UNIT 6: PAPER 6b: THE SOVIET UNION AFTER LENIN

• Having defeated the Left, Stalin now turned his attention to the Right of the Party.

• Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky argued for the continuation of the NEP. There had been an excellent harvest in 1927, but the peasants had been reluctant to hand over their grain - there were few goods they could buy with the money they received anyway.

• Bukharin argued the price paid to peasants must be increased, industrialisation therefore being slower, but based on solid economic foundations.

• Stalin now seemed to change his mind - some Historians argue cynically, as a way to attack the Right. Other Historians argue he was persuaded to adopt Trotsky's policy of rapid industrialisation because of the peasant's reluctance to sell grain.

• There was also a 'War Scare' in 1927 - a deep-seated distrust of the West. Soldiers forcibly requisitioned grain from the peasants

• The first major 'Wrecker's Trial' took place - some Russian miners were accused of collaborating with foreigners to weaken the Soviet Union.

• Stalin began to talk about Collectivisation as the way forward - to control the peasants as much as to hasten industrialisation.

• Bukharin attacked this is in 'Notes of an Economist' in 1928. In 1929 Bukharin was removed as the editor of Pravda and Chairman of Comintern.

• Tomsky was sacked as head of Trade Unions. Rykov was removed from the Politburo. Stalin was now dominant in the Party

How had Stalin managed to get control of the Party?

Some questions for you to think about:

• Was Stalin a very clever, devious politician who played on the weaknesses of others to obtain power?

• Did he have no political convictions, swapping from Left to Right and back again at an opportune moment in order to remove opponents?

• Was he simply a moderate, trying desperately to hold together a divided party?

• Did he genuinely change his mind about the policies needed for Socialism to survive in a hostile world?

• Was he a manipulator of the Party membership, or was he genuinely in touch with 'grass roots' opinion and responding to their wishes?

All these arguments have been put forward by historians when they discuss the rise of Stalin. You need to make up your own mind based on the facts as you see them. Perhaps there is no right answer! Whatever the cause, the consequence was Stalin's control of the Party seats of power from about 1929 onwards.

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B. Stalin and political control: his use of the party machine and terror

How did Stalin establish control over the Soviet Union?

• First of all Stalin had to establish control over the Party. He did this by a combination of terror – see below – and delivering what party members wanted.

• Much the same can be said about Stalin’s control over the country: control over dissenters was mostly by force, but propaganda and the cult of the individual played a key part in sustaining Stalin’s popularity in the country.

• Even prisoners in the Gulags were reported to cry when Stalin’s death was announced.

• It is important to note that some recent historians question just how much control Stalin had over the country.

• They argue he was certainly at the centre of events, but that often the Centre was trying desperately to get local parties and members to follow the Party line. Perhaps Totalitarianism isn’t an appropriate term to describe Stalin’s Russia after all.

The Terror

• The Terror is used to describe a whole series of events in Russia from 1928 to 1938, when millions – no one knows quite how many.

• Stalin once told Churchill that collectivisation cost 10 million lives – were either deprived of Party membership, arrested with or without trial, sent to the Gulags or shot.  

• Were these all enemies of Stalin that needed to be removed? Some confessed to the most unlikely of crimes – killing Lenin, working for the Nazis, and so on. Others maintained their innocence throughout.  

• The period 1936-1938 is known as the Yezhovschina –after Yezhov, the Head of the NKVD. It was this period that was the ‘high point’ of the Terror.

• Target figures of arrests and executions were set for each district. Kulaks and returning political prisoners were to be the main category, but priests, former members of political parties, nationalists, ex- Whites were all added to the list.

• In all, nearly 2 million people were arrested at this time, with about 700,000 being executed.

Was there serious opposition to Stalin within the Party?

• The events of the Terror largely targeted the Party and bureaucracy, and seem to coincide with changes in policy – 1928, 1933-4, - or with problems with industrialisation.

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Or are the events tied in with Stalin’s personal battle over leadership?

• All his opponents in the struggle for power figure in the Show Trials and confess to all manner of heinous crimes.

