4. 1.) STALIN'S FIRST FIVE YEAR PLAN- In the name of Communism, Stalin seized assets, including farms and factories, and reorganized the economy. However, these efforts often led to less efficient production, ensuring that mass starvation swept the countryside. To mask the disastrous results of the plan, Stalin maintained export levels, shipping food out of the country even as rural residents died by the hundreds of thousands. Any protest of his policies resulted in immediate death or relocation to a gulag (a prison camp in the remote regions of the nation). While all of these plans were unmitigated disasters, Stalin’s policy forbidding any negative publicity led the full consequences of these upheavals to remain hidden for decades. To many who were not directly impacted, the Five Year Plans appeared to exemplify Stalin's proactive leadership.

5. 2.) LENIN'S NEW ECONOMIC POLICY- Lenin's New Economic Policy was a temporary retreat from full socialism to partial capitalism for the purpose of rebuilding Russia's economy. The NEP permitted small businesses to make personal profits and permitted almost all of the peasant farmers to keep and sell their produce as they wished. Elements of capitalism such as individual profit and private ownership of land were permitted in order to revitalize the Russian economy. After the Bolshevik revolution and the Russian civil War, the nationalized industry faltered, producing less than it had even under Tsarist rule. In addition, the agrarian side of the economy, the peasant farmers, were angry at being forced to turn over large portions of their crops to the state whether they wanted to or not. They began hoarding some of it. There was real dissatisfaction with the oppressive Bolshevik demands among the peasant population. There was also real dissatisfaction among people in the urban areas because of shortages of goods due to the failing industrial side of the economy.

6. 3.) ABDICATION OF THE TSAR NICHOLAS II- During the February Revolution, Czar Nicholas II, ruler of Russia since 1894, is forced to abdicate the throne by the Petrograd insurgents, and a provincial government is installed in his place. In March 1917, the army garrison at Petrograd joined striking workers in demanding socialist reforms, and Czar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate. In 1916 Russia had drifted into a continuous internal turmoil. The Tsarist regime was generally expected to collapse. The Cabinet had actually lost its power despite various efforts to improve its authority.

7. 4.) STALIN'S CULT OF PERSONALITY- Stalin's “Cult of Personality” was created to shield the people from his malicious acts and in turn, show a powerful, softer, god-like image of him. The Soviet press worked to portray Stalin as a caring yet strong father figure, with the Soviet populace as his "children". Interactions between Stalin and children became a key element of the personality cult. Stalin often engaged in publicized gift giving exchanges with Soviet children from a range of different ethnic backgrounds. By reapplying various aspects of religion to the cult of personality, the press hoped to shift devotion away from the Church and towards Stalin. Initially, the press also aimed to demonstrate a direct link between Stalin and the common people; newspapers often published collective letters from farm or industrial workers praising the leader, as well as accounts and poems about meeting Stalin. Another prominent part of Stalin's image in the mass media was his close association with Lenin. The Soviet press maintained that Stalin had been Lenin's constant companion while the latter was alive, and that as such, Stalin closely followed Lenin's teachings and could continue the Bolshevik legacy after Lenin's death. Stalin publicly defended Lenin's infallibility with a fierce loyalty; in doing so, Stalin implied that his own leadership was similarly faultless, as he was a faithful follower of Leninism.

8. 5.) GREAT PURGES- Stalin's purges could otherwise be translated as "Stalin's Terror". They grew from his paranoia and his desire to be absolute autocrat, and were enforced via the NKVD (Communist Secret police) and public 'show trials'. They helped develop a centrally-enforced 'cult of Stalin-worship', and a terrifying system of labor camps - the gulag. The years after saw Stalin’s political opponents put on ‘show trials’, where they pleaded guilty to impossible charges of treason (e.g. Zinovyev and Kamenev in 1936, Bukharin, Tomsky and Rykov in 1938). The purges affected not only those who openly opposed Stalin, but ordinary people too. During Stalin's rule of the country over 20 million people were sent to labor camps, where nearly half of them died. The cult of Stalin replaced churches with its icons. Censorship of anything that might reflect badly on Stalin was enacted. Propaganda was everywhere - pictures, statues, continuous praise and applause for the leader. Mothers taught their children that Stalin was ‘the wisest man of the age’. History textbooks and photographs were changed to make him the hero of the Revolution, and obliterate the names of purged people.

9. Chart

11. Thesis: Stalin maintain power through various strategies, like the purges which were considered to ruthless; nonetheless, he was a powerful charismatic leader as his cult of personality became more prominent throughout the nation.