Dictatorship and Stalin

• Shakhty trial 1928:

  • Managers and technicians of coal mine who had questioned the rapid pace of industrialisation
  • 5 executed and rest imprisoned
• ‘Industrial Party’ trial 1930:

  • Group of senior industrialists and economists accused of planning a coup to wreck the soviet economy
• Ryutin:

  • Criticised Stalin and collectivisation in the ‘Ryutin platform’
  • Stalin said Ryutin intended to assassinate him
  • Imprisoned for ten years
• Party Purge 1933:

  • Communist party had 3.2 million members, most had joined after membership rules were relaxed in 1929
  • Over 570,000 Ryutin were expelled
• Kirovs murder:

  • Kirov had been a close ally of Stalin
  • Speech at congress for a slow in pace of industrialisation
  • Shot 1st December 1935 by a man his wife may have been having an affair with
  • Stalin blamed murder on Trotskyite threat and Yagoda was given power to arrest anyone terrorist plotting - over 100 party members were shot
• January 1935:

  • Zinoviev, Kamenev and 17 others were arrested and accused of causing terrorism
  • Sentenced to between 5-10 years imprisonment
• Show trials:

  • NKVD made sure that accused had signed confessions
  • April 1935 it was made legal for those of 12 to be treated the same as adults - used to extract confessions
  • 16th August 1936 - Kamenev, Zinoviev accepted responsibility for Kirovs murder and both were executed
• Stalins constitution:

  • 1936
  • Drafted by Bukharin
  • Proclaimed USSR to be federation of 11 soviet republics which had its own supreme soviet that met together in the new supreme soviet
  • Each republic had some rights of jurisdiction including primary education
  • Freedom of press, religion and speech