• The purge of the army seems to be linked with Trotsky – he had been Head of the Red Army and the army was really the only other possible source of power. Many of the leading generals must have been confidants of Trotsky, and there is evidence that still, in the 1930s, some leading Communists were maintaining links with Trotsky.

• However, some historians argue that the Terror was really quite arbitrary, that the frightening thing about the Terror was that it could strike anyone, anywhere, at any time, and that the victims never really knew why they were enmeshed in the system. Often they had been implicated by previous victims under torture, in an effort to save themselves.

To what extent was Stalin involved in the Terror?

• There is no doubt that Stalin was closely involved in setting the Terror in progress, or in key decisions about the Show Trials.

• He personally signed the death warrants for thousands of the victims. He also made the key speech in March 1939 at the Party Congress that brought the full force of the Terror to an end.

• What is open to debate is how much of the Terror was directed from the Centre, and how much it was a result of local forces getting out of control – either settling old scores or out of enthusiasm for building socialism.

• These were extraordinary times in Russia, with great economic and social changes taking place. There is no defending the scale of terror, but it needs to be put into the context of the time.

• Recent work suggests we should not view the Terror as a whole, carefully planned series of events, but as a series of unconnected events, as responses to specific problems as they arose.

• It shows not the strength of Stalin’s government but it’s weakness – i.e. its inability to control its own followers, its own party members; it’s inability to carry them with it and the need to resort to force to get its way.

• Was the Terror the result of Stalin’s fevered imagination, his paranoiac personality, seeing opposition behind every move?

• Or was it a result of Party bureaucrats trying hard to protect their own skins? Or the justifiable removal of those Trotsky called ‘radishes’? (Red on the outside, but White in the middle).

• Whatever the reason it is an area of great debate – after all historians can’t even agree on the numbers killed or arrested, let alone why the Terror happened!

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How effective was Stalin's control over the Party?

• By 1930 all Stalin’s rivals in the struggle for power have been removed from positions of power. Yet the 1934 Party Congress shows his control was not total.

• From 1936 however in terms of policy making Stalin could do as he wished. There were no rivals or even people prepared to question his judgement. He was surrounded by people who owed their position to him, and who, like Yagoda and Yezhov, could just as easily be removed when they were no longer needed.

• Yet, as we have seen, the debate about the Terror suggests that deciding what to do at the centre was one thing, actually ensuring it was implemented at the local level was quite another.

• Stalin controlled the bureaucracy – perhaps that is what the Terror was about – trying to make sure the Party did as it was told?

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2. How popular was Stalin’s rule?

A. The successes and failures of Stalin’s modernisation programme for the economy and society of the USSR

The Five Year Plans

• NEP was built on centralised state planning – the chief industries were state owned and controlled. Lenin famously said ‘Socialism was state power plus electrification’.

• Gosplan produced figures and targets for industrial production from 1924 onwards. It was in 1928 that the first Five Year Plan was announced.

• An army of state planners tried to plan increases down to the last detail. Emphasis was to be on heavy industry and infrastructure, with consumer goods and living standards a long way down the list of priorities.

• In the First Plan very ambitious targets were set: coal production to increase by 100%, iron by 200%, electricity by 400%. Such was the response that new improved targets were set in 1929, and these again revised upwards in 1930.

• It became crucial to meet your planned target. Never mind the quality, meet the target! Workers would move from job to job to get higher wages, managers would do anything to ensure they met the target – remember the 1928 ‘Wreckers’ Trial’.

• Public announcements showed that targets had not only been met, but had been exceeded. Statistics from this time are notoriously unreliable.

• The Five Year Plans show that political fervour took over from rational thought. It was almost a Civil War-type crusade to build socialism overnight.

• There was great enthusiasm amongst many Party members who made huge sacrifices to build new towns and factories.

• There were great achievements. But there was also muddle, confusion and waste. It is sometimes hard to separate the rhetoric from the reality when we consider the issue.

Agriculture

• 80% of Russia’s population were peasants, so change in agriculture was fundamental to economic growth.

• Under the NEP food production rapidly returned to pre-World War One levels, with the emergence of some richer peasants, or Kulaks as they were known, who employed others. Still, the majority of agriculture was small scale, old-fashioned and not very productive.

