The U.S.S.R. Under Stalin

Stalin and TrotskyVladimir Lenin led the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 that transformed Russia into communist Soviet Union. After the revolution, Russia was a hundred years behind the rest of the world in terms of industrialization and military strength. They didn’t have the factories or technology that the rest of Europe seemed to develop during the 1800s. The Bolsheviks wanted to have the country run by the working people, but what was there to run? The Russian people were facing poverty and starvation.

Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin were Lenin’s main supporters during the revolution. They both helped Lenin bring an end to the Tsar’s rule, and start the Soviet Union off during its first few years as a communist country. During his early days as a Bolshevik, Stalin changed his name from Dzhugashivili to Stalin, which means “man of steel” in Russian. The name fit well. Stalin was cold, hard and impersonal. Lenin was unsure who The Soviet Union’s next

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leader would be. He began to distrust Stalin, and believed he was a dangerous man. Shortly before Lenin died, he wrote “Comrade Stalin has concentrated enormous power in his hands, and I am not sure that he knows how to use that power with sufficient caution.”

When Lenin died, no one was chosen to be the leader of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union did not allow elections. The Communist Party got to choose their new leader. Trotsky and Stalin became bitter rivals for control of the Communist Party. Stalin told Trotsky the wrong date for Lenin’s funeral, and when Trotsky didn’t show, Stalin started a propaganda campaign that placed him in charge of the Communist Party. The first thing he did as premier of The Soviet Union was to send Trotsky to a gulag (work prison) in Siberia, and later exile him from the entire country.

Trotsky lived in Mexico from his exile until he was assassinated in 1940. Franck Johnson, a supporter of Stalin, murdered him. Trotsky invited Johnson to take afternoon tea with him. Johnson had a small pickaxe hidden in his trousers. He attacked Trotsky suddenly, battering his skull with the pickaxe and injuring his right shoulder and right knee. According to one of his bodyguards Trotsky's last words before he became unconscious were "I think Stalin has finished the job he started."

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A Totalitarian StateLenin and Trotsky wanted to unite Communists around the world. Stalin, however, focused on Russian economic development. He coined the phrase “socialism in one country” to describe his aims of perfecting a Communist state in Russia. Stalin would transform the Soviet Union into a totalitarian state. The Soviet Union was behind the rest of the world in both farming and industrial production. He had a vision of what he wanted the Soviet Union to become, and would not let the Soviet people stand in his way.

The term totalitarianism describes a national government that controls every aspect of a person’s public and private life. Totalitarian leaders, such as Stalin, took advantage of the nation’s fears and provided the country with a sense of security. Totalitarianism is the opposite of what Western democracies like the United States value the most. Western values such as freedom, human dignity, and individualism are not encouraged in a totalitarian government. Totalitarianism relies on absolute authority of the government. Often, one dynamic leader comes forward. He helps unite the people toward a common vision and insists on unconditional loyalty and uncritical support. Leaders often justify their violent actions in the name of progress and use the media to spread their vision. In a communist society, the government uses totalitarianism to achieve socialist goals.

Totalitarianism + Socialism = Communism

Under Stalin’s communist Soviet Union, the government controlled every aspect of the worker’s life. Officials chose the workers, assigned the jobs and determined their working hours. Workers needed the police’s permission to move. The secret police were ready to imprison or execute those who did not contribute to the Soviet economy and those who failed to live up official expectations. These forceful means of making the Soviet Union a modern

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industrial nation took a great toll on people’s personal lives. Many families fell apart due to the intense pressure and persecution.

Five Year PlansUnder the new plan, Lenin decided to allow some limited capitalism and chances for people to make money. Stalin had very different plans for the economy. Stalin, however, returned to total communism and total state control. To modernize the Soviet state, Stalin tried dramatic changes in industry and agriculture.

In 1928, Stalin outlined the first of many industrial plans for the development of the Soviet Union’s economy. In these plans, the government would take drastic steps to promote rapid industrial growth and to strengthen national defense. Stalin announced, “We are fifty or a hundred years behind advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it or we shall be crushed.” These plans to increase manufacturing were called “Five Year Plans.” They set high goals to increase the production of steel, coal, oil and electricity. These goods were necessary for the success of the Soviet Union. The problem was that the goals of the five year plans were so high they were impossible to reach.

The government wanted to make military products such as weapons and bombs. Since there were only so many factories already built, the government limited production of consumer goods such as food and clothing

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and directed resources towards military development. As a result, people faced severe shortages of housing, food, clothing and other necessary goods.

