Rise of Jospeh Stalin

• Background: organised a workers strike which showed him that violence is the way to achieve his goals, his best friend was a double agent who betrayed him, and his first wife died in 1906
• Struggle for power: both Trotsky and Stalin had faults and positives. Both agreed to withhold Lenin’s testament as it makes them look bad. Trotsky wanted permanent revolution (communism to spread everywhere) and Stalin wanted socialism in one country (communist to stay in Russia for the time being). By 1929, Stalin placed his allies in key positions and had complete control over soviet union
• Stalin created a totalitarian state with secret police, cult of personality/propaganda and purges/show trials
• Stalin relied on secret police to maintain power. He had the Cheka which became the NKVD which wasn’t constricted by the law anymore and was used against anyone without any real proof.
• Cult of personality/propaganda: stalin created tributes to himself everywhere, he named towns/cities after himself, even had his name included in the new national anthem. Stalins gov. controlled all newspapers and radios, etc and they glorified all achievements of communism, Stalin and his economic programs. Gov controlled all education and it was a way to promote propaganda
• Purges: Kirov, the leader of the Leningrad CP was murdered, stalin used this as an excuse to have massive purges where anybody accused of disloyalty was murdered, sent to gulags or put on public show trials where they had to plead guilty. Stalins intense paranoia fuelled this and his claims became more and more outrageous. One third of 3 million CP members were killed. Photos and books changed to erase the memory of those arrested.
• The Great terror was a period in Russia of unprecedented terror, a wave of fear was spread through Russia, 20 million ordinary people sent to gulags where half perhaps died. Prisoners in the gulags worked 14 hour days, had poor food rations and worked in freezing conditions
• Results of great terror/purges: nobody was willing to challenge stalin, fear and paranoia spread like wildfire, communist leadership and armed forces purged leading to poor performance at the start of WW2, economy slowed down due to death of skilled workers, estimated between 15-30 million people were victim to the purges
• Politburo: the head committee of the communist party who made the decisions
• To purge: to remove an undesirable group of people in an abrupt/violent way (to cleanse)
• Reasons why Stalin wanted to purge CP: rumours of replacing stalin with another member of the party (like kirov), he was becoming even more paranoid and believed a conspiracy to kill him was developing, people were becoming unhappy with his policies
• Quotes: “death is solution to all problems: no man, no problem”, “i trust no one, not even myself”, “one death is a tragedy. a million deaths is a statistic”