The Impact of Stalin on Russia and the Russian People Essay

His first five year plan was during 1928-1933 and this was the heavy industry plan which was making industries, transportation, and power supplies. The first of his methods was to use collectivization. Collectivization was the making of small farms into one big farm, and this would help increase the amount of products they make, and that would increase the amount of profit. Afterwards the people who were working on the farms would go into the city and be forced to work in the factories. The money then would be used to buy more more equipment which is industrial products which can help boost their profits yet again. Stalin was shown to be a heavy thinker, and to get his plans through, he made propaganda signs and speeches. He would focuses on telling his people the consequences if they didn’t work hard enough as a country, as they would be “falling behind... and those who fall behind are beaten”(Document 1). The propaganda speeches did work most of the time, but they felt hesitant as the goal for his five year plan was averaging to double the amount of, and “tripling in electricity (milliard kWh) from 5.05 to 17.0 in the end of 1933” (Document 2). Stalin

Stalin’s policy priorities were not building a ‘worker’s paradise’ or a classless society, but protecting Russia from war and invasion. In 1928, Stalin launched the first of two ambitious five-year plans to modernize and industrialize the Soviet economy. These programs brought rapid progress – but also significant death and suffering. Stalin’s decision to nationalize agricultural production dispossessed millions of peasants, forcing them from their land to labor on gigantic state-run collective farms. Grain was sold abroad to finance Soviet industrial projects, leading to food shortages and disastrous famines in the mid-1930s. Soviet Russia was dragged into the 20th century, transforming from a backward agrarian empire into a modern industrial superpower – but this came at extraordinary human cost.

Joseph Stalin, from the time that he was a low level revolutionary to the years that he spent as the dictator of the Soviet Union, always knew what he needed to do to achieve his goals. His organized rise to power allowed him to gain a steady flow of followers who would support him for decades to come. Stalin received a minor government position in 1917, but by the time a new leader was needed in 1924, he “had turned the largely routine post of Party general secretary into the most powerful office in the Soviet Union” (“Joseph Stalin) and “had built a personal empire for himself through his control over committee appointments at all levels . . . expand[ing] the leading Party organs with his supporters, who then voted against his rivals”

Prior to his rise to power, Joseph Stalin’s early life had a large impact on his future as a leader of the Soviet Union. Stalin was born into a dysfunctional family in Gori, Georgia on December 21, 1879 (Joseph Stalin pbs.org). His real name however, was Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. Then changed his last name to Stalin because he combined the Russian word stal, which means steel, and Lenin, the name of the Soviet Union leader at the time (jewishvituallibrary.org). In keeping with his strong name, Stalin contracted and even survived smallpox at a young age, but with the only remaining evidence being a facial scar from where the smallpox where it had formed at. Stalin was sent to a seminary in Tiflis, now known as Tbilisi, to become a priest. However, Stalin never completed his education and soon became involved in the city’s active revolutionary circle ,

After Lenin’s death, Stalin removed his colleagues from power and many were exiled including Leon Trotsky,

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.

Joseph Stalin was one of Russia’s most powerful and ruthless leaders. With his economic policies, he attained the favour of the struggling working class people and with the power he obtained from being a leader he eliminated the opposing party members. The concept of a ‘Five-Year-Plan’ was adopted by the Soviet Union as they sought escalated industrialization and controlled the economy where peasantry was directly in political power.

This worked, as shown by the fact that electricity increased from 5.05 to 17.0 (milliard kWh), coal increased from 35.4 to 68.0 (million tonnes), oil increased from 11.7 to 19.0 (million tonnes), pig-iron increased from 3.3 to 8.0 (million tonnes), and steel increased from 4.0 to 8.3 (million tonnes) (Doc 1). Russia turned from being a backward country into a modern industrialized nation by using the Five Year Plans and communism (O.I.).

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.

By 1941 Stalin had used the five year plans to strengthen his position as leader of the USSR, however the society as a whole was weaker. There were both advantages and disadvantages to the three five year plans: The five year plans were disorganised, there was difficulties with managers, it created a quicksand society and living standards were deprived. It did however help to create the Stakhanovite movement, it helped to finally abolish the New Economic policy (NEP) and most importantly to revolutionise the USSR’s heavy industry.

The Impact of Lenin on Russia and the Russian People Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (a.k.a Lenin) was born in 1870, into a middle class family. In the year 1887 when Lenin was 17 his elder brother Alexandra was executed for conspiring to assassinate the tsar. Lenin who was already well educated and fond of reading and writing was encouraged to enter politics to make changes and to somehow avenge his brothers' death.

The Russian Revolution is a widely studied and seemingly well understood time in modern, European history, boasting a vast wealth of texts and information from those of the likes of Robert Service, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Allan Bullock, Robert Conquest and Jonathan Reed, to name a few, but none is so widely sourced and so heavily relied upon than that of the account of Leon Trotsky, his book “History of the Russian Revolution” a somewhat firsthand account of the events leading up to the formation of the Soviet Union. There is no doubt that Trotsky’s book, among others, has played a pivotal role in shaping our understanding of the events of The Revolution; but have his personal predilections altered how he portrayed such paramount

The Russian Revolutionary war (1917 to 1920) was between the Red Bolshevik army and the White anti-Bolshevik forces. The Red army won the war and Joseph Stalin was appointed general secretary of the party’s Central Committee in 1922. Lenin didn’t like the way Stalin hungered for power and believed that all people should be equal. After the death of Vladimir Lenin, Stalin consolidated his power by suppressing criticism about him and expanding his roll in the current government. Stalin assured himself the leader of Russia by the late 1920’s and made himself “Premier” of the Soviet Union in 1941. He went unchallenged and made the Soviet Union into an Economic powerhouse among the world through Industrialization and Collectivization.

The Impact that Lenin had on Russia and the Russian People Russia was an enormous empire and had over 55,650,000 Russians in it. The leader of Russia from 1905 to 1917 was Tsar Nicholas II (emperor) who was ruler of Russia. The Tsar was independent and had autocratic power, which meant that he shared his power with no one, meaning Russia didn't have to vote. Before the Tsar was in power the Russian army performed a war against Japan and lost because their army was very unequipped and was made up of conscripts (people forced in the army). =

once this was a very silly idea as they would not be able to pull it