- Under the orders of Lenin all workers who refused to work on Sundays were arrested by the Cheka and were sent to labour camps.
- According to Lenin, those who refused to world during weekends were counter-revolutionaries.
- Historians like Conquest believe that Lenin’s initiation of the Red Terror was essential for the Bolsheviks to retain power, as they had no support from the majority of the population
- This fact is backed by the fact that the Bolsheviks only won one quarter of the population’s vote during the height of their fame.
- Lenin ruthlessly suppressed all strikes lead by Russian workers during the Red Terror.
Grenville, J. A History of the World in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000.
- During 1929-32, Stalin’s system of Collectivization had weakened Stalin’s authority, and to retain power he initiated the use of Terror or the Great Purge.
- Throughout the Great Purge, Stalin had the NKVD (Cheka) kill members of the party.
- He justified their execution by fake trails that were held before their death and forced confessions were extracted from the victims indicating that they were leading a scheme against Stalin and the party.
- During the Great Purge, Stalin had the NKVD also kill all military figures above the rank with the intention of removing the possibility of a revolt from the army.
- After the Great Purge, Stalin had successfully secured his position as the undisputed leader of Soviet Russia.
Bullock, Alan, and Baron Bullock. Hitler and Stalin Parallel Lives. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1991.
- Both Stalin and Lenin were able to successfully deal with the opposition through the use of ruthless actions.
- “Faced with the threat of a strike by public-service employees, on 7 December Sovnarkom, with Lenin’s full approval, authorized the creation of an Extraordinary Commission (known for short as the Cheka), and headed by the Pole Dzerzhinsky, to combat counter-revolutionary activities and sabotage.”
- This police system was created by Lenin and was responsible for running the Red Terror.
- The red terror was the elimination of counter-revolutionaries.
- “In the five years before Lenin’s death at the beginning of 1924, the Cheka is estimated to have carried out at least 200,000 executions, a figure to be compared with the 14,000 executed under the Tsars in their last half century of rule up to 1917”.
- Killed around 300 to 400 people every day.
- The Cheka were also responsible for killing any hoarders. Hoarder was the terminology given to people that hoarded extra food.
- Overall, during the time of Cheka over thirty million were killed either by execution or famine.
- Cheka’s main purpose other than eliminating counter-revolutionaries was to establish Marxist principles.
- Even though Lenin built the Cheka, Stalin also re-established the Cheka during his reign and used them when his National Economic Policy didn’t work.
- He used the Cheka to introduce forced labour and by doing so boost “agricultural production”.
- Unfortunately, the peasants revolt against his policy and in counter-attack he uses the Cheka to eliminated the Kulaks
- The Kulaks were farmers that had more than other farmers and were against collective farming.
- During Stalin’s reign the name of the Cheka was changed twice.
- First to OGPU and later to NKVD.
- Stalin’s followers regularly arrested and murdered anyone who disagreed with Stalin’s politics.
- Then the traces of these people were removed from photographic documents, and also removed from the media.
Mccauley, Martin. Stalin and Stalinism. New York: Longman, 1996.
- Collectivization was strongly supported by Stalin and does who did not agree with the system of Collective farms was killed or their farms were destroyed.
- “Peasant opposition was dealt with brutally, by using military force, deportation or expulsion.”
- The Great Purge or Great Terror which took place under the rule of Stalin was the prosecution of people who Stalin considered to be anti-revolutionaries.
- In reality Stalin used the purge as a mechanism of eliminating certain dissident figures from the Bolshevik party and in doing so strengthen his authority.
POV#2 – After the Russian Civil War, Lenin realised that he needed to improve the conditions of the people by replacing War Communism with the NEP; however, Stalin decided to keep a blind eye to the famine that was a result of his economic policies and instead accused the Kulaks of hoarding grain and executed many. However, neither leader took any considerable actions to prevent human sufferings.
Wood, Anthony. The Russian Revolution. New York: Longman, 1986.
- By 1920, when the armistice was signed with the Poles, the Reds had survived all attacks by the whites but it was clear that Russia was in a state of ruin. There were minimal industrial output; the economy was mainly being run by a system of barter while the railway rolling stock was rundown.
- “To avoid requisitioning, the peasantry were sowing secretly in distant scattered strop – as much as 50 million hectares, it was reckoned by 1920 – and the failure of any satisfactory system of distribution was soon to lead to an appalling famine in the south.”
- Lenin knew that radical changes needed to be done to the polices of the Bolshevik government as the people of Russia were suffering from famine and if nothing was done, they would eventually rise up against the Bolshevik government.
- Under Lenin’s leadership the NEP or New Economic Policy was created, intended to deal with deteriating economic situation of Russia as well as addressing the increasing famine.
- Through the NEP there was a limited restoration of private enterprise which was would help start up the economy once again. However, this was strictly against the policies of the Bolshevik government and an abandonment of War Communism, but Lenin saw it as necessary.
- Initially this policy reduced the amount of farm produce requisitioned from peasants. Furthermore, the peasants were allowed to trade their surpluses.
- The New Economic Policy helped the Soviet Union to make an economic recovery.
- In contrast to Lenin, Stalin did not pay much attention to human suffering and blindly initiated the Five Year Plan.
