Development of Communism in the USSR

2024-05-2223:25 Status:Pseudo Tags: USSR Cold War

Under Lenin

Industrialism in the 19th century was a period of immense exploitation, wide Wealth disparity, and disparities in life expectancy. The sentiment of many were opposed to greed, and those who grossly accumulate wealth. Marx and Engels, had a utopia vision where workers were in control. This would bring together people of all ethnicities, language, race etc. together as they all share the same common enemy of the bourgeoisie. It takes root in one of the most unequal nations motivated by Authoritarianism: Imperial Russia. Czar Nicholas II abdicates his throne, which leaves Russia without a formal leader, and a temporary democratic provisional government is in power, but it struggles.

In April 1917, Lenin, founder and leader of the communist Bolsheviks, called for an end to Russia’s involvement in the war and uses the slogan, “Peace! Land! Bread!” and gains widespread popularity. By October 1917, the Bolsheviks have taken power, and Lenin begins to transform Russia to his form of Marxism (believed that a vanguard government was necessary to reach a Marxist society). Lenin was a visionary inspired by Marx and Engels who sought a future with no exploitation, and a state that followed Egalitarianism and, more strictly, Leninism. He was also a good politician in that he successfully gained power from the disordered Russian state. Lenin and Bolsheviks party believed that revolution was the only way to overturn the government and avoid further development of liberalism in Russia. After an assassination attempt in 1918, Lenin tries to eliminate all political rivals through a campaign called, the Red Terror. Many people (nobility, clergy, landowners etc.) were tortured and executed and a 5-year civil war (second) in Russia (Reds vs. Whites (Anti-Bolsheviks supported by other liberal countries)). The Bolsheviks won in 1922, several republics joined together to create the first communist country in the world, The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, (USSR).

The Red Terror started the Russian Civil War in which Lenin tried to transform Russia into a communist state as quickly as possible by introducing “war communism” - elimination of the market distribution of resources. By 1921, there was a realization that this could not happen that quickly and the New Economic Policy was introduced, which brought back some aspects of capitalism. Under Lenin, Russia saw some positive changes. (1922 - two years)

• Land was redistributed to the people.
• Factories were given to the workers so they could make decisions about wages and working conditions.
• Men and women were considered equal and valuable contributors to society. (Doubling the workforce - not necessarily for women’s rights).
• Art and music flourished during this time

Many of these accomplishments were achieved at the expense of liberal rights and freedoms, but this all abruptly changed when Lenin dies of a stroke in 1924. (The positive aspects of his government differentiate him from Stalin). Ultimately, he declared Russia to be a state of workers and peasants.

Under Stalin

The Bolsheviks were divided into two groups: People who were educated (Trotsky, Lenin etc.) and people who came without education (e.g. Stalin who was born in Georgia to a poor, violent, abusive family, to a drunk father, and became a revolutionary who participated in a bank robbery, killing guards but sending money to Lenin (who he had no even met). To Lenin, Stalin represented the working class and, though he was basically a gangster, was able to gain power as The Secretary General. After being made Secretary General, and after Lenin’s death, Stalin transformed his Nothing job into one of the most crucial positions in the USSR’s government.

With Lenin’s death, Russia will go through a transition into another form of communism - Stalinism. Stalin struggles with Trotsky for power, but by 1928 he is the sole leader of the Soviet Union. Stalin’s version of communism was influenced by his desire to maintain absolute power and control. His style of communism is defined by oppression and fear rather than revolution and freedom. He completely rejected all liberal values. Stalin was worried that the small-scale capitalist practices of the NEO would encourage more capitalism, so he centralized economic planning and implemented the first of many five-year plans in a new command economy. The plan called for industrial production to increase by about 20% per year in a variety of industries. To finance this expansion, collectivization was going to be implemented - taking individual farms and creating an agricultural production cooperative. Farmers were forced to work together to meet quotas for the state. Propaganda became a widely used method to encourage everyone to follow the state’s policy.

This is when Stalin started collectivization (a process that in which all peasants were eliminated or ‘liquidated’). The kulaks, a class of prosperous land-owning peasants were particularly targeted and became the scapegoats for all hardship in the Soviet Union. This was targeted at successful farmers, and people with too much property, ‘kulaks’ to create collectivized farms. As the USSR did not export natural gas, nor oil at the time, they only had grain as a resource. The incredibly inefficient agricultural sector (formed by collectivization), initially caused a short mass starvation across the USSR. But this would soon be weaponized to form an artificial famine, contributing in large part to Holodomor, targeted at “kulaks’ in what is now Ukraine. This was because Stalin was particularly concerned with Ukrainian defecting (tried to create an independent state during the Russian Revolution). 4 million people were systematically killed in Ukraine alone (others were killed in Serbia). Some examples of Stalin’s policies during this time include:

• Stalin’s version of communism became increasingly brutal, as dissenters and any opposition were quelled quickly.
• Example: The Great Purge (1936-1938) and Gulag camps.
• By 1939, there were at least 1.3 million people in the camps and 1.5-2 million people arrested for “counterrevolutionary actives.”
• Secret police were used to control the people by terror.
• Propaganda was heavily used.
• Rewriting of Russian history to display a state view of Russian history (without Trotsky).

This marked the shift into a state more aligned with Totalitarianism (Dictatorship) (1930s): the Kremlin runs all the elections, the outcome is the same. This was the time when the Soviet Great Purge Trials where dissent was stomped out. Similar to the Red Terror, in 1937 to 1938, Stalin sought to eliminate political opponents in the Great Terror of ‘37; followed by the creation of concentration camps, Gulags 1 spread across all across the USSR with the intent of removing intellectual threat of organizing some sort of resistance. Because Stalin persecuted against his fellow Bolsheviks, created concentration camps, and committed a genocide for his ideals he is considered to be more left, violent, and totalitarian than Lenin.