The Soviet Union Under Joseph Stalin

862 Words2 Pages

The Soviet Union Under Joseph Stalin

The Soviet Union Under Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin came to power in Russia shortly after Socialist leader, Vladimir Lenin died. After eliminating his political competition, Stalin finally became the chief in charge of the Soviet Union. Stalin then lead Russia into a downward spiral. Stalin was a brutal ruler for Russia due to his irrational ways of leading the country.

Corruption of the government was one factor that contributes to the controversy of Stalin’s methods of dictatorship. After Lenin’s death, Stalin wanted to be the Soviet Union’s next idolized ruler. Stalin exiled his competition to level the playing field, then after learning that the exiled could still be heard by word of mouth and by writing, he started his infamous purges.

In 1936, there were fake trials held in Moscow that tried Communists and Bolsheviks, these set trials resulted in execution or being sent to work in the Gulags. These were under Stalin’s orders to send all these members of political parties to their deaths. Stalin’s unjust ways of operating the Soviet Union was detrimental to the advancement of the country itself. Having show trials simply portrays how corrupt Stalin had made the Soviet government just as an intricate plan to keep all the power for himself, to the detriment of the Russian people.

One citizen writes, “If you complain or write anything (“Heaven Forbid”), they will frame you or for something else, and they will shoot you like a dog.” Russia under the rule of Stalin was horrible in the way that people were killed for even complaining about Stalin and the horrible lives people lived under Stalin’s iron fist.

The forced labor of Russian citizens made Stalin a bad ruler. Stalin once s...

... middle of paper ...

...ecisions of how to dictate Russia resulted in the corruption of his government, and the overall irrational methods of leading the U.S.S.R

Works Cited

1, 11- Biography: Joseph Stalin - PBS. http://www.pbs.org/redfiles/bios/all_bio_joseph_stalin.htm.

2,8- Frame, Arthur T., and Spencer C. Tucker. "Joseph Stalin." In Modern Genocide: Understanding Causes and Consequences. ABC-CLIO, 2012-. Accessed April 16, 2014. http://moderngenocide.abc-clio.com/.

3,6- 2002. A History of the Modern World | Chapter Outline - McGraw-Hill. http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072316551/student_view0/chapter18/chapter_outline.html.

4- 2004. Joseph Stalin Quotes - BrainyQuote. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/joseph_stalin.html.

5, 7, 10- Gendercide Watch: Stalin's Purges. http://www.gendercide.org/case_stalin.html.

Show More
Related

  • Lenin Laid the Foundation for Stalinism

    2439 Words  | 5 Pages

    As relations changed between Russia and the rest of the world, so did the main historical schools of thought. Following Stalins death, hostilities between the capitalist powers and the USSR, along with an increased awareness of the atrocities that were previously hidden and ignored, led to a split in the opinions of Soviet and Western Liberal historians. In Russia, he was seen, as Trotsky had always maintained, as a betrayer of the revolution, therefore as much distance as possible was placed between himself and Lenin in the schoolbooks of the 50s and early 60s in the USSR. These historians point to Stalin’s killing of fellow communists as a marked difference between himself and his predecessor. Trotsky himself remarked that ‘The present purge draws between Bolshevism and Stalinism… a whole river of blood’[1].

    Read More

  • The Development of Totalitarianism Under Stalin

    523 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Development of Totalitarianism Under Stalin By 1928, Stalin had become the undisputed successor to Lenin, and leader of the CPSU. Stalin’s power of appointment had filled the aisles of the Party Congress and Politburo with Stalinist supporters. Political discussion slowly faded away from the Party, and this led to the development of the totalitarian state of the USSR. Stalin, through.

    Read More

  • Russia in the 1930s

    1648 Words  | 4 Pages

    “ The constitution promised the Soviets freedom of speech, conscious, press, assembly, and demonstrations in conformity with the interest of the working people and in order to strengthen the socialist system.”20 In fact the Soviet people never saw any of these rights. The Constitutional rights could only be used to support the regime, not to criticize it.

