1. law, govt and politics
2. armed forces
3. army

Russia Under Stalin
Ch. 30 Sec. 2
Background
• March 1917: Revolution that gives power to
Provisional Gov’t.
• October 1917: Bolshevik Revolution gives power
to Communists
– Leader of Bolsheviks: Lenin
• Reforms under Lenin:
– Seized private property, then gave it back under NEP
Post-Lenin
• Lenin has stroke, dies
without naming successor
• 2 possibilities for leader of
Bolsheviks
– Leon Trotsky: intellectual,
military hero, close advisor
of Lenin
– Josef Stalin: ran day-to-day
workings of Bolshevik party
under Lenin
Stalin’s Upward Climb
• Stalin gains allies within party, teams up to
exile Trotsky, then turns on allies
• Stalin gathers power around himself using
knowledge of the system
• By 1929, in total control of the Party
Totalitarian Gov’t.
• Totalitarianism:
complete, total control
of the gov’t
– Centralized around
leader
– Uses military force to
maintain power
– Good of the country
over good of the
individual
– Security over liberty
Stalin’s Economic Control
• Industry:
– 5 Year Plan: rapid industrialization to
catch up to European countries
– Increased production of steel, coal
and oil at the expense of consumer
goods (clothing and food)
• Agriculture:
– Collective farms: seized private farms
and made them public … products are
property of gov’t
– Peasant protests:
• Peasants forced to work at gunpoint or
killed
• Kulaks: wealthy farmers that revolted
against collectivization
Life Under Totalitarianism
• Police Terror:
– Monitored “suspicious” behavior
– Seized suspects without warrants
• Great Purge:
– Targets: “Old” Bolsheviks, army officers, any potential
or imagined threat
•
•
“The duty of an investigator was to scratch away at innocence until guilt was uncovered. If no guilt was
uncovered then they haven't scratched deep enough.” – Child 44
"People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record
of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You
were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word.“—1984
• Gulags: Siberian prison camps
– 18 million people killed under Stalin’s rule
Indoctrination and Propaganda
• Indoctrination:
instruction in the
gov’t’s beliefs
– Started with children
in schools
– Used writing, art,
music, propaganda
• Soviet Realism: art
style depicting
working men and
women and praising
Soviet Russia
Cult of Personality
• Cult of Personality
– Kim Jong Il, Hitler,
Stalin, Mao Zedong
– Attributing all success
to one influential
ruler
– “I thank Comrade
Stalin for this good
life”
Censorship and Persecution
• Writers, composers, artists
forced to alter or hide events
and opinions
• “Show trials”: suspects would
be tortured into confession,
then given a fake public trial
– Officials in the gov’t that were
convicted were then erased
from the record
• Religion outlawed:
worshippers persecuted and
imprisoned
Estimates of the Damage
• Killed by Stalin: 20 – 50 million
– Killed by Hitler: 10 – 25 million
• Famine, 1922: 5 million deaths
• Famine, 1932: 7 million deaths
• Famine, 1947: 2 million deaths