Stalin's Dictatorship

Lenin died in January 1924 after being an invalid during 1923

Stalin and other members of the Politburo arranged the funeral

What happened to Lenin?

• Seen as a hero
• His body was embalmed and put on display in a mausoleum in the Red Square
• His image was everywhere on posters and statues - reflecting how many ordinary russians 'worshipped him'
• City of Petrograd was renamed Leningrad in his honour

Stalin

• Had been the leading government figure in the last years of Lenin's life
• General Secretary of the Communist Party and controlled much of the government machinery, as was seen in the 12th Party Congress in 1923
• In 1917 he had been loyal in his support for Lenin on the Bolshevik CentralCommittee
• Humble origins - son of a shoemaker
• Georgian and russian was his second language

Trotsky

• Only became a committed member of the Bolshevik party in 1917
• Was Jewish and had been active in Europe and the USA trying to organise international support for communism
• In 1917 he became chairman of the Petrograd Soviet and played a leading part in the actual organisation of the takeover of the city in october/november 1917 revolution
• He became Lenin's right hand man in the Civil War (1918-1921)
• Organised the Red Army and directing military operations

In 1922 Lenin dictated a document called his 'Testament' in regards to his worry about the leadership of the party

• In 1923 he added a critical postscript of Stalin
• After Lenin's death, Stalin persuaded the party to not publish this document in order for 'unity of the party' 
• Leaders such as Kamenev and Zinioev agreed as they resented Lenin's praise of Trotsky

• He controlled the party machine as the General Secretary and was an excellent organiser which gave him an important power base
• He used his position to employ junior party officials whom then supported him as they owed their positions to him 
• The junior officals elected the Politburo thereofre Stalin was able to control the Politburo through them

• He had always been close to Lenin and made sure it was seen that way through getting photographs altered to show him as physically close to Lenin

• His plan to build communism in the USSR as a strong power rather than to spread it appealed to the Russians whom wanted to see the results of communism after their struggles

• He organised Lenin's funeral and he misguided Lenin about the date making Trotsky appear late thus he appeared more deticated to the memory of Lenin than Trotsky
• He wrote a book called 'Foundations of Leninism' which praised Lenin's policies and the NEP

• He carried out the actual Bolshevik takeover of Petrograd in 1917

• He led the Red Army to victory in the Russian Civil War and was a brilliant leader and toured Russia in a special train to direct troop movements and keep up morale

• He was clever and gained enthusiastic support through speech and writing

• He supported Karl Marx's original aim to spread communism to all developed countries - 'World Revolution'/ 'Continuous Revolution' against Stalin's policy of Socialism in One Country

When Lenin died...

• No preparations for a succesor had been made
• The nine members of the Politburo were theoretically in control
• The USSR was formed out of the non-russian areas under the Russian Empire control to create the Union of Soviet ocialist Republics
• The newly formed USSR had many enemies abroad as it was now the only communist government in the world

Before Lenin died...

• Strict control of the media had been established as this had been seen to be vital in the Civil War , all books/films/newspapers were censored
• The only important thing in life was service to the state
• Propaganda techniques had begun to be developed, and any Bolshevik successes of 1917/The Civil War were glorified and exaggerated

Stalin ,as the General Secretary of the party, was able to develop these techniques and showcase himself to be a 'natural successor', using propaganda, speeches etc. including quotes of Lenin

Stalin controlled the Politburo

The Politburo controlled all government departments

All policies were imposed by Stalin and his supporters

What were Lenin's secret police called?

