Essay on Economic, Political and Social Effects of Stalin's Purges

The purges not only impacted those openly opposed to Stalin and party members, but had devastating effects on ordinary people too, also resulting in the prevention of progress in the Soviet community, impacting it’s future. During Stalin's rule of the country over 20 million people were sent to labor camps of the Gulag, where nearly half of them died. Fear of losing his power and dictatorship led Stalin to believe that the educated would be most likely to challenge his authority. The origins of Stalin’s lower class background are rumoured to have left him feeling inferior towards the educated class, also leading to obsessive determination to remove the threat. Subsequently, scientists, doctors and engineers, became targets, and were also imprisoned and killed. As a consequence, the execution of Russia’s educated during the Terror, stopped the social development and growth in the Soviet initiated after the revolution, predominantly in the area of science and technology. Many people in Russia believed everything Stalin said, with most blinded by the vision of a father figure of authority who would do them no harm. If anyone

Between 1924 and 1945, Joseph Stalin was able to emerge as the leader of the USSR and maintain what Kruchev described as “the accumulation of immense and limitless power”. Stalin's rise to power was a combination of his ability to manipulate situations and the failure of others to prevent him from taking power, especially Leon Trotsky. Stalin ruled the USSR from 1929 until his death in 1953. His rule was one of tyranny, a great change from the society that his predecessor, Lenin, had envisioned. During his time of reign, Stalin put into effect two self-proclaimed "five-year

Almost everyone knows what a monster Adolf Hitler was, but most people do not know that one of the great ally leader of World War II, Joseph Stalin, had committed even greater atrocities than Hitler. Joseph Stalin was a ruthless and yet diligent dictator of the Soviet Union, whose rise to power influenced a multitude of major events in his country’s history. Due to Stalin’s impactful reign, he made the Soviet Union become a global superpower, underwent difficult hardships such as the Great Famine in the Soviet Union, and after his death, caused the Soviet Union to go through a process known as de-Stalinization.

Joseph Stalin greatly influenced Russia in the years 1924 through 1932. His rise to this power can be explained by the Russian Revolutionary experience that allowed him to gain authority in Russia. Although historians often refer to Stalin as a ruthless, mindless dictator, he redirected the Russian Revolution to major economic development. Stalin’s character in Russia during the Revolution catalyzed the many events that took place during the time period. Because of Stalin’s ability to both appeal to the masses, and take advantage of events, like Lenin’s death, Stalin was able to rise to power. Essentially, the Russian Revolution fostered the development of Stalin’s dictatorship leading the country into a state of economic growth and influence. The Revolution fostered Stalin’s ability to maintain a central leadership, use violence to gain control, and regenerate a previously disconnected economy.

Throughout historical times, the rule of Josef Stalin has been questioned due to his position as being one of the most popular and contentious leaders. Through the evaluation of his ruling within the Soviet Union, he can be seen as both a positive and negative ruler. His methods of changing the country following World War I were sudden, causing a complete change in societal ways of life in controversial ways. While his changes created one of the most powerful countries the world had ever seen at its’ time, they also caused for massive discontent within the citizens of Soviet Russia.

To begin with, this book educated the reader about the past. Everyone in the Soviet Union looked up to the leader, Stalin, even though he wasn’t a good leader at all. He caused many problems for the citizens including uncomfortable living conditions. This book educates the reader by showing that back then even when people were treated badly, they still had to look up to their leader even though he was the cause of all

The USSR showed great educational progress as it is shown in the statistics , the literacy was twenty-five percent in 1915 and it grew to ninety-nine in 1980. Another example of Russia’s social condition is the massive instability and genocides during 1937 and 1938. In Document C it states “According to declassified Soviet archives, during 1937 and 1938, the NKVD detained 1,548,366 victims , of whom 681,692 were shot -an average of 1,000 executions a day ( in comparison, the Tsarists executed 3,932 persons for political crimes 1825 to 1910-an average of less than 1 execution per week).” (Document C) it shows how the NKVD, the police force that carried out Stalin’s orders to keep his people from rebelling and having freedom of speech

The concept of Stalinism, being the ideologies and policies adopted by Stalin, including centralization, totalitarianism and communism, impacted, to an extent, on the soviet state until 1941. After competing with prominent Bolshevik party members Stalin emerged as the sole leader of the party in 1929. From this moment, Stalinism pervaded every level of society. Despite the hindrance caused by the bureaucracy, the impact of Stalinism was achieved through the implementation of collectivization and the 5-year plans, Stalin’s Political domination and Cultural influence, including the ‘Cult of the Personality’. This therefore depicts the influence of Stalinism over the Soviet State in the period up to 1941.

