Lesson 3: Stalin: the dictator
Highlights:
-he obtained unchecked power
-socialism needs to transform human nature
-any layers of self-interest must be cleansed from human nature
-absolute brutality: the killing of women and children
Transition of power:
-Communist party needed to choose a leader after Lenin suffers a stroke in 1922 and in 1923 where he lost the power of speech
-Lenin died in 1924
-Stalin’s birth name Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was born in Georgia so grew up around the TSARS (1878-1953)
-educated in an Orthodox seminary in Tbilisi
-Stalin was an intellectual-avid reader-he wrote poetry and had writings
-Stalin’s pursuit of socialism and communism enabled his greatest achievements but at the cost of equally great misdeeds
-he looked to books to show how society can be transformed
-Stalin was “a Marxist fundamentalist
-He never deviated from the Marxist worldview he adopted in his youth
-Like Lenin, he regarded Marxism as a science that rested on unshakable truths.
****He never showed any sympathy for the heterodox Bolshevik movement of “god-builders”, led by the Soviet Commissar of Enlightenment Anatoly Lunacharsky (1875-1933), which aimed to turn revolutionary socialism into a religion. For Stalin as for Lenin, Bolshevism was the practical application of science – the opposite of religion, in their view.
1917:Stalin successor of Lenin:
-Lenin set up to have Stalin to take over in 1922 as the higher powered general secretary
-Jan. 4 1923 Stalin speaks about replacing Lenin
-Stalin accumulating power under Lenin as a bureaucrat
1936-1938 The Great Purge:
-Stalin navigated a way to get rid of anyone not loyal to him
Examples:
-Grigory Zinoviev -Russian revolutionary and Soviet politician-part of the Old Bolshevik and one of Lenin’s closest associates
-Nikolai Bukharin -Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, and Marxist theorist-prominent Bolshevik; General Secretary of the Executive Comin tern's executive of the communist
-Lev Kamenev-Deputy Chairman of the People’s Commission
Purpose of the Council of People’s Commission:
The Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union was the highest collegial body of executive and administrative authority of the Soviet Union from 1923 to 1946.The People's Commissariat was responsible for managing a specific sector of the economy or area of state
activity. The head of a People's Commissariat was called a People's Commissar, or Narkom
People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD)
The Soviet Union's secret police and interior ministry from 1934 to 1946. The NKVD was responsible for political repression, the Great Purge, and counterintelligence.
People's Commissariat for Posts and Telegraphs
The central government body responsible for organizing and administering communication, including the postal service, from 1923 to 1932.
People's Commissariat for Education
Transformed into the Ministry of Education in 1946. Anatoly Lunacharsky was the first head of the People's Commissariat for Education.
People's Commissariat for Nationalities
Set up to prepare for the Constituent Assembly, particularly in regards to how Ukrainian autonomy could be handled.
-Stalin has Zinoviev and Kamenev executed on August 25, 1936
-Nikolai Yezhov: Stalin’s Commissar (Soviet secret police official) purges as a fervent Stalinist and a believer in violent oppression
-all men aligned with Lenin were executed
Leon Trotsky-Stalin’s main competition
-People’ Commission for Military and Naval affairs 1918-1925
-he led the red army during the Russian Civil War was exiled to leave Russian in 1929
-he wanted the new economic policy to end
-he tried to consolidate the NEP men on his side for control over Russia
Who were the NEP men:
NEP( New Economic Policy) men were small-scale business people and merchants in the Soviet Union during the 1920s who took advantage of the New Economic Policy (NEP)
-NEP men played a significant role in the Soviet economy, especially in retail trade. They were important suppliers to Soviet consumers, and the government allowed their existence because of the economic benefits they provided
-NEP men were often depicted as greedy and an affront to the Communist Party's goal of building socialism. They were subjected to many taxes and restrictions, and faced a "wave of terror" in late 1923 and 1924
-Stalin took them and either executed them or imprisoned them
-Stalin implements a full blow system of central economic planning
The 5 Year Plan:
-1928, Stalin develops and decreed 5 year plan
-mass collectivization of all agriculture
-capital from agriculture used for building heavy industry-government owned
2 things Stalin did before WWII:
1-economic plans and industrialization was meant to cement Stalin’s control and produce for war
2-collectivization
-he consolidated the regime to produce armaments even bigger than the U.S.
