To What Extent Were the Purges Caused by Stalin's Paranoia?

The Russian’s loss in the Russo-Japanese war was the another way that they got the public to turn against the provisional government and strengthen the communist revolt. The revolt got stronger and stronger until the Bolsheviks finally revolted and took down the Russian Provisional Government. Because of this, civil war erupted all over the country. At the end of this war, in 1920, the Bolsheviks set up the USSR, or Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, under control of Vladimir Lenin. When Lenin died, Stalin aggressively worked his way up until he was the leader of the USSR. In his control, Stalin set up a “5 year plan” to advance the Russian economy from just farming to also having industry. In this plan, he would also advance the military and “cleanse the country of villains” or those he saw as villains. To “cleanse the country”, Stalin would have unfair trials that would have many on trial at once. These were called his “Show Trials”. The majority, if not all, of these people were found guilty and sent for execution. They were executed all at once, and the executions were called the Purges. To advance the Russian economy, Stalin would work the farmers to death… literally. When the farmers revolted, Stalin stopped sending them food and even more died from starvation. On the last of the purges, 16 men were put on trial and accused of acts of terrorism towards Stalin and the Soviet government. Two of them were Stalin’s allies after Lenin’s death, Zinovyev and

The First and Second Red Scare of the United States paved the way for a long standing fear of communism and proved to be one of America’s largest periods of mass hysteria. Throughout the years authors and analysts have studied and formed expository albeit argumentative books and articles in an attempt to further understand this period of time; the mindset held during this period however is shown to be completely different compared to now.

Under a backdrop of systematic fear and terror, the Stalinist juggernaut flourished. Stalin’s purges, otherwise known as the “Great Terror”, grew from his obsession and desire for sole dictatorship, marking a period of extreme persecution and oppression in the Soviet Union during the late 1930s. “The purges did not merely remove potential enemies. They also raised up a new ruling elite which Stalin had reason to think he would find more dependable.” (Historian David Christian, 1994). While Stalin purged virtually all his potential enemies, he not only profited from removing his long-term opponents, but in doing so, also caused fear in future ones. This created a party that had virtually no opposition, a new ruling elite that would be

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 Great Terror was one of the single greatest loss of lives in the history of the world. It was a crusade of political tyranny in the Soviet Union that transpired during the late 1930’s. The Terrors implicated a wide spread cleansing of the Communist Party and government officials, control of peasants and the Red Army headship, extensive police over watch, suspicion of saboteurs, counter-revolutionaries, and illogical slayings. Opportunely, some good did come from the terrors nonetheless. Two of those goods being Sofia Petrovna and Requiem. Both works allow history to peer back into the Stalin Era and bear witness to the travesties that came with it. Through the use of fictional story telling and thematic devises Sofia Petrovna and Requiem, respectively, paint a grim yet descriptive picture in a very efficient manner.

These effects however were more severe under Lenin and Stalin as they sought to increase grain production by coercion. While Lenin under War communism used grain requisitioning to forcefully collect peasant surpluses from them Stalin used collectivisation to force peasants to collaborate to produce as much food as possible. Similarly in both cases the peasants refused to conform; knowing that any surplus would be confiscated the peasant produced the barest minimum to feed themselves and their family and even less food was available for Russia. One of the greatest impacts were the famines that occurred in 1921 under Lenin where the grain harvest produced less than half the amount gathered in 1931 and Russia had international help from countries such as the USA. However these impacts were the greatest under Stalin. The amount of bread produced fell from 250.4 (kilograms per head) in 1928 to 214.6 in 1932. The impacts of collectivisation were at its worst in 1932-32 when occurred what many people describe as a self-made national famine. Stalin’s ‘’official silence’’ of the situation meant it wasn’t addressed and thus collectivisation killed between 10-15 million peasants and failed to increase agricultural output. Though a similar devastating famine occurred under

It is true that Stalin’s rule positively affected Russia, after all, the Soviet Union did become a major military superpower under his government, and the economy also thrived. However, to fulfill these achievements Stalin acted as a harsh and cruel dictator. He ruthlessly killed people who opposed his form of government in his Great Purges. And his execution countless kulaks cannot be forgiven. Instead of protecting

As he attempted this goal, he disregarded all those he would affect in the process, even if it meant the death to millions through genocide. This would eventually depict the negative aspects of Stalin’s tendentious rule. Josef Stalin’s first negative method of attempting to increase the power of Russia can be seen as his idea of collectivization. As seen in Document Four, collectivization is the Socialist way of an agricultural economy. “[The Government] is to set up collective farms and state farms…[through] the joining together of small peasant farms into large collective farms.” This method completely abolished any means of capitalism within society, such as the idea of individual gain. This would put the country in a state of great famine for peasants, as well as wealthy farmers, would revolt against the idea of a community farm. Working for the state instead of working for their individual self seemed to be an absurd idea, leading to a decrease in agricultural production for farmers refused to work under these conditions. Along with this, Stalin also introduced the “Great Purge” to the nation of Russia during his rule. The “Great Purge” is seen as the torture, exile, or execution of any being that opposed or threatened the ruling of Stalin. This was a method of instilling fear in his people in order to let Stalin rule in

In the book Sofia Petrovna, the author Lydia Chukovskaya writes about Sofia Petrovna and her dreadful experiences as a widowed mother during the Russian Stalinist Terror of the 1930s. There were four basic results of the Russian Stalinist Terror: first, it was a way of keeping people in order; second, it kept Stalin in power and stopped revolutions from forming, made people work harder to increase the output of the economy, and separated families as well as caused deaths of many innocent people due to false charges.

The 20th century was marked by many unforgettable events such as World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. Some of these events occurred because of the birth of a government system called totalitarianism. A totalitarian regime is gained either through legal or illegal means and transforms the entire society into a single party regime with the sole purpose of conquering society (Zani, 2003). One of the founding fathers of totalitarianism, Joseph Stalin, ruined the lives of many by taking complete control over their lives through brainwashing techniques and destroying their rights to express their opinion.

Stalin like Hitler “used propaganda, censorship, and terror to force his will on the Soviet people. Government newspapers glorified work and Stalin himself. Secret police spied on citizens, and anyone who refused to praise Stalin and the state faced severe punishment, even death” (“The Soviet”, n.d.).

Stalin’s unquestionable dominance over the Bolshevik party and their actions highlights the impact of Stalinism

The effects of the purges on the political structure and community of the USSR can be described (as Peter Kenez asserts) as an overall change from a party led dictatorship to the dictatorship of a single individual; Stalin. Overall power was centred in Stalin, under whom an increasingly bureaucratic hierarchy of

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

During Stalin’s reign, there were many problems in the USSR: economic problems, social problems and political. Due to these problems Stalin developed many domestic policies in order to counter these problems and try to avoid an uprising. These plans were put into motion almost immediately during Stalin’s reign, but they proved unsuccessful and Stalin was unable to solve the problems that existed within the Soviet Union.