Stalinism in the Soviet Union...– War Communism saved Soviet government but wrecked economy •...

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Fall 2019Prof. Kenneth F. [email protected]

Senior Scholars:Interwar Europe: Working Out Modernity in the Midst of Crisis

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY HISTORY DEPARTMENT

Stalinism in the Soviet Union

• Developments since Bolshevik Revolution and end of Civil War

• Shift in agricultural and economic policy that began with First Five Year Plan (1928-32)

• Stalin’s efforts to eliminate all possible rivals in society, state, and party – purges of 1930s

• Foreign policy and shifting attitude of Soviet Union to western democracies and to rise of fascism

HISTORY DEPARTMENT

HISTORY DEPARTMENT

Stalinism and the Soviet Union

• Bolsheviks consolidated their now position after November 1917 only after 4-5 years of bitter struggle– Major and many-facetted Civil War– Intervention by Allies– War with Poland

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• “War Communism– Political aspect– Economic aspect

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• War Communism• Structure of Government

– Council of People’s Commissars– Chairman, Vladimir Lenin– Commissar of National Minorities, Josef Stalin (Dzhugashvili)

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• Vladimir Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov)– Born 1870 Simbirsk– Son of state official (school inspector)– Studied law at University of Kazan– In 1887, his elder brother, Alexander, was executed at age 21 for

plotting to assassinate Tsar Alexander III– Became Marxist rather than Populist– Imprisoned 1896, Siberian exile for 3 years, then to Switzerland– Published Social Democratic newspaper, Iskra

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• Lenin– 1903 forced a split in Social Democratic party– Emerged as leader of “majority,” Bolsheviks– Lenin’s Marxism always a more voluntarist one than in western Europe

• Importance of “vanguard party”

• Embedded in conspiratorial Russian revolutionary tradition

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• Lenin– After November 1917 Revolution, Lenin exercised real power only

until May 1922, when he began to suffer a series of increasingly incapacitating strokes

– Died on January 21, 1924



• War Communism transformed Russia politically, socially, economically– Bolsheviks allowed peasants to seize land

• Revolution had proceeded under slogan: “Bread, peace, land!”

– Gave control of factories to workers’ committees– Nationalized all banks– Foreign trade became state monopoly, with special commissariat– December 1917, abolished existing judicial system, replaced with

“revolutionary tribunals” and “people’s courts,” to be guided by “socialist legal consciousness”

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• War Communism political and social reforms– Abolished titles and ranks– Confiscated property of upper and middle class opponents and émigrés– Confiscated property of Russian Orthodox Church– Abolished religious instruction in school– Adopted Gregorian calendar, January 31, 1918– December 20, 1917, created Extraordinary Commission to Combat

Counterrevolution, Sabotage, and Speculation• “Cheka”

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• War Communism economic reforms– Law of June 28, 1918 nationalized “commanding heights” of industrial

economy– Private trade replaced by rationing and government distribution– February 19, 1918, land nationalized, state property to be used only by

those who cultivated it with their own labor– Peasants withheld grain; decreed food levy; forcible requisition and

repression became common– Closely tied to exigencies of Civil War

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• By 1921, country was exhausted– Despite bloodless revolution in November 1917, 20 million had died, 1

million had emigrated– War Communism saved Soviet government but wrecked economy

• Total output of mines and factories in 1921 was 20 percent of 1914 level

• Cotton was 5 percent; iron was 2 percent

• Cultivated land was 64 percent of prewar level• Exchange rate of ruble to dollar:

– 1914 2 :1

– 1920 : 1 ,200 :1

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1914 1920 1939

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• Unbearable situation had led to uprisings of peasants in countryside and strikes and violence in factories

• Uprising of soldiers and sailors at Kronstadt naval base, March 2, 1921– Reliable supporters of Bolsheviks– Provisional Revolutionary Committee ruled for 15 days– Demanded end to privileged position of Communist Party; satisfaction

of demands of peasants and workers; freedom of speech and press; secret ballot; release of all political prisoners

• March 18, Trotsky led Red Army in and crushed mutineers– Shot without trial, massacred




