Dictatorship and Stalinism until 1934

Question 1

In what year was Trotsky expelled from the USSR and Bukharin removed from the Politburo?

Answer 1

1929

Question 2

What year was the Industrial Party show trial for sabotage and treason + the collectivisation and coercion of kulaks?

Answer 2

1930

Question 3

What year was the Metro-Vickers trial of British engineers for sabotage?

Answer 3

1933

Question 4

What year was the 17th party congress?

Answer 4

1934

Question 5

What year is the OGPU replaced by the NKVD?

Answer 5

1934

Question 6

What year is Kirov murdered?

Answer 6

1934

Question 7

What year was the show trial of 16?

Answer 7

1936

Question 8

Where had the machinery of state terror emerged from?

Answer 8

under Lenin

Question 9

The machinery of state terror had emerged under Lenin and so the USSR was lardy a police state by what year?

Answer 9

1928

Question 10

The Soviet people were kept under strict surveillance by who? (2)

Answer 10

Party activists and informers

Question 11

Who kept extensive records on the population?

Answer 11

the General Secretariat

Question 12

When had Lenin establish the Cheka?

Answer 12

Decemeber 1917

Question 13

Why had Lenin established the Cheka in December 1917?

Answer 13

to act as his “sharp sword of the revolution”

Question 14

From what years were security functions carried out by the OGPU?

Answer 14

from 1922-1934

Question 15

The OGPU supervised a network of labour camps which had been built up since 1918 to replace what?

Answer 15

the old tsarist prison camps

Question 16

Why did Stalin first extend the use of terror?

Answer 16

to ensure his position in the leadership struggle and to enforce collectivisation through the obstruction of the kulaks

Question 17

In 1930, why did Stalin expel some of his former supporters from the Party?

Answer 17

for criticising the excesses of collectivisation

Question 18

Why in 1931 who did Stalin put on trial?

Answer 18

a group of former Mensheviks and SRs

Question 19

In the First Five Year Plans for industry, why did Stalin send specialists and engineers to labour camps?

Answer 19

as he accused the of machine breaking and sabotage

Question 20

What year was the Shakhty trial?

Answer 20

1928

Question 21

Why was there a Shakhty trial in 1928?

Answer 21

In 1928, managers and technicians at the Shakhty coal mine had questioned the pace of industrialisation and thus accused of counter-revolutionary activity and forced to confess

Question 22

What happened to the defendants at the Shakhty trial in 1928?

Answer 22

5 were executed and other received long prison sentences

Question 23

What year marked the end of the 1932 First Five Year Plan?

Answer 23

1932

Question 24

What had the forced collectivisation lead to?

Answer 24

the 1932-33 famine

Question 25

Who was Ryutin?

Answer 25

former Moscow Party Secretary and a rightist who was expelled from the party in 1930 for critiquing collectivisation

Question 26

tell the story of Ryutin?

Answer 26

He was the former Moscow Party Secretary and expelled from the party in 1930 for criticising collectivisation. He circulated documents which blamed Stalin for the USSR’s economy policies and arrested in 1932 with a 10 year prison sentence. Executed in 1937 as part of Yezhovshchina

Question 27

What was the name of the 200 page document that Ryutin distributed amount the Party members in March 1932?

Answer 27

“Stalin and the Crisis of the Proletarian Dictatorship”

Question 28

Who was Kirov?

Answer 28

popular Leningrad Party Leader who had been tipped as a likely successor to Stalin

Question 29

Why was Zinoviev, Kamenev and 14 others expelled from the party?

Answer 29

for failure to report the existence of the document

Question 30

By what year had 1/5th of the party been branded Ryutinites and expelled in a non-violent purge (or chistka)

Answer 30

1934

Question 31

Who were the 3 leaders of the NKVD ?

Answer 31

Yagoda then Yezhov then Beria

Question 32

In 1934, the labour camps were reorganised into a national network known as what?

Answer 32

Gulags

Question 33

In 1934 the OGPU was replaced by the NKVD which had control of the internal security of the USSR as well as control of the ordinary police. What did this mean?

Answer 33

that the whole system of policing and state repression was unified under the NKVD

Question 34

Yagoda was responsible for preparing the first major show trial in 1936 but accused of being insufficiently thorough and executed in what year?

Answer 34

1938