused, Kamenev resigned from the Central Committee and Lenin wrote a proclamation labelling him and Zinoviev ‘deserters’.
Kamenev joined Zinoviev and Stalin in the Troika group to oppose Trotsky, failing to recognise that Stalin was his most dangerous adversary until it was too late.
Kamenev was head of the Moscow branch of the Communist Party, which should have allowed him to build up a power base there, but he was such a poor local administrator that he failed to earn the respect of the Moscow Party.
Throughout Lenin’s illness, Kamenev was Lenin’s deputy and acting Chair of the Sovnarkom (acting head of the Soviet government). He did not use this position to effectively advance his own power.
On Lenin’s death, Kamenev also became the Chairman of the Central Committee, which was potentially a highly influential role as the Central Committee elected members to the Politburo. But once again, he failed to take advantage of it to further his own position.
Kamenev is barely mentioned in Lenin’s testament and Lenin seems to dismiss him as a leadership candidate, pointing to the ‘October episode’, where he opposed Lenin twice regarding the revolution. Though he does say that Kamenev should not carry personal ‘blame’ for this.
After finally realising how dangerous Stalin was, Kamenev switched sides to form the United Opposition Group along with Zinoviev and Trotsky. This was a strategic mistake however, as it made him appear weak and valueless and by opposing Stalin directly he could be accused of factionalism.

1.5 Strengths and weaknesses of rivals - Bukharin

Bukharin joined the Bolshevik Party in 1906. He organised a strike in a boot factory in the same year. Having been arrested and imprisoned for revolutionary activity many times, he escaped in 1910 and met Lenin in exile two years later.
He developed his career as a leading Bolshevik theorist and his book ‘The ABC of Communism’ was considered to be the Communist Party’s ideological handbook.
By 1917 he was instrumental in the Moscow Bolshevik Party and following the October Revolution he inspired them to take control of Moscow.
From 1917, Bukharin was the editor of the Communists’ two most important newspapers, Pravda and Communist. He was also responsible for all city newspapers, enabling him to influence Party opinion and deny his opponents access to the press. In addition, he was responsible for Communist educational academies, which were designed to give an ideological education to future Communist Party workers.
Bukharin had been critical of the Treaty of Brest Litovsk and opposed Lenin on it. Though he ardently supported the switch to Lenin’s New Economic Policy. Both of these stances show his dedication to his ideals, which would ultimately be his undoing.
Lenin was complementary about Bukharin in his testament, calling him ‘the favourite of the whole Party’. Though he does question whether Bukharin is too right wing, speculating on whether his ‘views can be classified as fully Marxist’.

1.6 Power struggle – Devious Tactics

Stalin stayed in the background pretending to be a moderate peacemaker. So, no one realised he was a serious power player. He outmanoeuvred his opponents, playing them off against one another, E.g. In 1924 Stalin formed the Triumvirate with Zinoviev and Kamenev to oppose Trotsky.
Stalin tried to put forward moderate views, which made him stand out from his more extreme rivals – particularly Trotsky and Bukharin. He became known as the ‘grey blur’, or ‘comrade card index’, which meant that no one saw him as a leadership rival until it was too late. At the same time, he developed a strategy of summarising at the end of each meeting, so that he could always have the last word on things.
Stalin made full use of Lenin’s funeral to advance his position. He tricked Trotsky into not attending the funeral. He took on the mantle of Leninism to transfer Lenin’s prestige to himself.
It was a huge blunder by Zinoviev, Kamenev and Trotsky that they formed the United Opposition Group against Stalin, allowing them to be accused of factionalism. This had more to do with their ineptitude than any clever strategy from Stalin.

1.7 Power struggle – Good Fortune

Lenin and Sverdlov died at the right time for Stalin. Sverdlov, who was an excellent administrator, died in March 1919. Lenin was left with few administrators and so began Stalin’s rapid promotion to positions of power within the party.
Stalin was therefore the natural choice for the position of General Secretary – the head of the Secretariat, when this position was created by Lenin in 1922. The Politburo was dependent on the Secretariat for information and administrative support, as well as the implementation of Politburo decisions. This put Stalin in an incredibly powerful position.
Finally, as General Secretary, Stalin gained substantial patronage within the Party because he was responsible for the recruitment, appointment and promotion of thousands of Party workers across the USSR. Despite all of this, the role of General Secretary was still considered to be unimportant by senior members of the Communist Party.
It was lucky for Stalin that Lenin’s testament was not read out and that Trotsky was ill for most of the power struggle. He was recuperating at the time of Lenin’s funeral and missed a number of Politburo meetings.
Stalin was not born with the intellect of charisma of some of his rivals. He was also born in Gori (Georgia) and he had a severely pockmarked face with one arm shorter than the other. None of these traits made him stand out as a leader.

1.8 The importance of ideological differences

All of the leadership rivals agreed that they wanted to build on the successes of the October Revolution and fulfil Lenin’s legacy. However, much of Lenin’s writing was unclear and open to interpretation. This is where ideological divides began to form.
These ideological divides were extremely important in terms of the leadership struggle, as the struggle for power was played out in terms of the ideological debate. Stalin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin did not attack each other personally, instead they criticised each other’s ideological positions.
Each of the rivals was trying to prove that they were Lenin’s heir, by showing that they were dedicated disciples of Lenin’s ideology. They started doing this by publishing their own accounts of Lenin’s teaching. Stalin’s ‘The Foundations of Leninism’ (1924), was quickly followed by Zinoviev’s ‘An Introduction to the Study of Leninism’ (1925) and Trotsky’s ‘Lenin’ (1925).
Finally, the ideological position of each candidate allowed them to gain support from different groups within the Party and it determined who they could ally themselves with. For example, Trotsky on the left would never by able to form an alliance with Bukharin on the right, as they were ideologically opposed. Whereas Stalin in the centre was able to form alliances with anyone he wished.
Trotsky was on the far left of the party (also known as radicals), with Zinoviev and Kamenev centre/left. Stalin was central in his policies and Bukharin was on the far right (also known as moderates).

1.9 Ideological differences – Industrialisation

The left-wing of the party had only begrudgingly accepted NEP to begin with and saw it as ideologically wrong. They pointed to the rise of the Kulaks and NEPmen, arguing that these were immoral examples of capitalism at work. Instead, they favoured an immediate shift to a ‘Dictatorship of Industry’, which would squeeze the peasantry through higher taxes to support rapid industrialisation.
The right-wing of the party actively supported the NEP and believed in ‘Industrialisation at a Snail’s Pace’. Bukharin stated that this could last up to 20 years. The right felt that economic stability was more important than rapid industrialisation. They emphasised the fact that the Soviet government was based on an alliance of two classes – the workers and the peasants. They called this alliance the ‘smychka’. By increasing taxes on peasants, this alliance would be threatened and Russia could descend into further conflict.
The centre of the Party supported NEP to begin with, but then wanted to move away from it when economic improvements stagnated. This was exactly the stance that Stalin took.

1.10 Ideological differences – World Policy

The left-wing of the Party believed in ‘Permanent Revolution’. This suggested that no socialist society could exist alone. Fundamentally Russia did not have the economic resources, or technological sophistication to complete the transition to socialism on its own. Therefore, she should try and support Communist revolutions in Western Europe, as these more advanced Communist regimes would then provide Russia with the resources needed to build socialism. Unsurprisingly, this policy was tremendously unpopular, as it suggested that Russia should get involved in constant conflicts and that the Russian people were incapable of achieving socialism by themselves.
The right wing believed in ‘socialism in one country’. This suggested that Trotsky and the left wing were being pessimistic and defeatist. In direct opposition, it claimed that the unique character of the Russian Revolution would allow ‘the general victory of socialism’ in Russia. Moreover, they claimed that this was the view Lenin had held. They believed that the Russian Revolution could be successful on its own because of the ‘smychka’, or alliance between workers and peasants. This alliance made Russia economically self-sufficient and therefore foreign aid was unnecessary.
The centre of the Party also supported ‘socialism in one country’. Stalin used this policy very effectively to appeal to the patriotism of Russians. It was very popular, as it suggested that the Russian people were special and that they held a leading role in world history.

1.11 Ideological differences – The future of the revolution

The left-wing were concerned that the Communists had transformed from radical revolutionaries into government bureaucrats. They feared that bureaucrats who had joined the Party for the main purpose of getting well paid jobs, lacked the revolutionary spirit and commitment necessary to fight capitalism.
As a result, the leaders of the left wing set out the ‘Declaration of the Forty-Six’ in 1923. This claimed that ordinary Party members had lost their voice to the bureaucrats and were afraid to speak out because of the power wielded by this bureaucracy.
Trotsky’s solution to what he called ‘bureaucratic degeneration’ in the Party was greater openness and democracy.
Trotsky claimed that ‘bureaucratic degeneration’ had been accelerated by the Lenin Enrolment, which admitted poorly educated workers into Party membership. He criticised the Lenin Enrolment, but this threatened a growing number of Communists who had good jobs and powerful positions within the Party bureaucracy, turning them against him.
The right-wing and centre argued that the real threat to the revolution was ‘Bonapartism’. Pointing to the French Revolution, Stalin highlighted the danger of a revolution being hijacked by a military dictator.
Following the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte – a gifted speaker, intellectual and leader of the revolutionary army – had installed himself as Emperor of France. To Stalin, the parallels with Trotsky appeared obvious.
Many in the Party therefore feared that Trotsky, like Napoleon Bonaparte, would use his position as Head of the Red Army to become a military dictator. This would spell the end of the Communist Party and the degeneration of the revolution.
To the right and centre – Trotsky himself was the biggest threat to the future of the revolution and his statement in 1927 that he would assume the position of dictator if Russia was attacked by foreign powers, appeared to be evidence that they were correct.

