Soviet Ideology

Vocabulary

Proletariat – the working class.Bourgeoisie – Wealthy owners of the ‘factors

of production’.Factors of production – mines, factories, and

farms. Communism – a theory of how to organize

human societies. According to the theory: government was unnecessary, implements a socialist economy.

* The theory of communism has never been realized.

Theory of Communism

Outlined in Marx and Engels’ The Communist Manifesto

Theory of how human history would develop.The proletariat would grow tired of working

for the profit of others and would rise up and violently overthrow the bourgeoisie and claim the ‘factors of production’ for the workers.

There would be a necessary period called the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ in which a small group of revolutionaries organized the society into a socialist economic system.

After the communist society was organized, and all of the workers were working for their own benefit in factories, farms, and mines they owned in common, there would be no need for a government.

Then everyone would live in a classless, happy society.

Soviet Ideology

Tsarist Russia Evil and Oppressive The First World War was

Devastating and a war of oppressive leaders that hurt the people.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks wanted to establish a communist government.

Believed it would be painful and difficult at first, but would then benefit the proletariat.

Willing to kill/eliminate opposition ‘for the greater good.’

Comintern – wished to spread communist revolution around world.

Stalin’s Consolidation of Power

Five Year PlansCollectivizationHousingEducationShow TrialsPurgesTerrorCensorshipPropagandaIsolation

“Comrade Stalin has concentrated enormous power in his hands, and I am not sure that he always knows how to use that power with sufficient caution.” V.I. Lenin

Collectivization

Combine small farms into large, collectively owned farms.

Results 1 million Kulaks and their

families (about 5 million people) deported.

In 1929 there were 25,000,000 small peasant farms, by 1952, these had been transformed into 100,000 large and highly mechanized collective farms.

6-10 million people died of famine in the Ukraine while the Soviet Union exported 10 million tons of grain.

Between 1930 and 1938, 25 million peasants were forcibly relocated from rural areas to developing industrial centers.

“In the terrible spring of 1933 I saw people dying from hunger, I saw women and children with distended bellies, turning blue, still breathing, but with vacant, lifeless eyes. And corpses, corpses in ragged sheepskin coats and cheap felt boots, corpses in peasant huts. . . I saw all this and did not go out of my mind or commit suicide. . . . Nor did I lose my faith.”

Lev Kopolev, Red Army Officer

“I did not trouble myself with why ‘humanity’ should be abstract, but ‘historical necessity’ and ‘class consciousness’ should be concrete.”

“The world revolution, was absolutely necessary so that justice would triumph. . .[When it was over], there would be no borders, no capitalists and no fascists at all . . . Moscow, Kharkov and Kiev would become just as enormous, just as well-built, as Berlin, Hamburg and New York. . . We would have skyscrapers, streets full of automobiles and bicycles. . .and all the workers and peasants would go walking in fine clothes, wearing hats and watches.”

- Lev Kopolev, Future Red Army Officer

“It was both possible and necessary to alter everything. The streets, the houses, the cities, the social order, human souls.”

- Raisa Orlova

“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.”

- Stalin

Five Year Plans

Five Year Plans – attempt to rapidly industrialize the Soviet Union. Results

Between 1928 and 1937 Russian national income rose from 24.4 to 96.3 billion rubles

coal output increased from 35.4 to 128 million tons steel production from 4 to 17.7 million tons electricity output rose 700% machine-tool production 20,000% tractor production rose 40,000% By the late 1930s, Russia had become the 2nd largest economy in

the world. Stakhanovism

Aleksei Stakhanov