• Lenin had set up the first collective farms, hoping that this example would lead peasants to voluntarily join together. This was not very successful – by 1928 less than 3% of peasants had joined.

• If the Soviet Union was to successfully industrialise, capital would have to come either from capitalist countries – unlikely as Russia had repudiated all debts when the Bolsheviks came to power, and due to the recent War Scare following the so-called Zinoviev Telegram – or from the countryside.

• The debate inside the Communist Party was about how to squeeze capital from the peasants – all were agreed on the policy of industrialisation.

• As well as capital from the countryside, the workers needed in the new towns and industries would have to come from the countryside, so it was imperative to grow more food with fewer workers.

• Some items needed for Industrialisation needed to be imported from the West, and could only be paid for in the short term by food exports, again increasing the need to raise productivity in the countryside.

• The peasants were happy to produce more food. But as 1927-28 shows, if there were no goods in the towns for them to buy, or prices for their grain were too low, then they would hold on to more of their surplus, either to feed their animals or to improve their own standard of living. Anyway, it was essential to have some grain stored in case there was a bad harvest the next year.

The debate about agricultural change

• Some argued that the peasants should be encouraged to grow more and sell more grain by giving them fairer prices. It might take longer to create capital for investment and industry would have to make the goods peasants wanted to buy, but that way a sound economy would develop. The peasants would gradually be won over by the benefits of Socialism and a new, fair society would emerge.

• Others argued that this would take too long. The Soviet Union could not wait. Somehow the peasants had to be forced into growing more, handing over more of their produce, and providing the labour force for industry. They had repeatedly shown they were not reliable political supporters of the Bolsheviks.

• Industry needed a clear plan, this could only be done on the basis of guaranteed food supplies for the cities, and guaranteed income from food exports.

• Collectivisation, it was argued, would make it easier to control the peasants – they had always been a conservative force, and a limiting factor in Russian economic growth. They would always remain selfish and put their own interests first, so the Communist Party needed to bring them into line.

• If the policy of Collectivisation was agreed, it would further undermine some of the opposition to Stalin in the Party – Bukharin, for example was an advocate of slow growth, in effect a continuation of the NEP.

The process of collectivisation

• In the winter of 1927-28 the peasants did not deliver enough food for the cities. Food Requisitioning was used by the Party to make up the shortfall. This brought the issue of agriculture to the fore.

• It had been hoped that collectivisation could occur voluntarily, but this was not working. Party members were sent to the countryside to help with the harvest.

• Poor peasants were encouraged to denounce hoarding, and rewarded with 25% of any grain discovered.

• After the harvest of 1929 there was a great campaign to collectivise. Peasants were supposed to vote on collectivisation, but in most cases it was forced through by party officials.

• Between November 1929 and March 1930 60% of all farms were collectivised. Opponents were labelled Kulaks and were transported to the Gulags or arrested and shot.

• Each area was given a target of Kulak families to arrest and deport, again an almost arbitrary terror descended on the villages.

• There was huge opposition from the peasants, especially when the Churches were ransacked or turned into barns or meeting places, and personal property was confiscated too in some areas.

• Warehouses were often broken open and personal goods restored to their owners. Faced with such widespread opposition the Party had to back down.

• Stalin made a speech in early 1930 (‘dizzy with success’) accusing local party officials of being over-zealous and allowing peasants to leave the collective farms. Many did.

• Once the 1930 harvest had been safely collected collectivisation began again. By 1931 over 50% of peasant families were collectivised. The consequences of opposition were dreadful (see the section on the Terror above).

• Tractor Stations were linked to collectives, in an attempt to mechanise production. Of course there were not enough tractors, and peasants didn’t know how to look after them, so many quickly became unserviceable.

• Because grain procurements were so high, income for peasants on the collectives were very low, reducing the incentive to work. Many spent more time on their private plots – by the end of the 1930s these were producing most of the country’s eggs, milk and meat – than on their official duties.

• Grain production fell. What grain that was produced was collected for the towns and export. In the Ukraine especially – the main grain producing area of the Soviet Union – there was a great famine in 1932-34.

