Who do you think was the more important figure in Russian history, Lenin or Stalin? Explain your answer.

David Norton
5th Form History Coursework
Russia 1905 – 1941
Who do you think was the more important figure in Russian history, Lenin or Stalin?
Explain your answer.
In 1928 Bukharin was for the New Economic Policy which Lenin had set up, however, Stalin was for the Five Year Plans.
Stalin’s aim was to modernise the USSR and to catch up, and even overtake, the West’s industrial power. Heavy industry, such as iron, steel, coal and hydroelectric power producers, chemical industries, and transport, received lots of income from the government.
There was mass regimentation of society. Wherever Stalin needed workers and labour he sent his workforce.
In 1929, Stalin announced agriculture was to be collectivised. Stalin’s plan was to make all 100 million peasants join collective farms but many peasants opposed his plans. The richest of these opposing collectivisation were called kulaks. These people were landowners who employed other peasants at times. Stalin said that he intended to “liquidate the kulaks as a social class”. The kulaks were divided into three categories: “actively hostile” – these people were dealt with by the OGPU, the political police, and deported; the wealthiest kulak households were also deported but not as far as the actively hostile; and the least harmful of the kulaks were allowed to stay but given the worst land. Kulaks property was given to the kolkhozes. Roughly 1.5 million people from kulak families were deported and at least a quarter of those deported died of starvation, disease and the cold.
