Stalin Question 3

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The following are equally important reasons why Stalin was able to hold onto power in the Soviet Union:

The purges and show trials

The secret police

Propaganda and the cult of personality

Stalin’s economic policies.

To what extent do you agree with this statement?

By 1928 Josef Stalin had emerged from a vicious power struggle as leader of the Soviet Union. Despite his victory he still had many enemies, from both without and within Russia. He feared the rich, capitalist nations of the west, who hated communism, might intervene. He also feared members of his own party, such as Kamanev and Zinoviev, who had been powerful when Lenin was alive.

During his time as leader, Stalin took many steps to hold onto his power. To combat the external threats (rich, powerful capitalist nations opposed to communism, such as the USA) he wanted to modernise Russia and make it one of the great industrial nations. He felt that this was the only way to stop communism in Russia being wiped out by capitalist nations. A famous quote of Stalin‘s is "We are 50 or 100 years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this lag in 10 years. Either we do it, or they crush us."

He also wanted to rid the party of his enemies (for example supporters of Trotsky) and dissenters.

Many of Stalin’s enemies in Russia were eliminated by the purges. During the civil war this was known as the ‘Red Terror’, where tens of thousands of suspected counter-revolutionaries were arrested and imprisoned or executed.

After the civil war there was a massive food shortage in the cities and the army. The Soviet government introduced a policy of collectivisation on farms. This meant that farms were handed over to the state and larger farms, worked by many families, formed. Some farmers liked this idea, since it would improve efficiency and allow them to buy modern equipment such as tractors. There was a group of richer farmers, however, who opposed it. These ’kulaks’ owned more land than other farmers, and employed people to work on it. When collectivisation was introduced the kulaks and their supporters rebelled, killing their livestock and wrecking their tools to keep them from the government. Some even went so far as murdering government officials. This rebellion meant that in the first few months a quarter of Russia’s livestock were slaughtered. Stalin called for the ‘liquidation of the kulaks as a class’. Suspected kulaks were subject to one of three fates: execution, labour settlements or deportation ‘out of regions of total collectivisation’.

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During the late 1930’s Stalin began the ‘Great Purge’. The first targets were senior members of the party who disagreed with Stalin’s policies. Of the six member’s of the original Politburo during the revolution who lived until the Great Purge, only Stalin survived. Four of the five others were executed, the fifth, Leon Trotsky was assassinated while in exile in Mexico.

Another group to suffer during the Great Purge was the army. Stalin feared the army because Trotsky, his main rival, had led it during the Civil War. Altogether around 30,000 members of the armed forces were ...

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