history essay on stalin

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Early years

Stalin’s rise to power.

• Lenin’s successor
• The great purges
• Role in World War II

• What is communism?
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• What are the origins of communism?
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Joseph Stalin

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• Atomic Heritage Foundation - Joseph Stalin
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When was Joseph Stalin born?

Joseph Stalin was born on December 18, 1878. His birth date was traditionally believed to be December 21, 1879, but the 1878 date was confirmed by records in the Communist Party central archives.

When did Joseph Stalin die?

Joseph Stalin died on March 5, 1953, in Moscow. His death triggered a leadership scramble within the Soviet Communist Party, and Nikita Khrushchev ultimately emerged as Stalin’s successor.

What was Joseph Stalin’s childhood like?

Joseph Stalin was raised in poverty in provincial Georgia . A bout of childhood smallpox scarred his face, and his left arm was mangled, most likely in a carriage accident. Although his mother doted on him, Stalin’s father was a drunk who routinely beat him.

Where was Joseph Stalin educated?

Joseph Stalin learned Russian at the church school in his hometown of Gori, Georgia. He entered Tiflis Theological Seminary to train as a priest, but he left school in 1899. He never earned a degree.

How did Joseph Stalin change the world?

From 1928 until his death in 1953, Joseph Stalin ruled the Soviet Union as a dictator, transforming the country from an agrarian peasant society into a global superpower . The cost was tremendous, however: Stalin was responsible for the deaths of millions of Soviet citizens.

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Joseph Stalin (born December 18 [December 6, Old Style], 1878, Gori, Georgia , Russian Empire [ see Researcher’s Note ] —died March 5, 1953, Moscow , Russia , U.S.S.R.) was the secretary-general of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–53) and premier of the Soviet state (1941–53), who for a quarter of a century dictatorially ruled the Soviet Union and transformed it into a major world power.

During the quarter of a century preceding his death, the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin probably exercised greater political power than any other figure in history. Stalin industrialized the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , forcibly collectivized its agriculture, consolidated his position by intensive police terror, helped to defeat Germany in 1941–45, and extended Soviet controls to include a belt of eastern European states. Chief architect of Soviet totalitarianism and a skilled but phenomenally ruthless organizer, he destroyed the remnants of individual freedom and failed to promote individual prosperity, yet he created a mighty military-industrial complex and led the Soviet Union into the nuclear age .

Stalin’s biography was long obscured by a mendacious Soviet-propagated “legend” exaggerating his prowess as a heroic Bolshevik boy-conspirator and faithful follower of Lenin , the founder of the Soviet Union. In his prime, Stalin was hailed as a universal genius, as a “shining sun,” or “the staff of life,” and also as a “great teacher and friend” (especially of those communities he most savagely persecuted); once he was even publicly invoked as “Our Father” by a metropolitan of the Russian Orthodox Church . Achieving wide visual promotion through busts, statues, and icons of himself, the dictator became the object of a fanatical cult that, in private, he probably regarded with cynicism .

Stalin was of Georgian —not Russian—origin, and persistent rumours claim that he was Ossetian on the paternal side. He was the son of a poor cobbler in the provincial Georgian town of Gori in the Caucasus , then an imperial Russian colony. The drunken father savagely beat his son. Speaking only Georgian at home, Joseph learned Russian—which he always spoke with a guttural Georgian accent—while attending the church school at Gori (1888–94). He then moved to the Tiflis Theological Seminary, where he secretly read Karl Marx , the chief theoretician of international Communism , and other forbidden texts, being expelled in 1899 for revolutionary activity, according to the “legend”—or leaving because of ill health, according to his doting mother. The mother, a devout washerwoman, had dreamed of her son becoming a priest, but Joseph Dzhugashvili was more ruffianly than clerical in appearance and outlook. He was short, stocky, black-haired, fierce-eyed, with one arm longer than the other, his swarthy face scarred by smallpox contracted in infancy. Physically strong and endowed with prodigious willpower, he early learned to disguise his true feelings and to bide his time; in accordance with the Caucasian blood-feud tradition, he was implacable in plotting long-term revenge against those who offended him.

In December 1899, Dzhugashvili became, briefly, a clerk in the Tiflis Observatory, the only paid employment that he is recorded as having taken outside politics; there is no record of his ever having done manual labour. In 1900 he joined the political underground, fomenting labour demonstrations and strikes in the main industrial centres of the Caucasus, but his excessive zeal in pushing duped workers into bloody clashes with the police antagonized his fellow conspirators. After the Social Democrats (Marxist revolutionaries) of the Russian Empire had split into their two competing wings— Menshevik and Bolshevik —in 1903, Dzhugashvili joined the second, more militant, of these factions and became a disciple of its leader, Lenin . Between April 1902 and March 1913, Dzhugashvili was seven times arrested for revolutionary activity, undergoing repeated imprisonment and exile. The mildness of the sentences and the ease with which the young conspirator effected his frequent escapes lend colour to the unproved speculation that Dzhugashvili was for a time an agent provocateur in the pay of the imperial political police.

Dzhugashvili made slow progress in the party hierarchy . He attended three policy-making conclaves of the Russian Social Democrats—in Tammerfors (now Tampere , Finland; 1905), Stockholm (1906), and London (1907)—without making much impression. But he was active behind the scenes, helping to plot a spectacular holdup in Tiflis (now Tbilisi ) on June 25 (June 12, Old Style), 1907, in order to “expropriate” funds for the party. His first big political promotion came in February (January, Old Style) 1912, when Lenin—now in emigration—co-opted him to serve on the first Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, which had finally broken with the other Social Democrats. In the following year, Dzhugashvili published, at Lenin’s behest, an important article on Marxism and the national question. By now he had adopted the name Stalin, deriving from Russian stal (“steel”); he also briefly edited the newly founded Bolshevik newspaper Pravda before undergoing his longest period of exile: in Siberia from July 1913 to March 1917.

In about 1904 Stalin had married a pious Georgian girl, Ekaterina Svanidze. She died some three years later and left a son, Jacob, whom his father treated with contempt , calling him a weakling after an unsuccessful suicide attempt in the late 1920s; when Jacob was taken prisoner by the Germans during World War II , Stalin refused a German offer to exchange his son.

Reaching Petrograd from Siberia on March 25 (March 12, Old Style), 1917, Stalin resumed editorship of Pravda . He briefly advocated Bolshevik cooperation with the provisional government of middle-class liberals that had succeeded to uneasy power on the last tsar ’s abdication during the February Revolution . But under Lenin’s influence, Stalin soon switched to the more-militant policy of armed seizure of power by the Bolsheviks. When their coup d’état occurred in November (October, Old Style) 1917, he played an important role, but one less prominent than that of his chief rival, Leon Trotsky .

(Read Leon Trotsky’s 1926 Britannica essay on Lenin.)

Active as a politico-military leader on various fronts during the Civil War of 1918–20 , Stalin also held two ministerial posts in the new Bolshevik government, being commissar for nationalities (1917–23) and for state control (or workers’ and peasants’ inspection; 1919–23). But it was his position as secretary general of the party’s Central Committee , from 1922 until his death, that provided the power base for his dictatorship. Besides heading the secretariat, he was also member of the powerful Politburo and of many other interlocking and overlapping committees—an arch-bureaucrat engaged in quietly outmaneuvering brilliant rivals, including Trotsky and Grigory Zinovyev , who despised such mundane organizational work. Because the pockmarked Georgian was so obviously unintellectual, they thought him unintelligent—a gross error, and one literally fatal in their case.

From 1921 onward Stalin flouted the ailing Lenin’s wishes, until, a year before his death, Lenin wrote a political “testament,” since widely publicized, calling for Stalin’s removal from the secretary generalship; coming from Lenin, this document was potentially ruinous to Stalin’s career, but his usual luck and skill enabled him to have it discounted during his lifetime.

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History Grade 11 - Topic 1 Essay Questions

Explain to what extent Stalin succeeded in transforming Russia into a superpower by 1939.

Stalin came to power on the back of Lenin’s death in 1925, after which he instituted a range of far-reaching policy changes that would alter the course of Russian society and politics for the rest of the 20th century. The communist Soviet Union we now remember was the product of Stalin, although it can be argued that Lenin was responsible for laying the foundations of its highly authoritarian political culture. The new Russia under Stalin was supposed to radically break from the economic and social backwardness that characterised the Tsarist regime, and which Lenin had little time to achieve. In many ways, Stalin did create a completely different Russia, one almost unrecognisable from before the October revolution which overthrew the provisional government. However, whether that translated into it being a superpower is quite another thing. This paper will argue that although momentous and radical, the reforms Stalin instituted did not transform Russia into a superpower by 1939, although it did lay the framework for such a status to be attained during the post-WWII era.

