Stalin effectively used Party structure and organization to build support and isolate political opponents. Trotsky, as Commissar for War (head of the Red Army), held a very powerful position, although he never used it for power. Members feared Trotsky for his position thinking that he would become a dictator and encourage capitalist countries to attack the USSR while Stalin on the other hand inspired little fear or envy. As Secretary general of the Communist Party Stalin appointed officials who supported him. It was these Party officials who elected the Politburo and by controlling their votes he determined who was elected. Trotsky refused to change his beliefs to win allies and many saw him as arrogant while Stalin’s lack of any strong political beliefs meant that he could change his opinions when it suited him and to gain allies.
Stalin defeated his rivals and responded to Party calls for stronger economic control to manufacture a utopian society. He abandoned the NEP and transformed the USSR into a major industrial power and drove towards modernity regardless of the costs. He believed that to achieve a secure socialist society massive industrial growth was required and feared that a weak USSR would prompt an invasion from hostile countries such as Germany and Japan. A strong industrial base was necessary to ensure that it could provide armaments in order to defend itself and make it less dependent on Western industrial goods. The need to consolidate power through industrialisation and the creation of large collective farms appealed to Party radicals and committed wavers to a course to a course that could not be reversed.
Stalin aimed to create an industrial nation that manufactured machinery required to modernise farming. Modern farm machinery was needed to reduce the number of workers in agricultural production and direct them into industry. However industry requires capital and in 1928 USSR lacked necessary domestic capital and was denied foreign loans because the government still refused to honour the Former Empire’s debts. Grain and agricultural exports were the only way to generate capital quickly. The state forcibly extracted grain from the peasants and dumped it on the world market during the height of the Great Depression and used the payments to import machinery. According to Stalin industry must be developed through central government planning. This meant that the state would decide where and how predetermined goods were to be produced, and also set prices and wages. This kind of economic planning was to be achieved through Five Year Plans and carried out by the state economic agency GOSPLAN, which emphasised the production of capital goods as opposed to consumer goods, “putting a steel ring around consumption” 1.
The idea behind collectivisation, initiated in 1929, was that it would replace the small-scale un-mechanised inefficient farms that were then commonplace in the Soviet Union, with large-scale mechanised farms that would produce farms far more efficiently. Each area was to pool their fields, animals and tools together on a kolkhoz- a collective farm. Instead of gaining profits by selling produce at the market they were forced to sell food to the government at a fixed low price. Party officials and OGPU (The United State Political Administration) members were sent into the countryside to organise the collectives and peasants who wished to join would sign a register. Those who refused to join were arrested, sent to labour camps or executed. It ensured food supplies to the cities, broke the control of the peasants over food and in theory larger units of production would help mechanisation, increase output and reduce costs.
Although better management methods and machinery eventually improved efficiency, collectivisation created a legacy of bitterness and rural apathy that worked against modernisation. Deportation deprived new farms of skilled and ambitious labour and destroying existing farms precipitated widespread famine. It is estimated that at least 13 million people died of starvation in the period 1932-1933 due to the food shortages caused by the disruption in rural areas forcing many to break the law just to provide for their starving families. Collectivisation meant the destruction of a centuries old way of life and a drastic drop in living standards for peasants.
Collectivisation faced widespread resistance and in an attempt to overcome this resistance Stalin's regime assembled shock brigades, who used indiscriminate violence against the peasantry. In response many slaughtered animals, burnt crops, houses and destroyed farm equipment instead of handing them over o the state. Within two years the country lost approximately 60% of its livestock and food production took a decade to return to pre-collectivisation levels. Stalin blamed this drop in food production on Kulaks (rich peasants) who he believed were capitalistic parasites organising resistance to collectivisation. He ordered all Kulaks to be either shot or transported to prison camps. Certainly grain was needed in order to purchase industrial equipment, to improve supplies to the rapidly growing towns and to create state reserves but such extreme measures were not required. Command polices replaced economic methods.
The targets set by GOSPLAN for industrialisation were unrealistically high but the results of the First Five Year Plan (1927-1932) were impressive with industrial output increasing on a massive scale. During the 1930s mass literacy campaigns and the increase in government spending on education meant that education levels rose sharply and by the 1940s many could read and write. The demand for labour increased during the 1930s, which meant that unemployment was not a problem unlike other industrial nations in the grip of the Great Depression.
However food rationing, inflation and currency devaluation, housing shortages in major cities and forced labour that had no cash incentives for hard work were just some of the problems associated with industrialisation. Despite the sacrifices made living standards drastically fell reducing many to horrendous poverty and bitterness while the repressive action only provoked disloyalty and a loss of morale. With no seed capital, little foreign trade and barely any modern industry to start with, Stalin financed the Soviet Union’s industrial revolution in much the same way that Russia’s leaders had always financed things: by a ruthless extraction of wealth from the peasants often to the point of starvation.
In spite of the successes GOSPLAN did not co-ordinate production efficiently. Poor central panning led to some industries over producing while factories in other industries were left idle because broken machinery could not be quickly repaired due to bureaucratic delays. The pressure to reach unrealistic targets resulted in the production of unusable goods because speed and volume was valued over quality. Many industrial workers were ex-peasants, who had not been given the opportunity to train to use machinery properly or safely leading to industrial accidents and machine breakage. The government then accused them of sabotage and put them on trials. Fear and intimidation caused by the trials meant that workers would cover up problems in industries and falsify production figures so that they appeared to be higher.