-he took over all the small businesses
-forced labor and if they didn’t want to work they were executed
-they were assigned work: where and what work to be done
Control over every aspect of the economy:
-overall goals for the economy to achieve
-focus on industrialization and production of steel
-Institution by the name of GOSPLAN (State Planning Committee of the Soviet Union)
GOSPLAN:
-they had the responsibility to come up with a detailed plan for the production of the entire economy
-hierarchy: Stalin down to management down to the front line workers
-Plan Law: down the tier back up to the top tier to Stalin and if working Stalin would sign it into plan law and then its full implementation and stick to that plan for 5 years
-Soviet Union applied this plan for over 63 years
-starvation, famine, disease, and death of the peasants during implementation of the plan
-oppression began during the initiation of the 5 year plan 1928-1929
-political structure of the country was established: Stalin had absolute power
-Stalin used mass terror and mass arrests
Example: The Moscow Show Trials
-Moscow show trials: part of the great purge to have people be accused and required to come and confess their betrayal but the trial was not fair to give the people representation but examples of what happens when you do not keep your mouth shut and keep in line - no dissent - made to name others as guilty of betrayal - to try to avoid torture -try to avoid their family and friends of being tortured or brought to trial
-Stalin believed he embodied the proletariat (working class regarded as collectively)
-he believed what he was doing what was best for the working classes
-Stalin was full Communist; full central planning; full ownership of agriculture; part of the Marxist tradition
Pragmatic side to Stalin:
-1930: he had Russian spies (espionage) toward the Western country
-He sent spies to commit industrial espionage to gain technology of: tractors, tanks, and armaments
-collectivism and industrialization combined = factories, machines, and technologies
-brutal labor caused mass human destruction
Example:
-the abuse of the farmers of Ukraine
-if peasants did not live up to the Stalin’s terms of productive worker was rounded up, put in a concentration camp, and starved to death
-hunger, despair, death in Ukraine agony was rampant
1932- 1933 Great Famine in Ukraine
-peasants were resisting Stalin coming in and taking their land
-1st group Stalin targeted: targeted for mass liquidations were called the kulaks(successful farmers)
-grain was exported at the height of the famine
Question: Soviet genocide didn’t get the same response from the West like the Holocaust?
-it had to do with the news coverage of corrective labor camps, casualties, terror of whole populations, terror through ethnic profiling: Baltic, Korean, Czech, class enemies following the Marxist theories
****Are western elites sympathetic with communism?
-Stalin believed soviet engineers were purposely sabotaging his plan
Example: Engineer trials
-Stalin killed the ones who were building and strengthening the Russian economy
-Stalin truly believed these engineers were the enemy
-Stalin followed Lenin’s thoughts of getting rid of anyone that even looks suspicious
Stalin’s legacy of brutality:
15-20 million citizens were murdered under his reign
1941: World War II:
-Hitler invaded Austria, Czechoslovakia, then Poland(1939) on way to East Russia
-France & Britain stopped Hitler from taking over Russia so Hitler turned to the west and attacked France and Britain
WWII was Stalin’s victory:
-1939 war is strategic where 2 capitalist countries go to war against each other to weaken both sides
-Stalin was opportunistic to set one side against each other: Germany and England
-Hitler caught off guard with war as he didn’t expect any push back
WWII referred to as a war of attrition:
-prolonged war during which each side seeks to gradually wear out the other by a series of small=scale actions. German and Western armies
Stalin’s true intentions:
-Soviet Union was not an ally with the U.S. but by the end of the war they too were beaten, but it was only because of the aid of U.S. that they survived
-without that aid there may not have been a post war Soviet Union
Grand Alliance:
-United States, United Kingdom, and Union of Socialist Social Republic
-U.S. Largest capitalist country,
-United Kingdom largest imperialist country
-Russia largest communist country
***but communism stood against both capitalists and imperialists
-3 powers combined and won the war
After the War:
-alliance broke up
1945 Yalta conference:
U.S., Great Britain, and Soviet Union
The "Big Three" leaders:
U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin
Signed declaration of liberated Europe:
-essence liberated countries could reestablish their government of their own choice-
The leaders agreed on several key points, including:
Germany: Germany would be occupied and de-nazified, and its military industry would be abolished or confiscated
Poland: The Soviets would maintain hegemony in Poland and other Eastern European countries
United Nations: A "World Organization" would be established to ensure peace after the war
Japan: The war in Japan would be brought to a successful conclusion
Reparations: A commission would determine reparations
War criminals: Major war criminals would be tried before an international court
Cold War:
-started because Stalin did not abide by the signed declaration of liberated Europe
-he never permitted to have free elections in Eastern Europe like Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Czech, and ultimately East Germany (Communist Imperialism
-1947-48 Eastern countries taken power
-1952-Truman sees Soviet Union reneged on their contract and were expanding their power
Winston Churchill speech:
-international communist, Soviet Russia, called it the iron curtain
The Iron Curtain:
-was a political, military, and ideological barrier that separated Western Europe from the
Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies during the Cold War:
Origin of the Iron Curtain:
The term was first used by Winston Churchill in a 1946 speech to describe the political and ideological divide between democratic and communist countries. The term had been used in other contexts since the 19th century, but Churchill's speech gave it its current meaning.
1. Physical barriers
The Iron Curtain was originally a symbolic boundary, but it eventually included physical barriers such as walls, fences, minefields, and watchtowers. The Berlin Wall, which divided East and West Germany, was the most well-known of these barriers.
2, Isolation
The Iron Curtain made it difficult to travel between the two sides. The Soviet Union worked to prevent Western influence from reaching its borders.
3. Economic and military alliances
Separate economic and military alliances were developed on each side of the Iron Curtain.
4. End
The Iron Curtain ended in 1989 when most communist countries in Eastern Europe abandoned single-party governments.
Outcomes:
-Orthodox Marxism: the only viable and lasting solution to the contradictions of capitalism is for the establishment of a post-capitalist socialist economy
-communism moved through Asian nations
-Stalin wanted Soviet Union leader in the new world order
***Stalin killed more people then were killed during the Holocaust