Single Party State Review

Joseph Stalin

Background information:

§  1879-1953

§  Born Josef Dzhugashvili in Gori, Georgia (remember he was not from the province of Russia)

§  Grandson of a serf; son of a shoemaker

§  Attended and dropped out of seminary school, where he was exposed to radical and revolutionary ideas

§  Read Marx’s works

§  1899-gave up his religious education to devote himself to the revolutionary movement against the Russian monarchy

§  Member of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP), which split into Menshevik and Bolshevik factions

§  Stalin belonged to the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin

§  1912: Lenin elevated Stalin to the leading Bolshevik Party body, the Central Committee

§  Stalin, a number of times, was exiled to Siberia

§  After the last exile, in 1913, Stalin was released upon the overthrow of the Russian monarchy in the Feb./March 1917 Revolution

Origin of the single-party state:

§  Conditions:

o  Lenin’s death in 1924—did not name a successor

o  Newly created Communist government in Russia

o  Mass Poverty; industrial production at 16 percent of pre-WWI level; peasants quit taking grain to the city (Scissors Crisis); 1/3 of the city populations moved to country looking for food; hungry soldiers; 1921 drought in the Volga River Basin; Kronstadt naval rebellion

o  In conflict over who would be the successor of Lenin with Leon Trotsky, Nikolai Bukharin, Lev Kamenev, and Grigori Zinoviev—NOTE: study the notes on this political maneuvering

§  Emergence of Stalin as leader:

o  Aims: making the USSR a world power; collectivization; gain power for the glory of the motherland

o  Ideology: communist; socialism in one country; five year plans; nationalism

o  Support: upper middle class; lower peasants; workers; uses fear and secret police to get and maintain support; army/military support

o  Held high positions in the Communist Party

§  1912: elevated to the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party

§  member of the Soviet of People’s Commissars, heading the Commissariat for National Affairs

§  1919: elected to the Politburo and Orgburo

§  political commissar in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War

§  maintained control as the commissar for state control from 1919 until 1923

§  1922: elected general secretary of the Communist Party

·  this post gave him control over appointments and established his base for political power

o  Rude and aggressive behavior

o  Role of Lenin’s death and the struggle for power

Establishment of single party state:

§  Methods: use of legal means within his party position and use of force, later, with the purges

o  Bolshevik party

o  Role as General Secretary

o  Death of Lenin

o  Lenin’s Testament

§  Voiced misgivings about all potential candidates, but especially Stalin

§  Kept secret

o  Lenin’s funeral: Trotsky did not attend

o  The struggle for power (divide party into left wing communists and right wing communists); manipulation of the NEP

o  Stalin created the Cult of Leninism

o  By the end of 1929, after his political maneuvering, Stalin eliminated his political opponents and was the supreme leader of the USSR

§  Form of government: Left wing communism: totalitarian communism

§  Treatment of opposition: purges of the Army, the people, the Party

Rule of Single Party State:

o  Political

§  Socialism in one country

§  Constitution of 1936

§  Creation of satellite states post WWII

o  Economic

§  Determined in the late 1920s that Lenin’s New Economic Policy (NEP) did not work

§  Collectivization

§  Five Year Plans—program of rapid industrialization

·  First one implemented in 1928

·  Believed the USSR needed to industrialize in order to strengthen the communist regime and compete with other world powers

§  Collectivization and the FYP resulted in harsh working conditions, famine, millions of deaths, liquidation of the kulaks

§  Stakhanovite movement

§  Industrialization was achieved (remember by 1939, industrialization had been achieved…USSR=3rd leading power)

§  Post WW2: resume FYP

o  Political/Social

§  Purges—to maintain power and check any potential conspiracies

§  Purge of the Party

·  Kirov’s assassination—1934

·  Role of the secret police

·  Highly publicized trials

·  Death of Kamenev, Zinoviev, and Bukharin

§  Purge of the people

§  Purge of the military

§  1 in 18 affected by the purges

§  role of the forced labor camps in Siberia

§  effects of the purges on the leadership in the party (young and devoted to Stalin) and the military (lost a lot of competent leaders and numerous soldiers which will weaken the military)

§  Post WW2: POWs; Zhdanov charges and the resultant arrest of doctors

·  People fear a new series of purges

§  Education, art, media and propaganda

·  Education: basically rewrote history

·  Media: printed only what would favor communist party

§  Status of women, minorities, religious groups

·  Women seen in a traditional sense—but will eventually use in industrialization

·  Women were purged if husband made mistakes or was accused

·  After WWII, Stalin goes after the Jewish population

Regional and Global Impact:

§  Foreign Policy:

o  “socialism in one country”

o  mid-1930s: support the Communist International (Comintern) in a Popular Front against fascism

o  Changed his alliances from the Popular Front to Hitler because believed the western countries would not help him if threatened by Nazi Germany…wanted to maintain a buffer state

o  Nazi-Soviet Pact 1939—trade agreement, divisions of Eastern Europe, and a non-aggression pact

o  Winter War 1940/1941 with Finland: Stalin and the Soviet Union gain control of Finland

o  Invasion by Germany through Operation Barbarossa

§  Brought into WW2 on the Allied side

§  Faced difficulties initially

§  Battle of Stalingrad

o  WW2: move into Eastern Europe (prepare for spheres of influence)

o  WW2: work with Allied leaders

§  Yalta

§  Potsdam

o  Development of Soviet puppet regimes in Eastern Europe after WW2

§  Creation of the Iron Curtain

§  Start of the Cold War

§  1947: create Cominform (Communist Information Bureau)—international body of Communist leaders to ensure conformity with the Soviet line

§  Problems with Yugoslavia and Marshal Tito

§  Berlin blockade

§  East Germany

§  Impact outside the state

·  Western nations are suspicious and reluctant to recognize the USSR when formed

·  Germany is the first to recognize the USSR (Treaty of Rapallo—under Lenin)

·  1930s: oppose Nazism/fascism—tried to work with western European nations

·  Nov. 1936—Germany and Italy create the Anti-Comintern Pact

·  Excluded from Four Powers Pact and Stresa Conference

·  Spanish Civil War—involved with the Popular Front

·  Not involved with Munich Conference and decisions dealing with Czechoslovakia

·  Nazi-Soviet Pact

·  WWII: Great Coalition

·  Cold War roe

§  Factor in the Cold War

·  One of the two superpowers

·  Spread influence in Eastern Europe

·  Theories blaming the USSR for the Cold War

·  East German policies

·  Berlin Blockade

·  Comecon and Cominform

·  Treatment of Yugoslavia

·  Horrible relations with China