LEADERSHIP CONTEST

2.1 The leadership battle – The Triumvirate vs Trotsky and the Left Opposition

Following Lenin’s retirement from public life, no single Communist had the power or authority to lead the Party and the country. Therefore, Russia was ruled by a series of alliances. The first was formed in 1923 with the explicit objective of keeping Trotsky out of power. This alliance included Zinoviev, Kamenev and Stalin and it became known as the ‘Triumvirate’ or the ‘Troika’.
The Triumvirate’s plan was first to deny Trotsky leadership of the party by ensuring he could never gain control of the Politburo and the Central Committee. Then they would use their influence to destroy Trotsky’s influence by questioning his ideology, his loyalty to Lenin and his activities since the Revolution.
Trotsky would not give up without a fight however and he led an opposition group known as the ‘Left Opposition’.
Trotsky had an early advantage, as Lenin’ testament was extremely critical of Stalin and recommended that he should be removed from his position as General Secretary. With Stalin gone, the Triumvirate would lose their majority in the Politburo, paving the way for Trotsky to take power.
As a result, Zinoviev and Kamenev argued in favour of Stalin, claiming that he had changed and it was therefore no longer necessary to remove him. This argument was accepted by the Central Committee and Stalin kept his position. Having Zinoviev and Kamenev defend him also had the added benefit of bolstering Stalin’s prestige within the Party.
Zinoviev and Kamenev also pointed out the fact that Lenin’s testament included criticism of a wide range of senior Communists and thus it had the potential to undermine the government. They used this to argue that its contents should be kept a secret. Again, they were able to persuade the Central Committee and Trotsky lost his early advantage.
Now that his position was secure, Stalin began to use it to draw up lists of approved candidates to be sent to the Party Congress. In the past local Communist parties had freely chosen who to send to the Party Congress, but this system gave Stalin control over who attended and he could use it to ensure that the Party Congress was filled with his loyal supporters.
The Party Congress elected the Central Committee, which in turn elected the Politburo, so by taking control of the grass roots of the Party, Stalin would have serious influence over its leadership.
Meanwhile, Trotsky was unable to further his own cause due to ill health, which forced him to miss several important Politburo meetings. He also refused to make private alliances with other Communist leaders, preferring to appeal directly to the Party Congress. This was a miscalculation, as the real power lay with the leaders of the Party and not with the Party Congress.
The Triumvirate began to use the ‘Cult of Lenin’ to help them criticise Trotsky. They claimed that Trotsky was disloyal to Stalin and his ideas.
The first example of this was Lenin’s funeral. Stalin purposefully gave Trotsky the wrong date for the funeral and due to the fact that Trotsky was far from Moscow, with no other sources of information, he did not attend. Stalin capitalised on this by presenting himself as the chief mourner.
Zinoviev and Kamenev criticised Trotsky’s book ‘The Lessons of October’, claiming that it disrespected Lenin by glorifying Trotsky’s role in the October Revolution, at the expense of Lenin. They claimed that this was further evidence of Trotsky’s arrogance and his betrayal of Lenin.
Finally, Zinoviev and Kamenev attempted to show that Trotsky’s ideological position was far removed from Leninism. Zinoviev invented the term ‘Trotskyism’, claiming that this was a form of Menshevism and incompatible with Leninism. They pointed to Trotsky’s Menshevik past and the disagreements between him and Lenin in the period 1903-1917.
The outcome was that the Triumvirate was successful. Trotsky and his Left Opposition were defeated at the Thirteenth Party Congress in 1924. The Congress condemned Trotsky for forming a faction against the explicit command of Lenin, who had banned factions in 1921.

2.2 The leadership battle – The Duumvirate vs the Left

Having achieved their goal of defeating Trotsky, the Triumvirate no longer had a common enemy, so there was nothing to keep them together. Furthermore, Stalin was supporting the new theory of socialism in one country, which Zinoviev and Kamenev who were on the left of the party could not accept. For these reasons, the Triumvirate split in early 1925.
Zinoviev and Kamenev believed that they would now be powerful enough to form a Politburo majority. However, their undignified arguments with Trotsky had damaged their standing in the Party and lost the respect of many.
Stalin meanwhile had purposefully refrained from taking part in these damaging debates, so his integrity remained intact. After joining with his new ally Bukharin, he formed the new governing Duumvirate and Zinoviev and Kamenev were left to form the New Opposition.
The Duumvirate was a powerful new alliance. Stalin had significant control of the Party, but lacked authority as an intellectual. Whereas Bukharin was recognised as the Party theorist and he controlled the Soviet media. Together, they controlled the most important aspects of Soviet political life. Together, Stalin and Bukharin were able to command a majority on the Central Committee, as well as the Politburo, which meant they could stop the left from seizing control.
Zinoviev and Kamenev attacked the Duumvirate ideologically, by advocating for immediate industrialisation and criticising the doctrine of socialism in one country. Zinoviev also used his book ‘An Introduction to the Study of Leninism’ (1925) to rival Bukharin’s authority as Party theorist.
However, Zinoviev and Kamenev were crushed at the Fourteenth Party Congress. Bukharin easily demolished Zinoviev’s arguments in favour of world revolution and Stalin had appointed the majority of delegates who attended the Congress. As a result, the Duumvirate won with 559 votes to 65.
Zinoviev and Kamenev were gravely weakened by defeat at the Fourteenth Party Congress. The vote proved how unpopular they were and diminished their authority within the Party.
After their defeat, Stalin and Bukharin also had the opportunity to strip them of their most powerful positions. Kamenev was immediately removed from the Sovnarkom and in 1926, neither Zinoviev nor Kamenev was re-elected to the Politburo. In the same year, Bukharin replaced Zinoviev as Chairman of Comintern and replaced Kamenev as Head of the Moscow Party.
Trotsky, who had remained aloof during the debate, was also targeted. In 1925, he was forced to resign as Head of the Red Army due to fears of Bonapartism. This stripped him of his single most important powerbase within the Party.

2.3 The leadership battle – The Duumvirate vs the United Opposition Group

During 1926 and 1927, the NEP was facing a crisis, as the lack of industrial goods meant that the peasants had no incentive to sell their grain.
Furthermore, there were rumours that Germany was preparing to declare war and that this could be part of a capitalist crusade against the USSR.
These crises reinvigorated the Left, persuading them that it was their duty to fight for a change of policy. Additionally, the threat of war brought Trotsky back from his self-imposed retirement.
Zinoviev and Kamenev now feared Stalin and Bukharin more than Trotsky and their ideological shift away from the NEP, as well as their rejection of socialism in one country made them natural allies of Trotsky. As such, the three came together to form the United Opposition Group.
Their hopes for victory were high and Kamenev claimed that the Party would appoint a new leadership as soon as they saw Trotsky and Zinoviev united.
However, they were quickly disillusioned at the Fifteenth Party Congress of 1927, where Kamenev’s speech was interrupted 24 times by his opponents, including Bukharin.
Stalin had packed the Congress with his loyal supporters and only 0.5% of the Party backed the United Opposition Group, showing how hopelessly outmatched they were.
The Congress set up a commission to investigate the United Opposition Group, which led to the expulsion of Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev, along with many of their supporters, from the Party.
Zinoviev and Kamenev publicly apologised for their ideological ‘crimes’ and were readmitted to the Party, but their authority had been destroyed.
Trotsky refused to apologise and was sent into exile.
Three of the five contenders for power had now been eliminated and the left was completely shattered.

2.4 The leadership battle – Stalin vs Bukharin and the Right Opposition

In 1928, Stalin rejected the NEP and signalled his intention to follow the ‘Great Turn’, a move to the left in terms of economic policy, which would see him advocate for rapid industrialisation and agricultural collectivisation. This ended his alliance with Bukharin.
At this time, Bukharin was unrivalled as Party theorist and had control of both the Soviet media and education. He also enjoyed the support of two senior members of the Politburo – Tomsky and Rykov. Tomsky had an important standing in Russia’s trade unions and could secure grass roots support, whilst Rykov was Head of State. Bukharin appeared to be in a strong position and had every right to feel confident.
As he had already shown, Stalin had the ability to manipulate appointments and promotions within the Party, and fill the Party Congress with his supporters. As General Secretary, he also had the right to issue official directives to every Party member. These were central to creating opinion within the Party and allowed Stalin to undercut the influence the Bukharin exercised through the media.
As the NEP continued to face problems, Bukharin’s theoretical prestige was slowly diminishing.
At the same time, Stalin’s was growing, as his book ‘The Foundations of Leninism’ (1924), was short, simple and easy to read. It was the perfect ideological handbook for those who had signed up in Stalin’s ‘Lenin Enrolment’ and became very popular amongst new members of the Party.
Stalin also attempted to undermine Bukharin by resurrecting his frequent disagreements with Lenin. He made sure that every instance of disagreement was republished and discussed, undermining Bukharin’s reputation as a Leninist.
Bukharin accused Stalin of turning the Party into a bureaucracy, but Stalin was able to defend himself by accusing Bukharin of Trotskyism, for the simple reason that Trotsky had been the first person to make this claim.
Bukharin was able to achieve some victories against Stalin, notably in the Central Committee, where Stalin was forced to temporarily stop his policy of emergency grain requisitioning. However, Stalin knew exactly when to back down and was always able to appear as a neutral mediator.
Stalin was also an excellent tactician. This was never more so than when he circulated false rumours that he was about to form an alliance with Zinoviev and Kamenev. In response, Bukharin arranged a secret meeting with them. Stalin then used Bukharin’s meeting as evidence of him committing factionalism, stating that ‘Bukharin is guilty of treacherous conduct’.
Stalin’s ruthless and strategic nature was also on show when he prevented Bukharin from attending an important meeting by ensuring that his plane was delayed twice.
Finally, Stalin simply ignored the Politburo and Central Committee and acted on his own authority when it suited him. In this way he restarted emergency grain requisitioning less than a month after it was condemned by the Central Committee. This sabotaged the NEP and with it, Bukharin’s reputation.
Bukharin was less adept at using devious tactics and preferred to work within the rules, which contributed to his downfall. Even when he tried to employ the underhanded strategy of using Lenin’s Testament against Stalin it backfired, as the Central Committee had previously ruled that the Testament should be kept secret.
Stalin’s victory over Bukharin was formalised in a meeting of the Central Committee in April 1929. Bukharin was forced to admit his ‘political errors’ and recognise the necessity of forced industrialisation and collectivisation.
Stalin then conducted a vigorous campaign against Bukharin in the Soviet press, before removing him from all of his important posts in the Communist Party and expelling him from the Politburo. Stalin’s victory was complete and he now had complete personal control of the USSR.

