Stalin Flashcards
Collectivisation
The main type of collective farm was the kolkhoz (plural kolkhozy and habitants of collective farms are sometimes referred to as kolkhozniks). where all the land was held in common and run by an elected committee.
To form a kolkhoz, between 50 and 100 households were put together.
All land, tools and livestock had to be pooled. Under the direction of the committee, the peasants farmed the land as one unit. Much larger areas could be farmed more efficiently through the use of tractors and other machinery. These would be supplied by the state through huge machine and tractor stations (MTS). Experts could help peasants to farm in more modern ways using metal ploughs and fertilisers. However, by the kolkhoz model statute of 1935 each household was allowed to keep its own private plot of up to one acre.
Why Did Stalin Introduce Collectivisation
- Support Rapid Industrialisation - Stalin judged that the only way to raise the capital needed to develop Soviet industry was to use the land. The necessary first step towards this was the collectivisation of Russian agriculture. This involved taking the land from the peasants and giving it all to the state. The peasants would no longer farm the land for their own individual profit. Instead, they would pool their chorts and receive a wage. Stalin calculated that this change would allow the Soviet Union to use the collective profits from the land to finance a massive industrialisation programme. For him, the needs of the land were always subordinate to those of industry.
-End of 1920s- Stalin talks about achieving a great turn, achieving socialism once and for all in the economy and society, wants to do this at break neck pace.
-Control peasants- dont work with/trust- Crush and use peasants.
-Dekulak- ideological- extension of class warfare- eliminate kulaks as a class, but just want to stop hoarding.
-Increase urban labour, increase work force - efficiency due to large plots of land and better farming technology, so freed up workforce so increase in urban workforce.
Stalins Collectivisation- implementation
Stalin’s experience of implementing the Urals-Siberian method in 1928 and again in 1929 (see page 174) decided him that forced collectivisation and the elimination of the kulaks as a class were needed to bring the peasantry under control once and for all. By this time Bukharin and the right had been defeated, and there was a ground swell of opinion among Party activists who were concerned about the amount of power the kulaks had over the economy. Stalin hoped that collectivisation would lead to an increase in the state’s share of larger harvests at a lower price. It would also make a large pool-of surplus rural labour available to industry.
In November 1929 the Central Committee resolved to recruit 25,000 industrial workers (known as the 25,000ers) to go to the countryside alongside Party officials, reinforced by army and police units. They would be given instructions not to come back without organising a collective farm. In the first two months of 1930, roughly half the Soviet peasantry around 60 million people in 100,000 villages) were herded into collective farms. However, the process was so disruptive that, concerned to ensure the sowing and harvesting of grain took place, Stalin called a halt. In an article in Pravda (Dizzy with success’) on
2 March 1930, he hypocritically stated that collective farms cannot be set up by force’
and accused local officials of excessive zeal. The number of peasant households in collective farms fell from 58 per cent to 24 per cent between March and June. In September, with the harvest in, the collectivisation offensive began again as vigorously as ever and by the end of the 1930s 90 per cent of households were collectivised - 25 million peasant households had been combined into 250,000 kolkhozy.
Stalins collectivisation- offensive agasint kulaks
The attack on the kulaks was central to the whole collectivisation policy. Stalin called for the liquidation of the kulaks as a class on 27 December 1929. Their number was exaggerated and the definition of kulak was elastic. Any peasant who opposed collectivisation was dubbed a kulak or an ideological kulak. The focus on the kulaks was deliberate to mask the fact that it was an offensive against the peasantry as a whole. A minority of the poorer peasants supported and at first benefited from de-kulakisation. There was no real class division in the villages and no class war to fan. De-kulakisation was a way of frightening the peasants into submission.
In a chilling foretaste of what was going to happen in the Great Terror, each region was given a number of kulaks to find. They were found whether they existed or not. Quotas were frequently exceeded to demonstrate the vigilance of the GPU (the secret police) or the local Party organisations.
The kulaks were divided into three categories:
* counter-revolutionaries who were to be shot or sent to forced-labour settlements
* active opponents of collectivisation who were to be deported to other areas of the Soviet Union, often to Siberia
* those who were expelled from their farms and settled on poor land
The deported kulaks, or rather peasants identified as kulaks, played an important part in developing industrial resources in remote places at minimal cost.
Inmates of the gulag labour camps and punishment brigades built canals, roads or the new industrial centres. Andrea Romano has calculated that in the years
1930-31 about 1.8 million peasants were deported in cattle trucks to Siberia, Kazakhstan and other inhospitable areas, many of them dying there. A further 400,000 households were uprooted but remained in their districts. Some
390,000 people were arrested, most were sent to camps and approximately
21,000 were shot. In May 1933 it was decided to stop the mass deportation of kulaks; the disruption of agriculture and the difficulties in organising resettlement were too great. However, this did not mean any let-up of the pressure on kulaks. They would be dealt with in a different way, as we shall see in the Great Terror.
As well as its impact on the villages, the campaign had an impact on the towns.
Many more families than were deported chose self-de-kulakisation and joined the 3 million a year leaving for the towns. This produced overcrowding and strained the rationing system to breaking point.
Stalins collectivisation - peasant opposition
The peasants resisted collectivisation bitterly despite the mass deportations.
* In 1930 there were 13,754 outbreaks of mass unrest.
* The demonstrations, riots and even full-scale uprisings involved over 2.5 million peasants.
*Acts of Kulak terrorism claimed 3,155 victims among Bolshevik activists and Soviet officials
In many instances troops had to be brought in. Peasants burned crops, tools and houses rather than hand them over to the state. One of the main forms of resistance was to slaughter animals and eat or sell the meat rather than hand over the beasts to the kolkhoz. The dramatic fall in livestock figures, bears this out.
Action by women olten proved the most effective form of opposition. There was a wave of women’s revolts’ (bab’i bunty) in the North Caucasus in February
1930. Kaganovich, a member of the Politburo, recognised that women had played the most advanced role in the reaction against the collective farm.
The women’s protests were carefully organised, with specific goals such as stopping grain requisitioning or retrieving collectivised horses. They reckoned, sometimes correctly, that it would be more difficult for troops to take action against all-women protests. The government found their tactics difficult to deal with.
The peasants deeply resented the attack on their traditional ways of life. In 1930 the village commune, the Mir; was abolished. Thousands of churches were closed, church bells were melted down and priests persecuted. This was part of the Cultural Revolution (see page 216). Millions just left. Between 1928 and 1941, 20 million peasants made for the towns and industrial areas. Kevin McDermott calls this a demographic shift of unprecedented scope that altered the face of the Soviet Union’. The towns were under immense strain and the government brought in internal passports to control the vast movement of people.
Stalins Collectivisation- Famine
In 1932 and 1933 in the Ukraine, a major grain-producing area in the Soviet Union, famine raged. Yet in 1933 state procurements were more than double the level under the NEP and exports continued. To conceal the extent of the crisis people were prevented from fleeing from the famine area. Robert Conquest, one of Stalin’s sternest critics writing before the archives were open, stressed that the Soviet collectivisation terror took more lives than were lost by all countries on all fronts, in the First World War. Conquest emphasised Stalin’s criminal responsibility’ for the Ukraininan famine in which 7 million died of starvation and saw it as part of a campaign to smash Ukrainian nationalism.
This interpretation is rejected by Wheatcroft and Davies, but they accept that it was a man-made lamine caused by ruthless and excessive grain procurements.
They have had access to the archives and their figure for deaths is 5.7 million, still an enormous figure’.
Hunger meant theft of grain from collective farms soared, most of it by collective farmers themselves. In August 1932, even though he knew there was a famine (he used the word in a letter to Kaganovich and Molotov in June), Stalin himself drafted the ‘law of five ears of corn’ (see below). Kolkhozniks were arrested for ‘hairdressing’ - the cutting of individual ears of corn in the fields, hence the title commonly given for the law. By the end of 1933 about 1,000 people had been executed - as this figure was only 4 per cent of those convicted, the numbers arrested was clearly huge. Laws like this, and de-kulakisation, explain why peasants formed the vast majority of those in Soviet camps throughout the 1930s, and why peasants would remain a substantial part of the prison population until Stalin’s death.
Stalins Collectivisation - The kolkhoz model statute and private plots
In 1935 a special Party Congress was called to adopt a model statute or charter for collective farms. It remained the basis for kolkhoz organisation until well into the 19605. It laid down rules for the payment of kolkhozniks for work on the collective farm and for the relations between the kolkhozy and the MTS. It also legalised private plots of up to one acre for each household. Livestock was limited to one cow and calves, one sow and piglets, four sheep, and any number of rabbits and poultry. Livestock was generally pastured on collective land. It has been estimated that these private plots provided 52 per cent of vegetables, 57 per cent of fruit, 70 per cent of meat and 71 per cent of milk as well as butter, honey and wool to Soviet
Impact of collectivisation- Economic Disaster
Any assessment of collectivisation reveals a very mixed picture. Economically, it appears to have been a disaster. The fact that grain harvests dropped dramatically in the early 1930s, when grain was most needed, and did not recover to their 1928 level (apart from 1930, which was an exceptional year until the latter half of the 1930s is a damning indictment. This is an even worse performance when you compare the figures with the last harvest of tsarist Russia in 1913 (80.1 million tons). The Soviet Union also lost a huge proportion of the animal population. Meat production did not reach pre-collectivisation levels until after 1953.
Sheep and goats go from 146 million (1928) to 50 million (1933)
Impact of Collectivisation - Economic Success
However, although the overall grain harvest declined in the early 1930s, state procurements did not. This was more important to Stalin than making agriculture more productive. The state collected the grain it needed to feed the rapidly growing workforce and to sell abroad to pay for industrial equipment.
What is more, dispossessed peasants from the overpopulated countryside fed to the towns, so providing labour for the new factories. Collectivisation had succeeded in its main purpose - to provide the resources for industrialisation.
This view, however, has been challenged by several historians. They believe that valuable resources had to be diverted to agriculture: in 1933 there were less than half the horses there had been in 1928 and there were not enough Iractors to replace them. In the vain effort to make good the deficit, tractors alone consumed half the production of quality steel in the USSR in 1932.
Impact of Collectivisation - Political Success
For the Party, collectivisation was an essential part of its modernisation drive.
The Party did not want a sizeable sector of the economy to be dominated by the private market or to be at the mercy of the peasants who hoarded grain.
In this sense, collectivisation was a political success. The Party gained control of the villages and did not have to bargain with the peasants anymore. It had established a system, using local soviets and MTS, of controlling the countryside and making agriculture serve the towns and workers.
Impact of Collectivisation- Devastation for the peasants
As for the impact on the peasants themselves, the death toll and human costs of de-kulakisation and the famine were horrendous as we have seen. Millions died and millions fled from or were forced out of the villages. A way of life that had existed for 500 years vanished forever. For those who stayed, collectivisation was a second serfdom’. Sheila Fitzpatrick’s study of peasant attitudes makes it clear that peasants blamed Stalin for collectivisation and the famine; they saw him as their inveterate enemy, they wished him dead, his regime overthrown, and collectivisation undone, even at the cost of war and foreign occupation’
Features of the Five Year Plan
The plans were dominated by an emphasis on the development of heavy industry. Stalin and the Supreme Economic Council (Vesenkha) agreed that the lions share of investment should go into coal, iron, steel and other heavy industries. These would provide the power, capital equipment and machine tools that could be used to manufacture other products. The soviet Union would then be less dependent on the West for these goods and could move towards self-sufficiency or ‘autarky. This decision meant that consumer industries producing clothes, shoes and similar products would be downgraded. Soviet citizens were asked to sacrifice their standard of living for longer-term objectives. There were two main reasons behind this:
1 It seemed to the Stalinists that Western industrial revolutions had been underpinned by the initial development in coal, iron and steel.
2 They were driven by the need to develop the sort of industries that could protect the Soviet Union should it be attacked from the West.
Three other features of the plans are worthy of note:
* The setting of production and output targets which industrial enterprises had to achieve was absolutely central. Five-Year Plans set down broad directions and could be changed as they went along. There were also shorter one-year or even quarterly plans which set more specific targets for individual enterprises.
The targets were backed by law, so failure to meet targets could be treated as a criminal offence. Bonuses were paid to enterprises that exceeded their plan target.
* Huge new industrial centres were constructed virtually from nothing, for example at Magnitogorsk in the Urals and Kuznetz in western Siberia. Most of these were located east of the Ural mountains, a strategic decision to make them less vulnerable to attack from the West.
* Spectacular projects were conceived to demonstrate the might of the new Soviet industrial machine. This has been called ‘gigantomania. The Dnieprostroi Dam in eastern Russia was, for two years, the world’s largest construction site and it increased Soviet electric power output fivefold when it came on stream. Other projects included the development of Magnitogorsk steel works, the Moscow-Volga canal and the prestigious Moscow metro with its elaborate stations and high vaulted ceilings.
Stalins Five Year Plans
Stalins Great Turn, the Five Year Plans would achieve socialist industry , industrial economy once and for all - away from the NEP.
Gosplan set up in 1921, an economic body in charge of strategic planning. Decided that by the end of the 1920s if they continue with the NEP Russia will not industrialise.
1917, Vesenskha set up- operating body
First Five-Year Plan
1928-1932, Say that it was cut short as so successful.
Ridiculously high production targets to meet as Vesenskha and Gosplan constantly outbid each other- an initial target for coal was that in five years produce 35 million tonnes, eventually reached 75 million tonnes.
Did achieve rapid industrial growth in heavy industry, workforce doubled, party and workers support plan.
The emphasis was on heavy industries - coal. oil, iron and steel, electricity, cement, metals. timber. This accounted for 80 per cent of total investment; 1,500 enterprises were opened. Coal and iron output doubled.
However, Consumer industries see very little growth, even a decline. Lack of skilled workers created major problems as workers were constantly changing jobs.
In reality, many targets were not met. The Great Depression had driven down the price of grain and raw materials, so the USSR could not earn enough from exports to pay for all the machinery it needed.
Also, a good deal of investment had to go into agriculture because of the forced collectivisation programme. However, the Soviet economy was kick-started: there was impressive growth in certain sectors of the economy and there were substantial achievements
Second Five-Year Plan
1933-1937. Continued focus on heavy industry. By 1937, the USSR was virtually self-sufficient in machine-making and metalworking. Move industries to east and start up new industries in the east to protect from the West.
There was greater emphasis on communications. especially railways to link cities and industrial centres. A total of 4,500 enterprises opened. The plan benefited from some big projects, such as the Dnieprostroi Dam, coming into use.
Continued industrial growth at a slower pace but still growth. Food supplies recover and standards of living improve, not because of five year plan however. In 1937 growth slows after 3 good years (33-36) due to high targets leading to the stealing of raw materials to meet targets and a decrease in quality of goods.
Consumer goods industries still lagging
Third Five-Year Plan
1938-1941. Focus of armaments as resources were diverted to them due to increasing threat from Hitler- in 1936 Hitler invaded the Rhineland. Workers and managers blamed for economic slowdown of 1937 and can be put in prison for being late or changing jobs without permission. Many Factories ran short of materials leading to difficulties at the beginning of 1938 due to an exceptionally hard winter and the diversion of materials to the military. Gosplan was thrown into chaos when the purges created shortages of qualified personnel, such as important managers, engineers and officials, who linked industries and government. .Germany invade in 1941 cutting plan short.
Political Impact of the Five Year Plans - First Five Year Plan
In April 1929, two versions of the plan were produced - a basic and a much higher optimum version.
The latter was chosen. This envisaged targets being increased by astonishing amounts, for instance, coal up from 35 to 75 million tons and iron ore from 6 to 19 million tons. To many, these seemed hopelessly unachievable.