Stalin rose to power as the leader of the Soviet Union by crushing his opposition in the Central Committee led by Leon Trotsky. Although we shall not detail this complicated political battle, it is important to note that the vying for power between the powerful figures was also a contestation over the ideological and policy framework which the Soviet Union should take. By the late 1920s, Stalin had emerged victorious, and went on to institute his own brand of communism in the Soviet Union. This centred on the notion of ‘Socialism in one Country’, which was ideally to build up the “industrial base and military might of the Soviet Union before exporting revolution abroad.” [1] This was in contrast to earlier pronouncements made by Lenin and Trotsky, which indicated the need to establish a worldwide ‘uninterrupted revolution’ of workers. [2] The logic here was that socialism could never survive independently outside of a socialist world order; Stalin, on the other hand, saw a national socialism – which, ironically, would be compared to Nazism – as the only way for socialism to survive. [3]

The practical effects of Stalin’s socialism in one country was the rescindment of the New Economic Policy (NEP) – which had allowed for small-scale capitalist enterprise to operate – the collectivisation of agriculture, and rapid forced industrialisation. [4] Socialism in one country forced the Soviet Union to look inwards, to create a socialist nation whose lessons and ideas could then be exported overseas. This means that, for all practical purposes, Russia was not interested in attaining any overtly ‘superpower’ status in global politics. It meant, in terms of foreign policy, of “putting the interests of the Soviet Union ahead of the interests of the international communist movement.” [5] Ideally, when Russia became powerful enough, it would then ferment for workers’ revolutions the world over.

The costs and benefits of these sweeping policy changes – which essentially closed off the Soviet Union from the outside world – are difficult to determine. On the one hand, they certainly led to large-scale industrialisation which outstripped the pace of Russia’s Western counterparts. Through the policy instrument of Five-Year Plans, which set production targets for industries and farms, Stalin was able to bring Russia up to date with modern heavy-industry production techniques and increase output exponentially. For example, cast iron production increased 439% in ten years, and coal extraction 361%. [6] Russia also went on an extensive electrification programme, called GOELRO, which increased electricity production from 1.9 billion kWh in 1913 to 48 billion kWh in 1940. [7]

However, despite the resounding success with which certain - especially heavy - industries benefitted from forced industrialisation, many other industries and rural farmers often suffered. Because of the focus on heavy industrialisation, lighter industries that catered for consumer goods were often poorly made and faced shortages. The agricultural collectivisation programme which was conducted with increased inflexibility and violence across the Russian hinterland cost the lives of millions of peasants, who died of hunger resulting from famine caused by the upheaval of forced collectivisation. Figures range from 5.6 million to 13.4 million. [8] Millions of other prosperous peasants – known as Kulaks – were sent to gulag camps in Siberia for work; Molotov suggested that between 1.3 and 1.5 kulak households (accounting for between 6 and 7 million persons) were expropriated. [9] Thus, whilst Stalin broke the back of these peasants – by 1941, 97% of agriculture was conducted in collectives, and finally there was enough food to feed the cities – the human cost remains an ever-contested aspect of this period.

What is clear about this period, is that these policies centralised the economy and political power in Russia in Stalin’s hands. The increased industrial output, and the ability for (eventual) increased agricultural production to feed the cities, allowed Russia a certain amount of confidence in its ability to conduct itself as an industrial nation. As Stalin was once quoted as saying, “We are fifty to one hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or they crush us.” [10] Thus, one of the primary reasons for industrialisation was for the ability for Russia to protect itself. This fits in well with the overall ideological implication of Stalin’s ‘socialism in one country’, which advocated for an insular reading of socialism that would allow for ‘proper’ socialist conditions to be reached within the massive country before a worldwide socialist revolution took place.

And in many ways, the industrial capacity generated during Stalin’s leadership up to 1939 was crucial for Russia to defend itself against Germany in 1941. Not only did allow for the production of millions of armaments and supplies crucial to the success of any armed conflict, but it also laid the groundwork for a post-war reconstruction. Because the Soviet Union boasted such impressive industrial capacity, it could rebuild after WWII much easier – and more importantly, without the help of aid from the West, especially the USA. The Marshall Plan, in which the USA loaned $15 billion to European countries to help rebuild industry and cities after their decimation during the second world war, was largely a strategic move to counter the spread of communism in Europe. [11] The spread of Russian influence into eastern Europe, on the other hand, was premised on its industrial power, which resulted in its alternative to the Marshall Plan - namely the Molotov Plan - which extended aid to socialist regimes in central and eastern Europe. [12]

The success of Russian industrialisation and agricultural collectivisation during the pre-war years allowed for the repel of German forces and the extension of Russian influence into the eastern European region. It was then that Russia became a superpower. In fact, it is only during the post-WWII war era when the notion of an international ‘superpower’ becomes widespread, when the cold war divides the world into two ideologically opposed sides – America on the one side and the Soviet Union on the other. [13] One could thus argue that the relative military strength of Russia after WWII, a result of its impressive industrial capacity – and its focus on heavy industry and agricultural production – meant that it could become a superpower. Thus, although no one would suggest that Russia was a superpower before WWII in 1939, its ability to retain its industrial strength after the war meant that it would become one. In conclusion, although Stalin did not transform Russia into a superpower by 1939, he laid the necessary groundwork for that to occur in the post-war era.

This content was originally produced for the SAHO classroom by Sebastian Moronell, Ayabulela Ntwakumba, Simone van der Colff & Thandile Xesi.

[1] "Communism - Stalinism". 2021. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/communism/Stalinism#ref539199

[2] Erik Van Ree. "Socialism in One Country: A Reassessment." Studies in East European Thought 50, no. 2 (1998): 77.

[3] Kate Frey. 2020. "An Introduction to Trotsky’s Theory of Permanent Revolution". Left Voice. https://www.leftvoice.org/an-introduction-to-trotskys-theory-of-permane… .

[4] "Communism - Stalinism". 2021. Encyclopedia Britannica.

[6] John P. Hardt and Carl Modig. The Industrialization of Soviet Russia in the First Half Century. Research Analysis Corp. McLean, 1968, pg. 6.

[8] Massimo Livi-Bacci. "On the Human Costs of Collectivization in the Soviet Union." Population and Development Review (1993): 751

[9] Ibid, pg. 744.

[10] Flewers, Paul. 2021. "The Economic Policy of The Soviet By Isaac Deutscher 1948". Marxists.Org. https://www.marxists.org/archive/deutscher/1948/economic-policy.htm .

[11] "Marshall Plan". 2021. History. https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/marshall-plan-1 .

[12] Morroe Berger. "How the Molotov Plan Works." The Antioch Review 8, no. 1 (1948): 18.

[13] Joseph M. Siracusa. "Reflections on the Cold War." Australasian Journal of American Studies (2009): 3.

• Berger, Morroe. "How the Molotov Plan Works." The Antioch Review 8, no. 1 (1948): 17-25.
• "Communism - Stalinism". 2021. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/communism/Stalinism#ref539199 .
• Flewers, Paul. 2021. "The Economic Policy of the Soviet by Isaac Deutscher 1948". Marxists.Org. https://www.marxists.org/archive/deutscher/1948/economic-policy.htm .
• Frey, Kate. 2020. "An Introduction to Trotsky’S Theory of Permanent Revolution". Left Voice. https://www.leftvoice.org/an-introduction-to-trotskys-theory-of-permanent-revolution .
• Livi-Bacci, Massimo. "On the Human Costs of Collectivization in the Soviet Union." Population and Development Review (1993): 743-766.
• "Marshall Plan". 2021. History. https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/marshall-plan-1.
• Siracusa, Joseph M. "Reflections on the Cold War." Australasian Journal of American Studies (2009): 1-16.
• Van Ree, Erik. "Socialism in One Country: A Reassessment." Studies in East European Thought 50, no. 2 (1998): 77-117.
• Hardt, John P. and Carl Modig. The Industrialization of Soviet Russia in the First Half Century. Research Analysis Corp. McLean, 1968.

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What Do We Really Know about Joseph Stalin?

It took three more decades of Soviet rule before the archives dealing with Stalin and his times could be explored. And then the doors were shut again.

Joseph Stalin died sixty-five years ago this month. But it wasn’t until Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika in the late 1980s, and then the breakup of the USSR, that the state archives were opened and the full record of Stalin’s deeds revealed.

As historian Hiroaki Kuromiya notes, prior to the Soviet Union’s end, that nation’s history was written by rumor, Kremlinology, and foreign intelligence agencies. The records of the USSR have transformed the history of the USSR. But don’t expect to find all the answers in the papers; historians like Kuromiya continue to debate the meanings and motivations behind the documentation.

In addition, some documents were never declassified at all. Intelligence and military archives were hardly opened. And there were big gaps: Stalin’s personal library and archives were missing. But there was more than enough to show that Stalin personally oversaw the Great Terror of the late 1930s. This purge of the revolutionary generation of “Old Bolsheviks” and the mass murders of other real and/or imagined enemies of the state, including ethnic minorities like Poles, Germans, Greeks, Koreans, and Latvians, peaked in 1937-38. Loyalty from dictators is precarious, however, and Stalin himself ordered the death of his chief Terror executioner.

According to the paperwork, 328,618 people were sentenced to be shot in 1938. But the records “are incomplete and ambiguities remain.” Kuromiya writes, “many who were tortured to death, for instance, were almost certainly not included” in this terrible toll.

Stalin’s own daughter called him a “moral and spiritual monster.” Others said they were surprised by his “human touch” in negotiations, his voracious reading habits, and his love of the movies. Kuromiya argues that Stalin’s “charm and inhumanity” were not contradictory, but rather the source of his power. “He was a rare, and even unique, politician who literally lived by politics alone…He accepted the fact that he was like a Tsar and maintained that the Soviet people needed a Tsar.” Although Georgian by birth, Stalin also played up Russian nationalism and “laid the foundation for the emergence of naked Russian nationalism after his death.”

