Home History 203 lecture list Wallace G. Mills Hist. 203 14 Russia & the Soviet Revolution
Russia and Revolution

- there are some important subtleties of terminology and we should get into the habit of being exact. Prior to the revolution in 1917, what existed was a vast empire which can be referred to as the Russian or tsarist empire. There is a gap between the end of the Russian Empire in March 1917 and the emergence of the new political entity which emerged by the early 1920s under Bolshevik domination and success in the civil war; that entity was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) or the Soviet Union. For simplicity, we can use the latter terms for the period 1918-1990. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, what had been the Russian Federation of Soviet Socialist Republics became one of the successor states for which the terms Russia or Russian Republic are correct.


- the Russian state and society of the tsars were not very typical of European states. Until the 18th century, the Russian Empire had few contacts with Europe. Europeans regarded it as barbaric. Its religion was Orthodox Christianity. It always lagged in industrialisation.

- Peter the Great had initiated a massive attempt to remodel and modernise the Russian state and society on the model of European states—especially the model of Enlightened Despotism. (As we shall see, there are many parallels between Peter the Great and Stalin in their methods and approaches—both were ruthless, pushed change at all costs, and wanted to catch and rival the west.)

- the state centred on the tsar and the court; the empire was maintained by a ponderous but effective bureaucracy; landowners were also an important element in maintaining and supporting the political system.

Peasant Revolts

- this was a long, recurrent tradition; in fact, at any given time there was a good chance there would be peasant revolt in progress somewhere in the Empire.

- local large landowners (aristocrats) and local bureaucrats were charged with maintaining order; if they lost control, it might take a considerable period of time before the central government of the tsar could hear of the problem and react. As a result, some revolts lasted for several years. Eventually, the revolts would be suppressed as they were localised; the peasants were not able to coordinate their actions and plans. These revolts did not constitute serious threats to the regime.

- partly, this was true because the revolts did not necessarily indicate disloyalty. There were two foci of loyalty:

(a) Mother Russia

 - this concept was propagated especially by the church (Russian Orthodox Church); partly, it was an appeal to the universal attachment to the land and country felt by all peasants. Partly, it was also a kind of earth goddess concept that was a legacy from an earlier pre-Christian paganism (such beliefs can be extraordinarily durable and long-lived); partly too, it probably attracted a good deal of overflow from the veneration of the Virgin. In any case, it helped to legitimise the state.

(b) tsar as ‘Father of the People’:
- loyalty to the tsar was often remarkable; peasants usually focused their hostility on the bureaucracy and on local landlords rather than tsar. They argued that ‘if the tsar knew how we are being treated, he would change things.’ [This too was a persistent idea and there were similar reactions to Stalin and the domestic terror which he unleashed; i.e., many of the people believed that Stalin didn’t know what was going on, that it was party officials or the secret police that were responsible for all the terrible things being done.]

- thus, they often tried to communicate their grievances to the tsar.

Discontent and Disaffection in the 19th Century

 (1) Peasant revolts—continued sporadically but still desultory and uncoordinated.

(2) Discontent of Intelligentsia
- the intelligentsia (the ‘intellects’) were a direct product of the Europeanizing influences and policies; the bureaucracy required a western trained elite and thus universities and an education system were established.

- this educational system in turn tended to turn out more graduates than could be employed in the rather limited number of positions; thus there was tremendous pressure from parents in this academic/ bureaucratic middle class to get education for their children as the only hope for economic and social mobility (because Russia had virtually no industrial development, it lacked an economic middle class). The result was a large group of disgruntled ‘intellects’ who were unemployed or underemployed and very dissatisfied with a system which denied them the opportunities to which they felt their talents entitled them.

- also, the education system stressed things western, especially French; thus, they continually looked to the West to provide the criteria by which to evaluate their own society; by those criteria (industrialisation, standards of living, efficiency, even military proficiency), Tsarist Russia was usually weighed and found wanting—seriously wanting. The western education also gave access to new ideologies and theories (Marxism, revolution, liberalism, socialism, anarchism, nationalism, etc.) and some ‘intellects’ began to promote these ideologies.

