Stalin quotes and historical interpretations

Question 1

The NEP could not work in the long run and technological backwardness and unstable nature of the internal and world markets couldn’t have brought the USSR forward.

Answer 1

Western historians including E. H. Carr

Question 2

‘We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it or we shall be crushed.’

Answer 2

A speech from Stalin 1931

Question 3

A kulak is ‘the accursed enemy of collectivisation’

Answer 3

Stalin in 1929

Question 4

‘The peasants are holding their grain back’

Answer 4

Secret politburo discussions, January 1928

Question 5

Historical view about the terror: it was an integral part of the Soviet system

Answer 5

It was born in terror eg. Civil war to seize power in 1917, and Lenin had labour camps secret police (cheka)

Question 6

Historical view about the terror: terror was a necessary part of the economic change

Answer 6

Eg. For unwilling groups such as liquidising the kulaks

Question 7

Who said about the first FYP ‘Heavy industry expanded at an accelerating rate’

Answer 7

Historian R. Davies

Question 8

Which group of people think the NEP was too restrictive and didn’t allow the Soviet economy to breathe or expand

Answer 8

Russian economists

Question 9

Who said under the NEP a moderate rate of expansion of both industry and agriculture could continue

Answer 9

R. Davies

Question 10

‘The worst period of Russia’s own crisis coincided with crashes and bankruptcies in the ‘capitalist’ world, and at least Russia’s troubles could be seen as growing pains’

Answer 10

A. Nove

Question 11

‘The cleansings were unavoidable and their results, on the whole, were beneficial’

Answer 11

Stalin ending the purges in a speech in 1939

Question 12

‘Better that ten innocent people should suffer than one spy get away’

Answer 12

Yezhov on how random the terror was in operating

Question 13

‘No area of Soviet life escaped being purged. Under Stalin terror was elevated to a method of government’

Answer 13

M. Lynch

Question 14

‘The terrible purges weakened but did not disrupt the combination. Gaps were rapidly filled by new recruits indebted to the regime’

Answer 14

M. Fainsod

Question 15

‘Stalin was the natural successor to Lenin because the party had become so bureaucratised’

Answer 15

Richard Pipes

Question 16

Who believes Stalin’s rise to power was down to his own personal qualities

Answer 16

The Liberal School

Question 17

Stalin demonstrated the ‘necessary grit, determination, manipulative skills and ruthlessness to attain power through his own means’

Answer 17

Conquest (from the liberal school)

Question 18

Believed Stalin’s rise to power was more attributed to party structure where the position of the General Secretary came to be all important

Answer 18

Western historians, structuralists such as E. H. Carr

Question 19

‘Lenin did not merely inspire revolutionary terror, he was also the first to make it into a state institution’

Answer 19

Volkogonov

Question 20

Said the terror was due to Stalin’s ‘lust for power, boundless ambition’

Answer 20

Medvedev

Question 21

The purges were made scapegoats for the real failings

Answer 21

Nove

Question 22

There was popular support for Stalin’s policies including class warfare and de-Kulakisation

Answer 22

Revisionist historians

Question 23

There was great enthusiasm for the programme of rapid industrialisation among the workers

Answer 23

Revisionist historians

Question 24

The worst period in Russia’s own crisis coincided with crashes and bankruptcies in the ‘capitalist’ world, and at least Russia’s troubles could be seen as growing pains

Answer 24

Nove

Question 25

Stalin’s policies were a product of the time and place

Answer 25

E. H. Carr

Question 26

Successfully tackled such formidable tasks as the laying of the material and technical foundations of Socialism

Answer 26

Y. Kukushkin

Question 27

There was a certain logic to Stalin eg FYP given the backwardness of Russia

Answer 27

Nove

Question 28

Stalin’s methods resulted in significant gains in industrial production in a short space of time, even though ‘impossible’ targets could not be met.

Answer 28

Economists, including H. Hunter

Question 29

Who disagrees with economists, that Bukharin’s longer term economic development could have had many of the successes without the terrible by-products of Stalinism

Answer 29

R. Tucker

Question 30

There was widespread support in the USSR for the campaign against kulaks

Answer 30

A. Getty

Question 31

Interpretation about the terror: although Stalin was at the centre of power, certain individuals such as Molotov who held an important position was prepared to argue policy with him

Answer 31

A. Getty