Political and economic policies implemented by Joseph Stalin
This article is about the means of governing and policies implemented by Joseph Stalin. For the political philosophy developed by Stalin, seeMarxism–Leninism. For other uses, seeStalinism (disambiguation).
Officially designed to accelerate development towardscommunism, the need forindustrialization in the Soviet Union was emphasized because the Soviet Union had previously fallen behind economically compared to Western countries and that socialist society needed industry to face the challenges posed by internal and external enemies of communism.[12] Rapid industrialization was accompanied by mass collectivization of agriculture and rapidurbanization, which converted many small villages intoindustrial cities.[13] To accelerate the development of industrialization, Stalin imported materials, ideas, expertise, and workers from western Europe and the United States,[14] pragmatically setting upjoint-venture contracts with major Americanprivate enterprises such as theFord Motor Company, which, under state supervision, assisted in developing the basis of the industry of theSoviet economy from the late 1920s to the 1930s. After the American private enterprises had completed their tasks, Sovietstate enterprises took over.
Stalinism is used to describe the period during whichJoseph Stalin was theleader of the Soviet Union while serving asGeneral Secretary of theCentral Committee of theCommunist Party of the Soviet Union from 3 April 1922 to his death on 5 March 1953.[15] It was a development ofLeninism,[16] and while Stalin avoided using the term "Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism", he allowed others to do so.[17] Following Lenin's death, Stalin contributed to the theoretical debates within the Communist Party, namely by developing the idea of "Socialism in One Country". This concept was intricately linked to factional struggles within the party, particularly against Trotsky.[18] He first developed the idea in December 1924, and elaborated upon it in his writings of 1925–26.[19]
Stalin's doctrine held that socialism could be completed in Russia but that its final victory could not be guaranteed because of the threat from capitalist intervention. For this reason, he retained the Leninist view that world revolution was still a necessity to ensure the ultimate victory of socialism.[19] Although retaining the Marxist belief that the state would wither away as socialism transformed into pure communism, he believed that the Soviet state would remain until the final defeat of international capitalism.[20] This concept synthesised Marxist and Leninist ideas with nationalist ideals,[21] and served to discredit Trotsky—who promoted the idea of "permanent revolution"—by presenting the latter as a defeatist with little faith in Russian workers' abilities to construct socialism.[22]
The termStalinism came into prominence during the mid-1930s whenLazar Kaganovich, a Soviet politician and associate of Stalin, reportedly declared: "Let's replace Long LiveLeninism with Long Live Stalinism!"[23] Stalin dismissed this as excessive and contributing to acult of personality he thought might later be used against him by the same people who praised him excessively, one of those being Khrushchev—a prominent user of the term during Stalin's life who was later responsible for de-Stalinization and the beginning of the Khrushchev Thaw era.[23]
Some historians view Stalinism as a reflection of the ideologies ofLeninism andMarxism, but some argue that it is separate from thesocialist ideals it stemmed from. After a political struggle that culminated in the defeat of theBukharinists (the "Party'sRight Tendency"), Stalinism was free to shape policy without opposition, ushering in an era of harshtotalitarianism that worked toward rapidindustrialization regardless of the human cost.[26]
All otherOctober Revolution 1917Bolshevik leaders regarded their revolution more or less as just the beginning, with Russia as the springboard on the road toward worldwide revolution. Stalin introduced the idea ofsocialism in one country by the autumn of 1924, a theory standing in sharp contrast to Trotsky'spermanent revolution and all earlier socialistic theses. The revolution did not spread outside Russia as Lenin had assumed it soon would. The revolution had not succeeded even within other former territories of theRussian Empire―such asPoland,Finland,Lithuania,Latvia, andEstonia. On the contrary, these countries had returned tocapitalistbourgeois rule.[27]
He is an unprincipled intriguer, who subordinates everything to the preservation of his own power. He changes his theory according to whom he needs to get rid of.
Bukharin on Stalin's theoretical position, 1928.[28]
Despite this, by the autumn of 1924, Stalin's notion of socialism inSoviet Russia was initially considered next toblasphemy by otherPolitburo members, includingZinoviev andKamenev to the intellectual left;Rykov,Bukharin, andTomsky to the pragmatic right; and the powerful Trotsky, who belonged to no side but his own. None would even consider Stalin's concept a potential addition to communist ideology. Stalin's socialism in one-country doctrine could not be imposed until he had come close to being the Soviet Union'sautocratic ruler around 1929. Bukharin and theRight Opposition expressed their support for imposing Stalin's ideas, as Trotsky had been exiled, and Zinoviev and Kamenev had been expelled from the party.[29] In a 1936 interview with journalistRoy W. Howard, Stalin articulated his rejection ofworld revolution and said, "We never had such plans and intentions" and "The export of revolution is nonsense".[30][31][32]
Traditional communist thought holds that the state will gradually "wither away" as the implementation of socialism reduces class distinction. But Stalin argued that theproletarian state (as opposed to thebourgeois state) must become stronger before it can wither away. In Stalin's view,counter-revolutionary elements will attempt to derail the transition tofull communism, and the state must be powerful enough to defeat them. For this reason,communist regimes influenced by Stalin aretotalitarian.[33] Other leftists, such asanarcho-communists, have criticized theparty-state of the Stalin-era Soviet Union, accusing it of being bureaucratic and calling it areformistsocial democracy rather than a form of revolutionary communism.[34]
Sheng Shicai, a Chinesewarlord with Communist leanings, invited Soviet intervention and allowed Stalinist rule to extend toXinjiang province in the 1930s. In 1937, Sheng conducted a purge similar to theGreat Purge, imprisoning, torturing, and killing about 100,000 people, many of themUyghurs.[35][36]
Cybernetics: a reactionary pseudoscience that appeared in the U.S.A. after World War II and also spread through other capitalist countries. Cybernetics clearly reflects one of the basic features of the bourgeois worldview—its inhumanity, striving to transform workers into an extension of the machine, into a tool of production, and an instrument of war. At the same time, for cybernetics an imperialistic utopia is characteristic—replacing living, thinking man, fighting for his interests, by a machine, both in industry and in war. The instigators of a new world war use cybernetics in their dirty, practical affairs.
