STALINISM ( )

Important events before Stalinism ● Signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on March 3, 1918, marking Russia's exit from World War I. ● October Revolution of 1917 lead by Vladimir Lenin ● Proclamation of Soviet Union with Lenin as leader ● Death of Lenin on 21 st January 1924

12 th Party congress, 1923 ● Last congress of Lenin’s regime ● Stalin's struggle against the Georgian National Communists ● Stalin’s and Ordzhonikidze’s accusations ● At this Congress the problems of nationalism were redefined so that local chauvinism became identified as the main problem rather than Great Russian chauvinism.

Stalin's access to power ● In 1922, he was made a general secretary of the party ● Lenin dies in 1924 ● Removes the Left Opposition ( Zinoviev & Kamenev) – 1927 ● Removes the Right Opposition (Rykov & Bukharin)

‘Socialism in One Country’ policy ● Thesis put forth by Joseph Stalin in 1924, elaborated by Nikolai Bukharin in 1925 and later adopted as a state policy. ● The defeat of several proletarian revolutions in countries like Germany and Hungary ended Bolshevik hopes for an imminent world revolution and began promotion of "Socialism in One Country”. ● "...Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence, the victory of socialism is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country alone. After expropriating the capitalists and organizing their own socialist production, the victorious proletariat of that country will arise against the rest of the world..."

Five Year Plans First Plan: ( ) ● Finished one year early ● Ultimate goal was to catch up to other countries ● Included electricy and heavy industry ● Beginning of collectivisation ● All at the expense of pesants’ freedom Second Plan: (1933 – 1937) ● In continuation with the first plan ● Coal and oil production didn’t reach goals ● Instauration of punishments if lack of productivity ● Begining of Stakhanovite movement

The Cult of Personality ● Closely monitored artistic creation ● Used to glorify the regime ● Manipulated history ● Trotsky, Lev Kamenev and Artemy Khalatov were edited out of these pictures

The Gulags

The Gulags ● Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago (1973) It was granted to me to carry away from my prison years on my bent back, which nearly broke beneath its load, this essential experience: how a human being becomes evil and how good. In the intoxication of youthful successes I had felt myself to be infallible, and I was therefore cruel. In the surfeit of power I was a murderer and an oppressor. In my most evil moments I was convinced that I was doing good, and I was well supplied with systematic arguments. It was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhlemed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil.

Nazi-Soviet Pact August 1939 ● In April 1939, Stalin suggested an alliance of Russia, France and Britain against Germany. However, negotiations dragged on into August because: ● Chamberlain did not like communist Russia. ● Poland would not let Russian troops go into Poland. ● Stalin did not trust that France and Britain would resist Germany. ● Out of the blue, on 23 August 1939, Hitler made the Nazi-Soviet Pact with Stalin - a promise not to go to war with each other and (secretly) a promise to invade Poland and split it between them.

A passage written by an American journalist who lived in Europe at the time. “For sheer cynicism, the Nazi dictator had met his match in the Soviet despot... the sordid, secret deal... The Soviet despot for years had cried out at the 'fascist beasts' and called for peace-loving states to band together to halt the Nazi aggression.” William Shirer, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" (1959)