Transcript Stalin - BTHS World History

How did Lenin
impose
Communist
control in
Russia between
1917-1924?
Consolidation of Power
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St. P only area of control, Moscow fighting for
a week
Nov. 12 Constituent Assy. (Shut down Jan
1918)
Decree on Land
– Redistribute land to Peasants
Workers control of factories
– Factory committees elected to run
businesses
– Decisions can be annulled b Trade Unions
or Congresses
– Means Bolsheviks really in control
State Capitalism: State control not elected
factory Committees
Decree on Nationalities: Self Determination
(false promise)
Decree on Peace: Leave war immeadiately
The abandonment of
the Constituent
Assembly
The Treaty of
Brest-Litovsk
1918
The Civil
War 19181921
The execution
of Tsar
Nicholas II
1918
Factors that helped
Lenin impose
Communist control in
Russia 1917-1924.
War
Communism
The
Cheka
Success of
the New
Economic
Policy
The Kronstadt
Revolt 1921
Establishment of a Single Party State
• 1921 Victory in RCW ends cooperation with Mensheviks
and SR’s and they are banned again
• Nationalities absorbed, not independent,forced to be Soviet
Socialist republics (SSR’s)
– Technically SSR’s on social issues but defense and
Foreign Policy controlled by central gov’t
• SET UP Parallel Gov’t of STATE and Party
Structure of the Single Party State
• State Government
• Local Soviets vote, only
“toilers”
• Elect Village/Town Soviets
• Town Soviets Elect Provincial
Soviet
• Provincial chooses Republic
Soviets
• Repub chooses two houses
– Soviet of Nationalities (Upper)
– Soviet of the Union (Lower)
• Two houses are SUPREME
SOVIET
• CPSU is parallel Government
• City and Provincial Party
members elect CPSU Party
Congress
• Party Membership rises from
70,000 in 1917 to 2 mi. in 1930
• Congress selects General
Secretary of Party and the
Central Committee
• CC appoints:
– Politburo: Strategic Planning
– Orgburo: Party operation at local
level
– Secretariat: Selects people for
Party posts (Civil Service??)
Structure of the Single Party State
• SUPREME SOVIET
– Appoints the Central Executive
Committee
• CEC appoints council of 15
Commissars called the:
• SOVNARKOM
– They run gov’t day to day as a
cabinet: Ministers of Defense,
Industry, Foreign Affairs,
Agriculture etc….
– Lower you go in Gov’t fewer Party
members you find
• Many are also members of
SOVNARKOM
• Technically Democratic
• Reality:
– P-buro dominates CC which
dominates Party Congress
The Leninist State
• Stalin uses the Leninist State to Seize Power
• Characteristics
– Single Party State
• Claim to represent irresistible historical force of
proletariat
• All other parties banned
• Top down leadership
– Lenin says workers are not ready to lead they have “trade
union consciousness (concerned only with work
conditions) not “class consciousness”
• Democratic Socialism
– Idea is that once Politburo is appointed, debates an issue
and votes on it, all opposition must cease, no more debate
The Leninist State
• Single Party State (con’t)
• Ban on Factionalism
– Despite democratic centralism there is still much debate
within the party up to 1921
– 1920 Party Congress the “Workers Opposition” group
criticizes Party officials for top down style
– 1921 20th Party Congress passes The Resolution on Party
Unity
» This bans all factions
» Workers opposition is purged and 150,000 expelled
from the party
– Free speech has been censored
The Leninist State Characteristics
• Bureaucratic
– Despite communist ideology state grows larger it does
not “wither away”
– SOVNARKOM dominates from the top (it is of course
dominated by the CPSU)
– State ministries get bigger and bigger
– Need more officials (bureaucrats), they control all
elements of society
– SOVNARKO dominant
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Lower levels have less and less influence
Elections less and less frequent
Congress and CEC lose control on SOVNARKOM
Congress meets only a few days a year
The Leninist State Characteristics
• Police State
– Cheka later NKVD enormous power
– Terror, torture supported by law
– Create a network of informers
– Internal and external espionage
– Prison system including the Gulag
• Trade Unions Destroyed
– No alternative voices other than the Party are allowed
– Trade unions are destroyed by Trotsky using the Military
– Workers have no organizations to speak for them
– State dictates their work rules and conditions
The Leninist State Characteristics
• Law is politicized
– Used for political control not justice
– Political dissent becomes a criminal act
– Court function is to promote Party and Revolution (Terror made
legal)
– Example is the “Show Trial”
• Usually associated with purges of dissenters
• Show trials used extensively by Stalin later on
• Lenin purges Moscow Clergy Apr. 1922 and SR’s in June
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Publicly degraded at the trials
Outcome decided before trials begn
Terrorized and intimidated, mot confess as families often threatened
Public worship prohibited, atheism promoted (no outside voices)
The Cheka (or secret police)
In December 1917 Lenin set up a secret police
force known as the Cheka. Cheka agents spied
on the Russian people in factories and villages.