- This plan was intended to strengthening the economy of Soviet Russia and in a way making the nation industrially and military self-sufficient.
- While Stalin’s Five Year Plan encouraged greater industrialization, it eventually led to the near destruction of the Russian Agriculture which in part led to uncontrollable famine throughout Russia.
- Stalin’s system of Collectivization resulted in the death of millions, especially kulaks who were sent to labour camps.
- One out of five men, women or children in the labour camps died. And it is calculated that over six million peasants died because of the poor conditions of the transportation or the labour camps.
- Furthermore, the bad harvest of 1932-33 was blamed on the Kulaks, as they were responsible for resistance towards collectivization.
- The Kulaks were accused of hoarding grain, with the intention that the price of grain would increase.
- Stalin’s response to these acts was the cutting off of food rations from peasants in areas with increasing opposition against collectivization. Without the necessary food rations most of these peasants perished.
- During 1929-1932, there was significant decrease in agricultural production and this fall resulted in the rise of famine in the rural areas.
- The total death during Stalin’s collectivization is calculated to be somewhere around 12 million people.
- These were caused either because of famine, poor working environment, executions or imprisonment of Kulaks.
POV#3 – Lenin was able to achieve power using his charismatic personality, as he was able to successfully convince the Bolsheviks to initiate a communist revolution and to replace the provisional government. However, Stalin was only able to achieve power through imposing fear and by associated himself with Lenin.
Serge, Victor. From Lenin to Stalin. City: Pathfinder Press (NY), 2000.
- On April 3, 1917, Lenin arrived at Petrograd and very quickly through his speeches he was able to convince the Bolshevik Party to Revolt against the provisional government.
- Lenin’s Charisma was very powerful as he was able to win many supporters from Mensheviks and other Social Revolutionaries for the Bolsheviks.
- The Bolsheviks were communists who wanted immediate revolution and the Mensheviks were communists who believed that immediate communist revolution was not possible.
- Lenin was able to successfully denounce the provision government through his April Theses and convince the Bolsheviks to initiate a communist revolution.
- By the September of 1917, the Bolsheviks had a majority.
- When the Bolshevik Party gained power, Lenin was influential in all activities within the party.
- Even after death, Lenin was viewed as a dominant figure. One of the most important examples is the changing of Petrograd to Leningrad.
De, Luca. Personality, Power, and Politics. Cambridge: Schenkman Pub. Co, 1983.
- De states that Lenin’s plan of immediate revolution was controversial amongst most communists, even Bolsheviks like Kamenev and Stalin. Most Bolsheviks and other communists had no intention of removing the provision government.
- It is important to note that Lenin was able to very quickly change the minds of majority of the communists.
- Those who opposed Lenin publicly were disliked by the majority of the population. A good example is Trotsky.
- In contrast to Lenin, Stalin was not as alluring and therefore tended to use Lenin’s popular image to improve his own.
- Stalin was also very good at making speeches.
- His speech at Lenin’s funeral was one of the most famous of his speeches.
- Stalin was able defeat Trotsky in the power struggle as he continually associated himself with Lenin.
Pauley, Bruce. Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini. Arlington Heights: Harlan Davidson, 2003.
- In 1927, Stalin used propaganda in the speech he made to the Fifteenth Congress.
- After his speech to the Fifteenth Congress he was faced with immediate applause. In his speech Stalin told the people what they sought to hear and by doing so he furthered his cause by winning support from the people.
- The power struggle which existed between Stalin and Trotsky resulted in Stalin focusing much of his propaganda on Trotsky.
- The overall purpose of speeches like this made by Stalin was to justify Trotsky’s weakness and why he was not a good choice for leader.
- Stalin also spent considerable amount of time censoring anything that would have reflected badly on his image.
- Under Stalin’s reign everything was fabricated or propaganda: pictures, praises, and statues etc.
- For example, children were taught by their mothers that Stalin was “the wisest man of the age”.
- Other examples included the revision of photographs and history books, so that Stalin was displayed as the hero of the Russian Revolution.
- This included the obliteration of names such as Trotsky, purged people.
- Stalin censored things such as poems, statues, radio, texts, newspapers, and paintings to brainwash the people of Russia.
- He even replaced religious statues with statues of himself and Lenin to win support for communism.
- Stalin even altered his statues so that he appeared to be taller and good looking.
- He also controlled what was written about his roles in the Bolshevik Revolution and made sure that they were exaggerated.
- He named events, towns and many other things after himself and Lenin
- However, it is important to note that an appealing personality or charisma did not aid Stalin or Lenin in retain power, because the Bolshevik party was not favoured among the majority of the population. It was because of Stalin’s and Lenin’s ruthless methods of suppressing that they were able to retain power.
- Lenin’s charismatic personality was not sufficient enough to unite the Bolshevik Party but terror.
Conclusion: In order to achieve and retain power both Lenin and Stalin used the Cheka and the NKVD to ruthlessly suppress the opposition and throughout the suffering of their people both took very little or no action. Considering all these, Lenin was still charismatic, while Stalin lack any sort of charisma and mainly depended on the use of force and always associated himself with Lenin to boost his image.
