How did Stalin maintain power?

Terror
1. Purging of the red army
  1. Top ranks due to heavy defeats
  2. Army /naval officers
  3. 1941- military intelligence- blamed for not alerting him of G’s plan to invade R
  4. Generals who performed badly against G’s army were shot
2. The enemy within
  1. NKVD drew up list of ppl who might be sympathetic to Germans
  2. Political prisoners in regions under threat from G invasion were excuted
  3. Ethnic groups e.g. Siberia who were said to welcome G invasion
  4. Chechen ppl- ordered all 460,00 ppl to be moved in 7 days- weather made it impossible= locked in stables & barns/ burned alive
3. The Doctor’s plot
  1. Concerned with those so closest to him
  2. Physician aroused his suspicion suggesting that he should reduce his work load to improve his health- arrested and so were 30 others
  3. Charged with assassination of the communist party & trying to poison him
  4. He died before this purge could escalate
4. The Leningrad affair
  1. Concerned about his authority in 2nd city
  2. Over a thousand party members from there sacked
  3. Over a thousand party members from there sacked
  4. Confessions extracted by using NKVD’s conveyor belt system
5. Purge of the Jews
  1. Suspicious of former allies
  2. Concerned with citizens who had contact with outside world
  3. Any cosmopolitan Russian was spy & traitor
  4. Believed jews were fundamentally cosmopolitan & had more loyalty to Jews than R
Propaganda
1. Censorship
  1. Content of pictures tightly controlled
  2. Detailed guidelines – specific works on specific subjects
  3. Some music/operas banned
  4. Union of Soviet Writers
  5. Film makers controlled by cast iron scenario system
2. Socialist Realist Art
  1. inspire the workers
  2. Joyful peasants – Voting to expel the Kulak from the collective farm
  3. They are writing about us in Pravda – happy peasants being read Pravda
  4. In The Storm Of The Third Year Of The Five Plan
  5. Sculptures celebrating the new Moscow ball – bearing factory and the Drieper power statopn
3. Soviet Literature
  1. Isaac Babel, Boris Pasternmak and the poet Anna Akhmartova – ‘genre of silence’ – gave up serious writing
  2. Fyodor Gladkov’s ‘Cement’ – a novel telling the story of a cement factory worker
  3. Socialist realism proclaimed to be the basic principle of literary creation
Domestic
1. Family
  1. Sex/ Relationships
    1. after 1917 rev looked for sexual freedom
    2. incest,bigamy,adultery & male homosexuality were legalised in '30 made illegal in '36
    3. no resources for the production of contraception
  2. Marriage
    1. wedding rings banned in '28 allowed in '36
    2. married party members = priviledges e.g. spacious accomidation
    3. communist husbands were to be main earner of family & could be expelled if had an affair
  3. Divorce
    1. spiralling divorce rates in urban areas
    2. avaiability of divorce limited- june 1936 divorce more complex & expensive
    3. soviet press hounded men who deserted wives
2. Children
  1. Ten years of compulsory schooling for all children.
  2. Core curriculum laid down: reading, writing, mathematics, science, history, geography, Russian (and for the national minorities their native language), Marxist theory.
  3. State-prescribed textbooks to be used.
  4. Homework to be a regular requirement.
3. Women
  1. Passed a decree in 1936, reversing Bolshevik social policy
    1. unregistered marriages were no longer recognised, divorce was made more difficult, right to abortion severely districted, the family declared to be the basis of Soviet society and homosexuality outlawed
  2. Women were conscripted into the armed forces, with two million women in the Red Army by 1944.
  3. During the Great Patriotic War, women and children had to fill the vacant place in the factories. Work on the land similarly became an almost totally female activity
  4. Between 1930 and 1945 women's pay rates dropped
Economy
1. Collectivisation
  1. Success
    1. Everyone was fed
    2. Relieved pressure on land
    3. Provided workforce needed for industrialisation programme
    4. Wheat production increased by 33%
    5. Kulaks were destroyed Introduced modern equipment to farming
  2. Failure
    1. Kulaks were destroyed Introduced modern equipment to farming
    2. Peasants burned crops & slaughtered 25-30% of animals
    3. 1932-4 famine killed millions
    4. Most enterprising peasants had been shot or deported so other peasants weren’t very effective with farming methods
    5. Destroyed culture & religion unpopular
2. The 5 Year Plans
  1. 1st FYP – October 1928 to December 1932 2nd FYP – January 1933 to December 1937 3rd FYP – January 1938 to June 1941 4th FYP – January 1946 to December 1950 5th FYP – January 1951 to December 1955
  2. The first year plan was a set of targets that had to be met and didn’t contain any plan on how to meet these targets. Local officials and managers faked there figures to meet the targets but this resulted in Stalin creating higher targets. This means that the data for production in Russia at this time is very unreliable.
  3. The second and third plans were much like the first but the targets were more realistic. Over production occurred in some parts of the economy and under production in others. This meant that parts of industry were held up as they had to wait for vital supplies.
  4. The party’s control of newspapers, cinema and radio meant that only a favourable view of the plans. Support for this was the Stakhanovite movement in 1935 named after Alexei Stakhanov who mined the most coal in one shift. This was to inspired people to work harder.

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How did Stalin maintain power?

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