Transcript USSR (Stalin) before WWII

Opening Question (3/20)
• What does the term MAIN stand for and list
the reason each term helped cause WWI
– M = ___________ caused WWI because…
– A = ___________ caused WWI because…
– I = ___________ caused WWI because…
– N = ___________ caused WWI because…
– You better get this because it will be a part of
your Third Quarter Test (after spring break)
• This will be an essay question!!!
MAIN – Long Term Causes of WWI
• M = Militarism – Growing Armies, “Arms Race”, using
war as tool of foreign policy
• A = Alliances – Agreements like the Triple Alliance
and Triple Entente dragged European countries into
war in 1917
• I = Imperialism – European powers competed for
territories and colonies
• N = Nationalism – Rivalries grew between nations
desiring to create stronger empires and ethnic groups
wanting their own country (“Balkan Powder Keg”)
– These LONG TERM CAUSES created so much
tension/drama that the murder of a minor European political
figure (Archduke Ferdinand) caused the entire continent of
Europe (and then the rest of the world) to go to war…
Brief Review of Russian Revolution
• 1917 – Russian Revolution begins and Czar
Nicholas II abdicates his throne
– A provisional government is set up
• October Revolution (1917)
– Bolsheviks (led by Vladimir Lenin) take over Russia’s
government
• Russian Civil War (1918-1922)
– Between the Bolsheviks (Soviets) vs. Mensheviks (the
landowners, conservatives, republicans and those
opposed to the unfavorable treaty Lenin signed with
Germany.)
• The west does not support the Bolsheviks
"Bolshevism must be strangled in its cradle," Winston
Churchill said.
1918: Lenin Begins
to Change Russian
Society
• Treaty with Germany cedes
land in exchange for peace.
• All industry nationalized.
• Independent labor unions
banned.
• Grain requisitions: armed
•
officials seize grain from
farmers to feed the poor.
Housing space seized and
distributed.
"Comrade Lenin Cleanses the Earth of Filth"
Communist poster, 1920
•
•
•
•
•
•
Successor States (Allies worry for the
future independence of these states…)
Austria
Hungary
Czechoslovakia
 Conflicting values expressed in
Wilson’s Fourteen Points and the
Treaty of Versailles influenced the
determination of national borders
in Eastern Europe.
Yugoslavia
 Wilson strongly advocated
national self-determination.
Poland
 But France feared any
arrangement that would
strengthen Germany.
Some AustroHungarian lands
were ceded to
Romania, Ukraine
and Italy
 The new national divisions left
large German and Hungarian
minorities in a number of
countries.
New European Democracies Were Created
from the Old Austro-Hungarian Empire
Before WWI, AustriaHungary was the
second largest
country in Europe
(after Russia), and
the third most
populous (after
Russia and the
German Empire).
Nationalist conflicts within the
empire were one of the causes of
WWI, and led to the ultimate
collapse of the empire.
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was
created in 1922.
Ukraine
Transcaucasian Region
Russia
Belarus
Leninism: The Telescoping of History
Karl Marx, considered the father of communism, wrote that history
proceeds through distinct stages: feudalism, capitalism, imperialism,
etc. Only after going through these stages, Marx thought, could
society advance to communism.
Lenin argued that under the right circumstances, such as those of
Russia in 1917, the intermediate steps could be skipped.
Marx wrote about the dictatorship of the
proletariat, a period in which the working class
would govern society while the ultimate classless
society of communism was developed.
To Lenin, the dictatorship of the proletariat meant
that a small group of dedicated individuals would
lead society forcefully so that the groundwork
could be laid for the future ideal society.
Worldwide Appeal of Communism
Russia was the first country to attempt to put the theory of
socialism into practice.
Many workers and intellectuals around the world thought
that at last there was a chance to overcome the inequality
and exploitation of market capitalism and build a society in
which everyone was respected and cared for.
Communist parties emerged in the U.S.
and Europe, and also in Asia, Africa and
Latin America, where many countries
suffered from poverty and the remnants of
colonialism.
