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The Rise and Rule of Stalin
Joseph (Josef) Stalin
• Succeeded Lenin• Leader of the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) from 1924 -1953.
Early Life
• He organized bank robberies, arms deals, and assassination attempts and put in prison in 1908.• He was again arrested in 1911
and exiled. He had another son April 1912. • He created Pravda in 1912. It
was a Bolshevik newspaper. He was caught and again exiled.
• During the Russian Civil War, Stalin was put in the Politburo (the executive committee for the Communist Party). He opposed many of Leon Trotsky’s policies (Trotsky was a Bolshevik Revolutionary and Marxist Theorist).• Ordered the killings of former tsarist
military leaders and counter-revolutionaries and burned villages to intimidate peasants.• In 1919, to fight against mass desertions
on the Western front, he had deserters and renegades publicly executed.
Early Career
Lenin’s Death
• With Lenin’s death, (January 21, 1924) a power struggle ensued. • Stalin seized power.
Joseph Stalin’s Rise to Power
• Head of both the Communist party and Soviet government from 1924 to 1953.•Most interested in power and
not ideology.• By 1928, established himself as
absolute dictator.• Increasingly paranoid &
dangerous.
Stalin’s totalitarian elements
1. Cult of the leader/Cult of Personality - the all-knowing and all-seeing Father of the People.
The Cult of Personality• After Lenin’s death (and very much against his
wishes) a personality cult was created around his memory, using methods such as:• Embalming his body and putting it on public display in
Red Square• Lenin’s image appeared everywhere in posters, film,
statues• Petrograd was renamed Leningrad (St. Petersburg-
Petrograd (1914)-Leningrad (1924)-St. Petersburg (1991))
• Stalin was an active promoter of this cult so as to link his name with Lenin• The Lenin personality cult made it easier for
Stalin to create one around himself.
Stalin’s Cult of Personality
• Stalin also had a city named in his honour – in 1923 Tsaritsyn became Stalingrad• The slogan: ‘Stalin is the Lenin of today’
was officially encouraged• Stalin was portrayed in various ways: Stalin
with peasants, Stalin with workers – all designed to show him as an ordinary man of the people.
Stalin liked to be portrayed as the friend of the workers, discussing the latest project
• He accepted grand titles ("Father of Nations," "Brilliant Genius of Humanity," "Great Architect of Communism," "Gardener of Human Happiness," and others)
• He helped rewrite Soviet history to provide himself a more significant role in the revolution of 1917
Stalin’s Cult of Personality
Stalin’s totalitarian elements
2. Young People and Education
Youth Organizations
Party youth organisations were:• The Pioneers for those under 14•Komsomol for those between 14-
18; membership shot up from 2.3m in 1929 to 10.2m in 1940.• Young people were encouraged
to report members of their own families to the authorities for ‘anti-Soviet’ views
Education• The 1935 Education Law undid most of the
revolutionary ideas introduced in the early 1920s; • it reasserted discipline by restoring the
authority of teachers• Schools could only use texts prescribed by the
state• The Short Course history of the Communist
Party became the standard text; it presented Stalin’s view of the party and the Revolution.• By 1939 94% of those town-dwellers under 49
were literate; 86% in the countryside.
A poster from 1920: ‘You may as wellbe blind as illiterate’. The Bolsheviks believed that illiteracy had been a keyfactor in maintaining the power of thetsars.
Stalin’s totalitarian elements
3. Radical ideology•Marxism-Leninism was Stalin’s driving ideology but Stalin he
altered it to serve his personal nationalist ambitions.
• “Stalinism” refers to a brand of communism that is both extremely repressive and nationalistic.
Altering Photographs to fit the cause…
An example of how the picture was altered again and again after each person fell out of favor with the regime of Joseph Stalin.
This image taken by the Moscow Canal was taken when Nikolai Yezhov was water commissar. After he fell from power, he was arrested, shot, and his image removed by the censors.