(a) Liberal forms

- liberals launched a great deal of criticism against autocracy and the mechanisms of repression (secret police, etc.) in Russia; this was very similar to early 19th century liberalism in Europe. They wanted more participation in political decision-making and ultimately, a constitutional monarchy.

- also, there was great criticism of the ‘backwardness’ of the Tsarist state in economic and social terms. They wanted efficient and effective government and an industrialised and ‘modern’ society.

(b) Revolutionary forms
- there was a wide variety of revolutionary groups, usually competing with and hostile to each other:

  1. peasant revolutionaries—most of these were educated people (i.e., they were not peasants themselves) who had imbibed some revolutionary and/or Marxist dogma. They thought that the peasants, who made up the mass of the population and who were the worst provided for in Russian society, should be roused and led into revolution; they included the Social Revolutionaries, who were Marxist, as well as other groups which were primarily anarchist.
    - some saw terrorism as the primary technique available; most terrorist attacks were against government officials but one tsar was assassinated and others attacked.

  2. Marxists—(included both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, as well as others) who looked to the traditional Marxist pattern which would require the urban proletariat to make the revolution (the problem was that urban workers were a very small class in backward Russia). These were almost exclusively ‘intellects’ but included some from peasant background who had received an education, probably through the church (Stalin is a good example).

  3. Pan-Slav nationalists
    - unlike the liberals and marxists who borrowed from and used the west to provide the norms which they used in assessing and judging Russia, this group was significant because they reacted negatively against western influence, culture and ideas.

    - Dostoevsky praised Pushkin for “his profound insight, his genius, and his purely Russian heart . . . ” and for giving “us artistic types of Russian moral beauty, which had sprung directly out of the Russian soul, which had its home in the truth of the people, in our very soil,” rather than “in the monstrosities of European ideas and forms only outwardly assimilated.”

    - he went on to ask, “Will the Russian organism even now not be suffered to develop nationally by its own organic strength, but must it necessarily lose its individuality in a servile imitation of Europe?”

    - this group was not revolutionary but was very activist in trying to turn the direction in society. They were very critical of those elements of government policy which continued to promote westernisation; better to be poor and Russian than rich and westernised, Dostoevsky declared.

Staying Power of the State

- my interpretation differs from what you get from many historians; most seem to accept the inevitability of the end of the Tsarist empire. Certainly, nothing lasts forever, but many seem more concerned to ask why it lasted so long, rather than why it ended when it did.

- in spite of the very large numbers of disaffected, the Tsarist state was not really threatened internally in normal times; the dissidents were too dissimilar and often too antagonistic to each other to cooperate in their opposition.

- also, organisation and coherence of a state (even an inefficient and ponderous one) has enormous advantages over internal rivals. The secret police was effective; dissident groups were infiltrated regularly by informers and members could usually be rounded up at will. The Tsarist state did not even require savage penalties; frequently, it sent people into exile in remote regions instead of to prison. Terrorists and assassins were executed, however.

- thus, even the terrorists were, from the general point of view, a nuisance rather than a serious threat to the existing order. During peacetime, the government had no difficulty in coping with any and all opposition. In fact, during the 19th C, the Russian empire had been extended across the vastness of the Asian steppes and Siberia all the way to the Pacific. In Britain, the ‘Russian bear’ was regarded as a real threat of world domination, just as the Soviet Union was regarded (“the evil empire”) during the height of the Cold War. Thus, the Tsarist state should not be dismissed too lightly.

- the real Achilles heel of the Tsarist state was its increasing difficulty in coping with the demands of modern war; these demands tended to overwhelm the Tsarist state and to paralyse it. The organisational and logistical demands of modern war were so overwhelming that the Tsarist state could not prosecute a war and still maintain the flow of food to the major cities—Moscow and St. Petersburg which were growing rapidly as industrialisation was beginning in the 1890s.