• Tumult of Kronstadt in 1921 led to shift in course• New Economic Policy, NEP, 1921-28

– Temporary retreat on road to socialism– Communist Party retained full political control– Relaxation merely economic– State kept economic control of “commanding heights”– Private enterprise allowed in small industry and retail trade– Peasants no longer subject to requisitions but definite tax, first in kind,

then in money– Peasants could keep and sell on free market what remained after tax– Permitted some use of hired labor and leasing of land

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• New Economic Policy, NEP– Mastermind was Nikolai Bukharin

• Opposed by Leon Trotsky and “Left Opposition”

– Great economic success• By 1928, amount of land under cultivation exceeded prewar area

• State industries were required to pay for themselves• 75 percent of retain trade fell into private hands

• Small businessmen, “NEPmen,” flourished in towns• Prosperous peasants, “kulaks,” in countryside

• Even while successful, this social change worried Party– 1925 m easu res to restric t N ep m en– 1927 m easu res to restric t ku laks


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• Constitutional Structure of Soviet Union– First constitution of July 10, 1918

• Created Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic

• Local soviets elected delegates to provincial congress of soviets, which elected All-Russian Congress

• All-Russian Congress elected Executive Committee and Council of People’s Commissars

• Elections not secret

• Communist Party, especially Central Committee and Politburo, dominated state as well

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• Constitutional Structure of Soviet Union– Second constitution December 30, 1922

• Created Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, USSR

• Composed of 7 republics– R S F S R , U k ra in e , B y e lo ru ssia , Tran scau casian F ed era tio n (A zerb a ijan , A rm en ia , G eo rg ia ),

Tu rk m en istan , U zb ek istan , Ta jik istan– Inc reased to 11 in 1936 : F edera tion d iv ided in to 3 , K azakhstan and K irgh izstan separa ted from R S F S R

• Power wielded by 4 main agencies– S o v ie ts

– C o m m u n ist P a rty

– S ecre t P o lice

– M ilita ry

• Real power lay with party

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• Increasing power lay with secret police– Cheka, Felix Dzershinsky– 1922 renamed GPU, OGPU, Unified State Political Administration, led

by Vyacheslav Menzhinsky– Later NKVD then KGB– Used to track down counterrevolutionaries and wreckers– Exile to “GULag Archipelago”

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• Transition from Lenin to Stalin– Three main points of view among Bolsheviks in 1920s

• Left, led by Trotsky, supported world revolution and opposed NEP

• Right, led by Bukharin, believed in world revolution but did not see it soon, so wished for non-disruptive policy in foreign affairs and develop economy through NEP at home

• Center, led by Stalin, favored building socialism in one country, called for great efforts to transform Soviet Union

– Stalin won struggle for control after Lenin’s death through control of party membership and apparatus as Secretary-General of CPSU

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• Stalin won struggle for control after Lenin’s death– Overcame Trotsky beginning in 1924, beginning process of stripping

him of offices, especially leadership of Red Army– Collaborated with Right (Bukharin and Rykov) to struggle with Left

(Kamenev and Zinoviev)– Fifteenth Party Congress on December 27, 1927 condemned “all

deviation from the general Party line,” as interpreted by Stalin

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• In 1928, Stalin made momentous decision to abandon NEP and embark upon a crash program of centrally directed industrialization in order to match economic, and thus military, power of the west.

• To defend “Socialism in One Country” from inevitable aggression of capitalist powers

• Necessary to build Socialism in One Country because World Revolution had clearly been delayed

• First Five Year Plan, 1928-32

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• But Soviet Union still a heavily agrarian society, bulk of population in countryside

• By its very nature, work force for industrialization needs to be urban

• Moreover, agriculture even now only barely feeding existing cities

• Industrialization would mean transfer of labor from country to city, leaving even smaller workforce for agriculture, but needing to produce more food than before

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• So starting point of First Five Year Plan was collectivization of agriculture– To produce enough grain to feed new cities and for export– To free peasant labor to move to cities to work in factories

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• Required abandonment of market compromises of NEP

