Wednesday 10 October 2018

Russian Revolution


The Russian Revolution was a pair of revolutions in Russia in 1917 which dismantled the Tsarist autocracy and led to the rise of the Soviet Union. The Russian Empire collapsed with the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II and the old regime was replaced by a provisional government during the first revolution of February 1917 (March in the Gregorian calendar; the older Julian calendar was in use in Russia at the time). Alongside it arose grassroots community assemblies (called 'soviets') which contended for authority. In the second revolution that October, the Provisional Government was toppled and all power was given to the soviets.
The February Revolution (March 1917) was a revolution focused around Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg), the capital of Russia at that time. In the chaos, members of the Imperial parliament (the Duma) assumed control of the country, forming the Russian Provisional Government which was heavily dominated by the interests of large capitalists and the noble aristocracy. The army leadership felt they did not have the means to suppress the revolution, resulting in Nicholas's abdication. The soviets, which were dominated by soldiers and the urban industrial working class, initially permitted the Provisional Government to rule, but insisted on a prerogative to influence the government and control various militias. The February Revolution took place in the context of heavy military setbacks during the First World War (1914–18), which left much of the Russian Army in a state of mutiny.
A period of dual power ensued, during which the Provisional Government held state power while the national network of soviets, led by socialists, had the allegiance of the lower classes and, increasingly, the left-leaning urban middle class. During this chaotic period there were frequent mutinies, protests and many strikes. Many socialist political organizations were engaged in daily struggle and vied for influence within the Duma and the soviets, central among which were the Bolsheviks ("Ones of the Majority") led by Vladimir Lenin who campaigned for an immediate end to the war, land to the peasants, and bread to the workers. When the Provisional Government chose to continue fighting the war with Germany, the Bolsheviks and other socialist factions were able to exploit virtually universal disdain towards the war effort as justification to advance the revolution further. The Bolsheviks turned workers' militias under their control into the Red Guards (later the Red Army) over which they exerted substantial control.[1]
In the October Revolution (November in the Gregorian calendar), the Bolsheviks led an armed insurrection by workers and soldiers in Petrograd that successfully overthrew the Provisional Government, transferring all its authority to the soviets with the capital being relocated to Moscow shortly thereafter. The Bolsheviks had secured a strong base of support within the soviets and, as the now supreme governing party, established a federal government dedicated to reorganizing the former empire into the world's first socialist republic, practicing soviet democracy on a national and international scale. The promise to end Russia's participation in the First World War was honored promptly with the Bolshevik leaders signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany in March 1918. To further secure the new state, the Cheka was established which functioned as a revolutionary security service that sought to weed out and punish those considered to be "enemies of the people" in campaigns consciously modeled on similar events during the French Revolution.
Soon after, civil war erupted among the "Reds" (Bolsheviks), the "Whites" (counter-revolutionaries), the independence movements and the non-Bolshevik socialists. It continued for several years, during which the Bolsheviks defeated both the Whites and all rival socialists and thereafter reconstituted themselves as the Communist Party. In this way, the Revolution paved the way for the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1922. While many notable historical events occurred in Moscow and Petrograd, there was also a visible movement in cities throughout the state, among national minorities throughout the empire and in the rural areas, where peasants took over and redistributed land.


The Joseph Stalin[b][c] (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili;[a] 18 December 1878 – 5 March 1953) was a Soviet revolutionary and politician of Georgian ethnicity. He ruled the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953, holding the titles of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1952 and the nation's Premier from 1941 to 1953. Initially presiding over an oligarchic one-party regime that governed by plurality, he became the de facto dictator of the Soviet Union by the 1930s. Ideologically committed to the Leninist interpretation of Marxism, Stalin helped to formalise these ideas as Marxism–Leninism while his own policies became known as Stalinism.
Born to a poor family in GoriRussian Empire, Stalin began his revolutionary career by joining the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party as a youth. There, he edited the party's newspaper, Pravda, and raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction via robberies, kidnappings, and protection rackets. Repeatedly arrested, he underwent several internal exiles. After the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia during the 1917 October Revolution, Stalin joined the party's governing Politburo where he was instrumental in overseeing the Soviet Union's establishment in 1922. As Lenin fell ill and then died in 1924, Stalin assumed leadership over the country. During Stalin's rule, "Socialism in One Country" became a central tenet of the party's dogma, and Lenin's New Economic Policywas replaced with a centralized command economy. Under the Five-Year Plan system, the country underwent collectivisation and rapid industrialization but experienced significant disruptions in food production that contributed to the famine of 1932–33. To eradicate those regarded as "enemies of the working class", Stalin instituted the "Great Purge" in which over a million were imprisoned and at least 700,000 executed between 1934 and 1939.
Stalin's government promoted Marxism–Leninism abroad through the Communist International and supported anti-fascist movements throughout Europe during the 1930s, particularly in the Spanish Civil War. In 1939 it signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, resulting in their joint invasion of Poland. Germany ended the pact by invading the Soviet Union in 1941. Despite initial setbacks, the Soviet Red Army repelled the German incursion and captured Berlin in 1945, ending World War II in Europe. The Soviets annexed the Baltic states and helped establish Soviet-aligned governments throughout most of Central and Eastern Europe, China, and North Korea. The Soviet Union and the United States emerged from the war as the two world superpowers. Tensions escalated into a Cold War between the Soviet-backed Eastern Bloc and U.S.-backed Western Bloc. Stalin led his country through its post-war reconstruction, during which it developed a nuclear weapon in 1949. In these years, the country experienced another major famine and an anti-semiticcampaign peaking in the doctors' plot. Stalin died in 1953 and was eventually succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev, who denounced his predecessor and initiated a de-Stalinisation process throughout Soviet society.
Widely considered one of the 20th century's most significant figures, Stalin was the subject of a pervasive personality cult within the international Marxist–Leninist movement, for whom Stalin was a champion of socialism and the working class. Since the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, Stalin has retained popularity in Russia and Georgia as a victorious wartime leader who established the Soviet Union as a major world power. Conversely, his totalitarian government has been widely condemned for overseeing mass repressions, ethnic cleansing, hundreds of thousands of executions, and famines which caused the deaths of millions.
Soldiers blocking Narva Gate on Bloody Sunday
The Russian Revolution of 1905 was said to be a major factor contributing to the cause of the Revolutions of 1917. The events of Bloody Sunday triggered nationwide protests and soldier mutinies. A council of workers called the St. Petersburg Soviet was created in this chaos.[2] While the 1905 Revolution was ultimately crushed, and the leaders of the St. Petersburg Soviet were arrested, this laid the groundwork for the later Petrograd Soviet and other revolutionary movements during the leadup to 1917. The 1905 Revolution also led to the creation of a Duma (parliament), that would later form the Provisional Government following February 1917.[3]
The outbreak of World War I prompted general outcry directed at Tsar Nicholas II and the Romanov family. While the nation was initially caught up in a wave of nationalism, increasing numbers of defeats and poor conditions soon made the opposite true. The Tsar attempted to remedy the situation by taking personal control of the army in 1915. This proved disastrous, as the Tsar was now held personally responsible for Russia's continuing defeats and losses. In addition, the Tsarina Alexandra, left to rule in while the Tsar was commanding at the front, was German born, leading to suspicion of collusion, only exacerbated by rumors relating to her relationship with the controversial mystic Rasputin. Rasputin's influence led to disastrous ministerial appointments and corruption, resulting in a worsening of conditions within Russia. This led to general dissatisfaction with the Romanov family, and was a major factor contributing to the retaliation of the Russian Communists against the royal family.[3]
After the entry of the Ottoman Empire on the side of the Central Powers in October 1914, Russia was deprived of a major trade route through the Dardanelles, which further contributed to the economic crisis, in which Russia became incapable of providing munitions to their army in the years leading to 1917. However, the problems were primarily administrative, and not industrial, as Germany was producing great amounts of munitions whilst constantly fighting on two major battlefronts.[4]
The conditions during the war resulted in devastating loss of morale within the Russian army, as well as the general population. This was particularly apparent in the cities, owing to a lack of food in response to the disruption of agriculture. Food scarcity had become a considerable problem in Russia, but the cause of this did not lie in any failure of the harvests, which had not been significantly altered during wartime. The indirect reason was that the government, in order to finance the war, had been printing millions of ruble notes, and by 1917 inflation had made prices increase up to four times what they had been in 1914. Farmers were consequently faced with a higher cost of living, but little increase in income. As a result, they tended to hoard their grain and to revert to subsistence farming. Thus the cities were constantly short of food. At the same time, rising prices led to demands for higher wages in the factories, and in January and February 1916 revolutionary propaganda, in part aided by German funds, led to widespread strikes. This resulted in a growing criticism of the government, including an increased participation of workers in revolutionary parties.
Liberal parties too had an increased platform to voice their complaints, as the initial fervor of the war had resulted in the Tsarist government creating a variety of political organizations. In July 1915, a Central War Industries Committee was established under the chairmanship of a prominent OctobristAlexander Guchkov (1862-1936), including ten workers' representatives. The Petrograd Mensheviks agreed to join despite the objections of their leaders abroad. All this activity gave renewed encouragement to political ambitions, and, in September 1915, a combination of Octobrists and Kadets in the Duma demanded the forming of a responsible government. The Tsar rejected these proposals.[5]
All these factors had given rise to a sharp loss of confidence in the regime, even within the ruling class, growing throughout the war. Early in 1916, Guchkov discussed with senior army officers and members of the Central War Industries Committee about a possible coup to force the abdication of the Tsar. In December, a small group of nobles assassinated Rasputin, and in January 1917 the Tsar's uncle, Grand Duke Nicholas, was asked indirectly by Prince Lvov whether he would be prepared to take over the throne from his nephew, Tsar Nicholas II. None of these incidents were in themselves the immediate cause of the February Revolution, but they do help to explain why the monarchy survived only a few days after it had broken out.[5]
Meanwhile, Socialist Revolutionary leaders in exile, many of them living in Switzerland, had been the glum spectators of the collapse of international socialist solidarity. French and German Social Democrats had voted in favour of their respective governments' war efforts. Georgi Plekhanov in Paris had adopted a violently anti-German stand, while Parvussupported the German war effort as the best means of ensuring a revolution in Russia. The Mensheviks largely maintained that Russia had the right to defend herself against Germany, although Martov (a prominent Menshevik), now on the left of his group, demanded an end to the war and a settlement on the basis of national self-determination, with no annexations or indemnities.[5]
It was these views of Martov that predominated in a manifesto drawn up by Leon Trotsky (at the time a Menshevik) at a conference in Zimmerwald, attended by 35 Socialist leaders in September 1915. Inevitably Vladimir Lenin, supported by Zinoviev and Radek, strongly contested them. Their attitudes became known as the Zimmerwald Left. Lenin rejected both the defence of Russia and the cry for peace. Since the autumn of 1914, he had insisted that "from the standpoint of the working class and of the labouring masses from the lesser evil would be the defeat of the Tsarist Monarchy"; the war must be turned into a civil war of the proletarian soldiers against their own governments, and if a proletarian victory should emerge from this in Russia, then their duty would be to wage a revolutionary war for the liberation of the masses throughout Europe.[6]