This frenetic pace and enthusiasm did not just come from above. The idea that the Soviet Union was at last on the road to socialism, via industrialisation, inspired Party members and urban workers alike. Young people especially were gripped by the feeling that they were creating a new type of society that would be far superior to that of their capitalist neighbours. After the compromises of the NEP, there was a return to the war imagery of the civil war and War Communism. There was talk of a ‘socialist offensive’, and of mobilising forces on all fronts. Groups of enthusiasts became shock workers who strove to increase productivity and urge each other on with socialist competition’. There were ‘campaigns’ and ‘breakthroughs, ‘ambushes’ by class enemies. People who opposed or criticised the regime’s policies thus became guilty of treachery. Bourgeois specialist-baiting and denunciation by workers was positively encouraged from 1928 as part of a Cultural Revolution.
The massive mobilisation of labour played a crucial role as the number of industrial workers in the USSR doubled during the First Five-Year Plan.
Collectivisation made a major, if largely unplanned, contribution. Millions poured in from the countryside completely lacking in training or experience of living conditions. It was almost impossible to forge a disciplined and diligent workforce. Specialist-baiting was not conducive to discipline and Stalin called a halt in a speech in June 1931. There was a further ideological retreat when Stalin attacked petty bourgeois egalitarianism’:
Higher wages and other incentives were used to encourage workers.The authority and status of management was now supported and a decree at the end of 1932 allowed managers to sack unsatisfactory workers and deprive them of ration cards, social benefits and factory housing. However, the managers needed the workers, especially skilled workers, if they were to reach output levels anywhere near their targets. A tough approach would lead to workers literally voting with their feet and moving on in search of better conditions.
It was a quicksand society. Labour turnover was astronomically high. At Magnitogorsk alone in the course of 1931 the total number of workers went up considerably but this increase was just a fraction of the number on site at some time during the year. Magnitogorsk was a revolving door (see Figure 3).
Political impact of the Five Year Plans - Second Five Year Plan
The year 1932 was one of crisis but the First Five-Year Plan was presented as a great success by emphasising heavy industry rather than light industry and agriculture, and focusing on quantity rather than quality. The Second Five-Year Plan was more realistic. Total investment was reduced and resources concentrated on completing projects in progress like the big plant at Magnitogorsk and other metal works. Three good years followed from 1934 to
1936. There was a gradual recovery of agriculture, a rapid increase in industrial output and rationing ended in 1935.
At ten o’clock on 30 August 1935, Alexei Stakhanov, a pneumatic-pick operator, began his special shift cutting 102 tons of coal in five hours, almost sixteen times the norm. He was given perfect conditions and, exceptionally, a support team. Afterwards there was a great deal of publicity. Stakhanov, the Soviet Hercules’, was put on the front cover of Pravda. He said, ‘In our country, under socialism, heroes of labour must become the most famous.
On 11 September, Pravda used the term ‘Stakhanovite movement’ for the first time and in November Stalin called for Stakhanovism to spread widely and deeply’ across the entire Soviet Union. Record mania swept the country. The Stakhanovite movement was seen as a way of compelling management to adopt new production methods and increase rates of production. Those reluctant to do so were branded as saboteurs. With pressure from above to meet increased targets and from below from workers wanting to be Stakhanovites, who would have wanted to be a manager in Soviet Russia at that time?
Historians have differing views on the effectiveness of the Stakhanovite movement. Lewis Siegelbaum argues that bonuses and gifts were showered on a favoured few. Ordinary workers, however, responded with violence, sabotage or demands to be classified as Stakhanovites, and the attempt to resurrect the mood of grass roots enthusiasm associated with the First Five-Year Plan broke down due to the purges .
In the second half of 1936 the situation deteriorated: a terrible harvest, shortages, an economic slowdown and dramatic industrial accidents, such as the Kemerovo mine disaster. The imperatives of meeting production targets of the Five-Year Plans led regional Party and economic leaders into self-protective practices that involved a systematic deception of the centre. Desperate to fulfil targets, managers sought to bribe or steal from others to get raw materials; factories turned out substandard or useless products or fiddled the figures. The local Party leadership and even local NKVD often colluded with this because they did not want to be held responsible for unfulfilled targets.
The political impact of the Five-Year Plans - The regime’s response to the economic slowdown
The regime explained the slowdown as due to criminal negligence and deliberate sabotage by officials and managers, and indiscipline by rank-and-file workers.
Its response was purges of officials and managers and the increasingly tough Labour decrees of 1938 and 1940. Both responses made the problem worse.
Under the Labour decree of 1938 a stricter system of work-record books was introduced. Managers were ordered to refuse employment unless the employee could produce a satisfactory work-book with details of and explanation for his/ her previous changes of employer.
The Labour decree of 1940 contained the following terms:
* Working day lengthened from seven to eight hours, and working week lengthened from five out of six to six out of seven days (Sunday was to be the normal day of rest), without additional pay.
* Changing jobs without specific authorisation became a criminal offence, punishable by imprisonment.
* Absenteeism (arriving more than 20 minutes late for work on two occasions) was to be punished by up to six months compulsory labour at 75 per cent normal pay.
* Employers who failed to report cases of the above, or who took on such workers were liable to criminal prosecution.
The Labour decrees were almost universally detested and were a part of the austerity measures brought in to restrict budget expenditure as the large increases in defence expenditure in the Third Five-Year Plan had repercussions throughout the economy. There was a level of popular discontent that dismayed the NKVD.
Gulags
The first corrective labour camps (Gulags - an acronym for ‘Main Administration of Corrective Labour Camps and Settlements’) after the revolution were established in 1918 after the attempted assassination of Lenin and a rapidly growing internment system during the Civil War. In March 1940, there were 53 separate camps and 423 labour colonies in the USSR and the utilisation of deportees and prisoners was fundamental to the realisation of some of the greatest achievements in industrialisation during the 1930s. For example, the Belomor Canal, which connects the White Sea with the Baltic, was almost entirely constructed by hand, using 250 000 prisoners between 1931 and 1933 It is estimated that almost 25 000 prisoners died in the first winter building the canal, their bodies thrown into the ditch they had been digging. Prisoners also worked in mines or cut timber without pay. The increase in prisoner numbers coincided with collectivisation; even political prisoners would now be forced to carry out hard labour, and prisoners were underfed, housed in poor conditions and worked long hours in a difficult climate. Prisoners could be executed if they refused to work.
It is possible that around 10% of prisoners in the Gulag died each year, although official figures obscure accuracy. The Gulags were situated all over Russia - some of the most hostile in Siberia, Kazakhstan and arctic Russia - and by 1939 it is estimated there were approximately 2.9 million people in the labour camp system forced to maintain the state’s industrial output.
Social Impact of the Five- Year Plans - Positives
-Workers Ideologically Valued
-Skilled or productive workers could gain higher wages or bonuses
-One of the most important sources of new labour was women. Some 10 million women entered the workforce. Women dominated some professions, particularly medicine though there were only four women head doctors in hospitals) and school teaching. The less well educated, especially tough ex-peasant women, became labourers or factory workers.
Social Impact of the Five- Year Plans - Negatives
-High Turnover Indicative of poor working conditions
-Few consumer goods available
-Food shortages
-Harsh Labour Disipline
-Longer working dat and week
-Lack of urban hosuing
-Decline in real wages
-Women Paid less and found more difficult to gain advancement than men
Social Impact of Five Year Plan - Urbanisation and Living Standards
One of the most momentous transformations of the twentieth century was the migration of 20 million peasants to the urban centres of the Soviet Union between 1928 and 1941.
This influx worried Party officials who were concerned that their drinking, lack of discipline, religious beliefs and general lack of political consciousness would infect younger workers. These peasants seemed to be the antithesis of the New soviet Person. Indeed David Hoffman, in his study of peasants in Moscow in these years, argues that they rejected such an identity and never internalised the role of loyal proletarian, nor did they develop an allegiance to the Soviet government.
Vast numbers moved into Moscow during the First Five-Year Plan (1929 - 2.2mill , 1932- 3.7 mill, 1939 - 4.1mill), and while the flow slowed after that there was intense overcrowding( 1928, 5.9 sq m per person, 1940, 4sq m).
This was true nationally. In new industrial towns like Magnitogorsk it was even worse as the planners were not able to meet the needs of urban dwellers. There, many lived in dormitories and barracks and 25 per cent lived in mud huts they had built themselves. Generally housing remained abysmal; there was intense overcrowding with people living in communal apartments, usually one family to a room. Some had to make their homes in corridors and corners’ in other people’s apartments: those in corridors and hallways usually had beds, but corner-dwellers slept on the floor in a corner of the kitchen or other public space. Not till the Khrushchev period was anything done to improve the terrible overcrowding which characterised the Stalin era.
If conditions for the peasants were dire, life was not much better in the towns. Rationing which had existed since 1929 would not end until January 1935, real wages declined markedly in the 1930s: Moscow workers’ real wages were 52 per cent of their 1928 level in
1932. Nationally the level of 1925 was not regained until the late 1950s. Between
1928 and 1932 the consumption of meat by the Moscow working class fell by 60 per cent and dairy produce by 50 per cent; once again NEP levels of consumption would not be reached during Stalin’s lifetime. An increase in the provision of education and health care, and more employment opportunities for women were the only developments to have a positive impact on the standard of living.
Social Impact of Five Year Plan - Women in Workforce
One of the most important sources of new labour was women. Some 10 million women entered the workforce. Women dominated some professions, particularly medicine though there were only four women head doctors in hospitals) and school teaching. The less well educated, especially tough ex-peasant women, became labourers or factory workers. Generally, women were paid less and found it more difficult to gain advancement than men. Sarah Davies’ survey of women workers in Leningrad in 1935 showed that women workers in the city made up 44 per cent of the workforce but were likely to be less well paid, less literate and less involved in political and technical education, and their chances of reaching the top were limited. Of 328 factory directors, only twenty were women and seventeen of these were in textile and sewing factories where well over three-quarters of the workforce were women. Encouraged to be Stakhanovites.
The big increase in the number of women in the workforce saved family incomes from a sharp fall as two incomes were now needed to sustain viable family life. As Geoffrey Hosking has pointed out, women coped with ‘the double burden’ by limiting the number of children they had. In that way the fruits of female emancipation became the building blocks of the Stalinist neopatriarchal social system.’
Shops were characterised by long queues and empty shelves and shopping itself was a survival skill. Sheila Fitzpatrick regards the new distribution system replacing private trade as a policy disaster whose dimensions and long-term consequences were exceeded only by those of collectivisation’. It was introduced without any prior planning at a time of general crisis and upheaval; the scale of the malfunctioning and its impact on the everyday life of town-dwellers were remarkable. The conditions of urban life worsened suddenly and drastically with the onset of the First Five-Year Plan and even though the situation improved marginally in the mid-1930s, the distribution of consumer goods remained a problem throughout the lifetime of the Soviet Union.
Stalins Five Year Plans - a verdict
The Five Year Plans did produce real achievements, between 1928 and 1940, Industrial output trebled and the annual industrial growth rate was 10%.
To protect the country from attack from the West and survive WW2 a significant part of soviet industry relocated in East, preventing Nazis being able to destroy/control Russian Industry fully. Defence concerns also drove the 28 fold increase in production of armaments and defence 1930-40.
These achievements came at the cost of immense human suffering, grim living and working conditions, harsh labour discipline, food shortages and an increase in working week and a decrease in real wages, show this.
Economic success also limited as riddled with inefficiencies, Staggeringly large amounts of pig-iron and steel were found to be unusable when the time came to count up output. But even if it was declared defective, it was still sent to metal-starved firms who had little choice but to use it. Blast furnaces and blooming mills lasted a fraction of the time they were supposed to before needing extensive repairs due to them not being strong enough(poorly made, rushed to meet targets). High targets also led to stealing and the NKVD lying about meeting targets to higher officials.
The Soviet Cultural Revolution
- The cultural revolution intended to bring about a radical restructuring of society. Old intelligentsia and bourgeois values would be attacked and removed from all areas of society. A new socialist proletarian society would be established.
- The term “cultural revolution” was introduced into the Soviet political language by Vladimir Lenin in 1923 in the paper “On Cooperation”: “The cultural revolution is… a whole revolution, a whole strip of the cultural development of the whole mass of the people
- The cultural revolution in the Soviet Union as a focused program for the transformation of national culture in practice often stalled and was massively implemented only during the first five-year plans. As a result, in modern historiography there is a traditional correlation of the cultural revolution in the Soviet Union only with the 1928-1931 period. This was Stalin’s Cultural Revolution as part of his ‘Great Turn’ away from everything bourgeois.
The Shakhty Trial - Start of Stalins Cultural Revolution
The Shakhty trial in May 1928 with its attack on bourgeois specialists’ and engineers has been seen as the start of the Cultural Revolution. The trial of 53 managerial and technical staff accused of counter-revolutionary activities was held at the Shakhty coal mine in the Don Basin. Stalin was closely involved in the proceedings. The staff were forced to confess to sabotage in a show trial staged in Moscow for maximum exposure lasting 41 days. It was attended by 30,000 Soviet inhabitants and filmed for newsreels. Stalin demanded death sentences and five were executed; the rest were given long prison sentences. The aim of this was clear - to show that the non-communist technical elite could not be trusted, to stir up class warfare, intimidate managers and Party officials and prepare the way for rapid industrialisation. The Shakhty trial created shock waves throughout the planning system. Gosplan was purged of pessimists and non-Party members at the end of the 1920s. Statisticians who presented low targets were replaced by those who could paint a more optimistic picture. At the trial, Vyshinsky, who was to be the chief prosecutor in the show trials of the 1930s, was the chief judge.
The Key Features of the Cultural Revolution - Industry and agriculture
-Empower the workers, and champion working class- wants committed to achieving a communist economy- loyalty.
-Dekulakilisation - remove class in countryside.
-Workers could gain higher wages or bonuses for being productive
-Working labour decrees - ensures committment
-Collectivisation + Kulakisation
The Key Features of the Cultural Revolution - Youth - Education
In schools traditional classroom teaching and discipline were often abandoned in favour of ‘socially useful labour’ outside school. Non-Marxists working in higher education, in the arts and literature, in schools, in architecture and in town planning were denounced. There was an attempt to find truly ‘proletarian’ approaches in all these fields.
The emphasis therefore was on educating and promoting workers. Opportunities were offered in technical education to a new cohort of young communists and workers: Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Kosygin, who became key Soviet leaders in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, were among the 150,000 workers and communists entering higher education during the First Five-Year Plan. Most trained as engineers and worked briefly before transferring to administrative and political work and becoming the core of the Stalinist elite after the purges and a social basis of support for the regime. They are often referred to as the Brezhnev generation. There was increased social mobility; more than half a million communist workers moved from manual to white-collar jobs. Sheila Fitzpatrick
states that the total number of workers moving into white-collar jobs during the First Five-Year Plan was probably at least 1.5 million.
The Key Features of the Cultural Revolution - Youth - Komosomol
Creating the New Soviet Person who would embody the morality, values and characteristics that a good Soviet citizen should possess was another of the objectives of the Cultural Revolution. This person would be a willing servant of the state with the right attitudes, far removed from the illiterate, uneducated peasant who exemplified the backwardness which had cursed the USSR in the past. The New Soviet Person was part of new modern industrial society, above all a proletarian with a sense of social responsibility and moral virtue. The Komsomol (Young Communists), in particular, enthusiastically took up the challenge and had been itching to move forward towards a more proletarian society with proletarian values. The Cultural Revolution was not simply a manipulation from above; it gained a momentum of its own. The Komsomols pushed matters further than the leadership wanted and, having served their purpose, were brought under control. In June 1931, Stalin’s speech emphasising the value of the tsarist-educated intelligentsia signalled the end of the Cultural Revolution.
The role of the Komsomols in the Cultural Revolution:
The Komsomol members were aged fourteen to twenty-eight and by 1927 there were 2 million members. It was an exclusive club: many applicants were rejected on grounds of immaturity or insufficiently proletarian social origins. The membership was enthusiastic and leapt at the opportunity to drive the Cultural Revolution. They were to fulfil a number of roles:
* being soldiers of production’ in the industrial drive; one of the first directors of the Magnitogorsk site described the local Komsomol as the most reliable and powerful organising force of the construction’
* imposing labour discipline; leading and joining shock brigades
* enforcing collectivisation and collecting state procurements of grain, etc.
