O Stalinism it was the totalitarian regime that existed in the Soviet Union (USSR) during the years when Josef Stalin was the ruler of the country. During the course of the regime, the Soviet Union went through an intense industrialization, there were significant reforms in the area of agriculture, and the leader's opponents were relentlessly pursued. The balance of Stalinism after nearly three decades of rule was over 10 million dead.
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How did Stalin become ruler of the USSR?
Stalin became ruler of the Soviet Union in 1927, the year he expelled his opponents from the party, his rise to power, however, lasting at least four years. It all started in 1923, when Lenin, then ruler of the USSR, had a leakage and he was in poor health. The power struggle that began there directly involved four names, the two main candidates being: Stalin and Leon Trotsky.
Throughout this period Stalin used his influence as a politician and party bureaucrat to impose himself on his opponents. In 1927, he managed to expel your opponents from the party, which put an end to the dispute for power and consolidated him in the position of Soviet ruler.
When he assumed power, Stalin performed numerous transformations in the Soviet Union, such as: reforming the economy, persecuting the rich and their opponents, seizing the lands of the great peasants, and establishing a regime of terror.
Stalinist economy
THE Stalinist economy wasplanned, that is, it was fully controlled by the State. This was even a big change in relation to Lenin, as the former ruler opened the country to a market economy through the New Economic Policy (NEP).
Stalin put an end to the market economy and nationalized the country's economy. Important areas, such as industry and agriculture, were entirely in the hands of the state, and radical changes were made. Some of these generated dissatisfaction among the population, and the state acted violently to repress those who did not agree with its leader.
Stalin's first sensible change was to carry out a plan for industrializationmassive of the Soviet Union. This program became known as Flatfive-yearly and it set goals to be achieved within five years, and then new goals were set.
These were high, and those who worked in the industries were put under great pressure and forced to work to exhaustion. Just to give you an idea, the first Five-Year Plan, launched in 1929, established that industrial production should increase about 180%|1|.
The Five-Year Plan also sought to increase the extraction coal and other resources that would be instrumental in boosting Soviet industrialization. The plan had some success and turned the Soviet Union into a great powerindustrial, although the human cost has been elevated. With regard to agriculture, Stalinist interventions did not work out so well.
In this area, Stalin carried out the collectivization of the land. In the process, he ordered that all productive lands belong to the state. Private property was abolished, and whateverhad in it, like production, tools and animals, it was taken over by the State. In place of these properties, the collective farms, places where peasants were sent to work.
With collectivization, Stalin's main focus was on kulaks, the peasant class that owns many lands. The resistance of kulaks the collectivization process was enormous, especially in Ukraine. On the other hand, the State's response to the resistance was harsh and millions of peasants were sent to labor campsforced, which were located in remote regions of Soviet territory.
On collective farms, the state set goals that peasants had to fulfill. This system, however, disorganized agricultural production of the Soviet Union, and the result was that famine spread across the country and caused the deaths of millions of people. In Ukraine, for example, historians argue that the famine in that country was a deliberate policy of Stalinism to weaken the resistance that existed there.
In Ukraine, the Great Famine of 1932-33 was named after Holodomor and was responsible for the death of about 5.5 million people. The violence of the Stalinist state was such that peasants who did not fulfill their goals were forced to hand over their seeds and even their animals. Peasants were also prohibited from moving and going to cities in search of food.
Stalinist terror
Other striking actions of Stalinism are related to the horror promoted by the State in that period. Opponents of the regime were relentlessly persecuted, which resulted in the death of up to 20 million people, according to estimates by historian Eric Hobsbawm|2|.
The Stalinist method of dealing with its opponents resulted in the shooting of these or your shippingforatgulags, forced labor camps. Stalinist terror peaked between 1936 and 1939 and became known as great terror. At this stage, the regime ordered the shooting of almost 700 thousand people.
This terror was also a consequence of the paranoia of Stalin, who believed in time that a conspiracy against him was under way. The Great Terror caused purges to be carried out across the country, including within the party and the Red Army. Minorities were also persecuted, especially the Poles.
To justify the thousands of executions carried out, the Soviet state staged trials that accused the defendants of conspiring against the country. In one of these scenarios, Kamenev and Zinoviev, party members who vied for power with Stalin in the 1920s, were convicted and executed.
These staged trials gave an air of legality to the state's violence. THE political advertising it's the leader worship they were also tools used to normalize all this violence.
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Stalinism in World War II
THE Second World War it was one of the great events that marked the history of Stalinism. Stalin's action at the head of the Soviet Union was fundamental for the country to achieve defeat the Nazis in war. Again, like everything else in Stalinism, the action of the state was violent and demanded great sacrifices from the Soviet population.
War between Germans and Soviets was something that, in 1939, seemed to be inevitable, as the two regimes were ideologically opposed. O Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact it turned out to be a big bucket of cold water for all who expected this conflict between the two nations. Through this pact, the Germans and Soviets established a peace agreement (although both sides knew it was a cover-up).
Stalin hoped that his country would be ready in 1942 to fight the Germans and so he embarked on other military adventures, first in the Mongolia and then in the Finland and Poland. The experience in Finland (the Soviets were defeated) showed that the Soviet army was still unprepared (the fruit of Stalin's purges) for a war against the Germans.
In 1941, news that the Germans would carry out an attack came from all sides. Even Germans had denounced to Stalin the real possibility of invasion of the USSR by the Nazis. Stalin ignored the warnings, did not prepare its borders, and when the Germans invaded the country in June 1941, they found it very easy to conquer the Soviet west.
The dissatisfaction of certain regions with Stalin's actions was so great that there were celebrations when the Nazis arrived, but the celebration soon turned to fear. The Soviet reaction came, but it accumulated defeats and human and material losses for the Germans in the first few months. Stalin instituted a law that forbade Red Army soldiers to retreat and led a great resistance force.
Industries were dismantled and taken to the Soviet east, men from all regions of the country were brought to the front, and over a million prisoners from the gulags were released tofight for the country. The Soviet resistance was a hairsbreadth away from being defeated - Moscow was almost conquered.
the huge number of soldiers it's the increase in industrial capacity of the country guaranteed the victory. In April 1945, Soviet troops attacked berlin and defeated Nazism after nearly four years of war against the Germans. Stalin turned into a Soviet hero, but the balance was hard: about 25 million dead, of which about eight million were soldiers.
end of Stalinism
Stalinism as a regime ended with the death of its leader, Josef Stalin, in March 1953. Nevertheless, some practices remained in force in the Soviet Union, such as the Five-Year Plan. When Stalin died, he enjoyed great prestige as a result of victory in the war.
The Stalin cult faded in the mid-1950s, when the Soviet ruler called NikitaKhrushchev he denounced the crimes committed by Stalinism over the decades that the regime was in power.
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Features
Regarding Stalinism, the consensus that exists among historians defines this regime as totalitarian. Over the 30 years of government, some characteristics can be clearly delineated, such as:
Centralization of power in the figure of the leader;
Cult of the leader's personality;
Economy entirely planned by the action of the State;
Use of terror as a weapon to weaken opposition to the regime;
Use of political advertising to align/indoctrinate public opinion;
Pursuit of religion.
Grades
|1| SIEGELBAUM, Lewis. The construction of Stalinism. In.: FREEZE, Gregory L. (org.). Russian history. Lisbon: Editions 70, 2017, p. 366.
|2| HOBSBAWM, Eric. Age of Extremes: the brief 20th century 1914-1991. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1995, p. 383.
Image credits
[1] Olga Popova and Shutterstock
[2] Everett Historical and Shutterstock
[3] bissig and Shutterstock