Economic and social changes

Russian soldiers marching in Petrograd in February 1917
An elementary theory of property, believed by many peasants, was that land should belong to those who work on it. At the same time, peasant life and culture was changing constantly. Change was facilitated by the physical movement of growing numbers of peasant villagers who migrated to and from industrial and urban environments, but also by the introduction of city culture into the village through material goods, the press, and word of mouth.[nb 1]
Workers also had good reasons for discontent: overcrowded housing with often deplorable sanitary conditions, long hours at work (on the eve of the war a 10-hour workday six days a week was the average and many were working 11–12 hours a day by 1916), constant risk of injury and death from poor safety and sanitary conditions, harsh discipline (not only rules and fines, but foremen's fists), and inadequate wages (made worse after 1914 by steep wartime increases in the cost of living). At the same time, urban industrial life was full of benefits, though these could be just as dangerous, from the point of view of social and political stability, as the hardships. There were many encouragements to expect more from life. Acquiring new skills gave many workers a sense of self-respect and confidence, heightening expectations and desires. Living in cities, workers encountered material goods such as they had never seen in villages. Most important, living in cities, they were exposed to new ideas about the social and political order.[nb 2]
The social causes of the Russian Revolution mainly came from centuries of oppression of the lower classes by the Tsarist regime, and Nicholas's failures in World War I. While rural agrarian peasants had been emancipated from serfdom in 1861, they still resented paying redemption payments to the state, and demanded communal tender of the land they worked. The problem was further compounded by the failure of Sergei Witte's land reforms of the early 20th century. Increasing peasant disturbances and sometimes actual revolts occurred, with the goal of securing ownership of the land they worked. Russia consisted mainly of poor farming peasants, with 1.5% of the population owning 25% of the land.[citation needed]
The rapid industrialization of Russia also resulted in urban overcrowding and poor conditions for urban industrial workers (as mentioned above). Between 1890 and 1910, the population of the capital, Saint Petersburg, swelled from 1,033,600 to 1,905,600, with Moscow experiencing similar growth. This created a new 'proletariat' which, due to being crowded together in the cities, was much more likely to protest and go on strike than the peasantry had been in previous times. In one 1904 survey, it was found that an average of sixteen people shared each apartment in Saint Petersburg, with six people per room. There was also no running water, and piles of human waste were a threat to the health of the workers. The poor conditions only aggravated the situation, with the number of strikes and incidents of public disorder rapidly increasing in the years shortly before World War I. Because of late industrialization, Russia's workers were highly concentrated. By 1914, 40% of Russian workers were employed in factories of 1,000+ workers (32% in 1901). 42% worked in 100–1,000 worker enterprises, 18% in 1–100 worker businesses (in the US, 1914, the figures were 18, 47 and 35 respectively).[7]
World War I added to the chaos. Conscription swept up the unwilling across Russia. The vast demand for factory production of war supplies and workers caused many more labor riots and strikes. Conscription stripped skilled workers from the cities, who had to be replaced with unskilled peasants, and then, when famine began to hit due to the poor railway system, workers abandoned the cities in droves seeking food. Finally, the soldiers themselves, who suffered from a lack of equipment and protection from the elements, began to turn against the Tsar. This was mainly because, as the war progressed, many of the officers who were loyal to the Tsar were killed, and were replaced by discontented conscripts from the major cities, who had little loyalty to the Tsar.

Political issues

The Petrograd Soviet Assembly meeting in 1917
Many sections of the country had reason to be dissatisfied with the existing autocracy. Nicholas II was a deeply conservative ruler and maintained a strict authoritarian system. Individuals and society in general were expected to show self-restraint, devotion to community, deference to the social hierarchy and a sense of duty to the country. Religious faith helped bind all of these tenets together as a source of comfort and reassurance in the face of difficult conditions and as a means of political authority exercised through the clergy. Perhaps more than any other modern monarch, Nicholas II attached his fate and the future of his dynasty to the notion of the ruler as a saintly and infallible father to his people.[nb 3]
This idealized vision of the Romanov monarchy blinded him to the actual state of his country. With a firm belief that his power to rule was granted by Divine Right, Nicholas assumed that the Russian people were devoted to him with unquestioning loyalty. This ironclad belief rendered Nicholas unwilling to allow the progressive reforms that might have alleviated the suffering of the Russian people. Even after the 1905 revolution spurred the Tsar to decree limited civil rights and democratic representation, he worked to limit even these liberties in order to preserve the ultimate authority of the crown.[nb 3]
Despite constant oppression, the desire of the people for democratic participation in government decisions was strong. Since the Age of Enlightenment, Russian intellectuals had promoted Enlightenment ideals such as the dignity of the individual and the rectitude of democratic representation. These ideals were championed most vociferously by Russia's liberals, although populists, Marxists, and anarchists also claimed to support democratic reforms. A growing opposition movement had begun to challenge the Romanov monarchy openly well before the turmoil of World War I.
Dissatisfaction with Russian autocracy culminated in the huge national upheaval that followed the Bloody Sunday massacre of January 1905, in which hundreds of unarmed protesters were shot by the Tsar's troops. Workers responded to the massacre with a crippling general strike, forcing Nicholas to put forth the October Manifesto, which established a democratically elected parliament (the State Duma). The Tsar undermined this promise of reform but a year later with Article 87 of the 1906 Fundamental State Laws, and subsequently dismissed the first two Dumas when they proved uncooperative. Unfulfilled hopes of democracy fueled revolutionary ideas and violent outbursts targeted at the monarchy.
One of the Tsar's principal rationales for risking war in 1914 was his desire to restore the prestige that Russia had lost amid the debacles of the Russo-Japanese war. Nicholas also sought to foster a greater sense of national unity with a war against a common and ancient enemy. The Russian Empire was an agglomeration of diverse ethnicities that had shown significant signs of disunity in the years before the First World War. Nicholas believed in part that the shared peril and tribulation of a foreign war would mitigate the social unrest over the persistent issues of poverty, inequality, and inhuman working conditions. Instead of restoring Russia's political and military standing, World War I led to the horrifying slaughter of Russian troops and military defeats that undermined both the monarchy and society in general to the point of collapse.

World War I

The outbreak of war in August 1914 initially served to quiet the prevalent social and political protests, focusing hostilities against a common external enemy, but this patriotic unity did not last long. As the war dragged on inconclusively, war-weariness gradually took its toll. More important, though, was a deeper fragility: although many ordinary Russians joined anti-German demonstrations in the first few weeks of the war, the most widespread reaction appears to have been skepticism and fatalism. Hostility toward the Kaiser and the desire to defend their land and their lives did not necessarily translate into enthusiasm for the Tsar or the government.[9][10][11]
Russia's first major battle of the war was a disaster: in the 1914 Battle of Tannenberg, over 30,000 Russian troops were killed or wounded and 90,000 captured, while Germany suffered just 12,000 casualties. However, Austro-Hungarian forces allied to Germany were driven back deep into the Galicia region by the end of the year. In the autumn of 1915, Nicholas had taken direct command of the army, personally overseeing Russia's main theatre of war and leaving his ambitious but incapable wife Alexandra in charge of the government. Reports of corruption and incompetence in the Imperial government began to emerge, and the growing influence of Grigori Rasputin in the Imperial family was widely resented. In the eyes of Michael Lynch, a revisionist historian (member of the School of Historical Studies at the University of Leicester) who focuses on the role of the people, Rasputin was a "fatal disease" to the Tsarist regime.
In 1915, things took a critical turn for the worse when Germany shifted its focus of attack to the Eastern front. The superior German army – better led, better trained and better supplied – was terrifyingly effective against the ill-equipped Russian forces, driving the Russians out of Galicia, as well as Russian Poland, during the Gorlice–Tarnów Offensivecampaign. By the end of October 1916, Russia had lost between 1,600,000 and 1,800,000 soldiers, with an additional 2,000,000 prisoners of war and 1,000,000 missing, all making up a total of nearly 5,000,000 men.
These staggering losses played a definite role in the mutinies and revolts that began to occur. In 1916, reports of fraternizing with the enemy started to circulate. Soldiers went hungry, and lacked shoes, munitions, and even weapons. Rampant discontent lowered morale, which was further undermined by a series of military defeats.
Russian troops awaiting German attack in trenches
Casualty rates were the most vivid sign of this disaster. Already, by the end of 1914, only five months into the war, around 390,000 Russian men had lost their lives and nearly 1,000,000 were injured. Far sooner than expected, barely trained recruits had to be called up for active duty, a process repeated throughout the war as staggering losses continued to mount. The officer class also saw remarkable changes, especially within the lower echelons, which were quickly filled with soldiers rising up through the ranks. These men, usually of peasant or working-class backgrounds, were to play a large role in the politicization of the troops in 1917.
The huge losses on the battlefields were not limited to men. The army quickly ran short of rifles and ammunition (as well as uniforms and food), and, by mid-1915, men were being sent to the front bearing no arms. It was hoped that they could equip themselves with the arms that they recovered from fallen soldiers, of both sides, on the battlefields. The soldiers did not feel that they were being treated as valuable soldiers, or even as human beings, but rather as raw materials to be squandered for the purposes of the rich and powerful.
By the spring of 1915, the army was in steady retreat, which was not always orderly; desertion, plunder and chaotic flight were not uncommon. By 1916, however, the situation had improved in many respects. Russian troops stopped retreating, and there were even some modest successes in the offensives that were staged that year, albeit at great loss of life. Also, the problem of shortages was largely solved by a major effort to increase domestic production. Nevertheless, by the end of 1916, morale among soldiers was even worse than it had been during the great retreat of 1915. The fortunes of war may have improved, but the fact of the war, still draining away strength and lives from the country and its many individuals and families, remained an oppressive inevitability. The crisis in morale (as was argued by Allan Wildman, a leading historian of the Russian army in war and revolution) "was rooted fundamentally in the feeling of utter despair that the slaughter would ever end and that anything resembling victory could be achieved."[12]
The war devastated not only soldiers. By the end of 1915, there were manifold signs that the economy was breaking down under the heightened strain of wartime demand. The main problems were food shortages and rising prices. Inflation dragged incomes down at an alarmingly rapid rate, and shortages made it difficult to buy even what one could afford. These shortages were a problem especially in the capital, St. Petersburg, where distance from supplies and poor transportation networks made matters particularly bad. Shops closed early or entirely for lack of bread, sugar, meat and other provisions, and lines lengthened massively for what remained. It became increasingly difficult both to afford and actually buy food.
Not surprisingly, strikes increased steadily from the middle of 1915, and so did crime; but, for the most part, people suffered and endured, scouring the city for food. Working class women in St. Petersburg reportedly spent about forty hours a week in food lines, begging, turning to prostitution or crime, tearing down wooden fences to keep stoves heated for warmth, grumbling about the rich, and wondering when and how this would all come to an end.
Government officials responsible for public order worried about how long people's patience would last. A report by the St. Petersburg branch of the security police, the Okhrana, in October 1916, warned bluntly of "the possibility in the near future of riots by the lower classes of the empire enraged by the burdens of daily existence."[13]
Nicholas was blamed for all of these crises, and what little support he had left began to crumble. As discontent grew, the State Duma issued a warning to Nicholas in November 1916. It stated that, inevitably, a terrible disaster would grip the country unless a constitutional form of government was put in place. Nicholas ignored these warnings and Russia's Tsarist regime collapsed a few months later during the February Revolution of 1917. One year later, the Tsar and his entire family were executed.

February Revolution

Main article: February Revolution
Revolutionaries protesting in February 1917
Meeting Germans in No Man's Land
Meeting before the Russian wire entanglements
At the beginning of February, Petrograd workers began several strikes and demonstrations.[citation needed] On 7 March [O.S. 22 February], workers at Putilov, Petrograd's largest industrial plant, announced a strike.[14]
The next day, a series of meetings and rallies were held for International Women's Day, which gradually turned into economic and political gatherings. Demonstrations were organised to demand bread, and these were supported by the industrial working force who considered them a reason for continuing the strikes. The women workers marched to nearby factories bringing out over 50,000 workers on strike.[15] By 10 March [O.S. 25 February], virtually every industrial enterprise in Petrograd had been shut down, together with many commercial and service enterprises. Students, white-collar workers and teachers joined the workers in the streets and at public meetings.[citation needed]
To quell the riots, the Tsar looked to the army. At least 180,000 troops were available in the capital, but most were either untrained or injured. Historian Ian Beckett suggests around 12,000 could be regarded as reliable, but even these proved reluctant to move in on the crowd, since it included so many women. It was for this reason that when, on 11 March [O.S. 26 February], the Tsar ordered the army to suppress the rioting by force, troops began to mutiny.[16] Although few actively joined the rioting, many officers were either shot or went into hiding; the ability of the garrison to hold back the protests was all but nullified, symbols of the Tsarist regime were rapidly torn down around the city, and governmental authority in the capital collapsed – not helped by the fact that Nicholas had prorogued the Duma that morning, leaving it with no legal authority to act. The response of the Duma, urged on by the liberal bloc, was to establish a Temporary Committee to restore law and order; meanwhile, the socialist parties establish the Petrograd Soviet to represent workers and soldiers. The remaining loyal units switched allegiance the next day.[17]
The Tsar directed the royal train back towards Petrograd, which was stopped 14 March [O.S. 1 March],[16] by a group of revolutionaries at Malaya Vishera. When the Tsar finally arrived at in Pskov, the Army Chief Nikolai Ruzsky, and the Duma deputees Guchkov and Vasily Shulgin suggested in unison that he abdicate the throne. He did so on 15 March [O.S. 2 March], on behalf of himself, and then, having taken advice, on behalf of his son, the Tsarevich.[16] Nicholas nominated his brother, the Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich, to succeed him. But the Grand Duke realised that he would have little support as ruler, so he declined the crown on 16 March [O.S. 3 March],[16] stating that he would take it only if that was the consensus of democratic action.[18] Six days later, Nicholas, no longer Tsar and addressed with contempt by the sentries as "Nicholas Romanov", was reunited with his family at the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo.[19] He was placed under house arrest with his family by the Provisional Government.
The immediate effect of the February Revolution was a widespread atmosphere of elation and excitement in Petrograd.[20] On 16 March [O.S. 3 March], a provisional government was announced. The center-left was well represented, and the government was initially chaired by a liberal aristocrat, Prince Georgy Yevgenievich Lvov, a member of the Constitutional Democratic party (KD).[21] The socialists had formed their rival body, the Petrograd Soviet (or workers' council) four days earlier. The Petrograd Soviet and the Provisional Government competed for power over Russia.