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• In 1929, Stalin sent party agents to countryside to seize hoards of grain withheld from market because peasants were dissatisfied with price and stop food shortages in cities

• December 27, 1929, called for “liquidation of the kulaks as a class”

• Collectivize agriculture into collective farms (kolkhozy) and state farms (sovkhozy)


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• More than 27,000 party agents sent into countryside• Together with local authorities and Party organizations, police,

and if needed, army troops, forced peasants into collectives

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• Peasants resisted, provoking party agents into brutal overkill– In theory, a kulak was any peasant with enough capital to be a money-

lender and thus usurer• Most estimates no more than 5 percent of all peasants

– In practice, any peasant who resisted collectivization was liquidated as a kulak

– Whereas original Plan called for 14 percent collectivization after 5 years, once resistance began, collectivization pursued brutally and totally

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• Nothing less than open warfare between peasants and Party emerged in countryside– Villages shelled and stormed– A minimum of 1 million, perhaps as many as 3 million, peasants died

of starvation after all their grain was requisitioned or were killed– Peasants resisted by killing their livestock

• Horses declined from 34 million to 16.6 million

• Cattle from 68.1 million to 38.6 million

• Sheep and goats from 147.2 million to 50.6 million• Hogs from 20.9 million to 12.2 million

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• Effects of violence worsened by significant droughts in 1932 and 1933

• Result was horrific famine in 1932-33– Charged by some as being deliberately induced– Particularly severe in Ukraine; called by Ukrainians Holomodor– Between 3 million and 4 million deaths, primarily in southwest, in

Ukraine





• Despite horrible dislocation and loss of life, Soviet agriculture fundamentally transformed

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• Despite dislocation and horrific loss of live, Soviet agriculture was fundamentally transformed– In 1928, 98 percent of all land in small peasant holdings– By 1938, 90 percent of all land had been collectivized– State had control over primary direction of food supply; farmers and

peasants could no longer determine whether there would be stability or unrest in cities

– By 1932, 68 percent of all cultivated land under kolkhozy, 10 percent sovkhozy, and only 22 percent private cultivation

– State monopolized farm machinery in Machine Tractor Stations

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• Collectivization eliminated a possible power base for opposition to CPSU

• Harvest in 1939 20 percent larger than in 1929, produced with fewer agricultural workers

• Between 1926 and 1939 20 million Soviets moved from countryside to city, creating vast urban labor force

• Never solved problem of agricultural productivity• Cost in human suffering and death, deprivation and sacrifice

enormous




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HISTORY DEPARTMENT


• Counterpart to collectivization in agriculture was rapid construction of heavy industry– Building upon wartime experience of “planned economy”– Main goal of First Plan was to develop heavy industry

• Iron and steel

• Machine-building and machine tools

• Automobiles and agricultural machinery• Aviation

• Electrical goods

• Chemicals

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• More than 1,500 new factories built• Entire cities, such as Magnitogorsk• Under leadership of State Planning Committee, Gosplan• Rates of growth of 12-14 percent per year

• Famous emphases like Stakhanovites, named after Alexey Stakhanov– Miner in Donets Basin, overfulfilled daily quota by 1,400 percent in

course of shift

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• First Five Year Plan completed in 4 years and 3 months



• First Five Year Plan (1928-1932)• Second Five Year Plan (1933-1937)• Third Five Year Plan began 1938, interrupted by German

invasion in June 1941• Amazing results

– Still lagged in efficiency and per capita production– War-like mobilization led to further repression, “wreckers”– Forced labor camps of GULag

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• Second great characteristic of 1930s was the series of purges that eliminated possible rivals to Stalin for power

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• Soon after Bolshevik Revolution, political parties other than the Bolshevik Party had been abolished

• Their supporters either sided with Whites, went into exile, were arrested and sent to the GULag or killed, or dropped out of political life

• Cadets, Socialist Revolutionaries, and Mensheviks suppressed as counterrevolutionaries in 1917 and 1918

• Only party other than Bolsheviks that was permitted were Left Socialist Revolutionaries, but they split in March 1918 over class struggle in villages

