SGQ9, October 22, 2009

MWH 361-378

1. How did Stalin get to supreme power? Stalin got supreme power by using his manipulative and intuitive ways to eliminate his opposition, by discovering their weaknesses and exploiting them during debates.

a. Why might Trotsky have become leader? Why did he not?

Trotsky might have become leader because he was one of the most important Bolsheviks at the time. He didn't become leader because the other Politburo members did all they could to ensure that he did not become the leader. Many resented him for only joining the Bolsheviks shortly before the November revolution and he was also very critical of Kamenev, Zinoviev, and Bukharin during Lenin's illness, saying that they had no plan or future. The other Politburo members decided to run the country jointly so that no one man, especially not Trotsky, would hold all the power.

b. Who were the other Politburo members? Why did none of them take power?

Some of the other Politburo members were Lev Kamenev, Grigori Zinoviev, and Nikolai Bukharin. None of them took power because Stalin did, and the other Politburo members underestimated Stalin. Stalin had great political skills and intuition, and he waited for disagreements to arise between his colleagues in the Politburo and then he would side with one faction over the other until he eliminated all of his competition. Stalin was manipulative, a good judge of character, and a lot smarter than his colleagues took him for, and this gave him the advantage.

c. How did Stalin use his position?
Stalin was Secretary-General of the Party. He had full powers of appointment and promotion to important jobs, such as secretaries of local Communist Party organizations, so he filled these positions with his supporters and removed the supporters of others. These local organizations which now supported him chose the delegates to national Party Conferences, which by default filled with people who supported Stalin.

d. What was the major Politburo disagreement? What were the three options?

The major Politburo disagreement was how the new communist society should be organized. This was left for disagreement because Marx never described in detail how the society should have been organized. One option was proposed by Bukharin, which was that it was important to consolidate Soviet power in Russia, and this became known as 'socialism in one country'. This meant that there would be a prosperous peasantry with a very gradual industrialization. Another option came from Trotsky, which was for revolution outside of Russia, or 'permanent revolution'. This would cause the industrialized states of western Europe to help Rissia with her industrialization. The other option was to continue the NEP.

2. How successful was Stalin in solving Russia's economic problems? He was very successful, as the Five Year Plans rapidly increased industrial production, and Russian industrial production was comparable with the other powerful nations which it was formerly far behind.

a. What were Russia's economic problems?
Production from heavy industry was very low. For example in 1929 France produced more coal and steel than Russia, with Germany, the US, and Britain far ahead of both Russia and France. Stalin believed that a rapid expansion of heavy industry was essential to enable Russia to deal with the attacks he predicted would come to Russia from western Europe. Also, there was a shortage of food, so Stalin believed that more food would need to be produced to feed the growing industrial population and to provide a surplus for export. The primitive agricultural system that existed was unable of providing such resources however.

b. What were the Five Year Plans? The Five Year Plans were designed to increase industry. The first Plan concentrated on heavy industries such as coal, iron, steel, oil, and machinery. The two later Plans focused on increases in customer goods as well as heavy industry, while the third Plan was cut short due to WWII.

i. How were they carried out?

The purpose of the Five Year Plans was for industrial expansion. The first two (1928-32 and 1933-7) were completed a year ahead of schedule and the third plan (1938-42) was cut short due to Russia's involvement in World War II. The other two plans contributed to increases in consumer goods and heavy industry, and in order to carry out these plans, hundreds of factories were built, such as iron and steel works.

ii. How successful were they? (Provide hard facts as evidence!)

The Plans were a remarkable success. This is known because in 1940, the USSR had overtaken Britain in iron and steel production, and was within reach of Germany. Industrial expansion was remarkable, as in 1900, the USSR produced 16.0 million tons of coal, and by 1940 this number jumped to 164.9 million tons. Production of steel increased from 2.5 million tons in 1900 to 18.4 million tons by 1940.

c. What does collectivization mean? Collectivization meant the merging of small farms and holdings belonging to peasants into larger collective farms owned jointly by the peasants.

i. How was it carried out?
It was carried out through sheer brute force, since the peasants who owned property were hostile to the plan, and had to be forced to join by armies of party members. Peasants who refused to join collective farms were arrested, taken to labor farms, or shot.

ii. How successful was it? (Provide hard facts as evidence!)