PROPAGANDA

3.1 Propaganda in Popular Culture

Stalin used propaganda extensively to promote himself and his policies. His plan was to socialise the people of the USSR into worshipping him, making it easier for him to hold onto power. Censorship was also an essential part of this process, as it ensured that people had no access to any dissenting views.
Stalin ensured that the newspapers ‘Pravda’ and ‘Izvestiya’ were primarily used as propaganda tools to promote him and his policies. They were primarily aimed at Party members however and it is unclear how many ordinary Russians had access to them.
Stalin made use of Soviet youth organisations to indoctrinate the youth into following him. Children under 9 would join the Little Octobrists, whilst the Young Pioneer movement was set up for children under 14 and those between 14 and 28 were invited to join Komsomol.
Joining Komsomol involved swearing oaths of allegiance to Stalin and the Party and it provided a route to full membership of the Party.
Membership of Komsomol increased fivefold from 1929 to 1941.
Members of Komsomol were encouraged to inform on those who criticised the Party and its leaders. They gave their labour for Stalin’s economic projects and provided the flag wavers and cheerleaders who were used in May Day parades and celebrations for Stalin’s birthday.
Komsomol struggled to recruit women in rural populations and during the NEP this demographic represented only 8% of the organisation. Recruitment problems continued and Komsomol adopted class blind membership policies in 1935, but the result was a decline in working class youth members, and a dominance by the better educated youth, which ran counter to the ideological aims of the Communist Party.
The arts were manipulated to present a popular culture that emphasised the role of the ‘little man’ or the worker, traditional values, the community and the power of the state. In other words, the arts were used to promote Communist Party ideology.
Murals of collective farms were constructed and grandiose, gigantic buildings were built. Classical art forms that reflected ‘socialist realism’, such as the music of Shostakovich, were encouraged and promoted.
Artists were expected to create art that celebrated and inspired the workers. For example, artists created sculptures of the new Moscow ball-bearing factory and the Dnieper power station.
In July 1930, 200 artists were sent to work on collective farms and Five-Year Plan construction sites. During their 2-month placements they were expected to record heroic work that they witnessed.
In sports the Dynamo and Spartak Moscow football teams were used to show the rest of Europe how successfully Russian people could perform under Communist rule.
By the time of the October Revolution in 1917, there were over 1,000 cinemas. Films like Sergei Eisenstein’s ‘October’ (1928) were used to portray the October Revolution as a popular rising, whilst ‘Strike’ (1924) showed how the workers had been oppressed and ‘Battleship Potemkin’ (1925) celebrated the role of the Potemkin in the 1905 Revolution.
Under the guidance of the Council of People’s Commissars, Soviet cinema was used to promote collectivisation and the Five-Year Plans, whilst being immersed in socialist realism.

3.2 Cult of Personality

The Cult of Personality was a special form of propaganda aimed at glorifying Stalin himself. The idea was to portray Stalin as the vozhd (leader), a genius with great wisdom and even prophetic powers. This would strengthen Stalin’s position, as any hardships could be blamed on local leaders, but never on Stalin himself, who was seen to have a purely positive effect on the USSR.
In the early days of the cult, Stalin’s relationship with Lenin was celebrated and “Stalin is the Lenin of today” became a commonly used phrase.
In 1925, Tsaritsyn was renamed Stalingrad to honour Stalin’s contribution.
For his fiftieth birthday in 1929, Stalin received 350 greetings, including some from organisations that did not even exist.
By 1931, huge portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin appear on special occasions such as celebrations of the October Revolution. Stalin is shown as the heir to the Party and the heir to Communist ideology.
The Cult of Lenin was carefully cultivated alongside that of Stalin, to help underpin the legitimacy and symbolism of the regime. For example, in 1930, Lenin’s tomb in Moscow and the area around it was rebuilt to allow massive parades to pass by. Moreover, Vertov’s film ‘Three Songs about Lenin’ (1934), described Lenin as a father who brought life to the deserts.
In Klucis’ painting ‘Long Live the Stalinist Order of Heroes and Stakhanovites’, Stalin is shown speaking in front of a bust of Lenin, showing how Lenin’s spirit lived on inside him.
Stalin’s relationship with children was emphasised, as he was portrayed as a father figure. No nursery was without the painting ‘Thank you, Stalin, for my happy childhood’.
By 1939, Stalin was shown alone as an all-powerful leader. An exhibition entitled ‘Stalin and the Soviet People’ contained pictures of his childhood, showing him as a natural leader, like a young Christ explaining the scriptures.
There was some resistance to the cult, with a 1938 leaflet ridiculing the Supreme Soviet, where people were allowed to shout out “Hurray” a thousand times in honour of the vozhd. An anonymous letter from a Communist supporter complained that overuse of the word Stalin was having the “opposite effect” of that which was intended. Though ultimately there was widespread respect and admiration for Stalin, seen in the fact that even many of those who he had persecuted wept when he finally died in 1953.

3.3 Stakhanovite Movement

The Stakhanovite movement began in 1935 as a propaganda campaign aimed at motivating workers to put in the maximum possible effort. It was named after Aleksei Stakhanov who reportedly mined 102 tons of coal in less than 6 hours on 31 August 1935, which was 14 times his expected quota.
Stakhanovite followers would soon go on to break his record and on 1 February 1936, it was reported that Nikita Izotov had mined 640 tons of coal in a single shift.
Supported and led by the Party, the Stakhanovite movement quickly spread to other industries in the Soviet Union. Pioneers included Busygin (automobile industry), Smetanin (shoe industry) and Vinogradov (textile industry).
In November 1935, the first All Union Stakhanovite Conference took place at the Kremlin. This emphasised the outstanding role of the Stakhanovite movement in the socialist reconstruction of the economy.
In accordance with the conference, the Soviets organised industrial training and created special courses for the foremen of socialist labour. They also introduced contests in many industries to find the best workers and encourage competition between them.
The Soviet authorities claimed that the Stakhanovite movement had caused a significant increase in labour productivity. It was reported that during the first Five Year Plan industrial labour productivity increased by 41% and during the second Five Year Plan it increased by 82%.
The Stakhanovite movement was essentially Soviet propaganda however and it was later reported that Stakhanov had used a number of helpers to support him, while the output was tallied for him alone. Some workers held Stakhanov responsible for making their lives harder and even threatened him for it.

3.4 Censorship

Lenin had already banned all non-Bolshevik newspapers in 1917, printing presses had been nationalised so only approved literature could be published and the radio was controlled by the Commission for Posts and Telegraph.
The government controlled what could be published using the Glavlit (censorship office), which was controlled by the secret police. Stalin vastly extended the scope and power of Glavlit and provided them with a list of banned authors and publications.
Any cultural trends that veered from the norm, or extolled capitalist values, or Western culture, became victims of censorship. For example, jazz music was banned.
By 1932, all literary groups were closed down and anyone wanting to write had to join the Union of Soviet Writers.
During the first congress of the Union of Soviet Writers in 1934, it was announced that members had to produce material under the banner of ‘socialist realism’. This involved writing to depict the struggle of ordinary people to overcome oppression. Any work had to be approved by the Party, or it would not be published. During this first congress, the term was used 228 times and ‘Cement’, a novel telling the story of a cement factory worker, was celebrated as the epitome of the new style.
Some writers, such as Boris Pasternak, changed their beliefs to fit in with the wishes of the Union of Soviet Writers. Others rebelled and were arrested, sent into exile, to labour camps, or just executed.
Writers were valued highly and Stalin called them the “engineer of men’s souls”, but only if they focused on promoting the concept of the New Soviet Man. This was the ideal Soviet citizen, who was hardworking, law abiding, moral and supportive of the Communist Party.
In 1936, the Party tightened its grip on artists even further, setting up the Committee for Art Affairs under the leadership of Yezhov, who immediately began a purge of Soviet artists.
Historians did not escape Stalin’s censorship and they were expected to follow the expectations of his book ‘History of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks): Short Course’ (1938). This made it clear that history should be subordinate to the needs of the Communist Party and forced all historians to follow a narrative of socialist realism. Historians were also expected to omit the role of Stalin’s former rivals and celebrate his role as the sole heir of Lenin.
Stalin even used censorship to alter images of history and remove any mention of his former leadership rivals. For example, in the famous image of Lenin’s 1920 speech in Sverdlov Square, Trotsky and Kamenev are prominently featured. However, the photo was altered to remove both.
Another image showing the Soviet leadership celebrating the 2^nd anniversary of the October Revolution was censored to remove Trotsky and Kamenev.
Creative and talented artists could occasionally get away with an unorthodox approach, if the quality of their work was sufficiently good and they had the courage to try. Mikhail Bulgakov for example was criticised by the Soviet press for glorifying White generals from the Russian Civil War. One of his productions, ‘The Days of the Turbins’ (1926) was censored in 1929, but brought back in 1932 at the personal insistence of Stalin who reportedly saw it at least 15 times. These instances are few and far between however and even in the case of Bulgakov, Stalin’s support was instrumental in his redemption.

