How did Stalin keep his power - Unit 3

Question 1

Propaganda:

Answer 1

• Slogans, ‘Peace, Bread, Land’.
• Pamphlets, newspapers (Pravda and Izvestia).
• Leisure promoted communist ideals. Spartak Moscow football teams successful under Communist rule.
• Film- ‘socialist realism’.
• Stakhanovite movement- propaganda used in workplace to increase productivity. Used example of miner, we need to live up to him.
• Cult of personality- Stalin worshipped as a hero.
• Replaced Tsarism with Stalingrad.
• ‘Stalin is the Lenin of today’.
• Youth organisations.

Question 2

Censorship:

Answer 2

• Under Stalin, censorship increased.
• 1932, all literacy groups closed down, anyone who wanted to join had to join ‘Union of Soviet Writers’.

Question 3

OGPU:

Answer 3

• Once CW over, Bolsheviks saw need to improve image, disbanded Cheka 1922.
• Replaced by OGPU 1924.
• Not as brutal as Cheka, instilled fear.

Question 4

NKVD:

Answer 4

• To combat opposition to Stalin.
• Headed by Yagoda, permanent form of terror.
• Imposed purges.
• Purged 20,000 members.

Question 5

What did the NKVD do?

Answer 5

• Show trials.
• Purges.

Question 6

Show trials:

Answer 6

• Public trials of Stalin’s political rivals.

Question 7

Purges:

Answer 7

• 1930s, change of policy, critics not removed from key political posts but from party altogether.
• Those who failed to implement collectivisation well or those who disagreed with Stalins attempts to ‘liquidate the Kulaks as a class’ lost party card.
• Mid 1930, 1/3 purged.
• Of 1996 delegates that attended 1934 party congress, 1108 executed.

Question 8

Gulags:

Answer 8

• 40 million sent to Gulags under Stalinist regime.