* leading the campaign against religion
* keeping an eye on bureaucracy, exposing official abuses, unmasking hidden enemies
* weeding out students whose families had been members of the former people, attacking non-Party professors and teachers, with the aim of making the intelligentsia proletarian
* breaking up ‘bourgeois’ plays by booing, and criticising painters and writers who did not follow the Party line reporting on the popular mood
The Key Features of the Cultural Revolution - Religion
Attack on Religion - The limited tolerance shown to organised religion under NEP was thrown aside during the late 1920s. De-clericalisation was not an official policy as such under Stalin, but the authorities turned a blind eye to physical attacks on religious leaders and during the First Five Year Plan mass killings did take place. In the Russian Orthodox Church alone, the number of active priests plummeted from around 60000 in the 1920s to only 5665 by 1941. Other religious leaders, suchas rabbis and mullahs, were also butchered at this time. Only one in 40 churches was functioning by 1940 and the others had been recommissioned for secular purposes; some, like the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, were blown up (albeit secretly in the dead of night).
Any regime determined to change society fundamentally cannot accept any alternative loyalties. Unsurprisingly the attack on religion was renewed.
The suppression of religion-in urban areas was relatively straightforward and no churches were allowed in the new cities and towns. However, there was fierce resentment against the Komsomols and the League of Militant Godless when they launched a major attack on religion in the villages at the height of the collectivisation drive. It increased peasant opposition even further.
The Key Features of the Cultural Revolution - The Arts
Here the Cultural Revolution meant a rejection of the old intelligentsia and was linked with Stalin’s attack on the right who were depicted as their protectors.
The emphasis was on the proletarian background of artists and some galleries began to label exhibits according to the class origins of the artists. Film-makers including Eisenstein were accused of doing nothing for the workers and peasants.
They were told that the principal task of Soviet cinema was to raise the cultural level of the masses. To do this,
‘You must either be from the masses yourself or
have studied them thoroughly by spending two years living their lives.
In literature the RAPP (Russian Association of Proletarian Writers) became the dominating force. Socialist construction and class struggle had to be at the heart of literature. Artistic brigades were organised, such as the First Writers’ Brigade in the Urals, which sang the praises of industrialisation and collectivisation. For some writers it was too much: after witnessing the horrors of collectivisation Boris Pasternak was unable to write at all for a year.
The End of the Soviet Cultural Revolution
- In June 1931, Stalin made a speech emphasising the value of tsarist-educated intelligentsia. This arguably signaled the end of the Cultural Revolution.
- The arrests and dismissals during the cultural revolution had led to a decline in standards in education, industry and the arts. Stalin needed expertise in all of these areas to ensure the rapid transformation of the economy succeeded. So, in the 1930s the old intelligentsia had to be asked back!
- This was part of what is known as the ‘Great Retreat’ to conservative and traditional values in Soviet society. Yet, the extent of this retreat has been debated as Stalin was still ultimately still committed to the Socialist transformation of society and creation of a New Soviet Person.
The Great Retreat
There has been a debate about the extent to which the Cultural Revolution was followed by a Great Retreat. There was a return to traditional values in the family, an emphasis on academic standards and discipline at school, and a more conservative style in the arts. However, Stalin was still committed to social transformation and the creation of a New Soviet Person. The Great Retreat naturally opens up some of the contradictions of Stalin’s Russia. After the great upheaval of the Cultural Revolution, collectivisation and the First Five-Year Plan, Stalin, the Bolshevik revolutionary, became the enforcer of traditional conservative social and cultural values.
The key features of The Great Retreat - Women
There was a return to traditional values in the family,In family life there was criticism of those who took marriage lightly, and children were urged to love and respect their parents, ‘even if they are old-fashioned and do not like the Komsomol’. The change in emphasis can be seen in the new Family Code of May 1936 in which:
* abortion was outlawed
* divorce was made harder
* child support payments were fixed
*Mothers with 6 children were to receive substantial cash payments.
The birth rate did rise from under 25 per 1,000 in 1935 to almost 31 per 1,000 in 1940. Newspapers reported prosecutions of doctors for performing abortions and some women were imprisoned for having abortions, although the punishment for women in these circumstances was supposed to be public contempt, rather than prosecution.
The Zhenotdel was closed down under Stalin. It was originally set up under Lenin to encourage women to play a more active role in politics and economics. Zhenotdel championed the cause of female emancipation and their campaigns contributed to the undermining of the influence of the family. They saw to it that divorce was made easier and that contraception and abortion were freely available to all women. By 1934, in Moscow, the capital city, 37% of all marriages ended in divorce whilst nationally the number of abortions was three times greater than that of live births. Believing that education provided women with the best chance of improving their status, they encouraged women to study and organised childcare facilities to enable them to do so. From the start, many men, including leading Party members and even groups of women workers, opposed their policies.
Stalin, concerned at the decline of the family in national life, recognised the need to bring about change in the Party’s attitude to women. A propaganda campaign emphasised that the ideal woman was a good wife and other as well as being a good worker. In 1930, the Zhenould was closed down since it was claimed that it had achieved its aim. Although the majority of women workers were employed in traditional female occupations - clerical work, nursing teaching and the textile industries - a great many worked shoulder to shoulder with their male counterparts in the steel and engineering industries and were encouraged to become stakhanovi. Some worked in coalmines and they also contributed fully to the more menial jobs of street cleaning and refuse collection. In spite of the claim that women had the same pay, promotion prospects and status as men, in reality this was seldom the case. As the 1930s progressed so the authorities accepted that the family unit was central to national stability and traditional attitudes to women and family values began to reassert themselves. Marriage was again encouraged and promiscuity, contraception and abortion frowned upon. Women were once again expected to be central to family life.
The key features of The Great Retreat - Youth
In education, examinations, homework and rote learning were reinstated and later in the 1930s school uniforms reappeared. Similar trends were seen in higher education: old professors recovered their authority and entrance requirements were based on academic criteria. The old intelligentsia returned to favour at the expense of Cultural Revolution.
Under Stalin’s rule, Komsomol grew in both membership and influence. It taught communist values through clubs, community centres and camps and had its own newspaper. It was closely linked to the Communist Party, to which it became directly affiliated in 1939. Members took an oath to live, study and fight for the Fatherland; they wore a uniform, helped carry out party campaigns and assisted the Red Army and police.
At all levels, the purpose of education was seen as preparing students to play their part in the life of a modern industrial state. As future citizens of a Communist state, they were expected to show a desire to work, patriotism in the form of love for Mother Russia, an appreciation of Party ideology, a rejection of religion and a hatred of capitalism. To help insure this, the Communist Party exercised tight control over textbooks and the curricula. The whole system was geared, as Stalin himself put it, to creating the new Soviet man’ who thought and acted as instructed by the Party.
The key features of The Great Retreat - National Minorities
There was some reversal too in policies towards the nationalities. Russia was very much the first among equals in the Soviet Union. From 1938 learning Russian became compulsory in Soviet schools and the sole language of the Red Army. Traditional Russian culture came to the fore and heroes of the past like Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great returned. Russia’s mission as a nineteenth-century imperialist power was praised. The emphasis on Russian nationalism was to increase in the Second World War and beyond.
One of the reasons Stalin had wanted to abandon NEP was to allay the assertiveness of the national minorities. Nationalism was to be fought ruthlessly as imaginary anti-Soviet organisations were ‘discovered’ in Ukraine (1929) and later in Belorussia, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Anti-Semitism persisted throughout the Stalinist era and to it added a resentment towards those from the Tansaucasus nations. Most deaths, however, were suffered by the less urbanised nationalities during collectivisation. The Kazakh nomads suffered disproportionately during 1931-3 when up to 1.8 million of them died because of the punitive policies implemented against peasants. The Ukraine was subject
to particular forms of persecution under Stalin: borders were sealed in 1932 by Red Army units, and the majority of the Ukraine’s peasantry were labelled kulaks, forcing them to acquiesce to state requirements. The regime did respond to reports of widespread famine in 1932 by cutting grain collection quotas, but this was nowhere near enough to stop widespread suffering in the Ukraine. It should be noted, though, that the famine was also grievous in parts of Russia too.
Recently unearthed archives have resulted in research being carried out on the national or ethnic components of the Great Terror. Eastern Europeans, Koreans, Chinese, Aghans were al subject to national sweeps of ethnic dearsiple during 1937. The Polish operation’ resulted in the arrest of 140 000 people of which a stagering 111 000 were shot dead - all perceived to be real or potential spies of hostile states and agents of anti-Soviet foreign intelligence services. Jews were also repressed in large numbers, although this may have been due to the proliferation of Jews at the higher levels of organisations, rather than it being an attempt to persecute this minority above any other. Such was the scale of ‘national operations’ that they became the prime function of NKVD activity ater February 1938.
The reasons for the abolition of nationalism and, therefore, nationalities were ideological. Stalin had read in Marx that the antidote to national conflict was to create unifying principles behind which all could unite. Stalin knew that as only 52% of the USSR’s population were Russian in 1932, a new way of inspiring unity and pride was needed. This coincided with growing concerns about the strength of the Third Reich under Adolf Hitler. Therefore, during the 1930s the privileges of Russian nationhood were expounded. This also coincided with the purges which replaced almost the entire leadership of the party in non-Russian republics with Russian cadres. The Russian language was given heightened status from 1938, becoming one of the compulsory subjects in all schools. (Over 130 languages were recognised by the authorities, but in practice there was a strict hierarchy with Russian at the peak.) There were also moves to alter non-Russian languages to a Cyrillic-style alphabet; from 1940 the Uzbek tongue was no longer allowed to be written in Arabic characters. Russian patriotism did not extend to village traditions, however, which continued to exist. So-called ‘former people’ such as the aristocracy and gentry had to be denounced in any literature or histories as Marxism-Leninism remained at the core of state ideology.
In line with Tsarist Russification
Arguably attack on peasantry, so happened that more ethinic minorities in these regions.
The key features of The Great Retreat - Class
The return of inequality and privilege
Another contradiction was that Stalin, the egalitarian communist, presided over the emergence of a privileged bureaucratic class and an increase in inequality - indeed this was one of the main reasons why Trotsky accused him of betraying the revolution. The principle of material incentives was firmly established. State officials, military and police officers, other members of the elites, and Stakhanovites were rewarded with better rates of pay, consumer goods and other benefits that only the government could give (private apartments, dachas, holidays in sanatoria, access to closed shops, etc.). There were echoes here of the tsarist system where ranks and property were granted to the nobility in exchange for military and civil service.
There was an increase in piecework and differentiation in workers’ wages - in 1932 the average salary of engineers and technicians stood higher in relation to average workers’ than at any time in the Soviet period before and after. In Magnitogorsk, there were different menus for different groups of workers. The Party maximum was abolished (it had in theory kept most communists’ salaries from rising above the average wages of a skilled worker). It was no longer appropriate for workers to use the familiar form of address to the plant manager.
The key features of The Great Retreat - The Arts
The Great Retreat in the arts: Socialist Realism
A decree of April 1932 abolished all proletarian artistic and literary organisations, like the RAPP, and ordered all artists to come together in a single union. There was a dramatic reversal of the official attitude to the intelligentsia.
Avant-garde artists, such as Malevich, were excluded from the mainstream of artistic life. The leading realist artists and sculptors became very successful, guided down the path of Socialist Realism.
The term appears for the first time in 1932. At the newly founded Union of Writers in 1934, Zhdanov proclaimed Socialist Realism to be the definitive Soviet artistic method’. Soviet literature must be able to show our heroes, must be able to glimpse our tomorrow.’ Socialist Realism meant seeing life as it was becoming and ought to be, rather than as it was. Its subjects were men and women, inspired by the ideals of socialism, building the glowing future.
Arts
From the beginning of the 1930s, Soviet paintings swarmed with tractors, threshing machines and combine harvesters or else peasants beaming out of scenes with tables groaning with food. It was at the height of the purges that Vera Mukhina’s famous Industrial Worker and Kolkhoz Woman was sculpted - a massive image of the Soviet people striding into a joyful future. The content of pictures was more tightly controlled. Artists were now given quite guidelines when they were committed to produce specific works on a given subject. There was almost no pictures of domestic and family scenes.
Literature
By 1932 RAPP was deemed to have served its purpose: it was criticised as being too narrow and was abolished. It was replaced by the Union of Soviet Writers, which included non-proletarian and non-Party writers and had Maxim Gorky (see below), himself a non-Party member, as its first head. The degree of state control, however, was just as strong and Socialist Realism was proclaimed to be the basic principle of literary creation, Feast on a Collective Farm by Arkadii Piastov, 1937 was a classic example of Socialist Realism?. In this climate, some great writers like Boris Pasternak and the poet Anna Akhmatova practised the genre of silence’ and gave up serious writing altogether. For Stalin, writers were the engineers of human souls’, and Socialist Realism was “the guiding principle’: Literature should not be a single step away from the practical affairs of socialist construction.’ Simple, direct language and cheap mass editions were demanded to make books accessible to a newly literate readership. There was nothing subtle about the titles: Cement, The Driving Axle, How the Steel was Tempered, and The Great Conveyor Belt.
Challenging the extent of the Great Retreat
Historians like David Hoffmann and Ewan Mawdsley challenge the idea of a retreat from socialism towards pre-revolutionary ways. They argue that the creation of the new working class and the new intelligentsia meant that:
* There was no retreat on private ownership of land and the means of production, or on hiring labour.
* The rest of the world saw communist Russia as still distinctly anti-capitalist.
* Stalinist culture may have embraced many of the traditions of nineteenth-century Russian realism but the content was ‘modern’: it was promoted to achieve objectives which the regime chose to stress - economic activity, the socialist utopia, national defence and adulation of the leader. It reflected a changing and advancing rather than a retreating society.
In spite of the Great Retreat in 1941 the new governing elite in practically every field was very differently composed from that of 1928. Further, the attempt to instil socialist values was very different from the social conservatism of tsarism.
The Great Terror
The Great Terror was a mass wave of arrests and over one million executions. It affected all, from the Politburo to the peasantry.
The Great Terror 1937-38 - Possible Motivations
-1932-33 - Party Dissent - Increasing discontent within the party. Intensity of Collectivisation and First Five-Year Plan led to calls for an easing of pressure. Stalin did not agree and it is possible that the situation highlighted a need for him to consolidate his position.
Examples:
-The Ryutin Affair
Ryutin had been a Moscow district secretary but had been expelled for his rightest views. In 1932 he published a 200 page document ‘The Ryutin Platform’ criticising Stalin’s leadership and policies. Stalin wanted him shot but only two members of the Politburo supported this decision; Molotov and Kaganovich. The others, led by Kirov overruled Stalin and Ryutin was imprisoned instead. (In 1937 Stalin had Ryutin, his wife and sons shot.)
-Division in the Party
In early 1934, at the 17thParty Congress(also known as the Congress of Victors)Stalin wanted to maintain the pace ofindustrialisation but Kirov suggestedthat following the success of the FirstFive-year Plan grain seizures could stopand worker’s rations be increased. Hisapproach appeared to be popular.
-1934 - 17th Party Congress - Despite a party purge of over 850,000 in 1933 at the 17th Party Congress, there was still a feeling that policy was too extreme. We don’t know for certain what happened in the elections for the new Central Committee but it seems that the moderate Leningrad Party Secretary Kirov received more votes than Stalin but this was covered up.
-1933+: Threat of War- Hitler’s growing power and foreign ambitionsmade war more likely. Stalin perhaps feared that national minorities and the millions of peasants displaced by collectivisation may support any invading army. This might explain his masspurge of ordinary citizens.