"Cybernetics" in theShort Philosophical Dictionary, 1954[37]
Under Stalin, repression was extended to academic scholarship, the natural sciences,[38] and literary fields.[39] In particular, Einstein'stheory of relativity was subject to public denunciation, many of his ideas were rejected on ideological grounds[40] and condemned as "bourgeois idealism" in the Stalin era.[41]
Pseudoscientific theories ofTrofim Lysenko were favoured over scientific genetics during the Stalin era.[43] Soviet scientists were forced to denounce any work that contradicted Lysenko.[54] Over 3,000 biologists were imprisoned, fired,[55] or executed for attempting to oppose Lysenkoism and genetic research was effectively destroyed until the death of Stalin in 1953.[56][57] Due to the ideological influence ofLysenkoism, crop yields in the USSR declined.[58][59][56]
Orthodoxy was enforced in thecultural sphere. Prior to Stalin's rule, literary, religious and national representatives had some level of autonomy in the 1920s but these groups were later rigorously repressed during the Stalinist era.[60]Socialist realism was imposed in artistic production and other creative industries such asmusic,film andsport were subject to extreme levels of political control.[60]
Historical falsification of political events such as the October Revolution and the Brest-Litovsk Treaty became a distinctive element of Stalin's regime. A notable example is the 1938 publication,History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks),[61] in which the history of the governing party was significantly altered and revised including the importance of the leading figures during the Bolshevik revolution. Retrospectively, Lenin's primary associates such as Zinoviev, Trotsky,Radek and Bukharin were presented as "vacillating", "opportunists" and "foreign spies" whereas Stalin was depicted as the chief discipline during the revolution. However, in reality, Stalin was considered a relatively unknown figure with secondary importance at the time of the event.[62]
In his book,The Stalin School of Falsification, Leon Trotsky argued that the Stalinist faction routinely distorted political events, forged a theoretical basis for irreconcilable concepts such as the notion of "Socialism in One Country" and misrepresented the views of opponents through an array of employed historians alongside economists to justify policy manoeuvering and safeguarding its own set of material interests.[63] He cited a range of historical documents such as private letters, telegrams, party speeches, meetingminutes, and suppressed texts such asLenin's Testament.[63] British historianOrlando Figes argued that "The urge to silence Trotsky, and all criticism of the Politburo, was in itself a crucial factor in Stalin's rise to power".[64]
Cinematic productions served to foster the cult of personality around Stalin with adherents to the party line receivingStalin prizes.[65] However, film directors and their assistants were still liable to mass arrests during the Great Terror.[66]Censorship of films contributed to amythologizing of history as seen with the filmsFirst Cavalry Army (1941) andDefence of Tsaritsyn (1942) in which Stalin was glorified as a central figure to theOctober Revolution. Conversely, the roles of other Soviet figures such as Lenin and Trotsky were diminished or misrepresented.[67]
In the aftermath of the succession struggle, in which Stalin had defeated bothLeft andRight Opposition, a cult of Stalin had materialised.[68] From 1929 until 1953, there was a proliferation ofarchitecture,statues,posters,banners andiconography featuring Stalin in which he was increasingly identified with the state and seen as an emblem of Marxism.[69] In July 1930, a state decree instructed 200 artists to prepare propaganda posters for the Five Year Plans and collectivsation measures.[70] Historian Anita Pisch drew specific focus to the various manifestations of the personality cult in which Stalin was associated with the "Father", "Saviour" and "Warrior" cultural archetypes with the latter imagery having gained ascendency during theGreat Patrotic War andCold War.[69]
Some scholars have argued that Stalin took an active involvement with the construction of the cult of personality[71] with writers such asIsaac Deutscher and Erik van Ree noting that Stalin had absorbed elements from the cult of Tsars, Orthodox Christianity and highlighting specific acts such asLenin's embalming.[72] Yet, other scholars have drawn on primary accounts from Stalin's associates such asMolotov which suggested he took a more critical and ambivalent attitude towards his cult of personality.[73]
The cult of personality served to legitimate Stalin's authority, and establish continuity with Lenin as his "discipline, student and mentee" in the view of his wider followers.[69][74] His successor,Nikita Khrushchev, would later denounce the cult of personality around Stalin as contradictory to Leninist principles and party discourse.[75]
Stalin blamed thekulaks for incitingreactionary violence against the people during the implementation ofagricultural collectivization.[76] In response, the state, under Stalin's leadership, initiated a violent campaign against them. This kind of campaign was later known asclassicide,[77] though several international legislatures have passed resolutions declaring the campaign a genocide.[78] Some historians dispute that these social-class actions constitute genocide.[79][80][81]
As head of thePolitburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Stalin consolidated nearly absolute power in the 1930s with a Great Purge of the party that claimed to expel "opportunists" and "counter-revolutionary infiltrators".[82][83] Those targeted by the purge were often expelled from the party; more severe measures ranged from banishment to theGulag labor camps to execution after trials held byNKVD troikas.[82][84][85]
In the 1930s, Stalin became increasingly worried about Leningrad party headSergei Kirov's growing popularity. At the1934 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 over 100.[86][i] After Kirov's assassination, which Stalin may have orchestrated, Stalin invented a detailed scheme to implicate opposition leaders in the murder, including Trotsky,Lev Kamenev, andGrigory Zinoviev.[87] Thereafter, the investigations and trials expanded.[88] 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 imposed "quickly."[89] Stalin's Politburo also issued directives on quotas for mass arrests and executions.[90] Under Stalin, thedeath penalty was extended to adolescents as young as 12 years old in 1935.[91][92][93]
After that, several trials, known as theMoscow Trials, were held, but the procedures were replicated throughout the country.Article 58 of the legal code, which listed prohibitedanti-Soviet activities as a counter-revolutionary crime, was applied most broadly.[94] Many alleged anti-Soviet pretexts were used to brand individuals as "enemies of the people", starting the cycle of public persecution, often proceeding to interrogation, torture, and deportation, if not death. The Russian wordtroika thereby gained a new meaning: a quick, simplified trial by a committee of three subordinated to the NKVD troika—with sentencing carried out within 24 hours.[89] Stalin's hand-pickedexecutionerVasili Blokhin was entrusted with carrying out some of the high-profile executions in this period.[95]
Many military leaders were convicted of treason, and a large-scale purge ofRed Army officers followed.[ii] The repression of many formerly high-ranking revolutionaries and party members led Trotsky to claim that a "river of blood" separated Stalin's regime from Lenin's.[97] 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.[98]
Mass operations of the NKVD also targeted "national contingents" (foreign ethnicities) such asPoles,ethnic Germans, andKoreans. A total of 350,000 (144,000 of them Poles) were arrested and 247,157 (110,000 Poles) were executed.[99] Many Americans who had emigrated to the Soviet Union during the worst of theGreat Depression were executed, while others were sent to prison camps or gulags.[100][101] Concurrent with the purges, efforts were made to rewrite the history in Soviet textbooks and other propaganda materials. Notable people executed byNKVD were removed from the texts and photographs as though they had never existed.