Stalin’s grim methods also produced fantastic economic results. Although most of the targets of the first Five-Year plan fell short, the Soviets made impressive gains. A second plan, launched in 1933, proved equally successful. From 1928 to 1937, industrial production increased more than 25 percent but people had very little to show for it. The country was getting richer and more technologically and militarily advanced, but none of these gains were seen by people doing the actual work.

FamineThe farmers welcomed the revolution of 1917. They believed that what they grew was theirs and that they should be able to do with it what they pleased. A profitable year meant that more animals or seed could be purchased with the possibility of even more land. However, Stalin disagreed. He was afraid that the cities would be starved of food. Lenin viewed the city workers as the powerhouse of the Russian Revolution and on one occasion wrote “let the peasants starve” when it became clear that they had embraced beliefs such as private land ownership, making profits, etc.

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In 1927, the USSR faced a food shortage because of a poor harvest. Stalin was convinced that the peasants were responsible for the grain shortages in the cities. He ordered thousands of young Communists from the cities to go to the countryside and seize grain. This was the start of a policy known as the “Great Turn” that left millions to starve. Stalin developed a win-win strategy. If a peasant handed over his surplus grain, the state would get what it wanted. Any who did not were labelled ‘kulaks’ and, therefore, were ‘enemies of the state’ and suitably punished– along with their grain being confiscated.

Stalin ordered “the destruction of the kulaks as a class.” The kulaks were divided into three groups: those to be killed immediately, those to be sent to prison and those to be deported to Siberia. The third category alone consisted of about one million people. Stalin believed that such a brutal policy would persuade others in agricultural regions to accept the rule of Moscow and that resistance would end. Stalin wrote, “We must break the back of the peasantry.”

The deportations started in 1930 and sparked off numerous rebellions. These rebellions were brutally suppressed by the Soviet police. When it became clear that the peasants and the government were effectively at war, the

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peasants responded by slaughtering their animals (26 million cattle and 15 million horses) and destroying what grain they had. This confirmed in the mind of Stalin what he had long thought– that the peasants could not be trusted and that they had to be killed off or forced to obey Stalin.    

By December 1931, famine spread throughout the Soviet Union. Stalin had done nothing to help its starving people. In fact, on June 6th, 1932, Stalin ordered that the government should let the peasants starve rather than act to help them.

Stalin refused to recognize the enormity of what he was doing. When he was challenged at one meeting to tell the truth, he told his accuser to become a writer so that he could continue writing fables. He even accused the head of the Bolsheviks in the Ukraine of being soft on peasants when he asked Stalin to provide his troops with more grain as they were starving.

Throughout the whole era of the famine there is no evidence that Stalin was willing to change his policy by any degree. He even introduced the Misappropriation of Socialist Property Law– this stated that anyone caught stealing just one husk of grain was to be shot. Internal travel within the USSR was made all but impossible as the government had total control over the issuing of internal passports that were needed to travel.

No one will ever know for sure how many died. However, it is generally accepted that within the Ukraine between 4 and 5 million peasants died. Over 5 million households were affected either by deportation, prison or executions.

Life Under StalinStalin’s totalitarian rule revolutionized Soviet society. He relied on total control and limited individual freedoms. Women’s roles, however, were greatly expanded. With the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, women won equal rights. After Stalin became dictator, women helped the state-controlled economy prosper. Under his Five-Year Plans, many women had no choice but to join the labor force. Young women performed the same jobs as men. Millions of women worked in factories and built dams and roads.

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Given new educational opportunities, women prepared for careers in engineering and science. Medicine, in particular attracted many women. By 1950, they made-up 75 percent of the Soviet doctors. Soviet women paid a heavy price for their rising status in society. Beside their full time jobs, they were responsible for housework and child care. Motherhood was also considered a patriotic duty in totalitarian regimes. Soviet women were expected to provide the state with future generations of loyal, obedient citizens.

Under Stalin, the government controlled all education- from nursery schools through the universities. Schoolchildren learned the wonders of the Communist Party. College professors and students who questioned the Communist Party’s interpretations of history or science risked losing their jobs or faced being sent to the gulags. People became better educated and mastered new technical skills. The dramatic changes in people’s lives had a downside, though. As servants of a totalitarian state, they would make great sacrifices in exchange for Stalin’s progress.

Education was not merely indoctrination. Stalin’s economic plans created a high demand for many skilled workers. Government paid university and technical training for the most able students became the key to a better life. As one young man explained, “If a person does not want to become a collective farmer or just a cleaning women, the only means you have to get something is through education.”