• The Famine was officially denied. Western visitors were shown successful Collective Farms full of happy, well-fed villagers. The reality was that somewhere between 3 and 4 million people starved to death, in order to fuel industrialisation.

• The harvest of 1935 was better. Private plots were allowed, so peasants could keep one cow, some chickens and grow some vegetables, as an attempt to stop peasants killing off all their livestock rather than hand it over to the collective farm.

• Yields from collective farms remained low – a problem right through to the demise of the Soviet Union – but Stalin had managed to browbeat the peasants into doing what he wanted. Agriculture had paid for industrialisation, whatever the price.

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Industry

• The aim was to turn Russia into a major industrial power, like the West. To do this the emphasis was to be firmly on heavy industry – coal, iron, steel, electricity, and the infrastructure needed to move such bulky goods.

• A second emphasis was to build these new industries in the East – beyond the Urals – away from the threat of Western invasion.

• Much of the infrastructure was missing, so railways, power lines, and roads all had to be built from scratch in many areas; all without a skilled labour force and with a severe shortage of capital.

• Forced labour from the Gulags played a large part in many projects. Most of Russia’s gold was mined by convict labour, for example. The most famous account of this type of labour is Solzhenitsyn’s ‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch’.

• By 1939 there were over 3 million people in Gulags, a vast and constantly-replenished source of cheap labour! And totally expendable!

• Much of the work was done by Komsomol volunteers, keen to make their contribution to Russia’s ‘Second Revolution.’ Many suffered severe hardship in ‘open-field’ sites, in winter, building new factories.

• There were even volunteers, and recruited specialists, from the West (the West was suffering from mass unemployment due to the Great Depression). These were partly attracted by the clever use of propaganda by the Soviet state, portraying Russia as a socialist paradise completely different from the West.

• Wages were kept low to create as much capital as possible. In 1931 Stalin introduced pay differentials – completely counter to Marx’s view of each according to his needs – allowing skilled workers and managers to earn up to four times as much as ordinary workers. This was justified by the need to industrialise quickly.

• Stakhanovites – shock workers who exceeded daily norms – helped raise output. In 1935 Alexei Stakhanov had cut 102 tons of coal in one single shift – 14 times the norm. If you exceeded your daily norm you got extra privileges and pay.

• By mid 1936 20% of workers were classified as Stakhanovites. Of course managers then used this to increase the norms for everybody!

• There were a series of ‘wreckers’ trials throughout the period of the Five Year Plans. Managers who failed to reach their norms were accused of sabotage and sent to the Gulags. This was a powerful incentive to reach targets!

• There was a great increase in technical education in this period. There was an insatiable appetite for skilled, literate workers and managers. Peasants from the countryside often found themselves operating quite sophisticated machinery with little or no tuition, and few instructions. Of course if the machine broke down they were accused of sabotage!

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How successful were the Five Year Plans?

• There is no doubt, despite the exaggerated figures, that the Five Year Plans completely transformed the Soviet Union.

• New industrial centres – like Magnitogorsk – were built from nothing. By 1938 it was producing 5,000 tons of steel a day. There were many other examples like this.

• The fact that Russia was able to resist German invasion in 1941 – just – and then go on and capture Berlin is ample evidence of the success of the Five Year Plans.

• There were problems – meeting the target became the priority so quantity became more important than quality. There were projects that were wrong – the Belomor Canal was built at huge human cost, but once opened was too shallow for the Navy ships it had been designed to handle – and there were projects that took longer than expected to complete.

• The successes were achieved at great cost in human suffering – living conditions lagged well behind developments in industry. Millions died, especially in the countryside.

• A key debate amongst historians is whether the advances could have been achieved in a more humane way, or was Stalin right that the only way to modernise the Soviet Union was by force and terror?

Urban Life

• Until 1932 when internal passports were introduced to stop peasants fleeing the new collective farms, peasants were free to leave the countryside in search of a new life in the towns.

• Under Stalin urban population increased from 11million in 1928 to over 38million by 1933, from 18% of the whole population in 1926 to 33% by 1939, a massive increase. As the Five Year Plans put such emphasis on productive investment rather than housing, facilities, etc, this huge increase was accompanied by overcrowding, shortages and difficulties.