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,[102] the great mass of them ordinary Soviet citizens: workers, peasants, homemakers, teachers, priests, musicians, soldiers, pensioners, ballerinas, and beggars.[103][104]: 4 Scholars estimate the total death toll for the Great Purge (1936–1938) including fatalities attributed to imprisonment to be roughly 700,000-1.2 million.[105][106][107][108][109] Many of the executed were interred inmass graves, with some significant killing and burial sites beingBykivnia,Kurapaty, andButovo.[110]Some Western experts believe the evidence released from the Soviet archives is understated, incomplete or unreliable.[111][112][113][114][115] Conversely, historianStephen G. Wheatcroft, who spent much of his career researching the archives, contends that, before 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 oldSovietological methods with round-about calculations based on odd statements from emigres and other informants who are supposed to have superior knowledge."[116][117]
Stalin personally signed 357proscription lists in 1937 and 1938 that condemned 40,000 people to execution, about 90% of whom are confirmed to have been shot.[118] 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? No one. Who remembers the names now of theboyarsIvan the Terrible got rid of? No one."[119] In addition, Stalin dispatched a contingent of NKVD operatives toMongolia, established a Mongolian version of the NKVDtroika, and unleashed abloody purge in which tens of thousands were executed as "Japanese spies", as Mongolian rulerKhorloogiin Choibalsan closely followed Stalin's lead.[104]: 2 Stalin had ordered for 100,000Buddhistlamas in Mongolia to be liquidated, but the political leaderPeljidiin Genden resisted the order.[120][121][122]
The Great Terror (September 1936 – December 1938) is the term used by Western scholars to describe the peak of Stalinist political repression, during which Nikolai Yezhov headed theNKVD and oversaw mass arrests and executions on an unprecedented scale.[131] Hundreds of thousands of party officials, military officers, intellectuals, and ordinary citizens were sentenced in show trials and either executed or sent toGulag camps. The NKVD operated under centrally planned quotas that set numbers of people to be executed or imprisoned in each republic.
As an example, in theKyrgyz SSR – then a small republic of just 1.5 million people – the directive for the first quarter of 1938 ordered 35 executions, 1,250 sentences of 25 years’ imprisonment, and 3,740 ten-year sentences. Local NKVD officials cynically referred to this as the “harvest of the crop.” Failure to fulfil these quotas could result in the arrest or even execution of the NKVD personnel themselves. The removal of several thousand able-bodied people within such a short period dealt a severe blow to the republic’s economy, yet quotas continued to be issued in subsequent quarters. Oral history accounts further describe the dramatic arrests of Kyrgyz elites, public trials staged as mass spectacles, and the devastating effects on families of those branded “enemies of the people.”[132]
Shortly before, during, and immediately afterWorld War II, Stalin conducted a series ofdeportations that profoundly affected the ethnic map of the Soviet Union.Separatism, resistance to Soviet rule, and collaboration with theinvading Germans were the official reasons for the deportations. Individual circumstances of those spending time inGerman-occupied territories were not examined. After the briefNazi occupation of the Caucasus, the entire population of five of the small highland peoples and theCrimean Tatars—more than a million people in total—were deported without notice or any opportunity to take their possessions.[133]
As a result of Stalin's lack of trust in the loyalty of particular ethnicities, groups such as theSoviet Koreans,Volga Germans, Crimean Tatars,Chechens, and many Poles, were forcibly moved out of strategic areas and relocated to places in the central Soviet Union, especiallyKazakhstan. By some estimates, hundreds of thousands of deportees may have died en route.[134] It is estimated that between 1941 and 1949, nearly 3.3 million people[134][135] were deported toSiberia and the Central Asian republics. By some estimates, up to 43% of the resettled population died of diseases and malnutrition.[136]
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 deported and exiled to remote areas of the Soviet Union (including entire nationalities in several cases).[137] The emergent scholarly consensus is that from 1930 to 1953, around 1.5 to 1.7 million perished in the gulag system.[138][139][140] 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,Meskhetians, and Volga Germans were allowed to returnen masse to their homelands.
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 became known as theGreat Turn as Russia turned away from themixed-economic typeNew Economic Policy (NEP) and adopted aplanned economy. Lenin implemented the NEP to ensure the survival of thesocialist state following seven years of war (World War I, 1914–1917, and the subsequentCivil War, 1917–1921) and rebuilt Soviet production to its 1913 levels. But Russia still lagged far behind the West, and Stalin and the majority of the Communist Party felt the NEP not only to be compromising communist ideals but also not delivering satisfactory economic performance or creating the envisaged socialist society.