Between February and throughout October: "Dual Power" (dvoevlastie)

The effective power of the Provisional Government was challenged by the authority of an institution that claimed to represent the will of workers and soldiers and could, in fact, mobilize and control these groups during the early months of the revolution – the Petrograd Soviet [Council] of Workers' Deputies. The model for the soviet were workers' councils that had been established in scores of Russian cities during the 1905 Revolution. In February 1917, striking workers elected deputies to represent them and socialist activists began organizing a citywide council to unite these deputies with representatives of the socialist parties. On 27 February, socialist Duma deputies, mainly Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, took the lead in organizing a citywide council. The Petrograd Soviet met in the Tauride Palace, the same building where the new government was taking shape.
The leaders of the Petrograd Soviet believed that they represented particular classes of the population, not the whole nation. They also believed Russia was not ready for socialism. So they saw their role as limited to pressuring hesitant "bourgeoisie" to rule and to introduce extensive democratic reforms in Russia (the replacement of the monarchy by a republic, guaranteed civil rights, a democratic police and army, abolition of religious and ethnic discrimination, preparation of elections to a constituent assembly, and so on).[22] They met in the same building as the emerging Provisional Government not to compete with the Duma Committee for state power but to best exert pressure on the new government, to act, in other words, as a popular democratic lobby.
The relationship between these two major powers was complex from the beginning and would shape the politics of 1917. The representatives of the Provisional Government agreed to "take into account the opinions of the Soviet of Workers' Deputies", though they were also determined to prevent "interference in the actions of the government", which would create "an unacceptable situation of dual power."[23] In fact, this was precisely what was being created, though this "dual power" (dvoevlastie) was the result less of the actions or attitudes of the leaders of these two institutions than of actions outside their control, especially the ongoing social movement taking place on the streets of Russia's cities, in factories and shops, in barracks and in the trenches, and in the villages.
The 2nd Moscow Women Death Battalion protecting the Winter Palace as the last guards of the stronghold.
A series of political crises – see the chronology below – in the relationship between population and government and between the Provisional Government and the soviets (which developed into a nationwide movement with a national leadership, The All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets (VTsIK)) undermined the authority of the Provisional Government but also of the moderate socialist leaders of the Soviet. Although the Soviet leadership initially refused to participate in the "bourgeois" Provisional Government, Alexander Kerensky, a young and popular lawyer and a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party(SRP), agreed to join the new cabinet, and became an increasingly central figure in the government, eventually taking leadership of the Provisional Government. As minister of war and later Prime Minister, Kerensky promoted freedom of speech, released thousands of political prisoners, did his very best to continue the war effort and even organised another offensive (which, however, was no more successful than its predecessors). Nevertheless, Kerensky still faced several great challenges, highlighted by the soldiers, urban workers and peasants, who claimed that they had gained nothing by the revolution:
·                    Other political groups were trying to undermine him.
·                    Heavy military losses were being suffered on the front.
·                    The soldiers were dissatisfied and demoralised and had started to defect. (On arrival back in Russia, these soldiers were either imprisoned or sent straight back into the front.)
·                    There was enormous discontent with Russia's involvement in the war, and many were calling for an end to it.
·                    There were great shortages of food and supplies, which was difficult to remedy because of the wartime economic conditions.
The political group that proved most troublesome for Kerensky, and would eventually overthrow him, was the Bolshevik Party, led by Vladimir Lenin. Lenin had been living in exile in neutral Switzerland and, due to democratization of politics after the February Revolution, which legalized formerly banned political parties, he perceived the opportunity for his Marxist revolution. Although return to Russia had become a possibility, the war made it logistically difficult. Eventually, German officials arranged for Lenin to pass through their territory, hoping that his activities would weaken Russia or even – if the Bolsheviks came to power – led to Russia's withdrawal from the war. Lenin and his associates, however, had to agree to travel to Russia in a sealed train: Germany would not take the chance that he would foment revolution in Germany. After passing through the front, he arrived in Petrograd in April 1917.
On the way to Russia, Lenin prepared the April Theses, which outlined central Bolshevik policies. These included that the soviets take power (as seen in the slogan "all power to the soviets") and denouncing the liberals and social revolutionaries in the Provisional Government, forbidding co-operation with it. Many Bolsheviks, however, had supported the Provisional Government, including Lev Kamenev.[24]
Street demonstration on Nevsky Prospekt in Petrograd just after troops of the Provisional Government opened fire in the July Days
Soviets attacking the tsarist police in the early days of the March Revolution.
With Lenin's arrival, the popularity of the Bolsheviks increased steadily. Over the course of the spring, public dissatisfaction with the Provisional Government and the war, in particular among workers, soldiers and peasants, pushed these groups to radical parties. Despite growing support for the Bolsheviks, buoyed by maxims that called most famously for "all power to the Soviets," the party held very little real power in the moderate-dominated Petrograd Soviet. In fact, historians such as Sheila Fitzpatrick have asserted that Lenin's exhortations for the Soviet Council to take power were intended to arouse indignation both with the Provisional Government, whose policies were viewed as conservative, and the Soviet itself, which was viewed as subservient to the conservative government. By some historians' accounts, Lenin and his followers were unprepared for how their groundswell of support, especially among influential worker and soldier groups, would translate into real power in the summer of 1917.
On 18 June, the Provisional Government launched an attack against Germany that failed miserably. Soon after, the government ordered soldiers to go to the front, reneging on a promise. The soldiers refused to follow the new orders. The arrival of radical Kronstadt sailors – who had tried and executed many officers, including one admiral – further fueled the growing revolutionary atmosphere. The sailors and soldiers, along with Petrograd workers, took to the streets in violent protest, calling for "all power to the Soviets." The revolt, however, was disowned by Lenin[25] and the Bolshevik leaders and dissipated within a few days. In the aftermath, Lenin fled to Finland under threat of arrest while Trotsky, among other prominent Bolsheviks, was arrested. The July Days confirmed the popularity of the anti-war, radical Bolsheviks, but their unpreparedness at the moment of revolt was an embarrassing gaffe that lost them support among their main constituent groups: soldiers and workers.
The Bolshevik failure in the July Days proved temporary. The Bolsheviks had undergone a spectacular growth in membership. Whereas, in February 1917, the Bolsheviks were limited to only 24,000 members, by September 1917 there were 200,000 members of the Bolshevik faction.[26] Previously, the Bolsheviks had been in the minority in the two leading cities of RussiaSt. Petersburg and Moscow behind the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries, by September the Bolsheviks were in the majority in both cities.[27] Furthermore, the Bolshevik-controlled Moscow Regional Bureau of the Party also controlled the Party organizations of the thirteen (13) provinces around Moscow. These thirteen provinces held 37% of Russia's population and 20% of the membership of the Bolshevik faction.[27]
In August, poor or misleading communication led General Lavr Kornilov, the recently appointed Supreme Commander of Russian military forces, to believe that the Petrograd government had already been captured by radicals, or was in serious danger thereof.[dubious ] In response, he ordered troops to Petrograd to pacify the city. To secure his position, Kerensky had to ask for Bolshevik assistance. He also sought help from the Petrograd Soviet, which called upon armed Red Guards to "defend the revolution". The Kornilov Affair failed largely due to the efforts of the Bolsheviks, whose influence over railroad and telegraph workers proved vital in stopping the movement of troops. With his coup failing, Kornilov surrendered and was relieved of his position. The Bolsheviks' role in stopping the attempted coup further strengthened their position.
In early September, the Petrograd Soviet freed all jailed Bolsheviks and Trotsky became chairman of the Petrograd Soviet. Growing numbers of socialists and lower-class Russians viewed the government less and less as a force in support of their needs and interests. The Bolsheviks benefited as the only major organized opposition party that had refused to compromise with the Provisional Government, and they benefited from growing frustration and even disgust with other parties, such as the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, who stubbornly refused to break with the idea of national unity across all classes.
In Finland, Lenin had worked on his book State and Revolution[28] and continued to lead his party, writing newspaper articles and policy decrees. By October, he returned to Petrograd (St. Petersburg), aware that the increasingly radical city presented him no legal danger and a second opportunity for revolution. Recognising the strength of the Bolsheviks, Lenin began pressing for the immediate overthrow of the Kerensky government by the Bolsheviks. Lenin was of the opinion that taking power should occur in both St. Petersburg and Moscow simultaneously, parenthetically stating that it made no difference which city rose up first, but expressing his opinion that Moscow may well rise up first.[29] The Bolshevik Central Committee drafted a resolution, calling for the dissolution of the Provisional Government in favor of the Petrograd Soviet. The resolution was passed 10–2 (Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev prominently dissenting) and the October Revolution began.

October Revolution

Main article: October Revolution
The October Revolution was led by Vladimir Lenin and was based upon Lenin's writing on the ideas of Karl Marx, a political ideology often known as Marxism–Leninism. It marked the beginning of the spread of communism in the 20th century. It was far less sporadic than the revolution of February and came about as the result of deliberate planning and coordinated activity to that end.
Though Lenin was the leader of the Bolshevik Party, it has been argued that since Lenin was not present during the actual takeover of the Winter Palace, it was really Trotsky'sorganization and direction that led the revolution, merely spurred by the motivation Lenin instigated within his party.[30] Critics on the Right have long argued that the financial and logistical assistance of German intelligence via their key agent, Alexander Parvus was a key component as well, though historians are divided, since there is little evidence supporting that claim.
The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly on 6 January 1918. The Tauride Palace is locked and guarded by TrotskySverdlovZinoviev and Lashevich.
On 7 November 1917, Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin led his leftist revolutionaries in a revolt against the ineffective Provisional Government (Russia was still using the Julian calendar at the time, so period references show a 25 October date). The October revolution ended the phase of the revolution instigated in February, replacing Russia's short-lived provisional parliamentary government with government by soviets, local councils elected by bodies of workers and peasants. Liberal and monarchist forces, loosely organized into the White Army, immediately went to war against the Bolsheviks' Red Army, in a series of battles that would become known as the Russian Civil War.
Soviet membership was initially freely elected, but many members of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, anarchists, and other leftists created opposition to the Bolsheviks through the soviets themselves. The elections to the Russian Constituent Assembly took place in November 1917. The Bolsheviks gained 24% of the vote.[31] When it became clear that the Bolsheviks had little support outside of the industrialized areas of Saint Petersburg and Moscow, they simply barred non-Bolsheviks from membership in the soviets.[citation needed]The Bolsheviks dissolved the Constituent Assembly in January 1918.[31] Not surprisingly, this caused mass domestic tension with many individuals who called for another series of political reform, revolting, and calling for "a third Russian revolution," a movement that received a significant amount of support. The most notable instances of this anti-Bolshevik mentality were expressed in the Tambov rebellion, 1919–1921, and the Kronstadt rebellion in March 1921. These movements, which made a wide range of demands and lacked effective coordination, were eventually defeated along with the White Army during the Civil War.