GROWTH OF THE POLICE STATE

4.1 Context of the Great Terror

Terror had been used to target enemies of the Communist Party under Lenin and by the late 1920s, the OGPU (secret police), were being used to enforce the house arrest of Zinoviev and Kamenev, whilst also spying on Bukharin.
From 1928, the role of the OGPU would evolve further, as they organised dekulakisation, which involved the mass exile of 10 million peasants and prison labour camps, that contributed to the construction of projects like Magnitogorsk. Finally, they spied on workers and peasants and organised show trials of ‘wreckers’ who had held back production.
None of this was specifically targeted at the Party itself however and none of it would prepare the Soviet Union for the wave of political terror that Stalin unleashed in 1934, which would go on to claim a million lives and result in 12 million people being sent to forced-labour camps. This would come to be known as the Great Terror.

4.2 Causes of the Great Terror – The Congress of Victors

The Seventeenth Party Congress (1934) was known as the ‘Congress of Victors’ and was intended to be a celebration of Stalin’s economic achievements.
However, when the Congress voted to elect the Central Committee, Kirov topped the poll receiving 1,225 votes, compared to Stalin’s 927 votes, indicating that Kirov was more popular than Stalin.
The ballot papers were destroyed and Stalin covered up the results. But as it was a secret ballot he had no way of knowing for sure who had voted against him and he saw treachery in everyone, amplifying his paranoia.
A group of old Bolsheviks then approached Kirov after the vote and tried to persuade him to stand as General Secretary.
Although Kirov refused, to Stalin this was evidence that he needed to purge the Party as they could no longer be trusted.
The ‘Congress of Victors’ would come later to be known as the ‘Congress of the Damned’, as 70% of those who were elected at the Congress would go on to be arrested and shot (98 out of 139 candidates). Out of the 1,966 delegates, 1,108 were arrested on charges of anti-revolutionary crimes.

4.3 Causes of the Great Terror – Stalin’s Paranoia

Stalin was anxious about his position as leader, given the fact that Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin had all held powerful positions in the Party, only to fall from power. Stalin believed the same thing could happen to him.
Stalin knew that Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin were all still members of the Party and he did not believe that they had truly converted to supporting his policies. He believed they were waiting for the opportunity to strike against him.
Stalin was also fearful of the old Bolsheviks, who had been Party members since the Civil War. These people knew the truth about Stalin’s rise to power and had heard Lenin’s testament, which had explicitly stated that Stalin was unsuitable as General Secretary, let alone leader of the Soviet Union. They knew that much of Stalin’s propaganda was nonsense and he was concerned that they could seek to challenge him.
The Red Army (which had formerly been under Trotsky’s control) and the secret police, were well equipped, powerful organisations over which Stalin had little control, or loyalty. This led Stalin to fear the possibility of assassination.
Finally, Yagoda, second in command of the OGPU (secret police), attempted to court Stalin’s favour by fuelling his suspicions and deepening his paranoia with extensive reports of discontent in the countryside against collectivisation and intelligence suggesting that Communist officials were questioning the wisdom of Stalin’s policies. This made him fear that a popular uprising was imminent.

4.4 Causes of the Great Terror – Terror Economics

Stalin used the Great Terror to cover up economic problems and blame them on political enemies. Difficulties with the Five-Year Plans were blamed on the presence of ‘wreckers’ in the workforce. These ‘wreckers’ were said to be in the employ of Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev and were working deliberately to sabotage Russia’s economy. This created scapegoats for economic problems and removed and of the blame from Stalin and his policies.
Evidence for an economic motive can be found in the trial of the Shakhty engineers, the Menshevik Trial of 1931, and the trial of state farm and agricultural officials in 1933. In each case, the accused were tried and found guilty of economic sabotage.
The purges also created a reservoir of cheap labour as the majority of those who were arrested were sent to prison camps. These prisoners were used as slave labour, they had no rights and were known as ‘white coal’. They worked on some of the most important Soviet building projects, including Magnitogorsk.
In 1931, out of 180,696 convictions, there were 10,651 executions. But in 1936, out of 274,670 convictions there were only 1,118 executions. A much lower proportion of executions meant that there were more prisoners who could be used for their labour.
However, the impact of large-scale purges decimated the plans of economic administrators, both nationally and locally. Purges led to labour shortages in other sectors of the economy, skilled labourers were lost, morale was low and production was impacted. Following 1936, economic growth rates slowed considerably and this can be attributed in part to the Great Purges of 1936-1938, which had a negative economic impact.

4.5 Causes of the Great Terror – The murder of Kirov

In 1932, Kirov had helped to defeat Stalin on an important issue concerning Mikhail Riutin, who had circulated a document that was highly critical of Stalin.
Stalin was furious and demanded Riutin’s execution, but both the Central Committee and the Politburo refused to order it.
Senior Communists, including Kirov, argued that Party members could not be executed simply for opposing Party policy. Stalin viewed this as a betrayal.
Stalin attempted to exclude Kirov from the Politburo, insisting that he stay in Leningrad to supervise the local Party.
Whilst in his Leningrad headquarters, Kirov was murdered by a lone gunman in December 1934.
The Soviet press quickly pinned the murder on Leonid Nikolayev who they claimed was working for a secret ‘Trotskyite-Zinovievite’ terror group who wanted to overthrow the Soviet government.
Following the announcement, Zinoviev and Kamenev were arrested for the conspiracy to murder Kirov.
This explanation was extremely convenient for Stalin. The murder had rid him of his most important rival, whilst allowing him to imprison two of his old rivals.
What is more, the murder gave Stalin a pretext for hunting down this ‘secret terror group’ and as the murder showed that political dissidents were plotting acts of terror, the execution of Party members who opposed Stalin’s policies was justified. This provided the final justification for and prompted the beginning of the Great Terror.
Within hours of Kirov’s death, Stalin had issued a decree authorising the swift execution of political opponents.
Secondly, he appointed Yagoda to investigate the murder of Kirov and interrogated Nikolayev (the shooter) personal.
Following Nikolayev’s ‘confession’ that he was working on the orders of Trotsky, Zinoviev and foreign powers, over 100 political prisoners who were already in NKVD hands were shot.
Finally, Stalin sent a secret letter to Communist Party secretaries throughout Russia. This letter, entitled ‘Lessons of the events connected with the evil murder of Comrade Kirov’, called on all Party organisations to root out Trotskyites wherever they may be found.
For the first time, a violent purge of the Communist Party had well and truly begun. Within a few months, Yagoda and the NKVD had overseen the exile of between thirty and forty thousand people in Leningrad for political crimes.

4.6 OGPU

After the Civil War, the Cheka was disbanded and replaced by the State Police Administration (GPU) in 1922. The latter was expanded in 1924 and renamed the United State Police Administration (OGPU).
Unlike the Cheka, the OGPU could not shoot counter revolutionaries at will and most suspected criminals had to be brought before a judge. It was still able to inspire fear however, as it had the power to arrest anyone at any time for no obvious reason other than the fact that they may have looked suspicious, or someone had reported them for supposed anti-party behaviour.
The OGPU would often storm into people’s homes and arrest them in the early hours of the morning, taking them away for interrogation. Confessions of guilt were often extracted from people even though they may have been innocent. This was done to set an example and generally create fear.
The OGPU set up tribunals to try the suspected cases of terrorism, usually without calling any witnesses.
When Stalin became leader, he issued a public decree that any and all opposition views should be considered dangerous and gave the OGPU the authority to seek out ‘hostile elements’.
This led in March 1928 to the Shakhty Trial, which saw the prosecution of a group of supposed industrial saboteurs. This would be the first of many large show trials that would take place under Stalin and continue under the NKVD.
The OGPU planned and set up the Gulag system and also became the Soviet government’s arm for the persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Greek Catholics, the Roman Catholic Church, Islam and other religious organisations in an operation headed by Tuchkov. This operation would continue under the NKVD.
The OGPU also enforced Dekulakization campaigns during the First Five-Year Plan. Over time they gained the power to sentence suspects to exile or death without a formal trial.
Due to the ill health of the leader of the OGPU, Stalin tended to deal with Yagoda, who was second in command and used reports to fuel Stalin’s paranoia. Yagoda essentially took over as head of the OGPU in the late 1920s.

