USSR under Stalin

The USSR under Stalin

What factors led to Stalin’s Rise to Power?

The one-party state after 1924

  • 1917 October Revolution: Bolshevik Party takes power from the Provisional Government – proclaimed first Marxist state

  • Vanguards: Bolsheviks said that their victory meant that they had the absolute right to govern, according to dialectical materialism

    • Dialectical materialism – not needed but cool anyway (source: yours truly):
    1. Every type of state is a powerful institution of the ruling class; the state is an instrument which one class uses to secure its rule and enforce its preferred relations of production and its exploitation onto society.[citation needed]
    2. State power is usually only transferred from one class to another by social and political upheaval.[citation needed]
    3. When a given relation of production no longer supports further progress in the productive forces, either further progress is strangled, or 'revolution' must occur.[citation needed]
    4. The actual historical process is not predetermined but depends on class struggle, especially the elevation of class consciousness and organization of the working class.[citation needed]

  • 1922 One party state

  • 1924 Situation by the time of Lenin’s Death
    - By this time the Bolsheviks had consolidated power (survived civil war, foreign interventions, economic crises); consolidation of power was violent - Lenin allowed no opposition – created a tradition of authoritarian rule and terror

    • Govt structures: Council of People’s Commissars and Secretariat – both controlled by the party - Politburo (part of the Sec) had all the power
    • Democratic centralism – Leninist idea that true democracy is obedience to enlightened leadership
    • One party, bureaucratic, police state
    • More officials came with greater centralisation
    • Cheka was established (future KGB)
    • Factionalism banned
    • Destroyed trade union independence
    • Politicisation of law
    • Purges & show trials
    • Concentration camps
    • Ban on religion
    • Nationalisation
    • War Communism —> New Economic Policy
    • Homo Sovieticus
    • International isolation – no worldwide uprising – Comintern

How did Stalin’s existing positions help him eventually gain power?

One sentence answer: Stalin used his positions to give himself the power of patronage, which he would then use to give yet more power to himself.

Positions:

  • peoples commissar for nationalities (1917)
  • Liaison Officer between the Politburo and Orgsburo (1919) - could monitor party policy and personnel
  • Head of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate (1919) - oversaw work of gov depts
  • General Secretary of the Communist Party (1922) - built up dossiers on all members of the party

Power of patronage (extending privileges to certain members and groups)

  • Stalin placed people in key positions especially during the Lenin enrolment (1922-5: 340,000 to 600,000 members)
  • They paid him back by being obedient

How did Stalin’s position himself for power after Lenin’s Death?

One sentence answer: Stalin paid close attention to and actively manipulated his public image in order to obtain greater legitimacy, by suppressing unfavourable information and positioning his media image to suggest that he was the intended successor to Lenin.

Situation:

  • Lenin hadn’t provided any clear instructions
  • Politburo members were competing for power, but told the public that they would continue as a collective leadership
  • Stalin got himself chosen as leading mourner, granting him legitimacy – impression of closeness; dedication to following in Lenin’s tradition
  • Trotsky didn’t show up — apparently he got the wrong date from Stalin — bad public impression
  • Lenin’s Testament Suppressed — Lenin criticised Stalin in a document he wrote in 1922 — Trotsky went along with it because he was criticised too

Why did Trotsky’s opposition fail?

TROTSKY: Chief rival to Stalin; war leader who organised the Red Army to victory in the October Revolution

Two sentence answer: Trotsky took strong political stances, in contrast with Stalin who remained silent most of the time, and in the meanwhile also exploited Trotsky’s stances by publicly attacking them. This allowed Stalin to position himself as the more reasonable figure who sided with the public’s opinion, giving him greater legitimacy over Trotsky.