Before 1922 - The Cheka

1922 - OGPU 'The department of political peace'

1934 - The NKVD - 'People's Commisariat of Internal Affairs'

This body ensured that no one openly critisiced communism/Stalin

• Lenin had quickly introduced a Constitution in 1918
• This was replaced in 1924 with one that recognised the USSR
• In 1936 a new one was written by Bukharin
  • Described by Stalin as 'The most democratic in the World'
  • It guranteed people their rights: including religion and freedom of speech

Supreme Soviet

...would be elected by everyone aged 18+ and in a secret ballot

BUT

• Only Communist Party members were allowed to be candidates 
• The Supreme Soviet only met two weeks a year
• ...The ruling committee of the party (controlled by Stalin) had the actual power

• Secret Police acted outside of the constitution and thereofre they could do anything they wanted

In 1934-1938 millions of people were arrested/imprisoned/murdered or simply 'disappeared' 

     = The Purges

Potential reasons for the Purges:

• Stalin's insecurity with having political enemies and 'Old Bolsheviks'
• Paranoia/Sadist 
• He was afraid of Kirov
• Purges were a convenient way of excusing failiure and setbacks
• If targets were not met, the failure could be blamed on sabotage and this provided the reasoning for purging thus ridding of enemies of the state
• They unified the country by appealing to people's nationalism and loyalty when there was a threat from Hitler's expanding control of Eastern Europe.

How did they begin?

With the murder of Sergei Kirov in December 1934

• He was a young and popular communist whom worked in an office in Leningrad
• The government newspapers announced the murder was as a conspiracy plan to kill Stalin
• Leading communists such as Kamenev and Zinoviev were immediately arrested on false charges of terroism
• It provided Stalin an excuse to begin waves of arrests with punishments of hard labour/execution

How is Kirov believed to be murdered?

On Stalin's orders as he was popular and had criticised the cruel aspects of the collectivisation of agriculture in the early 1930s and some saw him as a future leader

• Loyal supporter of Stalin

• Fought in the Red Army in the Civil War (1918-21)

• Had been head of the Leningrad Communist Party organisation in 1926

• By early 1930s he was a key Politburo member

• Often went on holiday with Stalin

Stalin issued new decrees that gave the NKVD the power to organise trials of 'crimes against the state' (treason)

Why were show trials organised?

• To justify the sentences imposed on the accused
• Almost all of the Old Bolsheviks who had played a leading part in October 1917 were tried, found guilty after confessing to a variety of ludicrous crimes and shot
• Zinoviev, Kamenev and 14 others were shot in 1936 after being brought to trial accused of plotting to assassinate Trotsky with the help of Trotsky
• The victims were humiliated by the State prosecutor - Andrei Vyskinsky, in scenes that were broadcast around the world

When was a second major show trial organised?

1937

• Nearly one million lower-rannking party officials were accused of less serious crimes 
  • they were thrown out of the party
  • sent to labour camps
  • or shot
• Members of the NKVD were charged with treason
  • Head of NKVD - Yagoda - was dismissed from his post and shot
  • Many lower ranking NKVD men were accused of deliberately not rounding up enough traitors and were shot

In many parts of the USSR, millions of people were arrested/shot/sent to labour camps

•  (NKVD) Had spies everywhere
• Could arrest almost anyone and publish them with little evidence
• Increasingly people denounced others to avoid themselves being arrested 
• Those who informed on work colleagues were more likely to gain promotion/better housing

Following arrests...

• The suspects would be interrogated (viciously), shot or sent to labour camps (gulags)

1937 -Stalin turned his attention to the armed forces

• (STALIN) Had become terrified that leading officers could end his dictatorship easily
• Marshal Tukhachevsky and seven other generals, all expereicned red army leaders, were secretly tried and executed
• 75 out of 80 men on the Supreme Military Council were exectuted
• All ranks of the army were purged
• 35,000 officers were shot or imprisoned (half total number of officers)
• Soviet Navy - six admirals were shot
• Most of the air force commanders were shot

This all happened at the time that Stalin became increasingly worried about Hitler

• (Hitler's) speeches often talked about Lebensraum to the East which put Poland and the USSR under threat
• In august 1939, Germany and the USSR signed the Nazi-Soviet pact promising they would not attack each other (Stalin agreed to this so Hitler would expand westwards instead)
• He gained half of poland as an extra buffer against any later threat
• Nazi's attacked the USSR in June 1941 when the army was still recovering from the purges