Anyone suspected of being anti-Communist
could be arrested, tortured and executed without
a trial.
When opponents tried to assassinate Lenin in
1918, he launched the Red Terror campaign
against his enemies. It is said that 50,000 people
were arrested and executed in this period.
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Lenin’s Single Party State
Bureaucratic
Police state
Trade Unions crushed
Politicized law
Purges/Show Trials
Concentration camps
Prohibit public worship
Foreign Policy
Succession
The abandonment of the Constituent Assembly 1917
Straight after the October Revolution of 1917, Lenin promised
to hold elections for a Parliament to be known as the
Constituent Assembly.
Lenin renamed the Bolshevik Party as the Communist Party in
order to win wider support. However, the Communists only
won 175 seats out of 700, not enough for a majority.
Therefore Lenin shut down the Constituent Assembly after only
one day!
Lenin was not prepared to share power with anyone. This was
the first step in setting up a Communist dictatorship.
Success of the New Economic Policy 1921
To regain popular support, Lenin relaxed War
Communism with the New Economic Policy
(NEP). Smaller industries were returned to private
ownership and peasants could sell their surplus on
the open market. This was a return to capitalism
and competition.
Lenin hoped that NEP would give Russia ‘a
breathing space’ to get back on its feet. Most of the
Communist Party saw the need for NEP, but some
were against it.
On the whole NEP was a success. But it did create
some problems. Some peasants, the Kulaks, became
rich, while ‘Nepmen’ or businessmen made a profit
in the towns. Some saw NEP as a betrayal of
communism and return to the old system.
Communist control of the USSR by 1924
• Leningrad
• Moscow
When Lenin died in 1924, he had
been very successful in imposing a
communist dictatorship in Russia.
He had defeated all of his opponents
and established a strong communist
government. As each of the areas
formerly belonging to the Tsar came
under communist control, they were
turned into socialist republics. In
1923 these became the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
But, Lenin failed to provide a clear
successor on his death. This led to
four years of bitter struggle.
Who
would
succeed
Lenin?
OR
Trotsky – Red Army
Commander and
Commisar of Foreign
Affairs
Stalin – Commisar for
Nationalities
Aims, Ideology
Stalin
• Personal ascendency over the party/
cult of personality
• Create a socialist economy
• Make Russia a modern industrial
state
• Classless society/social reform
• Maintain security of the USSR
• Export socialist revolution
• Monopoly of communist power &
totalitarian state evolves into …?
Rise to Power
• Various party positions
• Key is Gen’l Secretary 1922
• Underestimated: The “Gray
Blur”
• Lenin Funeral
• Suppression of Lenin’s
Testament
• Skillfull political operator
– Zinoviev, Kamenev, Stalin
“Troika”
– Trotsky counter-attack
“Bureaucratization”
Rise to Power (Con’t)
• Policy Disputes
– NEP
– Socialism in one county v.
Permanent Revolution
• Defeat of Trotsky
– 1925 Cong. Endorses “SIOC”
– T, K, Z form “United Opposition”
– 1926 Stalin uses “right” Rykov,
Tomsky, Bukharin, v. T,K,Z (lose
positions in party)
– 1927 T expelled, 1929 exiled
• Defeat of the Right
– B, T, R, Uglanov, resist S move to left
due to “scissors” crisis
Why Does Stalin Win?
• Controls party apparatus
• Rivals underestimate him
• Plays opponents against each other
– Personal and policy issues
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Correctly gauges party mood
Outmaneuvered Trotsky
Testament not published
Use Resolution on Party Unity (no
factions) to silence critics
Historiography
• Structuralist Richard Pipes
• Continuity of Lenin & Stalin = Conquest
• Stalin as a Deviation From Lenin = Cohen
How did
Stalin rule
the USSR
between
1928-1941?
Yezhov
• Stalin’s Terror State
• Purges are regular feature of Soviet
state
– 1921-28 450 K Counter-revolutionaries
– 1921 150K “Onions”/carreerists
• Is the Great Terror simply a
continuation of the Purges?