- this showed up in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905-06; as scarcities increased and prices rose for food and basic commodities, some people began to demonstrate. Then, troops were used to break up the demonstrations and a number of people were killed. That set off further demonstrations and a revolution. The government of the tsar was required to make many concessions, including the establishment of a parliament called the Duma.

- fortunately for the regime, although they lost the war, the war itself was over quickly and they could start returning to normal. With normal times, the government could return things to the way they were before the war and they did that. They gradually began to chip away at the concessions that had been made, especially the political concessions. By 1914, they had removed most of the Duma’s restraints on the autocratic actions and may even have been contemplating doing away with the Duma itself.

- thus, the most serious threat to the continued domination of an autocratic Tsarist regime was a major war. That war came in 1914 and the Tsarist government was not entirely innocent—certainly, they did not take as vigorous action as they might have to avoid war.

- while the 1914 war was closer to the seat of government and thus there were not the horrendous problems of distance that had been involved in fighting the Japanese, the war in Europe was on a vastly larger scale. Supplying 10-12 million men in the armies was a colossal task, especially when railroads were limited. The transportation and communications systems began to break down and by early 1917, there was virtual paralysis. Rather than being overthrown, the Tsarist regime collapsed; it no longer knew what was happening and was no longer able to control or direct what should be done.

Revolution and the Creation of the Soviet Union

- revolutionaries frequently seem to believe that revolution is the solution. Instead, once they seize power, they are usually confronted with the next question “Now what do we do?” Revolutionaries themselves (and often their enemies too) are often misled by confident statements into believing they really know that is happening and what they are doing. The theories seem clear-cut and specific; reality is not so accommodating.

- the February/March (1917) revolution came unexpectedly as a surprise; certainly it was not made by the Marxist revolutionaries.

- it created real dilemmas for Marxists; was this a ‘real’ or a phony revolution because the real ‘socialist’ revolution was supposed to start in the most advanced capitalist countries, not in one of the least advanced. The proletariat were supposed to be in the majority and seize control of the state, but in Russia, the proletariat were a minority. Even more, many of those who were becoming industrial and urban workers were from the peasants and still had much of the peasant outlook (a prerequisite according to Marxists was that the proletariat had to be self-conscious of their class, their exploitation, and of their aspirations). Also, except for the short and rather anaemic period between 1906 and the war, there had not been a liberal phase, let alone a laisser-faire phase. Could there be a ‘real socialist’ revolution without these requirements?

- thus, there was a great deal of dithering among Bolsheviks as they tried to decipher what was happening and to decide what tack to take. Trotsky was overseas in New York, and Lenin was still in exile in Switzerland. The Germans helped Lenin to get back by late spring. Trotsky was arrested in Nova Scotia on his way back to Russia and held here for a time before being allowed to continue.

- then in the October/November Revolution, the books usually say that the Bolsheviks succeeded in seizing power. This is misleading because it suggests that they were masters of the situation; Bolsheviks had control of the Moscow and Petrograd Soviets and used these to overthrow the provisional government of Kerensky and to dissolve the Duma. Thus, they had formed a power base, but they by no means controlled the situation or the country.

- also, there is a tendency to read back into the early period the totalitarian state that we know from more recent times. The first few years were uncertain and the outcome was not endorsed with inevitability; in other words, the Soviet Union, as we know it, was built or put in place gradually over a number of years—by the end of the civil war in 1921, but not fully for some years yet.

Three Aspects Interacting on Bolsheviks

1. Nature of the Situation

- the old structure, the Tsarist regime, had disintegrated but there were many conflicting currents of groups, aspirations and goals. Besides other Marxist groups (the Social Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks were both larger and much more powerful outside Moscow and Petrograd than the Bolsheviks), there were conservative groups, especially in the army, who wanted to bring back the tsar or at least some system resembling the autocratic tsarist state.