It was successful in one sense. It allowed greater mechanization, which achieved a substantial increase in production in 1937. The amount of grain taken by the state increased and grain exports also increased; 1930 and 1931 were good years for exports. However, it turns out that total grain production did not increase at all except for in 1930, and the grain production in 1934 was less than in 1928. Eventually, a famine occurred, mainly in the countryside. So in one sense, collectivization was a success as grain production increased one year, but for the most part it turned out to yield serious consequences, such as the famine, because kulaks (the best producers) were excluded from farms, many peasants left their farms after collectivization to look for work in the city, peasants did the minimum work they could do on the collective farms, and the government did not provide sufficient tractors at first.

3. How successful was Stalin in solving Russia's political problems? He was successful in that he dealt with opposition by eliminating it. 800,000 people had been expelled in 1933, and a further 340,000 were expelled in 1934. 2 million people were in prisons and forced labour camps.

a. What were Russia's political problems?

i. The government's popularity with the general public had fallen by 1930 due to the failures over collectivization and the hardships of the First Five Year Plan.

ii. A new constitution was needed to consolidate the hold of Stalin and the Communist Party over the whole country.

iii. Some of the non-Russian parts of the country wanted to be independent, and Stalin had no sympathy with nationalist ambitions and was determined to keep the country unified.

b. The Purges and Great Terror

i. What were the "purges"?

The purges were Stalin's removal of all dissident party members. These included an expulsion of 800,000 people in 1933, and 340,000 in 1934, the placing of 2 million people in prisons and forced labour camps, and the arrests, tortures, and forcing of hundreds of important officials to confess to crimes they did not commit for the most part.

ii. How were the purges justified?

1. J. Arch Getty suggested that the Purges were a form of political infighting at the top, playing down the role of Stalin and claiming that it was the obsessive fears of all of the leaders which generated the Terror.

2. Sheila Fitzpatrick suggests that the Purges must be seen in the context of continuing revolution.

iii. What was the Great Terror? How was it carried out?

The Great Terror was the murder of Kirov and the arrests, tortures, and interrogations of tons of important officials who Stalin believed may have been trying to plot against him. It was carried out when these people were forced to appear at "show trials" where they were usually found guilty and sentenced to death or labour camps.

c. What was the purpose of the 1936 constitution? How did it work in practice?

The purpose was for everyone to be able to vote (including 'former people' such as ex-nobles, kulaks, priests, and White Army officers) by secret ballot to choose members of a national assembly known as the Supreme Soviet. The purpose was for the candidates to get nearly 100% of the votes and to prove that government policies were popular. The power remained with the Politburo (leading body of the Communist Party), because in reality, there was only one candidate to vote for in each constituency and that was the Communist Party candidate.

d. What was Stalin's two part approach for holding the union together?

i. National languages and cultures were encouraged and the republics had a certain amount of independence, and this was much more liberal than under the Tsarist regime.

ii. It had to be clearly understood that Moscow had the final say in all important decisions, and if necessary, force would be used to preserve control by Moscow.

4. What was everyday life and culture like under Stalin? People could not avoid contact with the state - being educated, finding a job, getting a promotion, getting married, bringing up children, finding a home, shopping, traveling, reading literature, going to theatre and concerts, enjoying the visual arts, and practicing religion, reading the news, listening to the radio - all connected back to the person having contact with the state.

a. Why was life hard?

i. food - Food was in short supply. Due to famine, bad harvests, and a concentration on heavy industry and not on food production, not enough food was produced to feed the population.

ii. housing - the rapid growth of the urban population (an increase of 31 million between 1926 and 1939) caused housing shortages. Local soviets controlled all of the housing in the town, and they could evict residents and move new residents into already occupied houses.

iii. the nomenklatura - these were special elite groups such as party members, government officials in the bureaucracy, etc. They escaped the hardships that plagued the general population, and they had many privileges that no one else had, such as bread delivered to their homes, they were allowed lower prices, they had better living accommodation and the use of country houses. They made the ordinary people feel like the underdogs.

b. What signs of improvement were there?

i. Food supplies improved with all rationing abolished in 1936. The provision of cheap meals in factory canteens and free work clothes was a great help as well.

ii. Education and health care were free, and the number of schools and medical centres was increasing.

iii. What they called "culturedness", such as grooming and personal hygiene was encouraged by the state. Some industrial enterprises ordered that all engineers and managers were clean-shaven with neatly cut hair. Other signs of culture included sleeping on sheets, eating with a knife and fork, avoiding drunkenness and bad language, and not beating your wife and kids.

iv. Culturedness was extended to shopping and 13,000 new bread shops opened around the country in 1934, where the assistants wore white smocks, caps, and took lessons on how to be polite to customers. In addition, new sanitary regulations were brought in, and loaves of bread needed to be wrapped.

c. The state, women, and the family

i. Why was life hard for women? Women were forced to do work that men originally did because there were more women in society than men at this point.