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Nina Khrushcheva, a grand-daughter of Nikita Khrushchev, finds plenty of evidence of Stalin nostalgia in the aftermath of the Soviet Union , despite the millions killed and imprisoned. She suggests that for about a third of Russians, the “demise of the Soviet political system and the breakup of the Soviet empire resulted in a truncated historical narrative, which carried with it the loss of national identity.”

Making Russia great again, like when Stalin was at the height of his power, is a touchstone of that identity. This is likely behind the success of the latest Tsar-wannabe, Vladimir Putin. And in the time since the archives were opened in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Russian state has clamped down on access again .

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Joseph Stalin: Childhood, Early Life, How He Came to Power Essay (Biography)

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The Union of the Soviet Socialists Republics (USSR) had many outstanding political figures. They include Trotsky, Lenin and Josef Stalin. USSR became a world super power under the leadership of Josef Stalin.The superiority of the USSR was attributed to their military stability, political, industrial powers and their flourishing economy. These were established through strategic plans laid by Stalin as he ascended to power after the death of Lenin in 1924.The paper will look at Josef Stalin’s childhood/early life, how he came to power, what he did that was significant, and how the world changed because of him. Also a brief look at what he did during WWII.

Joseph Stalin was born as Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili in Gori, 1878. During his early childhood, his face was permanently scarred after suffering from a small pox attack. Beside that, he permanently damaged his left hand as a result two accidents that happened to him. He enrolled at Georgian Orthodox Seminary through a scholarship unfortunately he did not complete the course because he could not afford the required school fees. This resulted to his being expelled after which, he was inspired by revolutionary writings of Vladimir Lenin. In 1903, his desire for politics was satisfied when he joined the Bolsheviks and became an advocate of Marxism, a movement through which he carried out revolutions i.e. robberies and extortions. These illegal activities led him to be imprisoned many times, he also lived in exile. While in exile in Baku, his wife Ekaterina died. He started a newspaper printing press and named it Pravda. He remained as an editor of the newspaper (Suny 17).

The Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War of 1917-1919 was major role that Stalin played. This ended in the victory for the Bolsheviks. As a matter of fact during the revolution Lenin escaped and went into exile thus creating room for Stalin to rise to power. He was elected to the Bolshevik Central Committee and became an appointee to hold the seat of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union’s Central Committee. This was after Georgia had been attacked by the Red Army. After the death of Lenin, Josef Stalin ascended to power. Stalin eliminated all his former allies who could cause a threat to his leadership and by the year 1928 he was unchallenged leader and none could dispute him in USSR.

In the year 1928 he initiated a rapid industrialization programme, forced collective agriculture and established a five –year plans for economic development. His legacy is commonly remembered especially concerning the means he used to come to power and clinging to power for a long period of time, 1924-1953.During that time many murders were committed using the secret police and intelligence agencies, imprisonment without trials as he once said “Kill one and you are a murderer, kill thousands and you are a legend” . Stalin murdered his political rival Trotsky who had gone in exile in Mexico in 1940 through the use of the secret police and intelligence police (Kanatchikov 42).

Stalin was an outstanding negotiator (Walker 14). During his political career, Stalin was able to act as a middle person and fostered understanding between several political powers. For instance, he was the front runner in ensuring that the USSR stayed as a block after the liberation given to them by the red army. It is true to argue that his single handed efforts, Stalin was able to ensure that the Eastern European countries remained within the powers of the Soviet Union. In addition, Stalin was able to negotiate with Adolf Hitler for a peaceful solution concerning Poland. In his proposition, he offered that the two countries divide Poland between themselves and stay peaceful. This proposition was accepted by Adolf Hitler who later went against his word and attacked the USSR. His negotiation power was also evidenced by his ability to secure three seats within the United Nations Council for his country. During this period, the United Nations was a newly formed organization. Considering that Stalin’s deepest desire was to see the world giving respect the USSR, his negotiation power was able to ensure that USSR had a permanent seat in the Security Council. True to his desire, the USSR was respected as one of the world’s super powers.

As the leader of the USSR Stalin launched a five –year economic development plan that was centralized. The agricultural sector was collectivized and plans for rapid industrial development programs came into force. The experiments that were carried out in the agricultural sector introduced rapid changes in social ladder in the country. Peasant farmers were alienated from their land and produce thus leading to a great resistance from the peasants. This agricultural experiment flopped causing rigorous food shortage that resulted into deaths due to hunger. As a result of these new policies, measures were put in place to restrict consumption by the people and the wealth of the rich peasants were nationalized through capital investment by the government of the USSR. These achievements were made during the first two year plan periods under the 5 year economic development plan (Kanatchikov 42).

Under his leadership Stalin can be remembered for administering and championing equal rights for women. The policies laid down catered for women to get access to education and sound health care. The women had equal job opportunities after completion of their education.Proper road and rail networks were improved in the transportation sector. Technical experts, which included women, ensured that industrial outfit of the country was good. The rate of development was thus enhanced (Suny 13).

One notable character of Stalin was his intolerance for enemies and opposition. During his time in power with the Bolsheviks, Stalin ensured that the leaders of the Lenin party were destroyed (Ginzburg 27). He used the term enemy of the people to ensure that all of them were killed. Although he started by ensuring that most of them were sent to exile, he realized later that their influence on the people even from Diaspora was still great. He devised methods that later put the old leaders to trial which led to most of the killings.

During the Second World War, Stalin was comfortably sure that he was safe from the hands of the Nazi. This made him relax and concentrate less on the events of the war. However, Hitler went against his word and attacked the USSR. As a result of his unpreparedness, Stalin faced great defeat at the hands of the Germans. As a reaction, he stayed locked in his office for a long period of time trying to absorb the shock. Though he later regrouped his army, it had cost him time and lives. In addition, Belarus and Ukraine were already under the German control (Tumarkin 33).

The world has Stalin to thank for his strong opposition of Nazi Germany in 1942. During this time, the German legions had marched forward with a soul objective of liquidating the Russian power. If they had succeeded, Adolf Hitler would have conquered the whole world. He would have become unstoppable. His Nazi ideologies and values would have been spread to the whole world. From Europe, Hitler would have conquered other continents. However, Stalin stopped this Hitler dream. Although he was ambushed unexpectedly at first, he managed to regroup and re-strategize his military and stopped German legions from sweeping past Stalingrad (Tumarkin 32).

After the death of Stalin in 1953 his predecessor undermined his policies. Thus new policies came into effect. Stalin is never championed as the world leader due to his violation of human rights through the use of secret police to thrash those that challenged his power.

Born a humble church going little child, Stalin will be remembered not only by Russians but the world as a whole for the role he played during the Second World War. For the people of the Soviet Union, it was Stalin’s effort that ensured that the eastern European countries remained under the Soviet Influence. In addition, his development plan ensured that the Soviet experienced an industrial revolution which saw the country acquire an industrial outlook and hence competitiveness. To the world, it was Stalin who stopped the German legions from extending their ideologies and conquest over the world. Hitler’s army was stopped from advancing further after experiencing defeat from Stalin. On the other hand, Stalin is known for his iron handed rule over the Soviet. He is known for his destruction of opposition. Despite this, it is true that he is one of the people to be remembered down history lane.

Works Cited

Ginzburg, Eugenia. Journey Into the Whirlwind . NY: Harbrace, 1967.

Kanatchikov, Semen. A Radical Worker in Tsarist Russia: The Autobiography of Semen Ivanovich Kanatchikov . Trans., ed. Reginald E. Zelnik. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986.

Tumarkin, Nina. Lenin Lives! The Lenin Cult in Soviet Russia . Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983.

Suny, Ronald Grigor. The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the USSR and the Successor States . NY: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Walker, Barbara. “On Reading Soviet Memoirs: A History of the ‘Contemporaries’ Genre As an Institution of Russian Intelligentsia Culture from the 1790s to the 1970s,” Russian Review 59(2000):327-52

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IvyPanda. (2022, January 5). Joseph Stalin: Childhood, Early Life, How He Came to Power. https://ivypanda.com/essays/history-of-josef-stalin/

"Joseph Stalin: Childhood, Early Life, How He Came to Power." IvyPanda , 5 Jan. 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/history-of-josef-stalin/.

IvyPanda . (2022) 'Joseph Stalin: Childhood, Early Life, How He Came to Power'. 5 January.

IvyPanda . 2022. "Joseph Stalin: Childhood, Early Life, How He Came to Power." January 5, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/history-of-josef-stalin/.

1. IvyPanda . "Joseph Stalin: Childhood, Early Life, How He Came to Power." January 5, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/history-of-josef-stalin/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Joseph Stalin: Childhood, Early Life, How He Came to Power." January 5, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/history-of-josef-stalin/.

The Cold War

Joseph stalin.

Stalin’s revolutionary career was a curious mix of activism, intellectualism and violence. His early contributions to the Bolshevik movement were raising funds through robbery, counterfeiting and extortion. Stalin was coarsely spoken, fond of swearing in his thick Georgian accent. He was also capable of thuggish violence, despite being short in stature (his height was 165 centimetres or five feet five inches). During this period Dzhugashvili began using several codenames, including one that stuck: Stalin (‘man of steel’). Stalin became a wanted man and was frequently arrested, exiled and imprisoned by tsarist authorities, only to escape. He was released from custody after the abdication of Russia’s Tsar Nicholas II in March 1917. Returning to the Russian capital Petrograd, Stalin became editor of Pravda , the Bolshevik party newspaper. When Lenin returned to Russia in April 1917, Stalin gave him loyal support. A second revolution in October 1917 swept Lenin and the Bolsheviks to power. Stalin participated in this uprising, though he did not have a significant role.