-Stalin’s wife’s suicide-
Stalin’s wife, Nadezda Allilueva shot herself in Nov 1932. A contributory factor appears to have been depression caused by the excesses of collectivisation. This had a huge impact on Stalin; Kaganonvich said he was never the same man again. He felt a deep sense of betrayal and paranoia that his own beloved wife had been against him. This may have contributed towards Stalin’s subsequent ruthless drive to ensure loyalty to him.
The Great Terror 1937-38 - Opportunity
-1934: Kirov’s murder
In December Kirov was murdered. We do not know if Stalin was involved but he certainly used the situation to his advantage.
-1935-36: Zinoviev & Kamenev
Early 1935 Zinoviev and Kamenev were blamed for Kirov’s murder. They and 843 of their associates were arrested, sent to prisons or labour camps. A party purge followed removing 250,000 associated with dissent or opposition.
-1936: Trial of Z & K
The first of three Moscow show trials was held in August. These trials were carefully scripted as propaganda to make an example of anti-Soviet enemies, defendants were tortured to ensure they stuck to the script. Zinoviev, Kamenev and fourteen others were accused of being part of a counterrevolutionary bloc, murdering Kirov and planning to seize power. They all confessed and were executed. This was the first time members of the party elite had been executed.
The Great Terror 1937-38 - Purging the Party
Purging the party
Before 1937 party members were much more likely to be imprisoned or sent to labour camps than shot. This changed after the trial of Zinoviev and Kamenev. Two more Moscow show trials targeted the party elite and local show trials blamed officials for failures in economic policy – they were labelled wreckers or saboteurs and executed. Officials were also encouraged to denounce any comrade associated with dissident party members or economic failures.
Examples:
-Trial of Radek and Pyatakov
The second Moscow show trial took place in Jan 1937. Radek, a Trotskyite, and Pyatakov, Deputy Commissar for Heavy Industry along with eleven others were accused of treason. They had both criticised the targets set in the Five-Year plans as unrealistic. The state prosecutor Vyshinsky accused them of plotting with Trotsky and Germany. They confessed after 2½ months of interrogation. All were sentenced to death except Radek who was sent to a labour camp.Pyatakov may have been targeted to unnerve Ordzhonikidze, Commissar for Heavy industry who had criticised Stain’s use of terror.
-Mass arrests of party officials
From summer 1937 the party leadership inwas targeted in all areas – planningagencies, Komsomol, education, tradeunions. It wiped away careerists and thesupport bases of Stalin’s opponents. Stalinwanted old Bolsheviks whose loyalties layelsewhere replaced. It also providedordinary people with scapegoats for thehardships they faced as economicslowdown and failures could be blamed onlocal leadership.
-Trial of Bukharin
In March 1938 the trial of Bukharin and twenty others including Rykov and the former head of the NKVD, Yagoda, began. They were accused of espionage and sabotage. Vyshinsky spoke of Stalin as the people’s defender of hope and faith as he sentenced them all to death. Bukharin was shot last after being made to watch all of the other executions first.
-Stalin used to cut his enemies out of photographs. One sucherasure was Yezhov. For a while Yezhov worked at Stalin’s right hand, but in 1938, Yezhov was tried in a secret court, and later executed. Sometimes, official censors had to retouch photos over and over as the list of political enemies grew longer.
The Great Terror 1937-38 - Military Elite
In summer 1937 Stalin also began a purge of the Red Army. The reasons for this are not clear. The Nazi intelligence service produced disinformation which may have fooled the Soviet regime into believing they were plotting against them.
Purge of the Red Army
In June 1937 Tukhachevsky a hero of the civil war and seven senior military commanders were arrested, accused of treachery, brutally tortured and shot after a secret trial. Following this of the 767 high Command, 512 were shot. 10,000 officers were arrested and another 23,000 dismissed.
The Great Terror 1937-38 - The people
The ordinary citizens accounted for the bulk of the victims of Stalin’s Great Terror or Great Purge. NKVD Order 00447 was sent to Yezhov (appointed head of the NKVD 1936) instructing the arrest of former kulaks, active anti-Soviet elements and criminals. It is estimated the order resulted in 600,000-800,000 victims of this ‘social cleansing’.
NKVD Order 00447
The order divided anti-Soviet elements into two categories. Category one were those deemed to be of the greatest threat. After consideration of their case by the troika (a three man commission set up in each region to consider the cases) they were to be shot. The second category were to be sent to labour camps for 8-10 years. Quotas of people to be arrested were sent to each region. The highest was for Moscow- 5000 of 35000 people were to be shot.
The Great Terror 1937-38 - National Minorities
National Minorities
It was feared that national minorities along the USSR’s western borders may form a fifth column and support enemy invaders. They were uprooted, deported and many shot in this ‘ethnic cleansing’.
National operations
From the summer of 1937 Poles, Germans,Estonians and others were uprooted anddeported. The ‘Polish Operation’ resultedin the arrest of 140,000 of whom 111,000were shot. From Feb 1938 nationaloperations were the primary function ofthe NKVD – at least 250,000 were killedand this ‘ethnic cleansing’ continued afterthe war.
The Great Terror 1937-38 - The end of the terror
The end of the Terror
Stalin called a halt to the terror in Nov1938. Administrative systems werefalling apart and economic growth washampered. In some places ‘even thepurgersof thepurgersof thepurgershad been arrested’ – Robert Service. Aweek later Yezhov was replaced byBeria as head of the NKVD.The excesses of the terror wereblamed on Yezhov and he was shot in1940. (The purges of the people aresometimes referred to as theYezhovschina)
How Similar were Lenin and Stalin in their Treatment of opposition
Similarities
*Ideological motivation – class struggle, ‘anti-Soviet’ elements
*Peasants targeted
*Mass terror - Cheka and NKVD arrests and executions
*Huge numbers arrested and killed by both leaders
*Both needed scapegoats – kulaks, wreckers, bourgeois
Differences
*Stalin more ruthless in number targeted, level of violence.
*Stalin uses terror against the army and party – Lenin didn’t.
*Stalin focused on consolidating personal power
*Lenin had more real opposition to deal with - political & Civil War
*Stalin perhaps motivated by foreign threat – fifth column
Stalins Role in the Terror
Stalin identified as the chief mover, agent and director of the Terror. Repressive policies had been part of Stalins style from the civil war onwards. Arguably Stalins class war mentality and the ever present enemy within, weather it be a kulak or disloyal party state functionary, explained his policies.
Lenin, as we have seen, was a fierce class warrior and actively encouraged terror to smash his enemies, but Stalin extended and intensified Leninist methods. It is unthinkable that Lenin would have killed his Bolshevik comrades.
Stalin’s correspondence shows not just his ruthlessness but also how closely he was involved. He orchestrated both the propaganda campaign in the press and specific points in the prosecution cases in the three major show trials of his old rivals and others. He appointed Yezhov to step up the terror and records show that Yezhov was his most frequent visitor at the Kremlin. Stalin agreed to local requests to increase the quota of victims and he liked to incriminate his top colleagues by making them join him in signing hundreds of death warrants containing thousands of names. He had demanded death penalties at the Shakhty trial, the first big show trial in 1928 (see page 216), and extended this to Party oppositionists after the Ryutin Platform. His willingness to purge whole categories of people was seen when he called for the elimination of the kulaks as a class’. Only Stalin could start the mass arrests and executions and only he could rein them in as he did in November 1938.
Outcomes of the Great Terror
- Climate of fear created
- People would denounce each other to avoid being denounced themselves
- Desperate to show loyalty party officials would increase quotas of class enemies in their regions.
- Any future potential opposition was deterred
- It is estimated that 950,000-1.2 million were killed 1937-38 during mass operation. 1 in 18 arrested https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9eQenKlvic
- Increased personal power
- New party officials were young people who owed their education and position to Stalin. For them the revolution and Civil War were nothing more than legend. They were given further privileges to guarantee their loyalty such as luxury apartments and cars.
- There were 1996 delegates at the 17th Party Congress - 81% had joined the Party before 1920. Of the 1996 delegates 1108 were arrested of whom 848 were executed (in 1934). By the 1939 Congress 19% of the delegates had joined before 1920.
- There was no debate, criticism or even discussion at the 1939 Congress
- ‘Threat’ of a fifth column suppressed?
This was one possible motivation for the mass operations but it may not have been and it may not have ever been a threat that required action either. - Inefficiencies
- Third Five-Year Plan struggled as managers, officials and engineers were purged.
- New appointments lacked experience and there was serious disruption to administration.
Stalin’s Constitution of 1936
The Constitution was written by Bukharin and Radek and celebrated by Stalin. It was published 5th December 1936.
- The USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) established in 1924 was expanded from seven Soviet Republics to eleven. Each Republic had the right to leave the Union and each was to have autonomy regarding national minority culture (e.g. control over education)
- The Congress of Soviets was replaced by a ‘Supreme Soviet’ made up of the Soviet of the Union and the Soviet of Nationalities. This promised elected representatives and increased representation for the national minorities.
It guaranteed the citizens of the USSR:
* Freedom from arbitrary arrest
* Freedom of speech and the press
* The right to demonstrate
* Freedom of religion
* Employment for all
* Universal suffrage for over-eighteens (even the burzhui who had been deprived of the right to vote before), free elections and secret ballots.
Gives of impression of a democratic, fair and free government. In reality this was very untrue.
Stalin called his 1936 Constitution the ‘most democratic in the world’
Yet, the reality of his government was very different. He established a personal dictatorship and by 1941 ruled without the party
The Supreme Soviet met for a few days twice a year and, even then, only to receive instruction
The Politburo met 43 times in 1932 and only 4
times in
What was the basis of Stalins Dictatorship - Support
-Ideology - Stalin’s commitment to ideology is now seen as important by historians, particularly in the power struggle and the Great Turn. The latter was a socioeconomic revolution, a massive upheaval in millions of people’s lives in an attempt to build socialism. Stalin was a committed Marxist revolutionary and Stalinism was underpinned by Marxism-Leninism. Kaganovich, described by Molotov as a 200 per cent Stalinist, described the Party as an army of revolutionary warriors. It was Stalin’s model of socialism that society would be coerced into following.
-The USSR mobilised economically behind Stalin-
The Five-Year Plan became the centrepiece of Soviet life. With collectivisation and the removal of the Nepmen and small businesses, almost everyone was an employee of the state. Every institution had its plan and targets, even corner shops and kiosks. There was a thorough clear-out of economic managers too:
47 per cent of those on government bodies in charge of the economy at the beginning of 1939 (14,585 people) had been appointed in the previous two years. The creation of an urbanised, industrialised and technological society wholly directed by the state was, for Stalin, Creating Socialism.
-In society there were some big winners: the Brezhnev generation and the nomenklatura, of which they became part, and which numbered about 600,000 of a population of 150 million at the end of the 1930s. These people had often been promoted because of the purges. Shock workers and Stakhanovites, too, gained considerably.
-Komostol
-25,000ers
-new appointments to party loyal
-Specialist Baiting
What was the basis of Stalins Dictatorship - Propaganda
-Stakhanov
-5 Year Targets
-Trials
-How women presnted
-Arts
-Propaganda has been seen as at the heart of the Stalinist system. It was everywhere, pervading all areas of life, including education, youth movements, newspapers, cinema and literature. It was backed up by strict censorship which prevented any competing definition of reality. Its themes were:
* the joys of life in the USSR
* its many achievements
* the horrors of the capitalist West
* the guilt of the enemies of the people and the need to be on guard against wreckers and saboteurs
* the glowing genius of Stalin.
Stalin’s statement of 1935, ‘Life has become better, life has become merrier’, was the refrain which characterised the propaganda of 1936-37. It was important to contrast the good and heroic with the evil traitors. In 1937-38 there were more pictures of young heroes on the front page of Pravda than pictures of Stalin. A pioneering flight over the Arctic was greeted with a triumphal parade in Moscow on 15 August 1936, four days before the first show trial started. Similar feats from polar explorers, aviators, sportsmen and others were publicised just before the other show trials. However, in these turbulent years it was possible to persuade at least some of the people that sabotage was going on
- nearly everyone had experienced machinery breaking down and there was some popular approval for punishment of the
-The Cult of Perosnality- The cult performed four main functions:
* to underpin Stalin’s image as the Lenin of today
* to bind the Party and people to Stalin and by extension to the state
* to identify the achievements of the regime with himself
* to project a father-like persona - ever caring for his children, the Soviet people. The cult really got going around 1933-34. Praise was heaped on Stalin personally and his link with Lenin and his role in the achievements of the First Five-Year Plan were emphasised. From 1935 onwards, he was portrayed as the vozhd (the leader), a genius with great wisdom and even prophetic powers. The disruption and disorientation brought about by the First Five-Year Plan and the Terror meant that this was a bewildering and confusing time. Former heroes were revealed as traitors; wreckers and saboteurs were everywhere. The image of Stalin reassured the people that they had a strong leader to take them through these difficult and momentous times.
Paintings and posters stressed Stalin’s humanity and his active participation in the lives of ordinary people. He is seen marching alongside workers or in the fields with the peasants, or inspecting great projects. Stalin’s relationship with children was emphasised: no nursery was without a ‘Thank you, Stalin, for my happy childhood painting. As the cult developed, operas and films glorified his role in the revolution or as the chief hero of the civil war. The History of the All-Union Communist Party was published in 1938. History was reinterpreted in Stalin’s favour and as war loomed, his image became more that of an all-powerful leader.
What was the basis of Stalins Dictatorship - Terror
-Trials
-Murders
-Attacks on party members
-Army purges
-Terror and force were central to his method of rule. The Great Terror had cemented Stalin’s control of the Party. The show trials made it clear inside and outside the Party that opposition now could mean death. The NKVD may have been feared by everyone but they operated in dread of Stalin. They were at his beck and call and their network of informants was everywhere.
The writer Isaac Babel is alleged to have remarked, ‘Today a man only talks freely with his wife - at night with the blankets pulled over his head’.
Citizens were encouraged to denounce each other. The numbers in the gulags grew. Internal passports, residence permits and visas were used to control the movement of the population.
-The purges have been called Stalin’s victory over the Party. Old Bolsheviks and anyone who might have offered any resistance to his dominance had been removed. This can be seen in the withering away of the Politburo. On average the Politburo met almost once a week: 43 times in 1932. But in 1938 it met only four times. The frequency of meetings of the Central Committee declined sharply too. The Party Congresses grew further and further apart: 1930, 1934, 1939 and 1952. There was no institutional check on Stalin.
Tukhachevsky and the military leadership, and successive heads of the NKVD had been shot, Tomsky had committed suicide; the army, secret police and trade unions were under Stalin’s control.
- A new governing elite with a vested interest in the system -The Cultural Revolution and the Great Terror had opened up positions for a new elite of Party and state officials, intellectuals and managers. These people promoted in the 1930s owed nearly everything to Stalin. They have been called a ruling class without tenure, under constant threat of demotion, expulsion from the Party, arrest and even death. However they had a vested interest in the continuation of the system. We have seen with the growth of inequality how they were also kept loyal by material rewards and privileges, all the more attractive in this grim decade.
Was Stalins Soviet Union a totalitarian state? - Yes
-Complete Control over those in gulags. They had no rights at all.
-The Great Terror ensured the Party was a submissive tool
-After the Great Terror no institution had power to oppose Stalin
-The Politburo members after the Great Terror were mediocre yes-men. Molotov remained loyal even when his wife was imprisoned during the purges.
-Those who had benefitted from the regime supported Stalin. The Brezhnev generation, the nomenklatura, shock workers, Stakhanovites.
-NKVD Order 00447 dealt with the possibility of social disorder in urban areas flooded with millions of migrating peasants.
-Control of education, arts and the media was increased ensuring only government approved messages reached the people.
-The purges gained more control over outlying regions and ensured central policies were carried out more effectively.
-It is thought most citizens enjoyed the more accessible popular culture even if they did not believe its messages it provided welcome escapism and entertainment.