- the provisional government had lost control in November 1917; at the end of the civil war, there was a repeat of the critical situation which had spelled the end for the Tsarist government— virtually no food was going into the cities. Failure to maintain food supplies to the big cities could be fatal!

2. Delineation of Goals—in the context of ideology.

 - “What do we do now or do next? What should we do?”

- the Bolsheviks had an ideology with lots of theory but it was not much help in terms of practical implementation.

3. Leadership

- Lenin assumed and was acknowledged as leader as soon as he returned to Russia in 1917 and he remained unchallenged until his stroke and then his death in 1924. However, with his death, there was no clear cut, generally acknowledged leader. Trotsky was the most prominent, but a number of other Bolsheviks not only opposed him but were rivals. Thus, over the 5 or 6 years following Lenin’s stroke and death, leadership was a key issue.


- I want to talk about each of these separately but must emphasise that all three were intertwined (e.g. the question, “What should we do now?” because of circumstances at times had to be modified; “In view of the situation, what can we do or what must we do?”)

- also there was interaction between (2) and (3) as competing leaders were often competing for preeminence on the basis of their ideological proposals.

- sometimes it was reversed as a prospective leader adopted an ideological position because it was contrary to his rival’s position.

A. Situation

- the Bolshevik revolutionaries had not made the revolution; all they could do was try to win the support of those who had made the revolution and try to hold it. The Soviets had been created by the worker-soldier committees who had made the revolution. The soviets had remained in existence during the Provisional Government, which was based in the Duma. The soviets were continually pressuring the Provisional Government and undermining its power base, the Duma.

- the Bolsheviks had helped to make the second revolution by seizing the slogan, “All power to the soviets” and using that to undermine and destroy the Duma.

- having destroyed the Duma, the Bolsheviks “seized power” when they won control and assumed leadership of some of the main soviets, especially in Petrograd and Moscow; even there, the control was tenuous and precarious for a year or so and the Bolsheviks did not enjoy universal support. Nevertheless, having their power centred in the 2 capital cities was a big advantage.

- in rural areas, the Bolsheviks had no control at all; large areas were controlled by Mensheviks or by Social Revolutionaries; other minority nationalities (including Stalin’s Georgia) declared their independence as republics.

- in spite of vigorous (often strong-armed) efforts in the elections of 1918 for the Supreme Council of Soviets, Bolsheviks fell far short of a majority (the Mensheviks had larger numbers); because of animosities and hostilities towards the Bolsheviks, it was virtually certain that the Supreme Council of Soviets would be anti-Bolshevik.

- Bolsheviks managed to outmanoeuvre their rivals and got an indefinite adjournment of the Supreme Soviet. Actually, the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries blundered very badly. When they didn’t like what the Bolsheviks were doing, they got up and walked out in protest; the Bolsheviks immediately passed a motion for an indefinite adjournment. The Supreme Soviet did not meet again until after the Civil War, and the Bolsheviks could ensure a majority in new elections.

- this manoeuvre prevented anti-Bolshevik resolutions and measures from being passed in the Supreme Soviet, but it did not bring Bolshevik control; it merely bought them time. The areas from which the rival delegates came were still not under Bolshevik control.

- as late as 1921, there was a revolt in the Petrograd soviet and a mutiny of sailors just as had happened to the Tsarist and liberal regimes. By that time the Bolsheviks could suppress these easily.

- until 1923, Georgia was under Menshevik control and was run as an independent republic; Georgian nationalism was not completely suppressed until the ruthless purges and executions of the 1930s.


- the units and bodies which emerged were relatively independent and jealous of their autonomy; the rhetoric about power to the people and democracy was taken seriously. In many areas, local committees sprang up and tried to set about governing and arranging things on their own. It took time to recreate a centralised bureaucracy; this was especially difficult during the turmoil and pressure of the Civil War

- in fact, the Bolsheviks had to use ‘experts’ whenever they could (civil servants, army officers, and factory managers). In many cases, they took over or recreated the organisational structures of the Tsarist state, except that they put in controls (e.g., they used political commissars to check and control army officers; in the civil service, they erected an elaborate party organisation to parallel and control the state and the bureaucracy; they created the Cheka, secret police, except that the new Cheka was more ruthless than the old Tsarist secret police).