1. Millions of women were left to provide for their families because of the disappearance of so many men during collectivization, the famine, and the Purges.

2. Women were forced to do work that was traditionally thought of as men's work, including construction, lumbering, and machine-building.

ii. What two goals did the government have for women?

1. Women were encouraged to have as many children as possible, and abortion was made illegal except in cases where the mother's life was in danger. Also maternity leave was allowed up to 16 weeks, and there were benefits for pregnant women.

2. In addition to producing children, women were expected to take jobs, increase output and look after the household and family.

iii. What policies did the government adopt towards women?

1. The Wives Movement - aim was to raise the culturedness of the people that wives came into contact with.

2. Maternity leave was extended up to 16 weeks.

3. Abortion was outlawed in order to increase the number of children that were born.

iv. What was life like for upper-class or well-educated women?

For upper class women with professional jobs, they were seen by the state as part of its campaign to 'civilize the masses', and this is what the Wives Movement was for - it was to raise the culturedness of the people in workplaces.

d. Education

i. What improvements were made to education?

1. Free, mass education was expanded. By the summer of 1930, all children aged 8 to 11 must be enrolled in schools, and between 1929 and 1931, the number of pupils increased from 14 million to around 20 million.

2. By 1940 there were 199,000 new schools and even the most remote areas of the country were provided with schools. New training colleges were set up to train a new generation of teachers and lecturers.

ii. What were some of the goals of education?

1. Education was the way in which the younger generation could be turned into good, orthodox Soviet citizens.

2. To discourage the people from 'bourgeois' practices and religion, which were presented as superstitious and backwards. Education would help the people to see this.

e. Religion

i. Was was the Communist view of religion?
Religion was an invention of the ruling classes to keep the people docile and under control, or 'the opium of the masses' as it was known.

ii. What actions did the government take towards religious organizations?

A savage attack on the Orthodox Church had been launched by Lenin, but after Lenin's death the regime became more tolerant toward religious groups, however the priests began to oppose collectivization, so Stalin instructed local party organizations to attack churches and priests. Hundreds of churches and cemeteries were vandalized and thousands of priests were killed. Muslim and Jewish leaders also fell victim as well.

iii. What was the people's reaction to those policies/actions?

There was outrage, especially in rural areas were priests, mullahs and rabbis were respected members of the communities.

f. Literature and theater

The regime began to mobilize writers, artists, and musicians to wage a cultural war against the 'bourgeois intellectuals' and there were at first two rival groups of writers; the dedicated communists who were members of the All-Russian Association of Proletarian Writers and were committed to socialist realism. The other group were the non-communists who wanted to keep politics out of literature. Writers who did not write the right kind of socialist realism were running the risk of arrest and Stalin himself could even read the typescript of novels and tell the authors what he expected to be changed. A number of actors, actresses, and ballet dancers were also sent to labour camps as well if their work was alien to Soviet norms.

g. Art, architecture, and music
Artists, sculptors, and musicians were expected to play their part in 'socialist realism' as well. Abstract art was rejected, while paintings were expected to portray workers straining their muscle to fulfill their targets. Also encouraged were scenes from the revolution and civil war and paintings of Revolutionary leaders. Music followed a similar pattern to literature, with the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians condemning the 'modernization' of western music.

h. The cinema
Film was considered the most important form of communication. Soviet films were required to be 'intelligible to the millions' and were expected to tell a simple, yet powerful story. Film makers were expected to incorperate so many different and sometimes contradictory themes to their work - proletarian values, classless Soviet nationalism, the problems of ordinary people, the heroic exploits of the revolutionaries, and the glorious communist future. Film was considered the best and most effective way to get communist ideals across to the people and instill them into society.