the day in history, april 3, 2009
On
April 3,
1922, Stalin was made
general secretary of the
Central Committee of the
All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), a post that he subsequently built up into the most powerful in the country. It has been claimed that he initially attempted to decline accepting the post, but was refused. This position was seen to be a minor one within the party (Stalin was sometimes referred to as "Comrade Card-Index" by fellow party members) but, when coupled with leadership over the
Orgburo, actually had potential as a power base as it allowed Stalin to fill the party with his allies. After
Lenin's
death in January 1924, Stalin,
Kamenev, and
Zinoviev together governed the party, placing themselves
ideologically between
Trotsky (on the left wing of the party) and
Bukharin (on the right). During this period, Stalin abandoned the traditional Bolshevik emphasis on international revolution in favor of a policy of building "
Socialism in One Country", in contrast to Trotsky's theory of
Permanent Revolution.
In the struggle for leadership one thing was evident: whoever ended up ruling the party had to be considered very loyal to Lenin. Stalin organized Lenin's funeral and made a speech professing undying loyalty to Lenin, in almost religious terms .
For more about Stalin's relationship with Lenin, a post Soviet extract of Lenin's sister.
[17][18]He undermined Trotsky, who was sick at the time, possibly by misleading him about the date of the funeral . Thus although Trotsky was Lenin’s associate throughout the early days of the Soviet regime, he lost ground to Stalin. Stalin made great play of the fact that Trotsky had joined the Bolsheviks just before the revolution, and publicized Trotsky's pre-revolutionary disagreements with Lenin . Another event that helped Stalin's rise was the fact that Trotsky came out against publication of
Lenin's Testament in which he pointed out the strengths and weaknesses of Stalin and Trotsky and the other main players, and suggested that he be succeeded by a small group of people .
An important feature of Stalin’s rise to power is the way that he manipulated his opponents and played them off against each other . Stalin formed a "
troika" of himself, Zinoviev, and Kamenev against Trotsky. When Trotsky had been eliminated, Stalin then joined Bukharin and Rykov against Zinoviev and Kamenev, emphasising their vote against the insurrection in 1917 . Zinoviev and Kamenev then turned to Lenin's widow,
Krupskaya; they formed the "
United Opposition" in July 1926.
In 1927 during the 15th Party Congress Trotsky and Zinoviev were expelled from the party and
Kamenev lost his seat on the Central Committee. Stalin soon turned against the "
Right Opposition", represented by his erstwhile allies,
Bukharin and
Rykov .
Stalin gained popular appeal from his presentation as a 'man of the people' from the poorer classes . The Russian people were tired from the world war and the civil war, and Stalin's policy of concentrating in building "Socialism in One Country" was seen as an optimistic antidote to war .
Stalin took great advantage of the ban on factionalism which meant that no group could openly go against the policies of the leader of the party because that meant creation of an opposition . By 1928 (the first year of the
Five-Year Plans) Stalin was supreme among the leadership, and the following year Trotsky was exiled because of his opposition. Having also outmaneuvered Bukharin's Right Opposition and now advocating collectivization and industrialization, Stalin can be said to have exercised control over the party and the country.
However, as the popularity of other leaders such as
Sergei Kirov and the so-called
Ryutin Affair were to demonstrate, Stalin did not achieve absolute power until the
Great Purge of 1936–1938.
Soviet secret service and intelligence
Stalin vastly increased the scope and power of the state's secret police and intelligence agencies. Under his guiding hand, Soviet intelligence forces began to set up intelligence networks in most of the major nations of the world, including Germany (the famous
Rote Kappelle spy ring), Great Britain, France, Japan, and the United States. Stalin saw no difference between espionage, communist political propaganda actions, and state-sanctioned violence , and he began to integrate all of these activities within the
NKVD. Stalin made considerable use of the
Communist International movement in order to infiltrate agents and to ensure that foreign Communist parties remained pro-Soviet and pro-Stalin .
One of the best early examples of Stalin's ability to integrate secret police and foreign espionage came in 1940, when he gave approval to the secret police to have
Leon Trotsky assassinated in Mexico.