Maoist demonstration, Nepal
Leon Trotsky
Trotsky was a key figure in
the Russian Revolution,
second only to Lenin.
From 1918 to 1925, he was
People's Commissar for Army
and Navy Affairs and
commander of the Red Army.
When Lenin died in 1924, Trotsky was widely expected to assume
leadership of the country. Instead, that role went to Joseph Stalin,
General Secretary of the Central Committee.
As leader of the Left Opposition, Trotsky opposed Stalin. He was
purged from the Communist Party in 1927 and exiled in 1928.
From exile, he continued to oppose Stalin and Stalinism.
Trotsky was assassinated by Stalinists in 1940 at his home in
Mexico City.
Lenin, Trotsky and soldiers
of the Red Army, 1921
"Have you signed
up as a volunteer?"
Civil war recruitment
poster
Coat of Arms
of the Soviet
Union
TROTSKYISM
For decades,
Communists around the
world were divided.
Some remained loyal to
the Soviet Union and
took direction from the
Central Committee.
Other were aligned with
Trotsky’s Left
Opposition.
Bitter struggles between
the two groups took
place in many countries.
Leon Trotsky's grave in
Coyoacán, Mexico. His house
is now a museum.
War Communism and
the New Economic Policy
War Communism (Plan for economy during Russian
Civil War)
From 1918 through 1921, the Bolsheviks implemented
radical economic changes.
Under "War Communism," all industry was
nationalized, private enterprise was made illegal, and
economic planning was centralized.
The results were disastrous for the Russian economy and
led to a major famine in 1921.
NEP (New Economic Policy)
In 1921, Lenin introduced the NEP to the USSR. The state
retained control of banking and major industries, but small
business ventures were allowed, farmers were allowed to
sell surplus production, and trade restrictions were
loosened.
"We are not civilized enough for socialism," Lenin said.
In 1929, Stalin abolished the NEP.
Famine of 1921-1922
Causes:
Disruption of
agricultural
production by
WWI, the
revolution and
the civil war.
War
Communism
economic
policy.
Drought of
1921.
Results:
Approximately five million
deaths.
Permanent Revolution vs.
Communism in One Country
Lenin believed that the Russian Revolution was
merely the first step in a worldwide workers’
revolution.
Trotsky believed that the Russian Revolution could
only succeed in the context of permanent worldwide
revolution.
Stalin believed that the opportunity for worldwide
revolution had passed, and that the USSR should
concentrate on building communism in one
country.
Joseph Stalin (1879-1953)
General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
April 3, 1922 – March 5, 1953
Born Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili in Georgia.
Transformed Russia from a backward agrarian society to a
major industrial powerhouse through his Five-Year Plans
(1928-1938).
Replaced the NEP with a command
economy totally managed from the top.
Instituted a totalitarian regime under
which millions died in purges as well as in
the famine brought about by his forced
collectivization of agriculture.
The Great Terror of the late 1930s marked
his regime as one of the most oppressive
in history.
Stalin at 24 in 1902
Young Stalin
The son of a serf and a cobbler, Stalin grew up poor in
Georgia, a land occupied by the Russian Empire.
Georgian was his first language. In school he was forced to
learn Russian.
He excelled at school (first in his
class), as well as at singing, poetry,
and street fighting.
In 1898*, he joined the new Russian
Social-Democratic Labor Party, which
later became the Bolshevik Party.
After reading Lenin, he decided to
become a revolutionary.
*or 1901, according to some sources
From 1899 to 1917, Stalin worked as a
revolutionary. He organized strikes, wrote articles,
and at least once led a major bank robbery and
passed the money to Lenin. He was often in
prison, or exiled to Siberia.
He met Lenin at a
Bolshevik conference
in Finland in 1903.*
He consistently
supported Lenin and
the Bolsheviks
against the
Mensheviks.
*or 1905
Stalin Becomes Party Secretary
After the revolution, Stalin held various positions in the
party and the Red Army.
In April 1922, Stalin was made General Secretary of the
Communist Party, a position he kept until his death in
1953.
In 1922, he was one
of several party
leaders.
After Lenin’s death in
1924, Stalin emerged
as the principal party
leader.
