Stalin Notes

Cult of Stalin   

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Stalin's mobilisation of delegates to support his view against Trotsky/Z/K: last opportunity for democracy Manipulation of Central Committee and Politburo ensured his emergence as leader then dictator of USSR, left in sole charge of a totally centralised state Central Committee replaced all local structures of Party, making all decisions and appointing all committee members: no longer delegates to congresses elected, now appointed o 'The Party took over all organised political life in Russia...until finally one man alone, Stalin, decided for the Politburo.' 1929: through control of bureaucracy and information to Politburo, Ogburo and Central Committee, Stalin achieved goal of supreme leadership. From then on: statues, images, portraits of Stalin established future where Stalin idolised as a god: naming factories, mills, prizes, appointments etc: reinforcing idea of importance of Stalin for Russia's future God on Earth: o Stalin's wisdom, forethought and abilities spoken of continuously, reinforced by publication of official documents and newspapers depicting both Lenin and Stalin as leaders of October Revolution, and that Stalin was the new Lenin o 17th Party Congress, 1934: series of speeches from former opponents confirmed Stalin's place as leader, despite 1/4 of them voting against Stalin retaining his position as General Secretary o In response: Stalin destroyed those opposed him, end 1930s: majority of those there dead or removed o Congress did confirm role of Stalin and central Party bureaucracy: meant that while it appeared that they made decisions all they did was put a stamp on Stalin's o Stalin continually put himself forward as leader/defender of the people, and as protégé of Lenin: editing records/photos and eventually came to present his own arguments and ideas as truth o Result: despite 'democratically elected' Party congresses, Stalin had no need to share his decision making or seek approval for them: no real debate took place

Collectivisation 

Collapse of the NEP Problem was extracting enough labour and resources from peasantry to fuel modernisation of economy o 1928: neither of previous strategies working: Stalin came up with alternative which used both left and right wing strategies, implemented with decisiveness and brutality o Problems with NEP began to accumulate from 1926-7, in 1926 put increasing pressure on capitalist private sector: led to 'Procurements Crisis' of 1927 o Led to peasants placing less grain on the market, in the hopes of forcing prices up, only solution of adequate requirements to fuel industrialisation was through collectivisation o Theory: Peasants would be persuaded to join collective farms with modern machinery, giving up private agriculture and isolating kulaks with success of collective farms, with government assistance  Urals Siberian Method o Reality: peasantry unwilling to give up land, 1928: 97% of area under crops still privately owned o

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2 options: retreat into capitalism (NEP), advocated by Bukharin, where the gov pays peasants to induce them to sell their grain o Stalin: advance, keeping prices but making hoarding illegal: means irrelevant as long as 'tribute' collected: message for Party officials clear (memories of War Communism) o Became known as the Urals-Siberian method: success in short run, but by summer caused peasants to cut down amounts sowed and diminished grain surplus: method used on more extensive scale  Mass Collectivisation: o Stalin called for all out drive to: collectivise agriculture, eliminate kulaks, and abolish the rural private sector o Whole villages turned into collective farms: less wealthy peasants encouraged to join collective farms by expropriating kulak land and households: dekulakisation policy of eliminating richer peasants o By 1930, reported that 50% of peasants joined collective farms, pressure lower in July and numbers decreased, but then rose again with renewed pressure: complete by 1936, rural capitalism destroyed o Results: 25million peasant farms replaced with 250 000 collective farms, and some state farms  Impact: o Resistance against collectivisation resulted in virtual Civil War between ruling group and peasants  Bukharin - 'He [Stalin] will have to drown the risings in blood' o Peasant resistance: direct attacks on Party officials, hiding stocks of grain, and even destroying grain and livestock rather than hand them over to a collective farm o Party: defined all resisters as sub-kulaks, with kulak attitudes, meaning even poor peasants were subject to dekulakisation: many took advantage of this and claimed neighbours were kulaks to settle disputes o Human disaster  For majority of peasants collectivisation was a disaster: grain production dropped below 1928 levels until late 1930s, and traditional farming methods disrupted by collective farms run by Party officials  All peasants affected: material standards dropped sharply in both towns and countryside, but while rural life declined state procurements continued to rise  In many provinces, imposition of excessive procurement quotas led to famine of 1932-33, killing millions, while 3-5m 'kulaks' were forced in labour camps, many dying from hunger or overwork  Fiscal victory o While total agricultural production declined, procurements and exports increased, ie proportion of agricultural produce at hands of government increased o Gain magnified by low prices paid + high prices charged: 1933 sold 4 time given to collective farmers o Reason for success as fiscal devices: instead of dealing with 25m farms, now only 250t collective farms run by state appointed chairman: legally obliged to hand over procurements before feeding members o Gov POV: real achievement was that it placed countryside under state control, increasing fiscal capacity: fiscal advance necessary to secure Soviet government power