According to historianSheila Fitzpatrick, the scholarly consensus was that Stalin appropriated the position of theLeft Opposition on such matters asindustrialisation andcollectivisation.[141] Trotsky maintained that the disproportions and imbalances which became characteristic of Stalinist planning in the 1930s such as the underdevelopedconsumer base along with the priority focus onheavy industry were due to a number of avoidable problems. He argued that the industrial drive had been enacted under more severe circumstances, several years later and in a less rational manner than originally conceived by the Left Opposition.[142]
Officially designed to accelerate development towardcommunism, the need forindustrialization in the Soviet Union was emphasized because the Soviet Union had previously fallen behind economically compared to Western countries and also because socialist society needed industry to face the challenges posed by internal and external enemies of communism.[12] Rapid industrialization was accompanied by mass collectivization of agriculture and rapidurbanization, which converted many small villages intoindustrial cities.[13] To accelerate industrialization's development, Stalin imported materials, ideas, expertise, and workers from western Europe and the United States,[143] pragmatically setting upjoint-venture contracts with major Americanprivate enterprises such as theFord Motor Company, which, under state supervision, assisted in developing the basis of the industry of theSoviet economy from the late 1920s to the 1930s. After the American private enterprises had completed their tasks, Sovietstate enterprises took over.
Fredric Jameson has said that "Stalinism was…a success and fulfilled its historic mission, socially as well as economically" given that it "modernized the Soviet Union, transforming a peasant society into an industrial state with a literate population and a remarkable scientific superstructure."[144]Robert Conquest disputes that conclusion, writing, "Russia had already been fourth to fifth among industrial economies before World War I", and that Russian industrial advances could have been achieved without collectivization, famine, or terror. According to Conquest, the industrial successes were far less than claimed, and the Soviet-style industrialization was "an anti-innovative dead-end."[145]Stephen Kotkin said those who argue collectivization was necessary are "dead wrong", writing that it "only seemed necessary within the straitjacket of Communist ideology and its repudiation of capitalism. And economically, collectivization failed to deliver." Kotkin further claimed that it decreased harvests instead of increasing them, as peasants tended to resist heavy taxes by producing fewer goods, caring only about their own subsistence.[146][147]: 5
According to several Western historians,[148] Stalinist agricultural policies were a key factor in theSoviet famine of 1930–1933; some scholars believe thatHolodomor, which started near the end of 1932, was when the famine turned into an instrument of genocide; the Ukrainian government now recognizes it as such. Some scholars dispute the intentionality of the famine.[149][80]
The Stalinist era was largely regressive on social issues. Despite a brief period of decriminalization under Lenin, the 1934 Criminal Code re-criminalized homosexuality.[150] Abortion was made illegal again in 1936[151] after controversial debate among citizens,[152] and women's issues were largely ignored.[153]
Stalin considered the political and economic system under his rule to beMarxism–Leninism, which he considered the only legitimate successor ofMarxism andLeninism. Thehistoriography of Stalin is diverse, with many different aspects of continuity and discontinuity between the regimes Stalin and Lenin proposed. Some historians, such asRichard Pipes, consider Stalinism the natural consequence of Leninism: Stalin "faithfully implemented Lenin's domestic and foreign policy programs."[154]Robert Service writes that "institutionally and ideologically Lenin laid the foundations for a Stalin [...] but the passage from Leninism to the worse terrors of Stalinism was not smooth and inevitable."[155] Likewise, historian and Stalin biographerEdvard Radzinsky believes that Stalin was a genuine follower of Lenin, exactly as he claimed.[156] Another Stalin biographer,Stephen Kotkin, wrote that "his violence was not the product of his subconscious but of the Bolshevik engagement with Marxist–Leninist ideology."[157]
A poster of the Stalinist era with the inscription "The whole world will be ours!"
Dmitri Volkogonov, who wrote biographies of both Lenin and Stalin, wrote that during the 1960s through 1980s, an official patriotic Sovietde-Stalinized view of the Lenin–Stalin relationship (during theKhrushchev Thaw and later) was that the overlyautocratic Stalin had distorted the Leninism of the wisededushka Lenin. But Volkogonov also lamented that this view eventually dissolved for those like him who had the scales fall from their eyes immediately before and after thedissolution of the Soviet Union. After researching the biographies in the Soviet archives, he came to the same conclusion as Radzinsky and Kotkin (that Lenin had built a culture of violent autocratic totalitarianism of which Stalinism was a logical extension).
