Stalin - Methods Of Control

Question 1

Terror - how did Stalin transform terror?

Answer 1

He began to use terror on those inside the party as well as outside it. He used terror on a far greater scale than Lenin

Question 2

Terror - when did the Cheka become the NKVD?

Answer 2

1934, Yagoda appointed head in the search for Kirov’s murderer

Question 3

Terror - how did Stalin justify the new level of terror?

Answer 3

Part of the intensified class struggle

Question 4

Terror - how did Stalin reform terror?

Answer 4

• set targets for terror

- some NKVD agents were accused of being loyal to Stalins enemies so new more radical agents were employed

Question 5

Terror - what was the great terror?

Answer 5

1937-38

• 1.5 million males arrested
• 635,000 deported
• 680,000 executed

Question 6

Terror - what was the result of the terror?

Answer 6

Damage the economy and strengthen Stalin by removing all of his opponents

Question 7

Terror - who was Beria?

Answer 7

Replaced Yezhov as head of the NKVD he arrested and killed Yezhov in 1940. Beria targeted racial minorities, 53,000 of the 130,000 kalmyks survive. All chechens were deported or liked by 1944. He was also responsible for interrogating the 1.5m POW’s.

Question 8

Terror - what was the Leningrad affair?

Answer 8

200 officials from the Leningrad party were arrested

Question 9

Terror - what was the doctors plot?

Answer 9

1952/3 all of Stalins medical staff were arrested but were released after Stalins death. Thought to be based off anti Semitic views.

Question 10

Media - what did Stalin want from the media?

Answer 10

He wanted it to reflect the priorities of the government. Seen in the development of socialist realism, about socialist things and easy to understand

Question 11

Media - when was the union of writers set up?

Answer 11

In 1932 to spread socialist realism in literature

Question 12

Media - what did Stalin Censor?

Answer 12

Stalin tightened censorship of the media. Books by Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev were banned. Stalins writings were also edited to remove any dodgy statements

Question 13

Media - what was propaganda like?

Answer 13

Entirely focused on Stalin, all successes were accredited to him and failures to capitalist saboteurs

Question 14

personality cult - what was Stalin’s cult of personality like?

Answer 14

very large and detached from the actual problems of the soviet union. it emphasised Stalin as a legitimate leader of the USSR.

Question 15

personality cult - what was the myth of two leaders?

Answer 15

a rumour that Stalin had won the Oct revolution and Civil War alongside Lenin

Question 16

personality cult - what was published in 1938?

Answer 16

the two histories of the USSR, they eliminated figures like Trotsky and removed them from photographs.

Question 17

personality cult - what was Stalin also called?

Answer 17

the Vozhd meaning leader

Question 18

personality cult - what effect did WWII have on Stalin’s image?

Answer 18

he became a heroic war leader and a military genius who defeated Hitler.

Question 19

religion - who did the NKVD target?

Answer 19

churches in the countryside due to collectivisation and Islamic figures in central Asia.

Question 20

religion - who was targeted for being anti-marxist and who survived?

Answer 20

the Sufi’s and the Jadid’s were targeted. by 1936 the Sufi’s had been wiped out. Islam survived.

Question 21

religion - what was Stalin’s stance on religion in WWII?

Answer 21

Stalin made an alliance with the church, stopping the persecution of religion in order to boost patriotism. he recognised that people needed the church to comfort them, motivate them and give them something to believe in during the war.

Question 22

religion - when was anti-religious propeganda stopped?

Answer 22

in the last year of the war - 414 churches reopened as a result

Question 23

religion - what happened to the number of priests under Stalin?

Answer 23

there were 9254 priests in 1946 which rose to 11,827 in 1948.

Question 24

art - give some examples of art under Stalin.

Answer 24

Lavrosky’s Romeo and Juliet was praised for being widely understandable
‘voting to expel the kulak from the collective farm’ was a socialist realism painting glorifying collectivisation
‘morning of our motherland’ shows a socialist utopia in a similar fashion.