Industrialisation  

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Communist leaders: knew that economy would eventually be planned, where production/distribution would be planned by society, but no one had any idea how Civil War: showed skeleton for planned economy and provided experience of planning under conditions of crisis, but gov didn't commit itself to long term industrial development until late 1920s Gosplan, body created to draw up long term plans explored some problems of long term planning: political decision to adopt a long term plan taken in 1927: planners forced to raise targets when party shifted to the left First 5 year plan ran from end of 1928, but due to lack of understanding of theory needed to predict workings of economy over 5 years, plans did little more than to set arbitrary targets But Collectivisation showed that determination to fulfil these targets in the government existed: so 1st 3 5 year plans very successful in some crucial areas Growth rates remarkable compared with other western countries, ranging from 4-12 percent a year (statistics of this period unreliable) Caught up very fast relative to the rest of the world: being second only to the USA in terms of GNP by 1937, with Soviet victory over Nazi Germany during WWI showing that this economic growth translates into military strength Aspects of Industrialisation Drive: o Immense increase in capacity of Soviet economy to produce industrial goods, with industrial production increased by 160% in 12 years production in individual sectors of heavy industry, eg iron, was even faster o This led to a growth in the size of the urban population and the paid workforce, the proletariat, most of which came from the peasantry rendered unemployed by the more efficient collective farms o Altered significantly Soviet Union's international economic standing: growth particularly spectacular when compared with other major capitalist economies suffering from the Great Depression, GNP tripling in 9y  Altered economic ranking: in 1928 was comparable to second rate capitalist countries but by 1937 was second only to the US, and left Britain, France and Germany behind: twice their productive power  These, along with success in WWII, show that Soviet Union overcame problems with industrialisation and military weakness o Negatively affected living standards, with agricultural production and livestock numbers not rising at all from 1928 levels, while living standards, measured by average consumption levels, quality of diet/housing, levels of real wages, declined despite increases in total production of consumer goods Reasons for rapid growth o Greatest achievement: capacity to increase efficiency with which resources are used and make possible a lowering of the human and financial costs for production, so growth was either due to increase in inputs of increase in way inputs were used, but statistics too unreliable to determine which was more important o Labour: making people work harder  Labour is the 'input' which most affected the lives of Soviet citizens, with workers productivity increasing at a steady rate of between 1.3-3% a year, which was impressive but slower than rate of GNP growth: suggesting that increases in productivity does not explain total production increases  But it was: from 1928-1937 the participation rate, proportion of working age population engaged in wage earning employment, increased from 58% to 70%, reflecting 2 main trends:

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Vast influx of peasants into the towns to find wage earning employment after collectivisation  Vast increase in number of women in labour force: increasing from 27% in 1932 to 53% in WWII  Shows how the Soviet government got more work out of the citizens, women work at home and work and peasants now work regularly: producing more because they worked harder  How:  Collective farms drove many peasants off to the cities, esp the Kulaks, with 8.5m of the 11m joining the urban workforce in 1928-1937 being peasants, then locked in by internal passports  2nd 5 year plan/Great Patriotic War: women provided most of new recruits into workforce, due to declining real wages meaning families needed 2 incomes to survive  Once in workforce, had to be disciplined by means other than unemployment: deprivation of living quarters/ration cards, fines etc, 1930: unemployment benefits abolished: no one un-e  1938-1940, harsher penalties introduced: right to leave a job abolished in 1940 (Hitler), average hours went from 7-8 and 6 day week became norm  Incentives: 1931, Stalin abolished ideal of equal pay in work, and then used incentives to increase productivity: national campaigns encouraged workers to over-fulfil work norms set by plans  Education drive: turn peasant workforce into modern one, very successful; literacy rose fro 51% in 1929 to 81% in 1940 Diverting Resources  Economic programme succeeded because more resources made available for investment, not because existing resources were used more productively, investments increased GNP's rate  Any increase in total output was the result of an increase in amounts put in, rather than an increase in the efficiency with which the inputs were used (early chaos of industrialisation)  Where did resources come from  Agriculture (peasantry): increase in grain procurements, the profit of selling these in the 1930s accounted for 1/3 of the gov's budget  But not just from country to town, also vast flow in other direction: peasants found source of income by selling produce on private plots, and great agricultural investment  Therefore: resources that fuelled industrialisation came from both towns and countryside: at the cost of lower consumption levels of both proletariat and peasantry  Stalinist tactic: reducing amount of resources available for consumption and increasing amount invested in heavy industry: less was available for Soviet consumer while industry grew  Direct relationship between growth in investment and decline in living conditions in the 1930s Stalin's industrialisation had elements of both Bukharin's and Trotsky's strategies: right wing belief that Russia could build socialism alone, with the left's belief in the need to force the pace, but also raised fiscal burdens for all of society and overcame problems through coercion

