Soviet State Under Stalin

Question 1

When was collectivisation introduced?

Answer 1

1928

Question 2

What was the purpose of collectivisation?

Answer 2

Aimed at eliminating private ownership of land, creating a more efficient agricultural system to improve agricultural productivity and produce grain reserves sufficiently large to feed the growing urban labour force

Question 3

What was KOLKHOZ?

Answer 3

large collectives

Question 4

What was Sovkhoz?

Answer 4

state farms

Question 5

What was MTS?

Answer 5

Machinery Tractor Systems (MTS) set up to school farmers in modern systems

Question 6

How many people were killed in the 1932/33 famine?

Answer 6

10 to 15 million

Question 7

What happened to agricultural production and livestock numbers?

Answer 7

Agricultural production decreased & livestock numbers fell dramatically

Question 8

What happened to the kulaks?

Answer 8

Kulaks were targeted for liquidation, treated brutally, robbed of their land and deported to Siberia or placed in gulags.

Question 9

How did peasants responds to collectivisation?

Answer 9

Peasants resisted the deliberate destruction of their traditional life & the countryside descended into a virtual civil war as peasants burnt their crops and slaughtered their animals.

Question 10

What was the general aim of the five-year plans?

Answer 10

To increase production across the entire Soviet industry and reduce the gap between Russia and other industrialised countries.

Question 11

How long did Stalin estimate the gap between Russia and industrial powers to be?

Answer 11

50-100 years.

Question 12

When was the first five-year plan and what did it focus on?

Answer 12

The First Five Year Plan (1928-1933) focused on industries such as coal, iron, steel & electricity to manufacture heavy industries such as ships, railways, factories & to establish sources of raw materials to feed those factories

Question 13

When was the second five-year plan and what did it focus on?

Answer 13

The Second Five Year Plan (1933-1938) was to focus on production of consumer goods for the workers & peasants as an incentive to increase their production

Question 14

When was the third five-year plan and what did it focus on?

Answer 14

The Third Year Plan was to begin in late 1938, & did so, but was interrupted by the need to prepare for war & never met its targets

Question 15

Identify two targets of the first five-year plan

Answer 15

Targets included: a 250 percent increase in overall industrial development and a 330 percent expansion in heavy industry alone

Question 16

How many people were estimated to be needed for the first five year plan and who were they?

Answer 16

Approximately 3 million kulaks, prisoners & laborers were to be used

Question 17

Of the thousands that died, how did they die?

Answer 17

1000s died each year from exposure, disease and mishap

Question 18

Identify three major construction acheivements of the first five-year plan

Answer 18

Dnieper Dam and the White Sea-Baltic Canal & the iron and steel plant, Magnitogorsk were major achievements

Question 19

How was hard work encouraged during the 5-year plans?

Answer 19

Hard work was encouraged by paying workers based on what they produced & exceptional workers received adoration, medals, better pay & superior housing.

Question 20

What was the impact of offering different wages?

Answer 20

During the 1930s, the gap between the wages of the labourers and the skilled workers increased

Question 21

What was the impact of living standards from the 5 year-plans?

Answer 21

Living standards were lower in 1937 than in 1928

Question 22

What was the impact of industrial output from the 5 year-plans in relation to Europe?

Answer 22

By 1939, the Soviet Union succeeded in overtaking the other major European powers in terms of industrial output.

Question 23

Where were the largest increases in output?

Answer 23

The largest increases in output were in steel, coal and petrochemicals, with coal production increasing 98 per cent between 1952 and 1957

Question 24

What were artists and writers encourage to create?

Answer 24

Writers and artists were encouraged to create stories & artwork that emphasised Stalin as the “Supreme Genius of Humanity”

Question 25

Identify three towns that were named after Stalin

Answer 25

Stalingrad, Stalinsk & Stalinogorsk

Question 26

identify three slurs Stalin was known to use against those who criticised him.

Answer 26

‘White guard dog’
‘Tsarist hyena’
‘Capitalist Dog’

Question 27

What did exceptional workers receive for their hard work?

Answer 27

exceptional workers received adoration, medals, better pay & superior housing.

Question 28

What aspects of society does the state control under a totalitarian government?

Answer 28

State controlled every aspect of society including:
Mass communication
The economy
Freedom of Speech
Freedom of Movement
Freedom of Religion

Question 29

Why do some argue that the Soviet state was not totalitarian?

Answer 29

• That the entire structure of public information, surveillance & enforcement was patchy
• That policies could be obfuscated, modified & even emasculated
• That varying gradations of non-compliance were possible & common
• A totalitarian regime wasn’t achieved until well into the 1930s & only due to a substantial degree of popular support encouraged by propaganda and the cult of personality

Question 30

Where were the improvements in the Soviet state under Stalin?

Answer 30

Education
Health
Welfare services
More career paths due to the opening up of the economy
1936 Constitution guaranteed…
Freedom of speech, conscience, press & assembly

Question 31

What was the impact of Stalin on religion?

