Rule of Stalin

Question 1

Character

Answer 1

• Often depicted as a schemer and obsessive in wanting to gain personal power
• Megalomaniac with psychopathic tendencies, especially prevalent later in his career when he instigated the Great Terror
• Fuelled by a level of paranoia, he increasingly suspected that no one was to be trusted, including loyal party supporters and members of his own family
• “gross personality disorder” - Lynch
• View of Stalin as a madman has been challenged by historian Stephan Kotkin, who believes that Stalin was far more diligent, intelligent, resourceful and rational than he has often been made out

Question 2

Stalin as an administrator

Answer 2

1905 - Stalin emerged to represent local branch’s of the Bolshevik Party (Georgia and South Russia) at conferences
1912 - Elected to the Central Committee of the Bolsheviks where he excelled as an administrator and debater
1922 - Given the title of General Secretary, in charge of employment and administration, used this to his advantage to give out jobs often to the uneducated industrial workers who would then hold loyalty to him within the party

Question 3

Stalin as an manager

Answer 3

Began being given extra responsibilities after sowing his skill as a member of the Central Committee:
1917-1922 - Stalin was Bolsheviks’ specialist manager of national minorities’ issues (having been appointed Commissar for Nationalities in the first Soviet government)
Management skills evident in his role as commander during the Civil War
1922 - As General Secretary of the Communist Party, he held the most senior of all management posts - as a manager of people, Stalin was adept when dealing with those involved in the power struggle after Lenin’s death (especially Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev)
1927 - By this year, Stalin controlled the Party Congress, which allowed him to expel his main rivals from the party
His more sinister management of people seen through the instigation of the Great Terror and show trials (1936-1938) as well as the appointment of Beria as head of the secret police
1939-1941 - Stalin managed Russia’s resources to prepare for a possible Nazi invasion

Question 4

Stalin as a planner

Answer 4

Planned social and economic change, linking this with target-setting in an attempt to modernise Russia and improve its standing as a world power, reflected in:
1928 - Beginnings of the collectivisation programme
1928-1933 - Introduction of a planned economy with the first Five Year Plan being adopted, as well as introduction of the police state
January 1924 - Stalin had worked himself into a position of power based on his experience of holding senior political posts, accomplished through his ability to plan, organise and implement his ideas effectively, revealed in the way he became leader of Russia and his implementation of modernisation plans
However, he also had the ability to be ruthless when necessary, used unprecedented level of repression when faced with what appeared to be intractable issues, eg. Lenin’s legacy, a stagnant economy, opposition from national minorities and a changing world political climate

Question 5

Rivalries and divisions within the Bolshevik Party

Answer 5

• After overthrow of the Provisional Government in 1917, a number of prominent Bolsheviks, including Kamenev, Zinoviev and Rykov, called for a coalition to be formed with other socialist groups, although some left-wing SRs were allowed to join the ranks, Lenin bullied his Bolshevik colleagues into rejecting an alliance with opposing political groups
• Signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was opposed by the left, especially Trotsky, Lenin countered his opponents by claiming Germany would be defeated in WW1 and that it would soon be over, he stressed that territorial losses resulting from the Treaty would be reversed, however not all Bolsheviks were convinced of this argument
• Adoption of War Communism during the Civil War was considered harsh by some party members, Lenin conceded to pressure for change and introduced his NEP, this heightened tensions and widened divisions, right Bolsheviks favoured this temporary concession towards capitalism while left Bolsheviks saw it as a betrayal of revolutionary principles

Question 6

Prelude to the power struggle

Answer 6

Three key developments before Lenin’s death in January 1924
- Triumvirate was instigated within the Politburo, consisted of Zinoviev, Kamenev and Stalin, its purpose was to combat the growing influence of Trotsky, whom Lenin seemed to favour as a successor
- December 1922, Lenin provided his Political Testament, which criticised the personal attributes and achievements of many leading Bolsheviks, Stalin received heavy criticism for how he ran Rabkrin (The Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate) and his role in the 1921 ‘Georgian Affair’
- However, by 1924, Stalin had worked himself into a position of power by holding various political posts, including general secretary