Between October 1917 and 1923, Stalin served in several roles in Lenin’s government, most notably as Commissar of Nationalities. In April 1922 Stalin was appointed general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). It was an apparently mundane position, responsible for organising party membership, but Stalin used it to his advantage. Manipulating appointments and duties, Stalin was able to accumulate allies and influence while weakening support for his rivals. When Lenin was crippled by a series of strokes in 1922, Stalin kept him housebound and at arm’s length from other party leaders, while Stalin further increased his own power. After Lenin’s death in January 1924 Stalin isolated his main rivals for the Soviet leadership, particularly Leon Trotsky . By the end of 1927, Stalin had become the de facto leader of the Soviet Union. His rivals were either expelled from the CPSU or, in Trotsky’s case, forced into exile.

In the late 1920s, Stalin adopted the first of several Five Year Plans. These economic programs were designed to transform the Soviet Union into an industrial, technological and military superpower. Among his reforms were the forced collectivisation of small peasant holdings into gigantic, state-run farms called kolkhozy . Stalin’s reforms achieved their industrial goals but this came at enormous human cost; between 10-15 million Russians died from famine in the first decade of his rule. Stalin was ruthless in pursuing and eliminating threats to his power, both real or imagined. At various points in his rule, he initiated purges of his own inner circle, the CPSU hierarchy and Soviet military commanders. Stalin maintained an extensive and powerful secret police called the NKVD, a forerunner to the KGB; he would turn the NKVD onto anyone who raised his suspicions. During Stalin’s rule, thousands of Soviet citizens were subjected to investigation, intimidation, denunciation, show trials, torture or deportation to gulags (forced labour camps) in Siberia. Thousands more simply vanished, never to be heard from again.

The West was well aware of Stalin’s dictatorial rule and the sufferings he inflicted on his own people. Many Western leaders loathed and feared Stalin as much as they did Adolf Hitler . This changed in June 1941, when Hitler’s sudden invasion of Russia forced the Allies to accept the Soviet Union as a wartime partner. The Soviet Red Army battled for almost four years to defeat the Nazis, a conflict Stalin labelled the Great Patriotic War. The Soviets lost around 11 million men in World War II, a cause not helped by Stalin’s brutal purges of experienced military officers in the 1930s. Despite these obstacles, the Red Army pushed the Nazis out of Soviet territory in mid-1944. By the first weeks of 1945 Soviet forces had liberated Hungary and were pushing into Poland; there they uncovered the Nazi death camps where millions of Jews had been slaughtered. Back home, Soviet state propaganda attributed these victories to the leadership and military genius of Stalin.

The uneasy alliance between Stalin and Western leaders fractured during the wartime conferences of 1945 . While some dreamed of a continued post-war relationship between the Soviet Union and the West, Stalin believed the Allies would turn against him, once Hitler had been defeated. His aim was to expand Soviet territory into eastern Europe, to create a buffer to protect Russia from the Western powers. At Yalta and Potsdam, Stalin gave assurances to Allied leaders that he had no intention of keeping, such as promising free elections in Poland and other Soviet-occupied countries. On Stalin’s orders, the Red Army remained in these countries longer than needed. Soviet agents and local groups ensured the rise of socialist governments in East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and elsewhere. The communist leaders who emerged in these countries often modelled themselves on Stalin’s leadership and implemented Stalinist policies. Meanwhile, Stalin pushed Soviet scientists to research and develop atomic weapons . This process was aided by information provided by Soviet spies working in the US government.

Stalin’s foreign policy became particularly belligerent in 1947-48. He refused the offer of American Marshall Plan aid and ordered that other Soviet bloc governments refuse it too. Stalin’s willingness to confront the West culminated in the Soviet blockade of western Berlin (June 1948-May 1949), a move considered the first major clash of the Cold War. Stalin’s foreign policy became less confrontational in 1949, due to the formation of NATO (April) and the first successful Soviet nuclear test (August). While Stalin maintained his anti-Western rhetoric and propaganda, he turned his attention to Asia, lending support to emerging socialist regimes in China and North Korea. Kim Il-sung’s invasion of South Korea (June 1950) was conducted with Stalin’s authorisation. In the West, Stalin became a figure of derision, a power-crazed dictator bent on expanding his empire while oppressing his own people. Stalin died in March 1953, four days after suffering a massive stroke. With no obvious successor, his death left the Soviet Union leaderless and the world uncertain about how the Cold War might evolve.

1. Joseph Stalin was the dictatorial leader of the Soviet Union, ruling from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953. His ideas and actions contributed to the unfolding Cold War.

2. Stalin’s origins were humble: he was born in Georgia, the son of a cobbler. After abandoning training for the priesthood he joined a socialist party led by Vladimir Lenin.

3. Stalin participated in the Russian Revolution of 1917, and in 1922 became general secretary of the Communist Party. This seemingly minor position allowed him to accumulate power.

4. After Lenin’s death, Stalin emerged as leader of the Soviet Union. Initially feared and detested in the West, he became a significant wartime ally after Nazi Germany invaded the USSR.

5. Paranoid about a Western attack on his country, Stalin sought to expand its territory at the end of World War II. This mistrust and expansionism, along with Stalin’s dishonest negotiation and belligerent rhetoric, laid the foundations for the Cold War.

Content on this page is © Alpha History 2018-23. This content may not be republished or distributed without permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use . This page was written by Jennifer Llewellyn and Steve Thompson. To reference this page, use the following citation: J. Llewellyn & S. Thompson, “Joseph Stalin”, Alpha History, accessed [today’s date], https://alphahistory.com/coldwar/joseph-stalin/.

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Great Terror

By: History.com Editors

Updated: October 4, 2022 | Original: March 15, 2018

The Great Terror of 1937, also known as the Great Purge, was a brutal political campaign led by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin to eliminate dissenting members of the Communist Party and anyone else he considered a threat. Although estimates vary, most experts believe at least 750,000 people were executed during the Great Terror, which started around 1936 and ended in 1938. More than a million survivors were sent to forced labor camps, known as Gulags. This ruthless and bloody operation caused rampant terror throughout the Soviet Union and impacted the country for many years.

WATCH:  Hitler and Stalin: Roots of Evil  on HISTORY Vault  

Motives for the Great Terror

Soviet Union leader Vladimir Lenin , head of the Bolshevik party, died in 1924. Stalin had to fight his way to political succession, but ultimately declared himself dictator in 1929.

Upon Stalin’s rise to power, some members of the former Bolshevik party began to question his authority. By the mid-1930s, Stalin believed anyone with ties to the Bolsheviks or Lenin’s government was a threat to his leadership and needed to go.

The exact motives for the Great Terror are endlessly debated among historians. Some claim the actions of Stalin were prompted by his desire to maintain authority as dictator. Others see it as his way to preserve, enhance and unify the Soviet Communist Party.

The rise of Nazi Party power in Germany and militarists in Japan also posed a great danger to the Soviet Union. Many experts believe these threats further encouraged Stalin to carry out his purge in an effort to unite and strengthen his country.

Sergei Kirov

The first event of the Great Terror took place in 1934 with the assassination of Sergei Kirov, a prominent Bolshevik leader.

Kirov was murdered at the Communist Party headquarters by a man named Leonid Nikolayev. Although his role is debated, many speculate that Stalin himself ordered the murder of Kirov.

After Kirov’s death, Stalin launched his purge, claiming that he had uncovered a dangerous conspiracy of anti-Stalinist Communists. The dictator began killing or imprisoning any suspected party dissenters, eventually eliminating all the original Bolsheviks who participated in the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Among those purged were opposing members of the Communist Party, government officials, army officers and any accomplices.

Moscow Trials

Kirov’s death led to three widely publicized trials that successfully wiped out many of Stalin’s political rivals and critics. Several former high-ranking Communists, including Lev Kamenev, Grigorii Zinoviev, Nikolai Bukharin and Aleksei Rykov, to name a few, were accused of treason.

The trials, which became known as the Moscow Trials, were clearly staged events. The accused admitted to being traitors and spies. Later, historians learned that the defendants agreed to these forced confessions only after being interrogated, threatened and tortured.

Meanwhile, the Soviet secret police, known as NKVD, conducted three-member committees in the field to decide whether killings of other anti-Soviets were justified. The accused were tried, found guilty on site and quickly executed.

WATCH: Joseph Stalin 

Fifth Column

Stalin used terms, such as “fifth column,” “enemy of the people” and “saboteurs” to describe those who were sought out during the Great Purge.

The killing and imprisonment started with members of the Bolshevik party, political officials and military members. Then the purge expanded to include peasants, ethnic minorities, artists, scientists, intellects, writers, foreigners and ordinary citizens. Essentially, no one was safe from danger.

Convinced they were plotting a coup, Stalin had 30,000 members of the Red Army executed. Historians estimate that 81 of the 103 generals and admirals were executed.