Russian Civil War

American, British, and Japanese Troops parade through Vladivostok in armed support to the White Army
The Russian Civil War, which broke out in 1918 shortly after the October Revolution, brought death and suffering to millions of people regardless of their political orientation. The war was fought mainly between the Red Army ("Reds"), consisting of the uprising majority led by the Bolshevik minority, and the "Whites" – army officers and cossacks, the "bourgeoisie", and political groups ranging from the far Right to the Socialist Revolutionaries who opposed the drastic restructuring championed by the Bolsheviks following the collapse of the Provisional Government to the soviets (under clear Bolshevik dominance).[32][33] The Whites had backing from nations such as Great Britain, France, USA and Japan, while the Reds possessed internal support which proved to be much more effective. Though the Allied nations, using external interference, provided substantial military aid to the loosely knit anti-Bolshevik forces, they were ultimately defeated.[32]
The Bolsheviks firstly assumed power in Petrograd, expanding their rule outwards. They eventually reached the Easterly Siberian Russian coast in Vladivostok, 4 years after the war began, an occupation that is believed to have ended all significant military campaigns in the nation. Less than one year later the last area controlled by the White Army, the Ayano-Maysky District, directly to the north of the Krai containing Vladivostok, was given up when General Anatoly Pepelyayev capitulated in 1923.
Several revolts were initiated against the Bolsheviks and their army near the end of the war, notably the Kronstadt Rebellion. This was a naval mutiny engineered by Soviet Baltic sailors, former Red Army soldiers, and the people of Kronstadt. This armed uprising was fought against the antagonizing Bolshevik economic policies that farmers were subjected to, including seizures of grain crops by the Communists.[34] This all amounted to large-scale discontent. When delegates representing the Kronstadt sailors arrived at Petrograd for negotiations, they raised 15 demands primarily pertaining to the Russian right to freedom.[35] The Government firmly denounced the rebellions and labelled the requests as a reminder of the Social Revolutionaries, a political party that was popular among Soviets before Lenin, but refused to cooperate with the Bolshevik Army. The Government then responded with an armed suppression of these revolts and suffered 10 thousand casualties before entering the city of Kronstadt.[36] This ended the rebellions fairly quickly, causing many of the rebels to flee to political exile.[37]
During the Civil War, Nestor Makhno led a Ukrainian anarchist movement, the Black Army allied to the Bolsheviks thrice, one of the powers ending the alliance each time. However, a Bolshevik force under Mikhail Frunze destroyed the Makhnovist movement, when the Makhnovists refused to merge into the Red Army. In addition, the so-called "Green Army" (peasants defending their property against the opposing forces) played a secondary role in the war, mainly in the Ukraine.

Execution of the imperial family

Execution of the Romanov family, Le Petit Journal
The Bolsheviks executed the tsar and his family on 16 July 1918.[38] In early March, the Provisional Government placed Nicholas and his family under house arrest in the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo, 24 kilometres (15 mi) south of Petrograd. In August 1917 the Kerenskygovernment evacuated the Romanovs to Tobolsk in the Urals, to protect them from the rising tide of revolution. However, Kerensky lost control after the Bolsheviks came to power in October 1917, and the conditions of their imprisonment grew stricter and talk of putting Nicholas on trial increased. As the counter revolutionary White movement gathered force, leading to full-scale civil war by the summer, the Romanovs were moved during April and May 1918 to Yekaterinburg, a militant Bolshevik stronghold.
During the early morning of 16 July, Nicholas, Alexandra, their children, their physician, and several servants were taken into the basement and shot. According to Edvard Radzinsky and Dmitrii Volkogonov, the order came directly from Lenin and Sverdlov in Moscow. That the order came from the top has long been believed, although there is a lack of hard evidence. The execution may have been carried out on the initiative of local Bolshevik officials, or it may have been an option pre-approved in Moscow should White troops approach Yekaterinburg. Radzinsky noted that Lenin's bodyguard personally delivered the telegram ordering the execution and that he was ordered to destroy the evidence.[39][40]

The revolution and the world

Leon Trotsky said that the goal of socialism in Russia would not be realized without the success of the world revolution. Indeed, a revolutionary wave caused by the Russian Revolution lasted until 1923. Despite initial hopes for success in the German Revolution of 1918–19, in the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic and others like it, no other Marxist movement at the time succeeded in keeping power in its hands.
This issue is subject to conflicting views on communist history by various Marxist groups and parties. Joseph Stalin later rejected this idea, stating that socialism was possible in one country.
The confusion regarding Stalin's position on the issue stems from the fact that, after Lenin's death in 1924, he successfully used Lenin's argument – the argument that socialism's success needs the support of workers of other countries in order to happen – to defeat his competitors within the party by accusing them of betraying Lenin and, therefore, the ideals of the October Revolution.

Historiography

Few events in historical research have been as conditioned by political influences as the October Revolution. The historiography of the Revolution generally divides into three camps: the Soviet-Marxist view, the Western-Totalitarian view, and the Revisionist view.[41] Since the fall of Communism in Russia in 1991, the Western-Totalitarian view has again become dominant and the Soviet-Marxist view has practically vanished.[42]
A Lenin biographer, Robert Service, says he, "laid the foundations of dictatorship and lawlessness. Lenin had consolidated the principle of state penetration of the whole society, its economy and its culture. Lenin had practised terror and advocated revolutionary amoralism."[43]

Joseph Stalin[b][c] (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili;[a] 18 December 1878 – 5 March 1953) was a Soviet revolutionary and politician of Georgian ethnicity. He ruled the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953, holding the titles of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1952 and the nation's Premier from 1941 to 1953. Initially presiding over an oligarchic one-party regime that governed by plurality, he became the de facto dictator of the Soviet Union by the 1930s. Ideologically committed to the Leninist interpretation of Marxism, Stalin helped to formalise these ideas as Marxism–Leninism while his own policies became known as Stalinism.
Born to a poor family in GoriRussian Empire, Stalin began his revolutionary career by joining the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party as a youth. There, he edited the party's newspaper, Pravda, and raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction via robberies, kidnappings, and protection rackets. Repeatedly arrested, he underwent several internal exiles. After the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia during the 1917 October Revolution, Stalin joined the party's governing Politburo where he was instrumental in overseeing the Soviet Union's establishment in 1922. As Lenin fell ill and then died in 1924, Stalin assumed leadership over the country. During Stalin's rule, "Socialism in One Country" became a central tenet of the party's dogma, and Lenin's New Economic Policywas replaced with a centralized command economy. Under the Five-Year Plan system, the country underwent collectivisation and rapid industrialization but experienced significant disruptions in food production that contributed to the famine of 1932–33. To eradicate those regarded as "enemies of the working class", Stalin instituted the "Great Purge" in which over a million were imprisoned and at least 700,000 executed between 1934 and 1939.
Stalin's government promoted Marxism–Leninism abroad through the Communist International and supported anti-fascist movements throughout Europe during the 1930s, particularly in the Spanish Civil War. In 1939 it signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, resulting in their joint invasion of Poland. Germany ended the pact by invading the Soviet Union in 1941. Despite initial setbacks, the Soviet Red Army repelled the German incursion and captured Berlin in 1945, ending World War II in Europe. The Soviets annexed the Baltic states and helped establish Soviet-aligned governments throughout most of Central and Eastern Europe, China, and North Korea. The Soviet Union and the United States emerged from the war as the two world superpowers. Tensions escalated into a Cold War between the Soviet-backed Eastern Bloc and U.S.-backed Western Bloc. Stalin led his country through its post-war reconstruction, during which it developed a nuclear weapon in 1949. In these years, the country experienced another major famine and an anti-semiticcampaign peaking in the doctors' plot. Stalin died in 1953 and was eventually succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev, who denounced his predecessor and initiated a de-Stalinisation process throughout Soviet society.
Widely considered one of the 20th century's most significant figures, Stalin was the subject of a pervasive personality cult within the international Marxist–Leninist movement, for whom Stalin was a champion of socialism and the working class. Since the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, Stalin has retained popularity in Russia and Georgia as a victorious wartime leader who established the Soviet Union as a major world power. Conversely, his totalitarian government has been widely condemned for overseeing mass repressions, ethnic cleansing, hundreds of thousands of executions, and famines which caused the deaths of millions.


In May 1922, a massive stroke left Lenin partially paralysed.[252] Residing at his Gorki dacha, Lenin's main connection to Sovnarkom was through Stalin, who was a regular visitor.[253] Lenin twice asked Stalin to procure poison so that he could commit suicide, but Stalin never did so.[254] Despite this comradeship, Lenin disliked what he referred to as Stalin's "Asiatic" manner, and told his sister Maria that Stalin was "not intelligent".[255] Lenin and Stalin argued on the issue of foreign trade; Lenin believed that the Soviet state should have a monopoly on foreign trade, but Stalin supported Grigori Sokolnikov's view that doing so was impractical at that stage.[256] Another disagreement came over the Georgian Affair, with Lenin backing the Georgian Central Committee's desire for a Georgian Soviet Republic over Stalin's idea of a Transcaucasian one.[257]
They also disagreed on the nature of the Soviet state. Lenin called for the country to be renamed the "Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia", reflecting his desire for expansion across the two continents. Stalin believed that this would encourage independence sentiment among non-Russians, instead arguing that ethnic minorities would be content as "autonomous republics" within the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.[258] Lenin accused Stalin of "Great Russian chauvinism"; Stalin accused Lenin of "national liberalism".[259] A compromise was reached, in which the country would be renamed the "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" (USSR).[260] The USSR's formation was ratified in December 1922; although officially a federal system, all major decisions were taken by the governing Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in Moscow.[261]Their differences were not just based on policy but also became personal; Lenin was particularly angered when Stalin was rude to his wife Krupskaya during a telephone conversation.[262] In the final years of his life, Krupskaya provided governing figures with Lenin's Testament, a series of increasingly disparaging notes about Stalin. These criticized Stalin's rude manners and excessive power, suggesting that Stalin should be removed from the position of General Secretary.[263]Some historians have questioned whether Lenin ever produced these, suggesting instead that they may have been written by Krupskaya, who had personal differences with Stalin;[251] Stalin, however, never publicly voiced concerns about their authenticity.[264]