Question 7

Ideological battle between Stalin and Trotsky

Answer 7

• Dispute over continuation of NEP
• Many demanded that a more openly democratic form of government should be adopted
• The left, under the guidance of Trotsky, continued to press for a Permanent Revolution, whereas the the right emphasised the need for Socialism in One Country

Permanent Revolution
- Trotsky argued that the Revolution of October 1917 would not be complete with the overthrow of bourgeois rule by the proletariat, it would need to continue on a national and international scale
- At national level, completion would occur only with the total ‘liquidation of all class society’
- Completion internationally would happen with the ‘final victory of the new communist society on our planet’
- Trotsky did not think communism could survive in Russia against foreign countries, such as America, Britain, France and Germany, whose ideologies were based on free market capitalism
- It was never clear how Permanent Revolution could be achieved, this paved the way for an alternative view, pushed foremost by Stalin, of Socialism in One Country

Socialism in One Country
- Referred to the process of spreading and embedding socialism in Russia so that it could become strong and powerful from within
- It would, through socialist policies such as the state control of economic institutions, become self-sufficient and less vulnerable to external ideological influences, such as capitalism
- Stalin and others could not see how a Permanent Revolution could be established unless it was preceded by Socialism in One Country

Question 8

Stalin’s split with Zinoviev and Kamenev

Answer 8

• The ‘Troika’ (Stalin, Kamenev and Zinoviev) successfully discredited Trotsky who was replaced as Commissar for War in January 1925
• However, Kamenev and Zinoviev became concerned by Stalin’s plan for dealing with peasants and his foreign policy
• They turned on Stalin, but with little success, both were removed as secretaries of their local party
• Polit-buro was simultaneously expanded (from six to eight members) and reinforced with Stalinists

Question 9

The United Opposition group

Answer 9

• Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev responded by forming United Opposition group
• Their opposition to the NEP and demands for more ‘free speech’ were treated with contempt, all were excluded from the Polit-burn
• By 1927, Trotsky was expelled from the party and after continuing to provoke trouble was exiled to Kazakhstan
• January 1929, he was expelled from the USSR altogether

Question 10

Proposals for collectivisation

Answer 10

• Stalin’s proposals for collectivisation, including renewed grain requsitioning, were opposed by those on the right, who thought it resembled aspects of War Communism
• Bukhara was particularly vocal in expressing his concerns and as a result of joining forces with Kamenev, was branded a Factionalist

Question 11

Stalin’s Rise to Power

Answer 11

Stalin was an astute politician, able to manipulate the situation following the death of Lenin to his own advantage
- Stalin suppressed Lenin’s Testament, which made a number of critical comments about his person that would have been very damaging for him if it had been made public
- He took advantage of Trotsky’s absence from Lenin’s funeral to make the major speech and appear to be the ‘true disciple of Lenin’
- He used his position as General Secretary of the Party to become indispensable in distributing patronage and put his own supporters in top positions, as they owed their place to him, they supported him in committees
- Used the Lenin enrolment that was designed to increase party membership to his advantage, those who joined were aware that the privileges gained by joining the party depended on being loyal to those who had invited them to join and these were usually members of the Secretariat who Stalin controlled
- He took advantage of the attack on factionalism, which condemned party divisions and this made it difficult to criticise any decisions, which allowed him to use it to attack any attempts at criticism
However, it was not just Stalin’s strengths that facilitated his triumph, bit also Trotsky’s failings and weakness
- Trotsky had been viewed with suspicion by many in the party as he had been a former Menshevik, joining the Bolsheviks only in 1917
- He continued his holiday rather than attending Lenin’s funeral, he lied and claimed that he had been given the wrong date
- Trotsky failed to take important jobs when offered, declining the pots of deputy chairman of the Soviet government, he claimed that his Jewish background would embarrass the party, but it was also known that he disliked mundane jobs and this prevented him from building up a following in the Party
- Many in the Party feared that after Trotsky’s success in the Civil War, he would use the Red Army to establish a military dictatorship, others feared that his intellectual skills and therefore preferred to endorse Stalin, who seemed less of a threat
Outcomes:
1929 - Bukharin was ousted from his positions as President of Comintern, editor of Pravda and member of the Politburo
Tomsky and Rykov, who worked alongside Bukharin, also suffered demotions
Stalin simply gained the agreement of a core of loyal party members, many of whom were given roles under him as General Secretary, in order to remove ‘critics’ from positions of power
With both the left and right removed from key jobs, Stalin was free to dominate proceedings, both collectivisation and a series of Five Year plans were implemented with a great deal of speed
1929 marks the point when it is difficult to distinguish between real and imaginary challenges to Stalin’s authority