4.7 NKVD

In July 1934, the OGPU was dissolved and reincorporated in the NKVD under the leadership of Yagoda.
The powers and actions of the NKVD far outstripped those of its predecessor and the NKVD undertook mass executions of citizens without trial, arranged show trials, administered the Gulag system and even oversaw espionage activities and political assassinations.
The NKVD were responsible for enforcing Soviet policy both inside and outside the USSR and did so ruthlessly. Use of ‘physical means of persuasion’ (torture) were sanctioned by a special decree of the state, which in turn opened the door to numerous abuses.
Some of the mass operations of the NKVD were related to the persecution of whole ethnic categories. For example, the ‘Polish Operation’ in 1937-38 resulted in the execution of 111,091 Poles. Other populations were forcibly resettled.
When disillusioned American citizens living in the Soviet Union tried to leave they were arrested by the NKVD, taken to Lubyanka Prison, shot and dumped in a mass grave near Moscow. In a cruel irony, they were transported in Ford Model A’s, the very same cars that they had helped to build.
The NKVD organised the overseas assassination of political enemies of the USSR. For example, Trotsky, who was killed by an NKVD agent in Mexico in 1940 and Konovalets, a prominent Ukrainian nationalist leader who was killed in the Netherlands.
All of the terror activities that took place from 1934 onwards, including the aftermath of Kirov’s death, the purges, Gulags and Great Terror were arranged and orchestrated by the NKVD.

4.8 Purges

The purges of the early 1930s began largely peacefully. Party members who failed to implement collectivisation adequately or disagreed with Stalin’s attempts to get rid of Kulaks simply lost their Party card. This reduced total membership of the Communist Party by about one tenth.
During the mid-1930ss, the Party shed a further third of its members who were seen to be resisting the pace of industrialisation and collectivisation.
As the Great Terror began in 1936, the upper echelons of the Party began to be purged using the Moscow show trials.
The Trial of the Sixteen (1936) involved Zinoviev and Kamenev, along with 14 other comrades, they had been in prison for over a year before appearing at the trial. They were charged with Kirov’s murder, as well as plotting to disrupt the Five-Year Plans and conspiring with foreign powers to overthrow the government. Zinoviev and Kamenev both pleaded their innocence, but they were ‘persuaded’ to confess in the end. It is believed that Stalin promised that they would be pardoned following a full confession, but this promise was broken and the judge’s verdict was “Shoot the mad dogs, every last one of them!” Both were shot. 43 other high-ranking Communists and former allies of Zinoviev and Kamenev also disappeared – without trial – around this time.
The Trial of the Seventeen (1937) dealt with Trotsky’s former allies. Once again, the charges included plotting with foreign powers, terrorism, sabotage and contact with Trotsky. The Trial of the Seventeen was the first product of Yezhov’s ‘conveyor belt system’ of interrogation, which included torture, sleep deprivation and questioning relentlessly until the defendants confessed. Thirteen of the seventeen defendants were executed and the remaining four were sent to the gulags, where they soon perished. The evidence provided by the NKVD was concocted and forged to the extent that it was obvious, for example one of the defendants ‘confessed’ to murdering Kirov at a time when he was already in prison.
Many in the Party had been reluctant to try Zinoviev and Kamenev and this reluctance threatened to spill over into opposition when it was rumoured that Stalin’s next victim would be Bukharin. Indeed, on 10 September 1937, Pravda published an article stating that the investigation into Bukharin had been closed. Stalin had clearly orchestrated this in order to relieve tensions.
However, at the same time Stalin was planning for Bukharin’s demise. In order to do this, he decided to introduce a new ideological justification for terror. Stalin argued that as socialism advanced, the class struggle intensified, this gave him a justification to further extend his policies of terror. The Communist Party officially adopted this doctrine of ‘sharpening class struggle’ in the February-March Central Committee meeting of 1937. In spite of their loyalty however, 70% of those present at the meeting would be executed within three months.
The Trial of the Twenty-One (1938) dealt with Bukharin, Rykov and their ‘accomplices’. This was the last of the great Moscow show trials. Once again, the defendants were accused of attempting to overthrow socialism and of the murder of Kirov. However, in this final trial Stalin went further, and Bukharin was personally charged with attempting to assassinate Lenin. Bukharin tried to prove his loyalty, but this was not effective. He was not tortured, as instead Stalin threatened to execute his wife and new-born baby. During the trial Bukharin was accused of being ‘a foul-smelling heap of human garbage’, as well as ‘a damnable cross of a fox and a swine’. He was sentenced to death and along with Rykov, he died with curses against Stalin on his lips.
Following the Trial of the Sixteen, Yagoda had been replaced with Yezhov. Stalin never trusted Yagoda, as he saw him as incompetent and feared that he supported the right wing of the Party over Stalin. Yezhov had manipulated these fears and Stalin’s paranoia in order to usurp his former boss. Two years later Yagoda himself was sentenced to death following the Trial of the Twenty-One.
Once Yezhov was appointed Head of the NKVD, Stalin announced that the organisation was ‘four years behind’. In order to speed it up, Stalin set targets for arrests, executions and exiles. Secondly, in 1937, Stalin purged the NKVD itself. Many of the old NKVD had loyalty to old Bolsheviks like Bukharin and were ideologically opposed to the use of indiscriminate terror in a socialist society. New recruits were either thugs who enjoyed violence, or careerist administrators who met targets in order to gain promotion. Stalin’s changes delivered the desired result and the newly radicalised NKVD set about persecuting ‘enemies of the people’ with renewed vigour. This period of the Great Terror was the most intense and would come to be known as the Yezhovschina.
The trials had eliminated the last surviving Communists who could claim to have been close to Lenin and therefore had an authority that was independent of Stalin. Stalin had used terror to secure his position at the top of the Party.
In the Spring of 1937, Stalin argued that the conspiracy against the Soviet people was not restricted to those involved in the show trials. Memos were circulated demanding that Party officials increase their efforts to root out spies and traitors.
The NKVD set targets for the numbers of arrests. In the spirit of the Five-Year Plans, these targets were over fulfilled. Indeed, Yezhov argued that it was ‘better to overdo it than not do enough’.
The effects on the Party were dramatic. Between 1934 and 1938, some 330,000 Party members were convicted of being enemies of the people.
The Red Army did not escape Stalin’s murderous intentions. Stalin had never fully trusted them, as they had previously been loyal to his arch rival, Trotsky, who had appointed many of the senior officers. In June 1937 eight Generals were tried. Following their brutal torture at the hands of the NKVD, the Generals confessed to treason. In the following eighteen months, 34,000 soldiers were purged from the army. A death toll that the historian Rayfield amounted to ‘comparable to that of a major war’.
The Politburo supported the intensification of terror by issuing NKVD Order No. 00447, demanding the removal of ‘anti-Soviet elements’ from Russian society. The NKVD produced a list of over 250,000 people who were believed to be involved in anti-Soviet activity.
Many common people enthusiastically joined in and collaborated with this state-sponsored persecution. Some did so as a survival strategy, others to try and get promotions by reporting their bosses, or better houses by reporting their neighbours. Regional officials badgered the central offices with requests for higher targets in order to be allowed to arrest more people.
In the peak years if the purges, 1937-38, around 780,000 executions were carried out.
At the end of 1938, the Great Terror subsided, but the NKVD would claim two more high profile victims. The first was Yezhov himself who claimed that his only crime was killing too few Russians. In February 1940 he was executed and replaced by Beria.
Beria then compiled a list of 346 of Yezhov’s ‘associates’ who were also to be shot. Beria and Stalin were well suited, with Beria once claiming that ‘when you stop murdering people by the millions, they start to get ideas’.
Beria cemented his relationship with Stalin by succeeding where Yagoda and Yezhov had failed. On 20 August 1940, Ramon Mercader, an NKVD agent, broke into Trotsky’s house in Mexico and killed him with an ice-pick.

4.9 Gulags

In order to support the Great Terror, the system of Gulag camps, which had been set up under Lenin, were vastly extended. Notorious new camps were se up in the frozen Arctic North and Siberia, where conditions were inhospitable and those who managed to escape would surely die of exposure.
Inmates were forced to engage in hard labour, largely unskilled and manual, and to live in unsanitary conditions. Hours of work were long, with 14 hours per day being the norm, conditions were appalling and disease was rife. Food rations were very basic and small, leading to mass malnourishment.
Women were especially badly treated: they were subject to mental and physical abuse, including rape. If they gave birth in the camp, the child was invariably taken away and placed in a special orphanage.
It has been suggested that by 1941, the forced labour system engaged about 3,350,000 prisoners, although this included 1 million or so placed in ‘special settlements’, who were often the families of kulaks and other dissidents.
One of the ideas of the Gulags was that they should act as hubs of industrial activity at no cost. They could provide cheap labour for the 5-year plans and those who died were simply labelled as betrayers of the revolutionary ideals.
At the end of the Great Terror, the annual death rate in Gulag camps was 91 per thousand (out of every 1000 people in the camp, 91 would die in an average year).

4.10 Consequences of the Great Terror - Political

The three Moscow show trials not only eliminated Stalin’s rivals for power, but ‘proved’ that anyone who had opposed Stalin had done so for corrupt reasons. Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin and former Trotskyists were all exposed as traitors who had worked for foreign governments and assassins who had plotted the death of the popular hero, Kirov. Even the former supporters of Stalin’s rivals had been eliminated, so there was not even anyone left to speak for them.
The Great Terror was a period of severe hardship for the Russian people, but Stalin had expertly directed this discontent away from himself and towards ‘enemies of the people’. Stalin was seen as the saviour of the people and anything that went wrong was blamed on local Party officials rather than him. For example, when the people of Kazan were unhappy, they were directed to attack local Communist officials, who were publicly tried for misusing government funds. No crime had taken place, but the people were placated and Party bosses were replaced with people who were even more loyal to Stalin. This increased centralisation of the Party and Stalin’s own personal power.