Was Stalins Soviet Union a totalitarian state? - No
-John Barber estimates that 1/5th of the workers genuinely supported the regime
-The regime was clearly hated in Russian Villages
-Relied on regional subordinates to enact policies. Outwardly there was obedience but particularly in the regions far away from Moscow instructions could be interpreted to work in their own interests; sometimes this involved resistance and avoidance.
-Pressures to meet targets in the Five-Year plans could lead to managers fabricating targets and the NKVD supporting them for fear of being blamed themselves.
-The majority of workers were neither supporters nor opponents but they
‘accepted’ the regime. It was not popular.
-The peasants subverted the running of the kolkhozy despite the strict control over them. Non-cooperation, lack of effort and insubordination were still possible.
-Earlier in Stalin’s rule he did face opposition from the Politburo.
They would not agree to Ryutin’s execution and there were criticisms of his economic policies leading to growing support for the more moderate Kirov.
-Party officials would not always remove kulaks as they needed the most productive peasants to fulfil targets. They could not be obedient to both policies.
-Ordzhonikidze, Commissar for Heavy Industry raised concerns about Stalin’s use of terror in the mid 1930s.
Nazi-Soviet Pact
- On the 23rd August 1939 the USSR had signed a ten year non-aggression pact with Germany. In return for its neutrality (which freed Germany from a possible war on two fronts) the Soviet Union, in secret clauses, gained the right to occupy eastern Poland, the Baltic States and part of Romania in the event of war.
- The Russians had been worried about the prospect of facing Nazi Germany alone and were not convinced they would be able to form a solid defence alliance with Britain and France.
- Soviet security was always Stalin’s main concern and this pact was the only way to be sure of avoiding a war in the west, especially since the USSR was not prepared for a major conflict.
- HOWEVER, despite this pact, on 22d June 1941, the most powerful Germany army ever assembled launched Operation Barbarossa and took the Russians completely by surprise.
Operation Barbarossa:
Hitler’s invasion of the USSR - Army Group North
This attack was to gain Leningrad, a key industrial city, which was also the main base for the Soviet Baltic Fleet.
September 1941 :The German army had reached outskirts of Leningrad by Sept. Shelling and air raids of this key city began.
The Red Army and the citizens of Leningrad held off the German attack until January 1944 when they finally retreated.
Operation Barbarossa:
Hitler’s invasion of the USSR - Army Group Centre
Army Group Centre
This line of attack was to take the capital; Moscow. The city was also a major centre for arms production.
September 1941: In 2 weeks 300,000 Russians and 2,500 tanks were captured, and by Oct they had reached Moscow.
In Dec. 1941 Stalin ordered a counterattack and the Red Army forced the Germans to retreat from the capital.
Operation Barbarossa:
Hitler’s invasion of the USSR - Army Group South
Hitler ordered this attack because he wanted access to the wheat fields in the Ukraine and rich oilfields. He also wanted the city of Stalingrad.
September 1941: The Russian Army were taken by surprise and so by October the Ukraine had been conquered.
The Germans were forced to surrender due to lack of supplies in Stalingrad, early 1943.
The Great Patriotic War - Disaster
Disaster
Most of the Soviet aircraft were destroyed on the ground on the first day. There was chaos as the Germans swept eastwards. By December, the Red Army had lost 6 million, either killed in action or taken prisoner. Some of the most industrially developed and fertile land in the USSR, containing two-fifths of the total population, was overrun. The Germans sent three separate armies into Russia. One moved against Leningrad (see Figure 1, page 233) and in September 1941 laid siege to the city, a siege destined to last 900 days. Hitler wanted to preserve his northern troops for the battle for Moscow, a more important objective as the capital and the hub of the entire railway system. The German army advanced swiftly on Moscow and by the middle of October there was panic in the city. Documents, artistic treasures and Lenin’s body had been evacuated, and government offices were relocated to Kuibyshev (see Figure 1).
Stalin, however, refused to leave the city and a Soviet counter-offensive near Moscow pushed the Germans back 150-200 kilometres in December, the Germans’ first major setback. This meant that they could not knock out the USSR in one campaign before the winter set in. The German forces were poorly prepared for the cold, but Hitler ordered them to stand firm.
In the spring and summer of 1942 the Germans continued to advance in the south. The raw new Soviet formations were no match for the Wehrmacht (the German army) and the fall of Rostov, with little resistance, marked the Russian army’s lowest point. Stalin issued Order 227: ‘Not a step back’ (see page
235). Hitler was so confident that he divided his forces in the south between conquering the Caucasus, to gain economic resources especially oil, and taking Stalingrad, which was important because of its strategic position.
The Great Patriotic War - Triumph
Both sides came to see the struggle for Stalingrad as decisive. From September to November a few thousand courageous Soviet men and women held up the Germans in spite of 75 per cent falling as casualties. This gave time for General Zhukov to set up an encircling counter-offensive. The German oth army were trapped in a huge pocket. This was reduced gradually and the German surrender came on 31 January 1943. The resilience and dogged resistance of the ordinary Russian soldier delivered victory, although Hitler made strategic mistakes. By this time a third-generation Red Army was emerging; the first, the pre-war army, had been destroyed in 1941 and the summer battles of 1942 had largely destroyed the second, the hastily produced replacements. Lessons were learned from these disasters, at all levels, command and control were becoming more effective and techniques were developed for conducting mechanised warfare on a grand scale.
In July 1943, at Kursk, in the largest and fiercest set-piece battle in history, involving a huge number of tanks, the Germans were repulsed and the last chance of German victory in the east was snuffed out. In 1944, Operation Bagration (named by Stalin after a Georgian commander in the Napoleonic wars) was launched. Andrew Roberts described it as decisive as anything in the history of warfare, and fit) utterly dwarfed the contemporaneous Operation Overlord campaign. In 68 days the 1.2 million strong German Army Group Centre was destroyed and the Germans were driven from Soviet territory, suffering four times the number of casualties that were being sustained in the west.
Having borne the brunt of the war, Stalin and the Soviet commanders were determined to reach Berlin first. They did so but the Russians suffered 300,000 casualties, including 78,000 dead, and lost 2,000 tanks in three weeks.
The Great Patriotic War - The Red Army
The Red Army’s ability to mobilise a seemingly endless array of armies and divisions was crucial. As early as August 1941 the German General Heinrici, in letters to his wife, expressed his amazement at the Russians astonishing strength to resist’ and their ‘astounding toughness. Their units are all half-destroyed, but they just fill them with new people and they attack again. David Glantz, the leading western historian of the Red Army, has analysed why Red Army soldiers fought so hard
Although naked fear of the enemy and their own officers and commissars, pervasive and constant propaganda and political agitation, threats of severe disciplinary measures and outright intimidation motivated Red Army soldiers to fight, they also fought and endured because they were patriotic.
This patriotism had a number of different sources - traditional Russian nationalism, some sort of loyalty to the Soviet state or sheer hatred of the German invaders - but it provided a powerful bond and motivating force within the Red Army.
Was Stalin a good wartime leader - Yes
-Historian John Barber argues that, from the start of the war, Stalin was identified with the motherland (rodina). For many ordinary people, Stalin represented hope – hope of victory, hope of survival, hope that those in power cared about the millions they ruled.
-Stalin gave ruthless orders. These included Order 270, issued after the surrender of 100,000 encircled men at Uman in northwest Ukraine, and Order 277, issued after Rostov had fallen with barely a fight and when army discipline had begun to break down. Order 277 established detachments behind front-line forces that would shoot deserters, panickers and unauthorized retreaters. At the Battle of Stalingrad, 13,500 troops were shot this way. Many argue that these orders demonstrate his determination to stop further retreats and that this was the only way to maintain necessary order.
-Stalin was a rallying force and showed leadership qualities expected in desperate times. He did not leave Moscow when government offices were evacuated in 1941. Although he only addressed the Soviet people nine times during the war, his speeches in 1941 can be compared tot hose of Churchill in 1940-41 in their effect. Both leaders inspire their armed forced and civilians to fight on. On the 3rd July 1941 he began his speech; “Comrades! Citizens! Brothers and Sisters! Fighters of our Army and Fleet! I address you my friends!”. Stalin spoke of a ‘patriotic war of all the people’.
-The setbacks of 1942 had a sobering effect on Stalin. Historian Geoffrey Roberts writes, ‘[Stalin] listened more to the advice of his High Command, the advice got better and he got better at taking it’. Stalin came to rely on three very able men; Vasilevsky, appointed Chief of the General Staff; Antonov (his deputy) and Zhukov, the hero of Leningrad and Moscow, whom he appointed as his Deputy Supreme Commander of the Soviet Armed Forces. Zhukov and Vasilevsky planned the encircling counter-offensive which was the key to Russian success at Stalingrad.
-Compared to Hitler, who listened to his senior generals less and less, Stalin can be considered a strong wartime leader due to his ability to learn and to trust his High Command in many operational matters. Operation Bagration was carefully prepared by Zhukov and Vasilevsky.
Was Stalin a good wartime leader - No
-Stalin’s critics have argued that the Germans got as far as Stalingrad because of his policies.
-In 1937, Stalin had began his purge of the Red Army, beginning with Marshal Tukhachevsky, the leading military thinker in the Soviet Union. The vast purge of high-ranking Red Army officers had a traumatic effect; morale was shattered, initiative and independence of action were stifled. Potential allies assumed the Red Army was a broken shell.
-Stalin had received 80 warnings in eight months and reports of German troop build up. However, he ignored them and, determined not to alienate Hitler, he continued to meet requirements for deliveries of raw materials under the Nazi-Soviet Pact. As a result, the Soviet Union was unprepared for the German attack. By December, the Red Army had lost 6 million men.
-There is no evidence to suggest that Stalin suffered even the slightest remorse about sending millions to their deaths in battle.
-Six days after the German invasion Stalin admitted to a small group of his closest associates: ‘Lenin left us a great legacy, but we, his heirs, have messed it up’.
-Stalin’s inflexible, stand-fast mentality in 1941-42 prevented tactical withdrawals which would have avoided the catastrophic losses sustained when Kiev was encircled. The over-ambitious counter-offensives of the first half of 1942 led to further big losses of men and territory.
-Stalin made many errors, such as toying with ideasof signing a separate peace with the Germans in1941 and 1943, both of which strengthened theNazi’s resolve.
How was the Soviet Union Governed during the War
GKO and Stavka were the main institutional foci of central political life. The Communist ele Party yielded to other organs of power during the war; for example, the Central Committee scarcely met between 1941 and
1945; its normal functions were carried out by the GKO. However, Gill argues that neither body was in a position to impose any significant restraints on Stalin, and in practice, much decision making occurred informally in Stalin’s office.
The State Committee for Defence (GKO)
-Sometimes known as the Council of State Defence.
-The GKO was given power over all existing Party and state bodies; replaced the party’s formal mechanisms, including the Politburo.
-Purpose: supervise the military, political and economic life of the
-Its orders were binding on all institutions and all individuals.
-Formally, centralised control was brought to its peak.
-GKO successful in organising war economy, which led to victory. For example, the USSR was able to devote 50% of its GDP to the war.
Other countries were able to devote a maximum of 20%.
-HOWEVER; the GKO could not organise everything in the initial chaos of the war. In local areas, local authorities and party officials were given wider autonomy in things like rationing or securing labour. party officials had to wade into local economic difficulties, giving then unencumbered power in many respects. The sorts of crises they faced allowed an authoritarian (authoritarian in this context means that party leaders dictated policies and procedures, decided what goals were to be achieved, and directed and controlled all activities) decision-making style to develop, as well as habitual deceptiveness towards their superiors. Some historians argue that these were the formative years for many of the middle officials who were to struggle with more complex demands of a peacetime economy, post 1945.
Military Supreme Command or Stavka
-Responsible for all land, sea and air operation; military command, planned offensives
-Composition was shaped by Stalin, who insisted that lead politiciains should belong to it.
-Stalin became Commander-in-Chief (head of army) ( 10th July 1941)
and Chairman of Stavka (8th August 1941)
-Stalin’s supremacy was not in doubt. Stavka and the GO were kept separate and it was Stalin who brought them
Stalin only one in both groups, so can know whats being said in both. Maintains power.
Evidence that Stalins Political Authority Remained unchanged during WW2 - Continued to use terror to deal with opposition
-The NKVD increased in size during the war, A special department was set up to lead the struggle against spies and traitors in the Red Army, and had the authority to execute deserters on the spot.
-Returning prisoners of war were treated with suspicion. Stalin believed in Order 270, which had declared POWs deserters. About half were condemned to the Gulag.
-After the war, around 3 million men and women were sentenced to terms in the camps. All those who were released had the words,’ socially dangerous’ put on their records and bore the stigma of
collaboration or cowardice for years.
-‘Punishment companies’ were overseen by the NKVD. More than 430,000 men served in them, and they included gulag inmates and criminals. They were sent through minefields and on other almost suicidal missions.
-Terror was used on the frontline: when Stalingrad was on the verge of defeat in 1942, Stalin ordered that deserters and’cowards’, any who tried to retreat, were
to be shot.
Evidence that Stalins Political Authority Remained unchanged during WW2 - The Cult of Stalin continued and propaganda was used to emphasise his role
-Ilya Ehrenburg, a wartime propagandist, wrote that soldiers fervently believed in him: ‘On the walls I saw his photograph cut out of newspapers.
-Stalin was portrayed as a leader who was brave, all-seeing and steadrast; all the thoughts of the Soviet people turned to the glorious Bolshevik Party, to the father and friend of all toilers - comrade Stalin. ‘For the Motherland, for Stalin!” (Pravda, 20 July, 1941].
-The government used propaganda to maintain moral and persuade the people to make sacrifices in the name of victory.
They emphasised Stalin’s ability to defeat the enemy in their propaganda. The Moscow crisis in 1941 produced Stalin’s finest hour as he refused to leave the city. Stalin was becoming the father of the peoples of the USSR’.
-When victory was achieved, the message was that victory had been achieved through popular support for, and unity behind, the leadership of Stalin. He was the all powerful-leader - the Vozhd - and accorded the title ‘Generalissimo’.
Evidence that Stalins Political Authority Remained unchanged during WW2 - Continued emphasis on communism
-When the war ended, Stalin declared that the victory over Germany was a victory for communism over fascism. The idea of the people’s war was played down and the ‘Great Patriotic War was hailed as a victory for Stalin and the Soviet socialist system.
-Stalin wanted all citizens ‘contaminated’ by contact with the outside world returned, and Churchill and Roosevelt agreed to do so. Some were returned from as far away as the west coast of America. 32,000 Cossacks were forced to return to the USSR; some committed suicide rather than suffer deportation.
Evidence that Stalins Political Authority Remained unchanged during WW2 - Stalin maintained power
-Martin McCauley has suggested the bond between members, the state and the party was much stronger than before.
-Graeme Gill has stated that although the
GKO and Stavka were the main institutional foci of central political life,
neither body was in a position to impose any significant restraints on Stalin.
-Stalin’s supremacy was never in doubt. The Stavka and the GKO were kept separate and it was Stalin who brought them together.
-Stalin took control of military command. He became the leader of Stavka in July 1941.
Evidence that Stalins Political Authority Remained unchanged during WW2 - Repression of national minorities/’fifth column’ continued.
-When Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were re-annexed in 1944 drastic measures were taken to secure Soviet power; their
elites were arrested and either shot on sent to concentration camps
-Before 1941, under the territory gained in the Nazi-Soviet Pact, 1.5 million people were uprooted and deported to the gulags an exile villages in Kazakhstan and Siberia because they were considered potentially hostile. In April 1940, more than 20,000 officers, police and members of the Polish elite were shot and buried in mass pits at Katyn. Stalin was determined to eliminate potential opposition in advance.
-Two million members of ethnic minorities - Crimean Tartars, Chechens and other Transcaucasian populations - were deported to the Soviet interior. This was ethnic cleansing - Stalin wanted to be rid of troublesome, deeply anti-Soviet people. Their homelands were wiped of the map.
-The Volga Germans were deported in
1941 - although there were not grounds for regarding them as Nazi spies. They had been settled for centuries and thoroughly Russified in their allegiance.
