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Summary A* essay - was the USSR a superpower by 1953?
A* level essays - Russia Revolution and Dictatorship
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The Great Patriotic War and Stalin’s Dictatorship, 1941-1953 essays‘USSR was far from being a ‘superpower’ in 1953.’ Assess the validity of this view.
‘By 1953 the USSR had become a world power.’ Assess the validity of this view.
Introduction the USSR was a largely a superpower by 1953
as it had transformed and modernised its economy to an
overwhelming extent. The USSR’s territorial gains also
reflected its superpower status however a lack of friendly
international relations disadvantaged them,
Point 1 Economic/military power Point 2 Territory
- After the war, the USSR had become a vast military- The USSR massively increased their territory by absorbing
industrial war machine with 7.5 million troops. the Baltic States and large areas of eastern Poland,
-Developed atomic bomb was created in 1949 to rival the creating a large sphere of Soviet influence characterised
American atomic bomb developed in 1945. by a superpower.
- The European great powers had all been seriously By 1953 the borders of the USSR extended deep into
weakened by the war. Thus, the American superpower – central and Eastern Europe after the takeover Poland and
the US only joined the war in Dec 1941 after the Japanese Hungary (1947), Romania, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia
bombing of pearl harbour therefore they did not suffer (1948) and East Germany (1949). This Communist bloc
the same severity of blows and economic constraints as would rival the west’s Nato alliance in the Cold War.
the rest of the Allies. However, the USSR was also poised The ‘satellite states’ were forced to have pro-Soviet
to dominate the post-war world as they were successfully governments, through ‘Salami Tactics’ which involved
able to reconstruct their economy. Stalin had the small incremental steps such as propaganda, the fixing of
centralised control to lead to a transformative ‘democratic’ elections or targeting individuals using
reconstructing of the Soviet economy. violence. For example, in 1948 Czechoslovakia the pro-
As a fundamental aspect of totalitarianism, Stalin exerted western foreign minister, Jan Masaryk, died from a
control over the economy and allocated a 1/3rd of the suspicious fall and was later replaced with a pro-Stalinist
fourth FYP ‘s expenditure to be spent on Ukraine (which puppet leader. In April 1940 22,000 Polish elite were killed
was highly war devastated and important for industry and in the Katyn Forest Massacre, allowing Stalin to eliminate
agriculture). Stalin dictated his power by exploiting any elements that may oppose communism.
prisoners of wars and forcing workers in Leningrad to Once in power, nationalist communist parties were kept
contribute 30hrs extra week in addition to their 8hr day loyal to the USSR through regular purges.
schedule. It was self-sufficient in production and its
industrial production was huge - coal increased from However, despite these mass territorial gains Stalin still
149.3 million tonnes in 1945 to 261.1 million tonnes in felt the USSR was venerable - this was reinforced by the
1950. Stalin had the economic ability to still overload the fact that the USSR had neither the military strength nor
economy with military expenditure for the Cold War - economic resources to engage in international proletarian
culminating to 25% GDP. The USSR was largely an revolution. In addition, However, Yugoslavia left the
economic and military powerhouse. Eastern Bloc (1948) slightly weakening the USSR's
However, collectivisation permanently crippled Soviet superpower capacity.
agriculture and left USSR incapable of feeding itself, which
was made worse by a harvest failure in 1946. The war
had destroyed a quarter of the country’s resources and
although industry recovered, the production of consumer
good and foodstuffs was still lower than it had been in the
late 1920s.
Although the economic strives were inconsistent, Stalin
had successfully transformed the USSR from an
agricultural backwards society to an advanced
superpower to rival the US.
Point 3 International relations
Ultimately, in terms of international relations, the USSR
failed to create friendly relations as a superpower.
The rise of the USSR’s political standing was reflected in
the diplomacy of the Grand Alliance between the USSR,
Britain and the US where there were a series of wartime
summit meetings, in Tehran (November 1943), Yalta
(February 1945) and at Potsdam (July 1945) – which
ensured the USSR was a founding member of the UN.
Stalin personally was viewed as an outstanding world
statesman after victory in the Great Patriotic War and was
known abroad as “Uncle Joe” in contrast to the isolation
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