The background of the original image includes a store that says in Russian, "Watches, gold and silver". The image was then changed to read, "Struggle for your rights", and flag that was a solid color before was changed to read, "Down with the monarchy - long live the Republic!"
Stalin’s totalitarian elements
4. Organization• The Soviet communist party solidified Stalin’s power. • Party cells operated in every workplace & classroom, with party
members reporting on anyone who was not loyal enough.
Stalin’s totalitarian elements
5. Control
Pervaded ALL aspects of life…• Religion/culture•Media• Family life• Economy (industrialization, collectivization)
Command Economy• Heavily centralized “command economy.”
Stalin’s 1st goal to create an advanced industrial economy. • Command economy - where supply and price are
regulated by the government rather than market forces.
• Five Year Plans – Stalin’s plan for industrial and agricultural production
• Peasants resisted; killings; exile. • Severe agricultural losses & famine. • After a decade, millions dead.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_8e_OUUA2s
Collective Farms
• Under Stalin, the Government seized ALL farm landOR
• The Government allowed Peasants to stay on their land if they gave it (and all resources) to a “collective”• The state controlled all supplies
Kulaks
• Term for the “wealthy” peasants• Stalin “purged” kulaks when
he believed they weren’t cooperating with his plan• Over 5 million kulaks
deported to Siberia
“...rich peasants who exploit the labour of others, either hiring them for work, or lending money at interest, and so forth. This group supports the landowners and capitalists, the enemies of the Soviet power.” (V.I. Lenin Collected Works, Vol. 36, pp. 500-503.)
“In order to oust the kulaks as a class, the resistance of this class must be smashed in open battle and it must be deprived of the productive sources of its existence and development (free use of land, instruments of production, land-renting, right to hire labour, etc.).” (J. V. Stalin Works, Vol. 12 pp. 184-189.)
The Media
• All media controlled by the government• Pravda was the paper of the
Communist Party• Izvestiya was the paper of
the Soviets• Radio stations conveyed the
official party view
Police Force - NKVD
• Cheka disbanded after Civil War• New Secret Police force
under Stalin – NKVD• “People's Comissariat for
Internal Affairs”• Direct instrument for Stalin
for use in the Great Terror
Anti-Religion
• Atheism was the official religion under Stalin• Russian Orthodox Churches were
seized and turned into offices and museums or destroyed• Priests and Religious leaders were
killed• Jewish Synagogues were seized• Hebrew language was banned
Art and Popular Culture• The experimental art of the
early 1920s was abandoned and replaced by ‘Socialist realism’; this was seen in all forms of culture – art, cinema, literature.• Socialist realism was much
more conventional, traditional but it was designed to convey pro-Soviet messages to inspire the population to work harder, love the leader etc. A typical painting in the style of ‘socialist
realism’. Stalin is shown amongst theworkers, urging them to meet their production targets. The workers look on,impressed.
Stalin’s totalitarian elements
6. Violence & Terror.• Brutality on massive scale. • Targets: political opponents & party rivals.
The Great Purge/The Great Terror• The Great Purge/Terror - series of campaigns of political
repression and persecution in the Soviet Union led by Joseph Stalin • Show trials, with coerced confessions and summary
executions, from 1934 to 1938.• During his rule, one million direct killings & 12 million deaths
in Soviet prisons & slave labor camps.
The Great Purge/The Great Terror• Fueled by Stalin’s paranoia that people were trying to overtake
power• It involved a large-scale purge of the Communist Party and
Government officials, repression of peasants• Characterized by widespread police surveillance, imprisonment,
and executions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIzApqzlP3Q
Start @ 58:00
The assassination of Sergei Kirov was the spark of the Great Purge
"In sharp contrast to Stalin, Kirov was a much younger man and an eloquent speaker, who was able to sway his listeners; above all, he possessed a charismatic personality. Unlike Stalin who was a Georgian, Kirov was also an ethnic Russian, which stood in his favor.“Edward P. Gazur
The GULag
• Soviet system of forced labor camps• “Corrective labor
camps”• Several million inmates