Answer 31

• All religious property confiscated
• All churches, synagogues & mosques were closed down (60,000+)
• Church funds were nationalised
• Christian leaders were imprisoned
• “League of the Godless” smashed churches & burned religious pictures
• Pilgrimages to Mecca were banned, women were encouraged to unveil
• Study of Hebrew banned
• 50 million Soviet citizens in the 1937 census declared themselves “religious”
• Russian orthodox church was reopened in late 1930s as part of “adherence” to the idea of “freedom of conscience” in the 1936 Constitution

Question 32

Why did Stalin oppose religion?

Answer 32

Religion posed a threat to the ‘Cult of Stalin’ as people worshipped a different “god”

Question 33

What are five key characteristics of what Fitzpatrick refers to as ”the great retreat” that impacted on women and the family?

Answer 33

• Divorce more difficult to maintain
• Abortion severely restricted
• Unregistered marriages no longer recognised
• Homosexuality outlawed
• The family declared to be the basis of Soviet society

Question 34

According to Stalin why was the role of women changed? (quote)

Answer 34

Role of women changed “For the greater good of society”

Question 35

What stronger measures were put in place in July, 1944, to deal with the declining birth rate and to reaffirm the importance of family?

Answer 35

• Restrictions on divorce were further tightened
• Abortion totally outlawed
• Mothers with more than two children were made ‘heroines of the Soviet Union’
• Taxes were increased on parents with fewer than two children
• The right to inherit family property was re-established
• Zhenotdel was allowed to lapse in 1930

Question 36

Identify the key aspects of the “Housewives’ Movement” established in 1936

Answer 36

• it was mostly made up of the wives of industrialists & managers to ‘civilise’ workers.
• wives’ task to make society & their husband’s workplace in particular more “cultured.”
• Wives were encouraged to furnish workers’ dormitories and barracks, organize kindergartens, nurseries, and camps and sanatoria for children, set up literacy schools, libraries, and public baths, supervise factory cafeterias, plant trees, and in general do their best to improve the quality of life at their husbands’ plants- all unpaid of course!

Question 37

How did Stalinism impact education?

Answer 37

• Free access to education for every child- 10 years compulsory
• State organised examinations
• State prescribed text-books, which contained Marxist ideology- ‘Short History of the USSR’- rewrote history
• Technical schools established- focus on technical & scientific skills to help industrialisation
• 1939, 94% of urban dwellers & 86% of rural population could read & write
• Those attending school increased from 12mil (1929) to 35mil (1940)
• More engineers, doctors, teachers & scientists.
• Intelligentsia formed nomenklatura, causing some to question the egalitarian nature of education.

Question 38

What were the nomenklatura?

Answer 38

A category of people within the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries who held various key administrative positions in the bureaucracy, running all spheres of those countries’ activity

Question 39

identify the three ‘c’s’ that were hallmarks of culture under Stalin

Answer 39

Compromise, conformity and censorship were hallmarks of culture under Stalin

Question 40

What did declare that writers were in 1932?

Answer 40

Stalin declared to writers in 1932 that were “engineers of the human soul.”

Question 41

What was social realism under Stalin?

Answer 41

“Socialist realism”- govt policy that dictated that culture be happy, productive & accessible

• People should be able to relate art etc to their own “happy lives”.
• Music, art, poetry & plays had to be “intelligible to the ordinary person”

Question 42

identify four reasons commonly known as reasons for the purges

Answer 42

No one reason, but many theories:

• Eliminate threats to his position
• Stalin not totally responsible- it was a snowball effect. Stalin may have started them but he lost control of the momentum
• Links with economic policies- Only way Stalin could get mass forced labour for his industrial projects.
• Persecution complex

Question 43

What was the‘Great Terror’-

Answer 43

‘Yezhohchina’. Attempt to liquidate army of any potential opponents

Question 44

Who were the first victims of the 5-year plans?

Answer 44

Managers & workers accused of wrecking the first Five-Year Plan, kulaks & ordinary party members accused of incorrect attitudes

Question 45

Identify key years and events in the purges

Answer 45

1928. Fifty-five engineers put on trial for sabotage- 5 shot, 49 imprisoned
      1932- Ryutin criticized Stalin’s economic policies- he was exiled and his supporters put on trial
      1934- Kirov murdered, thousands of Communist Part members arrested- 40,000 in Leningrad alone
      1936 OGPU became the NKVD (People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs) who carried out purges
      1935- Senior communists arrested: 1108 out of 1966 delegates 17th Congress, 98 out 139 members of the Central Committee, anyone who supported Trotsky. Thousands were denounced and expelled.
      Gulags were the prisons where inmates were punished by forced labour.
      1936- ‘show trials’

Question 46

identify the key features of the show trials

Answer 46

Began in 1936 as part of the purges
Kamenev &Zinoviev some of the first tried for the “murder of Kirov & plotting to kill Stalin”
Accused put on trial in full view of the world & forced to confess
The confessions were important because they appeared to show that Stalin was right to purge the Communist Party
Confessions didn’t help the accused as they were executed after the trials.
Many confessed because they were physically & psychologically tortured by the Secret Police & their families were threatened with imprisonment or death.

Question 47

Identify the key impacts of the purges and show trials

Answer 47

Ensured ‘total’ control under Stalin
Devastating effect on the Soviet Union
Human cost was enormous- difficult to be exact with figures
KGB Files revealed the following
Executed- 1 million
Died in labour camps- 2 million
In prison, late 1938- 1 million
In labour camps late 1938- 8 million