Stalin

Question 1

Economic conditions leading to rtp

Answer 1

• 1918-21 - War communism
• 1921- NEP - disagreements between right and left over its timing

Question 2

Social conditions leading to rtp

Answer 2

• Ban on free speech
• Ban on trade unions
• Prohibition of public worship
• Nationalization

Question 3

Key events in rtp

Answer 3

1918-21 - War communism
1921 - NEP
1922 - Stalin becomes general secretary
1923 - Lenin’s postscript recommends Stalin’s dismissal, suppressed
1925 - Debate over “permanent revolution” or “socialism in one country”
1926 - K+Z call to abandon NEP, Stalin makes them the “new opposition” despite previous alliances
1927 - Trotsky, K+Z expelled from party
1928 - Bukharin voices his opposition
1929 - Bukharin removed from party

Question 4

Key events in consolidation of power

Answer 4

1929 - First 5yr plan
1930 - Collectivization, “dizzy with success”, Systov bloc expelled
1932 - Famine
1934 - Second 5yr plan, joins LoN, Kirov murder starts purges
1935 - K+Z secret trial
1936 - Show trial of the 16
1937 - Show trial of the 17
1939 - Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact

Question 5

Key domestic and foreign policy aims

Answer 5

• Control of media and propaganda
• Purge of the party, people and army
• Control over religion and education
• Return to traditional values (socially)
• Oppose the Nazi threat

Question 6

Methods to achieve aims (economic)

Answer 6

Economic:
- 1929- 1st 5yr, Kulaks ‘liquidated’
- Collectivization 1930, leads to 1932-33, famine(5-8m)

Question 7

Policies on women

Answer 7

• highest divorce rate in Europe (1/2)
• 1930s - ‘Great retreat’
• promoted traditional values, but due to the war women were needed in industry

Question 8

Domestic policy successes and failures

Answer 8

• Purges achieved what he wanted, free of enemies, but the purge of the army in 1937 left him undermanned
• Strayed from ideology by reopening churches but gained support for “the great fatherland war”
• Collectivization fails leading to a famine killing 6-8m
• Women remained in industry 1936-9m, 1945-15m

Question 9

Foreign policy successes and failures

Answer 9

• Joins LoN in 1934, is not included in Munich(38), feels isolated
• Not able to gain collective security except with Germany who stabs them in the back in 1941
• Salami tactics and satellites provide a buffer against Germany but are resource and economically drained

Question 10

PSQs

Answer 10

• “man can be made whatever we want him to be”
• “we are 50 or 100 years behind… we must make good this distance in 10 years.”
• “if … he had already transferred that person into the ranks of ‘enemies’, it was impossible to hold a conversation with him about that person” - Svetlana
• “only in Russia is poetry taken so seriously men are killed for it” - Medevev

Question 11

HSQs

Answer 11

• Purges were “Stalins victory over the party”-Shapiro
• “Nowadays, virtually all writers accept that he [stalin] initiated he great terror.” - Service
• “more great intellectuals perished in the 1930s than survived”-Service
• “female emancipation became building blocks of the Stalinist neo patriarchial social system”-Hoskings

Question 12

Methods to Achieve aims (political)

Answer 12

Political:
- 1930 - Systov bloc expelled
- 1934 - Joins LoN
- 1934 - Kirov Murder (possibly)

Question 13

Methods to achieve aims (terror)

Answer 13

Terror:
- 1935 -39 - Great purge (700kdeaths)
- 1940 - Trotsky assassinated in Mexico

Question 14

Methods to achieve aims (domestic and foreign)

Answer 14

Domestic:
- Russian dominance, uprooted 20m by 1945
- Closes churches in 1928, reopened in 40s for nationalism (25k opened by 53)
- 10yr education, further (paid) for specializations
- Cult, Stakhanovite 1935
Foreign:
- Salami tactics and satellite states