Extra detail: Dictatorship and Stalinism

Question 1

What did Stalin use terror for?

Answer 1

• To help him rise to power
• To enforce collectivisation through the destruction of the kulaks

Question 2

What was Ryutin’s document called and when was it circulated?

Answer 2

‘Stalin and the Crisis of the Proletarian Dictatorship’
March 1932

Question 3

How did show trials work/ what were they used for?

Answer 3

Public trials, foreign journalists invited, intended to prove that the USSR and Stalin were facing opposition from ‘enemies of the state’ who’d previously been faking loyalty

Question 4

When did Kamenev and Zinoviev have trials?

Answer 4

1935, secretly, and 1936 publicly

Question 5

Why did Kamenev and Zinovievs show trial take place?

Answer 5

For propaganda

Question 6

What were Kamenev and Zinoviev accused of?

Answer 6

Alliance with Trotsky, stirring up discontent, plotting to kill Stalin

Question 7

When did Yezhov replace Yagoda as head of the NKVD?

Answer 7

September 1936

Question 8

Why was Yagoda replaced?

Answer 8

Publicly: he hadn’t been active enough in uncovering the ‘conspiracy’
Privately: He failed to secure the confessions of Rykov and Bukharin, who Stalin desperately wanted to implicate

Question 9

Which three men led the NKVD?

Answer 9

Yagoda –> Yezhov –> Beria