Stalin also signed a decree that made families liable for the crimes committed by a husband or father. This meant that children as young as 12 could be executed.

In all, about one-third of the Communist Party’s 3 million members were purged.

Gulag Labor Camps

There’s no doubt the brutal tactics of Stalin paralyzed the country and promoted a climate of widespread terror.

Some victims claimed they would rather have been killed than sent to endure the torturous conditions at the infamous Gulag labor camps. Many who were sent to the Gulag camps were ultimately executed.

Although most historians estimate that at least 750,000 people were killed during the Great Purge, there’s debate over whether this number should be much higher. Some experts believe the true death figure is at least twice as high.

Because many people simply vanished, and killings were often covered up, an exact death toll is impossible to determine. To further complicate the matter, prisoners in the labor camps commonly died of exhaustion, disease or starvation.

Leon Trotsky

The Great Terror officially ended around 1938, but many believe Stalin wasn’t truly finished until his long-time rival Leon Trotsky was eliminated.

Trotsky was sentenced to death in absentia during the Moscow Trials. Living in exile in Mexico , Trotsky was assassinated in 1940 with an ice pick by a Spanish communist.

Even after this assassination, mass murders, arrests and exiles continued until Stalin’s death in 1953. During World War II , Stalin was responsible for the executions of war prisoners and traitors, especially Polish nationals.

Legacy of the Great Terror

Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev , condemned the cruel violence of the Great Terror. In a 1956 secret speech, Khrushchev called the purges “an abuse of power” and acknowledged that many of the victims were, in fact, innocent.

Stalin’s acts of terror and torture broke the Soviet people’s spirit and effectively eliminated certain groups of citizens, such as intellectuals, scientists and artists. His reign as dictator also made his people completely dependent on the state.

Surprisingly, the legacy of the Great Terror, and Stalin himself, is lined with mixed reactions. While most Russians regard the event as a horrific incident in history, others believe Stalin helped strengthen and propel the Soviet Union to greatness, despite his murderous, barbaric tactics.

READ MORE:  How Photos Became a Weapon in Stalin's Great Purge

The Great Terror. Seventeen Moments in Soviet History. Michigan State University . Stalin’s Great Purge: Over A Million Detained, More Than Half A Million Killed, War History Online . New research reveals misconceptions about Joseph Stalin and his “Great Purge,” Business Insider . Sentenced to Death in Stalin’s Great Purge, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty . The Great Terror: Seventy Years Later, Stalin’s Image Softening, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty .

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Stalin: "Bad But Brilliant"

Robert Service reconsiders Norman Pereira's revisionist account of Stalin's pursuit of power in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, first published in History Today in 1992.

Norman Pereira’s essay on Stalin’s rise to power in the USSR was a cautious attempt to challenge consensus. From the 1930s onwards, under the influence of Trotsky’s autobiography, even most anti-Communists subscribed to a condescending analysis of how Stalin had won the struggle against his great rival.

The generally agreed picture was simple. Stalin was ill-educated, unintellectual and uninterested in ideas. He was an arch-bureaucrat who put together a coalition of party secretaries who had no truly revolutionary intent and were preoccupied by a concern for bureaucratic privilege.By putting himself forward as their spokesman he transformed the Soviet Union into a state whose nature was at odds with the one that Lenin and Trotsky had in mind in the years after the October 1917 Revolution.

This consensual analysis was impossible to substantiate, but it had a wide following among historians and political scientists despite the several bricks pulled out of the wall since the late 1970s, when many long-standing features of conventional historiography came under attack.

Pereira expressed unease about how Stalin had been portrayed. He gave emphasis to the lengthy and impressive leading role played before the First World War when the general secretary had been entrusted with important duties in the Bolshevik faction. He noted that Lenin had recognised Stalin’s talent after 1917; Stalin was people’s commissar of nationalities affairs, served as a political commissar on several military fronts and joined the earliest permanent politburo. Pereira highlights the careful improvement in Stalin’s skills as an orator in the two decades after the revolution.

Using one of the books he cited, he could have gone further. Robert Tucker’s biography of Stalin, published in 1973, introduced the idea that Stalin was no mere administrator but a talented leader who could quickly make up his mind about policy and assemble a dynamic political team to carry it out. The fact that his factional adversaries – Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin – denied this said more about their ineptitude and condescension than about Stalin.

Perhaps, though, even Tucker held back from a radical revision of the politics of the 1920s. In trying to account for Stalin’s campaign for dominance he turned to psychoanalysis, speculating that the general secretary had a subconscious son-father obsession with Lenin. Once Lenin had died, Stalin supposedly engaged in an attempt to prove that he was as least as great a revolutionary hero. Tucker saw the so-called second revolution of 1928 as Stalin’s bid to demonstrate that he could modernise the USSR by casting aside the New Economic Policy. In so far as Stalin had a personal ideology, he supposedly was permanently transfixed by the objective of building ‘socialism in a single country’ and steadily mutated into a Russian nationalist leader.

Increasingly it is asked whether this interpretation withstands scrutiny. One of the problems is what might be called the ‘Bolshevism question’. Even before the documentary revelations of the late 1980s under Mikhail Gorbachev, there was convincing evidence that the Bolshevik leaders agreed about fundamental aspects of the Soviet order more than they disagreed. Once the Central Committee and Politburo records started to become accessible, this standpoint became widely accepted. Factional strife certainly divided Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Stalin and Bukharin. But they concurred about dictatorship, the one-party state, revolutionary justice and the ultimate need for comprehensive state control of the economy.

It is also more widely recognised, I hope, that not even Stalin thought it possible for the USSR to exist as the solitary anti-capitalist state forever. Even he had expansionist ambitions. The difference between him and the rest of the Politburo in the 1920s was of a practical nature. Stalin frequently judged that Europe was not yet ‘ripe’ for revolution. Nevertheless he kept looking for chances to expand Communism beyond the Soviet frontiers, as he showed when he invaded Finland and the Baltic States in 1939- 40 and when the Soviets occupied Eastern Europe in the late 1940s.

From its early years the Politburo had to decide a huge range of external and internal policies. Its remit covered politics, security, international subversion, culture, economics, ideology, diplomacy and the military. Stalin was a mass terrorist with a gross personality disorder. It is a pity that he ever lived. But he was able to do what he did because he was also a leader of exceptional talent.

- Read the full text of Stalin and the Communist Party in the 1920s .

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How did stalin use propaganda and terror to remain in power.

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Credit: Brian Ronayne.

This is a really good essay, and I don’t have much to add really. It’s a good length, answers the question well and is full of relevant information and quotation. The one thing I would say is that in the introduction, it’d probably be better to avoiding using “I” and to instead say something like “this essay aims to show.. “. I would also recommend removing the (1), (2), (3), (4) from the breakdown of the essay in the introduction as it breaks the flow of the paragraph. Otherwise this is a great essay that reads like a historical piece of writing.

Throughout his reign as leader and dictator of Russia, Joseph Stalin employed the use of both propaganda & terror to consolidate his power.

He used propaganda, the art of spreading information to convince people of a particular point of view, to indoctrinate Russian citizens and to influence them to support and even worship him. Terror’s purpose was to rid Russia of any of Stalin’s opponents and to force loyalty to Russia’s “Man of Steel”.

In this essay, I will examine how the ruthless dictator used propaganda to (1) create a cult of personality and (2) to promote the 5-Year Plans; and how he used terror, in the form of the (3) NKVD and the (4) Show Trials, to remove all opponents & solidify his power.

Stalin made effective use of propaganda to create a cult of personality for himself. To achieve this, statues of him were erected in every town & village. Posters & photographs of him were placed extensively. Streets & cities were renamed after him. The arts – music, poetry, art – were used to glorify him. Stalin became so ubiquitous in everyday life that people were easily indoctrinated. He was portrayed as a god-like figure and this influenced people to worship him almost religiously.

Teachers were forced to teach children to worship Stalin as the “fount of all wisdom”. History books were re-written to exaggerate his role in the 1917 October Revolution while any enemies who posed a threat to his power, such as military leader Leon Trotsky, were removed from history. The media was cleverly manipulated to promote Stalin as a great leader. Radios, loudspeakers & newspapers were used to share his message with the masses. Meanwhile, by stage-managing predecessor Lenin’s funeral, he was viewed as Lenin’s “truest comrade in arms”. This was a defining example of how he used the cult of Lenin, an extremely powerful leader who had brought Russia out of the turmoil of WWI, to further his own agenda. To conclude, the use of propaganda was successful in creating a cult of personality for the merciless Stalin. To many Russians, he became the fabric of Russian life. In turn, this meant that his policies were unchallenged by the majority, meaning that he had consolidated his power.

However, to heavily influence citizens to adhere to his policies, Stalin once again used propaganda as a tool. In particular, propaganda played a pivotal role in the promotion of his ambitious industrial 5-Year Plans which sought to transform Russia from a heavily agricultural-dependent country to a booming, industrial world power. Stalin made use of powerful rhetoric to convince people that he was acting for their good. He constantly claimed,

“We are 50 to 100 years behind the advanced countries. Either we make good this difference in 10 years or they will crush us.”

