To What Extent Did Stalin Establish a Personal Dictatorship in the Years 1929

This highlighted not only Stalin’s fear of being subsided as leader of the USSR, but his ruthlessness in the face of opposition. Then followed the 1936 Show Trials, in which there were many arrests of party members, ex-opponents, military figures and non-party members. The first involved Zinoviev, Kamanev and their allies, who confessed under force for falsified crimes of being responsible for attempts to wreck Soviet industry and to kill Soviet leaders, and subsequently were shot after being convicted. The second followed in January 1937, in which Karl Radek, a well known Trotskyite and Pyatakov was shot, again on falsified crimes. In March 1938, Bukharin and 20 members of the old Right Deviation were tried, and found guilty of working with Trotsky and foreign governments against the USSR. All confessed and were shot, with Tomsky being so crippled by fear that he committed suicide. The Show Trials were a grotesque sham by which Stalin cast immense fear into the hearts and minds of Russia’s political clout, ensuring total control over any opposition through fear alone. Removal of any potential opposition was extended in July 1937 when Yezhov (Stalin’s head of the secret police from 1936) drew up a list of over 250,000 ‘Anti-Soviet elements’, which included intelligentsia such as artists, writers, musicians, priests and so forth. This became known as the Anti-Soviet List, ad anyone unfortunate enough to be found on it was arrested,

There were four elected Duma which were all dispersed by the Tsar who would find an excuse to not trust them. Once the October Manifesto and the Fundamental Laws were passed, the Tsar Nicholas II ordered the army to shoot at protestors but the army refused and took the side of the revolutionaries. These Fundamental Laws re-established the autocracy as the Tsar became more reactionary. After the 1905 Revolution, the Tsar was able to regain control the uprisings in his country. He sent the police to arrest the leader of the St. Petersburg Soviet, a Worker’s Council, Trotsky and exiled him to Siberia. The army crushed a strike in Moscow which caused 1000 deaths. The Black Hundred who were the official strikebreakers, stopped riots in different parts of Russia and murders approximately 500 Jews. Eventually, the workers lost the will to fight and started working again in order to feed their families. The split of the opposition parties turned out to be an advantage for the Tsar who was able to use this against them.

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

Stalin's scheme looked differently because it started in a state which has already been authoritarian and had already been involved in it. He didn't have to win support of masses as Hitler did but had to eliminate his contenders and strengthen his position inside the party.

During the second half of the 1920s, Joseph Stalin set the stage for gaining absolute power by employing police repression against opposition elements within the Communist Party. The machinery of coercion had previously been used only against opponents of Bolshevism, not against party members themselves. The first victims were Politburo members Leon Trotskii, Grigorii Zinov'ev, and Lev Kamenev, who were defeated and expelled from the party in late 1927. Stalin then turned against Nikolai Bukharin, who was denounced as a "right opposition," for opposing his policy of forced collectivization and rapid

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”

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.

The media also expresses that the imprisonment of the spies is the right thing to do. "Up with the banner of Bolshevik vigilance, as we are taught by the genius of the leader of the peoples, comrade Stalin! Let us root out all saboteurs, secret and open, and all those in sympathy with them"(83) As Sofia Petrovna reads the Timofeyev editorial, her boss, Timofeyev, is accusing Sofia for being a saboteur because she had sympathy for Natasha being fired, another so called saboteur. Stalin and his mass media propaganda persuade Timofeyev into taking part in the terror, resulting Timoteyev's belief that what Stalin is doing is the best for the Russian country. The terror stopped revolutions from forming because whatever groups Stalin didn't agree with he could simply arrest the members of that group. In Timofeyev's editorial Sofia is siding with a Natasha, Natasha is thought to be a revolutionary, because Natasha wasn't said to be loyal to the communist regime, and therefore Sofia is accused of siding with a sabotager or revolutionary.

Why was Joseph Stalin a dictator? If he wasn't a dictator, nobody has ever been. He had total control of the country, where people worked, where they lived, even what crops were planted and what was sold, and anybody who spoke out against the Communist party, or Stalin could be imprisoned or killed. Millions were killed under Stalin, some say even more than under Hitler, mainly because the Soviet Union was such a vast country. So, Joseph Stalin (1878-1953) was the dictator of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) from 1929 to 1953. Under Stalin, the Soviet Union was transformed from a peasant society into an industrial and military superpower. However, he ruled by terror, and millions of his own citizens died during his brutal reign. Born into poverty, Stalin became involved in revolutionary politics, as well as criminal activities, as a young man."( Robert Service, A History of 20th Century Russia (1997))"

Rubashov’s character vacillates between embracing the individualistic traits of his nature to the pull exerted on him by the indoctrination of the ideology of the greater good, even at the expense of individual liberty and freedom. Rubashov, during his time in prison though shows a propensity to acknowledge the failure of the glorious tenets of the Revolution, for he has seen the horror of the totalitarian system in the purges carried out by the party leaders under the pretext of filtering traitors. In an acknowledgement of the folly of his and the Party’s ways, Rubashov states “…we are doing the work of prophets without their gift. We replaced vision by logical discussion…” and it is this acceptance of their shortcomings that shows the transformation of Rubashov.

Before that in 1934, a rival to Stalin, Sergey Kirov, was murdered. Stalin was accused of being behind the assassination, and he used this as an excuse to arrest thousands of people. Who, in his words, “could have been responsible for Kirov's murder

At least 100 SA men like Rohm and leading Catholics were slaughtered. He then promised conscription and full-scale rearmament. The Reichswehr vowed him absolute obedience. Like Hitler, the first threat to Stalin came from within the party itself. Stalin consolidated his own dictatorial power by removing old Bolsheviks.

The purges also saw a huge loss of original Bolshevik party members who had taken part in the original revolutions of February and October. It could be argued that the replacement of these individuals, among others, strengthened the party as it reduced threats to Stalin by removing prominent leading members and therefore potential rallying points for other dissidents. Lionel Kochan is of the opinion that `Stalin's purges did of course reveal the existence of widespread dissatisfaction and opportunist sentiment'. If this is true and there was real factional threat in the Communist party, then the purging of dissidents at a time when disunity could be fatal could be seen as strengthening the party and government and through them, the country. Repressed by the ideas of denouncement and the threat of arrest the party was united by fear, this had the added, beneficial effect of deterring outbreaks of resentment at the violence. This is perhaps not the best unifying factor, however, it insured obedience. This effect and the now open positions at the top would have been a strengthening factor for Stalin's position as he could select the individuals who would suit him; he

Intellectual life in Russia also suffered shut in order to eradicate opposition, for example archives were shut in the 1930s and original research was discounted. All areas were affected, including literature where writers who were seen to be non- ideological were purged (by expelling them from the Union of soviet writers).