Decelopment Of Stalinist Dictatorship - Political Structure Of Communist State Under Stalin

Question 1

What were the structures established by Lenin and what did Stalin do to them?

Answer 1

-rule by one party + centralised control
-Stalin perpetuated + extended them with increasingly dominant personal influence

Question 2

How did Stalin do this?

Answer 2

-control ensured through parallel structures most levels
-dual party membership + trusted members nomenklatura held gov offices

Question 3

What was Stalin’s concern and how did he reduce this?

Answer 3

-concerned party should reflect his wishes
-party congresses less frequent + none summoned 1939-52

Question 4

How did Stalin gain more personal control?

Answer 4

-as Gen Sec controlled more important appointments to party ‘apparat’
-this in turn controlled ‘nomenklatura’

Question 5

How did the Apparat controlling the nomenklatura benefit Stalin?

Answer 5

-he commanded vast patronage over important positions throughout Soviet society
-used power of appointment build up party membership

Question 6

What else did he use his power of appointment to do?

Answer 6

-develop an elaborate bureaucracy of loyal servants

Question 7

What was the ‘apparat’?

Answer 7

-the party ‘apparatus’ or administrative system
-those who worked in this area called ‘apparatchiki’

Question 8

What changed about party membership 1924-25?

Answer 8

-Lenin enrolment
-was in commemoration of Lenin’s death

Question 9

What did this ‘Lenin enrolment’ do?

Answer 9

-doubled party membership to one million
-1.6m 1930 to over 3.5m 1933

Question 10

Where did these new party members come from?

Answer 10

-drawn from younger + less we,l educated urban workers + ex-peasants
-less interested in ideological debate + more concerned with own careers

Question 11

Why did they join the party?

Answer 11

-attracted by Stalin’s ‘nationalist’, energetic + brutal policies
-knew loyalty to him could bring benefits for themselves + family

Question 12

What did Trotsky say about Stalins power in his book ‘Revolution Betrayed’ 1936?

Answer 12

-Stalins power rested on vast ‘administrative pyramid’ of 5m party officials that needed be swept away by new proletariat rev

Question 13

What was correct about Trotsky’s statement?

Answer 13

-identifying the bureaucratised society that emerged as result of Stalinist centralisation

Question 14

But what was Trotsky incorrect about?

Answer 14

-bureaucrats never swept away
-but became more entrenched + staunchest defenders of Stalinist socialist order