Rise to power

Main article: Rise of Joseph Stalin

Succeeding Lenin: 1924–1927

(From left to right) Stalin, Alexei RykovLev Kamenev, and Grigori Zinoviev in 1925.
Lenin died in January 1924.[265] Stalin took charge of the funeral and was one of its pallbearers; against the wishes of Lenin's widow, the Politburo embalmed his corpse and placed it within a mausoleum in Moscow's Red Square.[266] It was incorporated into a growing personality cult devoted to Lenin, with Petrograd being renamed "Leningrad" that year.[267] To bolster his image as a devoted Leninist, Stalin was eager to present himself as a theorist, giving nine lectures at Sverdlov University on the "Foundations of Leninism"; it was later published as a concise overview of Lenin's ideas.[268] At the following 13th Party CongressLenin's Testament was read out to senior figures. Embarrassed by its contents, Stalin offered his resignation as General Secretary; this act of humility saved him and he was retained in the position.[269]
As General Secretary, Stalin had had a free hand in making appointments to his own staff, implanting his loyalists throughout the party and administration.[270] He also ensured that these loyalists were dispersed across the USSR's various regions.[271] He favoured new Communist Party members, many from worker and peasant backgrounds, to the Old Bolsheviks who tended to be university educated.[272] Stalin had much contact with young party functionaries,[273] and the desire for promotion led many provincial figures to seek to impress Stalin and gain his favour.[274] Stalin also developed close relations with the three men at the heart of the secret police (first the Cheka and then its replacement, the State Political Directorate): Felix DzerzhinskyGenrikh Yagoda, and Vyacheslav Menzhinsky.[275] In his private life, he was dividing his time between his Kremlin apartment and a dacha he had obtained at Zubalova.[276] His wife had given birth to a daughter, Svetlana, in February 1926.[277]
In the wake of Lenin's death, various protagonists emerged in the struggle to become his successor: alongside Stalin was Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Alexei Rykov and Mikhail Tomsky.[278] Stalin saw Trotsky—whom he personally despised[279]—as the main obstacle to his rise to dominance within the Communist Party,[280] and while Lenin had been ill he had forged an anti-Trotsky alliance with Kamenev and Zinoviev.[281] Although Zinoviev had expressed concern about Stalin's growing authority, he rallied behind him at the 13th Congress as a counterweight to Trotsky, who now led a party faction known as the Left Opposition.[282] The Left Opposition believed that too many concessions to capitalism had been made with the NEP; Stalin was deemed a "rightist" in the party for his support of the policy.[283] Stalin built up a retinue of his supporters in the Central Committee,[284] while the Left Opposition were gradually removed from their positions of influence.[285] He was supported in this by Bukharin, who like Stalin believed that implementing the Left Opposition's proposals would plunge the Soviet Union into instability.[286]
In late 1924, Stalin moved against Kamenev and Zinoviev, removing their supporters from key positions.[287] In 1925, Kamenev and Zinoviev moved into open opposition of Stalin and Bukharin.[288] They attacked one another at the 14th Party Congress, where Stalin accused Kamenev and Zinoviev of reintroducing factionalism—and thus instability—into the party.[289] In mid-1926, Kamenev and Zinoviev joined with Trotsky's supporters to form the United Opposition against Stalin;[290] in October they agreed to stop factional activity under threat of expulsion, and later publicly recanted their views under Stalin's command.[291] The factionalist arguments continued, with Stalin threatening to resign in October and then December 1926 and again in December 1927.[292] In October 1927, Zinoviev and Trotsky were removed from the Central Committee;[293] the latter was exiled to Kazakhstan and later deported from the country in 1929.[294] Some of those United Opposition members who were repentant were later rehabilitated and allowed to return to government.[295] Stalin had established himself as the party's supreme leader,[296] although was not the head of government, a task he entrusted to key ally Vyacheslav Molotov.[297] Other important supporters on the Politburo were Voroshilov, Lazar Kaganovich, and Sergo Ordzhonikidze,[298] with Stalin ensuring that his allies ran the various state institutions.[299] According to Montefiore, at this point "Stalin was the leader of the oligarchs but he was far from a dictator".[300]
Stalin's growing influence was reflected in the decision to name various locations after him; in June 1924 the Ukrainian mining town of Yuzovka became Stalino,[301] and in April 1925, Tsaritsyn was renamed Stalingrad on the order of Mikhail Kalinin and Avel Enukidze.[302] In 1926, Stalin published On Questions of Leninism.[303] It was in this book that he introduced the concept of "Socialism in One Country", which he presented as an orthodox Leninist perspective. It nevertheless clashed with established Bolshevik views that socialism could not be established in one country but could only be achieved globally through the process of world revolution.[303] In 1927, there was some argument in the party over the USSR's policy regarding the situation in China. Stalin had called for the Communist Party of China, led by Mao Zedong, to ally itself with Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang (KMT) nationalists, viewing a Communist-Kuomintang alliance as the best bulwark against Japanese imperial expansionism in eastern Asia. Instead, the KMT repressed the Communists and a civil war broke out between the two sides.[304]

Dekulakisation, collectivisation, and industrialisation: 1927–1931

Economic policy

We have fallen behind the advanced countries by fifty to a hundred years. We must close that gap in ten years. Either we do this or we'll be crushed. This is what our obligations before the workers and peasants of the USSR dictate to us.
— Stalin, February 1931[305]
By the latter half of the 1920s, the Soviet Union still lagged behind the industrial development of Western countries,[306] and Stalin's government feared military attack from Japan, France, the United Kingdom, Poland, and Romania.[307] Many Communists, including in KomsomolOGPU, and the Red Army, were eager to be rid of the NEP and its market-oriented approach, desiring a push towards socialism.[308] These Communists had concerns about those who had financially profited from the policy: affluent peasants known as 'kulaks' and the small business owners or 'Nepmen'.[309] There had also been a shortfall of grain supplies; 1927 produced only 70% of grain produced in 1926.[310] At this point, Stalin turned against the NEP, putting him on a course to the "left" even of Trotsky or Zinoviev.[311]
In early 1928 Stalin travelled to Novosibirsk, where he alleged that kulaks were hoarding their grain and ordered that the kulaks be arrested and their grain confiscated, with Stalin bringing much of the area's grain back to Moscow with him in February.[312] At his command, grain procurement squads surfaced across Western Siberia and the Urals, with violence breaking out between these squads and the peasantry.[313] Stalin announced that both kulaks and the "middle peasants" must be coerced into releasing their harvest.[314] Bukharin and several other members of the Central Committee were angry that they had not been consulted about this measure, which they deemed rash.[315] In January 1930, the Politburo approved a measure to liquidate the existence of the kulaks as a class; accused kulaks were rounded up and exiled either elsewhere in their own regions, to other parts of the country, or to concentration camps.[316] Large numbers died during the journey.[317] By July 1930, over 320,000 households had been affected by the de-kulakisation policy.[316]According to Stalin biographer Dmitri Volkogonov, de-kulakisation was "the first mass terror applied by Stalin in his own country".[318]
Aleksei Grigorievich Stakhanov with a fellow miner; Stalin's government initiated the Stakhanovite movement to encourage hard work. It was partly responsible for a substantial rise in production during the 1930s.[319]
In 1929, the Politburo announced the mass collectivisation of agriculture,[320] establishing both kolkhozy collective farms and sovkhoz state farms.[321] Stalin stipulated that kulaks would be barred from joining these collectives.[322] Although officially voluntary, many peasants joined the collectives out of fear they would face the fate of the kulaks; others joined amid intimidation and violence from party loyalists.[323] By 1932, about 62% of households involved in agriculture were part of collectives, and by 1936 this had risen to 90%.[324] Many of the peasants who had been collectivised resented the loss of their private farmland,[325] and productivity slumped.[326] Famine broke out in many areas,[327] with the Politburo frequently ordering the distribution of emergency food relief to these regions.[328] Armed peasant uprisings against dekulakisation and collectivisation broke out in Ukraine, northern Caucasus, southern Russia, and central Asia, reaching their apex in March 1930; these were repressed by the Red Army.[329] Stalin responded to the uprisings with an article insisting that collectivisation was voluntary and blaming any violence and other excesses on local officials.[330] Although he and Stalin had been close for many years,[331]Bukharin expressed concerns about these policies; he regarded them as a return to Lenin's old "war communism" policy and believed that it would fail. By mid-1928 he was unable to rally sufficient support in the party to oppose the reforms.[332] In November 1929 Stalin removed him from the Politburo.[333]
Enukidze, Stalin, and Gorky in Red Square, 1931
Officially, the Soviet Union had replaced the irrationality and wastefulness of a market economy with a planned economy organised along a long-term, precise, and scientific framework; in reality, Soviet economics were based on ad hoccommandments issued from the centre, often to make short-term targets.[334] In 1928, the first five-year plan was launched, its main focus on boosting heavy industry;[335] it was finished a year ahead of schedule, in 1932.[336] The USSR underwent a massive economic transformation.[337] New mines were opened, new cities like Magnitogorsk constructed, and work on the White Sea-Baltic Canal begun.[337]Millions of peasants moved to the cities and became proletariat, although urban house building could not keep up with the demand.[337]Large debts were accrued while purchasing foreign-made machinery.[338] Many of the major construction projects, including the White Sea-Baltic Canal and the Moscow Metro, were constructed largely through forced labour.[339] The last elements of workers' control over industry were removed, with factory managers increasing their authority and receiving privileges and perks;[340] Stalin defended wage disparity by pointing to Marx's argument that it was necessary during the lower stages of socialism.[341] To promote the intensification of labour, a series of medals and awards as well as the Stakhanovite movement were introduced.[319] Stalin's message was that socialism was being established in the USSR while capitalism was crumbling amid the Wall Street crash.[342] His speeches and articles reflected his utopian vision of the Soviet Union rising to unparalleled heights of human development, creating a "new Soviet person". [343]

Cultural and foreign policy

In 1928, Stalin declared that class war between the proletariat and their enemies would intensify as socialism developed.[344] He warned of a "danger from the right", including in the Communist Party itself.[345] The first major show trial in the USSR was the Shakhty Trial of 1928, in which several middle-class "industrial specialists" were convicted of sabotage.[346] From 1929 to 1930, further show trials were held to intimidate opposition:[347] these included the Industrial Party TrialMenshevik Trial, and Metro-Vickers Trial.[348]Aware that the ethnic Russian majority may have concerns about being ruled by a Georgian,[349] he promoted ethnic Russians throughout the state hierarchy and made the Russian language compulsory throughout schools and offices, albeit to be used in tandem with local languages in areas with non-Russian majorities.[350] Nationalist sentiment among ethnic minorities was suppressed.[351] Conservative social policies were promoted to enhance social discipline and boost population growth; this included a focus on strong family units and motherhood, the re-criminalisation of homosexuality, restrictions placed on abortion and divorce, and the abolition of the Zhenotdel women's department.[352]
Photograph taken of the 1931 demolition of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow in order to make way for the Palace of the Soviets

Lenin's final years: 1921–1923

Stalin (right) confers with an ailing Lenin at Gorky in September 1922
The Soviet government sought to bring neighbouring states under its domination; in February 1921 it invaded the Menshevik-governed Democratic Republic of Georgia,[236] while in April 1921, Stalin ordered the Red Army to march into the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic to reassert Russian state control.[237] As People's Commissar for Nationalities, Stalin believed that each national and ethnic group should have the right to self-expression,[238] facilitating this through "autonomous republics" within the Russian state in which they could oversee various regional affairs.[239] In taking this view, some Marxists accused him of bending too much to bourgeois nationalism, while others accused him of remaining too Russocentric by seeking to retain these nations within the Russian state.[238]
Stalin's native Caucasus posed a particular problem due to its highly multi-cultural mix.[240] Stalin opposed the idea of separate Georgian, Armenian, and Azerbaijani autonomous republics, arguing that these would likely oppress ethnic minorities within their respective territories; instead he called for the formation of a Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic.[241] The Georgian Communist Party opposed the idea, resulting in the Georgian Affair.[242] In mid-1921, Stalin returned to the southern Caucasus, there calling on Georgian Communists to avoid the chauvinistic Georgian nationalism which he believed marginalised the AbkhazianOssetian, and Adjarian minorities living in Georgia.[243] On this trip, Stalin met with his son Yakov, and brought him back to Moscow with him;[244] Nadya had given birth to another of Stalin's sons, Vasily, in March 1921.[244]
After the civil war, workers' strikes and peasant uprisings broke out across Russia, largely in opposition to Sovnarkom's food requisitioning project; as an antidote, Lenin introduced market-oriented reforms: the New Economic Policy (NEP).[245] There was also internal turmoil in the Communist Party, as Trotsky led a faction calling for the abolition of trade unions; Lenin opposed this and Stalin helped to rally opposition to Trotsky's position.[246] Stalin also agreed to supervise the Department of Agitation and Propaganda in the Central Committee Secretariat.[247] At the 11th Party Congress in 1922, Lenin nominated Stalin as the party's new General Secretary. Although concerns were expressed that adopting this new post on top of his others would overstretch his workload and give him too much power, Stalin was appointed to the position.[248] For Lenin, it was advantageous to have a key ally in this crucial post.[249]



