Stalin - Control of the People Flashcards
Stalin’s Methods
Cult of Personality.
Media.
Secret Police (internal terror).
Religion.
Art & Culture.
Youth Groups.
Wartime Economy.
Cult of Personality
Used his + Lenin’s Cults to tie the two together as the defender of Lenin’s work + his rightful successor.
Portrayed as Lenin’s closest friend, hero of Civil War, Saviour of the Revolution.
“Stalin is the Lenin of today”.
Paintings with 5YP achievements (Dneiper Dam).
WW2, portrayed as “defender of the motherland” in propaganda posters.
Twisted portrayal = Kremlin officials didn’t recognise him in person.
“The gardener of happiness” - gulag prisoners cried upon news of his death.
Media
Newspaper (same as Lenin).
Magazines.
Radio.
TV hardly used until 1950s as few had a set.
Newspapers
Power of censoship via Revolutionary Tribunal of Press (01/1918).
Pravda & Izvestiya
Glavit monitored + published books/articles/works.
Magazines
Prohibited ideas government didn’t want to spread: pornography, religion, crime.
Red Sport –> Sovetskii 1946. Respected from honesty and limited freedom, but had to have Soviet propaganda on front page.
Radio
Used Lenin’s setup for general messages & reassure public during WW2.
Restricted access to foreign stations with cheap radios with limited range + jamming foreign broadcasts.
1930s, conveyed propaganda to 65% of the population who were illiterate.
Secret Police Leaders
Yagoda, 1934-36.
Yezhov, 1936-38.
Beria, 1938-53.
Yagoda
1934-36.
Head of NKVD, keen to prove himself to Stalin.
Removed political opponents accused of Trotskyism.
Show Trials of Zinoviev & Kamenev, 1936.
Rapid expansion of Gulags.
Gulag population rose from 500k (1934) to >1.5m (1937).
Labour camps used for economic considerations.
Removed in 1936, shot in 1938.
Yezhov
1936-38.
Head of NKVD - “Bloody Dwarf” - loved torturing people.
Many purges.
Framed people on the basis that they were acting against the purposes of communism.
Karelian Troika - courts that dealt with the cases, made up of three people. Troikas processed 231 prisoners a day in 09/1937.
Inmates in labour camps + deaths in labour camps rose (>2m by 1938).
Quotas for the death of inmates in camps.
Plain clothed police officers maintained control over general public.
Number of detectives x4, more staff employed to torture people.
Opposition now those not committed to communism.
Dismissed in 1938, accused of excess purges (scapegoat for Stalin).
Yezhovshchina + Great Purge
Yezhovshchina/The Great Purge
1934-38
Started with purging of Kirov, 1934.
Mass repression, aiming to eliminate threats to regime.
NKVD conducted arrests + interrogations.
High ranking officials, intellects, military officers targeted.
Show Trials - tortured + coerced to confess.
1.2m party members arrested + 600k executed.
Beria
1938-1953·
Popular, seen as some one who was going to reform the secret police.
Reintroduced, more conventional methods - public trials.
Surveillance continued, but arrests only made with evidence.
Gulags more profitable, increasing rations and thus productivity. Used specialist abilities of people in camps to his advantage: 1000 scientists utilised to make military hardware.
Gulags produced 2b roubles (1937) –> 4.5b (1940).
1940, >1/3 of the countries gold produced by gulags.
Accused of being a British spy in 1953, then executed.
Leningrad Affair
1949
Purge of Party officials in Leningrad.
Replaced opponents with those loyal to him, thus using terror to cement his personal power/dictatorship.
Executed 23 high-ranking party and state leaders.
Religion, ROC
Bigger propaganda campaign against church.
1929, League of Militant Godless.
Events to disprove existence of god: taking peasants on plane rides to prove heaven wasn’t real.
Attacks on religious rituals, replaced baptisms –> octoberings.
Village priests labelled kulaks + deported.
1939, 12/163 bishops weren’t arrested/deported/murdered.
Religion re-established after WW2. People wouldn’t fight for ideology, religion + patriotism gave hope, a reason to fight.
League of Militant Godless
1929.
Aimed to promote atheism and fighting against religion.
organizing public lectures, debates, and propaganda campaigns.
Religion, Islam
Religious acquisition of lands prohibited, upkeep of mosques more difficult.
Mullahs removed + publicly admitted to deceiving people via collectivization.
Campaign against veiling of women on International women’s day. Many women cast off their veils and threw them into the bonfire.
Ramadan fasting condemned - interfering with work discipline.
Polygamy (having more than one wife) - subjective towards women.
Still practiced in homes or underground brotherhoods known as Tariqat.
