From Lenin to Stalin (part 2) By Emily Meade 2 nd hour

Stalin Gains Power  When Lenin died suddenly in 1924, communists went through a power struggle.  Stalin was not a scholar or an orator but he was a political operator and a “behind-the- scenes” organizer.

Lenin’s opinion  Lenin thought Stalin was “to rude”.  Lenin told people that they should pick someone who was more polite, loyal, and considerate towards other people for their successor.

The Five Year Plans  When Stalin came to power, his goal was to make the Soviet Union into a modern industrial power.  In 1928 he introduced the first of many “five year plans”. The goals of this first five year plan were to work on building a heavy industry, improve transportation, and increase farm output.

Revolution in Agriculture  Stalin did not like the fact that peasants had their own private land plots and forced them to give up their land and live in state owned farms or collectives. A collective is a large farm that is owned and operated by peasants as a group.  The peasants were allowed to keep houses and personal belongings but all the farm animals and tools they had were to be turned over to the collective.

Collectives  This is what a collective would have looked like.

Effects of Collectivization  Many peasants were angry with collectives and they sometimes would only grow enough crops to feed themselves.  This made the government angry so in response, they took all of the grain away from the peasants and they just had to starve.  This led to a famine. Between 5 and 8 million people died in just Ukraine. In other parts of the Soviet Union, millions more people died as well.

The Great Purge  Stalin always had the idea that leaders of other countries were plotting against him. So in 1934 he started the Great Purge. During the Great Purge, Stalin and his secret police basically spied on the Old Bolsheviks. They were party activists from an earlier time period.

Foreign Policy  After the revolution, Lenin organized what was called the Communist International. It was also known as the Comintern.  What this did was it aided revolutionary groups all around the world and it encouraged colonial people to go up against imperialist powers.  This Communist International made other countries suspicious of the Soviet Union. In turn, Great Britain broke their connections with the Soviet Union and later in 1926, a strike turned into a revolution.

After the Great Purge  Around the 1930s, Stalin was trying to get Britain and France to join an alliance against this new threat that was coming from Germany. But because of the suspicions with the Soviet Union, this was not possible.