These powerful speeches persuaded the population that Stalin’s leadership would bring great benefits to them, unlike the leadership of Tsar Nicholas II & the Provisional Government who inflicted both economic & social hardship on ordinary citizens by their decision to have Russia participate in WWI. Stalin’s power was secure as the people were on his side. Propaganda was used to push people to their productivity limit. The myth of Stakhanov – Russia’s “greatest miner” — was used to do this. He supposedly mined 100 tons of coal in 6hrs. Therefore, people worked tirelessly to meet and even exceed targets to be viewed as a hero by Stalin. He labelled those who opposed industrialisation & those who failed to reach targets “wreckers”, “saboteurs” & “enemies of the state”.

This was successful as it ensured the success of the 5-Year Plans, turned workers against opponents of the Communist Regime, thus keeping Stalin in power.

In addition to propaganda, Stalin consistently used terror as a power consolidation tactic. Terror was used to inflict a sense of fear upon the population & to encourage loyalty to him. The Great Terror of the 1930s was a period of unprecedented cruelty directed at all levels of society. The historian Orlando Figes estimates that 1,500 people were shot each day at the height of the Terror in 1937-38 (Source: “Revolutionary Russia”, 2014, Penguin Books).

During the Terror, sparked by the murder of Leningrad Communist leader Kirov, the NKVD (secret police) brutally dealt with any opponents or even suspected opponents of Stalin. This showed the extent of Stalin’s paranoia. Members of this police force were anonymous and therefore people feared that they were surrounded by them. It was common for parents and siblings to turn each other into the NKVD, which illustrates the extent to which citizens were terrified, proving Stalin’s use of terror to be effective. Even NKVD members were afraid of falling victim themselves or facing punishment if they failed to reach the arrest quota. Yezhov, the head of the NKVD said, “Better too far than not far enough. If an extra thousand people will be shot, that is not such a big deal”.

Many suspects were sent to gulags (labour camps) where they faced long working hours to contribute to industrialisation. The largest gulag was Kolyma which was 6x the size of France, showing how large-scale Stalin’s terror was. The Terror was essentially a social holocaust which tightened Stalin’s hold over Russia.

Finally, Stalin combined both propaganda and terror to consolidate his power in the Show Trials of 1936-38 which were the centre-piece of the Terror. Before the Trials began, Stalin ensured that an atmosphere of superstition pervaded Russia, constantly claiming that spies & traitors were trying to hinder Russia’s progress. This essentially deflected the blame of collectivisation failure from him. Soviet newspapers contained details of the charges brought against the defendants. The Trials were attended by foreign journalists. This brought communism to the world stage. This was the element of propaganda associated with the Trials.

The terror element saw the accused & their families being tortured by the NKVD until the defendant agreed to confess to the crimes using a pre-prepared script. Among the accusations were plotting against Stalin, attempted murder, conspiracy & espionage. The Trials were highly successful both domestically & internationally. They brought the success of the communist regime to the world’s attention. Domestically, no-one remained to challenge Stalin’s power. Only two of the original 15-man government remained – Stalin and the exiled Trotsky. Stalin had more power over Russia than he had ever had.

In conclusion, Stalin “acted not through persuasion, explanation, and patient co-operation with people, but by imposing his concepts & demanding absolute submission to his opinion” to consolidate his power. (Khrushchev, successor). Stalin was a mastermind of propaganda and terror, a trait which kept him in power for almost 3 decades.

Another essay by the same title, marked 72/100. Credit: Shaun McBride

Stalin came into power after Lenin’s death in 1924. Lenin the previous leader suffered strokes in 1922 and 1923. After Lenin’s death in Jan 1924, there was a power struggle within the Politburo. This was the communist parliament. Stalin teamed up with Kamenev and Zinoviev. They believed communism should first be established in Russia first and than the world. They faced off Trotsky. Trotsky was a popular figure, he was the commissioner of war and lead the Reds to victory against the Whites during the Russian civil war. Trotsky also believed in the global rise of workers. Trotsky also held other prominent roles like the minister of foreign affairs. This made Trotsky an experienced and powerful figure.

Stalin was able to take advantage of position as general secretary of the party. He was able to appoint his supporters to powerful positions in the party. He also took advantage of Kamenev and Zinoviev. Prior to Lenin’s death he wrote a letter warning people about Stalin. With Kamenev and Zinovievs help he was to prevent it from becoming public and damaging his image. The letter also criticised Trotsky as being egotistical and overconfident. Stalin also took advantage of mistakes made by Trotsky. Trotsky opposed the New Economic Policies (NEP) which made him unpopular with the Kulaks. The Kulaks were the rich peasant class who prospered due to the NEPs. Stalin however supported the NEPs. Trotsky was also unable to attend Lenin’s funeral. Stalin took this opportunity to present himself as Lenin’s right hand man and successor. He also crated a cult of Lenin, which painted him as a savior. This was Stalin’s earliest use of propaganda.

When Stalin when gained enough power he betrayed Kamenev and Zinoviev and allied himself with Bukharin, editor of the Pravda, the communist newspaper. He voted Kamenev, Zinoviev and Trotsky out of the party. In 1931 he also exiled Trotsky from Russia. This was because Trotsky was his biggest threat.

In 1933 Stalin introduced three, five year plans. To allow a fast growth of industrialisation. He also introduced collectivism to feed these industrial cities. Collectivism brought all farms under government control, creating large collective farms. This upset many Kulaks who refused to cooperate. Stalin ordered the to have wiped out. Three to five million were shot or sent to gulags. This was known as the great purge.

In Dec 1934, Kirov head of the communist party in Leningrad was assassinated. Many historians believe that this was Stalin’s doing. After Kirov’s death, 13 close colleagues were shot in connection to his death 100 unconnected were also shot. This was Stalin’s way of consolidating power early on. Stalin than used his death to imprison key figures inside the party and put them on trial. These would be know as then Show Trials.

The first show trial began in 1936 and was known as the Trail of the Sixteen. Kamenev and Zinoviev were put on trial alongside 14 others. They were charged with the death of Kirov and plotting to assassinate Stalin. The NKVD, Stalin’s secret police and led by Yogoda tortured the accused to make them confess. Kamenev was the first to break after the NKVD threatened to harm his children. Zinoviev quickly confessed after learning Kamenev had. They were forced to learn off lines in their confession. The next day they were taken to court and confessed. Vishinsky the Judge said “I demand each one of these mad dogs be shot – every last one”. All 16 were found guilty and were shot the next morning.

The second trial took place in 1937 and was called the Trial of the Seventeen. Radek, Pytakov were put on trial alongside 15 others. Radek contributed to the drafting of the Soviet constitution and Pytakov was deputy of heavy industry and the 5 year plans. They were described as being members as members of the anti soviet trotskyite centre, and were charged with conspiring with the Japs and Germans and impairing industry. After they confessed after torture they were found guilty. |13 were shot including Pytakov and 3 were sent to Gulags. Radek was one of the 3 and later died there in the hands of the NKVD.

The third show trial was the Trial of the 21 or the Great Show Trial, in 1938. Here Bukharin, Rykov and Yagoda were put on trial. They were charged with conspiring with germans and damaging the economy. The real reason was that they were part of Lenin’s cabinet and last of the old bolchevicks. The show trial was also used to get rid of evidence, Yagoda was NKVD and knew as much as Stalin about them. He was replaced by Yezhov as head of the NKVD. After they all confessed they were found and shot.

Stalin kept a close eye on the show trials to make them seem legal and fair. He invited international observers to legitimise this. The show trials were also used to push off the blame of the shortcomings of the 5 year plans.The 5 year plans replaced the NEPs. However they did not meet their targets. Yagoda was blamed with this in the second show trial. There were 3 5 year plans. The first between 1928 and 1932. This focused on industry. The second plan (1933 to 38) focused on steelworks and the construction of many transport links in Russia like the Moscow Metro. The final one (1938 to 41) was cut short due to operation barbarossa , the German invasion of Russia in 1941. Stalin was able to turn a mainly agricultural country into an industrial powerhouse through these plans.

Stalin also had a secret purge in his army in which 35,000 officers were jailed or shot. This prevented a coup from the army if the need ever arose. Stalin was also able to buy time by signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, which was a non aggression pact with Germany in 1939. This allowed Stalin to rebuild his army and Russia split Poland with Germany. This allowed Russia to take back land it lost in the Treaty of Riga in 1921. Stalin also used this as propaganda in Russia at the time.

Stalin also introduced a cult of Stalin. Here he used propaganda through daily life and education to paint himself as a god and above Lenin.

Stalin was effective in his use of terror and propaganda. Through the this he was able to rule to his death in 1952. He also made sure all loose ends were tied. This was seen in the show trials. It could also be seen with Trotsky’s assassination in Mexico by a NKVD agent in his office at his home.The show trials were also an extremely effective use of propaganda and terror as it was seen as fair. It also eliminated any opposition to Stalin.

Feedback : This essay answers the question, but you could be more direct in addressing the question – in every paragraph you should clearly say how the information you’ve mentioned helped Stalin to maintain power. Try to use some quotations from historians or historical figures to further prove your points. The essay is a good length with plenty of good-length paragraphs. The 2 sentences just before the conclusion wouldn’t count as a paragraph, so try to flesh out this point some more to make it count. Make sure in the exam to spell out months and numbers under 100 fully (apart from years).

Cumulative mark: This would probably get about 50/60 for its cumulative mark – if you added a stronger analysis in each paragraph, or fleshed out that last paragraph, you could bring this up to 60.