    Read More

  • Resistance To Liberalism Justified

    794 Words  | 2 Pages

    Originally platformed by Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin took control of the communist party in 1924 when Lenin died of a stroke. Communist ideals were heavily in opposition to classical liberal values; Whereas Liberalism stressed the importance of the individual, Communism sought to better the greater good of society by stripping many of the individual rights and freedoms of citizens. Communism revoked the class structure of society and created a universal equality for all. This equality came with a price however. Any who opposed the communist rule were assassinated in order to keep order within society. Joseph Stalin took this matter to the extreme during an event known as the Great Purge. The Great Purge, also known as The Great Terror, began in 1936 and concluded in 1938. During these two years, millions of people were murdered and sent to labour camps in Siberia for opposing the Communist party and the ultimate dictator, Stalin himself. In some cases, even those who did not oppose the regime were killed. Sergey Kirov was a very popular member of the communist party and Stalin saw this as a possible threat to his ultimate power. As a result, Stalin order Kirov to be executed. Stalin furthered his violation of individual rights by introducing the NKVD who worked closely with the russian secret police force. One of the primary goals of the secret police was to search out dissidents who were not entirely faithful to the communist regime. This violation of privacy caused histeria en mass in the Soviet Union and millions were killed as a result. The Soviet union resisted liberalism to such an extreme that it resulted in the deaths of millions of people, leading to some of the darkest days in russian

    Read More

  • An Analysis Of Joseph Stalin's Reign Of Terror

    1379 Words  | 3 Pages

    For most people that know who Joseph Stalin was, they can agree on one thing: Stalin was one of the most brutal and ruthless leaders that mankind has ever seen. He is known as the instigator and leader of the Reign of Terror, which incorporated extremely horrifying purges. These purges have been estimated to have killed five times as many people as the Holocaust. The purges also helped him establish his power base, which allowed him to build one of the most powerful countries in its day and age. But he was not born evil, in fact, when he was a child, family and friends said he was shy. This does not mean he didn’t have a bad childhood, which happened quite often in rural Georgia. The pain of his childhood built as the years went by. Growing up admiring people like Karl Marx, Machiavelli, and Ivan the Terrible only stoked the fire even more. I believe that Joseph Stalin’s reign of terror can be traced directly back to his brutal childhood and complete belief in Marxist principles.

    Read More

  • Everyday Stalinism

    546 Words  | 2 Pages

    When most people hear the name Joseph Stalin, they usually associate the name with a man who was part of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and was responsible for the deaths of millions of people. He was willingly to do anything to improve the power of the Soviet Union’s economy and military, even if it meant executing tens of millions of innocent people (Frankforter, A. Daniel., and W. M. Spellman 655). In chapter three of Sheila Fitzpatrick’s book, Everyday Stalinism, she argues that since citizens believed the propaganda of “a radiant future” (67), they were able to be manipulated by the Party in the transformation of the Soviet Union. This allowed the Soviet government to expand its power, which ultimately was very disastrous for the people.

    Read More

  • Joseph Stalin

    837 Words  | 2 Pages

    Son of a poverty-stricken shoemaker, raised in a backward province, Joseph Stalin had only a minimum of education. However, he had a burning faith in the destiny of social revolution and an iron determination to play a prominent role in it. His rise to power was bloody and bold, yet under his leadership, in an unexplainable twenty-nine years, Russia because a highly industrialized nation. Stalin was a despotic ruler who more than any other individual molded the features that characterized the Soviet regime and shaped the direction of Europe after World War II ended in 1945. From a young revolutionist to an absolute master of Soviet Russia, Joseph Stalin cast his shadow over the entire globe through his provocative affair in Domestic and Foreign policy.

    Read More

  • The History Of Stalin's Great Purges

    790 Words  | 2 Pages

    In 1934, Sergey Kirov a rival to Stalin was murdered. Stalin is believed to have been behind the assassination, he used it as a pretext to arrest thousands of his other opponents who in his words might have been responsible for Kirov’s murder. These purges not only affected those who openly opposed Stalin but ordinary people too. During the rule of Stain o...

