Communism in Russia

COMMUNISM IN RUSSIA

Communist Revolution

Karl Marx

• Bourgeoisie V Proletariat
• ‘Communist Manifesto’ with Engels
• ‘the Proletariat have nothing to lose but their chains’
• ‘Workers of the world, unite!’
• ‘Das Kapital’
• Removal of profit
• Factors of production in state hands.
• Worldwide revolution in industrialised countries.

Lenin (early years)

• Alexander executed affected Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov.
• Became a lawyer but exiled to Siberia for political activities.
• Moved to Switzerland and became editor of ‘Iskra’
• Engineered split between Bolsheviks (elitist) and Mensheviks (populist).
• Good speaker.

Lenin’s Russia

• 1917 led the October Revolution and became ruler of Soviet Russia
• 1917 Brest-Litovsk lost 1/3 of land and ½ of industry
• 1918 shot. Never fully recovered.
• 1918-21 led the Reds against the Whites in the Civil War.
• 1921 dropped War Communism in favour of the New Economic Policy.

• This meant:
• Stopped taking all food from peasants. Took 10% and allowed them to sell the rest.
• Small factories returned to their owners.
• The NEP improved things but food was still scarce and expensive.
• Many regarded as a betrayal of communist ideals.

• 1922 a stroke may explain failure to appoint a successor.
• 1924 died of a brain haemorrhage

Assessment

• Millions died in war and starvation.
• Landlords gone
• Less exploitation by industrialists.
• Realistic in transitional approach.
• Showed the effectiveness of terror against opponents.
• Creation of elite made it possible for Stalin to come to power.
• In his ‘Political Will’ he warned of the danger of giving Stalin power.

Stalin Seizes Power

• Stalin, Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev in a power struggle.
• Other 3 turned against Trotsky who still favoured world revolution.
• Stalin proposed ‘Socialism in one country’
• 1927 Trotsky expelled from the Party, later banished from USSR and assassinated in 1940.
• 1927 Stalin turned on the other two, claiming they were too liberal and they were expelled from the Party and executed in the 1936 purge.
• Stalin was now addressed as ‘Vozhd’ (leader)

Stalin’s Economic Policies

• Stalin’s main aim was to turn USSR into an industrial and military power quickly.
• The state planning body, Gosplan, came up with 5 year plans.
• In order for these to succeed, rural workers had to be moved to the cities.

First 5 Year Plan 1928-32

• State took control of all aspects of the economy.
• It was a law setting targets rather than a plan.
• 250% increase in industrial production. 150% in agriculture.
• Infrastructure (power stations, mines, railways, canals and roads), industrial and agricultural machinery were given priority.

Second Plan 1933-38

• Focus on heavy industry and agricultural equipment continued.
• Stakhanov (15 times his quota) became a national hero
• Extra pay, holidays and prizes for great workers.
• Huge hours, accidents common, dreadful conditions. Unemployment not tolerated.
• Scale of projects (Magnitogorsk) was enormous

• The third Plan started to produce radios, bicycles and other household goods but war put an end to that.

Assessment

• Great success economically.
• Human cost huge.
• Full employment did mean a better standard of living.
• Figures were often exaggerated.
• Quality of goods often poor.
• Big emphasis on education.

Collectivisation

• Stalin believed peasants were hoarding grain and reducing production to push prices up.
• He also wanted 25 million workers for industry
• Collective farms (kolkhoz)
• Kulaks preferred to destroy their farms than give them up.
• Over 5 million were executed or deported.
• Agricultural production dropped as farmers did little on the collectives.
• 1932-33 about 10 million died of famine as a result of this and bad harvests.
• Eventually things improved but never reached targets

THE RED TERROR 1928-40: Repression Under Stalin

Stalin’s Paranoia

• ‘Class Enemies’ or ‘wreckers’. Engineers and industrial planners suffered.
• Stalin called for the ‘liquidation of the Kulaks as a class’. 1 million killed or deported.
• Half of the 35,000 officer class executed of jailed.
• Informers everywhere

The Gulag

• This was a prison system that was really a slave labour camp.
• Millions died
• Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s ‘Gulag Archipelago’

The Moscow Show Trials: Case Study

The Ryutin Platform

• Many were against forced collectivisation.
• Martemyan Ryutin was the most vocal.
• Stalin wanted him killed but it was 1932 and he was outvoted (1932).
• Sergei Kirov did most to save Ryutin (got 10 years and died in jail).

The ‘Kirov Flood’

• Kirov was very popular in the Party was murdered, probably on Stalin’s orders.
• Stalin used the murder as an excuse for the secret police (NKVD) to arrest all possible opponents, their families and friends.
• This included Kamenev and Zinoviev.
• A massive ‘cult of the leader’ propaganda campaign was in progress with an emphasis on the ‘enemies of the people’.
• Thousands were sentenced to death.

1936 The First Show Trial

• These trials were big media events in front of carefully chosen audience and foreign correspondents.
• Kamenev, Zinoviev and 14 others accused of killing Kirov, of plotting to kill Stalin’ of being wreckers and of being Trotskyites.
• All pleaded guilty and all executed within 24 hours.
• Their families and friends ‘disappeared’.

The 1937 Show Trial

• 17 pro Trotsky supporters ‘admitted’ that Trotsky had organised wrecking.
• 2 were spared because they implicated Bukharin, Rykov and Kretinsky who had been members of Lenin’s Politburo. They died in jail anyway.

The 1938 Show Trial

• Bukharin had wanted to continue with the NEP.
• Torture, interrogation and finally threatening his family forced him and the others to confess to sabotage and spying. They also implicated others.
• They were executed.

The Final Figures

• At least 7 million executed or died in the Gulag.
• 10 million from famine.
• Between 19 and 22 million in all excluding war victims.