A* standard notes for Cambridge A-Level History (9389/9489) Paper 4 European option, Depth Study 1: European history in the interwar years, 1919-41 covering Theme 2: Stalin's Russia (1929-41). Includes essay outlines, mind maps, and exam tips.
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A-LEVEL HISTORY: P4 (9489)-THEME 2: STALIN’S RUSSIA, 1924-41
EUROPEAN OPTION, DEPTH STUDY 1: EUROPEAN HISTORY IN THE INTERWAR YEARS,
1919-41
2.0 Introduction
● Nov 1917: Russian Revolution
○ Backing of industrial workers & soldiers
○ Overthrew the Tsar
○ Bolsheviks formed new unelected provisional govt
■ Consisted of monarchists, conservative, liberal & socialist members
■ Declared Russia a democratic republic
■ Faced violent opposition = civil war
● Political crisis & economic collapse
● Growing disagreements between Russian Communist Party
leaders
● Provisional govt became unpopular
○ Failed to carry out land reform
○ Didn’t keep Russia in the war
○ Delayed holding promised elections
● Condition of Russia when Bolsheviks took over
○ Economic collapse, state of chaos & decay
■ Industrial output, manufactures & minerals were a small fraction of
pre-war levels
■ Disorganised railways
○ Low town populations
■ Due to wars
■ Many people unable to obtain food scattered throughout countryside
● Hoped to avoid starvation
○ People: sense of hopelessness & apathy
■ Constant devastation of war, disorganisation of life & uncertainty
about the future
2.1 Why did Stalin gain power from 1924?
→ Lenin’s legacy & problem of leadership
● Lenin’s ideology
○ Explained his ideology in book State and Revolution, 1917
■ Concerned transition to socialism once Bolsheviks achieved power
○ Circumstances largely determined policy in Bolshevik’s early years
○ Initially wanted democracy
■ Followed Marxist view that govt should be in the hands of “the
people” & Russian belief that aim of revolution was to end all social
privilege (class, nobility etc.)
○ Peasants in villages divided nobel’s land & shared it out
○ Cities: workers took control of factories & responded to Lenin’s call for “the
looting of the looters & the confiscation of bourgeois property”
■ Made the wealthy share their horses & do manual labour (payback)
○ End of WW1
■ Creation of socialist society
● Lenin & Trotsky: socialist society dependent on worldwide
socialist revolution
● Hoped it would emerge from WW1
○ Workers against employers/govt in civil war
● Marxist idea of dictatorship of the proletariat was based on
societies with urban workers majority (ie. Germany, Brit)
○ Russia: peasants made 80% of population
Sonia A. Sanjay Notes
, ■ German military advance continued- Russians forced to sign Treaty
of Brest Litovsk (humiliating)
● Lenin: more important to save revolution at home than
spread international revolution
○ Foundation for Stalin’s “Socialism in One Country”
○ One Party State
■ Lenin believed the “dictatorship of the proletariat should be exercised
by the Bolsheviks”
● Wasn’t going to share power with other socialists
○ Shown when he closed the Constituent Assembly
after they didn’t get the majority
● Rule by the Bolshevik-only Sovnarkom (the remaining
Romanian social revolutionaries left in March 1918)
○ March 1918: Bolsheviks became “Communist Party”
■ Civil War had huge impact on the development of the party & state
● Forced govt to adopt a more centralised system of govt
● Use terror to enforce laws
● Highly centralised government fulfilled socialist goals
■ War Communism gave way to New Economic Policy
● Allowed more capitalist practises, tight party unity
○ Lenin issued a “ban on factions”
■ Stalin used it defeat his rivals
■ 1922: all parties other than Bolsheviks outlawed
○ Bureaucratic state
■ Central power increased under Lenin (no. of govt institutions/officials
grew)
■ Bolshevik original belief: withering away of the state
○ Consolidation of authority
■ Bolsheviks were a minority
■ Wanted to be a party of the people (lacked mass support)
■ More opponents after signing Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
● Tsarist army officers, Kadets, SRs & Mensheviks, & foreign
armies on their soils
■ Democratic centralism
● Requirement that party members obey & act on orders
handed down by party leaders
■ 1921: Decree on Party Unity banned formal factionalism
● Prevented criticism of leadership within the party
■ Law was an extension of political control
○ Economic crisis
■ Spring 1918: Russia on economic collapse
■ Too little grain reaching cities (workers going hungry)
● Due to wartime disruption of transport system
● Seizing land of nobles & kulaks & dividing up amongst
peasants = small scale subsistence farming
○ Majority didn’t have surplus to sell to cities
○ Little incentive to sell grain- few goods to exchange
for it
■ Worker’s control of factories & shortage of
raw materials = fall in industrial output
(consumer goods)
● 1918: Food riots erupted
○ Workers fled cities in search of food = labour
shortage in factories
Sonia A. Sanjay Notes
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