1945-1953 - Why was Stalin able to consolidate power?

• Victory in the Great Patriotic War meant Stalin could state convincingly that the economic transformation of the 1930s with all of the upheaval and suffering that went with it, as well as the terror and purges, were all justified as without them, the USSR would not have survived the war.
• The war had devastated the economy of the USSR.

  • A dramatic new transformation of the Soviet economy was needed to achieve a recovery and then to supersede pre-war levels.
• The economic recovery was all the more important in the emerging Cold War between the USSR and its former allies in the West.

  • There was also renewed danger of spies and traitors within the USSR who might be working for the capitalist enemies necessitating the continuation of the work of the secret police.
  • Furthermore, increasing Russian nationalism went hand-in-hand with the strident anti-Westernism of Soviet culture in the post-war years.