Question 12

Types of propaganda under Stalin

Answer 12

Slogans
Cult of Personality
Newspapers
Groups
Stakhanovite Movement
Leisure
Film and Cinema

Question 13

Use of slogans

Answer 13

“Peace, Bread and Land”
“All Power to the Soviets”
Also used pamphlets, tracts, newspapers, photographs, posters and statues to glorify Stalin, reminiscent of the days of the Tsar

Question 14

Cult of Personality

Answer 14

Developed through the use of propaganda to build a positive image of a leader so that the population offers total obedience
- American writer John Steinbeck claimed, after a visit to Russia in 1947, that “everything in the Soviet Union takes place under the fixed stare of the plaster, bronze, drawn or embroidered eye of Stalin”
- The notion that Stalin was omnipresent and omnipotent is re-enforced by thousands of eye witness accounts, such as that of Alexander Adeyenko, a steelworker who stated that “Day and night, radio told us that Stalin was the greatest man on earth - the greatest statesman, the father of the nation, the genius of all time”

Question 15

Newspapers

Answer 15

• Under the communists, the main newspapers, Pravda and Izvestiya were primarily propaganda tools rather than news outlets
• Stalin used them to good effect, to promote the need for and achievements of the Five Year Plans
• Effectiveness on general population questioned as Pravda especially was aimed at party members

Question 16

Groups

Answer 16

• Special youth groups were established, the Pioneers and Komsomol, to protect the young against the ‘degeneracy of bourgeois culture’
• Komsomol was first established under Lenin but was formalised under the control of the CPSU in 1926
• Organisation was characterised by being open to 14-28 year olds (Young Pioneer movement for those under 14), members swore allegiance to Stalin and the Party, the organisation provided the provision of a route to full membership to the CPSU
• Komsomol members were encouraged to inform on those who criticised their leaders
• Membership increased fivefold from 1929 to 1941
• Most members were encouraged to support, with their labour, Stalin; economic projects, they also provided flag-wavers and cheerleaders used in May Day parades and the celebrations for Stalin’s birthday

Question 17

Stakhanovite Movement

Answer 17

• Propaganda was used in the workplace to raise productivity
• Movement was based on the extraordinary efforts of the Donbas miner, Alexei Stakhanov, who supposedly produced 100 tonnes of coal in a five-hour shift, which was 14x the required quota
• He was turned into a model worker for others to copy, meant that workers felt guilty about their supposed underperformance and pushed themselves harder
• Those who reached high levels of productivity were given special rewards, such as holiday in Moscow
• Although this achievement was used as propaganda to encourage other workers, it actually created more issues as groups established to copy his achievement were given privileged access to tools and supplies, which disrupted plans and led to an overall loss of production where Stakhanovite movements were strongest

Question 18

Leisure

Answer 18

• Used to promote communist ideals
• Dynamo and Spartak Moscow football teams were used to show the rest of Europe how successfully Russian people could perform under Communist rule