[19] Stalin and changes in Soviet society
Industrialization
Main articles: History of the Soviet Union (1927-1953)#Stalinist development and Industrialization of the USSR
The
Russian Civil War and
wartime communism had a devastating effect on the country's economy. Industrial output in 1922 was 13% of that in 1914. A recovery followed under the
New Economic Policy, which allowed a degree of market flexibility within the context of socialism.
Under Stalin's direction, this was replaced by a system of centrally ordained "Five-Year Plans" in the late 1920s. These called for a highly ambitious program of state-guided crash industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture.
With seed capital unavailable because of international reaction to Communist policies, little
international trade, and virtually no modern infrastructure, Stalin's government financed industrialization both by restraining consumption on the part of ordinary Soviet citizens to ensure that capital went for re-investment into industry, and by ruthless extraction of wealth from the kulaks.
In 1933 workers' real earnings sank to about one-tenth of the 1926 level. Common and political prisoners in
labor camps were forced to do unpaid labor, and communists and
Komsomol members were frequently "mobilized" for various construction projects. The Soviet Union used foreign experts, e.g. British engineer Stephen Adams, to instruct their workers and improve their manufacturing processes.
In spite of early breakdowns and failures, the first two Five-Year Plans achieved rapid industrialization from a very low economic base. While it is generally agreed that the Soviet Union achieved significant levels of economic growth under Stalin, the precise rate of growth is disputed. What is not disputed is that these gains were accomplished at the cost of millions of lives.
Official Soviet estimates stated the annual rate of growth at 13.9%; Russian and Western estimates gave lower figures of 5.8% and even 2.9%. Indeed, one estimate is that Soviet growth became temporarily much higher after Stalin's death.
[1] [2]According to Robert Lewis the Five-Year Plan substantially helped to modernize the previously backward Soviet economy. New products were developed, and the scale and efficiency of existing production greatly increased. Some innovations were based on indigenous technical developments, others on imported foreign technology.
[20] Collectivization
Joseph Stalin.
Stalin's regime moved to force
collectivization of agriculture. This was intended to increase agricultural output from large-scale mechanized farms, to bring the peasantry under more direct political control, and to make tax collection more efficient. Collectivization meant drastic social changes, on a scale not seen since the abolition of serfdom in 1861, and from control of the land and its produce. Collectivization also meant a drastic drop in living standards for many peasants, and it faced violent reaction among the peasantry.
In the first years of collectivization it was estimated that industrial production would rise by 200% and and agricultural production by 50%
[21], but these estimates were not met. Stalin blamed this unanticipated failure on
kulaks (rich peasants), who resisted collectivization. (However, kulaks proper made up only 4% of the peasant population; the "kulaks" that Stalin targeted included the slightly better-off peasants who took the brunt of violence from the
OGPU and the Komsomol. These peasants were about 60% of the population). Those officially defined as "kulaks," "kulak helpers," and later "ex-kulaks" were to be shot, placed into
Gulag labor camps, or deported to remote areas of the country, depending on the charge.
The two-stage progress of collectivization—interrupted for a year by Stalin's famous editorial, "
Dizzy with success" (
Pravda,
March 2,
1930), and "
Reply to Collective Farm Comrades" (
Pravda,
April 3,
1930)—is a prime example of his capacity for tactical political withdrawal followed by intensification of initial strategies.
Many historians assert that the disruption caused by collectivization was largely responsible for major
famines.
The 1932-1933 famine in
Ukraine and the
Kuban regions has been termed the
Holodomor (Ukrainian: Голодомор).
According to
Alan Bullock, "the total Soviet grain crop was no worse than that of 1931 … it was not a crop failure but the excessive demands of the state, ruthlessly enforced, that cost the lives of as many as five million Ukrainian peasants." Stalin refused to release large grain reserves that could have alleviated the famine, while continuing to export grain; he was convinced that the Ukrainian peasants had hidden grain away, and strictly enforced draconian new collective-farm theft laws in response.
[22][23]Other historians hold that it was largely the insufficient harvests of 1931 and 1932 caused by a variety of natural disasters that resulted in famine, with the successful harvest of 1933 ending the famine.