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Censorship and PropagandaIn order to keep control, Stalin educated the people of the Soviet Union to understand the goals of the Communist Party. State-supported youth groups served as training grounds for future party members. Totalitarian states rely on the spread of propaganda. Propaganda is information given to the people that only shows one point of view or leaves out important facts. It was designed to sway people to accept certain beliefs or actions of the Communist Party. Soviet newspapers, posters and radio broadcasts made Communist ideas seem wonderful and wrote favorably about Stalin. They often exaggerated his economic progress.

Many towns, factories and streets in the Soviet Union were named for Stalin. A new metal was called Stalinite. An orchid was named Stalinchid. Children standing before their desks every morning said, “Thank Comrade Stalin for this happy life.”

Stalin also relied on censorship. Since his government controlled the newspapers and radio stations, he would not let them print anything negative about his plans. Many Soviet writers, composers, and other artists fell victim to official censorship. Stalin would not tolerate individual creativity. He demanded conformity and obedience from all citizens.

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Communists wanted to replace religious teachings with the ideals of Communism. Under Stalin, the government officially sponsored groups of atheists, people who did not believe in God. “Museums of Atheism” displayed exhibits to show that religious beliefs were mere superstitions. Yet many people in the Soviet Union still clung to their faiths. The Russian Orthodox Church was the main target of persecution. Other religious groups, including Roman Catholics and Jews, also suffered greatly under Stalin’s totalitarian rule. The police destroyed magnificent churches and synagogues. Many religious leaders of all faiths were killed or sent to labor camps.

The Great PurgeIn 1934, Stalin turned against members of the Communist Party. He launched the Great Purge campaign of terror that was directed at eliminating anyone who threatened his power. Thousands of old Bolsheviks who helped stage the Revolution in 1917 stood trial. Stalin told them that if they confessed to their “crimes” their families would be safe. Their trials were televised so that other world leaders would think they were legitimate. They were executed for “crimes against the Soviet state.”

When the Great Purge ended, Stalin had gained total control of both the Soviet government and the Communist Party. Historians estimate that Stalin was responsible for the deaths of somewhere between 8 and 13 million people.

The GulagsStalin began building his totalitarian state by destroying his enemies. Stalin’s secret police used tanks and armored cars to stop riots. They monitored telephone lines, read mail and planted informers everywhere. During Stalinist times, a person could be sent to the Gulag for practicing their religious faith. The government had the power to punish even the most minor acts, like drawing a caricature of Stalin. The police arrested the director of the Moscow Zoo because his monkeys got tuberculosis. The police themselves were not above suspicion, especially if they did not meet their quota of arrests. Every family came to fear the knock on the door in the early hours of the morning. Surprise visits from the secret police usually

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meant the arrest of a family member. Even children told authorities about disloyal remarks they heard at home. The secret police arrested and executed millions of so-called traitors. Those who survived were often sent to the gulags.

What was the Gulag? A Gulag was a Soviet concentration camps in which millions of people performed slave labor for the government while living in unimaginably atrocious conditions. There was a vast system of gulags set up across the country. In Russian, GULAG is an acronym for Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagerei which means Main Camp Administration. Individuals could be sent to far-off concentration camps for the slightest incident.

Felix Dzerzhinsky, who became head of Soviet Russia’s secret police after the October Revolution (in 1917), set up the regime’s first forced labor camps. Acknowledging the government’s regular use of fear against its own people, Dzerzhinsky told New Life (a Russian newspaper) in 1918, “we represent in ourselves organized terror- this must be said very clearly- such terror is now very necessary in the conditions we are living through in a time of revolution.”

The camps dehumanized life and instituted a reign of terror throughout Soviet society. Recently opened Russian State Archives, now available for study through the Hoover Institute, reveal the following facts:

● Ten percent of the entire population of the Soviet Union lived in the camps.

● The Gulag administration was the largest single employer in all of Europe.

● The average life expectancy of a camp prisoner was one winter. ● At least twenty million people perished in the labor camps during

Stalin’s rule. Millions did not get out alive.

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This map depicts the location of Gulag camps throughout the Soviet Union. 

Life in the Gulags

Unlike the Nazis, who documented all kinds of concentration camp atrocities, the Soviets (under Stalin) did not photograph events and living conditions in the Gulags. We learn of forced labor camps from survivor stories.

Prisoners, usually sorted into groups of five, made the long trek to Soviet forced work camps by rail and uncovered trucks, even when the cold weather was no longer bearable.

As work in any particular area neared completion, old camps were abandoned and new ones were built. Prisoners too sick to make the move

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were left behind to die. Since the Stalinist regime endlessly found reasons to send people to the camps, there was a steady stream of replacement labor.