Overall evaluation : For overall evaluation, this would get about 22/40 – this is a good mark, but you can bring it up by making your commentary clearer and linking your paragraphs back to the question regularly.

Total : 72/100

• Post author: Martina
• Post published: November 1, 2018
• Post category: #625Lab History / History

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Essays on Joseph Stalin

When it comes to writing an essay on Joseph Stalin, there are a multitude of topics to choose from. Stalin's impact on the Soviet Union, his rise to power, his policies and their effects, and his legacy are all rich subjects for exploration. In this essay, we will delve into the various options for writing about Joseph Stalin and how to choose the best topic for your essay.

One of the most popular topics for an essay on Joseph Stalin is his impact on the Soviet Union. Stalin's rule had a profound effect on the country, and there are countless aspects of his impact to explore. For example, you could write about Stalin's economic policies and their impact on the Soviet economy. You could also explore his social policies and their effects on the people of the Soviet Union. Additionally, Stalin's impact on the military and foreign policy of the Soviet Union is another rich topic for investigation.

Another popular topic for an essay on Joseph Stalin is his rise to power. Stalin's path to becoming the leader of the Soviet Union was marked by intrigue, manipulation, and ruthless ambition. You could write about Stalin's early life and how it shaped his character and ambitions. You could also explore the various political maneuvers and power struggles that allowed Stalin to rise to the top of the Soviet hierarchy. Additionally, you could examine the role of propaganda and personality cult in Stalin's rise to power.

Stalin's policies and their effects are also a rich topic for an essay. Stalin's rule was marked by a series of policies that profoundly affected the Soviet Union and its people. You could write about Stalin's collectivization of agriculture and its impact on the peasantry. You could also explore his industrialization policies and their effects on the Soviet economy. Additionally, Stalin's purges and repression of dissent are another important aspect of his policies to consider.

Finally, Stalin's legacy is a compelling topic for an essay. Stalin's rule had a lasting impact on the Soviet Union and the world, and his legacy continues to be a subject of debate and controversy. You could write about the lasting effects of Stalin's rule on the Soviet Union and its people. You could also explore the ways in which Stalin's legacy continues to shape Russia and its politics today. Additionally, you could examine the various ways in which Stalin's legacy is remembered and memorialized, both in Russia and around the world.

When choosing a topic for your essay on Joseph Stalin, it's important to consider your own interests and expertise, as well as the scope and requirements of the assignment. If you have a particular interest in Soviet history, you may want to focus on Stalin's impact on the Soviet Union. If you are more interested in political history, you may want to explore Stalin's rise to power. If you are interested in social history, you may want to write about Stalin's policies and their effects. And if you are interested in the lasting impact of historical figures, you may want to explore Stalin's legacy.

It's also important to consider the scope of the assignment when choosing a topic. If you have a limited word count or a specific prompt to address, you may need to narrow your focus to a specific aspect of Stalin's rule. For example, if you only have 1000 words to work with, you may want to focus on a specific policy or event from Stalin's rule, rather than trying to cover his entire impact on the Soviet Union.

In addition to considering your own interests and the scope of the assignment, it's also important to consider the availability of sources and research materials when choosing a topic. If you have access to a wealth of primary sources or scholarly articles on a particular aspect of Stalin's rule, you may want to focus on that topic. Conversely, if you are having trouble finding sources on a particular aspect of Stalin's rule, you may want to consider a different topic that is better supported by available research materials.

There are a multitude of topics to choose from when writing an essay on Joseph Stalin. Whether you are interested in his impact on the Soviet Union, his rise to power, his policies and their effects, or his legacy, there are rich subjects for exploration. When choosing a topic, it's important to consider your own interests and expertise, as well as the scope and requirements of the assignment. By considering these factors, you can choose the best topic for your essay on Joseph Stalin and produce a compelling and well-researched piece of writing.

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The Struggle for Power Between Stalin and Trotsky

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December 6, 1878

March 5, 1953 (aged 74)

Prime minister (1941-1953), Soviet Union

Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party

Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili was born in the Russian peasant village of Gori, Georgia on December 18, 1879. Stalin's mother, a devout Russian Orthodox Christian, wanted him to become a priest. In October 1899, Stalin began work as a meteorologist at the Tiflis observatory. In 1901, he joined the Social Democratic Labor Party.

Between April 1902 and March 1913, Dzhugashvili was seven times arrested for revolutionary activity. In February 1917, the Russian Revolution began and the revolution was complete and the Bolsheviks were in control. The Soviet Union was founded in 1922, with Lenin as its first leader. In 1922 Stalin became secretary general of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Lenin died in 1924, and by the late 1920s, Stalin had become dictator of the Soviet Union.

Joseph Stalin launched industrialization under a succession of five-year plans. His development plan included the forced collectivization of Soviet agriculture. Collectivization caused a great famine in Ukraine. During these years, about 10 million peasants may have perished through Stalin’s policies.

The Great Purge, or the “Great Terror,” was Stalin' brutal political campaign, in purpose to eliminate dissenting members of the Communist Party. Between 1936 and 1938, at least 750,000 people were executed during the Great Purge.

In June 1941, Germany invaded the USSR, making significant early inroads. As Stalin had ignored warnings about potential invasion, the Soviets were not prepared for war. The Battle of Stalingrad and the Battle of Kursk were won by the Soviet Army under Stalin’s supreme direction. Soon, the Soviet Army was liberating countries in Eastern Europe.

Stalin strengthened and stabilised the Soviet Union. He transformed the Soviet Union into a major industrial world power,

On 1 March 1953, Stalin had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. He died on March 5, 1953, at age 74, and his body was embalmed and preserved in Lenin’s mausoleum in Moscow’s Red Square until 1961.

"A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic." "Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything." "Education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed."

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Joseph Stalin’ Show Trials: A Short Summary

Joseph Stalin’s show trials were common during his political repressions, such as the Moscow Trials of the Great Purge period (1937–38). The Soviet authorities staged the actual trials meticulously.

The trials were held against Stalin’s political enemies, such as the Trotskyists and those involved with the Right Opposition of the Communist Party. The trials were shams that led to the execution of most defendants. Every surviving member of the Lenin-era part was tried, and almost every important Bolshevik from the Revolution was executed. Over 1,100 delegates to the party congress in 1934 were arrested.  The killings were part of Stalin’s Great Purge, in which opportunists and Bolshevik cadres from the time of the Russian Revolution who could rally opposition to Joseph Stalin were killed. He did so at a time of growing discontent in the 1930s for his mismanagement of the Soviet economy, leading to mass famines during periods of rapid and poorly executed industrialization and farm collectivization.

Prominent Americans could even be found to defend Stalin show trials, a spectacle of political theater so transparent that it would have taken genuine effort not to see through it. In order to terrorize Communist Party members into absolute submission and at the same time eliminate potential rivals, Stalin put on a series of high-profile trials in which prominent Communists confessed to treachery against the Soviet Union. In some cases, people were coaxed into making these confessions by threats against their families if they refused. One by one some of the most loyal Communists , dating back to the days of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, solemnly admitted to counterrevolutionary activity. George Orwell could hardly have improved on this eerie and macabre spectacle.

Yet there were those on the American Left who supported Stalin and vouched for the authenticity of the trials. In 1938, some 150 Americans prominent in the entertainment industry signed a statement in support of the verdicts reached in “the recent Moscow trials.” According to the expert opinion of these Broadway stars and assorted glitterati, the trials had “by sheer weight of evidence established a clear presumption of the guilt of the defendants.” As if this weren’t bad enough, people who knew better said the same thing. The U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, Joseph Davies , insisted to the American government that the trials were genuine, a claim he stood by in his 1941 book Mission to Moscow. He told the New Republic, “We see no reason to take the trial at other than its face value.” The proceedings, he said, had uncovered the “virus of a conspiracy to overthrow the [Soviet] government.” Duranty, for his part, described it as “unthinkable” that Stalin could have sentenced his friends to death “unless the proofs of guilt were overwhelming,” and wrote of his conviction that “the confessions are true.”A

After Stalin’s death, Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev repudiated the trials in a speech to the Twentieth Congress of the Russian Communist Party:

The commission has become acquainted with a large quantity of materials in the NKVD archives and with other documents and has established many facts pertaining to the fabrication of cases against Communists, to glaring abuses of Socialist legality which resulted in the death of innocent people. It became apparent that many party, Government and economic activists who were branded in 1937–38 as ‘enemies,’ were actually never enemies, spies, wreckers, etc., but were always honest Communists … They were only so stigmatized and often, no longer able to bear barbaric tortures, they charged themselves (at the order of the investigative judges – falsifiers) with all kinds of grave and unlikely crimes.

