How did Stalin use Propaganda and Terror to remain in Power?

Party members who were in positions of power within each area

Introduction/Becoming Leader

Lenin died with no successor - Contest between Trotsky and Stalin

Stalin had upperhand - Commissar of Nationalities/General Secretary of the Party

Could appoint supporters to Key Positions

Stalin deliberately spread the Cult of Lenin

Organised Lenin's Funeral

Promoted his own image as best, staunchest, truest Comrade in Arms of Lenin

Socialism in One Country

Allowed for the removal of Trotsky

Stalin removed any threat by outmaneuvering his rivals on issues of Policy

Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin

Collectivisation/Eradication of Kulaks

Idea of maximising Agricultural output, by getting rid of small unproductive peasant farms and bringing them together into large State owned farms

Promise of new schools and health centres

Income raised from new farms would modernise the farming sector

Increased food production which would help Russian Society

By 1929 only 10% of Farmers had volunteered to join the Collectives

Stalin now used force to get peasants to co-operate

Resistance from Kulak Class

Stalin called for them to be 'eradicated'

Propaganda labeled them 'enemies of the workers'

Responded by burning crops and slaughtering animals

By 1930 it was 58%

By 1936 it was 90% - 250,000 Collective Farms

Inefficient - Widespread Famine

5 Year Plans

False promises made Peasants give up land

Suffered from food shortages, with Government requisitioning their food supplies

Replaced by NEP in 1928

Drawn up Gosplan

'We are 50 or 100 years behind the advanced countries. We must make good the difference in 10 years or they will crush us'

First emphasised Heavy Industry (Coal, Iron, Gas and Electricity

Unrealistic Goals - 330% expansion in Heavy Industry

Achievements Dramatic - Electricity production trebled, Coal production doubled, Workforce doubled to 22 million

Model City - Magnitogorsk

Second emphasised Consumer Goods and Transportation

Third emphasised Rearmament - 16% to 33% increase in Government Spending

1940 - USSR became 2nd most industrialised nation in the world

Unemployment eradicated

Industrially Self-Sufficient by 1939

Pressure to meet targets

Examples made - Alexey Stakhanov

Internal Passports

Provision of Work, Housing, Schooling and Healthcare

Increase in Role of Women

Totalitarian State

Communist Party only Party

Had complete control - Press, Radio and Industry

Party members who were in positions of power within each area

Pravda claimed Stalin as 'the Great Leader of Communism

Control of Army

Secret Police enforced Party Policy and ensured conformity

Propaganda

Newspapers, Radio, Cinema, Writers and Artists all controlled

Glorified Stalin and his Policies

Indoctrination

'We must make the young into a generation of Communists. Children, like soft wax, are very malleable and they should be moulded into good Communists....from the earliest days of their lives, they must find themselves under the beneficent influence of Communist schools'

Young Communists and Komsomol

Teachers taught Marxist Ideologies

Textbooks and History was revised

Writers and Artists produced work that depicted a compliant and happy workforce contributing to the greatness of the Soviet Union

Drew attention to the enemies of the workers

The Cult of Stalin

Stalin became a God like figure where worship of him was promoted

Statues and posters erected throughout USSR as well as towns being named after him (Stalingrad)

History books rewritten to exaggerate Stalin's importance

He became focus of music and theatre and was even mentioned in the National Anthem

Made him the equal of Lenin - 'Stalin is the new Lenin of today', 'the most learned of men', 'the font of all wisdom'

Known as the Vozhd

'Father of Nations', 'Brilliant Genius of Humanity', 'Great Architect of Communism' and 'Gardener of Human Happiness'

The Purges/The Great Terror

Stalin's want to remove any threat to his power - 'to destroy men who might form an alternative Government'

Allowed Stalin to lay the blame for all the failures of Stalin's Policies at the hands of 'traitors' and 'spies'

Climate of fear throughout the country

Informers everywhere

NKVD

Targeted 'Old Bolsheviks'

Targeted Soviet Red Army

Stalin declared, 'the Purge was unavoidable and its results, on the whole, beneficial'

Resulted in there being no challenge to the Leadership of Stalin

The Show Trials

Gulags/Slave Labour

Used to imprison Stalin's opponents

Designed to provide slave labour to help with process of industrialisation

Exceptionally harsh conditions - weather, food, treatment

Foreign Policy

Conclusion

Initially an Isolationist Policy where focus was on Collectivisation and Industrialisation to achieve Self Sufficiency and International recognition of Communism

Particularly successful due to the Wall Street Crash

Give Stalin the confidence and belief now was time to involve USSR in foreign territories, aligned with the Rise of the Nazis

1934 - Joined League of Nations

Popular Fronts - European Communist Parties to form Anti-Fascist Alliances with other Political Parties

Military Alliances with France and Czechoslovakia

Involvement in Spanish Civil War

30 Years in power until his death in 1953

Eradication of all opponents during that time

Through both Physical and Diplomatic methods

'No area of Soviet Life escaped being purged. Under Stalin terror was elevated to a method of Government'

Stalin demonstrated the 'necessary grit, determination, manipulative, skills and ruthlessness to attain power through his own means'

Concealing of 1937 Census results

Potentially 30 million killed during his Reign of Terror

By 1940, of the original 15 man Bolshevik Government of 1917, only one was alive - Stalin

11 had been executed under Stalin's Reign

Used purges to warn Party members that no one was safe, and helped to reinforce the message from Stalin to ordinary citizens that traitors were extent on making Communism fail

Propaganda Trials, with the accused men portrayed as enemies of the people

Aim to establish complete domination over the Communist Party and to eliminate any potential threats

Also allowed Stalin to find scapegoats to blame for failures during the 5 Year Plans

Confessions were key in the trials as they 'proved' that there was a conspiracy and that Stalin was justified in what he was doing

Link to Nazi Germany

The accused implicated others in their evidence and confessions, thus raising the possibility of other Bolshevik Leaders being prosecuted

Stalin ensured that the Trials were accepted by the people

Constant coverage by Newspapers

Invites to International observers - give validity