[24]Famine affected other parts of the USSR. The death toll from famine in the Soviet Union at this time is estimated at between five and ten million people. The worst crop failure of late tsarist Russia, in 1892, had caused 375,000 to 400,000 deaths.)
[25]Soviet and other historians have argued that the rapid collectivization of agriculture was necessary in order to achieve an equally rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union and ultimately win World War II. This is disputed by other historians;
Alec Nove claims that the Soviet Union industrialized in spite of, rather than because of, its collectivized agriculture.
Science
- Main articles: Science and technology in the Soviet Union, Suppressed research in the Soviet Union, Lysenkoism
Science in the
Soviet Union was under strict ideological control by Stalin and his government, along with art and literature. There was significant progress in "ideologically safe" domains, owing to the free
Soviet education system and state-financed research. However, in several cases the consequences of ideological pressure were dramatic—the most notable examples being the "
bourgeois pseudosciences"
genetics and
cybernetics.
In the late 40's, some areas of physics, especially quantum mechanics but also special and general relativity, were also criticized on grounds of "
idealism". Soviet physicists, such as K. V. Nikolskij and D. Blokhintzev, developed a version of the
statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics, which was seen as more adhering to the principles of
dialectical materialism.
[26][27] However, although initially planned,
[28] this process did not go as far as defining an "ideologically correct" version of physics and purging those scientists who refused to conform to it, because this was recognized as potentially too harmful to the
Soviet nuclear program.
Linguistics was the only area of Soviet academic thought to which Stalin personally and directly contributed. At the beginning of Stalin's rule, the dominant figure in Soviet linguistics was
Nikolai Yakovlevich Marr, who argued that
language is a class construction and that language structure is determined by the economic structure of society. Stalin, who had previously written about language policy as People's Commissar for Nationalities, read a letter by
Arnold Chikobava criticizing the theory. He "summoned Chikobava to a dinner that lasted from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. taking notes diligently."
[29] In this way he grasped enough of the underlying issues to coherently oppose this simplistic Marxist formalism, ending Marr's ideological dominance over Soviet linguistics. Stalin's principal work discussing linguistics in a small essay, "Marxism and Linguistic Questions."
[30]Although no great theoretical contributions or insights came from it, neither were there any apparent errors in Stalin's understanding of linguistics; his influence arguably relieved Soviet linguistics from the sort of ideologically driven theory that dominated genetics.
Scientific research was hindered by the fact that many scientists were sent to
labor camps (including
Lev Landau, later a
Nobel Prize winner, who spent a year in prison in 1938–1939) or executed (e.g.
Lev Shubnikov, shot in 1937). They were persecuted for their
dissident views, not for their research. Nevertheless, much progress was made under Stalin in some areas of science and technology. It laid the ground for the famous achievements of Soviet science in the 1950s, such as the development of the
BESM-1 computer in 1953 and the launching of
Sputnik in 1957.
Indeed, many politicians in the
United States expressed a fear, after the "
Sputnik crisis," that their country had been eclipsed by the Soviet Union in science and in public education.
Social services
Under the Soviet government people benefited from some social liberalization. Girls were given an adequate, equal education and women had equal rights in employment , improving lives for women and families. Stalinist development also contributed to advances in health care, which significantly increased the lifespan and quality of life of the typical Soviet citizen. Stalin's policies granted the Soviet people universal access to healthcare and education, effectively creating the first generation free from the fear of
typhus,
cholera, and
malaria . The occurrences of these diseases dropped to record low numbers, increasing life spans by decades .
Soviet women under Stalin were the first generation of women able to give birth in the safety of a hospital, with access to prenatal care . Education improved. Millions benefitted from mass literacy campaigns in the 1930s, and from workers training schemes
[31]. Engineers were sent abroad to learn industrial technology, and hundreds of foreign engineers were brought to Russia on contract .
Transport links were improved and many new
railways built. Workers who exceeded their quotas,
Stakhanovites, received many incentives for their work
[32]; they could afford to buy the goods that were mass-produced by the rapidly expanding Soviet economy.
The increase in demand due to industrialization and the decrease in the workforce due to
World War II and repressions generated a major expansion in job opportunities for the survivors, especially for women
[33].
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