- the civil war helped the Bolsheviks because it forced/persuaded many, especially other Marxists, to support the Bolshevik resistance to White Russian and foreign attempts to restore the tsarist state. The build up in the Red Army left the Bolsheviks supreme. The success also brought a flood of new people joining the Bolshevik Party.

- in spite of that for almost 10 years, the Bolsheviks were required to make compromises; they had to coax support and they sometimes had to retreat on issues.

B. Goals and Ideology

- as indicated, problems were partly a result of the situation; at the end of the civil war, there was a crisis with very little food getting to the cities and the peasants were refusing to grow food which might be taken away or which they were forced to sell at low prices set by the Bolshevik controlled government. Although the revolt by sailors near Petrograd had been suppressed by the Red Army early in 1921, the crisis was serious.

- the New Economic Policy of 1921 is a good example of how ideology had to be shaped to the situation:

- the NEP was an attempt to reverse the enormous decline in production (in some cases, it was only about one-third of what it had been in 1914) and to get food flowing into the cities again; it allowed for some return of a free market, especially for agricultural produce. Under the NEP, peasants had to produce specific quantities to be sold to the government at prices fixed by the government, but any amount they produced above that quota could be sold in the market at market prices. The result was a burst in production and a recovery. The NEP also allowed for some return of small business under private control.

- larger enterprises remained under government control and ownership, but some competition between them was allowed and even some banking was permitted.

- the NEP was primarily a concession to necessity, but attempts to find an ideological and theoretical rationale were difficult. Could ‘scientific’ socialists ever admit that there were flaws in the blueprint?
 - moreover, there were ideological uncertainties about how some of the theories should be implemented in practice;

- thus, it could be argued that at least a modified version of capitalism must happen and better that it should take place under the control of ‘socialists. It could be thought of like a vaccination. This has been a frequent problem for Marxists because no industrialised, ‘capitalist’ society has had a ‘socialist’ revolution.

- there were other ideological issues also. The problem was that the Bolsheviks were continually being confronted by urgent problems and were required to decide what to do. In making decisions, we have to have some conception of the world and some sort of ideology to give direction, to provide values for making judgments, etc.

- Bolsheviks were Marxists and therefore had a very comprehensive ideology with values, etc. However, principles and values which seem very clear and specific in theory can produce conflicting guide posts in practice; this, of course, is not unique to marxism.

- Marxists have lots of slogans and maxims, but policies can be difficult to sort out. Let us consider 3 examples:

1 The Classless Society

 - Bolsheviks were committed to ending class but needed the ‘intellects’ for development and education. Thus, the latter were often attacked verbally and were often treated with great suspicion; programmes were put into place to give preference to the children of peasants and other workers for education and preferment, but 50 or 60 years after the revolution, these backgrounds are still recognised, probably more clearly than in North America!

- the Soviet Union provided many examples of huge differences: differential wages and incomes, scarce goods were available to only a few. In fact, Communist Party officials came to be a privileged class in the Soviet Union—special stores, special privileges, etc.

2 World Revolution or Socialism in One Country

 - this was very hotly debated. Marx had insisted that capitalism and socialism could not coexist in the world because they were exact opposites. Therefore, socialist revolution on a world wide scale to completely overthrow and destroy capitalism was the only way for socialism to be safe. Thus, according to this school of opinion, the Bolshevik government should devote much of its efforts to promoting and assisting revolution around the world. Trotsky was a prominent supporter of this school.

