Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Rise and fall of communism in the soviet union
Rise and fall of communism in the soviet union
Economic issues with Stalins Russia
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Rise and fall of communism in the soviet union
In the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s a second revolution occurred within the government, economy, and culture. This second revolution is known as the Stalinist Revolution. The Stalinist Revolution brought with it many reforms that continued to change the state from the Tsarist Regime. The new communist government also caused many political changes. Within the Stalinist Revolution there were many political changes. Along with the political changes there was also another revamp of the economic policy of the USSR. Potentially one of the largest changes to the USSR was the Stalinist Revolution also revamped the economic policy of the USSR.
The Stalinist Revolution began in 1928 when Stalin took power in the Soviet Union. After the death of Lenin in 1924, the USSR was left without a leader. Many Bolsheviks figured that individuals such as Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, or Stalin would fill the vacancy left by Lenin. At the time of Lenin’s death, Stalin held an office known as the General Secretariat. In this position, Stalin was in charge of selecting new members for admittance into the Bolshevik Party. This allowed Stalin to control membership in the party and ensure that anyone who attempted to join the party not only supported his politics, but also owed their party membership to him. With new party members largely supporting him, Stalin had out maneuvered Trotsky by 1925, and by 1927 and 1928 Stalin and Bukharin were in power .
Within the USSR Stalin enforced several new policies that shaped the political, economic, and cultural faces of Russia. Within the political realm Stalin was responsible for such major events as the Purges in government, Socialism in one country, and attempts to move away from Russifica...
... middle of paper ...
...inging within the family. The Commissar of Enlightenment also created youth organizations that were designed as patriotic groups that also taught children about communism. The Commissar also declared war on illiteracy and made valiant attempts to teach citizens in both rural and urban environments to read .
The People’s Commissar of Enlightenment was a tool used by Stalin to help implant is ideals of what a culture should be into the Soviet landscape, and by doing so Stalin helped push his revolution even further. The Revolution was at its highest peak of success when Stalin was able to influence every member of Soviet society on a day to day basis.
The Stalinist Revolution allowed Stalin to control the politics of the Soviet Union, which in turned allowed him to create his own policies that then allowed him to enforce his own economic and cultural ideology.
By 1928, Stalin had ousted Trotsky and the rest of the Left opposition. In four years, Stalin had single handedly taken major steps away from Lenin’s collective leadership and free inter party debate and replaced them with his autocratic dictatorship. Stalin began to secure predominant power over the communist party and the state by destroying passive opposition from the peasantry and former Lenin supporters. He won growing support from the working class who were impressed with the initial five-year plan. As it promised increased industrialization, which would lead to socialism in one country within their lifetime.
The Enlightenment was a major turning point in history. Multiple ideas that were established during the Enlightenment were eventually utilized in many government systems. Although some people known as “Enlightened Despots” did not accept the ideas developed by people such as John Locke, Baron de Montesquieu, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Ultimately, the Enlightenment ideas showed that they were more powerful and were more significant than the power of the army.
Though it existed for over 70 years, many of the Soviet Union’s structures were put in place before and during Stalin’s reign. Milovan Djilas succinctly summarized the general Soviet system in his book, The New Class when he wrote “There is no fundamental difference in the Communist system between governmental services and party organizations, as in the example of the party and the secret police. The party and the police mingle very closely…the difference between them is only in the distribution of work” (Djilas, pg 73). The system Djilas described was one where the Bolshevik party was in absolute control of the government and all its functions. This included the bureaucracy, and secret police, as well as the military. As a result, the Bolshevik party was in total control of all the Soviet Union’s levers of power. It was effectively an autocracy of the Communist party, at the head of which rested Joseph Stalin, whose power was absolute and as close to god-like, as anyone had ever had. Nikita Khrushchev testified to Stalin’s autocratic power in his book, Khrushchev Remembers, when he wrote, “Stalin adapted all methods of indoctrination to his own purposes. He demanded unthinking obedience and unquestioning faith” (Khrushchev, pg 8). Khrushchev was undoubtedly politically biased against Stalin, but his statement seems to be in line with the latter’s record of achievements. The purges of
The Russian revolution of February 1917 was a momentous event in the course of Russian history. The causes of the revolution were very critical and even today historians debate on what was the primary cause of the revolution. The revolution began in Petrograd as “a workers’ revolt” in response to bread shortages. It removed Russia from the war and brought about the transformation of the Russian Empire into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic, replacing Russia’s monarchy with the world’s first Communist state. The revolution opened the door for Russia to fully enter the industrial age. Before 1917, Russia was a mostly agrarian nation. The Russian working class had been for many years fed up with the ways they had to live and work and it was only a matter of time before they had to take a stand. Peasants worked many hours for low wages and no land, which caused many families to lose their lives. Some would argue that World War I led to the intense downfall of Russia, while others believe that the main cause was the peasant unrest because of harsh living conditions. Although World War I cost Russia many resources and much land, the primary cause of the Russian Revolution was the peasant unrest due to living conditions because even before the war began in Russia there were outbreaks from peasants due to the lack of food and land that were only going to get worse with time.
