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Summary Stalin - Russia and its Rulers OCR History A-Level
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Revision notes of Stalin as part of the Russia and its Rulers OCR history A-Level course - achieved A*
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Lenin’s view of Stalin at the end of his life - Lenin died 1924 Concerns in 1922
1923 - concerns have grown to the point where he is telling the party to find
someone to replace Stalin - telling them to find someone more polite,loyal and
considerare
Stalin is not a team player - psychological flaw of being too concerned with his
own advancement but is not a man of outstanding ability
Views trotsky as arrogant and self assured - has the ideas though
Pcarin - right of the party in favour of the NEP - has the ideas but not in line
with the Marxist ideology
Contenders to replace Lenin:
Trotsky - influential in 1917 as chairman of the soviet
Crutial to organising to October Revolution - military aspect
Negotiation of Brest-Litovsk
Leading the RA to victory in the Civil war
Wants to end NEP - left of the party
But considered to be arrogant to other, didnt get close to his colleagues
Late 20s suffering from lung illness so is abit frail
Kamenec & Zinoviev
Want to end NEP
Both in exile with lenin before 1917
Arguements with Lenin due to no roll in the Sovnarkom
Zinoviev -Led party in SIP but incompetent and cowardly
Kamenec let party in Moscow but soft
Stalin:
Know as the grey blur - energetic but not charismatic, nobody thinks he will be
the successor to lenin
Increasingly bad relations with Lenin
Rykov & Tromsky
R was frank direct and notorious drinker
Not loved
Supported the NEP - right of the party
T was former leader of metalworks union, supported the workers opposition in
1920
Bukharin
Issues in the leadership struggle:
Controversial policy of the NEP - continue ot end as not inline with ideology
What direct will the new leader take the party in - dictatorship ot collective
, Revolution - permamanet or socialism in one country - spend time and
resources encouraging a global revolution (permanent) or whether the russian
gov
Why did Stalin collectivise Russia Farming? - 25/01/22
Collectivisation - was a policy of forced consolidation of individual peasants
household into collective farms called ‘kolkhozes’ as carried out by the Soviet
government in the late 1920 - early 1930
Original system:
Village commune - use strip farming - inefficient, the aim was to support as many
people as possible (different families in the commune) - it doesn't encourage
production of a surplus, profit making is impossible on such small pieces of land -
subsistence farming is what happened
Acts as a safety net for the the peasantry as people have enough to survive - but is a
member of the family falls ill or is injured the land they have goes unfarmed but they
still need the food - so they sell their land to the family next to them who will now
have more land and provide the original family with food - this is alot of work and
they don't have the capability to farm it so they then also sell it on - over time there is
an emergence of families who have accumulated more land and therefore wealth -
they are known as Kulaks - some peasants don't like the Kulaks because of their
wealth and the greater voice they get in mir meetings, some peasants like the Kulaks
because they can lend them resources and food if times are tough
Kulaks become leaders of the village
Overall - inefficient and creates a peasant hierarchy
Collectivisation - abandons this method to make the land into much larger fields
(consolidation) and technology is introduced to increase efficiency
1 tractor and a few people to do all the work that was done by many more
people
These left over peasants are going to go to the cities to increase industrial
production
The Kulaks are going to go oppose this system as they are at the top of it and
are identified by the Communists as the ‘bourgeoisie peasants’ - Kulaks are
liquidated
Stalin wants to strengthen Russian military power, this need a stronger industry,
which means agriculture needs to improve to allow people into the cities
Peasants don’t want collectivisation - propaganda element of repression e.g. forced
to march and say they support it
,Key features of a collective farm: - Kolkhoz
MTS station - motor tractor station
Communal building - for meetings and where gov information can come into
and communist officials can discipline criticising and lack of efficiency
Processing plant
Private plots - at home people were allowed to keep their gardens up to
1acre to themselves and peasants would keep their own livestock and grow
fruit and veg for consumption or for sale - at some points this is what kept the
town going
January 1930 - Stalin announced that 25% of grain-producing areas were to be
collectivised by the end of the year - surprised his officials as they assumed
collectivisation would be voluntary
Most common form of collective farm after 1930?
