Stalin Dbq Research Paper

In 1910 Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili renamed himself 'Josef Stalin', the man of steel, a foreshadowing of the iron hand he would rule the Soviet Union with a mere 15 years later. Lenin knew that Stalin was dangerous and sought to get rid of him: " I propose to find a way to remove Stalin" (Stalinism Chronology), but died before accomplishing this, leaving Stalin free to ascend to absolute power in both the Communist Party and the country. This absolute power enabled Stalin to unleash a reign of terror and death on his country unprecedented at the time. There is, perhaps, and argument for Stalin's 'Bolshevik firmness' to have enabled the Soviet Union to accomplish incredible feats regarding its move from a mostly agrarian society in the early 1920s to
There were several reasons. Stalin sought to reorganize the Soviet Union via his Five Year Plans, which called for a radical industrialization as well as collectivisation to increase agricultural production and efficiency. This increased agricultural output was necessary to support the rapid industrialization he espoused; how else could the workers be fed? Many peasants who had been awarded or taken their land...to liquidating the kulaks as a class" (Document 5.3 Collectivisation 181). Millions were sent to labor camps, deported and died. The impossible demands made on the peasant farmers of increased production, only to turn everything over to the state, resulted in peasants that remained on the land at first hiding, then burning their crops/killing their animals rather than give them up "Stock was slaughtered every night..." (History in Quotations #5). An infuriated Stalin sent industrial workers into the country to show the peasants 'Bolshevik firmness' "without any rotten liberalism...[or] bourgeois humanitarianism...[and with]extreme measures" to get the grain. (Document 5.4 Horror in the Village