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• Bolshevik Party itself underwent periodic purges– Reached 730,000 in 1921, but one-third were purged– By 1929, again had more than 1 million members– By 1939, had 1.5 million members plus 5 million in youth groups

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• From the very beginning and creation of the Cheka, political police were a fundamental reality of Soviet life– Red Terror during 1918 during Civil War– Pursued upper and middle class backgrounds as “class enemies”– Campaign of violence by Left Socialist Revolutionaries gave impetus

to Red Terror– August 1918, Fanny Kaplan shot and wounded Lenin



• Stalin began to use position as Secretary General of Party to eliminate rivals for power– Three main points of view among Bolsheviks in 1920s

• Left, led by Trotsky, supported world revolution and opposed NEP; joined by Zinoviev and Kamenev

• Right, led by Bukharin, believed in world revolution but did not see it soon, so wished for non-disruptive policy in foreign affairs and develop economy through NEP at home; also Rykov

• Center, led by Stalin, favored building “Socialism in One Country,” called for great efforts to transform Soviet Union

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• As Lenin declined in 1923, triumvirate of Stalin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev, all opposed to Trotsky, assumed power– Transferred Trotsky’s closes associates to jobs far away from center of

power– Encouraged Trotsky’s enemies to criticize him– In January 1925, removed Trotsky as War Commissar– Gradually lost power, and in 1929 was expelled from Soviet Union

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• Stalin then turned sights on other “Old Bolsheviks”– In 1927, had Zinoviev and Kamenev expelled for association with

Trotsky’s ideas– Later readmitted, but power was gone– By end of 1930, other old Bolsheviks such as Bukharin, Tomsky, and

Rykov had been forced out of Politburo and replaced by Stalin loyalists, Molotov

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• As Second Five Year Plan began in 1934, Stalin began Great Purge– Signal was murder of party leader of Leningrad, Sergei Kirov in

December 1934– Under guise of weeding out “plotters,” GPU killed hundreds and sent

thousands to labor camps– ”Yezhovshchina” after head of GPU, Nikolai Yezhov

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• August 1936, Trial of the Sixteen– Accused of plotting murder of Kirov– Final liquidation of Left, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Tomsky

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• January 1937, Trial of the Seventeen– Plotting with foreign powers to destroy Soviet Union– Radek

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• March 1938, Trial of the Twenty-One– Eliminated leadership of the Right– Bukharin and Rykov

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• By the end of the Great Purge in 1938, all of Lenin’s Politburo except for Stalin and Trotsky were dead

• Stalin finally succeeded in having Trotsky murdered in Mexico City by Spanish Communist, Ramon Mercado




• At Party Congress in 1934, 80 percent of delegates had been Old Bolsheviks

• At Party Congress in 1939, 20 percent of delegates had been Old Bolsheviks

• Of 1,966 delegates to 1934 Congress, most had been arrested• Of 136 members of Central Committee in 1934, 98 killed by

1939• As many as 7 or 8 million people arrested during great purge• By 1937, 6 million people in labor camps

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• Crucial element of Great Purge was its effect on Red Army• Stalin suspected Marshal Tukhachevsky as an independent

power• Nazis thought that Tukhachevsky’s fall would weaken Soviet

military, so forged documents compromising Tukhachevsky, gave to Eduard Benes, President of Czechoslovakia, ally of Soviet Union



• June 1937, Generals of Red Army tried in secret• 3 of 5 marshals, 14 of 16 army commanders, 60 of 67 corps

commanders, 136 of 199 division commanders, 221 of 397 brigade commanders, half of officer corps, 35,000 in all, shot or imprisoned

• Wrought havoc on army, not recovered by 1941



• Foreign Policy– 1917-24: World Revolution

• Bifurcated foreign policy

• Soviet state pursued traditional foreign policy

• Third International, Comintern, promoting world revolution

– 1924-35: No foreign adventure– 1935-39: Popular Front

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Stalinism in the Soviet Union...– War Communism saved Soviet government but wrecked economy •...

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