– 1933-34 20% Expelled from Party
– Next step is qualitatively different
• Early Purges
– Shakty Trial 1928
– Industrial Research and Planning Trial
1930
– Ryutin Purges 1932
• For these early trials members are expelled
and lose priveleges
WHY?
• Violence a normal part of the Soviet
State?
How?
• NKVD
– Police, Secret Police, Camps, Border and
security guards
– Special Military courts
• Stalin’s cronies
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Yogoda, Yezhov, NKVD
Vyshinsky - Prosecutor
Beria, State Security
Poskrebyshov - Secretariat
• Trigger?
– Kirov Murder 1934
– Decree v. Terrorist Acts
– Party Congress 1934
• 1996 Attend- 1108 Shot by 1938
• CC 98 of 139 Shot
– K & Z arrested 1935
– Trial of the16 ( T, Z, K Counterrevolutionary Line)
• Confess under torture
– 1937 Trial of 17 (Anti-Soviet Trotskyist
Center)
• Alleged plot with Germans
– 1937 Decree of Anti-Soviet Elements
• Quota arrests and executions
– Trial of 21 (Trotskyite Rightists)
– New Anti-Soviet Center
– B, R, T all tried, 18 others
• Army Purge
– Tukhachevsky and most of Air Force,
Navy and Army officers
– All units end up understaffed,
inexperienced
• Purge of the people
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Yezhovschina
1934 – 1 mi arrested
1937 - 8 mi. in camps
1939 – 5-7 mi. more
1940 – 2 mi deported
1941 - ethnic deportations
• Later Purge
– Leningrad Affair
– Doctors Plot
• Why the Purges?
J. Arch Getty
– Stalin wants to retain power
– Stalin wants sole credit for Soviet
successes
– Stalin’s Personality
– Ther are some actual opponents (Ryutin,
Kirov) on issues like collectivization
• Revisionists
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J. Arch Getty, Sheila Fitzpatrick
Not just Stalin
Party officials want to eliminate rivals
Stalin can’t control all local officials
• Purges generate own momentum
– Background of forced collectivization
and Nazi rise breeds violence
– Yezhov/NKVD use purges to increase
power
The Struggle for power: Stalin v Trotsky
After the death of Lenin in 1924, there was a four year
power struggle between Josef Stalin and Leon Trotsky
over the succession to the Russian leadership.
Trotsky believed that under his leadership Russia would
become a catalyst for the spread of communism across
the world. He had been very successful as commander of
the Red Army in the civil war and appeared to have
Lenin’s support.
Stalin had not played a significant part in the revolution
of 1917, but since then he had gathered control of a
number of key posts in the Communist Party. Stalin was
determined to win control of Russia for himself. He was
not interested in international communism, he wanted to
make Russia strong and with himself at its head.
By 1928 Stalin emerged as the successor to Lenin and
Trotsky was forced into exile.
Reasons for Stalin’s success
When Lenin died he had warned the
Communist Party of Stalin’s threat in his
‘Political Testament’.
Comrade Stalin, having
become General
Secretary, has great
power in his hands, and
I am not sure that he
always knows how to
use that power with
sufficient caution.
Comrade Stalin is
too rude.
Reasons for Stalin’s success
Although Lenin had not supported him, Stalin was in a strong position. As
General Secretary of the Communist Party Stalin had responsibility for
appointing posts in the Party. This meant he could remove opponents and
replace them with his supporters. He was also popular in the Party as he
wanted to concentrate on turning Russia into a modern, powerful state; this
approach was called ‘Socialism in one country’.
In contrast Trotsky was much less popular. He had been a Menshevik and
had only joined the Bolsheviks in 1917. Trotsky was dismissed as
Commissar for War in 1925 and from the Central Committee in in 1926. In
1927 he was expelled from the Communist Party and forced into exile in
1929. Stalin had Trotsky assassinated in Mexico in 1940.
Other leading figures of 1917, Kamenev, Zinoviev and Bukharin, were
also removed by Stalin.
Stalin’s dictatorship: purges and propaganda
Even with his opponents removed, Stalin still felt
insecure. He conducted a policy of purges between
1934-1938. Millions were arrested, executed or sent to
labour camps.
Stalin used the NKVD, the secret police, to undertake
the ‘Great Terror’. Stalin purged:
• 90% of the army’s top officers,
• every admiral in the navy,
• 1 million Communist Party members,
• some 20 million ordinary Russians.
