Political Situation

• Soviet Union was a highly centralised one-party state. Lenin also favoured one-party rule but Stalin extended one-party domain. Marx’s prediction of the state withering away didn’t occur and 1936 Constitution only allowed Communists to stand for election.
• Nomenklatura concentrated decision-making into a smaller number of hands and therefore more centralisation.
• From the 1930s Stalin no longer depended on the party. Stalin seldom left Moscow and disliked mass meetings, he avoided calling party congresses.
• Stalin added to his own mystique by restricting access to him. Commissars trembled at meetings of the Sovnarkom and no independent institutions were allowed to emerge and younger officials were made dependent on Stalin.
• Stalin was still reliant on the workings of a highly bureaucratic system. There was plenty of corruption in the ranks including falsifying statistics and presenting inaccurate reports.
• Local officials won’t protect each other against central demands. At the lower levels non-compliance of central orders was widespread.
• Lenin’s response to opposition was often using the Cheka and camps to deal with ideological and political enemies- 150,000 members expelled in 1921 and a ban on factions. However no leading Bolsheviks lost their lives from political vindictiveness under Lenin
• Whereas Stalin extended and intensified Leninist intolerance and his political enemies were dealt with far more brutally than Lenin. Stalin executed 600,000 party members. ‘Correction camps’ developed into gulags providing slave labour and persecution was on a far more monumental scale
• There were limitations of the effectiveness of Stalin’s purges of opposition.There was still much hostility and many citizens particularly national minorities welcomed the Germans.