The 600,000 people even included the families of men serving in the Red Army
-As the Red Army pushed westwards (1943-1944), exaggerated reports that some members of the population had collaborated with the Germans infuriated Stalin did he used this as a pretext to punish entire nations. In reality, only the Chechen-Ligush began an anti-Soviet
rebellion.
Stalin’s political authority was changed by World War
Two - The Party’s formal mechanisms, such as the Politburo, were replaced
-The Communist Party yielded to other organs of power during the war; for example, the Central Committee scarcely met between 1941 and 1945. its normal functions were carried out by the GKO which was primarily made up of Politburo members. The GKO was given power over all existing Party and state bodies
Stalin’s political authority was changed by World War
Two - Local Party Officials had more autonomy during the war
-Local authorities and managers were given wider discretion and autonomy in things like organising rationing or securing labour.
Stalin’s political authority was changed by World War
Two -Stalin increasingly listened to advice and there was increased delegation
-Historian Geoffrey Roberts writes, ‘[Stalin) listened more to the advice of his High Command, the advice got better and he got better at taking it. Zhukov and Vasilevsky planned the encircling counter-offensive which was the key to Russian success at Stalingrad.
Stalin’s political authority was changed by World War
Two - Changes in the Party
-The losses accumulated during the ‘Great Patriotic War created a need for mass
recruitment into the party as turnover exceeded 50% by 1943. Over 43% of those recruited were from the intelligentsia at first. Over 3.6 million new members filled the ranks of the party during the war and a great proportion of these also served in the army or navy. Over 11 million medals were given out to soldiers who had exhibited extraordinary bravery and 74% of these became party members. There was mass turnover in party membership.
-Geoffrey Hosking suggested the Communist Party lost a certain amount of pre-war power and influence because of the dilution in standards caused by mass turnover
Stalin’s political authority was changed by World War
Two - Stalin abandoned class warfare
-Stalin took decisions to abandon class warfare and focus on uniting the nation.
He appealed to popular patriotism, calling the war the ‘Fatherland war
rather than one of ideology. It was to save Russia itself.
-Stalin’s first wartime speech addressed
his “brothers and sisters, not the more usual Soviet ‘comrades. He appealed to their sense of Russian nationalism, not their loyalty to the Soviet Union or to communism.
Social Impact of the War - Churches
-Persecution was temporarily halted
-The Churches were used to boost morale and encourage patriotism (but were given no real autonomy.
-The churches were allowed to reopen and did much to raise morale and support the war to defend ‘Holy Mother Russia.
Social Impact of the War - Women and Family
-The importance of the family was emphasised
Women’s hurdens increased - wartime work +
raising the family
-Women worked in industry, on farms or in the armed forces, but received little reward
-Soviet women made a huge contribution to the war effort. One million women served in the armed forces. Women were particularly good snipers. The Central Women’s School for Sniper Training turned out 1,061 snipers and 407 instructors; its ‘graduates’ killed 12,000 German soldiers. The feared ‘night witches’ (night bombers) flew 23,672 sorties in flimsy biplanes and 23 received the Hero of the Soviet Union award. But the women most valued by fellow male soldiers were the medics and signallers. At the front, 100 per cent of the nurses and over 40 per cent of doctors and field surgeons were women, and they, and radio operators, suffered heavy casualties.
-However, the perseverance and determination of women in occupied zones and behind the front lines in the factories and the farms contributed just as much, if not more, to their country’s survival and ultimate triumph. In industry, women had made up 41 per cent of the workforce before the war and between 51 and 53 per cent during the years 1942-45. In light industry 80-90 per cent of the workforce were women but even in heavy industry the proportion grew sharply.
-In the countryside the proportion of female labour employed in agriculture rose from 40 per cent in 1940 to over 80 per cent by the end of the war, all working predominantly by hand. Urban sieges, rural deprivation, mass evacuation and mass deportation all played havoc with the well-being of millions of families and so hit women very hard.
-Approximately 70 per cent of Soviet deaths were of men and the majority of these were from the younger generation, the most fit and capable. In terms of overall population in 1946, women outnumbered men by 96.2 million to 74.4 million. There was a rupturing of life at every level.
Social Impact of the War - Partisans
-Many Soviet citizens and soldiers left behind the German lines formed partisan groups, using sabotage against the enemy.
-The role of partisans grew as the war progressed, particularly in the Ukraine.
They were composed of Red Army men, members of the party, local inhabitants and Jews who had nowhere else to go. Their early activity merely consisted of food seizures. Many just sought to survive rather than become heroic defenders of the Motherland. The Nazis reacted with ferocity to these groups, attempting to liquidate them, usually through public executions. Stalin centralised the partisans in May 1942, and individual groups were given lists of German targets to kill. The groups shared a grim existence, constantly living in fear of spies, having poor weapons, no medical supplies and little shelter. The most famous group was founded by the Bielski brothers who managed to save 1256 Jews by sabotaging Nazi operations and living in underground dug-outs for much of the war. As the Russians pushed the Germans back, partisan groups were no longer acknowledged and many were treated to scrutiny from the NKVD. Those that had proven their loyalty to the Stalinist regime were conscripted into the Red Army, but over half were found to be unfit and either sent to labour camps or let go.
Social Impact of the War - ‘The peoples war’
The opening up of Soviet archives after 1988 revealed that the war really demonstrated the astonishing capacity for the people of the Soviet Union to endure hardship and suffering. For this reason, Chris Ward
(1999) has suggested the war should be referred to as ‘The People’s War. The suffering inflicted on the peoples of Eastern Europe and Russia can hardly be described. Over 500 000 Soviet citizens died from German bombing alone; other causes of death included execution, typhus, starvation; some were even used as human shields in front of advancing German soldiers (when he heard about this, Stalin allegedly uttered ‘war is merciless’). Estimates put the total number of civilian casualties at 18 million, with a further 8 million soldiers perishing in combat. Richard Overy (1997) ‘ has referred to the war in the east as a ‘harvest of death’.
-The war was won by the Soviet people and their patriotism, resilience and endurance. The historian Edward Acton has argued that the horrors of Nazi occupation provoked a massive determination to resist and that without it, the Soviet regime’s capacity to galvanise and mobilise would have come to naught’. The war brought people and regime together.
-The victims of Leningrad alone exceeded the total of British and American wartime deaths. Comparing the losses with other countries (including both soldiers and civilians), for every Briton or American who died, the Japanese lost 7 people, the Germans 20 and the Soviets 85.
Social Impact of the War - Peasants
-Life was incredibly hard for the peasants. The countryside had been so stripped of men, horses and machinery that by the end of the war, four out of five collective farmers were women, and carts and ploughs were increasingly pulled by human beings. The state procurement of food from collective farms was probably even more ruthless than during the Civil War. Malnutrition was general and pervasive. Under the rationing system only combat soldiers and manual workers in the most difficult and hazardous occupations were guaranteed sufficient food to maintain health.
Social Impact of the War - Soilders and workers
-All sections of society were recruited and centrally deployed for war work
-Working hours were increased
-Discipline (in both factories and army) was tightened
Social Impact of the War - Living conditions
- Food shortages led to the deaths of millions
- Many had to flee the Germans or relocate to factories in the east
-Housing and fuel shortages
-Health problems increased
-Many died in the gulags
-This economic achievement depended on the Russian people who had already suffered so much under Stalin. They were extraordinarily resilient. They were severely overworked, under-nourished, very cold and poorly housed. Living standards fell on average by two-fifths. In one relocated tank factory, 8,000
female workers lived in holes in the ground.
-Little or no official attention was paid to citizens emotional or psychological recovery, or to burgeoning peacetime problems of alcoholism, adultery and domestic violence - unsurprising afflictions for a country where families had been separated for years, where returning veterans had witnessed near-unimaginable atrocity, and where women far outnumbered men. A general feeling of exhaustion afflicted the population as a whole, and after the first flush of enthusiasm with victory this exhaustion would have its impact on post-war reconstruction.
-Leningrad was besieged for over two years, with no heating, no lighting and no water supply.
-Eight hundred thousand died in the city in the winter of 1941-42, more than combined US/ UK losses during the whole war.
Social Impact of the War - Propaganda and Culture
- Propaganda was used to promote unity
- Posters and the press encouraged heroism and self-sacrifice
- Artists and musicians enjoyed more freedom, to encourage an atmosphere of national reconciliation
-Propaganda emphasised patriotism to drive the invader out of Mother Russia.
-Government propaganda exploited nationalist feeling, invoking memories of great Russian heroes of the Tsarist past as well as of the Civil War.
-The war brought government and people together and Stalin emerged as the nation’s saviour, held in even greater awe and fear than before.
How was the Soviet economy mobilised for War?
-Stalin realised that victory required complete and ruthless mobilisation of the country’s entire resources. The Russians set up an evacuation committee two days after the German attack to relocate the machines, equipment and manpower vital for the war effort to the east.
-The Stalinist regime was able to devote a much higher proportion of national income to the war effort than any other country. The Soviet Union outperformed Britain and the Third Reich in its capacity for organisation, coordination of government systems and infrastructure during the war.
How was the Soviet economy mobilised for War - Industry
-Main Focus on Munitions - all resources diverted from elsewhere- agriculture suffered (no machinery produced for agriculture e.g. tractors) and consumer industries.
-Plane production doubled, 1941-42. And by 1942, munitions accounts for 3/4 of industrial production in Russia
-Industry moved from east - 8-10% of USSRs productive capacity moved, factories, machines and labour force. 1500 industrial enterprises moved east in first year.
-Up to 1.5 million railway wagon-loads of plant and machinery and hundreds of thousands of workers - between 8 and 10 per cent of the USSR’s productive capacity - were moved. In addition, 3,500 new factories were created, most of them dedicated to armaments, and manufacturing industry was converted to war production. In 1942-43 Soviet factories were producing aircraft, tanks, guns and shells faster than German factories, in spite of the terrible losses wrought by Operation Barbarossa, which by November 1941 had halved industrial production.
-With an acute shortage of skilled labour, mass production methods and simplification were essential. The famous T-34 tank underwent just one major wartime modification and the hours required to produce it were more than halved. Herculean though these efforts were - and the T-34 and KV tanks eventually outperformed as well as outnumbered the best German Panzer tanks - the Stalinist economic system did not suddenly become a watchword for quality. Some aircraft had a reputation as death traps and in a BBC documentary a veteran of the battle of Kursk said his team of sappers (soldiers with engineering duties) preferred to locate, dig up and re-lay German mines on the battlefield rather than handle Soviet-made mines, which they feared would explode at any moment.
How was the Soviet economy mobilised for War - Agriculture
Agriculture already struggling in 1930s (collectivisation) , starts to get better near end but war destroys it. Lack of machines made for agriculture made, all focus on munitions.
Even more dramatic was the impact of the war on the rural economy. With the best land under German occupation, three-quarters of men drafted into the army or factories, and horses requisitioned for military needs, any progress that had been made in the 1930s collapsed. Mechanisation was abandoned as tractor production fell from 66 200 in 1940 to 14 700 in 1945 and replaced with back-breaking manual labour. Diverting resources and labour to the front served to jeopardise the entire war effort as output plummeted. From a level of 95.5 million tonnes in 1940, the grain harvest fell to 30 million tonnes in 1943 and cattle stock was halved. In April 1942, local authorities were given permission to halt the flow of labour into industry to ensure that food production was maintained as dangerously low. A much wider scope of local initiative was also permitted during the grim years of 1942-3 than had been allowed in the 1930s. Private plots expanded rapidly on collective farms, factories cultivated surrounding land, and city-dwellers worked on private gardens to supplement the pitiful food rations allocated by the government. Women lined the roads bartering food for goods, reminiscent of the “bagmen’ during the Civil War.
How was the Soviet economy mobilised for War - Lendlease
The concentration on war production had become so great that the economic historian Mark Harrison argues that without Allied help in the form of Lend-Lease, predominantly from the USA, the authorities would have been compelled to withdraw major resources from fighting in 1943 to avoid economic collapse.
In October 1941 USA gave Russia 11.3 billion dollars worth of Imported trucks, jeeps, communication equipment and railway resources whcih \gave the Red Army vital mobility without which, Khrushchev admitted ‘our losses would have been colossal’ and that, without spam we wouldn’t have been able to feed our army’. In 1943 and 1944 Lend-Lease made up 10 per cent of the GDP of the USSR. Even Stalin acknowledged to his close associates that it was the coalition of the USSR, Great Britain and the USA against the German-fascist imperialists’ that made the defeat of Hitler inevitable.
The Price of the War
- Soviet losses during the war totaled about 27 million
- For every Briton or American that died, the Japanese lost 7, the Germans 20 and the Soviets 85.
- Approximately 70% of deaths were men and the majority of these were from the younger generation, the most fit and capable.
- Of a population of about 200 million when the Germans invaded, some 80 million were subjected to German occupation, 25 million were evacuated from their homes to the east and 29 million served in the armed forces.
- Economic devastation:
- Areas which had been under German occupation, including the best agricultural land in the Soviet Union, were left in a desperate state.
- These areas had suffered three times:
1. The retreating Red Army used scorched-earth tactics
2. During the occupation, the Germans took everything they could
3. When the Germans withdrew, they destroyed everything they could - Towns and villages in the western part of the Soviet Union had been virtually obliterated.
- Hospitals, radio stations, schools and libraries were targeted where entire townships had not been burnt down.
The lack of resources and labour was bad for economy.
25 million left homless and 1.7k towns and 40k villages destroyed. 31k industrial enterprises and 65k kiliomiters of railway track destroyed. 40% of agricultural output lost.
To what extent did WW2 change the nature of the soviet economy - Change
-The Lend- Lease agreements meant that the United States contributed $11.3 billion dollars worth of food, trucks, jeeps and communication equipment to the Soviet Union. In 1943/44 this made up 10% of the GDP of the USSR.
-The Red Army destroyed farmland to make it useless to the invading Germans: This is known as the Scorched Earth Policy.
-Mechanisation was abandoned as tractor production fell from 66,2000 in 1940 to 14, 700 in 1945 and was replaced by back-breaking manual labour in the countryside.
-By October 1941, fifty per cent of the country’s coal, iron and steel was in German hands.
-Railways were built to connect new industrial bases with the war fronts.
-Grain harvest fell: 95.5 million tonnes in 1940 to 30 million tonnes in 1943. Cattle stock was also halved.
-The countryside had been so stripped of men, horses and machinery, that by the end of the war 4 out of 5 collective farmers were women and carts and ploughs were increasingly pulled by human beings. This slowed down agricultural production.
-Production in areas not related to the war fell markedly; for example, steel production declined from 18.3
million tonnes in 1940 to 12.3 million in 1945. This had a devastating effect on agriculture.
-A much wider scope of local initiative was permitted after 1943, than had been allowed in the 1930s.
Private plots expanded rapidly on collective farms in order to address the agricultural problems caused by the war.
To what extent did WW2 change the nature of the soviet economy - continuity
-Heavy Industry was emphasised in
the Five Year Plans, and this continued during the war. The Third Five Year Plan also emphasised the need for armaments. Defense and armaments grew (1938-41) as resources were diverted to them.
-Harsh punishments were given for poor work or lateness. A 72 hour week became the norm in order to produce enough resources for the war effort.
-Food shortages were addressed by rationing and quotas from the Kolkhozes. The state procurement of food from collective farms was probably even more ruthless than during the Civil War.
-There was a massive transfer and rebuilding of industrial plants in the Ural Mountains.
-Factories were put under martial law to tighten labour discipline and productivity.
-The whole balance of the economy was diverted towards munitions production, starving agricultural production of labour and resources.
-The economy had effectively been put on a war footing in the Five-Year plans. The emphasis on heavy industry and armaments and the highly centralised nature of the system, were of great value in organising the war effort.
High Stalinism
- The period of Stalin’s rule after the Second World War (1945-53) is often referred to as High Stalinism.