  • Triumvirate (Stalin, Kamenev, Zinoviev) tried to isolate Trotsky, exploiting his unpopularity with large sections of the party
  • Identity: Jew, intellectualism, personality seemed dangerously ambitious, did not become a Bolshevik until 1917
  • Stance: New Economic Policy damaged Trotsky’s reputation: Trotsky backed “War Communism” which centralised agriculture – this didn’t work and Lenin replaced it with NEP (mixed economy) at a Party Congress in 1921 as a temporary, transitionary measure – Leftists and Rightists disagreed on how long it should last – Stalin kept quiet and attacked for being a disruptive force Trotsky who publicly declared opposition to putting the interests of the Nepmen above the revolution’s
  • Stance: 2 things — food surplus and ideology
    • Modernisation – Trotsky put modernisation below international revolution (Permanent Revolution), and wanted peasants to be coerced into producing a food surplus to raise capital for industrial investment – Stalin attacked Trotsky for this with the notion of “Socialism in One Country”, saying that Trotsky was a threat to USSR sovereignty (invasion was a real concern in the 1920s)

Why did Trotsky and the Left get defeated?

Two sentence answer: Stalin used his widespread influence over the party to drive Trotsky into a political corner, by removing his position as Commissar for War in 1924, and member of the Politburo in 1926; immediately shutting down his political challenges by heavily outvoting them, and eventually removing him from the picture entirely in 1927. Trotsky’s methods of challenge also did not help – his opposition to bureaucratisation after 1926 alienated many party members, while his protest in 1927 simply provided Stalin with a reason (counterrevolution) to expel and exile him.

  • 1920s Propaganda War failure diminished Trotsky’s influence over institutions
  • 1925 Party Congress removed Trotsky as Commissar for War
  • Zinoviev (Chairman of Leningrad Soviet) and Kamenev (Chairman of Moscow Soviet) ensured that local party orgs sided with Stalin
  • 1925 Stalin eradicated his Kamenev and Zinoviev who had now become rivals in his eyes (The New Opposition) – they wanted to abandon the NEP – In 1926, Trotsky joined them in a oppositional bloc
  • Vyacheslav Molotov — replacement in Moscow; Sergei Kirov — replacement in Leningrad
  • 1926 – Trotsky removed from Politburo
  • Trotsky tried to fight back by attacking bureaucratisation — this was not popular among party members who were reliant on bureaucracy for privileges
  • 1927 – tried to gain popular support to challenge Stalin’s authority – Congress expelled him – internally exiled
  • 1929 – deported to Turkey

Why did the Right get defeated?

One sentence answer:Stalin no longer need their support to defeat the left, so he decided to offer policies that they were advocating for (and that nobody else was).

- Members: Алексей Рыков, Михаил Томский, Николай Бухарин
- Helped Stalin get rid of Trotsky
- Stalin got rid of them to implement agricultural and industrial schemes which he began doing in 1928
- They were not a significant challenge compared to the Left
- Right wanted to restrict the role of the state in an economy – they believed the best way to raise funds to finance industrialisation was to offer farmers the chance to become prosperous to create a food surplus – argued against Stalin’s state procurements
- Stalin repeatedly used the idea of reactionaries to scare people – he used this to spread fears about the status of the revolution to undermine the right
- Right didn’t matter anymore by 1929 – Molotov replaced Rykov as Premier

In what ways was Stalin a dictator?

Economic policy:

  • 1926 Party Congress agreed to “transform our country from an agrarian into an industrial one”
  • 1928 Stalin decided he wanted to act on this
    • Aim: Modernisation through industrialisation and collectivisation ASAP (Stalin believed the survival of the USSR was dependent on this “either we do it or we shall be crushed)
    • The Soviet state took over running the economy
    • Originally there was conflict between Right (as a proletarian society, the economy should be allowed to develop at its own pace) and Left, but this ended because of Stalin’s economic programme
    • Stalin coined this “the second revolution” (even more positioning)
  • Collectivisation - Stalin’s definition: “the setting up of collective farms in order to squeeze out all capitalist elements from the land.”
    • Reasons for adoption: bring peasants under control; raise capital (for investment in industry) — Stalin’s logic was:
    • USSR needed industrial investment and manpower
    • Land could provide both
      • Surplus grain to be sold abroad for investment
      • Surplus peasants could become factory workers
    • Stalin believed (because of Communist theory in the Soviet Union at the time)
    • Time of peasants as a revolutionary social force had passed (OCT 1917 was the first stage of the industrial proletariat)
    • Peasantry should therefore succumb to the demands of industrialisation
    • Claimed that it was “voluntary”
    • De-Kulakisation
    • “Holding back the workers’ revolution by hoarding produce and keeping food prices high” – De-Kulakisation became a govt campaign
    • Kulaks didn’t really exist - Stalinist myth
    • OGPU (successor to the Cheka) arrested and deported “Kulaks”
    • De-Kulakisation programme was because it was a vent for jealousy and a way to seek revenge (kind of like Salem)
    • Effects:
      • Warned peasants not to resist collectivisation
      • Soviet official: “the whole point of de-Kulakisation was its value as an administrative measure”
    • \
    • Dec 1929 - March 1930 – Resistance to collectivisation:
    • 30,000 arson attacks
    • Organised rural mass disturbances increased from 172 to 229 from the first to the second half of 1929
    • 90% of farms collectivised by 1936 — almost all by 1941
    • Impact of collectivisation
    • Peasants disorientated / bewildered ??? (resisted by… seems more probable as an explanation) — ate seed corn and slaughtered livestock -
      • Livestock more than halved
      • Food intake significantly decreased
    • Starvation — national famine 1932-3; 6-8 million deaths
    • Rural to urban migration — led to creation of internal passports in 1932 —> industrialisation could now happen
    • BUT only 2 tangential references in state press
  • Industrialisation
    • Stalin was trying to create a “war economy” through developing iron, steel and oil production (sinews of war in his view)
    • Five-year plans from Gosplan – lasted from 1928 to 1953, except 1941-5
    • 1st FYP: Oct 1928 to Dec 1932
    • 2nd FYP: Jan 1933 to Dec 1937
    • 3rd FYP: Jan 1938 to June 1941
    • 4th FYP: Jan 1946 to Dec 1950
    • 5th FYP: Jan 1951 to Dec 1955
    • 1st FYP:
    • What was it?
      • Set of targets; not a plan
      • Falsified figures —> hard to know real stats
      • Three versions of FYP existing complicates things
      • Propaganda project to convince (young) people that they were building a better world – shock brigades
    • Effects
      • Initial success —> Stalin got a new “optimal” plan made, with reassessed targets (that were unachievable)
      • Figures did get exaggerated, but the actual results were still very impressive
      • Coal, iron, electricity – very large increases
      • Steel and chemicals – increased
      • Textiles – decreased
    • 2nd and 3rd FYPs
    • What?
      • Similar to first, but with more realistic goals
    • Effects
      • Same lack of co-ordination: some overproduction, some underproduction, supply chain issues
      • Frequent complaints about standards
      • Successful in terms of heavy industry
    • Overall
      • Coal, steel, oil and electricity (main focus) helped USSR beat Germany in WWII in May 1945
      • Emphasis on heavy industry and large projects (“Grand Projects of Communism”) – i.e. factories, bridges refineries, canals
      • Unbalanced – lack of emphasis on light engineering – I.e. specialised activities like precision tool-making
      • Failed to raise living standards
      • “Uninterrupted” seven day week – 1/5 of workers had one day off – effects on family relations
      • Severe penalties for absenteeism / slacking – fired/evicted from factory housing
      • SO, German invasion —> destruction of 3rd FYP —> bad conditions for Soviet industrial workers (worse than 1928)

Stalin’s Purges:

  • Began in 1932, but not unprecedented (public show trials used at the start of FYP)
    • At the start: Handing in party cards
    • Ryutin Affair in 1932 – people tried to criticise Stalin at the start, despite difficulties
    • Stalin behaved in ways that went beyond reason or logic – Svetlana Allilueva (Stalin’s daughter): “if in his should he had already. Translated that person into the ranks of ‘enemies’, it was impossible to hold a conversation with him about that person”
  • 1933-34: Centralisation of law enforcement agencies – civilian police, labour camp officials, border security – all put under NKVD
  • 1934-36: 1 December 1934, Kirov shot and killed in office