At the same time Stalin encouraged a cult of
personality. Propaganda was used to make people
aware of the part Stalin was playing in every aspect of
life – work, home and leisure.
Stalin’s face is seen everywhere. His name is
spoken by everyone. His praises are sung in every
speech. Every room I entered had a portrait of
Stalin hanging on the wall. Is it love or fear? I do
not know.
A foreigner describes the glorification
of Stalin in the USSR.
Stalin in 1928
Reasons for Collectivisation
Agriculture is developing slowly, comrades.
This is because we have about 25 million
individually owned farms. They are the most
primitive and undeveloped form of economy.
We must do our utmost to develop large farms
and to convert them into grain factories for the
country organised on a modem scientific basis.
Collectivisation
In the late 1920s, Russia suffered a food crisis. To feed starving workers,
Stalin ordered the seizure of grain from the farmers. But, just as happened
under War Communism, the peasants hid food or produced less. In 1929
Stalin announced the collectivisation of farms.
The most common was the Kolkhoz in which land was joined together
and the former owners worked together and shared everything. Stalin
persuaded peasants to join by attacking the Kulaks, peasants that had
grown as a result of the NEP.
Collectivisation had limited success and a terrible human cost, between 10
to 15 million people died as a result. Between 1931 and 1932, there was a
famine in Russia as not enough food was being produced. By 1939,
Russia was producing the same amount of food as it had in 1928.
Collectivisation was clearly a disaster and the problem was even worse as
its population had increased by 20 million - all of whom needed feeding.
Stalin’s Economy: Revolution
From Above
• Why end the NEP
– NEP recovery from War Communism had stalled by
1926
– Lenin had always said NEP is temporary
– United opposition was eliminated by 1926
– Scissors crisis 1927-28
• Revives forced requisitions
– Method to eliminate Kulaks
– Peasants always luke-warm to Communists
Stalin’s Economy: Revolution
From Above
• Collectivization
– Step One = Eliminate Kulaks
• Petty-bourgeoisie, eliminate opponents, warn other
peasants
– Peasant resistance and use of OGPU
– Brief Halt in 1930 (Historiography debate Traditional
v. Revisionist Lynn Viola)
– Resume 1931 but permit private plots and some
livestock
– National famine 1932-33= 4 - 6.5 mi. die
Stalin’s Economy: Revolution
From Above
– USSR did have rural population crisis and this program
eliminates it
• Wrong thing for right reason? Did Stalin succeed?
– YES!
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Party gets control over peasants (New serfdom?)
Grain procurements rise from 15% to 35% by 1933
Able to feed industrial workforce after 1935
Massive increase in urban workers 12 mi.
– No! : Grain production only rises from .5 tons per peasant to .57
• No incentive to work hard, have to buy grain by 1960’s
• Massive decline in livestock
Stalin’s Economy: Revolution
From Above
– Industrialization and 5 Year Plans
• 15th Party Congress sets Industrial targets and CC
picks the highest in1928 (NEP Ends)
• Quotas not methods
• Propaganda “Build a better world”
• GOSPLAN runs it, OGPU ‘motivates” i.e. terrorizes
workers
5 Year Plans
– 1st 5 Year Plan (1-5YP)
• Set of targets and quotas not a plan
• Propaganda targets young
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Create a Soviet “man/woman”
Sacrifices for the good of all
Plan is defense v. capitalists
Opposition = sabotage (miners tried for example for low
production)
• Giganto-mania
• Local levels try to meet goals but no central plan
5 Year Plans
– 2- 5YP 1933-37
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1934-35 successful because factories built under 1-5YP
Goals more realistic and food rationing ends
Still no coordination, lack raw materials
Hoarding, no cooperation
Fear of failure if officials share supplies
– 3- 5YP 1938-41
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Purges under way
Stakhanovites disrupt production
Labor discipline code
Conditions terrible
5 Year Plans
– Successes 1927-40
• GDP triples 1928-30, industrial output passes Britain,
Germany, France in1940
• Coal up 500%. Steel 600%, Oil 200%, Electric 500%
• 8000 new factories, 70,000 libraries, literacy rises from 51% to
81%, Tech. Colleges graduate 300,000 engineers
– Failures
• Only heavy industry = giganto-mania (Belomar Canal)
• Unbalanced economy, lousy quality, still can’t compete with
modern economies
• Food shortages drain scarce capital, industry eventually
stagnates and tech. collapses
5 Year Plans
• Incentives; Higher pay for skills or exceeding quotas
• Propaganda: “Heroes of Socialist Labor”, Socialist Realism,
KOMSOMOL
• Negatives: iron discipline, internal passports, Gulag, Show trials
(wreckers)
• Money sources: seize more garin, high taxes, drive down living
standards (56 mi. industrial workers)
• Historiography: Could Ind. Rev. occur w/o Stalin’s methods?
