Stalin

• Whta happened to Stalins wife?

  - Commits suicide

  - Leaves a note attacking Stalin
• Failures of Stalins Policy


  - Policy fails- Famine and strikes in towns

  - Criticism of 5-year plans
• Leadership struggles for Stalin


  - Bukharin re- elected to central committee in 1930

  - Ryutin and Smirnov lead political revolt against Stalin
• Ryutin


  - Kyrov overrules Stalins request of execution of Ryutin

  - Zinoviev and Kamenev exiled for not informing on Stalin
• Stalin's paranoia


  - Conducted a paranoid struggle

  - Leading to 18% of the party being purged
• Stalin support in the party


  - Leading opponents such as Bukharin admitted error challenging Stalin

  - Elections for central committee showed people were divided on Stalin
• Votes for Stalin


  Received 150 negative votes
• Disagreements in the party


  Whether to:

  - Slow industrialisation

  - Decrease grain seizures

  - Increase workers rations
• Kirov speech


  - Speech for more moderate approach to industrialisation - standing ovation

  - Stalin demoted to Secretary of equal rank sharing role with Kirov
• What happened to Kirov?


  - December 1934

  - Shot in the neck as he approached office in Leningrad
• What happened to Kirov's bodyguard


  - Killed in a "car accident"

  - Before he could give evidence of Kirov's death
• What decree was passed to the secret police?

  Gave Yagoda and secret police power to arrest and execute anyone accused of "terrorist plotting"
• What happened to Zinoviev and Kamenev


  - January 1935

  - Zinoviev, Kamenev and 17 others arrested and imprisoned
• Results of the new decree


  - 843 of Zinoviev's associates arrested

  - 250,000 party members expelled

  - 11,000 "former people" arrested, exiled or put in camps
• What happened to Yagoda?


  Shot after trial in 1938
• What did Stalin release in 1936?


  - New constitution full of democratic promises

  - Contrastingly, launches a 2 year period of purges
• Party members in trial


  - Accused leading party members of conspiring to murder Stalin

  - Zinoviev, Kamenev and 14 others found guilty and executed
• Who else were put on show trials?


  - Military commanders

  - NKVD

  - Leading party members
• Why did the show trials lead to so many deaths?

  In almost all cases the guilty confessed
• What was Yezhovschina?


  - Between 1937-38

  - Similar trials and purges carried out against:

  - Government departments

  - Party members

  - Towns and villages`
• Surveillance in Russia


  - Everywhere

  - Citizens rooted out co-workers, friends and neighbours
• What did the Bolsheviks face?

  In the early years they faced 3 types of oppression
• What were the 3 types of oppression


  - Political groups on the right and left

  - Many opponents across the empire

  - Ideological "opposition"- the bourgeoisie and upper class
• What did the Mensheviks do in October 1917?


  - Destroyed themselves by walking out congress

  - Leaving the Bolsheviks with a monopoly of power
• What did the Bolsheviks ban?


  - The press

  - Ordered the arrest of Kadet, Menshevik and SR leaders
• Where were political prisoners sent?

  - St. Petersburg Gaols

  - So many were sent that criminals had to be released to accommodate them
• What did the Bolsheviks ignore?

  Ignored calls in October to form a coalition government
• What was set up in December?


  Checkai we're set up showing determination of Bolsheviks to remove opponents
• What happened with the Constituent assembly


  - Bolsheviks closed it at the end of 1917

  - The Red Army dealt with any rebellion
• What did the Bolsheviks launch on the upper and middle classes?


  A class warfare
• Effects of the class warfare on upper and middle classes


  - Property confiscated

  - Social privilege ended

  - Taxes raised on the Burzhui
• What happened to Lenin in August 1918?


  Attempt on his life acted as an excuse for an attack on the borgeois
• What did the sovnarkom give to the Checka in September 1918?

  Authority to find, question, arrest and destroy families of unexpected traitors
• What happened to priests in 1921

  8000 priests executed for failing to hand over valuable church possessions
• How many people were killed in Russia


  - 500,00-1,000,000 shot in Russia

  - Others tortured and sent to labour camps
• What happened between 1920-21


  Disputes break out about economic political policy within the party
• What did he introduce to unify the party

  Introduced factions
• What did the faction ban do?

  Anyone who voiced dissent to decisions of central committee faced expulsion from the party
• What did the ban do to the party

  - Created a highly centralised, authoritarian one party state

  - Almost impossible to challenge
• What was high stalinism?

  - Peak of Stalins authority

  - By the end of the Great Patriotic War to his death

  - 1945- 1953