Question 19

Use of film and cinema

Answer 19

• By late 1920s, Stalin was using the cinema to promote collectivisation and his Five Year Plans, under the guidance of the Council of People’s Commissars, Soviet cinema was immersed in ‘socialist realism’

Question 20

Censorship - Socialist realism

Answer 20

1932 - all literary groups were closed down and anyone wanting to write had to join the Union of Soviet Writers, during first congress of the group (1934) it was announced that members had to produce material under the banner of socialist realism
Involved writing to depict the struggle of ordinary people to overcome oppression, any work had to be approved by party
Some writes, such as Boris Pasternak, changed their beliefs to fit in with wishes of the Union of Soviet Writers, others rebelled and were arrested, sent into exile or to labour camps and executed

Question 21

Censorship - The New Soviet Man

Answer 21

Censorship continued into WW2, Stalin was especially concerned with doctoring information about the rest of the world
Radio broadcasts were distorted, news was fictionalised and restrictions were placed on all the arts to prevent ‘bourgeois behaviour’
Writers were still valued highly as the ‘engineer of men’s souls’ (Stalin), but only if they focused on glorifying Russia’s achievements and promoted the concept of the New Soviet Man, who was the ideal Soviet citizen, hardworking, law abiding, moral and supportive of the Communist Party

Question 22

What is a police state?

Answer 22

Where the government uses the police to strengthen its authority with very strict law enforcement, which is often arbitrary and restricts basic rights, alongside the monitoring of the general behaviour of the population
Stalin believing that combining the use of ordinary and secret policing was critical in ensuring that Soviet citizens obeyed his rules and in creating a sense of fear
Was tantamount to terrorising the population and proved a highly effective way of preventing the development of opposition

Question 23

The OGPU

Answer 23

• After Civil War, the Cheka was disbanded and replaced by the State Police Administration, and was later expanded in 1924 and renamed the United State Police Administration (OGPU)
• Created fear in the general populace, would take unsuspecting people from the streets for no obvious reason, other than ‘looking suspicious’ or that someone had reported their supposed anti-party behaviour
• Would often call on people at odd times, especially early hours of the morning, arrest them and take them away for interrogation
• Confessions of guilt were often extracted from people even though they may have been innocent of alleged crimes against the state, this was done to set an example and generally create fear

Question 24

The NKVD

Answer 24

To combat opposition to Stalin’s personal dictatorship, the NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) was formed in 1934
headed by Yagoda, and later Yezhov, the NKVD created a permanent structure of terror
Was crucial to the imposition of the purges and was notable for gathering evidence against high-ranking communists, such as Bukharin, Kamenev, Zinoviev and Trotsky
- Helped administer the Gulag camps, over 40 million people were sent to these labour and prison camps during the Stalinist regime
- However, Stalin suspected the NKVD of conspiracy, so in 1938 Yezhov was replaced by Beria, who proceeded to arrange the execution of Yezhov and his close allies
- By start of WW2, the NKVD had been purged of around 20,000 members

Question 25

Yagoda

Answer 25

• Secret police official who rose to be head of the NKVD from 1934-1936
• Was involved in the show trials of the 1930s and supervised the construction of the White Sea canal, built using slave labour
• However, was demoted as head of the NKVD in 1936 and arrested in 1937, charged with espionage and Trotskyism
• After his confession at his trial, he was shot

Question 26

Yezhov

Answer 26

• Known as the ‘poisoned dwarf’ because of his small stature and vicious behaviour
• Was made head of the NKVD in 1937, but was tried and shot in 1939.