As a result of the harshness of industrialisation and the social backlash some Party members became uncooperative with administration. In response to the breakdown in Party discipline the Central Committee organised a chitska (‘cleaning”) to reinforce obedience. This period between 1934-1938 was called the Great Terror/Purge where millions of people suspected of opposing Stalin’s regime were killed. The murder of popular Party member Sergie Kirov in December 1934 marked the start of the purges and its suspected that Stalin ordered his death thus providing the excuse for reprisals against his political opponents who earlier disputed his claim to leadership.
Stalin’s earlier leadership struggle with Trotsky, bourgeois elements, kulaks and other oppositionists became essential to his consolidation of power. Sensational stories of foreign plots and “wreckings” diverted attention from Stalin’s responsibility for the disastrous side effects of rapid modernisation. He virtually destroyed the Party by imprisoning “old Bolsheviks” and forcing them to make ludicrous public confessions at “show trials” before being shot. Millions were imprisoned in concentration camps and mistered by GULAG, a special department of the NKVD. “Islands” of gulags spread across the country, known as the GULAG archipelago, made use of cheap prison labour through inhumane measures. The Red Army also underwent a complete purge including the Chief of Staff Tuckachevsky and all but two army commanders. Accused of plotting to allow a German invasion half of the entire officer corps was executed and by 1939 it had seriously affected the army’s ability to function, as seen with the German invasion in 1941.
The leaders of the purges, scientists, artists, historians, diplomats, and intelligence agents did not escape the purge either due to their foreign contacts and “unwanted” critical thinking. Stalin pitted one power structure against another creating distrust and perpetual tension. It divided potential opposition by making people suspicious of each other and promoted vigilance to prevent people acting on “subversive thoughts” by teaching them to see spies and traitors everywhere. The system reached such a stage where individuals were even arrested for “failure to denounce” suspicious people.
In the struggle for unity as understood dogmatically by Stalin he gradually killed off the healthy exchange of opinion. Like-mindedness became the norm in part life while indecisiveness only exacerbated matters. Under the banner of creating a monolithic party Stalin systemically destroyed the democratic principle of internal party exchange. The abolition of socialist pluralism launched the monopoly on both social truth and political power. Making allies and constructive critics into enemies led to the replacement of the revolutionary democracy by totalitarian bureaucracy. He perverted socialist principles by promoting a one-dimensional view of the world used the most radical means to achieve defined aims which themselves became deformed in the process.
Stalin took the primacy of the state over society to absurd limits. Within the environment of political absolutism, the leaders decisions were increasingly divorced from economic reality. The deepest corruption of this system was in removing man from the centre of society’s goals and in replacing them with the state as a machine that magnified one man only. Atomisation separated individuals from society, prevented any challenge to the status quo and secured the indefinite stagnation of the USSR. According to Dimitri Volkogonov, a Russian historian, the Bolsheviks were permeated with the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat- perhaps because they saw no other path to power- and who paraded their radicalism as the hallmark of revolutionary mindedness with the clear intention of solving Russia’s problems by violent means.
In 1941 Hitler broke the Molotov-Rippentrop Pact and invaded the Soviet Union who was largely unprepared while many of the experienced generals in the Red Amy had been killed during the purges. This had a negative affect on Russia’s ability to organise defences though the scorched earth strategy, a strong Russian military-industrial complex, a cold winter that cut off supplies for German troops and Hitler’s arrogance, Stalin led Russia to victory.
Historians argue that Stalinism occurred due to the consequences of the Civil War and that ruthless behaviour in order to stay in power was continued for decades while others say that since Russia did not have a democratic tradition, people were used to tyrannical rulers and that Stalin was no different. Even though the foundations of the Stalinist state existed before Stalin came to power, i.e., consequences of Leninism, Stalin perverted these to consolidate his own power. Stalin’s personal traits of dominance, manipulation and determination to pursue his idea at all costs influenced his policies and it is these reasons why Stalinism occurred.
He brought the country from a backward status into a great industrial power and built a country with no unemployment, social services for all citizens and mass literacy. By leading the country to victory in WWII and holding the “encircling capitalist countries” at bay, Stalin’s success in unparallel in history given the situation. However he created a "cult of personality" eliminating all independent thought and institutional initiative and was responsible for the deaths of millions during collective campaigns. Unlike capitalism, which can adapt to economic surroundings, communism is based on rigidity and must adhere to ideological constraints. Stalin established system that lacked a smooth transition of power after his death and dragged the USSR into a Cold War with America who had the ability to out produce and out spend because of its market based economy and privatisation of debt.
Stalin's harsh polices are indefensible on a moral or human level. The idea of the end justifying the means as his modus operandi was erroneous and the staggering cost in human lives overrides any progression achieved under a brutal rule.
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1. (From Page 2)- A quote from one of Stalin’s speeches
Bibliography
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Dimitri Volkogonov, 1991, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, Phoenix Press, London.
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Vicki Greer and Robert Darlington, 2002, Flashpoints: National and International Studies, Heinemann- Hardcourt Education, Melbourne.