- High Stalinism can be described as the period when Stalin’s power had reached its pinnacle. After the Second World War Stalin’s power was unchallengeable and his style of leadership became much more despotic.
- Historians argue that perhaps the greatest victor to emerge from the war was Stalin himself. The Soviet victory seemed to validate the system he had developed and legitimised his personal rule.
In June 1945, he was elevated to the position of Generalissimo.
The war consolidated Stalin’s authority. - The main features of High Stalinism were nearly all present before the war, but were intensified post 1945.
Post- War Reconstruction
After War, the people had been hopeful that life would be better. The relaxation of control in the war through the church being allowed to operate, the local government being given more control in supply of labour, the peasants being able to start private plots and music/arts restrictions being relaxed to lift, had given this hope.
However in 1946 Stalin gave a speech in Bolshoi theatre annoucning an imperialist (west) danger to Russia that continued to threat Russia so had to return to Five Year Plans.
The 4th Five Year Plan (1946-50) and the 5th Five Year Plan (1950-55) held similar themes to their predecessors with industry, agriculture and war preparation being at the heart of the plans.
Stalins aim was to make Russia a superpower and said he wanted to increase industrial production by 3 times from pre war levels. This involved reverting back to a centrally planned economy = the state determines the priorities and focuses on particular aspects.
Post War Reconstruction - Loss/damage: problems after the War - Industry/ Agriculture
Industry:
-31,000 industrial enterprises destroyed
-65,000km of railway track destroyed
Agriculture:
- Agricultural output loss of 40%
-Scorched earth tactics destroy agricultural land
-1.7k towns and 70k villages destroyed
* Whole rural districts had been wrecked. Nearly 100,000 collective farms or kolkhozy had stopped functioning. Many peasants had returned to farming the land privately.
* There was a shortage of agricultural labour since most of the Red Army had been peasants and there had been a heavy loss of life. In addition, many peasant soldiers had learned skills in the army and went into industry rather than return to the villages.
* A large amount of arable land had not been cultivated for some time and had to be brought back into operation.
* There was a shortage of tractors, horses, fuel and seeds.
* Livestock had been slaughtered and stock levels were low.
Both:
-27 million people died
-2 million recognised and ‘invalids’ due to physical and mental handicaps
-25 million homeless
Post War Reconstruction - Main Policies- Industry
-Fourth Year Plan aimed to rebuild industry and transport (in an effort to catch up with the USA). As a result most industry targets were met (thanks to maintenance of wartime controls of labour) and the USSR was stronger than before the war; second to the USA in industrial capacity.
-The Fifth Five year plan- Initially focuses on heavy industry and rearmament, but later under Malenkov
there was a new emphasis on consumer goods, housing and services.
-The centrally planned economy was back in full force. The plan was a repeat of early versions: 85 per cent of investment was devoted to heavy industry and capital goods (which included armaments). This skewed balance was at its most extreme during Stalin’s last years. There was a rhetorical commitment, as in the past, to devoting special attention’ to improving living standards and the output of consumer goods, but it remained just that - rhetoric.
-The target was to exceed pre-war industrial levels. To achieve this, the population was mobilised - everybody was to be involved in reconstruction work. In Leningrad, for instance, workers had to contribute 30 hours a month on top of their eight-hour working day; citizens not working had to put in 60 hours and students 10 hours. Other cities probably had similar schemes. Extra labour was provided by prisoners of war (around 2 million) and the inmates of labour camps (around 2.5 million), the population of which had grown very rapidly after the war. These individuals were exploited mercilessly as slave labour on the most unpleasant work, particularly working in the inhospitable north cutting timber, and mining for gold and, importantly, uranium for the new atom bomb, where few survived.
-Because of Cold War and expansion of Russian control of eastern Europe there was a concentration on producing armaments. In 1949 the first Soviet atomic bomb was tested, showing the USSR catching up on technical achievement, in part due to captured German scientists.
Post War Reconstruction - Main Policies- Agriculture
The war left Soviet agriculture in a desperate position. The two post-war Five Year Plans therefore tried to rebuild the agricultural economy.
* The Fourth Five Year Plan (1946-50): aimed to force the kolkhozes to deliver agricultural products, revive the wheat fields of Ukraine and revitalise barren land. It involved huge state direction, high quotas and low wages, and higher taxation on private plots. Output increased, but the peasants were left with little and farming practices were held back by inaccurate (ideological) scientific theories.
* The Fifth Five Year Plan (1951-55): continued the aims of its predecessor, but also included Khrushchev’s initiative to develop ‘virgin’ lands and build huge agricultural farms or ‘agrocities’. However production still lagged behind industry and by 1955 it was still lower than in 1940.
Post War Reconstruction - Successes - Industry
The results were remarkable and undoubtedly owed much to the efforts of the Russian people who were prepared to endure privation, food rationing and long hours for low pay. There was huge growth in heavy industry. Factories and steel works were rebuilt and mines re-opened at astonishing rates. The great Dnieper dam was back in operation and generating electricity by 1947. The same old problems resurfaced - bottlenecks and shortages of raw materials and component parts - but the end product was impressive. Production of coal and steel passed pre-war figures and, according to Alec Nove, industrial production in general passed pre-1940 levels, although the statistics emanating from Soviet sources have to be treated with caution.
Post War Reconstruction - Successes - Agriculture
-During fourth year plan Output did increase but peasants left with little and farming practices were held back by inaccurate scientific theories.
Post War Reconstruction - Failures- Industry
There was huge suffering for the populace engaged in reconstruction work who had to endure rationing and long hours for low pay.
Also With the focus on heavy industry and, apart from reparations from Germany and eastern Europe, no outside investment, resources came at the expense of consumer industries. Goods like clothes, shoes and furniture were in short supply. The details of the Fifth Five-Year Plan, which was meant to have begun in 1951, were not announced until 1952. The plan followed similar lines to the Fourth and had not progressed very far before Stalin’s death in 1953.
Post War Reconstruction - Failures- Agriculture
-Pressure on the peasantry was fierce. There was a major drive in 1946 to tighten discipline on the kolkhozy and reverse wartime trends, particularly the expansion of private plots. It was a dreadful year. Grain procurements to feed the people in the cities and towns took up to 70 per cent of a much reduced yield, leaving barely enough to feed the peasants and keep the animals alive, and there was a drought too. In 1946-47, 1 to 1.5 million people died from starvation and related diseases, with the Ukraine hit particularly hard.
-During 1947 delivery targets and taxes on income arising from private plots were raised to a new height. Extra taxes were invented, for example, on each fruit tree in a peasant household’s garden. Retail outlets and consumer goods were in short supply in the countryside and currency reform was designed to devalue drastically the savings the more entrepreneurial peasants had made during the war. Derisory prices were paid to the peasants for their produce and for the work days served on the kolkhoz. By the end of 1952 the number of kolkhozy was reduced by nearly two-thirds to 94,800 to increase production but an even more important reason was to increase Party control.
-Since top priority had been given to industry, the villages were not allowed electricity from state power stations and not provided with building materials to rebuild their houses. With few incentives, motivation was at rock bottom and agricultural production suffered as a result. In the Fifth Five-Year Plan there were announcements of large projected increases in grain and meat production but nothing was done to facilitate this. The peasants were perpetually squeezed under Stalin, and his successors sought to ease the pressure on them; but in 1954, a full year after Stalin’s death, the average pay of a kolkhoznik remained lower than one-sixth of the earnings of the average factory worker.
By 1955, production still lagged behind industry and was still lower than in 1940.
The Cult of Personality
Success in the Second World War fed the cult, which reached its height at the end of the 1940s. Paintings show Stalin in god-like solitude or with Lenin, sometimes even appearing to tell Lenin what to do. Stalin had lost his role as a disciple; now he was an equal or even the master. The omnipresent images of Stalin said to the Soviet people: ‘Stalin is everywhere present and watching over you; he understands your hopes and has your best interests at heart.
The celebrations of his 70th birthday were extremely elaborate with galas and greetings almost every day from 21 December 1949 (actually his 71st birthday) to August 1951. A giant portrait of Stalin was suspended over Moscow and lit up at night by a battery of searchlights.
The Politburo and the Party - Role of the Party and Stalins rule
The Soviet Union was a one-party state, but the Party was not significant in initiating policies and actions. Just as before the war, its main role was co-ordinating economic activity. It supervised the agencies of government and chose and scrutinised their personnel. Stalin fostered tensions between Party and government to stop either undermining his personal power. The Politburo rarely met and a Party Congress was not convened until 1952. Stalin preferred to rule more informally, sending out his orders by telegram or convening small groups to discuss key policy issues. Stalin told them no more than they needed to know and only when they needed to know it; Martin McCauley reminds us of Khrushchev’s recollection, if you were not told you presumed you were not supposed to know. Under no circumstances did you ask’.
The Politburo and the Party - change and control of the Politburo
The Politburo in 1945 was almost the same as it had been in 1939, with key roles for Molotov, Kaganovich, Khrushchev, Zhdanov, Malenkov and Mikoyan. Stalin controlled decision-making although he left the details to others. He used the same pre-war technique of playing people off against each other and encouraging rivalry between contenders for the leadership and Party influence. He did this to protect himself, but also to make sure that the members of the Politburo worked hard to produce the outcomes he wanted. It was bear-pit politics. Malenkov and Zhdanov were fierce rivals. Zhdanov was regarded as Stalin’s favourite. He had led the defence of Leningrad when it had been besieged by the Germans during the war. He fronted the campaign against Western bourgeois influences. Beria, Stalin’s secret police chief and enforcer, appears to have sided with Malenkov. In the post-war period the MVD (formerly the NKVD) exercised enormous and terrifying power.Beria was appointed head of the NKVD in 1938 and remained so until 1953. The NKVD was renamed the MVD in 1946 and, under Beria’s leadership, became more powerful than ever. His main interests were power, terror and sex. If he could not seduce women, he had them kidnapped and then raped them.
The Politburo and the Party - Party during the second world war
During the Second World War the Party had grown from 4 to 6 million members, with a large number under the age of 45. Many of the new intake had little knowledge of the outside world, old revolutionary history or traditions, and tended to follow directives without question. Stalin may have been even more in control than ever but he still remained suspicious. Dmitry Shepilov, editor of Pravda and a protégé of Zhdanov, wrote in his memoirs, ‘For Stalin in the final period of his life, the exposure of “terrorists”, “poisoners”, and
“conspirators” became as vital as vodka to a hardened alcoholic.
The Politburo and the Party - 19th Party Congress
In 1952, at the 19th Party Congress, Stalin took little direct part and contented himself with sitting and watching the proceedings. But at a meeting of the Central Committee after the conference he made his last speech, in which he attacked Molotov and Mikoyan. A Presidium of 25 replaced the Politburo of 11. This could be interpreted as an indication that Stalin was contemplating another purge at the top level in the Party and bringing up his reserves in preparation. A new generation of leadership was introduced. Beria felt he was at risk and Molotov was certain he was in danger. Nobody felt safe.
The cult of Stalin and the control of culture
Historians widely agree that the cult of Stalin, which had been assiduously manufactured during the 1930s, put down popular roots during the war. Recently the archives have revealed the drive coming from Stalin himself. For reasons we may never fully understand, given the lack of rivals or opposition to his premiership, Stalin felt compelled to maintain his personal hegemony.With industrial modernisation came mass culture (popular fiction, cinema, radio, spectator sports), and so the regime chose to promote national defence and the leader himself in didactic fashion. The reinvigoration of the Orthodox Church was again suspended after 1946 and cultural uniformity was implemented once more.
Zhdanov was certainly the mouthpiece of Stalin’s thinking on literatureand the creative arts. Anything that was seen to be kowtowing to the West was denigrated. This was particularly important to the regime because of the fear of Western influence. After the war, soldiers who had fought in Germany, Hungary and other parts of Europe had mixed with Americans and British and brought back with them new ideas, even criticisms of the Soviet model, which could not be integrated into the socialist mould. The post-war period was marked by an end of almost all autonomy for film-makers in the Soviet Union; the heavy control now exerted by the government ended film-making as an art form. Evidence suggests that remarkably low numbers of films were produced from 1945 to 1953, with as few as nine films produced in 1951 and a maximum of 23 produced in 1952.
National myth-making took precedence over truth telling. With artisits being publically humiliated such as poet, Anna Akhmatova, when Zhdanov referred to her as ‘half nun, half whore’ after the Western liberal philosopher, Isaiah Berlin, visited her. Even Shostakovich’s symphonies, one of which was inspired by the Siege of Leningrad, were banned for not being ‘Russian’ enough.
Right up until the early 1950s, Stalin continued to treat questions of theory very seriously. His commitment to Marxist - Leninist - Stalinist Ideology meant not area of study was ‘apoliticial’ and the supremacy of his beliefs had to be asserted over that of his Western rivals (particulary heightened with the Cold War setting in). The most famous example of his discouragement of contridictions to his thought was in the field of linguistics, when he wrote ‘Marxism and the Problems of Linguistics’ in 1950. Stalin rejected the previously held Marxist approach that held that languages developed along class lines. Instead he stressed the specific and special nature of the Russian language that was developed centuries ago. This is not to say that Stalin had become a nationalist; he still held that socialism would one day eradicate languages as it spread across the world. However, he was compelled to defend his socialist state against the capitalist exploiters of the West and part of this was an appeal to Russian nationalism.
The cult of Stalin and the control of culture - summary
It is difficult to pinpoint the beginning of the cult of Stalin. Some suggest it was probably on his 50th birthday in 1929; by the end of the Second World War when Stalin reached 70 (in 1949), it was truly at its zenith. Initially, the promotion of Stalin began by placing him in a succession following Marx, Engels and Lenin - he was a living Marxist philosopher. However, it went much further than this: his views were elevated to the level of sacrosanct dogma and he became the authority in a number of fields. By extension, those who he found appealing were also given authority-figure status, whether their expertise or knowledge demanded it or not. The history of the Soviet Union had been rewritten during the 1930s to ensure Stalin had been present and influential at all the key points leading up to the Bolshevik revolution and photos had been doctored to support these myths. Accolades to ‘Lenin’s closest friend and disciple’ sprung up everywhere. Vast statues were erected (even in remote parts of the Soviet Union, such as a small village on the river Enisel in Siberia) and operas, paintings and flims magnified his role as a national hero,
Writers and musicians during the war
For Boris Pasternak the war seemed an omen of deliverance, a purifying storm. The struggle for survival did bring a sense of community; writers were involved and valued. Pasternak himself worked for a time as a fire watcher during the war. Some of his work was published again and he started writing again. The poet Anna Akhmatova silenced in the 1930s was treated with honour for the first time and allowed to publish and, as we have seen, to broadcast.
The composer Shostakovich publicly attacked in 1936 was now celebrated. Shostakovich had worked by candlelight in Leningrad on his seventh symphony which he dedicated to the city. On 9 July 1942, it was performed by a motley collection of musicians in the bombed Great Hall of the Leningrad Philharmonia and piped through loudspeakers into the streets of the still besieged city. It had an overwhelming emotional effect, The novelist Vasily Grossman was a war correspondent reporting vividly from the front line in the battle of Stalingrad. Pasternak hoped that, So many sacrifices cannot result in nothing. A presage of freedom was in the air. He was to be bitterly disappointed.
High Stalinism: Tightening control on culture - The Arts
Stalin was keen to keep the Soviet Intelligentsia in line, especially after the relaxation during the war.
Stalin treated questions of theory very seriously and his writings were saturated with Marxist-Leninist language. In the atmosphere of rising Cold War tensions, this strong element of patriotism bordered on xenophobia. Soviet culture was to be seen as superior to liberal, Western culture. This drive for ideological and cultural purity was known as the Zhdanovshchina, but Zhdanov was only Stalin’s mouthpiece.