Stalin desired a "cultural revolution",[353] entailing both the creation of a culture for the "masses" and the wider dissemination of previously elite culture.[354] He oversaw the proliferation of schools, newspapers, and libraries, as well as the advancement of literacy and numeracy.[355] "Socialist realism" was promoted throughout the arts,[356] while Stalin personally wooed prominent writers, namely Maxim GorkyMikhail Sholokhov, and Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy.[357] He also expressed patronage for scientists whose research fitted within his preconceived interpretation of Marxism; he for instance endorsed the research of agrobiologist Trofim Lysenko despite the fact that it was rejected by the majority of Lysenko's scientific peers as pseudo-scientific.[358] The government's anti-religious campaign was re-intensified,[359] with increased funding given to the League of Militant Atheists.[351] Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Buddhist clergy faced persecution.[347] Many religious buildings were demolished, most notably Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, destroyed in 1931 to make way for the (never completed) Palace of the Soviets.[360] Religion retained an influence over much of the population; in the 1937 census, 57% of respondents identified as religious.[361]
Throughout the 1920s and beyond, Stalin placed a high priority on foreign policy.[362] He personally met with a range of Western visitors, including George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells, both of whom were impressed with him.[363] Through the Communist International, Stalin's government exerted a strong influence over Marxist parties elsewhere in the world;[364] initially, Stalin left the running of the organisation largely to Bukharin.[365] At its 6th Congress in July 1928, Stalin informed delegates that the main threat to socialism came not from the right but from non-Marxist socialists and social democrats, whom he called "social fascists";[366] Stalin recognised that in many countries, the social democrats were the Marxist-Leninists' main rivals for working-class support.[367]This preoccupation with opposing rival leftists concerned Bukharin, who regarded the growth of fascism and the far right across Europe as a far greater threat.[365] After Bukharin's departure, Stalin placed the Communist International under the administration of Dmitry Manuilsky and Osip Piatnitsky.[364]
Stalin faced problems in his family life. In 1929, his son Yakov unsuccessfully attempted suicide; his failure earned Stalin's contempt.[368] His relationship with Nadya was also strained amid their arguments and her mental health problems.[369] In November 1932, after a group dinner in the Kremlin in which Stalin flirted with other women, Nadya shot herself.[370] Publicly, the cause of death was given as appendicitis; Stalin also concealed the real cause of death from his children.[371] Stalin's friends noted that he underwent a significant change following her suicide, becoming emotionally harder.[372]

Major crises: 1932–1939

Famine

Further information: Soviet famine of 1932–33
Starved peasants on streets of Kharkiv in 1933
Within the Soviet Union, there was widespread civic disgruntlement against Stalin's government.[373] Social unrest, previously restricted largely to the countryside, was increasingly evident in urban areas, prompting Stalin to ease on some of his economic policies in 1932.[374] In May 1932, he introduced a system of kolkhoz markets where peasants could trade their surplus produce.[375] At the same time, penal sanctions became more severe; at Stalin's instigation, in August 1932 a decree was introduced meaning that the theft of even a handful of grain could be a capital offense.[376] The second five-year plan had its production quotas reduced from that of the first, with the main emphasis now being on improving living conditions.[374] It therefore emphasised the expansion of housing space and the production of consumer goods.[374] Like its predecessor, this Plan was repeatedly amended to meet changing situations; there was for instance an increasing emphasis placed on armament production after Adolf Hitler became German Chancellor in 1933.[377]
Such policies nevertheless failed to stop the famine which peaked in the winter of 1932–33.[378] Between five and seven million people died;[379] many resorted to cannibalising the dead to survive.[380] Worst affected were Ukraine and the North Caucuses, although the famine also impacted Kazakhstan and several Russian provinces.[380] The 1932 harvest had been a poor one,[379] and had followed several years in which lower productivity had resulted in a gradual decline in output.[379] Stalin blamed the famine on hostile elements and wreckers within the peasantry;[381] his government provided small amounts of food to famine-struck rural areas, although this was wholly insufficient to deal with the levels of starvation.[382] Grain exports, which were a major means of Soviet payment for machinery, declined heavily.[382] Stalin would not acknowledge that his policies had contributed to the famine,[376] the existence of which was denied to foreign observers.[383]

Ideological and foreign affairs

In 1935–36, Stalin oversaw a new constitution; its dramatic liberal features were designed as propaganda weapons, for all power rested in the hands of Stalin and his Politburo.[384]He declared that "socialism, which is the first phase of communism, has basically been achieved in this country".[384] In 1938, The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), colloquially known as the Short Course, was released;[385] Conquest later referred to it as the "central text of Stalinism".[386] A number of authorised Stalin biographies were also published,[387] although Stalin generally wanted to be portrayed as the embodiment of the Communist Party rather than have his life story explored.[388] During the later 1930s, Stalin placed "a few limits on the worship of his own greatness".[388] By 1938, Stalin's inner circle had gained a degree of stability, containing the personalities who would remain there until Stalin's death.[389]
Review of Soviet armored fighting vehicles used to equip the Republican People's Army during the Spanish Civil War
Seeking improved international relations, in 1934 the Soviet Union secured membership of the League of Nations, of which it had previously been excluded.[390] Stalin initiated confidential communications with Hitler in October 1933, shortly after the latter came to power in Germany.[391] Stalin admired Hitler, particularly his manoeuvres to remove rivals within the Nazi Party in the Night of the Long Knives.[392]Stalin nevertheless recognised the threat posed by fascism and sought to establish better links with the liberal democracies of Western Europe;[393] in May 1935, the Soviets signed a treaty of mutual assistance with France and Czechoslovakia.[394] At the Communist International's 7th Congress, held in July–August 1935, the Soviet government encouraged Marxist-Leninists to unite with other leftists as part of a popular front against fascism.[395] In turn, the anti-communist governments of GermanyFascist Italy and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact of 1936.[396]
When the Spanish Civil War broke out the same year, the Soviets sent 648 aircraft and 407 tanks to the left-wing Republican faction; these were accompanied by 3000 Soviet troops and 42,000 members of the International Brigades set up by the Communist International.[397]Stalin took a strong personal involvement in the Spanish situation.[398] Germany and Italy backed the Nationalist faction, which was ultimately victorious in March 1939.[399] With the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in July 1937, the Soviet Union and China signed a non-aggression pact the following August.[400]Stalin aided the Chinese as the KMT and the Communists had suspended their civil war and formed the desired United Front.[401]

The Great Terror

Regarding state repressions, Stalin often provided conflicting signals.[402] In May 1933, he ordered the release of many criminals convicted of minor offenses from the overcrowded prisons and ordered the security services not to enact further mass arrests and deportations.[403] In September 1934, he ordered the Politburo to establish a commission to investigate any false imprisonments; that same month he called for the execution of workers at the Stalin Metallurgical Factory accused of spying for Japan.[402] This mixed approach began to change in December 1934, when the prominent party member Sergey Kirov was murdered.[404] After Kirov's murder, Stalin became increasingly attentive of the possibility of murder and subsequently improved his own personal security, including being heavily guarded at all times and rarely going out in public.[405]
Kirov's killing was followed by an intensification of state repression;[406] Stalin issued a decree establishing NKVD troikas which could mete out rulings without involving the courts.[407] Just as the de-kulakisation policy had sought to rid rural areas of anti-government forces, so Stalin sought to do the same in the cities and towns. In 1935, the NKVD was ordered to expel suspected counter-revolutionaries, particularly those who had been aristocrats, landlords, or businesspeople before the October Revolution.[377] In the early months of 1935, over 11,000 people were expelled from Leningrad, to live in isolated rural areas.[377] In 1936, Nikolai Yezhov became head of the NKVD and oversaw this intensification.[408]Stalin instigated this intensification of repression, which was rooted in his own psychological compulsions and the logic of the system he had created, one which prioritised security above other considerations.[409]
In this famous image, Nikolai Yezhov is shown with Voroshilov, Molotov, and Stalin inspecting the White Sea Canal.
The image was later altered to remove Yezhov completely.
Stalin orchestrated the arrest of many former opponents in the Communist Party as well as sitting members of the Central Committee: denounced as Western-backed mercenaries, many were imprisoned or exiled internally.[410] The first Moscow Trial took place in August 1936; Kamenev and Zinoviev were among those accused of plotting assassinations, found guilty in a show trial, and executed.[411] The second Moscow Show Trial took place in January 1937,[412] and the third in March 1938, in which Bukharin and Rykov were accused of involvement in the alleged Trotskyite-Zinovievite terrorist plot and sentenced to death.[413] By late 1937, all remnants of collective leadership were gone from the Politburo, which was controlled entirely by Stalin.[414] There were mass expulsions from the party,[415]with Stalin commanding foreign communist parties to also purge anti-Stalinist elements.[416]
During the 1930s and 1940s, NKVD groups assassinated defectors and opponents abroad;[417] in August 1940, Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico, eliminating the last of Stalin's opponents among the former Party leadership.[418] In May, this was followed by the arrest of most members of the military Supreme Command and mass arrests throughout the military, often on fabricated charges.[419] These purges replaced most of the party's old guard with younger officials who did not remember a time before Stalin's leadership and who were regarded as more personally loyal to him.[420] Party functionaries readily carried out their commands and sought to ingratiate themselves with Stalin to avoid becoming the victim of the purge.[421] Such functionaries often carried out a greater number of arrests and executions than their quotas set by Stalin's central government.[422]
Repressions further intensified in December 1936 and remained at a high level until November 1938, a period known as the Great Purge.[409] By the latter part of 1937, the purges had moved beyond the party and were affecting the wider population.[423] In July 1937, the Politburo ordered a purge of "anti-Soviet elements" in society, affecting Bolsheviks who had opposed Stalin, former Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, priests, former soldiers in the White Army, and common criminals.[424] That month, Stalin and Yezhov signed Order No. 00447, listing 268,950 people for arrest, of whom 75,950 were executed.[425] He also initiated "national operations", the ethnic cleansing of non-Soviet ethnic groups—among them Poles, Germans, Latvians, Finns, Greeks, Koreans, and Chinese—through internal or external exile.[426] During these years, approximately 1.6 million people were arrested,[427] 700,000 were shot, and an unknown number died under NKVD torture.[427]
Stalin initiated all of the key decisions during the Terror, personally directing many of its operations and taking an interest in the details of their implementation.[428] His motives in doing so have been much debated by historians.[427] His personal writings from the period were — according to Khlevniuk — "unusually convoluted and incoherent", filled with claims about conspiracies and enemies encircling him.[429] He was particularly concerned at the success that right-wing forces had in overthrowing the leftist Spanish government,[430]worried that domestic anti-Stalinist elements would become a fifth column in the event of a future war with Japan and Germany.[431] The Great Terror ended when Yezhov was removed as the head of the NKVD, to be replaced by Lavrentiy Beria,[432] a man totally devoted to Stalin.[433] Yezhov was arrested in April 1939 and executed in 1940.[434] The Terror had damaged the Soviet Union's reputation abroad, particularly among previously sympathetic leftists,[435] and as the Terror wound down, so Stalin sought to deflect responsibility away from himself.[436] He later claimed that the "excesses" and "violations of law" during the Terror were Yezhov's fault.[437]
Stalinism is the means of governing and related policies implemented from around 1927 to 1953 by Joseph Stalin (1878–1953). Stalinist policies and ideas as developed in the Soviet Union included rapid industrialization, the theory of socialism in one country, a totalitarian statecollectivization of agriculture, a cult of personality[1][2] and subordination of the interests of foreign communist partiesto those of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, deemed by Stalinism to be the leading vanguard party of communist revolution at the time.[3]
Stalinism promoted the escalation of class conflict, utilizing state violence to forcibly purge society of alleged supporters of the bourgeoisie, whom Stalinist doctrine regarded as threats to the pursuit of the communist revolution. This policy resulted in substantial political violence and persecution of such people.[4] "Enemies" included not only bourgeois people, but also working-class people accused of counter-revolutionary sympathies.[5]
Stalinist industrialization was officially designed to accelerate the development towards communism, stressing the need for such rapid industrialization on the grounds that the Soviet Union was previously economically backward in comparison with other countries and asserting that socialist society needed industry in order to face the challenges posed by internal and external enemies of communism.[6]Rapid industrialization was accompanied by mass collectivization of agriculture and by rapid urbanization.[7] Rapid urbanization converted many small villages into industrial cities.[7] To accelerate the development of industrialization, Stalin imported materials, ideas, expertise and workers from Western Europe and from the United States[8] and pragmatically set up joint-venture contracts with major American private enterprises, such as the Ford Motor Company, which under state supervision assisted in developing the basis of the industry of the Soviet economy from the late 1920s to the 1930s.[9] After the American private enterprises had completed their tasks, Soviet state enterprises took over.[9]
While some historians view Stalinism as a reflection of the ideologies of Leninism and Marxism, some argue that it stands separate from the socialist ideals it stemmed from. After a political struggle that culminated in the defeat of the Bukharinists, Stalinism was free to shape policy without opposition, ushering forth an era of harsh authoritarianism that soldiered toward rapid industrialization regardless of the cost.[13]
From 1917 to 1924, Vladimir LeninLeon Trotsky and Stalin often appeared united, but they had discernible ideological differences. In his dispute with Trotsky, Stalin de-emphasized the role of workers in advanced capitalist countries (for example, he considered the American working class "bourgeoisified" labour aristocracy). Stalin also polemicized against Trotsky on the role of peasants as in China whereas Trotsky's position was in favor of urban insurrection over peasant-based guerrilla warfare.
Whilst all other October Revolution 1917 Bolchevik leaders regarded their revolution more or less just as the beginning, they saw Russia as the leapboard on the road towards the World Wide Revolution, Stalin eventually introduced the idea of Socialism in One Country by the autumn of 1924. This did not just stood in sharp contrast to Trotsky's "Permanent Revolution", but in contrast also to all earlier Socialistic thesis. But by time and through circumstances, and as the revolution did not spread outside Russia, as Lenin had assumed it soon would. Not even within the through the October Revolution outer edge Russian Empire liberated states such as PolandFinlandLithuaniaLatvia and Estonia had the revolution been a success. On the on the contrary, all these countries had returned to Bourgeoisie ruling.[14] But still by the autumn of 1924, Stalin's idea of socialism i Soviet Russia alone, initially was next to compare to blasphemy in the ears of the other Politeburo members - Zinoviev and Kamenev to the intellectual left, RykovBukharin and Tomsky to the pragmatic right and the intellectual as well as pragmatic Trotsky who belonged to no side but his own. None of them had even thought of Stalin's first own addition to Communist ideology. Hence, Stalin's "Socialism in one country" doctrine couldn't be imposed until he had become close to being the autocratic ruler of the U.S.S.R. (From around 1929,as Trotsky had been exiled and Zinoviev and Kamenev had been thrown out of the party, Bucharin and the right wing expressed their support for imposing Stalin's idea) [15]
While traditional communist thought holds that the state will gradually "wither away" as the implementation of socialism reduces class distinction, Stalin argued that the proletarian state (as opposed to the bourgeois state) must become stronger before it can wither away. In Stalin's view, counter-revolutionary elements will try to derail the transition to full communism, and the state must be powerful enough to defeat them.[16] For this reason, Communist regimes influenced by Stalin have been widely described as totalitarian.
Sheng Shicai collaborated with the Soviets, allowing Stalinist rule to be extended to the Xinjiang province in the 1930s. In 1937, Sheng conducted a purge similar to the Great Purge.[17]