Purges and Terror 

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Purges o After having to share power with Zinoviev and Kamenev after Lenin's death, Stalin never wanted to be in that position again: plotting to remove the Bolshevik's 'Old Guard' from power after seeing them as a threat o He suspected everyone who had any semblance of power and he wanted them dealt with, given a reason when party head of Leningrad, Sergei Kirov, was murdered, convincing Politburo to give Stalin support for his purges o First group of people rounded up by NKVD labelled 'Trotskyites': imprisoned/tortured to gain information about other 'traitors', even though most were just under the pain of torture o Show trials: public trials to maintain air of legality to the purges, even through many signed confessions knowing what they had confessed to was wrong, but to Stalin was like a trophy to parade among the people as proof o 1934-1938: 1m party member arrested then executed, and 10m sent to gulags, with many dying o Used Purges to promote supporters: while purges going on he had supporters in place: many people knew, through trial reports in the newspapers, that it was common sense to be openly loyal to Stalin o Convinced Red Army was plotting a coup: 30,000 executed: 50% of officer corps and 3/5 marshals, weakened military as inexperienced officers took their place o With Army and Old Guard purged: Stalin then purged the NKVD, scared that the senior officers knew too much and that the information could be held against them in the future: claimed had been infiltrated by fascists Stalinist Terror o Stalin's regime is assosciated with terror, unparalleled in terms of casualty in the whole of human history, previously thought to be only due to Stalin. In reality: too complex for only one explanations o Reasons  Russian revolution: very susceptible to trend for revolutions to rely on purges to preserve power base and transform their legacy, with 'terror' being a positive force used to achieve higher goal  Trotsky: 'We shall not enter the kingdom of socialism in white gloves on a polished floor' - justified establishment of the CHEKA and the early use of terror in maintaining power: precedent for Stalin  Traditionally, intensification of terror attributed to Stalin's personality, but what was Stalin driven by:  Consolidation of power: sending a vast number of past and present hostile elements to labour camps or destroyed, and the rest of the population reduced to complete silence and obedience, Great Purges an effort to achieve an unrestricted personal dictatorship: wipe out all Lenin-era Bolsheviks  Economic: forced pace of industrialisation and collectivisation required disciplined workforce and compliant peasantry: had to be done by force (measures against managers and kulaks), terror was inseparable for Stalin's vision of modernisation  Support of population: had to remove alternative leaders justifiably (as traitors) to prevent internal revolt, especially during the Nazi-Soviet Non aggression pact  Another view: while Stalin introduced policy centrally, they way it was carried out was determined locally  Countryside: central instructions exceeded and measured needed to be taken to control dekulakisation squads, gov had to exert direct control over excess dk: due

to years of pent up class rage, intensified by shortages created by collectivisation. Stalin initiated movement with vague instructions; lost control  Industry: widespread chaos as managers came into conflict with Party and workforce, and Stakhanovite movement created tension as they upset productivity with personal/political ambitions, managed became subject to accusations of sabotage  At all levels feeling of direct involvement: everyone had motives, and informed on each other to settle old scores: peasants provided information on each other for land  Mass paranoia: important part played by show trials, which whipped up suspicion of resentment against managers: created 'imagery of omnipresent subversion and conspiracy'  Stalin: revived terror and renewed turmoil at all levels, but sheer scale of upheaval only understood on national scale - while he initiated/maintained purges, gained momentum that outpaced his expectations o Consequences  Tightening political leadership + enhancing power of dictatorship  Stalinism created regime more ruthless than Nazi Germany, and with elimination of Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin etc, removed all capacity for debate about different strategies  Terror made it possible to experiment with more democratic forms in 1936, since they never amounted to anything  Unleashed Chaos into System + limited extent to which dictatorship could operate  Local groups in industry and the countryside acted according to their own interpretations of central decisions, normally cautious but stimulated by the terror for intensifying activity  Result: descend into chaos, as local groups implemented orders in their own way, with the centre then attempting to restore an approved line: tyranny of the people just as much as over them  Economic impact: normally seen as providing the impetus for the command economy, but now argued that terror confused the command network: undermining the whole Stalinist system, 2 examples:  Mass disobedience campaigns as a result of approach to collectivisation and dekulakisation  Stakhanovites intended to promote productivity slowed it down as mangers hostile to anyone who distorted their implementation if industrial plans: made then a target for denunciation  But Stalin remained popular: as he was seen as the only one that could stop the local implementation of terror, seen when those that opposed Stalin when the Nazis invaded did so on traditional grounds  Security: real loss was said to be of experience at highest level, but exaggerated: many purged were simply expelled from the party, 2 main reasons for disparity between real and estimated numbers:  Underestimation of the size of the Red Army and the hasty rehabilitation of many purged officers  Overall: momentum less controlled, so effects more blurred than traditionally supposed and state benefited less because unable to control it: much more devastating than intended