During the 1930s Stalin was worried about his control of the government and so he wanted to create a friendly and caring image of himself as a leader

• Writers, artists, film-makers were told to produce work to praise Stalin's achievements 
• History was rewritten to give Stalin an important role under Lenin in the early days of communism
• Dissenters were punished e.g. the writer Solzhenistyn who critisised Stalin's rule and was sentenced to 8 years in a labour camp
• Musicians were expected to compose popular pieces celebrating the achievements of the Soviet workforce in the modernisation of the country
• Propaganda posters featuring Stalin and happy Russian workers were common
• Visual images to spread the desired message of happy workers striving for success

Dmitri Shostakovich

• Was a russian composer
• Brought up under USSR communist rule
• He used a four note motif (DSCH) to express his great force of anger
• He was a proud russian that hated communist rule
• Found it hard to express emotion without being punished

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

• Russian novelist/historian
• Used his writing to express the truth to the world
• 'Gulag Archipelago' written 1958/1968 contains eyewitness accounts of arrests and executions and was published in the West in 1973 (his book)

• Lenin introduced the NEP in 1921: which allowed peasants to own their own land and sell any surplus food and it provided more incentives for more food to be produced
• Some peasants (Kulaks) became quite well off and employed other peasants to work on their land and some peasants resented the privileged position of the Kulaks

• Despite food production growing in the 1920s there were problems that limited its growth
• Peasants that owned their small plots of land were using mostly primitive methods of agriculture with little machinery and low yield
• There was very little industrial development considering the size of the country
• USSR was vulnerable to attack from Europe (as it had been in 1914)
• The country urgently needed more industry to produce weapons BUT if more people were to work in factories and live in cities, more food would need to be produced to feed the workers
• AND the USSR would have to buy machinery for Industrialisation from abroad which could only be paid for through the export of food
• SO in 1929 Stalin abandoned the NEP and new policies meant that the State took direct control of agriculture and industry
• This would ensure much higher levels of production and strengthen the position of the USSR so that it could withstand any invasion

Theory:

• Large farms (Collectives) would be more productive than smalll plots of land because:

The process began in 1929

• 25 million peasant farms were to be combined to form 240,000 collective farms called Kolkhoz
• Most peasants immediately opposed and many killed their livestock rather than hand them over to the State
• The Kulaks had the most to lose

Stalin embarked on a policy of destroying the kulaks as a class

The destruction of livestock had disastrous consequences:

• (estimated that) the animal population fell by about half in three years

This and the disruption caused by collectividation lead to a terrible famine

Production levels increased in the later 1930s BUT

• Many peasants remained in extreme poverty
• Many peasants were always at the 'mercy' of a bad harvest or an extra cold winter
• A substantial proportion of grain was exported and there were still many more industrial workers in the cities to be fed

The locally controlled kolkhoz were supervised by Soviet Party officials

• This was frequently necessary as the peasants had no incentive to work hard as any surplus made would be taken straight away

But for those who did work hard Collective farms could bring benefits:

• Schools and hospitals were built
• Peasants could feel pride in the achievements of their kolkhoz
• Later in the 1930s, Stalin allowed peasant families to have a small individual plot with one cow and several pigs or sheep

What was modernisation of industry essential for? (which Stalin realised)

• Agriculture
• Defending the country from attack
• Showing the USSR as being competitve with the rest of the industrialised countries in the world
• First five year plan (1928-32)
  • Aimed to expand heavy industry - coal,iron,steel and oil
  • It had considerable success
    • Number of industrial workers doubled
    • New cities were built around industrial areas
    • GOSPLAN (government agency in charge of the programme) achieved success though industries rarely reached the over-ambitious targets set
• Second Five year plan (1933-37) = Concentrated on making machines, especially tractors
• Third five year plan = starting in 1938, aimed to produce more consumer goods for loyal Soviet citizens
  • BUT this transformed into building weapons when it proved necessary after germany invaded the USSR in June 1941