4.11 Consequences of the Great Terror - Economic

The Great Terror was designed to increase economic production by eradicating ‘wreckers’ and saboteurs, whilst simultaneously creating a cheap supply of forced labourers through the Gulag system.
In reality however, the impact of the Great Terror was a negative one. The Great Terror and the threat of execution drove industrialists to lie about their economic performance and claim that they had met targets in order to avoid becoming a target. This led to confusion and chaos in the economy.
Moreover, purges within Gosplan eliminated many of Russia’s most experienced economic planners, and at a local level the Terror wiped away many competent industrial managers. This made planning difficult and reduced efficiency.
One case study of the effects of the Great Terror on the economy can be seen in the Donbas region. In 1929, the Donbas region accounted for over 77% of Russia’s coal production. From the summer of 1936 to the autumn of 1938, more than a quarter of the management in the coalmines were purged. As a result, the rate of coal production fell dramatically. Coal production which had virtually doubled between 1928 and 1932, and doubled again between 1932 and 1936, barely grew from the beginning of the Great Terror to 1940. This slowdown was experienced throughout Russia. Indeed, the historian Nove argues that the relative failure of the Third Five Year Plan was a direct result of the Great Terror, which ‘swept away managers, technicians, statisticians and planners, leading to a shortage of trained workers’.

4.12 Consequences of the Great Terror - Social

It has been estimated that 10% of adult males were executed or sent to labour camps. With estimates of total deaths ranging from 700,000 to 1.2 million.
35,000 army officers were either exiled or shot and over 23,000 NKVD agents were killed.
The urban and educated population were far more widely affected than manual workers or peasants. Indeed, those most at risk were between the ages of 30 and 45, in managerial or professional positions. In the central districts of Moscow, some apartment blocks became entirely deserted.
In terms of gender, only 5% of all those arrested were women. The women most likely to be affected by the Terror were single, or the relatives of men who had been purged.
The Great Terror also discriminated based upon nationality. The NKVD had specific targets for the number of Poles, Romanians and Latvians to be persecuted.
The older children of those arrested were likely to be expelled from university. School age children were subjected to ritual humiliation by teachers and peers in the classroom. Furthermore, it was expected that the children of those arrested would publicly disown and renounce their parents. During 1937-38, formal renunciations formed part of everyday school life.
The Great Terror had a marked effect on local Party organisations and factory management, as the old elite were purged and replaced by a new, more loyal group of leaders. What happened in the Moscow show trials was replicated on a smaller scale in regions all over Russia. For example, at the Yaroslavl trial, where managers from the local rubber factory and members of the local Party leadership were purged and replaced.
Finally, corruption was increased by the demand for new identities. Former, kulaks, priests, Nepmen, landowners and nobility attempted to move to new areas where they were unknown and bribe local officials into providing them with a new working-class biography. One such man, named Vladimir Gromov impersonated a prize-winning architect and engineer. He used his false identity to persuade the government to pay him a million roubles in advance for designing an important government project. Though eventually he was caught and sentenced to 10 years in a Gulag.

COLLECTIVISATION

5.1 What was collectivisation?

Collectivisation was the process by which Russian agriculture was reformed. Traditionally, peasants had worked on small farms with very limited technology. Stalin planned to merge all the small farms into larger ‘collective’ farms. These new, larger farms would pool labour and resources and therefore operate more efficiently. In addition, state provided tractors and fertilisers would modernise production, again making the operations more efficient.

5.2 Aims/Reasons for Collectivisation - Economic

The autumn of 1926 saw a record grain harvest for the USSR under the NEP. However, the harvests of 1927, 1928 and 1929 were all poorer. The decrease in production forced the price of agricultural products up. Consequently, the standard of living amongst urban workers declined. This was problematic to the core support of the Communist Party and needed to be addressed.
The decrease in agricultural production also affected the Soviet government. Since 1921, Russia’s government had been selling grain surpluses abroad in order to gain the foreign currency necessary to provide resources for industrialisation. Clearly, if there were no grain surpluses there would be no money to build Russia’s industry.
Finally, collectivisation was designed to create more efficient farms that would require fewer human labourers. This would free up labourers to work in the cities and increase the drive towards industrialisation.

5.3 Aims/Reasons for Collectivisation - Ideological

The NEP involved the use of Nepmen to facilitate the trade in agricultural goods and was underpinned by capitalism. This was anathema to the values of the Communist Party and needed to be addressed. Collectivisation was a step towards a socialist society.
The peasants had shown themselves to be obstinate and unwilling to get behind the goals of the Communist Party. They had not shown a revolutionary spirit and had at best only supported the Bolsheviks begrudgingly at any stage. Many of them also harboured a hatred towards the Communist Party for the grain requisitioning that had taken place under War Communism. Collectivisation would allow the Communist Party to gain a much greater centralised control of the peasantry and enforce socialist views amongst them.

5.4 Aims/Reasons for Collectivisation - Political

Stalin’s desire to initiate collectivisation was also motivated by his struggle against Bukharin and the Party’s right wing. The radical nature of collectivisation appealed to the Party’s left wing. Moreover, it was far more appealing to the majority of the Party than the right-wing alternative of continuing with the NEP and importing grain. By switching to Collectivisation, Stalin wanted to expose and eliminate his rivals on the right of the Party.
Despite his peasant background, Stalin had a limited understanding of agriculture and only visited farming land on one occasion in his adult life in 1928, a visit that lasted less than a month. Stalin believed that peasants who refused to cooperate with the state were simply terrorists and enemies of the people and that Russia’s agriculture could be transformed by strong leadership.
As the poor harvests from 1927 onwards pushed the price of grain up, the Kulaks started to withhold grain from the market in order to push the price up further. Stalin described this as the ‘Kulak Grain Strike’ and to him it proved that his assumptions about the peasantry were correct and showed that the peasants could hold the government to ransom to slow down the process of industrialisation.

5.5 Events of Collectivisation

The Soviet government moved towards mass collectivisation in a series of stages. In many cases a radical policy was adopted, then reversed and re-adopted again when Stalin was in a more secure position. It appears that there was no grand plan and that the steps that were taken were mostly pragmatic and reactive to the events that were occurring at the time.
1928 saw the beginning of a drive for voluntary collectivisation, though this was very unpopular with the peasantry and little changed.
In the winter of 1928-29, in response to a scarcity of bread and sugar, Stalin began to increase the power of the government over the economy. Rationing was re-introduced in the cities and at the end of 1928, the state resumed grain requisitioning.
Under Article 107 of the Soviet Criminal Code, grain hoarding could be punished and Stalin began to reward the poorer peasants who informed on their richer neighbours by giving them the land that had belonged to the kulaks. This policy created huge resentment amongst the peasantry and Bukharin persuaded the Party to abandon the policy.
Nonetheless, as Stalin’s power grew, the policy was restarted. In the spring of 1929, the government started to requisition meat and in the middle of the same year, they revised Article 61 of the Criminal Code, giving the police powers to send kulaks to labour camps for up to two years for ‘failure to carry out general state instructions.
Mass collectivisation began in December 1929, with Stalin’s instruction to ‘liquidate the kulaks as a class’.
Dekulakisation marked the end of capitalism and independent farming in the countryside and vastly increased the speed of collectivisation. Initially, Stalin had proposed that only 30% of Russia’s farms would be collective by 1934. However, the call to liquidate the kulaks entailed immediate collectivisation of all farming in Russia.
The majority of peasants (all except the very poorest) stood to lose out from collectivisation, both financially and in terms of their independence. As such, they chose to rebel by destroying grain and livestock, rather than surrendering it to the collective farms.
For example, 18 million horses and 100 million sheep and goats were destroyed between 1929 and 1933. Kulaks also destroyed what machinery they had, rather than allow it to fall into the hands of the Communists.
Local Communists were unhappy with the plans for forced collectivisation and unwilling to implement them.
In order to get around this, Stalin issued a decree sending 25,000 industrial workers into the countryside to offer technical help to the peasants with the new machinery. 27,000 eager workers volunteered to help revolutionise socialism in the countryside. In reality, the Twenty-five-thousanders, as they became known, were used to enforce dekulakisation, find secret stores of grain and confiscate them, round up the kulaks and organise their exile and force the remaining peasants into collective farms.
In January 1930, Stalin approved the ‘Decree on Measures for the Elimination of Kulak Households’, further intensifying his drive for collectivisation and dekulakisation.
March 1930 saw a temporary halt to enforced collectivisation in order to deal with opposition and consolidate the gains that had been made.
By 1931, Stalin had restarted enforced collectivisation, which led into the widespread famine of 1932-34.
By 1941, 100% of farms were collectivised.

5.6 Consequences of Collectivisation - Political

The famine in the countryside and poverty in the cities created a feeling of crisis in the top levels of the Communist Party. But rather than provoking criticism of Stalin and his policies, the chaos united the Party behind their new leader, as they feared the outbreak of another Civil War. Problems were blamed on kulaks and peasant saboteurs.
Communists on the left wing of the Party viewed Stalin’s hard line against the peasants as a return to the heroic traditions of the Civil War.
As planned, collectivisation helped Stalin to expose, isolate and eliminate his rivals on the right of the Party, like Bukharin and Rykov.
Stalin became the first leader to gain a measure of control over the peasantry. Centralisation and government control over the countryside was vastly increased through collectivisation. Each of the MTS stations contained a Party member whose job it was to ensure the spirit of socialism was present amongst the peasants. Whilst this did not stop resentment and hatred of the Party, it did help to prevent rebellion and ensure that the Party could react quickly to eliminate any resistance.

