Summary
Summary Terror and Opposition under Stalin
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Notes upon the conflict Stalin faced as leader of Russia, how he overcame these threats and the overall use of terror on the Russian motherland.
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TERROR Arrest and exile of Political opposition.
Secret Police – land Captains.
Executions.
Ration cards.
Concentration camps.
Use of religion.
Censorship in media and education.
Show Trails.
The Shakhty Show Trail 1928
The start of the Five-year plans where 55 engineers and managers were arrested and accused of
conspiring with the former owners of coal mines to sabotage the Soviet economy. These arrests had
been called by Stalin to undermine Bukharin and Tomsky – used as leverage. The charges thus
enabled him to denounce the reliance on such pre-revolutionary specialists, a policy that Bukharin
had defended, and it allowed him to make allegations that Rykov’s state apparatus and Tomsky’s
labour unions had failed to uncover or had concealed widespread economic sabotage.
The Gulags – Ivan Denisovich
Prisoners are assigned numbers for easy identification and in an effort to dehumanize.
Each day, the squad leader receives their work assignments for that day and the squad are
then fed according to how they perform.
If a prisoner is caught slaking the whole squad is punished.
It shows that loyalty exists among the work gang members and through such solidarity they
survive day to day.
WHITE SEA-BALTIC SEA CANAL – (1931) over 100,000 prisoners dug a 141-mile canal in 20
months with simple tools. Many died during construction, and it was to narrow and shallow
making it a ‘white elephant’ but it was widely praised, even in America.
KOLYMA – coldest place on the planet and wasn’t accessible by overland route. Had to
spend several months waiting for the Pacific coast to unfreeze so you could reach the
destination. Goldmining was the job, most report a high death rate – unlikely to come back
once you were sent there.
The Crisis of 1932
Suicide of Stalin’s wife
Starts the purges and
The famine of 1932-33
increases terror.
Ryutin affair
Nadeza Suicide – alleged affairs and treated him poorly. On the night of their suicide, it was thought
they had an argument, so he left to be with his mistress. Two interpretations where he showed little
remorse and didn’t visit her grave, or he loved her dearly and never got over her death. Most agree
that this death caused him to draw more into himself and became more paranoid over his guilt
which he projected.
, Famine – reports of up to 9million killed in Ukraine as they were taking grain of the peasants and
selling it to make money to feed into rapid industrialisation. People turned to cannibalism and was
devastating for him politically – should we still focus on Five-Year plans.
Ryutin – rightists and was critical of Stalin, thought they were going too fast, and millions were dying
due to famine. Politburo ruled against Stalin – however Stalin orders his death in 1937.
Why was 1932 a bad year for Stalin? See above notes
What does Stalin’s reaction suggest about his political authority? Stalin needed to use terror in
order to fully assert himself to others. He wasn’t good with persuasive language as Trotsky was
before him and so through threat of life, it forced those around him to conform. Many saw this point
of leadership as a turning point where he became increasingly threatening and unstable. ‘Unhinged
Stalin’ – Orlando Figes. He was far from secure as the political purge began targeting those who he
saw as unloyalty/faithful to his authority.
Terror and the purges
Lenin used terror and class warfare to crush opposition. Stalin extended the use of terror
and class warfare to push through the 5-year plans.
Millions were killed or sent to labour camps.
Lenin and other Communists made a distinction between the methods to be used against
the opposition from outside the party and those for dealing with disagreements and
opposition inside the party. There was a clear understanding that terror should not be used
on party comrades.
In the Great Purges, Stalin unleashed terror inside the party which then engulfed people in
the wider socieyu in a further wave of terror.
Kirovs murder as a springboard into violence.
The Show Trials
Kirov’s murder was used as a pretext and justification for the great purges.
An extensive purge of the Leningrad Party took place.
Show trials to uncover the enemy of the people.
Show trials – August 1936, January 1937, and March 1939.
Effective way to create intimidation fear and a sense of danger – as well as a genuine feeling
that there were enemies, spires, and wreckers around.
The show trails became just that – a show. Some of the ‘biggest’ names in the Bolshevik
Party were made to stand trial in public – men like Kamenev, Bukharin, and Zinoviev.
Stalin viewed these men as potential rivals and as such they had to go. Noth these men were
charges with plotting to kill Stalin.
There guilt was never in doubt as the court had been provided with much ‘evidence’
obtained from other prisoners and they were executed in 1936 and 1938 in Bukharin’s case.
Yezhov
In September 1936, Stalin appointed Nikolai Yezhov as head of the NKVD, the Communist
Secret Police
Yezhov quickly arranged the arrest of all the leading political figure in the Soviet Union who
were critical of Stalin.
The Secret Police broke prisoners don by intense interrogation. This included threat to arrest
and execute members of the prisoner’s family if they did not confess.
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