1921

• Electricity = 0.5 billion  kWhs, Crude Oil = 4 million tonnes, Coal = 9 million tonnes.
• Steel =  0.2 million tonnes

1928 

• Electricity = 5 billion  kWhs, Crude Oil = 12 million tonnes, Coal = 35 million tonnes, Steel =  4 million tonnes, tractors = 0.1 million

1933

• Electricity = 16  billion  kWhs, Crude Oil = 22 million tonnes, Coal = 76 million tonnes, Steel =  7 million tonnes, 7 million tractors 

1940

• Electricity = 48 billion  kWhs, Crude Oil = 31 million tonnes, Coal = 165 million tonnes, Steel =  13 million tonnes, 3 million tractors

Huge scale projects were often achieved in spite of lack of experienced workers (most workers were peasants whom were unskilled)

• Sometimes foreign experts were brought in e.g. from the UK
• When production started, managers were under great presssure so 
  • They either cut corners = bad quality products
  • Lied about production figures ...statistics from 1930s are more than likely unreliable

New factories were constructed with very little attention to safety so many workers were injured/died

• Scaffolding could easily collapse
• Temperatures in Winter could drop as low as = -30 degrees
• In the new pig-iron blast furnaces - workers could suffer serious burns
• Many conscripted workers had no/little education = they could not read
• Some siberian peasants working on huge products had never even seen electricity and only knew huts with oil lamps

• Hydroelectric dams e.g. Dnieper Dam 
• Moscow Underground Railway

...Were all admired by Russians and foreign visitors alike

• Over 100 new cities were built
• Most of the new industrial areas were located in Siberia, East of the Ural Mountains to ensure that Russian industry would survive an invasian from Western Europe

Despite major setbacks and exaggerated claims, the USSR succeeded in substantially expanding its industry in the 1930s due to the plans

• When the USSR was invaded by Germany in 1941, sufficient progress had been made to enable effective resistance
• It transformed itself (the USSR) when other major countries were suffering the effects of the Great Depression with millions out of work

• Millions died working on industrial projects
• Millions of peasant families were uprooted and forced to live thousands of miles away
• Working conditions were harsh:
  • Seven day working week
  • Accidentally damaging tools was treated as sabotage
  • Absenteeism/lateness was treated as a crime

Those who worked hard/succeeded were treated as heroes:

• August 1935 - Soviet press announced a new hero, (a coal miner) called Alexei Stakhanov 
  • It was claimed that he mined 102 tonnes of coal in one shift (14x more than average worker)
  • He was praised and given medals
  • He went around giving lectures on productivity improvement
  • Those who copied his achievement = Stakhanovites
• With the rapid growth of cities new housing could not cope with the demand
  • Many had to live in dormitories
  • Many families lived together in one room of a flat

Society began a transformation

• Gradually living conditions did improve especially in established cities

• Electricity became available for everyday use

• Radios improved communications

• Education was free

• Hospitals had free health care 

• Some blocks of flats had central heating

• Those living in Moscow could be proud of the new buildings
  • The Moscow Underground was spacious with cathedral-style arches, colonnades and bright paintings

Foundations had been laid for the USSR to become a superpower which it did after the defeat of Germany in 1945

• Stalin remained in power until his death in 1953
• By then the USSR controlled much of Eastern Europe
• They had developed an atomic bomb

...Making the USSR the second most powerful country in the world

• The harsh industrialisation brought achievements on a scale that no one would have imagined

The gulags - labour camps

• Grew in size in the 1930s

• Those condemned to live there suffered near starvation
  • They were forced to construct railways or canals 

1928

• Grain (tonnes)- 73 million
• Cattle - 29 million
• Pigs - 19 million

1933

• Grain (tonnes)- 69million
• Cattle - 19 million
• Pigs - 10 million

1928

• Grain (tonnes)- 95 million
• Cattle - 28 million
• Pigs -  27 million