Question 27

Beria

Answer 27

• Became deputy premier in 1941 and a member of the Politburo in 1946
• Played a crucial role in intelligence and sabotage operations on the Eastern Front in WW2
• Promoted to head of NKVD in 1939

Question 28

The military

Answer 28

• Use of military to help implement economic policy was furthered by Stalin
• Red Army was required to requisition grain as part of collectivisation policy
• Also helped administer the purges and played a role in the Great Terror
• Ironically, the military leadership was consistently perceived as a threat by Stalin, he therefore removed a number of key military figures in the Great Purge of 1936-38, including the great Civil War hero, Marshal Tukhachevsky
• By end of the purge, over 40% of the top echelon of the military had disappeared
• Seemed illogical given rising international tensions following the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 and Hitler’s expansionist foreign policy
• Stalin’s ambivalence towards the military could be seen to have hindered it as an effective tool for control

Question 29

Show Trials

Answer 29

Used to engender fear, trialled in front of a public audience which would have been carefully selected by Party officials, key trials:
1) Murder of some of Stalin’s closest allies, most notably Sergei Kirov and the perceived plotting to overthrow Stalin resulted in the first major Stalinist show trial of August 1936, 15/16 accused were found guilty, having been forced into making confessions and were shot, their confessions also implicated others, especially Bukharin, Tomsky and Rykov
2) Second major show trial took place in early 1937, experienced Bolsheviks such as Radek and Pyatakov were among the 17 accused of working with Germany and Japan to plan the division of the USSR and of sabotage and wrecking in general, 13 were killed and the remainder were sent to gulag camps
3) March 1938 was the last of the major show trials, among the 21 accused were Bukharin, Rykov and Yagoda, their supposed crimes ranged from conspiracy to subvert the ruling regime, spying on behalf of external enemies and plotting to kill Lenin in 1918, most followed the fate of those previously put on trial and were executed

Question 30

Significance of show trials

Answer 30

• Showed that, according to historian J.N. Westwood “there seemed little hope of resisting Stalin’s forcefulness”
• By naming, shaming and implicating, the show trials had the desired effect of adding to the terror that was being created through the other modes of repression
• By 1930, most of the old Bolshevik party had ‘disappeared’; 80% of the membership in 1939 had only been members since 1930

Question 31

Radek and Pyatakov

Answer 31

• Radek had been a leading Bolshevik propagandist since 1905 and had been head of Comintern in the 1920s
• Pyatakov was an economist who had held government posts in the 1920s and 1930s
• Both were accused of being members of the anti-Soviet Trotskyist centre

Question 32

The Stalin Enrolment

Answer 32

• As General Secretary, Stalin controlled all positions and who they were given to
• Those that he gave party positions to, typically members of the industrial working class, followed him blindly and held intense loyalty to Stalin due to him being responsible for giving them jobs, as well as the promise of promotions

Question 33

Post Kirov Purges (1934-6)

Answer 33

December 1934 - Nikolaev killed Kirov in Communist Party Headquarters, this was branded as a terrorist attack by Stalin, who used the event as a justification for the purges
Kirov had been a prominent Bolshevik leader who had progressed through the Communist Party ranks to become head of the party organisation in Leningrad
Some believe his assassination was ordered by Stalin who was concerned by Kirov’s growing popularity
Decree Against Terrorist Acts was enforced two hours after this assassination
On the pretext of hunting down the killers, the purge began, led by Yagoda, the head of the NKVD
Three thousands suspected conspirators were rounded up and removed from the party, Stalin such these vacant positions with his own nominees, eg. in 1935 he filled Kirov’s post as party boss in Leningrad with Zhdanov, Krushchev became party boss in Moscow and Beria became the head of the NKVD

Question 34

Purge of the Party (1936-9)

Answer 34

The Party shed a further third of its members who were seen to be resisting the pace of industrialisation and collectivisation
Stalin used show trials to eliminate key potential threats who held significant popularity