After gold was discovered thousands of kilometers from the port of Magadan, labor-camp workers were forced to build Kolyma Highway, a 1200-kilometer road, using only pickaxes, crowbars, shovels and wheelbarrows. Workers were forced to sleep outside, no matter how bad the weather.

At least in the gold and diamond mines workers had a chance to survive. The same could not be said for those who mined uranium or dug for gold in the permafrost of Indigirka.

In Siberia, the Upper Debbin Camp was a place of certain death for many. At lunchtime, when the Siberian temperatures dropped to -60 degrees, the prisoners ate warm balanda (a kind of soup or gruel made from the tops of vegetables). Daily rations were always short of what a human needed to perform the back-breaking work.

Women prisoners, singled out for special treatment, were despised by the rest of the inmates. Wives, and children, of political prisoners (so-called “enemies of the state”) fared little better than their husbands and fathers. Children old enough to work did- often with their mothers who, among other

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things, cut down trees with primitive hand tools. Young children were left in the barracks, unsupervised except by camp guards.

Every minute of rest that prisoners took was added to their 14-hour day. Escape was next-to-impossible. Prisoners who could not endure the wretched conditions tried to harm themselves. If they did not die from self-inflicted wounds, no one gave them medical help. Dogs, maintained in The Guards’ Kennel, were better maintained than the political prisoners. When a prisoner died, he was tossed in the snow. A famous song, describing that situation, sums it up: “...no one will ever learn where my grave is.”

For the slightest reason, like showing disrespect to a guard, prisoners could be subjected to torture by komariki- small mosquitoes which would cover a person’s body for 30- 60 minutes while the prisoner, firmly secured to a tree, was unable to brush the insects away. At the end of that session, the prisoner would usually die. Those who survived the gruesome camp conditions received “rehabilitation” papers and were permitted to return to “normal” life.

.In Waiting to be Shot, Getman remembers 159 men who- for no reason- were roused from

their barracks in the middle of the night and executed.

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Stalin’s temper became ever more savage as he grew older. His doctor, Vladimir Vinogradov, noticed a marked change for the worse in Stalin’s health early in 1952. When he suggested that the dictator start to take things more easily, the patient flew into a furious rage and had him arrested.

Several other medical men were arrested in 1952. Some of them were Jewish and newspaper tirades against ‘murderers in white gowns’ provoked widespread rumors about a medical conspiracy. There were whispers of babies killed in maternity wards and patients being given poisoned medicines. In January 1953 the Tass press agency reported the arrest of nine members of ‘a criminal group of killer doctors’, accused of murdering prominent Soviet figures. Six of the nine were Jews. More doctors were arrested and although many of them were not Jewish, there was an outbreak of anti-Semitism and Jews were attacked in the streets. Stalin meantime was seriously considering a plan to deport all Soviet Jews to Siberia.

The accused doctors’ lives were saved by Stalin’s own death. He had begun to feel his age and tell his followers that he had not long left to live. His senior colleagues, their homes and offices bugged by the security police, were all terrified of him. At a meeting of the Central Committee of the Party in October 1952 Stalin announced that he was too old to cope any longer and asked to be relieved of his post as Secretary General. Georgi Malenkov, in the chair, paled for fear that the other members would not instantly stand up to protest and demand that the request be denied. Fortunately for him, they did.

Stalin left the Kremlin for his house at Kuntsevo, outside Moscow, in mid-February 1953, for the last time. There are conflicting reports of what happened, but after a routine night of heavy drinking until the early hours of March 1st, the guards became alarmed when there was no sound from their master all day and late in the evening a guard or a maid ventured in and found him lying on the floor of his bedroom. One account says he was conscious, but only able to make incoherent noises, and had wet himself.

Not until the next day, with Stalin paralyzed and speechless, were doctors summoned. Almost too frightened to touch him, they announced that he had suffered a massive stroke. According to his daughter Svetlana, who was at

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the bedside, at 9.50pm on the 5th Stalin’s eyes opened with ‘a terrible look – either mad or angry and full of the fear of death’. He raised his left hand, pointing upwards, perhaps threateningly, and then death took him. It was announced on the radio the next day, and the funeral was held in Moscow on March 9th in the presence of a huge crowd – so large that some were crushed to death. Stalin’s veteran colleague Vyacheslav Molotov, whose wife was in a prison camp where she was known as Object Number Twelve, spoke in praise of the dead tyrant. Stalin’s body was embalmed and was presently put on display with Lenin’s corpse in the renamed Lenin-Stalin Mausoleum.

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