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Russia & the Soviet Union 1917–1941 Essay (Georgia Morrison)

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TO WHAT EXTENT WAS SOCIAL AND CULTURAL LIFE IN THE SOVIET UNION TRANSFORMED UNDER STALIN’S RULE? Intro: Stalin’s rule utterly transformed the entirety of the Soviet Union through strictly regimenting every facet of Soviet life in accordance with the ideals of the Communist Party and Stalin himself. Stalin’s rule did face some minor limitations in terms of irreversibly transforming the Soviet Union, however these limitations were mostly intangible due to Stalin’s immense successes in depriving Soviet society of freedom and controlling every aspect of their behaviour. Stalin swiftly eradicated all improvements made for women under Lenin’s rule, while also creating the revolutionary Komsomol, which transformed youth culture in Russia irreversibly. Stalinism also uprooted Soviet culture and religion, gradually removing all influence on Soviet people until Stalin was the sole form of authority in Russia. Stalin’s implementation of censorship and the regulation of art in Soviet society also contributed to its profound transformation. Despite the considerable transformation evident, each facet of social and cultural life faced its own limitations in terms of total radicalisation. Stalinism profoundly transformed Russia, rigidly dictating all facets of cultural and social life, however Stalin did face measurable limitations.

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How to write an essay about Stalin’s Five Year Plans

How to write an essay on stalin’s five year plans: a comprehensive guide.

Stalin’s Five Year Plans were a series of centralized economic plans implemented in the Soviet Union from 1928 to 1932. These plans aimed to transform the Soviet Union from an agricultural society into an industrialized nation through rapid industrialization and collectivization of agriculture. The plans were characterized by ambitious production targets, strict state control, and the use of forced labor.

Writing an essay on Stalin’s Five Year Plans can be a challenging task, but with the right approach, it can be a rewarding experience. To begin with, it is important to understand the historical context in which the plans were implemented and the impact they had on the Soviet Union and its people. This requires a thorough analysis of primary and secondary sources, including government documents, speeches, and scholarly articles.

Moreover, a successful essay on Stalin’s Five Year Plans should also address the controversies and debates surrounding the plans. While some historians argue that the plans were necessary for the Soviet Union’s survival and modernization, others criticize the plans for their human cost and inefficiencies. By examining multiple perspectives and sources, a well-crafted essay can provide a nuanced understanding of this complex historical topic.

Section 2: Historical Background

Joseph Stalin was the leader of the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He was known for his strong leadership and his desire to modernize the Soviet Union. Stalin believed that the Soviet Union needed to catch up with the industrialized Western countries in order to protect itself from foreign threats.

In order to achieve this goal, Stalin introduced a series of Five Year Plans. These plans were designed to rapidly industrialize the Soviet Union and transform it from an agricultural society into an industrial powerhouse. The first Five Year Plan was launched in 1928 and focused on heavy industry, such as steel production and coal mining.

The Soviet Union had a long way to go to catch up with the industrialized nations of the West. The country had been devastated by World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the subsequent civil war. The economy was in shambles, and the country was facing widespread famine and poverty. Stalin’s Five Year Plans were seen as a way to modernize the country and improve the lives of its citizens.

However, the Five Year Plans were not without their drawbacks. The rapid industrialization came at a great cost to the people of the Soviet Union. Workers were forced to work long hours in dangerous conditions for low pay. Many were sent to labor camps or executed for failing to meet production quotas. The agricultural sector suffered as resources were diverted to heavy industry, leading to widespread famine and starvation.

Despite these drawbacks, the Five Year Plans were largely successful in achieving their goal of modernizing the Soviet Union. By the end of the Second World War, the Soviet Union had become a major industrial power, with a strong military and a growing economy. The legacy of Stalin’s Five Year Plans can still be seen in modern-day Russia, where heavy industry continues to play a major role in the country’s economy.

Overview of Stalin’s Five Year Plans

Stalin’s Five Year Plans were a series of centralized economic plans in the Soviet Union from 1928 to 1932. The main objective of these plans was to rapidly industrialize the country and modernize the economy. The first Five Year Plan focused on heavy industry, such as steel, coal, and machinery production, while subsequent plans emphasized the development of consumer goods and agriculture.

The Five Year Plans were implemented through a series of strict quotas and targets that were set by the government. These targets were often unrealistic and led to a number of negative consequences, including widespread famine, labor shortages, and poor working conditions. However, the plans also led to significant advancements in Soviet industry, particularly in the production of heavy machinery and steel.

The Five Year Plans were accompanied by a number of political changes, including the elimination of private enterprise and the collectivization of agriculture. These policies were often enforced through violent means, such as the forced relocation of peasants and the execution of political dissidents.

Despite the significant human cost of the Five Year Plans, they are often credited with transforming the Soviet Union from an agricultural society into an industrial powerhouse. The plans laid the groundwork for the country’s rapid industrialization during World War II and its subsequent emergence as a superpower during the Cold War.

Key Features of Stalin’s Five Year Plans

The Five Year Plans were a series of centralized economic plans in the Soviet Union, created under the leadership of Joseph Stalin. The first plan was launched in 1928 and the last one ended in 1952. These plans were designed to transform the Soviet Union from an agricultural country into an industrial powerhouse.

The key features of Stalin’s Five Year Plans are:

• Centralized Planning:  The Soviet government controlled all economic decisions, and the plans were created by a central planning agency. The government set targets for production, and factories were required to meet these targets.
• Industrialization:  The main goal of the Five Year Plans was to rapidly industrialize the Soviet Union. This was achieved through the construction of new factories, power plants, and transportation infrastructure.
• Collectivization:  The government forced farmers to give up their private land and join collective farms. This was done to increase agricultural productivity and provide a source of food for the growing urban population.
• Heavy Industry:  The Five Year Plans focused on the development of heavy industry, such as steel production and machine building. This was seen as essential for the modernization of the Soviet economy.
• Rapid Growth:  The Soviet Union experienced rapid economic growth during the Five Year Plans, with industrial production increasing by over 250% between 1928 and 1937.

Despite the successes of the Five Year Plans, there were also significant costs. The forced collectivization of agriculture led to widespread famine and the deaths of millions of people. The focus on heavy industry also meant that consumer goods were in short supply, and living standards for ordinary people were often low.

Writing the Essay: Tips and Strategies

When writing an essay about Stalin’s Five Year Plans, it is important to keep in mind the purpose of the essay. The purpose is to analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of the Five Year Plans in achieving their goals, and to provide evidence to support your arguments.

One tip for writing a successful essay is to start with a clear thesis statement. The thesis statement should clearly state your argument and provide a roadmap for the rest of the essay. It should be specific and concise, and should be supported by evidence from primary and secondary sources.

Another strategy for writing a successful essay is to organize your ideas into a logical structure. This can be done by creating an outline or a mind map, which will help you to identify the main points of your argument and how they relate to each other. You can then use this structure to guide the writing process, ensuring that each paragraph and section of the essay contributes to the overall argument.

When writing the essay, it is important to use evidence to support your arguments. This can include statistics, quotes from primary sources, and analysis of secondary sources. It is also important to acknowledge and address counterarguments, as this will demonstrate that you have considered multiple perspectives and have a nuanced understanding of the topic.

Finally, it is important to proofread and edit your essay carefully. This will ensure that the essay is free from errors and is presented in a clear and concise manner. You can also ask a friend or family member to read over your essay and provide feedback, as this can help you to identify areas for improvement and refine your argument.

Sample Outline for an Essay on Stalin’s Five Year Plans

When writing an essay on Stalin’s Five Year Plans, it’s important to have a clear and well-organized outline. This will help you stay focused and ensure that your essay is coherent and easy to follow. Here is a sample outline to get you started:

I. Introduction

• Brief overview of Stalin’s Five Year Plans
• Thesis statement

II. Background Information

• Historical context and political climate in Soviet Union during the time of the Five Year Plans
• Overview of the economic conditions in the Soviet Union before the implementation of the Five Year Plans

III. Implementation of the Five Year Plans

• Overview of the first, second, and third Five Year Plans
• Details on the specific goals and targets of each plan
• Discussion on the methods used to achieve these goals, including collectivization and industrialization

IV. Impact of the Five Year Plans

• Economic outcomes of the Five Year Plans, including improvements in industrial production and agricultural output
• Social impacts of the Five Year Plans, including changes in living standards and working conditions
• Political implications of the Five Year Plans, including the consolidation of Stalin’s power and the impact on Soviet foreign policy

V. Criticisms of the Five Year Plans

• Overview of the criticisms leveled against the Five Year Plans, including their impact on the environment and human rights abuses
• Discussion on the validity of these criticisms and their impact on the legacy of the Five Year Plans

VI. Conclusion

• Restatement of thesis
• Summary of key points
• Final thoughts on the significance of the Five Year Plans in Soviet history

By following this outline, you can ensure that your essay on Stalin’s Five Year Plans is well-structured and informative. Remember to use credible sources and avoid making exaggerated or false claims. Good luck!

Stalin’s Five Year Plans were a significant milestone in the history of the Soviet Union. They were aimed at transforming the country from an agrarian society into an industrialized one. The plans were successful in achieving the desired results, but at a great cost. The human toll was immense, with millions of people dying due to famine and forced labor. The plans were also criticized for their lack of focus on consumer goods and their overemphasis on heavy industry.

Despite the criticisms, the Five Year Plans had a lasting impact on the Soviet Union. They laid the foundation for the country’s industrialization and helped it become a superpower. The plans also set the stage for the country’s involvement in World War II and its eventual victory over Nazi Germany.

Writing an essay on Stalin’s Five Year Plans requires a deep understanding of the historical context and the impact of the plans on the Soviet Union. It is important to present a balanced view of the plans, highlighting both their achievements and their shortcomings. By doing so, the essay can provide a nuanced understanding of one of the most significant events in Soviet history.

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