While Stalin was in power the size of the Communist Party increased by many millions. Many people attribute this to the fear that he culminated into the Soviet Union’s citizens’ minds. His principal way to gain power were a sum of dishonesty, fraud, lies, extreme brutality, and mass murder. Some examples of the ways he used to make people fear him are the Gulag camps, the secret

The following primary source analysis is from Nikita Khrushchev’s speech delivered to the 20th congress of the Communist party of the USSR in Moscow on February 25 1956. In the speech Khrushchev heavily criticized the role played by the deceased Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and in particular the great purge of the communist parties at the end of the 1930s. He accused Stalin of constructing a leadership personality cult and still claiming to follow the beliefs of the communist party. Khrushchev’s primary objective was to turn back the communist party to follow Leninist communist ideals instead of the former Stalinist ideals, and to also gain further control of the communist party against other competitors.

It is undeniable that Stalin had a profound impact on the Soviet Union following Lenin’s death. His rise to power within the Soviet Union has provided historians with a hotbed of political intrigue for many years. He was an opportunist, coming to dominance by manipulating party politics and influential figures in the politburo to eliminate his opposition by recognising and exploiting their weaknesses thus becoming the dominant leader of the Soviet Union. He was severely underestimated by other members of the Politburo about his potential within the party, leading to missed opportunities to ally and stand against him- a mistake that Stalin never made. He gained support from the public by exploiting the idea of ‘the Cult of Lenin’ in 1924 at Lenin’s funeral, and then adopting this concept for himself, thereby likening himself to Lenin; and, more importantly, gained support from other party members by following the wishes of Lenin, for example, initially supporting the continuation of the NEP and supporting the idea of factionalism. This essay will also argue that he was ideologically flexible as he was able to change his ideas for the party according to who he needed as an ally, in order to achieve dominant status in the party. He sought out which individual was the biggest threat, and eliminated them before they could stand against him.

The Impact of Stalin on Russia and the Russian People Joseph Stalin was born to a poor family in the province of Georgia in 1879. Stalin's real surname was Djugasvili; he adopted the name 'Stalin' whilst in prison as he felt the translation 'Man of Steel' would help his image. Stalin joined the Bolshevik party as a young man and soon became an active member organizing bank raids to gain money for party funds; this led to Stalin's imprisonment a number of times. Stalin first met Lenin in December 1905 in Finland and was quite surprised to see him as an ordinary man unlike the person he had imagined. In 1918 Stalin was made Commissar for Nationalities of the Bolshevik party, then in 1922 he became

The Great Purge was an act of terror. During Stalin’s purge, 20 million people were sent to labor camps and half of them died. Stalin didn’t want anyone to take his power, so he forced them into the labor camps. By doing that, no one could’ve taken away his power. In the camps they had to work for long periods of time. The physical work they had to do left them exhausted. Stalin didn’t think the people in the camps had any value, so he didn’t really care about them at all. The people were not treated very well. Around this time there was a lot of persecution and oppression in the Soviet Union. During this purge of Stalin’s, there was lots of imprisonments and executions. Depending on who the people were, and if they were a threat, if they weren’t

Between 1929 and 1930 Stalin used various ways to establish a personal dictatorship. This allowed Stalin to establish a personal dictatorship in these years. In order to do this Stalin instituted a party purge to silence the opposition of Riutin and his supporters, the assassination of Kirov, executed delegated party congresses, The trial of the twenty-one and general Purges.

Joseph Stalin’s three decade long dictatorship rule that ended in 1953, left a lasting, yet damaging imprint on the Soviet Union in political, economic and social terms. “Under his inspiration Russia has modernised her society and educated her masses…Stalin found Russia working with a wooden plough and left her equipped with nuclear power” (Jamieson, 1971). Although his policies of collectivisation and industrialisation placed the nation as a leading superpower on the global stage and significantly ahead of its economic position during the Romanov rule, this was not without huge sacrifices. Devastating living and working standards for the proletariat, widespread famine, the Purges, and labour camps had crippling impacts on Russia’s social