Opponents of this view includerevisionist historians and manypost–Cold War and otherwisedissident Soviet historians, includingRoy Medvedev, who argues that although "one could list the various measures carried out by Stalin that were actually a continuation of anti-democratic trends and measures implemented under Lenin…in so many ways, Stalin acted, not in line with Lenin's clear instructions, but in defiance of them."[160] In doing so, some historians have tried to distance Stalinism from Leninism to undermine the totalitarian view that Stalin's methods were inherent in communism from the start.[161] Other revisionist historians such asOrlando Figes, while critical of the Soviet era, acknowledge that Lenin actively sought to counter Stalin's growing influence, allying with Trotsky in 1922–23, opposing Stalin onforeign trade, and proposing party reforms including the democratization of theCentral Committee and recruitment of 50-100 ordinary workers into the party's lower organs.[162]
Critics include anti-Stalinist communists such as Trotsky, who pointed out that Lenin attempted to persuade the Communist Party to remove Stalin from his post as itsGeneral Secretary. Trotsky also argued that he and Lenin had intended to lift the ban on theopposition parties such as theMensheviks andSocialist Revolutionaries as soon as the economic and social conditions ofSoviet Russia had improved.[163]Lenin's Testament, the document containing this order, was suppressed after Lenin's death. Various historians have cited Lenin's proposal to appoint Trotsky as aVice-chairman of the Soviet Union as evidence that he intended Trotsky to be his successor as head of government.[164][165][166][167][168] In his biography of Trotsky, British historianIsaac Deutscher writes that, faced with the evidence, "only the blind and the deaf could be unaware of the contrast between Stalinism and Leninism."[169] Similarly, historianMoshe Lewin writes, "The Soviet regime underwent a long period of 'Stalinism,' which in its basic features was diametrically opposed to the recommendations of [Lenin's] testament".[170] French historianPierre Broue disputes the historical assessments of the early Soviet Union by modern historians such as Dmitri Volkogonov, which Broue argues falsely equateLeninism, Stalinism andTrotskyism to present the notion of ideological continuity and reinforce the position ofcounter-communism.[171]
Some scholars have attributed the establishment of the one-party system in the Soviet Union to the wartime conditions imposed on Lenin's government;[172] others have highlighted the initial attempts to form a coalition government with theLeft Socialist Revolutionaries.[173] According to historianMarcel Liebman, Lenin's wartime measures such as banning opposition parties was prompted by the fact that several political parties eithertook up arms against the newSoviet government, participated in sabotage,collaborated with the deposedTsarists, or madeassassination attempts against Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders.[174] Liebman also argues that the banning of parties under Lenin did not have the same repressive character as later bans enforced by Stalin's regime.[174] Several scholars have highlighted the socially progressive nature of Lenin's policies, such asuniversal education,healthcare, andequal rights for women.[175][176] Conversely, Stalin's regime reversed Lenin's policies on social matters such assexual equality, legal restrictions onmarriage, rights of sexual minorities, andprotective legislation.[177] HistorianRobert Vincent Daniels also views the Stalinist period as a counterrevolution in Soviet cultural life that revivedpatriotic propaganda, the Tsarist programme ofRussification and traditional,military ranks that Lenin had criticized as expressions of "Great Russian chauvinism".[178] Daniels also regards Stalinism as an abrupt break with the Leninist period in terms of economic policies in which a deliberated, scientific system ofeconomic planning that featured formerMenshevikeconomists atGosplan was replaced by a hasty version of planning with unrealistic targets, bureaucractic waste,bottlenecks andshortages.[179]
O kulcie jednostki i jego następstwach, Warsaw, March 1956, first edition of the Secret Speech, published for the inner use in thePUWP.
In his "Secret Speech", delivered in 1956,Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin's successor, argued that Stalin's regime differed profusely from the leadership of Lenin. He was critical of thecult of the individual constructed around Stalin whereas Lenin stressed "the role of the people as the creator of history".[180] He also emphasized that Lenin favored acollective leadership that relied on personal persuasion and recommended Stalin's removal as General Secretary. Khrushchev contrasted this with Stalin's "despotism", which required absolute submission to his position, and highlighted that many of the people later annihilated as "enemies of the party ... had worked with Lenin during his life".[180] He also contrasted the "severe methods" Lenin used in the "most necessary cases" as a "struggle for survival" during the Civil War with the extreme methods and mass repressions Stalin used even when the revolution was "already victorious".[180] In his memoirs, Khrushchev argued that his widespread purges of the "most advanced nucleus of people" among theOld Bolsheviks and leading figures in themilitary andscientific fields had "undoubtedly" weakened the nation.[181] According to Stalin's secretary,Boris Bazhanov, Stalin was jubilant over Lenin's death while "publicly putting on the mask of grief".[182]
Some Marxist theoreticians have disputed the view that Stalin's dictatorship was a natural outgrowth of the Bolsheviks' actions, as Stalin eliminated most of the original central committee members from 1917.[183]George Novack stressed the Bolsheviks' initial efforts to form a government with theLeft Socialist Revolutionaries and bring other parties such as the Mensheviks into political legality.[184]Tony Cliff argued the Bolshevik-Left Socialist Revolutionary coalition government dissolved the Constituent Assembly for several reasons. They cited the outdated voter rolls, which did not acknowledge the split among the Socialist Revolutionary party, and the assembly's conflict with theCongress of the Soviets as an alternative democratic structure.[185]
A similar analysis is present in more recent works, such as those of Graeme Gill, who argues that Stalinism was "not a natural flow-on of earlier developments; [it formed a] sharp break resulting from conscious decisions by leading political actors."[186] But Gill adds that "difficulties with the use of the term reflect problems with the concept of Stalinism itself. The major difficulty is a lack of agreement about what should constitute Stalinism."[187] Revisionist historians such asSheila Fitzpatrick have criticized the focus on the upper levels of society and the use of Cold War concepts such astotalitarianism, which have obscured the reality of the system.[188]
Russian historianVadim Rogovin writes, "Under Lenin, the freedom to express a real variety of opinions existed in the party, and in carrying out political decisions, consideration was given to the positions of not only the majority, but a minority in the party". He compared this practice with subsequent leadership blocs, which violated party tradition, ignored opponents' proposals, and expelled theOpposition from the party on falsified charges, culminating in theMoscow Trials of 1936–1938. According to Rogovin, 80-90% of the members of the Central Committee elected at theSixth through theSeventeenth Congresses were killed.[189] The Right and Left Opposition have been held by some scholars as representing political alternatives to Stalinism despite their shared beliefs in Leninism due to their policy platforms which were at variance with Stalin. This ranged from areas related toeconomics,foreign policy andcultural matters.[190][191]
Several scholars have derided Stalinism for fosteringanti-intellectual,antisemitic andchauvinistic attitudes within the Soviet Union.[197][198][199] According to Marxist philosopherHelena Sheehan, his philosophical legacy is almost universally rated negatively with most Soviet sources considering his influence to have negatively impacted the creative development of Soviet philosophy.[200] Sheehan discussed omissions in his views on dialectics and noted that most Soviet philosophers rejected his characterization ofHegel's philosophy.[200]
Pierre du Bois argues that the cult of personality around Stalin was elaborately constructed to legitimize his rule. Many deliberate distortions and falsehoods were used.[201] The Kremlin refused access to archival records that might reveal the truth, and critical documents were destroyed. Photographs were altered and documents were invented.[202] People who knew Stalin were forced to provide "official" accounts to meet the ideological demands of the cult, especially as Stalin presented it in 1938 inShort Course on the History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), which became the official history.[203] HistorianDavid 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."[204]
Mao Zedong famously declared that Stalin was 70% good and 30% bad.Maoists criticized Stalin chiefly for his view that bourgeois influence within the Soviet Union was primarily a result of external forces, to the almost complete exclusion of internal forces, and his view that class contradictions ended after the basic construction of socialism. Mao also criticized Stalin's cult of personality and the excesses of the great purge. But Maoists praised Stalin for leading the Soviet Union and the international proletariat, defeating fascism in Germany, and hisanti-revisionism.[205]
Taking the side of theChinese Communist Party in theSino-Soviet split, thePeople's Socialist Republic of Albania remained committed, at least theoretically, to its brand of Stalinism (Hoxhaism) for decades under the leadership ofEnver Hoxha. Despite their initial cooperation against "revisionism", Hoxha denounced Mao as a revisionist, along with almost every other self-identified communist organization worldwide, resulting in theSino-Albanian split. This effectively isolated Albania from the rest of the world, as Hoxha was hostile to both the pro-American and pro-Soviet spheres of influence and the Non-Aligned Movement under the leadership ofJosip Broz Tito, whom Hoxha had also previously denounced.[206][207]
Leon Trotsky was the leader of theLeft Opposition which advocated for an alternative set of policies to Stalin.