Question 35

Show Trials

Answer 35

Used to engender fear, trialled in front of a public audience which would have been carefully selected by Party officials, key trials:
1) Murder of some of Stalin’s closest allies, most notably Kamenev and Zinoviev and the perceived plotting to overthrow Stalin resulted in the first major Stalinist show trial of August 1936, 15/16 accused were found guilty, having been forced into making confessions and were shot, their confessions also implicated others, especially Bukharin, Tomsky and Rykov
2) Second major show trial took place in early 1937, experienced Bolsheviks such as Radek and Pyatakov were among the 17 denounced as “Anti-Soviet Trotskyists”, accused of working with Germany and Japan to plan the division of the USSR and of sabotage and wrecking in general, 13 were killed and the remainder were sent to gulag camps
3) March 1938 was the last of the major show trials, among the 21 accused were Bukharin, Rykov and Yagoda, they were branded “Trotskyist-Rightists” and their supposed crimes ranged from conspiracy to subvert the ruling regime, spying on behalf of external enemies and plotting to kill Lenin in 1918, most followed the fate of those previously put on trial and were executed

Question 36

Stalin Consitution

Answer 36

Established during the purges, rule that party members had the rights to have basic human rights, however party politics had to come above all other politics
This gave Stalin an excuse to round people up and execute them for being suspected spies against the Soviet Union

Question 37

Purge of the Armed Forces (1936-9)

Answer 37

• Use of military to help implement economic policy was furthered by Stalin
• Red Army was required to requisition grain as part of collectivisation policy
• Also helped administer the purges and played a role in the Great Terror
• Ironically, the military leadership was consistently perceived as a threat by Stalin, he therefore removed a number of key military figures in the Great Purge of 1936-38, including the great Civil War hero, Marshal Tukhachevsky who was supposedly feeding military information to other countries
• By end of the purge, over 40% of the top echelon of the military had disappeared
• Seemed illogical given rising international tensions following the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 and Hitler’s expansionist foreign policy
• Stalin’s ambivalence towards the military could be seen to have hindered it as an effective tool for control

Question 38

Purge of the people (1936-9)

Answer 38

• Gulags were supposedly used for re-education, but were actually used for slave labour and were designed to breed fear
• Largest and most notorious camps were constructed in the most inhospitable parts of the USSR, ranging from Arctic north to Eastern Siberia and Central Asia
• 8 million people had been in a gulag by 1939, 1/10 had been in a Gulag, 1/3 knew someone who had been
• Stalin claimed to not know about what was going on in the camps, blamed overzealous military leaders
• At the end of the Great Terror, the annual death rate in Gulag camps was 91 per thousand, but this increased to 170 per thousand during the period of WW2

Question 39

Can the Stalin’s establishment of the police state be considered effective?

Question 40

Collectivisation - definition

Answer 40

Process of bringing small farm units together to form bigger farms, idea was that peasants would then collaborate to produce more food to feed both themselves and the growing urban proletariat
Before Stalin emerged as leader of the USSR, only around 3% of peasant farmers were working on a collective, within the first 10 years of the policy introduction, 50% of farms were collective and the majority were by 1933

Question 41

Why collectivisation?

Answer 41

• Famine of 1927-8 sparked Stalin’s desire to push for mass collectivisation
• Wanted to create “socialism in the countryside” involved getting rid of the NEP, eradicating the ‘wealthier class of pesants’ (kulaks) and marginalising rightists who supported a more commercial-based agricultural policy, all of these groups were seen as traitors to the revolution and opponents of Stalin
• He understood that in order to modernise industry, changes to agricultural production had to occur, rural workers had to increase their productivity to meet a dramatic increase in demand for food from an expanding urban proletariat

Question 42

Voluntary or forced?