• It was quite common for whole families - three generations often - to live in one room. Dormitories were supplied for workers, who were often separated from families. Canteens at work provided food.

Standard of living

• There is no doubt that the standard of living fell for most ordinary Russians during the 1930s. After 1931 most people were paid by piecework, yet average income was probably about 50% of that in 1928.

• There were severe shortages, so queuing was a way of life. Fresh foods were often not available. Most people ate meals in the communal canteens at their place of work rather than cook at home.

• Luxury goods were just not available, or were only available in special shops for Party bureaucrats or managers.

• Housing was in short supply, because it was low on the Party’s priorities, and overcrowding common. Clothes, shoes boots, materials to repair things, were also difficult to get hold of, so the quality of life deteriorated too.

• Things were particularly hard in rural areas, especially for kulaks or better off farmers affected by collectivisation. It was towards the end of the 1930s before there were enough tractors to begin to affect their productivity. Once private plots were allowed then the standard of living began to improve.

• In the cities there were opportunities for people to improve their prospects if they had the skills or good fortune to get one of the millions of new managerial, technical or even supervisory posts created by industrialisation. With luck a new flat, better rations or access to some of the new, scarce, consumer goods would go with the job.

Family Life

• At first, the Bolsheviks frowned on marriage, saying it exploited women. They made it easier for women to get a divorce, they made abortion easier, and encouraged people to live together. Not much of this affected life in the countryside, where people remained very traditional.

• There were many orphans and widows because of the First World War and the Civil War. In the chaos of the time families were often split and had to manage the best they could.

• Women found themselves increasingly required to work, but also having to look after the family too – queue for food, cook, clean, etc. In Leningrad by 1937 women made up 50% of the workforce.

• By 1936 new laws were introduced to try to strengthen family ties. Divorce was made much more difficult – and expensive - and abortion illegal. Crèches were introduced at most work places to make it easier for women to work. Financial inducements were made to encourage larger families. Indeed the birth rate did increase in the later 1930s.

• The Terror had a huge impact on families. Whole families might be arrested and deported, or children left behind with friends and family. Men might be sent to work many miles away from their wives and children and not return for years. You often did not know if your spouse was alive or dead.  

• Many children had to live on their wits. At first juvenile crime was treated leniently, being blamed on society and social disruption. Education and care were regarded as appropriate ‘punishments’.

• This changed in 1935 when a new law classed offenders aged 12 or above as adults, liable even to the death penalty. Parents were made responsible for behaviour, and had to pay their children’s fines. Difficult young people could be taken away from parents and put into state orphanages, where the parents had to pay the cost of keeping them there!

Religion

• From the time that the Bolsheviks came to power they had attacked the Church. Marx called religion the ‘opium of the people’ – realistically the Bolsheviks saw it as another centre of power and opposition. Real attempts were made to wean people away from the Church, but were only partly successful.

• Priests were often deported from villages under collectivisation. Churches were ransacked or converted to other uses – museums, barns, or schools. Congregations had to register with the authorities.

• A League of the Militant Godless was set up. Nevertheless, the campaign was only partly successful – in the 1937 census over 50% of the population still described themselves as believers. Even if there was no church and no priest congregations still tried to meet in private houses.

Education

• There was a huge expansion of education both to meet the needs of the Five Year Plans and to help create new communist citizens. The Revolutionary educational theories and ideas introduced after the Revolution were quietly put to one side as discipline, exams, uniforms and such like were reintroduced. Preference to students of a proletarian background was dropped in 1936.

• In 1930 primary education for all for four years was introduced. This was later extended to seven years. In 1926 only 1.8 million students were enrolled in secondary education. By 1938-39 this had become 12 million.

• There was a heavy emphasis on vocational training, and on science, technology and medicine. Large numbers of engineers and technical specialists of all kinds were turned out by the educational system.

• In 1940 fees were introduced for Higher Education. Thousands of new places for students were created – again with a strong focus on technical and vocational studies. Education and skills were the key to moving up the social ladder, with better pay and standard of living.

• Great emphasis was made on eliminating adult illiteracy, and on evening/after work classes for adults.