By 1927, he had
become the absolute
dictator of the USSR.
Dictatorship: Rule by one person, not limited by law,
constitution or competing political interests.
("The law is what I SAY it is")
Totalitarian State: The state regulates every
aspect of social and personal life.
In practice, most dictatorships
implement totalitarian practices, and
totalitarian states tend to be firmly led
by a single person, a dictator.
Stalin Creates a Totalitarian State
Instituted one-man rule.
Eliminated/murdered
political opposition.
Used secret police and
informers to spread terror
and insure obedience.
Ordered massive
deportations and
executions.
Extended state control
over every aspect of Soviet
society.
Stalin: Cult of Personality
Stalin, like Mussolini
and Hitler, used his
control over the
mass media to build
a "cult of
personality."
In posters, articles,
and on the lips of the
faithful, he was
proclaimed the
"beloved leader."
"Comrades, the cult of the individual acquired such monstrous size chiefly
because Stalin himself, using all conceivable methods, supported the
glorification of his own person."
- Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin’s successor, in his famous 1956 "secret speech"
denouncing the excesses of Stalinism.
First Five-Year Plan: 1928-1933
Stalin resolved to quickly move the USSR to the forefront
of industrial nations. He was successful, but at the cost of
millions of deaths and much suffering.
"Old Russia was continually beaten because of
backwardness. It was beaten by the Mongol
khans. It was beaten by Turkish beys. It was
beaten by Swedish feudal landlords...It was
beaten because of military backwardness,
cultural backwardness, industrial backwardness,
agricultural backwardness...That is why we
cannot be backward any more."
- Stalin
Under the first
two Five-Year
Plans (19281937), the
USSR was
transformed
into a major
industrial
power.
Under construction, circa 1930
Construction on the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station in the
Ukraine began in 1927. When it came on line in 1932,
producing 650 megawatts of electricity, it was one of the
largest power plants in the world.
1929 propaganda poster showing enemies of the Five-Year Plan:
Landlords, kulaks (prosperous farmers), journalists, capitalists,
White Russians, Mensheviks, priests, and drunkards.
Forced Collectivization
The collectivization of
agriculture was key to the
Five-Year Plan.
Stalin needed peasants to
leave their farms and work in
the new factories.
He believed that large
collective farms would be
more productive than
peasant agriculture.
Projected increase in grain
yields was 150%.
Soviet Propaganda Poster
"Comrade, come join our kolkhoz"
(collective farm)
Left: Collective farmers
demonstrate: "We kolkhoz
farmers, on the basis of
complete collectivization, will
liquidate the kulaks as a class."
Collectivization was
imposed in stages.
At first it was voluntary.
As the Five-Year Plan
proceeded, collectivization
was imposed on unwilling
peasants.
Right: First tractor arrives at
collective farm, 1929
Negative Consequences of
Collectivization in the First Five-Year Plan
Number of domestic cattle (meat, dairy
and draft animals) fell by 50%.
Many peasants killed their draft animals
rather than surrender them to the
collective.
Hundreds of thousands of kulaks
(prosperous farmers) were killed or sent
to Siberia for resisting collectivization.
Holodomor: "The Hunger Plague"
There was tremendous resistance to collectivization.
Ordered to bring their draft animals and livestock to the
communal farm, many kulaks killed their animals instead.
With fewer draft animals and not enough tractors, grain
production declined.
When a drought hit in 1932, a great famine swept much of the
country, especially the Ukraine, and millions died of hunger.
Famine victims, Ukraine, 1932-33
Historians dispute the cause,
nature and extent of the
famine:
Natural disaster.
Unintended consequence of the
Five-Year Plan.
Deliberate act of genocide
against the Ukrainian people.
In 2003, the Ukrainian
parliament declared
the Holodomor an act
of genocide.
Some historians argue
that the famine was
not a deliberate
attempt to eliminate
the Ukrainian
population, but that it
could have been
prevented if Stalin had
not drawn off food
resources to support
the Five-Year Plan.
Ukrainian
peasants
trying to
get to the
city in
search of
food, 1933.