Leon Trotsky always viewed Stalin as the "candidate for grave-digger of our party and the revolution" during the succession struggle.[208] American historianRobert Vincent Daniels viewed Trotsky and the Left Opposition as a critical alternative to the Stalin-Bukharin majority in a number of areas. Daniels stated that the Left Opposition would have prioritised industrialisation but never contemplated the "violent uprooting" employed by Stalin and contrasted most directly with Stalinism on the issue ofparty democratization and bureaucratization.[209]
Trotskyists argue that theStalinist Soviet Union was neithersocialist norcommunist but abureaucratizeddegenerated workers' state—that is, a non-capitalist state in which exploitation is controlled by a rulingcaste that, although not owning themeans of production and not constituting asocial class in its own right, accrues benefits and privileges at the working class's expense. Trotsky believed that theBolshevik Revolution must be spread all over the globe's working class, theproletarians, for world revolution. But after the failure of the revolution in Germany, Stalin reasoned that industrializing and consolidating Bolshevism in Russia would best serve the proletariat in the long run. The dispute did not end until Trotsky was murdered in his Mexican villa in 1940 by Stalinist assassinRamón Mercader.[216]Max Shachtman, a principal Trotskyist theorist in the U.S., argued that the Soviet Union had evolved from a degenerated worker's state to a newmode of production calledbureaucratic collectivism, wherebyorthodox Trotskyists considered the Soviet Union an ally gone astray. Shachtman and his followers thus argued for the formation of aThird Camp opposed to theSoviet andcapitalist blocs equally. By the mid-20th century, Shachtman and many of his associates, such asSocial Democrats, USA, identified associal democrats rather than Trotskyists, while some ultimately abandoned socialism altogether and embracedneoconservatism. In the U.K.,Tony Cliff independently developed a critique ofstate capitalism that resembled Shachtman's in some respects but retained a commitment torevolutionary communism.[217] Similarly, American TrotskyistDavid North drew attention to the fact that the generation of bureaucrats that rose to power under Stalin's tutelage presided over the Soviet Union'sstagnation andbreakdown.[218]
At a time when hundreds of thousands and millions of workers, especially in Germany, are departing from Communism, in part to fascism and in the main into the camp of indifferentism, thousands and tens of thousands of Social Democratic workers, under the impact of the self-same defeat, are evolving into the left, to the side of Communism. There cannot, however, even be talk of their accepting the hopelessly discredited Stalinist leadership.
—Trotsky's writings on Stalinism and fascism in 1933[219]
Trotskyist historianVadim Rogovin believed Stalinism had "discredited the idea of socialism in the eyes of millions of people throughout the world". Rogovin also argued that theLeft Opposition, led by Trotsky, was a political movement that "offered a real alternative to Stalinism, and that to crush this movement was the primary function of the Stalinist terror".[220] According to Rogovin, Stalin had destroyed thousands of foreign communists capable of leading socialist change in their respective countries. He cited 600 activeBulgarian communists who perished in his prison camps along with the thousands of German communists whom Stalin handed over to theGestapo after the signing of theGerman-Soviet pact. Rogovin further noted that 16 members of theCentral Committee of theGerman Communist Party became victims of Stalinist terror. Repressive measures were also enforced upon theHungarian,Yugoslav and otherPolish Communist parties.[221] British historian Terence Brotherstone argued that the Stalin era had a profound effect on those attracted to Trotsky's ideas. Brotherstone described figures who emerged from theStalinist parties as miseducated, which he said helped to block the development of Marxism.[222]
Some historians and writers, such asDietrich Schwanitz,[223] draw parallels between Stalinism and the economic policy ofTsarPeter the Great; 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. Some reviewers have considered Stalinism a form ofred fascism.[224] Otherfascist regimes ideologically opposed the Soviet Union, but some regarded Stalinism favorably for evolvingBolshevism into a form of fascism.Benito Mussolini saw Stalinism as having transformed Soviet Bolshevism into aSlavic fascism.[225]
British historianMichael Ellman writes that mass deaths from famines are not a "uniquely Stalinist evil", noting that famines and droughts have been acommon occurrence inRussian history, including theRussian famine of 1921–22, which occurred before Stalin came to power. He also notes that famines were widespread worldwide in the 19th and 20th centuries in countries such as India, Ireland, Russia, and China. Ellman compares the Stalinist regime's behavior vis-à-vis theHolodomor to that of theBritish government (towardIreland andIndia) and theG8 in contemporary times, arguing that the G8 "are guilty of mass manslaughter or mass deaths from criminal negligence because of their not taking obvious measures to reduce mass deaths" and that Stalin's "behaviour was no worse than that of many rulers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries".[226]
David L. Hoffmann questions whether Stalinist practices of state violence derive from socialist ideology. Placing Stalinism in an international context, he argues that many forms of state interventionism the Stalinist government used, including social cataloguing, surveillance and concentration camps, predate the Soviet regime and originated outside of Russia. He further argues that technologies of social intervention developed in conjunction with the work of 19th-century European reformers and greatly expanded during World War I, when state actors in all the combatant countries dramatically increased efforts to mobilize and control their populations. According to Hoffman, the Soviet state was born at this moment of total war and institutionalized state intervention practices as permanent features.[227]
