Stalin's Russia 1924-41

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  • Stalin's Russia
    • Claims to power (1924)
      • Stalin
        • Was General Secretary
        • Excellent organiser
        • Always loyal to Lenin
          • Organised Lenin's funeral
        • Believed in building up communism in the USSR into a strong power
          • Appealed to Russians who had gone through years of struggle
      • Trotsky
        • Carried out actual Bolshevik takeover of Petrograd
        • Clever and a powerful speaker and writer
        • Supported Karl Marx's original aim of communism spreading to all the developed countries
        • Led Red Army to victory in the Russian Civil War
    • The power struggle
      • 1925 - Trotsky dismissed as Commissar for War
        • 1926 - Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev dismissed from Politburo
          • 1927 - Zinoviev and Trotsky were expelled from Communist party
            • 1929 - Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party
              • 1929 - Bukharin expelled from Politburo
    • The purges
      • Reasons
        • Stalin never felt secure
          • Believed that there were people plotting to depose him
        • Convenient way of excusing faliure and setbacks
          • If targets were not met, faliure could be blamed on sabotage
            • Provided reasons for getting rid of enemies of the State
        • Believed USSR could be unified by getting rid of enemies of the State
      • Purging of the armed forces
        • 75 out of 80 men on Supreme Military Council executed
        • 35,000 officers shot or imprisoned
        • All 6 admirals executed
        • 8 generals secretly tried and executed
      • Great Terror
        • Millions arrested, shot or sent to military camps
          • Exact number of people died unknown
            • But suggested that as many as 12 million died
              • Result of execution or appalling conditions
      • Show Trials
        • Trials broadcast to the world
          • Zinoviev and Kamenev brought to trial in 1936
            • Found guilty of plotting to assassinate Stalin with help of Trotsky
              • Shot
    • Economically building up the USSR
      • Five Year Plans
        • 1st Five Year Plan (1928-32)
          • Aimed to expand heavy industry
            • e.g. coal, iron, steel, oil
            • New cities built around new industrial areas
        • 2nd Five Year Plan (1933-37)
          • Concentrated on making machines - particularly tractors
        • 3rd Five Year Plan (1938-41)
          • Aimed to produce consumer goods for loyal citizens
            • Quickly transformed into building weapons
              • Proved necessary when Germany invaded USSR in June 1941
        • Effects
          • More crude oil
          • More coal
          • More steel
          • More electricity
          • More tractors
      • Collectivisation
        • Bringing many individual farms together to form big collective farms
          • Process began in 1929
            • 25 million peasant farms combined to form 240,000 collective farms
              • Most peasants refused to give up their land
                • Killed their livestock
                  • Caused animal population to fall by about 1/2
                    • Famine occurred between 1931 and 1933
                      • 6 million died
                        • Eventually peasants conformed
        • Effects
          • More pigs
          • More grain
          • Less cattle
    • Strengthening his dictatorship
      • The 1936 Constitution
        • NKVD (Stalin's secret police) acted outside constitution
        • Supreme Soviet elected by everyone aged 18 and over
          • Only Communist Party members allowed to be candidates
          • Supreme Soviet met for only two weeks a year
        • Everyone guaranteed freedom of speech and religion
      • Cult of Personality
        • Used his control of government to present himself in favourable light
          • Dissenters were punished e.g. Solzhenitsyn
          • Writers, film-makers and artists made to produce works that praised Stalin's achievement
          • History was rewritten

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