5.7 Consequences of Collectivisation - Economic

One of the goals of collectivisation had been to provide more grain for export in order to generate the funds to industrialise. Although the amount of grain that was produced fell from 1926 onwards, with 77 million tonnes produced in 1926, compared to only 72 million tonnes in 1929, the amount of grain procured and exported by the state increased, allowing Stalin to achieve this goal.
In 1928, the state procured 11 million tonnes of grain, this rose to 16 million tonnes in 1929 and 23 million tonnes in 1933.
Similarly, grain exports rose from 0.03 million tonnes in 1928, to over 5 million tonnes in 1931.
The reductions in agricultural production did take their toll on the Russian people however and fed into many of the social impacts.
Sugar beet production fell from 10 million tonnes in 1927 to 6 million tonnes in 1929.
The number of pigs fell from 23 million in 1927 to 20 million in 1929 and fell further to 13.6 million in 1931.
In June 1930, the Central Committee agreed to the creation of a national network of Machine Tractor Stations (MTSs), though because of bad planning implementation was not really started until early 1931. Additionally, in order to extract more grain from the peasants, the government kept the price of hiring tractors high, consequently very few farms were able to acquire new machinery.
By the end of 1932 there were almost 75,000 tractors and 2,500 MTSs across Russia. However, half of Russian farms were left out of the network. Moreover, the extra tractors did not make up for the loss of horses, as the number of horses had halved between 1928 and 1932.
By the late 1930s, there were signs of recovery, with the number of pigs recovering to 17.4 million by 1935 and grain production increasing back up to 77 million tonnes produced by 1940.
The number of eggs produced grew from 9.2 billion in 1929 to 9.6 billion in 1940.
Urban workers saw their wages halve between 1928 and 1932, as a direct result of the chaos caused by collectivisation.

5.8 Consequences of Collectivisation - Social

Collectivisation had a devastating effect on the Russian peasantry with between 9.5 million and 10 million people exiled as part of the dekulakisation drive.
In 1929, 150,000 kulak families were sent to Siberia. This figure rose to 240,000 in 1930 and rose again to 285,000 in 1931. In some cases, 10% of the peasants in a single village were exiled.
Furthermore, the drive for collectivisation created a famine that was entirely the result of government policy. In 1931, the government issued hugely unrealistic targets to Russian farmers and announced that failure to meet these targets was considered sabotage and would be punished severely.
When farmers inevitably failed to meet their targets, Stalin ordered the seizure of grain by the Red Army and the secret police. In order to meet government targets all grain was confiscated and peasants caught hiding even one or two ears of corn were exiled or shot.
Stalin set up military checkpoints to stop food entering Ukraine and trains passing through the region were ordered to keep their windows shut to prevent food falling onto the tracks. International offers of aid were rejected, as Stalin claimed that there was no famine in socialist Russia.
The consequences were appalling, as people were forced to take drastic measures to survive, such as fighting over horse manure which contained undigested grain.
The Soviet authorities made no count of the dead, but conservative estimates suggest that at least 10 million died during the famine.
The grain seized from the peasants was taken to the cities or exported in order to provide the resources for industrialisation. However, Stalin’s economic policy was in such chaos that often grain sat in barns rotting, while peasants starved in nearby villages.
The peasants who remained faced enormous hardships and ridiculous targets with little reward for the crops they produced. There was little incentive for hard work and labour productivity in rural areas declined.
Though there was no famine in the cities, the standards of living for industrial workers fell sharply. The amount of meat consumed by urban workers fell by two-thirds from 1928 to 1932.
Urbanisation was increased by collectivisation, as peasants attempted to flee the countryside. In 1928, only 18% of Soviet citizens were working class. This figure had risen to 50% in 1939. In some cities the urban population trebled during the 1930s.
Indeed, between 1922 and 1940, the number of Russians living in cities rose from 22 million to 63 million. This created problems of its own, because the government was reluctant to invest in housing in urban areas.

1^st Five-Year Plan

6.1 What were the Five-Year Plans?

Stalin’s ‘First Five-Year Plan’ was not a plan and it did not last five years. Rather, it was a massive propaganda exercise, designed to persuade the Soviet people and the rest of the world that something amazing was taking place in Russia.
In actuality, the First Five-Year Plan was essentially an extensive series of centrally set targets, drawn up by the Gosplan (State Planning Committee). Targets were so extensive that when published they comprised three large volumes and, in most cases, targets were set by officials who had only a sketchy knowledge of the factory they were dealing with.
The Gosplan set all targets centrally. They would research and calculate targets for all industrial producers, but they would not necessarily take any inputs from below. These targets were passed to the industrial commissariats (official departments), to create a plan for certain areas of industry. Then finally, the targets and plans would be passed on to regional managers/directors to implement. Rather than plans, these were essentially detailed instructions about what needed to be achieved.
The Plan was also continually redrafted. The first version in 1927 set ambitious targets, but in 1932, Stalin revised the targets upwards, producing two new versions of the Plan. Each revision made fulfilling the Plan more unrealistic. Production was demanded by the government, with no clear idea of how it was to be achieved.
Nonetheless, the period between October 1928 and 1932 did see a transformation of the Russian economy and Russia became an industrial giant. The foundation was laid for the USSRs emergence as a superpower.

6.2 Aims/Reasons for the First Five-Year Plan – Ideological

Karl Marx had written that socialism was only possible in a highly advanced, industrialised nation and Stalin, along with all Russian Communists, believed this. However, Russia was economically backwards and up to 100 years behind the advanced economies of the West. So, in order to make socialism a reality, Stalin aimed that ‘in ten years at most we must make good the distance which separates us from the advanced capitalist countries’.
Stalin also believed that the working classes (core supporters of the Bolsheviks), should benefit from Communist rule. Yet under the NEP, peasants had prospered, while conditions for the workers were slow to improve. Stalin aimed to reverse this.
Finally, Stalin aimed to replace the old ‘bourgeois specialists’ who managed industry during the NEP with ‘red specialists’ who were educated by the Communist government and came from the working classes.
The NEP had been a step away from socialism and concepts like the Nepmen and kulaks were anathema to Communist doctrine. The First Five-Year Plan aimed to address this and bring Russia closer to a socialist utopia.

6.3 Aims/Reasons for the First Five-Year Plan – Political

Getting rid of the last vestiges of the NEP would help Stalin to consolidate upon his successes over his rivals on the right of the Party in the leadership contest. He could root out and eliminate anyone who remained loyal to Bukharin and be seen to symbolically destroy everything they had stood for.
Stalin also saw the First Five-Year Plan as an opportunity to get out of Lenin’s shadow. No longer did he want to be seen purely as Lenin’s pupil, but he was keen to develop a reputation that surpassed that of Lenin. In 1929, on Stalin’s fiftieth birthday, he made the unusual move of giving a speech about Lenin’s mistakes. The message was clear – Lenin’s Russia, the Russia of the NEP, was over. Stalin’s Russia was just beginning.
Finally, Stalin was concerned that Russia would be unable to defend itself against capitalist nations in the event of war. In order to repel attacks, Russia would need to develop iron, steel, oil and coal industries on a grand scale, because these industries were necessary for modern warfare.

6.4 Aims/Reasons for the First Five-Year Plan – Economic

Even supporters of the NEP acknowledged that the policy could only industrialise Russia ‘at a snail’s pace’ and that was seen as an economic failure by Stalin, which needed to be addressed.
The amount of iron, steel and copper produced under the NEP never exceeded the amount produced in the last years of Tsarism.
Even when improvements were seen, for example in the production of commodities such as crude oil and coal, Russia was still far behind Germany, France and other western nations. The NEP was not producing results fast enough and a new approach was needed.
Stalin’s understanding of industry was as unsophisticated as his understanding of agriculture and he saw industrialisation as simply the creation of heavy industry. During the industrial revolution, industries like coal and iron had been some of the first to develop, so Stalin believed that Russia also needed to start with these. Furthermore, Stalin personally prized physical and mental strength, something which was clear in his adopted name, which literally meant ‘man of steel’. Stalin was obsessed with the development of heavy industry and this was the primary aim of the First Five-Year Plan.
The focus on heavy industry was also designed to lay the foundations for future industrial development. All industries needed raw materials such as coal, steel, oil and iron to develop. So, developing these first made some sense.
Also, much of Stalin’s industrial workforce was made up of unskilled peasants who were poorly suited to the production of complex consumer goods. But they were capable of producing large quantities of raw materials. Starting with heavy industry would give these peasants the time to get the skills and training they needed to diversify.
Finally, heavy industry laid the foundations for rearmament in the case of war. Stalin was not intending to create a war economy in the First Five-Year Plan, but he was concerned that Russia should be ready to defend itself in the event of invasion.

6.5 Consequences of the First Five-Year Plan - Political

The First Five-Year Plan outperformed previous economic systems under the Tsar and under Lenin, this helped to consolidate Stalin’s position and prove to the people that he was the man to lead Russia forward. Stalin was finally able to come out of Lenin’s shadow and start to build his own legacy as a great leader.
The fact that Russia’s economy was growing so quickly at a time when both America and Europe were in the throes of the Great Depression helped to show that socialism was superior to capitalism and that the Russian Revolution was the right way forward.
Stalin was able to announce in December 1932 that the First Five-Year Plan had been such a success that it was to finish a year early. This was a propaganda coup for the Communist Party and for Stalin in particular, as he had been the main advocate of switching away from the NEP.
Local Party officials who failed to meet their production targets were demoted, sacked, or in some cases put on trial and executed as enemies of the state. Under this enormous pressure, many local administrators lied about the amount of raw materials they had been able to produce, creating the impression that targets had been exceeded. This created a culture of large-scale fraud and chaos.
A significant aspect of the early 1930s was the involvement of foreign companies and individuals in building Russian industry. Henry Ford helped the Russians develop a car industry and Ford designed cars were produced at the car plant in Gorky. Thousands of skilled workers from all over the West chose to come to the Soviet Union, some for ideological reasons and other just to find work. But either way, this offered Stalin a great propaganda opportunity to claim that the USSR and its socialist vision was the future of working people.