InThe Mortal Danger: Misconceptions about Soviet Russia and the Threat to America, anti-communist and Soviet dissidentAleksandr Solzhenitsyn argues that the use of the termStalinism hides the inevitable effects of communism as a whole on human liberty. He writes that the concept of Stalinism was developed after 1956 by Western intellectuals to keep the communist ideal alive. But "Stalinism" was used as early as 1937, when Trotsky wrote his pamphletStalinism and Bolshevism.[228]
In twoGuardian articles in 2002 and 2006, British journalistSeumas Milne wrote that the impact of thepost–Cold War narrative that Stalin and Hitler were twin evils, equating communism's evils with those ofNazism, "has been to relativize the unique crimes of Nazism, bury those of colonialism and feed the idea that any attempt at radical social change will always lead to suffering, killing and failure."[229][230]
According to historianEric D. Weitz, 60% of German exiles in the Soviet Union had been liquidated during the Stalinist terror and a higher proportion of the KPD Politburo membership had died in the Soviet Union than in Nazi Germany. Weitz also noted that hundreds of German citizens, most of them Communists, were handed over to the Gestapo by Stalin's administration.[231]
In modern Russia, public opinion of Stalin and the former Soviet Union hasimproved in recent years.[232] Levada Center had found that favorability of the Stalinist era has increased from 18% in 1996 to 40% in 2016 which had coincided with his rehabilitation by the Putin government for the purpose of socialpatriotism andmilitarisation efforts.[233] According to a 2015Levada Center poll, 34% of respondents (up from 28% in 2007) say that leading the Soviet people to victory inWorld War II was such an outstanding achievement that it outweighed Stalin's mistakes.[234] A 2019 Levada Center poll showed that support for Stalin, whom many Russians saw as the victor in theGreat Patriotic War,[235] reached a record high in thepost-Soviet era, with 51% regarding him as a positive figure and 70% saying his reign was good for the country.[236]
Lev Gudkov, a sociologist at theLevada Center, said, "Vladimir Putin's Russia of 2012 needs symbols of authority and national strength, however controversial they may be, to validate the newly authoritarian political order. Stalin, a despotic leader responsible for mass bloodshed but also still identified with wartime victory and national unity, fits this need for symbols that reinforce the current political ideology."[237]
Some positive sentiments can also be found elsewhere in the former Soviet Union. A 2012 survey commissioned by theCarnegie Endowment found 38% ofArmenians concurring that their country "will always have need of a leader like Stalin".[237][238] A 2013 survey byTbilisi University found 45% ofGeorgians expressing "a positive attitude" toward Stalin.[239]
^Sawicky, Nicholas D. (December 20, 2013).The Holodomor: Genocide and National Identity (Education and Human Development Master's Theses). The College at Brockport: State University of New York. Archived fromthe original on February 6, 2021. RetrievedOctober 6, 2020 – via Digital Commons.Scholars also disagree over what role the Soviet Union played in the tragedy. Some scholars point to Stalin as the mastermind behind the famine, due to his hatred of Ukrainians (Hosking, 1987). Others assert that Stalin did not actively cause the famine, but he knew about it and did nothing to stop it (Moore, 2012). Still other scholars argue that the famine was just an effect of the Soviet Union's push for rapid industrialization and a by-product of that was the destruction of the peasant way of life (Fischer, 1935). The final school of thought argues that the Holodomor was caused by factors beyond the control of the Soviet Union and Stalin took measures to reduce the effects of the famine on the Ukrainian people (Davies & Wheatcroft, 2006).
^De Basily, N. (2017) [1938].Russia Under Soviet Rule: Twenty Years of Bolshevik Experiment. Routledge Library Editions: Early Western Responses to Soviet Russia. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.ISBN9781351617178. RetrievedNovember 3, 2017.... vast sums were spent on importing foreign technical 'ideas' and on securing the services of alien experts. Foreign countries, again – American and Germany in particular – lent the U.S.S.R. active aid in drafting the plans for all the undertakings to be constructed. They supplied the Soviet Union with tens of thousands of engineers, mechanics, and supervisors. During the first Five-Year Plan, not a single plant was erected, nor was a new industry launched without the direct help of foreigners working on the spot. Without the importation of Western European and American objects, ideas, and men, the 'miracle in the East' would not have been realized, or, at least, not in so short a time.
^Jones, Jonathan (August 29, 2012)."The fake photographs that predate Photoshop".The Guardian. RetrievedAugust 27, 2016.In a 1949 portrait, the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin is seen as a young man with Lenin. Stalin and Lenin were close friends, judging from this photograph. But it is doctored, of course. Two portraits have been sutured to sentimentalise Stalin's life and closeness to Lenin.
^Quoted inPeters 2012, p. 150. FromRosenthal, Mark M.; Iudin, Pavel F., eds. (1954).Kratkii filosofskii slovar [Short Philosophical Dictionary] (4th ed.). Moscow: Gospolitizdat. pp. 236–237.
^Birstein, Vadim J. (2013).The Perversion Of Knowledge: The True Story Of Soviet Science. Perseus Books Group.ISBN978-0-7867-5186-0. RetrievedJune 30, 2016.Academician Schmalhausen, Professors Formozov and Sabinin, and 3,000 other biologists, victims of the August 1948 Session, lost their professional jobs because of their integrity and moral principles [...]