    Read More

  • The Great Terror

    947 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Great Terror, an outbreak of organised bloodshed that infected the Communist Party and Soviet society in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), took place in the years 1934 to 1940. The Terror was created by the hegemonic figure, Joseph Stalin, one of the most powerful and lethal dictators in history. His paranoia and yearning to be a complete autocrat was enforced by the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), the communist police. Stalin’s ambition saw his determination to eliminate rivals such as followers of Leon Trotsky, a political enemy. The overall concept and practices of the Terror impacted on the communist party, government officials and the peasants. The NKVD, Stalin’s instrument for carrying out the Terror, the show trials and the purges, particularly affected the intelligentsia.

    Read More

  • The Great Terror in Russia

    843 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Communist Party was one of the main sections in Soviet society that was impacted profoundly by Stalin’s terror. In 1935, the assassination of Sergei Kirov, a faithful Communist and Bolshevik party member that had certain popularity, threatening Stalin’s consolidation of power, initiated The Great Purge. His death, triggering three important, widely publicised ‘show trials’ in Moscow, ultimately encouraged the climate of terror during the Great Purge. Bolsheviks Zinoviev, Kamenev and their associates were accused of conspiring against Stalin and the government, with each confessing to their supposed crimes, which were then broadcast around the world. It was later discovered that these confessions were forced after long months of psychological abuse and cruel acts of torture. As Stalin...

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Fdr And Stalin

    612 Words  | 2 Pages

    Joseph Stalin was the dictator of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics from 1929-1953. Stalin rose to power as General Secretary of the Communist Party, becoming a Soviet dictator after

    Read More

  • How Did The Great Terror Lead To Joseph Stalin's Death

    1107 Words  | 3 Pages

    His reign was during the peak of the Soviet Union 's power. Stalin was a cruel and harsh leader who was fascinated by power. He had incredible power and great influential skills. Many of Joseph 's associates and comrades said that he was magnificent because of his crazed way of leading, and even they tended to fear him. He was always determined to stay in control, and he came up with schemes and plans to eliminate anything he disliked. He would always try to stay one step ahead of other countries and try to begin new projects which seemed to fail. Joseph Stalin had many people suffering and killed when he was

    Read More

  • Joseph Stalin Research Paper

    592 Words  | 2 Pages

    Joseph Stalin became leader of the USSR after Lenin’s death in 1924. Lenin had a government of abstemious communist government. When Stalin came into government he moved to a radical communist society. He moved away from the somewhat capitalist/communist economy of Lenin time to “modernize” the USSR. He wanted to industrialize and modernize USSR. He had overworked his workers, his people were dying, and most of them in slave labor camps. In fact by doing this Stalin had hindered the USSR and put them even farther back in time.

    Read More

  • The Armenian Genocide

    1803 Words  | 4 Pages

    Paradigms of Genocide: The Holocaust, The Armenian genocide, and Contemporary Mass Destructions, 156-168. Sage Publications Inc., 1996. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1048550

    Read More

  • Soviet Union

    1706 Words  | 4 Pages

    The general perspective of the Soviet Union was that the country was a dictatorship, specifically, an oppressive, brutal, top-down autocracy that guided all aspects of life of its people. From grocery stores having set quantities of goods, only purchasable by ration card, to strict, set times of work and off-duty hours, to censored press, The Soviet Union was indeed a dictatorial state. However, the people of the Soviet Union did not simply fall into line with the established rules of society- They had diaries, they wrote down their opinions about the government or their job, they wrote detailed memoirs of their life within the USSR. The people of the Soviet Union had some freedom, and it was even codified in the Constitution of 1936. Yet, scholars and most people in general still widely accept the notion that the Soviet Union was a totalitarian dictatorship. The question then arises: Why did the Soviet people have freedom, otherwise known as sociological ‘agency,’ to denounce others or write down their views about society, if the country was perhaps one of the most totalitarian and dictatorial countries to exist in human history? By analyzing Totalitarianism as scholars perceive it, as well as the Soviet system, along with examples from the people of the USSR, one will be able to realize that totalitarianism set the rules for society within the Soviet Union and provided its people with a distribution of power, which was used by those that understood the system and could act within the framework of the system.

    Read More

More about The Soviet Union Under Joseph Stalin

Open Document