Stalin

• A year before his death, Lenin condemned Stalin And called for his dismissal
• who formed an informal alliance in the politburo to present Trotsky taking power

  • Stalin
  • Zinoviev
  • Kamenev
• how large was the politburo when Lenin died

  6
• What is Lenin’s Letter to Congress now known as

  Political testament
• After Lenin’s death, what did the Politburo set up to preserve Lenin’s memory

  Immortalisation commission
• According to Figes, under Lenin 5,000 Bolshevik families lived a privileged existence in the Kremlin
• What was Stalin position after the revolution

  Commissar for Nationalities
• which members of Lenin’s Politburo had a Jewish background (3/6)

  • Trotsky
  • Zinoviev
  • Kamenev
• The New Economic Policy was not popular in the communist party, it was a great defeat for the world’s first communist government to have to reintroduce capitalist competition and private ownerships.
• It was believed the New Economic policy was creating a new bourgeoisie in the countryside - what were they called?

  • Kulaks
  • Nepmen
• The 1930s saw a remarkable transformation in the USSR. Twelve years of communist rule had restored The country to roughly the same economic position as it had occupied in 1913. This could be regarded as a great achievement in light of the immense cost of WW1 and the following period of civil war. However, it was not what Russian Marxists had hoped to achieve.
• what was the concerted drive to industrialise and modernise the USSR called

  ‘second revolution‘
• Why were farms collectivised?

  1. to bring socialism to the countryside
  2. to control and transform the ‘backwards peasantry’
  3. to solve the problems of food supply
  4. to raise revenue for industrialisation
  5. to destroy political rivals
  6. to prove the successes of communism to the Russian people and rest of the world
• To achieve socialism in the country side

  • from 1925 onwards, private traders and entrepreneurs in the cities and industrialised regions had to face increangly harsh taxes and even arrests
  • It was therefore a growing contradiction to allow private farmers freedom to make profit in the countryside
• In 1928, what percentage of farmers were in collective farms

  2%
• What target did the 1927 party congress set for collectivisation

  20% of farmers to be in collectivised farms by 1933
• To control and transform the backward peasantry

  • for many forward thinking Russians, the peasantry had always represented the biggest obstacle to progress
  • Alexander II, Witte and Stolypin had all tried to modernise agriculture and change the ingrained habits of the conservative peasantry
  • For the communists, the desire to transform the peasantry was even stronger, given that the proletariat was the class of the future
  • They were a source of opposition to the communist regime as religious superstition was high in the countryside
• What did the communists view the peasantry as

  • primitive
  • uneducated
• There was only 1 communist in every 125 peasant household
• After collectivisation, the party hoped to control the peasants, and to ’raise’ by education their cultural level to support the communist ideals
• To solve the problem of food supplies

  • in 1927 and 1928, the government had great difficulty in purchasing grain to feed the urban population
  • Collectivisation would mean that the state would manage agriculture and guarantee the food supply in the future
• To raise revenue for industrialisation

  • The new, larger collectivised farms, bringing economies of scale and using modern equipment, would produce more
  • large surpluses would then be sold abroad to pay for the import of machinery to build an industrialised society
• To Destroy Political rivals

  • In 1928, Stalin shared power with the Right; Bukharin, Tomsky, and Rykov.
  • A move to forced collectivisation would isolate them and enable Stalin to emerge as the dominant figure in the soviet Union
• The Three Stages of Collectivisation

  1. emergency measures
  2. The Urals Siberian method
  3. forced collectivisation
• emergency measures

  • in January 1928, the politburo voter unanimously for ‘emergency measures’
  • This meant confiscating grain by force
  • in 1928, over 100,000 party workers went out in the farms to help with the harvest
• The Urals - Siberian method

  • this method of collecting grain was approved by the Central Committee in November 1928 and used during the 1928-29 winter
  • Village meetings were called and the poorer peasants were asked to point out those kulak families hoarding grain
  • they were offered a reward of 25% of any grain confiscated
• what was set up in 1929

  • Collective Farm Centre
• Forced collectivisation

  • In summer 1929, the Collective farm centre was set up
  • almost 60% of farms were collectivised between November 1929 and March 1930
  • Peasants who opposed were branded as Kulaks and transported, shot or imprisoned
• Dekulakisaton

  • The Kulaks had always been the biggest opposition to collectivisation
  • Peasants were invited to denounce Kulaks in their villages
• How many Kulaks were affected by persecution

  1,000,000
• Out of the 1,000,000 affected ‘Kulaks’, how many were transported

  1/3
• What percentage of the Peasnts did the party assume were Kulaks

  3%
• • Quotas of Kulak families to be identified were set for each area
  • they were difficult to identity and there were no instructions set for party workers
• Who attacked the churches, burned icons and deported priests - in attempt to destroy peasant culture

  League of the Militant Godless
• What were churches transformed into

  • Barns
  • Socialist Clubs
  • Libraries
• What did the attack on culture, and the deaths accompanying it, reminded the peasants of - associating the communist party with the anti-christ

  the Coming of the Antichrist with his Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse -
• What did priests preach

  Collectivisation was against God’s Will
• Opposition of the peasantry

  • Individual acts of terror and murder against collectivisers
  • Disruption of collective farm meetings
  • Peasants slaughtered or ate their animals instead of surrendering them
• The Party Retreats

  • The Pravda carried an article written by Stalin, criticising the pace of collectivisation
  • The article called for the return of the unjustly removed Kulaks
  • The figure of collectivised peasants fell from 60% in February in 1930 to 20% in August
• The Newspaper of the Communist Party

  Pravda