• Cheap books – the Russian classics as well as Soviet propaganda – were published in their millions, and communist newspapers like Pravda were sold very cheaply. Every factory would have its own library.

Was Stalin's policy of Modernisation a success or a failure?

• Some argue that it was a success - that World War Two would have ended very differently without the great leap forward made by the Five Year Plans.

• They argue that the NEP would not have produced a Russia capable of defeating the Nazis, or an industrial giant capable of putting a man into space. The deaths and famines were unfortunate, but were necessary for the greater good of society.

• Others argue that following Bukharin's line would have produced a much happier society, where peasants would have produced enough food to support the population and generate the capital necessary for investment. It would have been slower, but much more balanced growth.

• More attention would have been paid to living conditions and the standard of living. This has been argued much more forcefully since the fall of the Soviet Union, when the failures of centralised planning have become much clearer to everyone.

B. Propaganda and the cult of personality

How popular was Stalin?

• This is hard to say, as he controlled the media so all we know is what the official media tells us. There is plenty of evidence to suggest he was well liked, and that there was a great pride in the achievements of the Soviet Union under his leadership.

• There is also emerging from the archives plenty of evidence of a counter-culture, where people spread rumours or jokes, distributed leaflets or inscribed on walls counter-Stalinist ideas.

• This of course is not proof of organised opposition to Stalin, merely that the so-called totalitarian society was perhaps not quite as totally in control as we previously thought.

The use of propaganda

• Propaganda lay at the heart of the Stalinist system. From 1935 onwards a great effort was made to portray Stalin as close to the people. Images of him were everywhere.

• Stalin’s birthday was a national celebration. Cities were renamed after him. When he spoke applause lasted for many minutes – no one wanted to be the first to stop applauding!

• He became the great leader of society in many aspects - film, art, morality as well as politics and the economy.

• People received an unending diet of the joys of Soviet life, of how terrible the West was - this was a period of mass unemployment and economic dislocation - the genius of Stalin, and the danger posed to Soviet achievements by hidden 'enemies of the people'.

• If things went wrong it was always the lower ranks of the Party that were to blame, not the leadership and certainly not Stalin! It was almost impossible to discover anything other than from the official line.

Sometimes the use of propaganda could be counter-effective.

• After the 1935 Constitution was introduced, and widely publicised, guaranteeing freedom of speech, freedom of religious observance, the right to vote, etc, many people, especially peasants, petitioned the Party claiming their right to keep the church open, for example, when the Party tried to close it down.

• Endlessly exhorting people that life is better under the Soviet system just does not work when people know that there is very little food, that wages have gone down and so on.

• Rumour, jokes and popular songs were all used to criticise the Party and often leaders in particular. It was dangerous to express counter views - you could be sentenced to 10 years in the gulag for 'anti-Soviet agitation' - but NKVD and party reports show that it did happen.

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Totalitarianism

• Historians talk about Stalin’s Russia being a totalitarian state, where the Party set out to control every aspect of life. There is increasing evidence that however much it might have liked to give the impression of being totalitarian, Stalin’s government did not quite succeed.

• People did hold counter opinions, even if they largely kept them to themselves, or grumbled in a crowd where it was hard to be picked out.

• You need to think carefully about the ways Stalin tried to control aspects of life, and where the information we have about those aspects of life come from.

Film

• Like elsewhere in the world the cinema became a favourite place of entertainment in the 1930s. There were propaganda trains that included travelling cinemas to take film to the rural areas, and cities and towns would have huge new cinemas.

• All films were state-made, so fully reflected the views and wishes of the Party, plying a vital role in propaganda as well as entertainment.

Censorship

• The press and the radio were given great emphasis by the party. Most towns and cities had loudspeakers set up in prominent places so people could hear Government pronouncements.

• Even some villages were connected to the electricity supply so they too could receive radio broadcasts and be kept in touch with what the Party wanted them to do and think. All media was totally controlled by the State.

• Great efforts were put into controlling what people could read and see, to ensure it conformed with the wishes of the Party. Of course, when the wishes of the Party changed, then this caused some problems.

