Stalin: a totalitarian dictatorship. Stalin defeated Trotsky after Lenin’s death (1924-1927) Stalin’s economic program Quick industrialisation of a

Stalin: a totalitarian dictatorship


• Stalin defeated Trotsky after Lenin’s death (1924-1927)• Stalin’s economic program Quick industrialisation of a backward

country to construct “Socialism in one country” and transform the USSR in a world power• The state took over all the sectors of the Soviet economy• The government passed five-year plans to conduct a centralised

economy• Collectivization of agriculture terrible social consequences

because peasants’ refusal to give up their new acquired lands• Results:

• Quick industrialisation based upon heavy industry (iron and steel, coal, armament)

• Utter failure in farming • Cruel repression and terrible death toll









• Industrialisation took place at a terrible social cost

• From the very beginning, Stalin set up a dictatorship based upon terror• Anticommunists• Trostkyists• Farmers against collectivisation…• All sort of opponents within the

Communist Party


• Unlike Hitler, Stalin’s repression was carried out massively within his own party (SUCP)• Power in the USSR was completely centralised SUCP

Secretary General (Stalin)• “Great Purges” or “Moscow Trials” started in 1934 after Sergei

Kirov’s assassination• The world was astonished when a great part of the Bolshevik

leaders went into trial, accused of being counter-revolutionaries• After being drugged and tortured they confess that they

have been plotting against the USSR for years (“show trials”)

• In 1939 70% of the SUCP had been purged 90% of the Red Army generals were shot or sent to the Gulag (concentration camps)



• Not only the SUCP was persecuted• Soviet society as a whole suffered the consequences of Stalin’s

dictatorship• The Checka, GPU, NKVD, KGB (Soviet subsequent secret political

police) repressed Soviet people• The year 1937 became was the apex of Stalinist repression• Over the purges of 1937 and 1938:

• 1.700.000 civilians were arrested• More than two million were purged from their jobs• About 700.000 were executed• Millions of Soviet citizens were sent during Stalin’s dictatorships

to the Gulag (Soviet concentration camps system





• As a result of the repression, more and more power was concentrated in Stalin’s hands

• Stalin’s “cult of personality” was established in the USSR• Even in a more acute way that in the Duce or the Fuhrer,

the figure of Stalin was constantly praised by the Soviet propaganda



Stalin: a society shaped by terror

• Soviet society was shaped by the urgent drive for industrializing the USSR

• Farmers went through all the hardships caused by collectivization

• Urban workers toiled 8 hours a day, 7 days a week• Subbotnik or “Communist Saturdays”: days

of volunteer work that became obligatory later



• The Constitution of 1936 proclaimed that the USSR was classless society… reality was altogether different

• SUCP bureaucracy (about 14 million people) made up a new upper class with different privileges:• Higher salaries (4 to 20 times the average salary)• Food extra rations• Better accommodation…

• All the members of the Communist bureaucracy were subjected to Stalin’s will

• 1930s purges reminded everybody of this.



• After some social changes after the revolution, Stalin forced the Soviet to return to the traditional values of hierarchy and authority (teachers, parents, army commanders…)

• The achievement of different women’s rights (divorce, legal abortion - Decree on Women’s Healthcare-) and the difficult social conditions over the civil war reduce the Soviet birth rate Stalin imposed again the traditional family model (restrictions to divorce, abortion illegal…)

• Internationalism was substituted by Russian nationalism

Documents

Stalin: a totalitarian dictatorship. Stalin defeated Trotsky after Lenin’s death (1924-1927) Stalin’s economic program Quick industrialisation of a