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.
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.
Stalin continued even once he was successful in accomplishing those goals, as he did not stop hurting people, but if anything it gave him more power to hurt people even more. But, at the end of the day, although Lenin ruled for only a very short time, he did raise the standard of living, though there maintained a large amount of hardship. Stalin, however, transformed the USSR from a peasantry to an industrialized nation in less than a decade, he did it on the backs of his millions of victims, who died because of his harsh policies and many purges. Lenin made a series of policies throughout the beginning of the Revolution and through his short time in public office that came to be collectively known as ‘Leninism’. There were many things that influenced Leninism, such as Karl Marx.
In the beginning Josef Stalin was a worshiper of his beloved Vladimir Lenin. He followed his every move and did as he said to help establish and lead the Bolshevik party. Much of the early part of his political career was lost due to his exile to Siberia for most of World War I. It wasn’t until 1928, when he assumed complete control of the country were he made most of his success. After Lenin’s death in January 1924, Stalin promoted his own cult followings along with the cult followings of the deceased leader. He took over the majority of the Socialists now, and immediately began to change agriculture and industry. He believed that the Soviet Union was one hundred years behind the West and had to catch up as quickly as possible. First though he had to seal up complete alliance to himself and his cause.
During Stalin’s regime, the individual Russian was the center of his grand plan for better or worse. Stalin wanted all of his people to be treated the same. In the factory the top producer and the worst producer made the same pay. He wanted everyone to be treated as equals. His goal to bring the Soviet Union into the industrial age put tremendous pressure on his people. Through violence and oppression Stalin tried to maintain an absurd vision that he saw for the Soviet Union. Even as individuals were looked at as being equals, they also were viewed as equals in other ways. There was no one who could be exempt when the system wanted someone imprisoned, killed, or vanished. From the poorest of the poor, to the riches of the rich, everyone was at the mercy of the regime. Millions of individuals had fake trumped up charges brought upon them, either by the government or by others who had called them o...
Stalin’s hunger for power and paranoia impacted the Soviet society severely, having devastating effects on the Communist Party, leaving it weak and shattering the framework of the party, the people of Russia, by stunting the growth of technology and progress through the purges of many educated civilians, as well as affecting The Red Army, a powerful military depleted of it’s force. The impact of the purges, ‘show trials’ and the Terror on Soviet society were rigorously negative. By purging all his challengers and opponents, Stalin created a blanket of fear over the whole society, and therefore, was able to stay in power, creating an empire that he could find more dependable.
boosted the USSR’s economy. Therefore Stalin had created a country which seemed corrupt at the time, but later on it improved by the hard work Stalin had forced upon them.
Joseph Stalin was a realist dictator of the early 20th century in Russia. Before he rose to power and became the leader of Soviet Union, he joined the Bolsheviks and was part of many illegal activities that got him convicted and he was sent to Siberia (Wood, 5, 10). In the late 1920s, Stalin was determined to take over the Soviet Union (Wiener & Arnold 199). The main aspects of his worldview was “socialism
In order for it to work, Russia had to become an industrial power at all costs. Stalin removed anyone he though could possibly turn against his plan and stay in the way. Over the next few years, he executed many of the old Bolsheviks who had led the revolutions as well as many military officers.
One of the most powerful and murderous dictators in history, Joseph Stalin was the supreme ruler of the Soviet Union for a quarter of a century (www.bbc.co.uk). Joseph Stalin had a major impact on the Soviet Union and the rest of the world. He changed the world by making the Soviet Union a powerful, modern nation, and also the largest state on Earth through his policies and ideas. He also led the killing of millions of people including commoners who spoke out against him (McKenna 94). He also had the Great Purge, which sent anyone who was not “loyal” to him to camps and executed them. In total he killed about seven times as many people as Hitler did which would probably be about twenty to sixty million people. Stalin also changed the world by helping to start the Cold War, and also some of the countries that aligned with the Soviets in the Cold War are still in poverty because their benefactor crumbled. Stalin was the face of the second world for a chunk of the twentieth century and the Cold war. Stalin also created the Five Year Plan, which was a series of nation-wide economic plans in the Soviet Union. The plans were developed by a state planning committee and were general guidelines of the communists used for economic development. During the Cold War Stalin challenged the Allies multiple times trying to win the war and created major damage to a lot of countries including Germany. Competition between the Soviet Union and the United States escalated during the Cold War to a point where nuclear war was not going to be a surprise. Joseph Stalin ended up losing the Cold War, but still created a lasting impression due to his theory of ruling by fear. Stalin also ended the New Economic Plan that Lenin created and then he also forced p...
Joseph Stalin is a polarizing figure. Decades after his death his legacy still continues to create debate about his tumultuous years as the leader of the Soviet Union. This is evident throughout the four documents while some praise Stalin as impeccable others criticize his policies and lack of political, economic, and social progress during his regime. Even though Stalin was behind various violations of human rights he was able to maintain the Soviet Union during a time of turmoil both domestically and internationally as a result he has earned notoriety as a great leader and advocate for Marxist ideology.