Socialist Realist movement

• Everything, even the Arts, was supposed to play its part in Stalin’s ‘Second Revolution.’ Under Lenin, there was great artistic freedom, and the 1920s are regarded as a high spot in Russian cultural life. Under Stalin art had to inspire greater productivity, be a propaganda vehicle for creating the new Communist society

• Only approved writing could get published, music played, art displayed. What was acceptable wasn’t always easy to discern, as Shostakovitch discovered when Stalin went to see his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsenk.

• The opera had been playing for two years to rave reviews before Stalin went to see it. He walked out. Following that it was denounced as ‘cacaphonous’ and ‘pornographic.’ Shostakovitch suddenly found himself cast as villain rather than hero. Eventually, with the premiere of his Fifth Symphony, Shostakovitch was rehabilitated in the public eye.

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How did Stalin's idea of 'Russian Backwardness' influence his actions?

• After initially seeming to support the ‘gradual’ approach to industrialisation, Stalin appeared to change his mind in 1928, following the defeat of Trotsky.

• Both the ‘War Scare’ of 1927 and the food procurement crisis of 1927-28 seemed to help change his mind, as did his conversion to the ‘Socialism in One Country’ idea.

• Stalin, in common with most Bolsheviks, viewed Russia’s peasants as backward, conservative and totally unreliable.

• The difficulties in acquiring enough food from the peasants in 1927-1928 reinforced this view that the peasants would hold the country to ransom unless they were effectively dealt with.

• The idea that the world’s first socialist country should be dependent on the peasants in order to develop its industry was a great insult felt by many Party members, not just Stalin. The problem was what to do about it.

• In 1931 Stalin made a speech where he decreed that the Soviet Union was '50 to 100 years behind the West’ and that the Soviet Union must ‘catch up in 10 years or be crushed’. This was used to further quicken the pace of industrialisation.

• In 1937–38, with the situation in Europe seeming to deteriorate, and the Western Powers seeming unable or unwilling to stand up to Hitler, greater emphasis was placed on the development of the armaments industries, thus distorting the Third Five Year Plan.

• There is no doubt that Stalin, along with all Bolsheviks, wanted to use every means in his power to turn Russia into a strong industrial power. This was seen as essential to the survival of Socialism in a hostile world.

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Conclusion: Stalin: Continuer of Lenin, or Betrayer of Lenin?

Continuities:

• Under Lenin there was great emphasis on leadership, of achieving results at any cost. There was also great antagonism to existing traditions and ways of doing things - peasants, religion, traditional culture, even the idea of the Nation state.  

• Marxism was, after all the future for all mankind. Lenin set up the strong centralised Party to impose its will on the working class. He tolerated no opposition outside the Party, but did tolerate discussion, debate and dissension within the Party. He even forgave mistakes or errors in thought.

• There was a distrust of elections, a feeling that the people needed to be led for their own good. Terror was justified; fulfilling the policy was important, not questioning it. The only way forward was a one-party state, involving terror and elimination of opponents if that was necessary. All these ideas were carried forward into Stalin's time.

Discontinuities: 

• Stalin had no real wish to see the 'withering away' of the State, he regarded the development of a strong state as an end in itself. He, perhaps to hide his own insecurities or initial lack of support, found it necessary to elevate the idea of leader as someone above the Party.

• Lenin could be, and often was, outvoted or kept in check by the 'Old Bolsheviks'. Stalin was a dictator much more than Lenin, who would not tolerate opposition, or potential opposition either within or outside the Party.

• Lenin dominated the Party by force of personality, Stalin by brute force. His state made much greater use of terror to secure support. His own distrust of individuals led to frequent changes of personnel.

Conclusion:

• Without Lenin there could have been no Stalin.

• Lenin set up a system that allowed Stalin (a) to become leader and (b) develop that system into what we call Stalinism. It wasn't inevitable that Stalin should follow Lenin, or indeed that Stalin's regime should develop the way it did.

• The best way to think of Stalin, as he sometimes did himself, is as a Tsar - Peter the Great or Ivan the Terrible. He was a strong leader doing what was necessary to make Russia, rather than the Soviet Union, strong and able to maintain its true place in the world, as a Superpower.