– NO: Wouldn’t have caught up, survived Hitler, Bukharin methods
won’t work, did it w/o foreign investment
– Yes: NEP showed similar growth, too centralized, “storming”
lowers productivity, Purges destroy, managers, engineers +
starvation
Grain
1928 = 73.3 million tons
1934 = 67.6 million tons
Cattle
1929 = 70.5 million
1934 = 42.4 million
Pigs
1928 = 26 million
1934 = 22.6 million
Sheep and goats
1928 = 146.7 million
1934 = 51.9 million
We are 50-100 years behind the
advanced countries. We must make up
this gap in ten years. Either we do it or
they crush us.
Stalin 1931
The Five Year Plans
Stalin believed that industry could only develop through state control. Under
GOSPLAN, three Five Year Plans set targets between 1928-1941 to increase
production.
Russian industry changed enormously. New towns such as Magnitogorsk
grew up and large projects such as the Dnieper hydroelectric dam were
developed. The USSR became a major industrial country.
The human cost was high. Forced labour killed millions, working conditions
were poor and hours of work were long.
The effects of Stalin’s rule on men and women
Millions of people suffered in Stalin’s purges – workers, peasants
and members of the Communist Party itself.
There was brutality, persecution, executions and forced labour.
Millions died of starvation and over-work. The shops were empty ;
clothes were dull and badly made and household items difficult to
find. Although the USSR was a Communist state, the dictatorship
of Stalin was just as complete, and in some ways even more
bloody, than that of Hitler.
But despite these appalling tragedies, there were some positive
aspects to Stalin’s rule.
For example schools were built and social insurance schemes were
introduced. Russia became a modern industrial country.
Social Policy
• Religion
– 1917 Confiscate all Church lands
– Kill many priests during Civil War
– Arrest Bishops 1920’s
– Propaganda: League of Militant Atheists
– 1929 ban churches from any activity except church
services
– 1930’s only 2% of churches still operate
– Program fails: 1937 57% still claim to be believers
– 95% of Mosques closed in 1930’s
Social Policy
• Education
– Literacy: 40% literate 1913, 94% by 1939
– Peoples Commissariat for Enlightenment (Lunacharsky)
• Ban bourgeois from education 1928
– 7-10 Years compulsory education (improves production)
• Core curriculum and Marxist theory
• State Books, tests exams uniforms all abandoned under Stalin then reintroduced 1930 and don’t have to be working class
– Special schools for elites
– Stalinst History, Research at Universities
• Disaster of Lysenkoism is example
Social Policy
• Women and Family
– Divorce easier 50%, abortion legal
– Stalin returns to traditional family structure (population growth)
– Restricts divorce, abortion restricted, traditional marriage,
homosexuality outlawed
• 1944 restrictions increase
– Divorced tightened further, abortion outlawed, small families
taxed, reinstate inheritence
– Few women in the Party, labor and Mother roles emphasized
Social Policy
• Culture
– 1920’s artists can experiment, futurism, modernism
– Stalin sees art solely as propaganda: must serve the people and
create a useful product
• Socialist Realism
– Glorify 5 Year Plans, Stalin’s genius
– Example N. Ostrovsky novel HOW THE STEEL WAS
TEMPERED glorifies a Komsomol member
– Union of Soviet Writers under Zhdanov attacks bourgeois themes
like individual emotions/feelings
– Party themes, easy language, common man characters,
– Theatre/Films: censored, Stalin like figures, same for music,
sculpture
Social Policy
• Cult of Personality/Propaganda
– Worship of Stalin
– Newspapers, posters, theatre, movies
• Stakhanovsim
• Komsomol Youth League
– Young Pioneers
– Path to CPSU, Exploited, indoctrinated
The Great Patriotic War 1941-1945
When Germany attacked the USSR in
1941, Stalin used the same ruthlessness to
defend his country.
The defence of the USSR was the
bloodiest war in history and cost the lives
of millions of people and the destruction of
thousands of villages, towns and cities.
The final victory in 1945 was, like
everything else, put down to the personal
leadership of Stalin by the Soviet
propaganda machine.
After the war, Stalin built up the USSR as
a superpower, in opposition to the USA.
This conflict was known as the Cold War.
Stalin died in 1953.