Answer 42

• Collectivisation policy came into action November 1929
• Agricultural workers had the choice to sign up to collective farms
• Principles were explained to villagers, then a mixture of poorer peasants and ‘politically aware’ workers were recruited to seek out wealthier peasants and denounce them as ‘kulaks’, helped to create a sense of fear within a community which made it much easier to encourage others to sign up to the collective program, other incentives were offered such as the prospect of working with a new tractor and combine harvester
• Result was the formation of either ‘Kolkhozy’ (collective farms) or ‘Sovkhozy’ (state farms)

Question 43

Economic impacts

Answer 43

• Grain production initially increased dramatically (from 50 to 84 million tonnes between 1922-1930)
• The late 1920s witnessed progress in agriculture but the 1930s were a period of stagnation

Question 44

Mechanisation

Answer 44

• By grouping farms together in collectives, productivity increased, in places where this was especially prevalent, they were rewarded with agricultural machinery
• The motorised tractor became the symbol of the new mechanised farming system, this then meant that a number of workers became redundant, allowing Stalin to use them as industrial workers in his new factories
• Despite the mechanisation programme, which involved the establishment of motor tractor stations to provide machines for these collectives, the machines often broke down and the lack of trained specialists and mechanics hindered their effectiveness

Question 45

Social impacts

Answer 45

• March 1930, Stalin claimed that 58% of all households had been collectivised
• Kazakhstan, collectivisation virtually destroyed the nomadic way of life, the peasants there reacted by moving out of the region into China, the population of Kazakhstan fell by 75% within only 8 years
• Stalin blamed negative impacts on regional officials whom he argued had become “intoxicated with success”
• By late 1930s, the consumption of meat and fish had fallen by 80%

Question 46

Dekulakisation and its impacts

Answer 46

• Wealthier peasants were ‘visited’ by Komsomols and plenipotentiaries, where ‘kulak’ houses would then be stripped bare in an attempt to locate hidden wealth
• Clothing, food, fuel, furniture and other personal belongings were confiscated and sold or given away to other villagers, in anticipation these peasants often sold their goods, slaughtered animals and abandoned their homes to flee to the towns
• Best case scenario if caught: reallocated land, often of a very poor quality, they were then given unrealistic food production targets which they invariably failed to meet, result was that they were deported to Gulag work camps in inhospitable places such as Siberia
• Worst-case: transported immediately to Gulags or were more likely to be shot
• Estimated that from the beginning of 1928 to the end of 1930, between 1-3 million kulak families (6-18 million people) were deported and around 30,000 were shot, in this sense Stalin achieved his aim to ‘liquidate the kulaks’. as a class
• However, in many ways ‘kulaks’ were a myth, the term was invented to provide an excuse to blame certain people for the failings of communist agricultural policies
• There were always some peasant farmers who seemed to be more productive than others simply because they were good at farming, to classify them as an elite group within the peasant class was a deliberate exaggeration
• Although this process eliminated the most effective farmers, leading to an increase in famine, it was beneficial for the Stalin
• Dekulakisation functioned to break apart the peasant classes and create a climate of fear and distrust
• The increased famine (food consumption feel by 100kg per head between 1928-1932) due to dekulakisation meant that Stalin could push agricultural workers toward industry to further his own goals of industrialisation
• He promoted this through the promise of higher living conditions, higher wages and more food, essentially utilising their desperation

Question 47

General aims of Stalin’s economic policy

Answer 47

• Push toward a self-sustaining industrialised society, wanted a system with more worker autonomy that encouraged workers to believe that they were the key to economic success
• Prepare for a potential conflict with Russia’s capitalist enemies, development of heavy industry was the key to expansion and modernisation of the armed forces, which was essential to the defence of Russia
• These aims were also linked to the wish for economic autarky (self-sufficiency)

Question 48

How did Stalin believe these aims could be achieved?

Answer 48

• Abandoning the NEP completely and replacing it with a policy based on strict state control and centralised planning
• Industrialisation was to be stimulated through the setting of production targets which were to be achieved over a series of five-year periods, this policy actually involved little strategic planning in the modern sense and unrealistic targets were often set based on very flimsy research
• Initial targets were stipulated by key officials in the party, Gosplan (State Planning Commission) was given the task of researching and calculating figures needed for target setting for individual industries
• Targets were then passed onto industrial commissariats to frame a plan for clearly defined areas of economic activity, initially four commissariats (heavy industry, light industry, timber and food), however by the beginning of the third plan, there were 20 of these bodies
• Plans were then passed onto regional managers and directors to implement, however were little more than very detailed instructions about what had to be achieved, there was very little guidance on how targets were to be arrived at and on the availability of resources needed to support the planning process