This anti-Westernism can be seen in Stalin’s policy towards the arts. The State Museum of Modern Western Art was closed down. Hundreds of writers, condemned for kow-towing to the West, were expelled from the Writers’ Union, which meant their works could not be published. This included Anna Akhmatova, the famous poet, whom Zhdanov denounced as ‘half-nun, half-whore. Akhmatova’s status as a symbol of Leningrad’s spirit of endurance during the war did not help her. Stalin was always suspicious of Leningrad and, as Orlando Figes points out, wanted to underline the subordination of the Leningrad intelligentsia to the Moscow-based regime.
Theatres were attacked for staging too many Western plays. Soviet composers were attacked because their work was supposedly corrupted by bourgeois values and did not reflect Soviet virtues and musical traditions. Shostakovich’s symphonies could no longer be performed; musicians needed a special pass to listen to Stravinsky. Painters and film directors had to follow the regime’s dictats. Stalin himself intervened in Eisenstein’s film about Ivan the Terrible, urging the director to show ‘that it was necessary to be ruthless. Stalin added that Ivan’s great strength as a leader was that he championed the national point of view…. he safeguarded the country against penetration of foreign influences.
Stalin took a particular interest in linguistics. In his Marxism and the Problems of Linguistics, written in 1950, he dismissed class theories of linguistics and the development of the Russian language, tracing its origins to places in the RSFSR (Russian Republic) rather than Kiev in the Ukraine where academics had previously located it. Anti-Westernism had a broader purpose too. If the Soviet population was to be galvanised into great efforts to rebuild the economy, all unfavourable comparisons with the outside world had to stop. The briefest contact with a foreign person could bring an arrest.
High Stalinism: Tightening control on culture - Science
In this atmosphere absurd claims were made for the achievements of Soviet science. Ethnic Russians seemed to have invented almost everything from the steam engine to the aeroplane. Scientists, though, had to adhere to the guidelines set down by the state if they wanted to survive. Crude interventions were made into science. Stalin worked closely with Lysenko in 1948 to impose the latter’s view of genetics on the USSR. Lysenko was a biologist and agronomist who claimed heritable changes in plants could be achieved by changes in the environment, rather than by genetic factors alone. So, wheat subjected to refrigeration would produce seeds that could be sown in colder climates. This was just not the case and held back progress in Soviet biology and led to the arrest of renowned geneticists who did not agree with his theory. Chemistry also suffered. Physics was different. Although Einstein’s theory of relativity was dismissed as it did not fit with Marxism-Leninism, Russian scientists could not ignore it or quantum mechanics if they wished to develop the atom bomb.
Working under the pressure of the Stalinist regime, whose leadership knew no science, Soviet scientists developed the bomb in only a little more time than the American team had taken and helped only slightly by espionage.
High Stalinism: Tightening control on culture - Russian Nationalism
Stalin mounted a drive to emphasise the superiority of ethnic Russians over other nationalities, this policy sat well with ethnic Russians and helped to secure their support for the regime. It was also an eftective way of controlling other nationalities. In the non-Russian republics the top jobs, particularly Party secretaries and police chiefs, went to Russians. Soviet central planning, collective farms and other institutions and practices were imposed on the newly annexed countries. In the Baltic states there were deportations to Siberia and Kazakstan. In all, 142,000 people from these new Soviet Republics were deported in 1945-49, notably peasants resisting the imposition of collectivisation in 1948. Russian migrants took over their homes. Deportations took place in western Ukraine and tens of thousands of Russian migrants and migrants from Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine moved in. The cultures of nationalities like the Latvians and Lithuanians were denigrated. The Moldavian language had Russian words added and it had to be written in Cyrillic letters.
Ukrainian was decreasingly taught to Ukrainian-speaking children in the Russian Republic. Stalin was as keen on Russification as the tsars.
High Stalinism: Tightening control on culture - Anti- Semitism
Stalin reserved particular venom for the Jews, initiating a vicious campaign of anti-Semitism. In 1948, the Jewish anti-Fascist committee, which had helped send thousands of Russian Jews to fight the Nazis, was closed down, its leaders arrested and thirteen of them executed. Jewish Soviet politicians disappeared and others in important positions lost their jobs. Jewish writers and artists were arrested. Jewish schools and synagogues closed. Textbooks did not refer to the fact that Karl Marx was a Jew. Stalin talked about setting up a special area for Jews in the Soviet Union in eastern Siberia. There were a series of trials in which Zionist conspiracies were exposed, culminating in the Doctors’ plot just before Stalin died. The reason for the campaign lay in Jewish connections to the West. Many Jews had relatives in the USA, other Western countries and the new state of Israel, which was heavily backed by the Americans.
Stalin called them ‘rootless cosmopolitans’ who owed more loyalty to Jewish internationalism and Israel than to the Soviet state. They were suspected of being agents for the West and particularly America, Stalin’s main enemy in the Cold War.
Suppression of ‘Opposition’, 1945-53 - General Zhukov
General Zhukov, a hero from the war, became the first commander of the Soviet Occupation Zone in Germany and had taken part in conferences with allied leaders in 1945. Rumours circulated that he had taken full credit for winning the war against Germany in a media interview. Stalin was furious and it is highly likely that he was bitterly jealous of his subordinate. However, Stalin couldn’t risk executing this popular and world-renowned figure, and there is evidence to suggest Stalin maintained a deeply-held respect for this man who had openly argued with him over military tactics.
Therefore, he was stripped of his position and assigned command of the Odessa Military District, far from Moscow and lacking in strategic significance and troops.
Suppression of ‘Opposition’, 1945-53 - The Leningrad Affair, 1949
Savage purge of Leningrad party engineered by Beria and Malenkov, likely to gain influence and deal with potential risk. Voznesensky and Kuznetsov were widely tipped as Stalin’s successors. Voznesensky, a member of the Politburo, was responsible for planning the Soviet war economy which was so successful after 1942, and by 1948 was second only to Stalin in the Council of Ministers. Stalin did not like war heroes and it is also likely that he thought that the Leningraders were becoming a little too confident and independent. Leading Leningrad Party and government officials, including Voznesensky and Kuznetsov, were arrested, forced to confess, ‘tried’ in secret and executed. Before the secret ‘trial’, Politburo members had signed the accused’s death warrants. Over 2,000 people from the Leningrad city government and regional authorities were arrested on grounds of treason. The Leningrad affair, as it is often called, made everybody at the top feel insecure.
Suppression of ‘Opposition’, 1945-53 - The Mingrelain Case ( Georgian Purge) 1951-52
Mingrelian - ethnic division of the Georgian nationality - Beria was Mingrelian. The destruction of the Leningrad arm of the party seemed to mark a revival in fortunes for Beria, head of the security police, however, even this was tainted for Beria by the splitting of the NKVD into the MGB (Ministry for State Security), responsible for the security police, and the MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs), responsible for the ordinary police, public order and labour camps.
By 1951 Stalin had become suspicious of Beria and fired a warning shot across the bows with the Mingrelian Affair. The fabricated accusations of separatism and collaboration with the ‘Western imperialists’ were followed by a purge, which delivered a devastating blow to the Georgian party organisation and specifically targeted its Mingrelian members.
In Georgia in 195i Stalin ordered the arrest of a number of Mingrelian Party and governmental officials who were accused of being involved in a Mingrelian nationalist plot. Beria was a Mingrelian and the victims were all close to him. Beria was compelled to carry out the purge. This added to his sense of insecurity.
Suppression of ‘Opposition’, 1945-53 - The Doctors Plot
The Doctors’ plot is further evidence of Stalins increasingly suspicious nature. In January 1953, Pravda announced that thirteen doctors, several of whom were Jewish, who treated top Party officials, were accused of conspiring with the USA and killing Zhdanov and other high-ranking officials. It was said that they planned to wipe out the top Soviet leadership. Confessions were obtained under torture, during which two of the doctors died. But before they could be executed, Stalin died. Subsequently, the plot was declared a fabrication and MVD officers were executed.
Suppression of ‘Opposition’, 1945-53 - Anti - Semitism
Stalin launched an attack on ‘cosmopolitanism’, which he associated with intellectuals who were not patriotic. An irrational link was made between Jewishness and lack of patriotism due to perecption that Jews within Soviet were supported by the USA due to their link. The Anti-Fascist Committee, which had been set up during the war to fight the Germans, was abolished in 1948 and the leaders were arrested. Mikhoels’s position as a leader of the Jewish community led to increasing persecution from the Soviet state. In 1948 Mikhoels was murdered, almost certainly on the direct orders of Stalin, and his body was run over to create the impression of a traffic accident. He was given a state funeral. The cultural and religious life of Jews was severely restricted and schools were closed down, along with Jewish libraries and newspapers. Jewish writers and artists were imprisoned, banished or executed in some cases, on the basis that they were formulating a Zionist conspiracy. Richard Overy (1997) argues that this wave of purges was almost certainly linked to the re-conquest of Eastern Europe, where the Russians had been fighting armed resistance to the Soviet regime - now the enemies were within.
Suppression of ‘Opposition’, 1945-53 - The people
Stalin determined to ensure Western culture and political ideas would not contaminate the Russia people. He set out to eliminate every vestige of independent thought and remove anyone, both within and outside the Party, who stood in his way or posed a threat.What followed were years of violence when fear and intimidation permeated every aspect of Soviet life. In such a dimate, Russians regarded each other warily looking for the opportunity to curry favour by unearthing a dissident and living in fear that they themselves would be denounced. There were secret police and informers everywhere and people were liable to be arrested for careless slips of the tongue, a hint of independent thought and behaviour considered inappropriate.
Then, subjected to interrogation and even torture, they would invariably be found guilty and sent to the labour camps. Life in the camps was extremely harsh and although sent to serve a specified number of years, many had their sentences extended over and over again for no valid reason. An estimated 12 million men and women were sent to the camps to endure grim conditions which included long working hours, near starvation rations and appalling living conditions.
Beria remained head of the NKVD until 1953. The NKVD was renamed the MVD in 1946 and, under Beria’s leadership, became more powerful than ever.
The revival of terror and the destruction of ‘supposed’ opposition.
-With age, Stalin became even more suspicious of those around him. Although he had made them, he seems to have felt they were potentially dangerous to his political authority.
-To keep them in their place, purges and terror remained as much a part of Stalin’s system of government as before the war.
-However, it was used more selectively. Dalton argues that the ‘terror’ of the late 1940s cannot be compared to the Great Purges of 1937-38, if for no other reason that there were fewer executions following arrests and more reliance on forced labour camps instead. Between 1945-53 around 12 million were sent to the labour camps
-All those who had any contact with the West were treated as ‘suspicious’ and segregated from the rest of the population, often by being marched directly to labour camps. Half of returning USSR PoWs were sent to the gulags.
-The Party was purged of approximately 100,000 members.
Why was there a continuation of Stalinism
Historian Robert Daniels has written that it is extraordinary that the Stalinist system came through the ordeal of war so little changed. Disappointed Soviet citizens were likely to think that the post-war world (the period of High Stalinism) was a lot more of the same.
Three main factors contributed to this:
-Victory had given Stalin a new legitimacy and his system had been triumphant in the ultimate test of war.
-There was the urgent task of reconstruction after the devastation of war
-The ‘imperialist danger, the Cold War, had been used to justify the emphasis on heavy industry and to stamp out potential discontent and dissent at home. It contributed to the anti-Westernism and nationalism associated with Zhdanov.
During the years of High Stalinism - was the SU a totalitarian state - For
-Continued purges ensured the Party was a submissive tool
-No institution had power to oppose Stalin
-Wartime institutions were dismantled and military hierarchy downgraded
-Politburo became advisory board, decisions made by Stalin and his inner circle
-Zhdanov initiated a cultural purge to bring all creative arts under strict political control
-Control of science, arts and media ensure only governmnet approved messages reach the people
-Party members fear Stalin
-Fear and intimidation permeated every aspect of soviet life. Secret police and informers everywhere.
-NKVD renamed MVD in 1946 and under Beria became more powerful than ever
-Ensured all Russian people denied access to the outside world and influence
During the years of High Stalinism - was the SU a totalitarian state - Against
-Unrest in Gulags with strikes and an armed uprising in the winter of 1949-50
-In 1952, according to gulags own statistics, 32% of prisoners had not fulfilled their work norms
-Majority of workers were neither supporters nor opponents but accepted the regime, it was not popular
-Gulf between the centre and regions far from Moscow who ran their own fiefdoms for their own interests while paying lip service to the central government
-Outwardly there was obedience to orders, but under the surface there was considerable disorderliness
What Major Problems did Stalin leave for his successors - Terror and Respression
-Stifling fear - high level of fear and repression pervaded Stalins Russia, it stifled initiative and creativity and kept out new ideas, including desirable technical info from the West. It kept talented inmates in camps, failing to utilise them fully. Successors agreed that level of terror and repression was counter productive.
-Prison Camps- did not make economic sense. inmates living in poor conditions, lacking medical care and food, did not operate as efficiently as free workers would have done. Cost of maintaining the camps exceeded any profits made from prison labour and by 1953 the number in gluags doubled to over 2.5 million.
-MVD- Stalin believed in slave labour and gave the MVD increasing economic power so by 1952 they controlled 9% of capital investment in Russia, more than any other ministry. Five year plans 1951-55 doubled this.
-Gulag construction projects were among Stalins pet projects. Some were pointless: an inspection carried out in 1951 revealed that an entire 83 kilometres of far northern railway track, constructed at the cost of many lives, had not been used for three years.
What Major Problems did Stalin leave for his successors - Foreign relations and the Cold War
-Berlin Blockade- counter productive - accelerated the move towards the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, defensive alliance linking US ,Canada and Europe established in 1949. It lessened the prospects of a collaborative settlement of the German problem and speeded progress to the formation of a West German State that would gradually become part of the Western world.
-Security - despite a growth in soviet military power, there was not lasting security. In Asia, the Korean War dragged on. The USSR needed to increase its influence in developing countries to challenge pro-American govts and reduce US threat. By 1953 two hostile military camps faced each other and this had major consequences. There could only be one winner of the arms race- the West.
-Defence Sector - best scientists and engineers were creamed off to work in the defence sector and a very large army meant that industry and agriculture was deprived of young, fit men. Stalin determination to catch up with West led to increased defence spending. The notion of ‘the inevitable war’ would have to be rethought by Stalins successors.
What Major Problems did Stalin leave for his successors - The Command Economy
-Poor living conditions - Work and production at heart of soviet system, with aim to catch up to capitalism. In 1953, this seemed a long way away for Soviet citizens living in overcrowded, poorly maintained housing and accustomed to long queues for very poor quality consumer goods.
-Failures of the system - The planning system was over rigid, over centralised and excessively bureaucratic. Meeting the target was the key. Innovation and initiative were stifled and the centrally planned system was ill-equipped to compete in a world which was seeing increasingly rapid product and technological development. There was a concentration on the old staples such as solid fuels rather than oil and natural gas.
Little attention was given to synthetics and plastics.
-Agriculture - remains weakest element. Poverty-stricken villages and miserably low productivity were Stalins agricultural legacy. In post war years, continued neglect to agriculture. Payments for mandatory deliveries were so low that peasants sold their output for much less than the cost of production. To the very end, even in the context of worsening food shortages, Stalin had blocked any talk of serious policy reform in agriculture.
His successors were to vie with each other to do something about this.
What Major Problems did Stalin leave for his successors - The Stalin political system and the Stalin image
-Possible problem of reform- Stalins successors all saw need to reform, dilemma was how far relaxation could go without endangering the soviet state. Russian tradition was one of firm rule as the one alternative to anarchy and confusion. The party had a monopoly of power and many vested interests benefitted from this, not just materially. They looked to their own comfort and privileges rather than the drive to build socialism, and had much to lose by real change.
-Stalins position as an individual - Stalin was the embodiment of the repressive system. If his successors criticised his errors and crimes would they not open themselves up to the question, why had he been tolerated for so long? On the other hand, if parts of the structure were dismantled without any criticism of Stalin it would be neither very convincing nor effective.All in all it was a very difficult set of problems.
