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EIT Week 19- Stalin and the Soviet Union (Creating soviet socialism in the…
EIT Week 19- Stalin and the Soviet Union
Creating soviet socialism in the 1920s
1921- end of civil war, rethink of War Communism- Bolsheviks tried to control economy in wartime
1921- Great Famine
Banned other political parties and factions within Communist Party
Peasant Uprisings
Bukharin- friend of Lenin, very popular within Bolshevik party
Kronstadt rebellion- Trotsky leads Red Guards in to stop the rebellion
New Economic Policy (NEP)- private farming, small scale manufacturing (Bukharin’s idea)
1921- 10th Party Congress
1922-24
January 1924- death of Lenin
1924 Socialism in One Country- USSR can build socialism without any external help
1922- Stalin appointed as General Secretary
Collective leadership- Stalin-Bukharin alliance
1922- Peaceful Coexistence- Lenin used the capitalists’ lust for profits to help build socialism- 1920s USSR exporting oil, timber
Leon Trotsky
- 'leftist'- opposed Stalin- advocated Permanent Revolution, not Socialism in One Country- wanted end to NEP and rapid industrialisation- attacked powers and privilege of growing Bolshevik party-state bureaucracy- anti-factionalism used vs Trotsky
1927- expelled from the party
1940- murdered in Mexico
Foreign sources of funding capitalists and workers unavailable
'Leftists' (Trotsky)
- end private farming, state-collective control of agricultural- export and feed growing urban population
‘Rightists’ (Bukharin, Tomsky, Rykov)
Private farming, provide incentives to grow, deliver to state at fixed price, low taxes
Can sell anything above quota
Peasant spending, would create demand for industrial goods and stimulate development
‘Riding to Socialism on a Peasant Nag’
Mid 1920s Scissor Crisis
- harvest OK but peasants failed to produce desired surplus and/or hoarded grain- Secret Police (OGPU) led requisitioning squads- resistance met with violence
1928-32- 1st 5 Year Plan
Collectivisation- from private farming to collective farms
1932-3- Famine
1928
- launch of collectivisation and rapid industrialisation- could only be achieved with strong coercive state- linkage of economic policies and creation of strong state
17th Party Congress, Feb 1934
1 December 1934- Kirov ‘murdered’ in his office
Stalin announced as winner
End of Party rule- Stalin became dictator
Kirov elected Party leader
18th Party Congress in 1939, 19th not until 1952
Features of Stalinism
Aim to control every aspect of socio-personal life
Definite aims and policies- forging ahead in military might and industrial strength
Rule through a number of rival bureaucracies (party, secret police, state bureaucracy and economic admin)
Aim to change the country from a backward peasant economy and society to a Great Power
Ruled by a dictator
Stalin never displayed particular affection for the peasantry and leaned more towards those like Trotsky who favoured a programme of intensified industrialisation at the peasants’ expense- (
Alan Wood, Stalin and Stalinism (London: Routledge, 2005), Chapter 4
)