Holodomor memorial at
the Andrushivka village
cemetery - Photo by
Håkan Henriksson
Second Five-Year Plan: 1933-1938
The first Five-Year Plan was declared a
success in 1932, one year ahead of
schedule.
Industrialization and collectivization were
continued in the second Five-Year Plan.
By 1938, the USSR had been
transformed into a major industrial power.
This would enable the Soviet Union to
resist the Nazis in the second world war.
Moscow Metro
The world’s secondmost heavily used
metro system.
First line opened in
1936.
Mayakovskaya Station
Much of the construction was
done by forced labor crews
working in terrible conditions.
Soldiers working on metro construction, 1937
Magnitogorsk: Founded 1929
Magnitogorsk was one of
the great achievements of
the Five-Year Plans.
It was a giant steelworks
built to take advantage of
large nearby iron deposits.
It became a major steel
center and played a role in
WWII military production.
Magnitogorsk is still a
major steel producer and
one of the 45 most
polluted cities in the world.
Moscow Show Trials leading up to the Great Purge
On Dec. 1, 1934,
Sergei Kirov, a
popular Party
leader and Stalin
loyalist, was
murdered.
His murder set off a series of public
"show trials" in which many
Bolshevik leaders “confessed” to
crimes against the state and were
executed.
The trials were followed by the
"Great Purge," in which many Party
members and others suspected of
disloyalty were imprisoned or
executed.
Many leading communists were tortured and their families threatened and
killed to get them to confess to false crimes against the state. The show
trials were public spectacles, eagerly watched by international observers.
These saw only the staged confessions, not the torture and intimidation that
led up to them.
Lev Kamenev
Founding member of
the Politburo. Executed
1936 for anti-Soviet
terrorism.
Nikolai Bukharin
Opposed forced
collectivization. Executed
1938 for conspiring to
overthrow the Soviet
state.
Grigory Zinoviev
Leading Bolshevik
and close associate
of Lenin. Executed
1936.
Poster from a 1936
show trial in which
scientists were
forced to confess to
sabotage and
espionage in the
service of foreign
powers.
"A Blow Has Been Struck
against the Leadership of the
Interventionists"
Red Army Purge
In 1938, Tukhachevsky and other leading Red Army
commanders were tried for espionage with Germany,
convicted and executed.
This was the beginning of a purge of
the Red Army that resulted in the
deportation or execution of 30,000
army officers.
One half of the officer corps was
purged.
This weakened the Red Army, and may
have emboldened Hitler to attack
Russia three years later.
Mikhail Tukhachevsky
The Red Bonaparte
The Great Purge: 1937-1938
A wave of terror swept the
Soviet Union.
8½ million were arrested,
most without any judicial
process.
One million were shot, while
many more died in prison
work camps.
Half the Communist Party,
including almost all the old
guard who had been with
Lenin and Trotsky, was
purged.
Secret police and informants
permeated Soviet life.
A prisoner about to be shot by
NKVD executioners - Painting by
Nikolai Getman
GULAG: The Chief Administration of
Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies
A system of forced labor camps for political and other
prisoners.
Hundreds (perhaps
thousands) of forced
labor camps provided
part of the workforce
for the Five-Year Plan.
Criminals were sent to
the camps by the
courts.
Many political
prisoners were sent
there without trial.
Entering Labor Camp (a leaf from Eufrosinia
Kersnovskaya's notebook)
Prisoners in GULAGs and Penal Colonies
1931-32
1935
1939
Labor Camps Penal
Colonies
200,000
800,000
300,000
1.3 million
350,000
Background: Prisoner labor at the construction of Belomorkanal, 1931–33
"Beloved Stalin Is the People's Happiness!"
Government under Stalin
• Politburo (Political Bureau) runs
government in Russia (Stalin controls them)
– near absolute authority
• Uses fear to control people of USSR
– He is a dictator (one of the worst)
• Government represses religion
– Take all religious property, close churches,
imprison or execute church officials
• Government represses art, music, and
writing
– Only “Socialist Realism” allowed (Soviet
propaganda)