6.5 Consequences of the First Five-Year Plan - Economic

The First Five-Year Plan did lead to remarkable industrial growth and underpinned a 14% annual growth rate in Russia at a time when capitalist economies in the West were contracting due to the Great Depression.
Production of crude oil grew from 11.6 million tons in 1928 to 21.4 million tons in 1932. Remarkably, oil production actually exceeded its target of 19 million tons.
Production of coal grew from 35.5 million tons in 1928 to 64.4 million tons in 1932. Though this did not meet the target of 68 million tons.
Production of pig-iron grew from 3.3 million tons in 1928 to 6.2 million tons in 1932. Though this did not meet the target of 8 million tons.
Production of rolled steel grew from 3.4 million tons in 1928 to 4.4 million tons in 1932.
Huge new tractor works were built in Stalingrad, Kharkov and other places in order to support the mechanisation of agriculture.
Though light industry and agriculture did not experience the same improvements, with production of cotton fabrics barely changing and production of woollen fabrics actually contracting from 101 million metres in 1928 to 89 million metres in 1932. Whilst production of raw sugar also contracted from 1.28 million tons in 1928 to 0.83 million tons in 1932.
As targets related to the quantity of goods produced, rather than quality, a large proportion of the materials produced were of such low quality that they were effectively useless. Additionally, as the focus was on production rather than consumption, often the raw materials that were produced were never used and were allowed to decay.

6.6 Consequences of the First Five-Year Plan - Social

The First Five-Year Plan was a time of tremendous social mobility. The urban population trebled, as peasants moved to the cities to take unskilled jobs in Soviet industry.
Existing members of the working class were also promoted in order to fill the gaps left by the old ‘bourgeois specialists’. Many became managers of the new Soviet industries, or were retrained as engineers or administrators.
Education was reformed to serve the needs of the Five-Year Plan. Workers were encouraged to attend classes in technical subjects, and universities were made accessible to people with minimal academic qualifications.
The Soviet government introduced a programme of ‘proletarian advancement’, which removed existing ‘bourgeois specialists’ and replaced them with 150,000 newly trained working-class ‘red specialists’.
Living standards dropped precipitously during the First Five-Year Plan and whilst the improvement of living standards was not one of Stalin’s aims, such a substantial drop does indicate the chaotic nature of the Plan.
Workers were sustained by rations which provided a diet significantly poorer than that available under the NEP. Consumer goods virtually disappeared and queuing became a feature of life in Stalin’s society.
Additionally, Stalin introduced a seven-day working week, which meant that Sunday, traditionally considered a day of rest – became just another working day.
Working conditions also deteriorated and many peasants who had just moved to the cities and had little experience of industrial work, died in the hastily constructed factories. Miners were allowed to work in unsafe conditions because their bosses cared more about meeting targets than their welfare.
Labour discipline was extremely harsh. Lateness was criminalised, strikes were outlawed and workers who broke machinery were accused of being capitalist ‘wreckers’ and exiled to forced labour camps. Such enormous pressure was counter-productive, and absenteeism and low productivity increased during the Plan.
Many of the workers who built Soviet industry during the First Five-Year Plan were prisoners who were forced to work. These workers were known by prison guards as ‘white coal’, they had no rights and were frequently allowed to starve or freeze to death.
At Magnitogorsk, workers were told they would live in a socialist utopia, but in reality, they were forced to live in mud huts and tents, with no heating or sanitation. Conditions there were so grim that on average workers left to find new work after 82 days.
40,000 prison workers and a hard core of dedicated volunteers were able to turn the desolate region into one of Russia’s major industrial centres however and some workers were so dedicated to the socialist dream that they volunteered to work double shifts, and even through the night, in order to create a modern industrial miracle.
Crime increased, as the lack of consumer goods prompted the existence of a thriving black market. This illegal trade centred around products such as vodka, cigarettes, footwear and food and was so widespread that it was impossible to police effectively. The Soviet authorities tried to stamp it out by making an example of those caught, these ‘speculators’ were the subject of show trials, which usually ended with their exile to forced-labour camps.

2^nd Five-Year Plan

7.1 Aims of the Second Five-Year Plan

By the beginning of the Second Five-Year Plan in 1933, Party leaders were privately willing to recognise some of the failings of the First Five-Year Plan and they sought to address these.
The growth of heavy industry was still a key aim, but production targets were designed to be more realistic and achievable, which was possible, as the People’s Commissariats, which were more organised and clearly defined gave specific targets for enterprises under their control as well as estimates of costs, labour, prices and so on.
There was a greater attempt to develop the economy holistically and new industries were promoted, as well as light industries, chemical industries and the railways, in order to allow the raw materials which had been produced to be used effectively.
There was a recognition that the standard of living under the First Five-Year Plan had been worse than that under the NEP and the Second Five-Year Plan set about trying to address this and improve the lives of workers.
Alongside this, there was a recognition that labour productivity under the First Five-Year Plan was low. To reverse this, the Soviet authorities devised an incentives scheme as well as enforcing a new code of practice which set high expectations of labour performance.
The final revision of the Second Five-Year Plan changed the focus slightly however and in the final years, funds were diverted away from the production of consumer goods to invest in Russia’s military resources. This was to combat the increased threat of war with Nazi Germany.

7.2 Consequences of the Second Five-Year Plan - Political

The same fraud and exaggerations of figures that had been rife amongst local Party officials in the First Five-Year Plan continued into the Second Five-Year Plan.
Kirov and the moderates in the Politburo were able to pressure Stalin into making some concessions and agreeing to improve living standards in the Second Five-Year Plan, however Kirov’s assassination and the purging of the Party to eliminate other powerful moderates gave Stalin the confidence he needed to direct investment away from consumer goods again.
The Second Five-Year Plan continued to be a valuable propaganda tool and economic successes, along with the symbolic importance of the Stakhanovite movement allowed Stalin to keep the people on his side and continue his emergence from Lenin’s shadow.
In 1935, Stalin attended the first All-Russian Conference of Stakhanovites. Surrounded by happy workers, he uttered the immortal words “life has become better, and happier too”. Stalin’s words became the basis of a popular propaganda song entitled ‘Song about Stalin’. It was said that Stalin ‘lives for the happiness of the people’. All of this helped to build Stalin’s personal legacy.

7.3 Consequences of the Second Five-Year Plan - Economic

Improvements in heavy industry continued, though they were more modest and by the end of 1937, Stalin was able to announce that the Second Five-Year Plan had been over-fulfilled by 3%.
By 1937, crude oil production had risen to 28.5 million tons.
By 1937, coal production had risen to 128 million tons.
By 1937, pig-iron production had risen to 14.5 million tons.
By 1937, rolled steel production had risen to 13 million tons.
The new focus on developing the chemical industry had seen sulphuric acid production increase from 0.55 million tons in 1932 to 1.37 million tons in 1937.
The new focus on developing Russian machine tools, so that they did not need to be imported from abroad, saw production rise from 19,700 in 1932, to 48,500 in 1937.
The new focus on developing transport saw the Moscow-Volga Canal completed between 1932 and 1937, this allowed the transportation of large quantities of material throughout western Russia.
The new focus on improving the living standards of the Russian people saw an increase in consumer goods, with production of cotton fabrics rising to 3448 million metres and woollen fabrics rising to 108 million metres.
Government defence expenditure rose from 4% in 1933 to 17% in 1937. This increased investment in defence came at the expense of improving living standards further.

7.4 Consequences of the Second Five-Year Plan - Social

The years from 1934 to 1936 were known as the ‘three good years’, due to the comparative improvements in standards of living.
The first lines of the Moscow metro were opened in 1935, allowing for easy and cheap public transport.
In early 1934 bread rationing was ended and this was soon followed by the end of rationing for other commodities, such as meat and butter.
The wages of industrial workers also increased in real terms.
From 1934, peasants were allowed small plots of land to farm privately and they could sell the produce from this land on the open market. This increased living standards, ensured that Russia could recover from famine more easily and made the peasants happier.
In Stalin’s Russia, shopping had become like a survival skill and certain consumer goods, like good quality shoes, were almost impossible to get hold of. In 1934, a queue of 6,000 people waited for more than a day outside one shoe shop in central Leningrad and when the shop opened, the police were called in to avoid a riot.
Housing and amenities for the new urban population failed to improve. For example, there was not a single bathhouse for the 650,000 people in the Liubertsy district of Moscow. Indeed, many of the new houses completed during the Second Five-Year Plan were built without running water or sewerage.
Stalin announced at the beginning of the Second Five-Year Plan that socialism did not entail wage equality and as a result, social inequality began to rise. The 55,000 senior Communists were entitled to better food, better clothes and better accommodation than the average citizen, due to their seniority within the Communist Party. For example, Stalin’s new elite were entitled to chauffeur-driven limousines, private houses and holiday homes, and in some cases reserved seats in cinemas and at the opera. Communist Party officials also had access to ‘secret shops’, which contained consumer goods unavailable to the general public.
However, most Party members were still worse off than the average worker in Britain or America at that time.
The Stakhanovite movement also created inequalities by rewarding the most productive workers with opulent flats and access to luxury food.