^Conquest, Robert (1997). "Victims of Stalinism: A Comment".Europe-Asia Studies.49 (7):1317–1319.doi:10.1080/09668139708412501.We are all inclined to accept the Zemskov totals (even if not as complete) with their 14 million intake to Gulag 'camps' alone, to which must be added 4–5 million going to Gulag 'colonies', to say nothing of the 3.5 million already in, or sent to, 'labour settlements'. However taken, these are surely 'high' figures.
^Rosefielde, Steven. 2009.Red Holocaust.Routledge, 2009.ISBN0-415-77757-7. pg. 67: "[M]ore complete archival data increases camp deaths by 19.4 percent to 1,258,537"; pg 77: "The best archivally based estimate of Gulag excess deaths at present is 1.6 million from 1929 to 1953."
^De Basily, N. (2017) [1938].Russia Under Soviet Rule: Twenty Years of Bolshevik Experiment. Routledge Library Editions: Early Western Responses to Soviet Russia. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.ISBN978-1-351-61717-8. RetrievedNovember 3, 2017.... vast sums were spent on importing foreign technical 'ideas' and on securing the services of alien experts. Foreign countries, again – American and Germany in particular – lent the U.S.S.R. active aid in drafting the plans for all the undertakings to be constructed. They supplied the Soviet Union with tens of thousands of engineers, mechanics, and supervisors. During the first Five-Year Plan, not a single plant was erected, nor was a new industry launched without the direct help of foreigners working on the spot. Without the importation of Western European and American objects, ideas, and men, the 'miracle in the East' would not have been realized, or, at least, not in so short a time.
^Fitzpatrick, Sheila (1994).Stalin's peasants : resistance and survival in the Russian village after collectivization. New York: Oxford University Press.ISBN0-19-506982-X.OCLC28293091.
^Broue., Pierre (1992).Trotsky: a biographer's problems. In The Trotsky reappraisal. Brotherstone, Terence; Dukes, Paul,(eds). Edinburgh University Press. pp. 19, 20.ISBN978-0-7486-0317-6.
^Rogovin, Vadim Zakharovich (2021).Was There an Alternative? Trotskyism: a Look Back Through the Years. Mehring Books. pp. 13–14.ISBN978-1-893638-97-6.
^Carr, Edward Hallett (1977).The Bolshevik revolution 1917–1923. Vol. 1 (Reprinted ed.). Penguin books. pp. 111–112.ISBN978-0-14-020749-1.
^Rogovin, Vadim Z (2021).Was There an Alternative? 1923–1927: Trotskyism: a Look Back Through the Years. Mehring Books. pp. 494–495.ISBN978-1-893638-96-9.
^"While Trotsky was strongly biased toward industrial development, there is little basis to suppose that he would have adopted Stalin’s forcible collectivization, slapdash economic planning, anti expert campaigns, or cultural know-nothingism. Neither Trotsky nor Bukharin would have pursued anything like Stalin’s pseudo-revolutionary “third period” foreign policy and his connivance in the advent ofHitler, another product of his political manoeuvring against the Bukharinists."Daniels, Robert V. (October 1, 2008).The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia. Yale University Press. p. 396.ISBN978-0-300-13493-3.
^Carol Strong and Matt Killingsworth, "Stalin the Charismatic Leader?: Explaining the 'Cult of Personality' as a legitimation technique."Politics, Religion & Ideology 12.4 (2011): 391–411.
^N. N. Maslov, "Short Course of the History of the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik)—An Encyclopedia of Stalin's Personality Cult".Soviet Studies in History 28.3 (1989): 41–68.
^Rogovin, Vadim Zakharovich (2021).Was There an Alternative? Trotskyism: a Look Back Through the Years. Mehring Books. pp. 1–2.ISBN978-1-893638-97-6.
^Rogovin, Vadim Zakharovich (2021).Was There an Alternative? Trotskyism: a Look Back Through the Years. Mehring Books. p. 380.ISBN978-1-893638-97-6.
^Brotherstone, Terence (1992).Trotsky's future. Brotherstone, Terence; Dukes, Paul,(eds). Edinburgh University Press. p. 238.ISBN978-0-7486-0317-6.
^Schwanitz, Dietrich.Bildung. Alles, was man wissen muss: "At the same time, Stalin was a kind of monstrous reincarnation of Peter the Great. Under his tyranny, Russia transformed into a country ofindustrial slaves, and the gigantic empire was gifted with a network of working camps, theGulag Archipelago."
^Fried, Richard M. (1991).Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective. Oxford University Press. p. 50.ISBN978-0-19-504361-7.
^MacGregor Knox. Mussolini Unleashed, 1939–1941: Politics and Strategy in Italy's Last War. pp. 63–64.
^Hoffmann, David (2011).Cultivating the Masses: Modern State Practices and Soviet Socialism, 1914–1939. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. pp. 6–10.ISBN978-0-8014-4629-0.
^An exact number of negative votes is unknown. In his memoirs,Anastas Mikoyan writes that out of 1,225 delegates, around 270 voted against Stalin and that the official number of negative votes was given as three, with the rest of ballots destroyed. FollowingNikita Khrushchev's "Secret Speech" in 1956, a commission of the central committee investigated the votes and found that 267 ballots were missing.
^The scale of Stalin's purge ofRed Army officers was exceptional—90% of all generals and 80% of all colonels were killed. This included three out of five Marshals; 13 out of 15 Army commanders; 57 of 85 Corps commanders; 110 of 195 divisional commanders; and 220 of 406 brigade commanders, as well as all commanders of military districts.[citation needed]Carell, P. [1964] 1974.Hitler's War on Russia: The Story of the German Defeat in the East (first Indian ed.), translated byE. Osers. Delhi: B.I. Publications. p. 195.
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