Transcript Stalin class notes File

MAN OF STEEL
COLD, HARD, IMPERSONAL
After Lenin’s
death, Stalin
had total
power by 1928
His rival,
Trotsky, was
forced into
exile – then
killed
Made the USSR a
Totalitarian State
Wanted to develop
the Soviet Union
into a world
superpower
Developed a
Command
Economy
“We are 50 or 100 years behind
the advanced countries. We
must make good this difference
in 10 years. Either we do it or
we shall be crushed.” - Stalin
Quotas
Decline in
consumer goods
Soviet industry
booms
Government controls
ALL aspects of
workers’ lives
Produced fantastic
results for the USSR
(as a nation, not the
people of the USSR)
Collective Farming –
AKA government controls all agricultural
Peasants
Resist
Forced
Famine
10 – 15 Million
Dead
Millions sent to Gulags
Hard labor for prisoners
Secret Police
• Used terror & violence to force
obedience & crush opposition
• Stalin began killing all enemies real & imagined
• Monitored phone lines, read mail &
planted informants
• Stalin’s secret police arrested &
executed millions of “traitors”
• Stalin turned against members of
the Communist Party
• Wanted to eliminate anyone who
threatened his power
Thousands of Bolsheviks who had
helped stage the 1917 Revolution were
executed for “Crimes against the Soviet
State”
Could be arrested for ANYTHING, or nothing
Even the Police
Resulted in 8 – 13 million deaths
Government
censored all
individual
creativity
Indoctrination &
Propaganda
Lectures for
workers
Statesupported
youth
groups
Propaganda used to glorify Communists’
(Stalin’s) achievements
New art form called Socialist Realism
Lenin
Stalin
Religious Persecution
• Wanted to replace religious
teachings with the ideals of
Communism
• League of the Militant Godless
(atheist) - spread propaganda
attacking religion
The Russian Orthodox Church was a
main target
Churches & synagogues were
destroyed
Religious leaders
were executed or
sent to the gulags
Stalin also brought agriculture under
his control, but at a terrible cost.
• Peasants
had to farm on state-owned
farms or collectives.
• They
kept their houses and
belongings, but the livestock and tools
were owned by the state.
• The
state set prices and controlled
supplies.
The peasants rebelled, causing
Stalin to respond with brutal force.
•
He believed the kulaks, wealthy farmers,
were responsible for the resistance.
•
He tried to eliminate the kulaks by taking
their land and sending them to labor
camps. (in Siberia)
•
Thousands were killed or died during this
purge.
The Terror Famine of 1932 was a result of the
government’s efforts to rid the land of the
kulaks and eliminate peasant resistance.
Peasants resisted
by growing only
enough grain to
feed themselves.
The government
seized all of the grain
to meet industrial
standards, leaving the
peasants to starve.
Between 5 and 8 million people died in
Ukraine alone.
"From 1931 to 1934 we had great harvests. The weather conditions
were great. However, all the grain was taken from us. People
searched the fields for mice burrows hoping to find measly
amounts of grain stored by mice..."
(as remembered by Mykola Karlosh)
"I still get nauseous when I remember the burial hole that all the
dead livestock was thrown into. I still remember people screaming
by that hole. Driven to madness by hunger people were ripping the
meat of the dead animals. The stronger ones were getting bigger
pieces. People ate dogs, cats, just about anything to survive."
(as remembered by Vasil Boroznyak)
"People were dying all over our village. The dogs ate the ones that
were not buried. If people could catch the dogs they were eaten. In
the neighboring village people ate bodies that they dug up."
(as remembered by Motrya Mostova)
"The famine began. People were eating cats, dogs in the Ros’ river
all the frogs were caught out. Children were gathering insects in the
fields and died swollen. Stronger peasants were forced to collect the
dead to the cemeteries; they were stocked on the carts like
firewood, than dropped off into one big pit. The dead were all
around: on the roads, near the river, by the fences. I used to have 5
brothers. Altogether 792 souls have died in our village during the
famine."
(Antonina Meleshchenko, village of Kosivka, region of Kyiv)
"I remember Holodomor very well, but have no wish to recall it.
There were so many people dying then. They were lying out in the
streets, in the fields, floating in the flux. My uncle lived in Derevka –
he died of hunger and my aunt went crazy – she ate her own child.
At the time one couldn’t hear the dogs barking – they were all eaten
up.”
(Galina Smyrna, village Uspenka of Dniepropetrovsk region)
Genocide The deliberate killing of a
large group of people, esp.
those of a particular ethnic
group or nation
• http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/educati
on/heroesvillains/g4/cs2/g4cs2s5.htm
You see you may remember that from about 1929
to about 1933, the Soviet Union carried out two
extremely interesting and tragic campaigns.
One was the so-called liquidation of the Kulaks
(well-off peasants).
Now by the way, liquidation meant liquidation was a real true physical liquidation.
Parallel to this and on the basis of this liquidation a
forced collectivisation was carried out.
Now, I was a witness and a contemporary of both
campaigns and I now say that they created a
tragic situation –
famine, branches of the economy paralysed and
since the armed forces were really fed from
agriculture (soldiers used to come from mainly
peasantry)
of course the moral and psychological effect of
these tragedies demoralised in a degree the
armed forces.
That is one thing. Secondly you will recall that in
1933-34 there were so-called party purges. The
party purges aimed at one thing – to eliminate
those who had some kind of critical mind,
independent mind, who questioned the wisdom
of this collectivisation and liquidation of Kulaks.
Now these purges freed the party and I must add
here the party was and still is the only party, it
was the ruling party.
It was the party who ran the state. Now that party
was freed of its most brilliant personnel
members, the thinking part. That too affected the
state of affairs.
You will see my conclusion in a second.
Then you will recall that on December 1
1934, a member of Politburo, Kirov, was
assassinated.
From then onwards, until about the end of
1939, the USSR was a country, or the
country of notorious show trials and
extremely unusual but dreadfully tragic –
er – I don’t really know, people in the West
call it purges,
but it’s worse than purges, it was a national
tragedy,
its purpose being to eliminate not only from
the party but from the whole state all those
who had some kind of critical mind.
So the country was freed so to speak of its
creative leaders at all levels in all
branches of the economy.