|
STALIN
How Stalin
became the leader of Russia after the death of Lenin.
Stalin used the post of General Secretary to find
out about everything that was going on in the party and to make sure
that all posts were filled by his supporters. He managed to build up
support for himself throughout Russia. When the other leaders discovered
what had been going on, it was too late to do anything about it.
In 1922 Lenin wrote a "Political Testament". In it he said
that Trotsky should become the leader of Russia after him. Lenin also
suggested that the other Bolshevik leaders should find a way of getting
rid of Stalin. However, when the will was given to the Bolshevik leaders
after Lenin's death in 1924, they decided not to publish it, because
they did not want Trotsky to take over. He was unpopular.
Between 1924 and 1929 Stalin managed to force most of the other leading
Bolsheviks out of power. He sided with one group and then another, gradually
isolating the other leading Bolsheviks.
Stalin's main target was Trotsky, who left the Soviet Union (as Russia
was now called) for good in 1929. The others, like Kamenev, Bukharin
and Zinoviev retired from their posts. Stalin used his support throughout
the country to undermine his opponents and backed one against the other.
By 1928 he had total control.
In what
ways Stalin tried to change agriculture
and industry
in the Soviet Union.
When
Stalin gained total control of the Soviet Union, he immediately began
to change agriculture and industry. He believed that the Soviet Union
was one hundred years behind the West and had to catch up as quickly
as possible. This could only be achieved, he believed, by creating a
"command economy" and forcing farmers and industry to modernise.
So, in 1928 Stalin ended Lenin's New Economic Policy and began to force
all peasants to join Collective Farms:
Peasants had to pool
their machinery and livestock on large farms, which were controlled
by the State. 5,000,000 richer peasants, Kulaks, were murdered or starved
to death.
On the Collective
farms, peasants were forced to hand over their produce to the government
and were either paid wages or had to feed themselves on what was left
over. The ensuing result was a devastating famine. Kulaks burnt their
crops and killed their animals, rather than hand them over. 5,000,000
people starved to death in the Soviet Union between 1932 to 1934 . Agricultural
production fell by 15%.
Collectivisation was part of the first Five Year Plan. This was an attempt
to modernise industry by the state taking over all firms and businesses:
Each business or
factory was given a target that it had to meet every year for a five-year
period. The targets were worked out by "Gosplan" in Moscow.
This organisation had half a million workers who did nothing but set
targets for every factory and works and then check how much was actually
produced. The First Five year plan was actually cut to four years to
make people work harder. Punishment for failing to meet targets was
severe. Managers of factories could be executed. Workers were forced
to work longer hours and were not allowed to change their jobs. Being
away from work became a crime.
were often in Siberia or in Northern Russia, where the weather in winter
was very cold. Here they worked with little food for ten years
or more. Many died from exhaustion. Many factories faked production
figures, or disregarded the quality of goods produced. So long as the
numbers were right, nothing else mattered. It was estimated that half
of all tractors made in the 1930s broke down. Overall the first three
Five Year Plans, which ran from 1928 to 1941, increased industrial production
by about 400%, but how much of that increase was genuine is very difficult
to say.
How Stalin
tried to eliminate opposition in the 1930s.
In
December 1934 Sergei gets for production and millions of ordinary Soviet
citizens, who often did not know what they had done to anger Stalin.
Most of the senior officers in the Red Army and the Red Navy were also
executed.
The leading Bolsheviks
were given "Show Trials", where they were forced to confess
to ridiculous crimes which they could not possibly have committed.
In the 1930s Stalin
began to rewrite the history of Russia and the Soviet Union in the twentieth
century - school books and encyclopaedias were destroyed or altered,
and children in school had to paste over pages in their books with the
new versions of what had happened. This became known as the "Revision
of History".
Stalin wanted to
destroy the reputations of the other Bolshevik leaders, like Bukharin
and Kamenev. This would explain why he had put them on trial and had
them executed. He picked on Trotsky in particular, because Lenin had
chosen him as his successor. He accused him of treason and said that
he had done nothing to help Russia or the Soviet Union. Stalin claimed
that he alone had been responsible for the successes in the Civil War
in 1918 to 1920.
Stalin wanted to
make out that only he knew what Lenin had intended to do in Russia.
This would help Stalin justify why he became the leader and would make
Russians accept him. Stalin had many paintings produced, which showed
him close to Lenin. He had Lenin's body preserved in a huge mausoleum
in Red Square and encouraged Soviet citizens to visit it. In fact Lenin
had not wanted this to happen; he had requested a small burial.
Stalin wanted to
build himself up to be all-powerful and stop anyone opposing his ideas.
This became known as the "Cult of Personality". Stalin made
out that he was a superman who never made any mistakes. He was called
the "wisest man alive", and the "genius of the age".
Stalin made sure that everyone knew about his successes. He used many
forms of propaganda to pass on the news, but his favourite form was
paintings and sculptures. These appeared all over Russia. They showed
Stalin meeting smiling people, opening factories and dams, and he always
looked rather taller and fitter than he actually was.
Of all the dictators who came to power between the two World
Wars, Stalin was the most successful. Not only did he murder more people
than any of the others, but lived to be seventy-three, dying in1953.Kirov,
the Communist Party leader in Leningrad, was murdered. It is now widely
believed that his murder was ordered by Stalin, who was frightened,
because Kirov appeared to be more popular than he was. As a result of
this murder Stalin initiated 'The Purges' as a means of removing any
perceived opposition. From 1934 to 1938 at least 7,000,000 people disappeared.
These included the Bolshevik leaders whom he had forced out from 1925
to 1927, poets, scientists, managers of industries who did not meet
their tar
SUMMARY
Joseph Stalin was born in 1879. His real name was Djugashvili, but
he later changed it to Stalin which meant "man of steel".
He came from Georgia in southern Russia and started to train to be a
priest, but joined the Bolshevik party in about 1903. By 1917, he had
become the editor of Pravda, the Bolshevik newspaper and had taken a
minor role in the Bolshevik seizure of power.
When the job of party secretary came up in 1922, Stalin took it on after
all the other leading Bolsheviks had turned it down. They didn't take
Stalin seriously (referring to him as the "Grey blur", because
he was happy to stay out of the limelight), but he was determined that
when Lenin died he would become the new leader of Russia.
Answer!
1.How
did Stalin become the leader of Russia after the death of Lenin?
2.In what ways did Stalin
try to change agriculture and industry in the Soviet Union?
3.How did Stalin try to
eliminate opposition in the 1930s?
Homepage
|