Stalin Notes
STALIN.
A GROUP OF CORE SUPPORTERS:
Huge numbers of people, form those at the top right down to interrogators, torturers, guards and executioners, were willing to carry out Stalin’s orders.
Local party bosses – little Stalins – often initiated their own terrors from below.
Stalin ruled unchallenged with the help of his supporting clique – Molotov, Kaganovich, Mikoyan, Zhdanov, Voroshilov, Bulganin, Beria, Malenkov and Khrushchev.
POLICE CONTROL BASED UPON TERROR:
Five Year Plans for industry * Ordinary Workers were ruthlessly disciplined. There were severe punishments for bad workmanship, people were accused of being ‘saboteurs ’or ‘wreckers’ when targets were not met, and given spells in forced labour camps.
Collectivation of Agriculture * Carried through by sheer brute force. * All peasants who owned any property at all were hostile to the plan, and had to be forced to join by armies of party members, who urged poorer peasants to seize cattle and machinery from the kulaks (prosperous peasants) to be handed over to the collectives. * Peasants who refused to join collective farms were arrested and taken to labour camps, or shot. * Many peasants were demoralized after the seizure of their land and property. With all the arrests and deportations, there were far fewer peasants to work the land.
The Purges and the Great Terror, 1934-8 * By the end of 1933, over 800 000 had been expelled, and a further 340 000 were expelled in 1934. There were over 2 million people in prisons and forced labour camps. * The murder of Sergei Kirov (the Leningrad party boss and ally of Stalin) by a young Communist Party member was used as the pretext for launching further purges against anybody that Stalin distrusted. Historian Robert Conquest calls the murder ‘the crime of the century, the keystone of the entire edifice of terror and suffering by which Stalin secured his grip on the soviet peoples’. * Hundreds of important officials were arrested,
A GROUP OF CORE SUPPORTERS:
Huge numbers of people, form those at the top right down to interrogators, torturers, guards and executioners, were willing to carry out Stalin’s orders.
Local party bosses – little Stalins – often initiated their own terrors from below.
Stalin ruled unchallenged with the help of his supporting clique – Molotov, Kaganovich, Mikoyan, Zhdanov, Voroshilov, Bulganin, Beria, Malenkov and Khrushchev.
POLICE CONTROL BASED UPON TERROR:
Five Year Plans for industry * Ordinary Workers were ruthlessly disciplined. There were severe punishments for bad workmanship, people were accused of being ‘saboteurs ’or ‘wreckers’ when targets were not met, and given spells in forced labour camps.
Collectivation of Agriculture * Carried through by sheer brute force. * All peasants who owned any property at all were hostile to the plan, and had to be forced to join by armies of party members, who urged poorer peasants to seize cattle and machinery from the kulaks (prosperous peasants) to be handed over to the collectives. * Peasants who refused to join collective farms were arrested and taken to labour camps, or shot. * Many peasants were demoralized after the seizure of their land and property. With all the arrests and deportations, there were far fewer peasants to work the land.
The Purges and the Great Terror, 1934-8 * By the end of 1933, over 800 000 had been expelled, and a further 340 000 were expelled in 1934. There were over 2 million people in prisons and forced labour camps. * The murder of Sergei Kirov (the Leningrad party boss and ally of Stalin) by a young Communist Party member was used as the pretext for launching further purges against anybody that Stalin distrusted. Historian Robert Conquest calls the murder ‘the crime of the century, the keystone of the entire edifice of terror and suffering by which Stalin secured his grip on the soviet peoples’. * Hundreds of important officials were arrested,