Russia - Trotsky and Stalin.

Trotsky got more support for the Bolsheviks by telling the Red Guard that they were fighting for their family’s to get equality for ordinary people. When the red guards new that they were fighting for this they gave the Bolsheviks a little bit of respect.

If Trotsky hadn’t contributed to the Bolsheviks I don’t think that the revolution would of happened. Trotsky played a vital part in the revolution and his sneaky plans worked and he had everything planned secretly from everyone.

B 

        I think the reason that Stalin and not Trotsky emerged as Lenin’s successor because Stalin was a strong Bolshevik believer from the beginning unlike Trotsky who was a bit of a glory supporter and only came onto the Bolsheviks side when he knew that there was going to be a revolution happening in 1917 that he could be a part of. I think that if Stalin didn’t know that a revolution could take place then he would of stayed a Menshevik supporter. Stalin also thought that if they started the revolution in one country (Russia) then they could get power in that country and then the army would have to join the Bolsheviks making it bigger to take over one country one by one. Whereas Trotsky believed that they should take over a few countries at once this was a very silly idea as they would not be able to pull it off as they were not quite big enough to do this and Lenin saw this.

        Stalin was a very hard worker from the beginning to the finish and he was a very healthy man around the time that Lenin died whereas Trotsky was a sick man and he also still had that glory supporter nametag. Stalin was a very sneaky person he knew what he needed to do and he did well and truly when Trotsky was very busy sorting out the revolution and being in the public eye stalin was doing the boring secretary jobs this also showed Lenin that Stalin was dedicated even to the boring jobs even though these jobs were boring and didn’t seem powerful with all the jobs he did he gained quite a lot of power without anyone realising. Not only that but he worked very hard at getting political alliances and so when it came to Lenin’s death surprisingly Stalin had a lot more supporters than Lenin so he was a stronger participant.

C

        I think that all the points were equally important this is because of all the points that support them.

Stalin as we al know was a very sneaky man who was equally clever in such a way that he could cover everything he did significantly. I think this because nobody found out the amount of people that he killed until after his death.     

Stalin couldn’t persuade every one of his proposals and he felt threatened by that so the only way of stopping them maybe speaking out against him was to pretend that they had done a crime and then sending them off to be killed (execution).

Stalin had a secret police called the NKVD who arrested   and shot over 700 000 people in one year! Stalin himself played a strong part in the deaths of 40 000 of them. To prevent anyone finding out about the secret police Stalin had to do something to stop the NKVD from telling anyone what they wee doing. Stalin had many of his senior officers killed.  

Propaganda and censorship played a big part for Stalin as     he let people see him in newspapers and pictures with children                and peasants the homeless and the unfortunate. Propaganda was also use in schools, radios etc people were no longer thinking for themselves but they didn’t realise that everything was being censored in case it made the Bolsheviks good in any way or the Mensheviks good in any way. Schools were taught only what communists wanted to teach; also everywhere you went there was always advertisements showing that communism was the best way to run the Soviet Union.

Stalin made a significant difference in trade by taking land off peasants and setting up large collective farms and forcing them to work on them this was called collectivisation the idea of it was to increase the amount of food grown the peasants didn’t like this because they wanted to farm their own land but Stalin soon put the peasants in their place by using violence. He also did something called the five-year plans this consisted of the government setting big production targets. The workers worked very hare to achieve this and within ten years the Soviet Union had major industrial power.

I think each one of these points are equally important because each one needs each other to help Stalin’s power in the soviet union, because without the purges and show trials then the people who didn’t support him could of made another group and taken over, without the secret police Stalin would not of been able to kill so many people, without propaganda and censorship they would have been photographs shown of Stalin being evil, radio and newspapers would tell the truth and people would think for themselves and without Stalin’s economical polices the soviet union wouldn’t have gained so much industrial power.