chant_m_b

=B. Summary of Evidence (500-600 words) Tips]=

Prior to Stalin’s rise and claim to power as leader of The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Russia was undergoing a period of great change and turmoil. Immediately after Lenin’s death in 1924, the struggle for power and individual ruling of Soviet Russia had already started only to end in 1928, with Stalin beating both the right and the left with cunning ability enhanced by good fortune.[1] In the late 1920’s, Stalin became the definite //vozhd**[2]**// of the USSR and did not wait to apply his concept of ‘Socialism in One Country’ (concept that had countered Trotsky’s notion of ‘Permanent Revolution’)[3]. This concept aimed to overcome Russia’s present primitive agriculture and industrial problems as well as building a modern and industrial state capable of rivalising with powerful western countries. Stalin, who believed that the USSR’s survival depended on its ability to become a powerful modern and industrialized nation, made it very clear from the start that this was is main priority, for in 1931, Stalin announced that “ We (the USSR) are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or we shall be crushed”[4]. Stalin’s economics aims aimed for a second revolution (a Revolution from Above[5] ) that would definitely modernise the USSR. Motivated by the envy of enabling the Soviet Union to catch up with the western powers and to confirm his authority as a leader[6], Stalin chose the two policies of Collectivisation and Industrialisation to remedy to the Russian plague that was its terrible economic situation. The first of these two policies, Collectivisation, was introduced in 1928 by Stalin, he thought that the best way of raising mass amounts of capital was by using the Soviet land, land that was considerably under cultivated[7]. This policy was born after an announcement at the 15th Party Congress in 1928 by Stalin[8], calling for a “transformation of the small scattered peasant’s plots into large consolidated farms based on the joint cultivation of land using superior techniques”. Stalin claimed that collectivization, when it was introduced in 1928, had been a measure enthusiastically proposed by the peasants, and that this work was voluntary. This however, could not be further from the truth, for collectivization was unforced upon a very reluctant peasantry, whom preferred by far the system of private ownership. To try to encourage these reluctant peasants to carry out his policies, Stalin engaged in a major propaganda offensive[9] in the form of de-kulakisation. Stalin identified a class of ‘Kulaks’[10] whom he accused of hogging all their farm productions, thus holding back the modernization of Russian farms. The notion of an oppressing Kulak class proved a very powerful one and provided the grounds for the coercion of the peasantry as a whole.[11] A huge amount of kulaks faced deportation from their native villages between 1930 and 1932, and their ‘liquidation’ was subject of many demonstrations. [12] After a very present resistance to collectivization[13], a huge national famine (Holodomor) arose in 1932-1933[14]. Stalin also announced his industrial policies at the 15th party Congress, in the form of massive industrialization. To carry out such drastic changes, and to successfully equip the Soviet Union for it to become a superpower, Stalin retained Lenin’s economic planning institution (the Gosplan)<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.66px;">[15] to help draw up a series of Five Year Plan’s<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.66px;">[16] which would be a key part of Stalin’s industrial policy, with the first one being launched in 1928, and ending in 1932.<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.66px;">[17] //<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 16px;">Word Count: 632 //

<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.33px;">[1] Stalin associated himself to Kamenev and Zinoviev to form a triumvate aiming to isolate Trotsky from a possible position of power. For this, they took advantage of Trotsky’s main disadvantages being that Trotsky lacked a power base in the Part compared to Stalin whom held key positions in the government and in the party, mainly due to the Lenin enrollment; secondly, Trotsky was never fully accepted as a member of the Bolsheviks for he joined the Party in 1917, previously being a part of the Mensheviks, causing him to look uncredible when he tried to fight on certain issues like Bureaucratization or the NEP. Stalin then turned on Kamenev and Zinoviev ( who form the United Opposition in 1925), and used the Right Communist votes in the 1926 Congress to (i) definitely dismiss Kamenev and Zinoviev as Soviet Chairmen and (ii) expel Trotsky from the Committee and from the Politburo, with final result Stalin’s defeat of Trotsky and the left. Stalin could then easily defeat the Right Opposition (with the main trio being Bukharin, Tomsky and Rykov) due to their poor organization and lack of appealing ideas to public opinion. <span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.33px;">[2] Russian term for supreme leader. <span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.33px;">[3] Michael Lynch, (2008). //Access to History Stalin's Russia 1924-53//. Oxford University Press, USApage 25. <span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.33px;">[4] Find out from where the speech comes from. <span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.33px;">[5] It was claimed by the CPSU (The Communist Party of the Soviet Union) that the 1917 revolution had actually come from the peasantry, rather than power being forcefully taken by the Bolsheviks, thus being a revolution from bellow. <span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.33px;">[6] Michael Lynch, (2008). //Access to History Stalin's Russia 1924-53//. Oxford University Press, USA page 26. <span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.33px;">[7] Put a source or diagram of all cultivated land, and all land that was not cultivated. <span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.33px;">[8] Appendix B <span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.33px;">[9] Stalin Michael Lynch, (2008). //Access to History Stalin's Russia 1924-53//. Oxford University Press, USAs Russia 1924-53.36 <span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.33px;">[10] Kulaks were peasants who had grown wealthy under the NEP and were not what Stalin made them out to be. The concept of a Kulak class was a Stalinist myth, and their prosecution was a result of Stalin’s propaganda offensive to try and create a form of coercion between the peasantry. <span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.33px;">[11] Michael Lynch, (2008). //Access to History Stalin's Russia 1924-53//. Oxford University Press, USA. P37 <span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.33px;">[12] Appendix C. <span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.33px;">[13] Official figures recorded for the period 1929-1930 showed that 30,000 arson attacks occurred, and that organized rural mass disturbances increased by one third (from 172 to 229). Women took a very prominent role in these disturbances; they would often try to break into barns and try to reclaim their bags of seeds or their cattle. <span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.33px;">[14] Peasants (in particular Kulaks) were not satisfied with these new policies, so they started eating their own harvest and killing their own herds of cattle, instead of giving it to the government. The government responded with tremendous fierceness, imprisoning, executing and deporting a huge number of Kulaks. Stalin sent special seizing squads to seize all the grain from urban regions, and then left the peasants to starve. It is estimated that approximately 6 million people died in the regions of Ukraine, Kazakhstan, the North Caucasus and the Volga Region. <span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.33px;">[15] Europe john traynor book, page 236. <span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.33px;">[16] In total there were 5 ‘Five Year Plans’. <span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.33px;">[17] Stuff about the 1st five year Plan.