Class-based violence, purges and deportations[edit]

Class-based violence[edit]

Stalin blamed the kulaks as the inciters of reactionary violence against the people during the implementation of agricultural collectivisation.[18] In response, the state under Stalin's leadership initiated a violent campaign against the kulaks, which has been labeled "classicide".[19]

Purges and executions[edit]

Main article: Great Purge
Left: Lavrenty Beria's January 1940 letter to Stalin asking permission to execute 346 "enemies of the Communist Party and of the Soviet authorities" who conducted "counter-revolutionary, right-Trotskyite plotting and spying activities"
Middle: Stalin's handwriting: "за" (support)
Right: the Politburo's decision is signed by Stalin
As head of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Stalin consolidated near-absolute power in the 1930s with a Great Purge of the party that claimed to expel "opportunists" and "counter-revolutionary infiltrators".[20][21] Those targeted by the purge were often expelled from the party, though more severe measures ranged from banishment to the Gulag labor camps to execution after trials held by NKVD troikas.[20][22][23]
In the 1930s, Stalin apparently became increasingly worried about the growing popularity of the Leningrad party boss Sergei Kirov. At the 1934 Party Congress where the vote for the new Central Committee was held, Kirov received only three negative votes (the fewest of any candidate) while Stalin received at least over a hundred negative votes.[24][25] After the assassination of Kirov, which may have been orchestrated by Stalin, Stalin invented a detailed scheme to implicate opposition leaders in the murder, including Trotsky, Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev.[26] The investigations and trials expanded.[27] Stalin passed a new law on "terrorist organizations and terrorist acts" that were to be investigated for no more than ten days, with no prosecution, defense attorneys or appeals, followed by a sentence to be executed "quickly".[28]
Thereafter, several trials known as the Moscow Trials were held, but the procedures were replicated throughout the country. Article 58 of the legal code, which listed prohibited anti-Soviet activities as counter-revolutionary crime, was applied in the broadest manner.[29] Many alleged anti-Soviet pretexts were used to brand someone an "enemy of the people", starting the cycle of public persecution, often proceeding to interrogation, torture and deportation, if not death. The Russian word troika gained a new meaning: a quick, simplified trial by a committee of three subordinated to NKVD troika—with sentencing carried out within 24 hours.[28] Stalin's hand-picked executioner Vasili Blokhin was entrusted with carrying out some of the high-profile executions in this period.[30]
Nikolai Yezhov, walking with Stalin in the top photo from the 1930s, was killed in 1940 and following his execution was edited out of the photo by Soviet censors[31] (such retouching was a common occurrence during Stalin's rule)
Many military leaders were convicted of treason and a large-scale purge of Red Army officers followed.[32] The repression of so many formerly high-ranking revolutionaries and party members led Leon Trotsky to claim that a "river of blood" separated Stalin's regime from that of Lenin.[33] In August 1940, Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico, where he had lived in exile since January 1937—this eliminated the last of Stalin's opponents among the former Party leadership.[34]
With the exception of Vladimir Milyutin (who died in prison in 1937) and Stalin himself, all of the members of Lenin's original cabinet who had not succumbed to death from natural causes before the purge were executed.
Mass operations of the NKVD also targeted "national contingents" (foreign ethnicities) such as Poles, ethnic Germans and Koreans. A total of 350,000 (144,000 of them Poles) were arrested and 247,157 (110,000 Poles) were executed.[35][page needed] Many Americans who had emigrated to the Soviet Union during the worst of the Great Depression were executed and others were sent to prison camps or gulags.[36][37] Concurrent with the purges, efforts were made to rewrite the history in Soviet textbooks and other propaganda materials. Notable people executed by NKVD were removed from the texts and photographs as though they never existed. Gradually, the history of revolution was transformed to a story about just two key characters: Lenin and Stalin.
In light of revelations from Soviet archives, historians now estimate that nearly 700,000 people (353,074 in 1937 and 328,612 in 1938) were executed in the course of the terror,[38] with the great mass of victims merely "ordinary" Soviet citizens: workers, peasants, homemakers, teachers, priests, musicians, soldiers, pensioners, ballerinas and beggars.[39][40] Many of the executed were interred in mass graves, with some of the major killing and burial sites being BykivniaKurapaty and Butovo.[41]
Some Western experts believe the evidence released from the Soviet archives is understated, incomplete or unreliable.[42][43][44][45][46]Conversely, historian Stephen G. Wheatcroft, who spent a good portion of his academic career researching the archives, contends that prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of the archives for historical research, "our understanding of the scale and the nature of Soviet repression has been extremely poor" and that some specialists who wish to maintain earlier high estimates of the Stalinist death toll are "finding it difficult to adapt to the new circumstances when the archives are open and when there are plenty of irrefutable data" and instead "hang on to their old Sovietological methods with round-about calculations based on odd statements from emigres and other informants who are supposed to have superior knowledge".[47][48]
Stalin personally signed 357 proscription lists in 1937 and 1938 that condemned to execution some 40,000 people and about 90% of these are confirmed to have been shot.[49] At the time, while reviewing one such list he reportedly muttered to no one in particular: "Who's going to remember all this riff-raff in ten or twenty years time? No one. Who remembers the names now of the boyars Ivan the Terrible got rid of? No one".[50] In addition, Stalin dispatched a contingent of NKVD operatives to Mongolia, established a Mongolian version of the NKVD troika and unleashed a bloody purge in which tens of thousands were executed as "Japanese spies". Mongolian ruler Khorloogiin Choibalsan closely followed Stalin's lead.[51]
During the 1930s and 1940s, the Soviet leadership sent NKVD squads into other countries to murder defectors and other opponents of the Soviet regime. Victims of such plots included Yevhen KonovaletsIgnace Poretsky, Rudolf Klement, Alexander KutepovEvgeny Miller, Leon Trotsky and the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) leadership in Catalonia (e.g. Andrés Nin Pérez).[52]

Deportations[edit]

Shortly before, during and immediately after World War II, Stalin conducted a series of deportations on a huge scale that profoundly affected the ethnic map of the Soviet Union. It is estimated that between 1941 and 1949 nearly 3.3 million[53][54] were deported to Siberia and the Central Asian republics. By some estimates, up to 43% of the resettled population died of diseases and malnutrition.[55]
Separatism, resistance to Soviet rule and collaboration with the invading Germans were cited as the official reasons for the deportations. Individual circumstances of those spending time in German-occupied territories were not examined. After the brief Nazi occupation of the Caucasus, the entire population of five of the small highland peoples and the Crimean Tatars—more than a million people in total—were deported without notice or any opportunity to take their possessions.[56]
As a result of Stalin's lack of trust in the loyalty of particular ethnicities, ethnic groups such as the Soviet Koreans, the Volga Germans, the Crimean Tatars, the Chechens and many Poles were forcibly moved out of strategic areas and relocated to places in the central Soviet Union, especially Kazakhstan in Soviet Central Asia. By some estimates, hundreds of thousands of deportees may have died en route.[53]
According to official Soviet estimates, more than 14 million people passed through the gulags from 1929 to 1953, with a further 7 to 8 million being deported and exiled to remote areas of the Soviet Union (including the entire nationalities in several cases).[57] The emergent scholarly consensus is that from 1930 to 1953, around 1.5 to 1.7 million perished in the gulag system.[58][59][60]
In February 1956, Nikita Khrushchev condemned the deportations as a violation of Leninism and reversed most of them, although it was not until 1991 that the Tatars, Meskhetiansand Volga Germans were allowed to return en masse to their homelands. The deportations had a profound effect on the peoples of the Soviet Union. The memory of the deportations has played a major part in the separatist movements in the Baltic states, Tatarstan and Chechnya even today.