- the opposite school argued that most of the government’s time and resources should be devoted to making socialism safe in one country, the new Soviet Union. By building up and developing its resources and industrial might, it would be possible to create a haven for socialism so strong that it could not be attacked and destroyed by the forces of external capitalism. Eventually, Stalin came to espouse this view, although he fluctuated during the leadership struggle.

3 National Interests of the Soviet Union or the Interests of Foreign Communist Parties:

- the pursuit of national interests had always been denounced by marxists as a trick on the part of the exploiting capitalist classes; also, they had stressed the need for international solidarity of the working classes in their struggle against capitalism. Once they were in power in the newly created Soviet Union, the Bolsheviks had the problem of setting foreign policy. What if the needs of the Soviet government clashed with the interests and needs of foreign communist parties (and thus leaders of the workers in those countries)? [Stalin in fact gave the names of many German communists to the Nazis after the conclusion of the Non-Aggression Pact in August 1939.]


- both issues 2 and 3 revolved around the Comintern (Communist International) which the Bolsheviks organised in the Soviet Union as a rival to the Socialist International; Trotsky and the ‘world revolution’ supporters envisioned the Comintern as the vehicle for promoting world revolution. Stalin saw it primarily as means to use communists in other countries in promoting the interests of the Soviet Union. [e.g., from Aug. 1939 and the signing of the Non-Aggression Pact until the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June of 1941, as a favour to Hitler, French Communists were ordered by Moscow to oppose the war with Germany and to persuade French soldiers not to fight.]

- the result, during the leadership struggles in the 1920s following Lenin’s death, was a long series of often very bitter debates and conflicts about what goals to set and what routes to follow.

C. Leaders

- the Bolshevik leaders were (with the major exception being Stalin) middle-class intellectuals. In addition to being religious fanatics who took their Marxism very seriously, they were an incredible group of prima donnas; Trotsky, Vinoviev, Bukharin and others were all very high strung.

- it is a measure of Lenin’s adroitness that he managed to keep these people working together as a team, primarily because they were all, in the final analysis, willing to defer to Lenin on ideological matters; not so with each other, and when Lenin died, the ability to work together was no longer possible. Thus, there began a long process of competition and struggle for the leadership.

- as noted previously, authoritativeness on ideological matters was very important and became an important aspect in the leadership struggle.

- however, there has long been a view that the leadership struggle was really determined by the nature of the Bolshevik party itself. McNeal (The Bolshevik Tradition ) argues that Lenin’s party was premised on dictatorship and could not exist without it; as a result, Stalin’s dictatorship was an inevitable outcome of the Bolshevik party structure.

- this is part of a debate which has gone on for a very long time and was reopened with vigour in the last years in what was formerly the Soviet Union:

Did Stalin, in turning the Soviet Union into a totalitarian, terrorist state, pervert the marxist revolution?

or

Was the Stalinist dictatorship merely the logical and perhaps,inevitable culmination of the authoritarian party and system created by Lenin?

 Lenin

- the study of Lenin is a very interesting one; certainly, he seems to have retained some human characteristics that distinguish him from Stalin, but he did create a very authoritarian party.

- relatively early in the 1890s, Lenin decided that the revolution had to be organised by an elite—an elite thoroughly imbued with obedience and strict discipline. This in fact went against most marxist theory, according to which the revolution could only be made by the proletariat. Also, as we noted early last fall, Marx seemed to tend towards anarchism; certainly, the ‘communist society’ would be an anarchy.

- the thrust of Lenin’s argument was that the working classes might not be able to bring off the revolution on their own; they needed tough, dedicated, organised leaders to provide direction. This cadre should not only lead by example but by force if necessary against defeatist or reactionary elements in the working classes. This was known as the ‘vanguard’ theory where the party would be the ‘vanguard’ of the working class.

- Lenin then set out to create this disciplined, obedient party; he was as intolerant as Hitler was later. For Lenin, you were either on his side and accepted his statements and analysis or you were an enemy; he recognised no legitimate differences of opinion or no possibility of agreeing to disagree.