Question 49

First Five Year Plan - Successes

Answer 49

(October 1928-December 1932)
- Significant increases in the output of heavy industry
- Engineering industry developed considerably
- New specialised trial centres emerged, for example, Magnitogorsk in the Urals

Question 50

First Five Year Plan - Limitations

Answer 50

• Consumer industries neglected, causing discontent among certain societal sectors
• Shortage of skilled workers was apparent, partly due to show trials and purges
• Although production levels rose, targets were not met, there was still a dramatic shortfall in some industries such as chemicals

Question 51

Second Five Year Plan - Successes

Answer 51

(January 1933 - December 1937
- Electricity industry took off and heavy industry built on the base laid by the first plan, over 4500 new enterprises were started
- Engineering became self sufficient and no longer relied on imports of specialist equipment
- Specialised training schemes for workers were implemented
- Targets were scaled down and a more rational approach to planning was adopted
-Commissariats were better organised and more effective

Question 52

Second Five Year Plan - Limitations

Answer 52

• Consumer industries continued to decline, although some flourished, eg. meat packaging
• Oil industry was very slow to expand compared with Western counterparts

Question 53

Third Five Year Plan - Successes

Answer 53

• Production and productivity in heavy industry continued to be impressive although regional variations became more apparent
• Notable improvement in the quantity and quality of armaments produced

Question 54

Third Five Year Plan - Limitations

Answer 54

• Russia’s entry into WW2 led to a diversion of resources to fuel the war effort
• Shortage of raw materials
• General slowing in the pace of progress, some historians have attributed this to the purges as well as the war
• By the end of the third Five Year Plan, there were many features of a lack of planning: shortages and a lack of expert workers

Question 55

Economic impacts

Answer 55

• First plan covered period October 1928 - September 1933, however came to an end December 1932
• Government claimed that the plans were so successful, targets had been met well ahead of schedule, reality was that workers had struggled to meet extremely unrealistic targets
• Under the first two plans, managers submitted false claims about production levels (coal rising from 35.5 million tonnes in 1928 to 166 in 1940, and electricity from 5.0 million kilowatt hours to almost 50 in the same time period), however this fabrication backfired when Stalin became so impressed with he achievement that he revised the targets
• However, it is understandable why managers did this, as given the climate of fear that had been manufactured and what would happen to them if they failed to meet targets

Question 56

Social impacts

Answer 56

• Led to regular employment and therefore more stable incomes for families, gave the Russian people greater access to better housing, health care and education
• In order to bring about increased industrial production, a more education workforce was required and many benefitted from increased educational opportunities, with some 200,000 in higher education and nearly 1 million in secondary technical schools
• Reduction in personal freedoms as any vestiges of workers’s rights disappeared as free trade unions were abolished and a code of ‘labour discipline’ was imposed
• This introduced a range of punishments from loss of wages to imprisonment in labour camps
• In order to achieve the targets, workers’s interests and living conditions were of little interest to the regime, with most living in overcrowded tenements, often 4 or 5 families shared a toilet and kitchen
• Regime may have claimed that wages improved, but as there was food rationing and higher prices, living standards were actually lower in 1937 than they had been in 1928

Question 57

Political impacts

Answer 57

• Centralised planning of the economy went hand in hand with a centralised, rather than developed, political system, very little political power was filtered down to region level
• Economic reforms used to control opposition, any individual or group that showed any hint of sabotaging economic planning and/or collectivisation were severely dealt with
• Peter Gatrell argues that it was these policies that allowed Russia to survive the Great Patriotic War (describes the period of WW2 where the Soviet Union was defending the country following the German invasion in 1941) from 1941-5, and emerge as a superpower in the post-war period