Economic policy[edit]

Starved peasants on a street in Kharkiv, 1933
At the start of the 1930s, Stalin launched a wave of radical economic policies that completely overhauled the industrial and agricultural face of the Soviet Union. This came to be known as the Great Turn as Russia turned away from the near-capitalist New Economic Policy (NEP) and instead adopted a command economy. The NEP had been implemented by Lenin in order to ensure the survival of the socialist statefollowing seven years of war (1914–1921, World War I from 1914 to 1917 and the subsequent Civil War) and had rebuilt Soviet production to its 1913 levels. However, Russia still lagged far behind the West and the NEP was felt by Stalin and the majority of the Communist Party, not only to be compromising communist ideals, but also not delivering sufficient economic performance as well as not creating the envisaged socialist society. It was therefore felt necessary to increase the pace of industrialisation in order to catch up with the West.
Fredric Jameson has said that "Stalinism was [...] a success and fulfilled its historic mission, socially as well as economically" given that it "modernised the Soviet Union, transforming a peasant society into an industrial state with a literate population and a remarkable scientific superstructure".[61] Robert Conquest disputed such a conclusion and noted that "Russia had already been fourth to fifth among industrial economies before World War I" and that Russian industrial advances could have been achieved without collectivisation, famine or terror. According to Conquest, the industrial successes were far less than claimed and the Soviet-style industrialisation was "an anti-innovative dead-end".[62] Stephen Kotkin said those who argue collectivization was necessary are "dead wrong". "Collectivization only seemed necessary within the straitjacket of Communist ideology and its repudiation of capitalism. And economically, collectivization failed to deliver", further claiming that it decreased harvests instead of increasing them.[63]
According to several Western historians,[64] Stalinist agricultural policies were a key factor in causing the Soviet famine of 1932–1933, which the Ukrainian government now calls the Holodomor, recognizing it as an act of genocide. Some scholars dispute the intentionality of the famine.[65][66]
Pierre du Bois argues that the cult was elaborately constructed to legitimize his rule. Many deliberate distortions and falsehoods were used.[67] The Kremlin refused access to archival records that might reveal the truth and key documents were destroyed. Photographs were altered and documents were invented.[68] People who knew Stalin were forced to provide "official" accounts to meet the ideological demands of the cult, especially as Stalin himself presented it in 1938 in Short Course on the History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), which became the official history.[69] Historian David L. Hoffmann sums up the consensus of scholars:
The Stalin cult was a central element of Stalinism, and as such it was one of the most salient features of Soviet rule ... Many scholars of Stalinism cite the cult as integral to Stalin's power or as evidence of Stalin's megalomania.[70]
However, after Stalin's death in 1953 his successor Nikita Khrushchev repudiated his policies, condemned Stalin's cult of personality in his Secret Speech to the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956 and instituted de-Stalinisation and relative liberalisation (within the same political framework). Consequently, some of the world's communist parties who previously adhered to Stalinism abandoned it and to a greater or lesser degree adopted the positions of Khrushchev. Others, such as the Communist Party of China, instead chose to split from the Soviet Union.
The "Big Three" Allied leaders during World War II at the Yalta Conference: British Prime MinisterWinston ChurchillUnited States President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Stalin, February 1945
The Socialist People's Republic of Albania took the Chinese party's side in the Sino-Soviet split and remained committed at least theoretically to Hoxhaism, its brand of Stalinism, for decades thereafter under the leadership of Enver Hoxha. Despite their initial cooperation against "revisionism", Hoxha denounced Mao as a revisionist, along with almost every other self-identified communist organization in the world. This had the effect of isolating Albania from the rest of the world as Hoxha was hostile to both the pro-American and pro-Soviet spheres of influence as well as the Non-Aligned Movement under the leadership of Josip Broz Tito, whom Hoxha had also denounced.
The ousting of Khrushchev in 1964 by his former party-state allies has been described as a Stalinist restoration by some, epitomised by the Brezhnev Doctrine and the apparatchik/nomenklatura "stability of cadres", lasting until the period of glasnostand perestroika in the late 1980s and the fall of the Soviet Union.
Some historians and writers (like German Dietrich Schwanitz)[71] draw parallels between Stalinism and the economic policy of Tsar Peter the Great, although Schwanitz in particular views Stalin as "a monstrous reincarnation" of him. Both men wanted Russia to leave the western European states far behind in terms of development. Both largely succeeded, turning Russia into Europe's leading power.[citation needed] Others[who?] compare Stalin with Ivan the Terrible because of his policies of oprichninaand restriction of the liberties of common people.
Stalinism has been considered by some reviewers as a "red fascism".[72] Though fascist regimes were ideologically opposed to the Soviet Union, some of them positively regarded Stalinism as evolving Bolshevism into a form of fascism. Benito Mussolinipositively reviewed Stalinism as having transformed Soviet Bolshevism into a Slavic fascism.[73]
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (Народный комиссариат внутренних делNarodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del), abbreviated NKVD (НКВД About this sound listen (help·info)), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union.
Established in 1917 as NKVD of Russian SFSR,[1] the agency was originally tasked with conducting regular police work and overseeing the country's prisons and labor camps.[2] It was disbanded in 1930, with its functions being dispersed among other agencies, only to be reinstated as an all-union ministry in 1934.[3]
The functions of the OGPU (the secret police organization) were transferred to the NKVD in 1934, giving it a monopoly over law enforcement activities that lasted until the end of World War II.[2] During this period, the NKVD included both ordinary public order activities, as well as secret police activities.[4] The NKVD is known for its role in political repression and for carrying out the Great Purgeunder Joseph Stalin. Mobile gas vans were used to execute people without trial during the Great Purge.[5][6][7] It was led by Genrikh YagodaNikolai Yezhov and Lavrentiy Beria.
The NKVD undertook mass extrajudicial executions of untold numbers of citizens, and conceived, populated and administered the Gulag system of forced labour camps. Their agents were responsible for the repression of the wealthier peasantry, as well as the mass deportations of entire nationalities to uninhabited regions of the country. They oversaw the protection of Soviet borders and espionage (which included political assassinations), and enforced Soviet policy in communist movements and puppet governments in other countries, most notably the repression and massacres in Poland.
In March 1946 all People's Commissariats were renamed to Ministries, and the NKVD became the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD).[8]

History and structure[edit]

Early NKVD leaders Genrikh YagodaVyacheslav Menzhinsky and Felix Dzerzhinsky, 1924
After the Russian February Revolution of 1917, the Provisional Government dissolved the Tsarist police and set up the People's Militsiya. The subsequent Russian October Revolution of 1917 saw a seizure of state power led by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, who established a new Bolshevik regime, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). The Provisional Government's Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), formerly under Georgy Lvov (from March 1917) and then under Nikolai Avksentiev (from 6 August [O.S. 24 July] 1917) and Alexei Nikitin (from 8 October [O.S. 25 September] 1917), turned into NKVD (People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs) under a People's Commissar. However, the NKVD apparatus was overwhelmed by duties inherited from MVD, such as the supervision of the local governments and firefighting, and the Workers' and Peasants' Militsiya staffed by proletarians was largely inexperienced and unqualified. Realizing that it was left with no capable security force, the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR established (20 December [O.S. 7 December] 1917) a secret political police, the Cheka, led by Felix Dzerzhinsky. It gained the right to undertake quick non-judicial trials and executions, if that was deemed necessary in order to "protect the Russian Socialist-Communist revolution".
The Cheka was reorganized in 1922 as the State Political Directorate, or GPU, of the NKVD of the RSFSR.[9] In 1922 the USSR formed, with the RSFSR as its largest member. The GPU became the OGPU (Joint State Political Directorate), under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. The NKVD of the RSFSR retained control of the militsiya, and various other responsibilities.
In 1934 the NKVD of the RSFSR was transformed into an all-union security force, the NKVD (which the Communist Party of the Soviet Union leaders soon came to call "the leading detachment of our party"), and the OGPU was incorporated into the NKVD as the Main Directorate for State Security (GUGB); the separate NKVD of the RSFSR was not resurrected until 1946 (as the MVD of the RSFSR). As a result, the NKVD also took over control of all detention facilities (including the forced labor camps, known as the GULag) as well as the regular police.

NKVD activities[edit]

The main function of the NKVD was to protect the state security of the Soviet Union. This role was accomplished through massive political repression, including authorised murders of many thousands of politicians and citizens, as well as kidnappings, assassinations and mass deportations.

Domestic repressions[edit]

NKVD chief Genrikh Yagoda (middle) inspecting the construction of the Moscow-Volga canal, 1935
In implementing Soviet internal policy towards perceived enemies of the Soviet state ("enemies of the people"), untold multitudes of people were sent to GULAG camps and hundreds of thousands were executed by the NKVD. Formally, most of these people were convicted by NKVD troikas ("triplets")– special courts martial. Evidential standards were very low: a tip-off by an anonymous informer was considered sufficient grounds for arrest. Use of "physical means of persuasion" (torture) was sanctioned by a special decree of the state, which opened the door to numerous abuses, documented in recollections of victims and members of the NKVD itself. Hundreds of mass graves resulting from such operations were later discovered throughout the country. Documented evidence exists that the NKVD committed mass extrajudicial executions, guided by secret "plans". Those plans established the number and proportion of victims (officially "public enemies") in a given region (e.g. the quotas for clergy, former nobles etc., regardless of identity). The families of the repressed, including children, were also automatically repressed according to NKVD Order no. 00486.
The purges were organized in a number of waves according to the decisions of the Politburo of the Communist Party. Some examples are the campaigns among engineers (Shakhty Trial), party and military elite plots (Great Purge with Order 00447), and medical staff ("Doctors' Plot").
A number of mass operations of the NKVD were related to the prosecution of whole ethnic categories. For example, the Polish Operationof the NKVD in 1937–1938 resulted in the execution of 111,091 Poles.[15] Whole populations of certain ethnicities were forcibly resettled. Foreigners living in the Soviet Union were given particular attention. When disillusioned American citizens living in the Soviet Union thronged the gates of the U.S. embassy in Moscow to plead for new U.S. passports to leave USSR (their original U.S. passports had been taken for 'registration' purposes years before), none were issued. Instead, the NKVD promptly arrested all of the Americans, who were taken to Lubyanka Prison and later shot.[16] American factory workers at the Soviet Ford GAZ plant, suspected by Stalin of being 'poisoned' by Western influences, were dragged off with the others to Lubyanka by the NKVD in the very same Ford Model A cars they had helped build, where they were tortured; nearly all were executed or died in labor camps. Many of the slain Americans were dumped in the mass grave at Yuzhnoye Butovo District near Moscow.[17] Even so, the people of the Soviet Republics still formed the majority of NKVD victims[*17][*18].
The NKVD also served as arm of the Russian Soviet communist government for the lethal mass persecution and destruction of ethnic minorities and religious beliefs, such as the Russian Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic ChurchGreek CatholicsIslamJudaism and other religious organizations, an operation headed by Yevgeny Tuchkov.

International operations[edit]

Lavrentiy Beria with Stalin (in background) and Stalin's daughter Svetlana
During the 1930s, the NKVD was responsible for political murders of those Stalin believed to oppose him. Espionage networks headed by experienced multilingual NKVD officers such as Pavel Sudoplatov and Iskhak Akhmerov were established in nearly every major Western country, including the United States. The NKVD recruited agents for its espionage efforts from all walks of life, from unemployed intellectuals such as Mark Zborowski to aristocrats such as Martha Dodd. Besides the gathering of intelligence, these networks provided organizational assistance for so-called wet business,[18] where enemies of the USSR either disappeared or were openly liquidated.[19]
The NKVD's intelligence and special operations (Inostranny Otdel) unit organized overseas assassinations of political enemies of the USSR, such as leaders of nationalist movements, former Tsarist officials, and personal rivals of Joseph Stalin. Among the officially confirmed victims of such plots were:
·                    Leon Trotsky, a personal political enemy of Stalin and his most bitter international critic, killed in Mexico City in 1940;
·                    Yevhen Konovalets, prominent Ukrainian patriot leader who was attempting to create a separatist movement in Soviet Ukraine; assassinated in Rotterdam, Netherlands
·                    Yevgeny Miller, former General of the Tsarist (Imperial Russian) Army; in the 1930s, he was responsible for funding anti-communist movements inside the USSR with the support of European governments. Kidnapped in Paris and brought to Moscow, where he was interrogated and executed
·                    Noe Ramishvili, Prime Minister of independent Georgia, fled to France after the Bolshevik takeover; responsible for funding and coordinating Georgian nationalist organizations and the August uprising, he was assassinated in Paris
·                    Boris Savinkov, Russian revolutionary and anti-Bolshevik terrorist (lured back into Russia and killed in 1924 by the Trust Operation of the GPU);
·                    Sidney Reilly, British agent of the MI6 who deliberately entered Russia in 1925 trying to expose the Trust Operation to avenge Savinkov's death;
·                    Alexander Kutepov, former General of the Tsarist (Imperial Russian) Army, who was active in organizing anti-communist groups with the support of French and British governments
Prominent political dissidents were also found dead under highly suspicious circumstances, including Walter KrivitskyLev SedovIgnace Reiss and former German Communist Party (KPD) member Willi Münzenberg.[20][21][22][23][24]
The pro-Soviet leader Sheng Shicai in Xinjiang received NKVD assistance in conducting a purge to coincide with Stalin's Great Purge in 1937. Sheng and the Soviets alleged a massive Trotskyist conspiracy and a "Fascist Trotskyite plot" to destroy the Soviet Union. The Soviet Consul General Garegin Apresoff, General Ma HushanMa Shaowu, Mahmud Sijan, the official leader of the Xinjiang province Huang Han-chang and Hoja-Niyaz were among the 435 alleged conspirators in the plot. Xinjiang came under virtual Soviet control. Stalin opposed the Chinese Communist Party.[25]