22.2: Stalinism

The Bolshevik party rose to power against the backdrop of the anarchy surrounding Russia’s disastrous military position in World War I. By 1922, the party was firmly in power and embarked on a fascinating and almost unprecedented series of political and social experiments. No country had undergone a successful communist revolution, so there was no precedent for how a socialist society was supposed to be organized. Almost immediately, the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin launched the New Economic Policy, which allowed limited market exchange of goods and foodstuffs, while the state supported a renaissance in the arts and literature. For a few years, the standards of living rose, and a flowering of innovative creative energy existed as artists and intellectuals explored what it might mean to live in the country of the future.

When Lenin died in 1924, a struggle within the Bolshevik leadership emerged. In 1927, Joseph Stalin politically defeated his enemies (including the Bolshevik leaders Trotsky and Zinoviev, two of Lenin’s closest allies) and consolidated total control of the state. Officially, Stalin was the “Premier” of the communist party, overseeing its central decision-making committee, the Politburo. Unofficially, Stalin’s control of the top level of the party translated into pure autocracy, similar to the power of the Tsar before the revolution.

Before his rise to power, Stalin’s position in the Russian Communist Party had been relatively innocuous. As its secretary, he had little direct power but enormous potential influence. In order to achieve appointment within the party, other members of the party had to go through Stalin. He shrewdly cemented political relationships, so that by Lenin’s death he was well-positioned to make a power grab himself.

Stalin is a much more enigmatic figure than Hitler. However, he did not write manifestos about his beliefs, or leave behind many documents or letters that might help historians reconstruct his motivations. During his rule, he changed his mind frequently and did not stick to consistent patterns of behavior or decision-making, making it difficult to pin down his essential beliefs or goals. His only overarching personality trait was tremendous paranoia: almost always feeling as if surrounded by potential traitors and enemies.

Figure 22.2.1: Stalin

During the 1930s, he forced through massive change to the Soviet economy and society while periodically killing anyone imaged as a threat or enemy. Communism was “supposed” to spread around the world after an initial revolutionary outburst. Instead, it was stuck in one place, which necessitated a massive industrial buildup. The military benefited the most, growing dramatically and achieving a level of parity with the west.

Of his many destructive policies, Stalin is perhaps best remembered for the "purges", rounding up and executing members of the communist party, the army, or even the police forces themselves. Normally, Stalin's agents would use torture to force the hapless victims to confess to outlandish charges like conspiring with Germany or the United States to bring down the Soviet Union. His secret police force, the NKVD (its Russian acronym - later changed to KGB), often followed direct orders from Stalin himself. Thus, even at the highest levels of power in the USSR, no one was safe from Stalin's paranoia.

Stalin relied on the NKVD to carry out the purges, targeting better-off peasants known as kulaks, then the Old Bolsheviks (who had taken part in the revolution itself), army officers, middle-ranking communist party members, and finally, regular citizens caught in the machinery of accusation and punishment that plagued the country in the second half of the 1930s. So many people disappeared that citizens came to suspect that everyone was an informer and that everything was bugged. In addition to outright murder, thousands were imprisoned in labor camps known as gulags, almost all of which were located in the frigid northern regions of Siberia. Researchers estimate that roughly 681,692 died during the Great Purge of 1936-1938.

Domestic Policies

While the purges were emblematic of Stalin’s tyranny, other policies led to more deaths. Earlier in the 1930s, Stalin imposed the collectivization of agriculture, forcing millions of peasants to abandon their farms and villages and move to gigantic new "collective" farms. The state-imposed quotas were immediately set at unachievable levels. In the winter of 1932 – 1933, approximately 3 million peasants across the USSR (and especially in the Ukraine) starved to death. The collectivization process resulted in another 6 - 10 million deaths including those who were executed for resisting. Despite falling abysmally short of its production goals, collectivization “succeeded” in destroying the age-old bonds between the peasants and the land. Going forward, Soviet peasants would be a resentful and inefficient class of farm workers rather than peasants rooted in the land who identified with traditional values.

Acknowledging the vast gap between the Soviet Union's industrial capacity and that of the West, Stalin introduced the Five-Year Plans. The sky-high production quotas were never actually met and thousands died in the frenzy of industrial buildup. However, the plans were successful in achieving near parity with the Western powers in terms of industrial capacity. Industrial workers were obliged to toil in conditions far from a “worker’s paradise,” spared the worst depredations of the purges, and did not face outright starvation.

Figure 22.2.2: Soviet propaganda consistently mythologized the supposed fervor of industrial workers. The text reads “2+2 plus the enthusiasm of the workers = 5.”

Foreign Policies

Stalin’s overriding goals were twofold:

• secure allies abroad against the growing power of Germany (and, to an extent, Japan)
• drag the USSR into the industrial age

While remaining deeply hostile to the Western powers, the Soviet state did receive official diplomatic recognition from the US and France in 1933. The Five-Year Plans were disastrous in the long run, but did succeed in industrializing the USSR. On the eve of World War II, the USSR had become the third-largest industrial power after the United States and Germany, and was counted among the major political powers of Europe and the world.