- The Toz more common before 1930 - where land was private bu machinery shared
and co-operated activities like harvesting
The Sovkhoz - state run and owned - peasants paid a wage like factory
workers
The Kolkhoz - all the land was held in common and run by an elected
committee - 50-100 households put together - land, tools and livestock were
pooled - under direction of the committee the peasants farmed the land as
one unit
Original aim was to create more sovkhozes but the kolkhoz with private plots
became the type favoured by the communists in the 1930s
Why did Communists believe collectivisation was the solution to Russia’s agricultural
problems:
Larger units of land could be farmed more efficiently through the use of
mechanisation - supplied by the state through MTS - experts could help the
peasants farm in more modern ways using metal ploughs and fertilisers - net
result would be higher food production
Mechanised agriculture would require fewer peasants to work the land -
releasing labouR for the new industries
Much easier for the state to procure the grain it needed for cities and exports -
fewer collection points and each farm would have communist supporters who
would know how much had been produced
Was a socialist solution for agriculture - could not build a socialist state is the
majority of people were [private landholders who sold their products on the
market, collectivisation would socialise the peasantry - they would live in
‘socialist agrotowns’ in apartments rather than wooden huts, leaving their
children in creches, eating in restaurants and visiting social activities, they
would be bussed out to fields to works and would learn to work together
cooperatively and to live communally
How was collectivisation carried out:
It was carried out so quickly
, In 1929 food supply shortages - harvest was better but the peasants were
resisting the govs policies and were not marketing their food - meat and bread
had to be rationed in the cities, stalin blamed Kulaks for hoarding grain
Also 1927 war scare with the west but there was a need to improve
agriculture to support industry
Also fast a ruthless to get the peasants to comply
1928 Stalin pays visit to Urals and Siberia to where the kulaks were being
cracked down on and thought their collectivisation method which were very
strict was a good way to do it - following the political and supply situation
Mid 1929 less that 5% peasants were on state farms - aim was 25% by the
end of the year - hadn’t planned for it - not enough machinery, fertilisers and
experts - and the way to do it was through fear and force
‘Ural-siberian method’
Force, terror and propaganda
Stalin returned to the idea of the ‘class enemy’ as a mechanism to achieve his
ends - the Kulak
December 1919 he announced the ‘liquidisation of the kulaks as a class’ -
Moltov (one of stalin's leading supporters) said they would hud the kulaks so
hard that the so called ;middle peasants’ would ‘snap to attention before us’
The aim was the frighten the middle and poor peasants into joining the
Kolkhozes but villagers were often unwilling to identify kulaks many of who
were their friends or family or people who helped them when times were
tough - even if they weren't liked they were a part of the community in which
ties were stronger than to the Communist state - in some village poor
peasants wrote letters in support of their richer neighbours, richer peasants
sold their animals and stopped hiring labourers so that they could slip into the
ranks of the middle peasants
Local party officials opposed forced collectivisation they were unwilling to
identify kulaks who were valuable to the community and they knew
collectivisation would tear the countryside apart
So stalin enlisted an army of 25,000 urban party activists to help revolutionise
the countryside - after a 2 week course they were sent out in brigades to
oversee collectivisation, backed by local police, the OGPU (secret police) and
the military
But the so-called ‘Twenty Five Thousanders’ had no real knowledge of how to
run or organise a collective farm ot how to wage class warfare
The peasants don’t receive this well and riot - crops have to be burned and
people shot - women were amongst the leaders of the opposition of
collectivisation
‘Dekulakisation’ went ahead at full speed - each region given a number of
kulaks to root out whether they existed or not, they were divided into three
categories - counter revolutionaries who were to be shot or sent to force-
labour settlements to build bridges or canals, active opponents of
collectivisation who were to be deported to other areas of the soviet union
(often siberia) and those who were expelled from their farms and settled on
poor land
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