Do you agree with the view that Stalin successfully removed ‘treachery’ and ‘counter-revolution’ in the USSR in the 1930’s?
The use of terror became a central part of the soviet regime during the 1930’s with the launching of the great terror against prominent party members. A series of show trials were held which saw former leaders of the regime accused and then executed. The purges went beyond former leaders who had fallen out with Stalin, and were extended to include army personnel and middle-ranking party officials. In fact, anyone who found himself or herself labelled as an ‘enemy of the people’ be them peasants, factory workers, class enemies, even the secret police themselves became a victim of the great purges.
Throughout this time, millions were forced into labour camps, executed, tortured, put on trial, died of diseases and starvation or simply ‘disappeared’. The justification of all the death and terror that took place was that all these people had committed the crime of being an enemy of the state and were trying to overthrow the revolution. Theses purges definitely removed something from Russia, but whether it was ‘treachery’ and ‘counter-revolution or whether it was removed successfully is a totally different question/matter.
The 1930’s saw the introduction of a new economic plan to modernise Russia and make it more powerful and influential. Stalin initiated a succession of five-year plans, which was supposed to push Russia towards rapid industrialisation. These five-year plans focused hugely on heavy industry. Stalin justification for this was that Russia needed to build up an industrial infrastructure of factories, plants and communication before other sectors could flourish. On the whole Stalin’s aim to transform the USSR into a modern industrial society able to withstand attack by foreign capitalist powers had been achieved, yet Stalin through a series of show trials, accused ‘bourgeois experts’ of ‘wreaking’ and deliberately sabotaging the attempt to industrialise Russia. It could be argued that because Stalin managed to eliminate the so-called saboteurs, the five-year plans were able to flourish. However the only sabotage these ‘bourgeois experts’ committed was insisting that the targets of the five-year plan could never be achieved. This assumption on the whole was true and as the conditions within the factories began to decline more pressure was put upon factory managers to fulfil the increasingly unrealistic targets set to them. So much so that they began to use a wide range of enterprising methods to achieve what had been asked of them. Many factory officials began to ambush resources destined for other factories and bribery was another useful tool, which was often used. Therefore I believe that these men were either treacherous nor counter-revolutionary and the accusations that the experts were ‘deliberately’ sabotaging factories and plants was just an excuse for Stalin to get rid of any one who was seen as questioning his authority.