- he spent most of the early 20th C in exile, but he wrote copiously and built a following; he also attended various socialist and marxist conferences and meetings, but always with the attempt to get control and to dominate them. During these years, he was continually quarrelling with and becoming alienated from other marxists whenever they disagreed with him; with the exception of Stalin, who was not in the pre-revolutionary period noted as a theorist of marxism, Lenin had quarrelled with most of the leading Bolsheviks. Occasionally, he would, for tactical reasons, join others in a common front, but usually because he hoped eventually to win control and dominate.

- his following during this time was never very large as it was repeatedly reduced by quarrels and fragmentation, yet he did establish a reputation for his Bolshevik party as one of the most vociferously revolutionary of the marxist groups. His appropriation of the name Bolshevik (majority) was a fraud and only became true during or at the end of the civil war.

- in spite of his reputation and early career as an ideologue who insisted on doctrinal orthodoxy and complete obedience, Lenin in the revolution proved to be a masterful opportunist; thus, he was prepared to change and adapt slogans and dogma whenever the situation required it. Bolsheviks were expected to support the new dogma as strongly as the old. Thus, the aspect of ‘double-think’ that George Orwell pointed to in 1984 began under Lenin, even before Stalin.

- the other side of Lenin which emerged at this time was a willingness to consult with others or even to leave direction of things in their hands; he did this with Trotsky who was given almost a free hand in organising and directing the Red Army in the civil war. Thus, in power, Lenin was a good deal less dictatorial and totalitarian than he had been earlier. Debate and disagreement over policies were tolerated within limits; once a decision had been made, however, everyone was required to support it without question or further criticism. The point is that Lenin was much more collegial when in power than he had been earlier or than Stalin was once he had achieved power after 1928.

- also, although he was prepared to accept and use terror, he seemed to regard this is as exceptional rather than an integral technique of governing as Stalin did. It shows up in the handling of party discipline and treatment of members. With growing success, lots of people started becoming party members, and while some may have been sincere marxists for many years, it was clear that many were simply opportunists jumping on a winning bandwagon. Also, there was the problem of what to do with party dissidents who disagreed with party policies (when those policies were frequently changing, that was not difficult to do). Thus, there were periodic purges of members. In Lenin’s period, those expelled, providing that they did not try to overturn party control or advocate forcible resistance, were left alone to retire in quiet. This was not the case under Stalin who tended to pursue and do away with those driven out.

- this debate about whether Stalin completed or perverted the revolution (and thus whether or not the Soviet Union under Lenin would have been less totalitarian and terroristic than it became under Stalin) has been a lively one in the Soviet Union; with Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin in the late 1950s, the tendency was to place all the blame on Stalin—i.e., to argue that Stalin had perverted the ‘true’ revolution. Thus, in reducing the terror and shifting more emphasis to production of consumer goods, the subsequent leadership tried to argue that they were merely trying to put the revolution back on the Leninist track.

- in fact, until early Feb. 1990, Gorbachev was arguing that his reforms were still just dismantling the Stalinist system and getting back to the Leninism before Stalin. However, when the decision was made to drop the Communist Party as the only political party, it was clear that he had gone beyond Lenin; it was the Mensheviks who had argued for a multi-party system and this had been rejected by Lenin.

- Stalin was not one of the best known of the Bolshevik leaders; he had not been one of the thinkers and theoreticians. However, he had been able to use his organisational skills to great effect in the hectic early days of the revolution and civil war. The Bolshevik party was mushrooming and it was Stalin who organised it and came to oversee it; as a result, he came to exercise enormous influence throughout the Party. He was able to place in party jobs people who supported him or whose career were dependent on him. In this way, he was very well placed to carry on a struggle for leadership in the party.

Economic and Industrial Development

. - Stalin’s approach, ‘ socialism in one country’, created a great need for developing the industrial and military might of the Soviet Union.



- please note that this graph compares rates of growth, not actual production.

- although Russia lagged behind many western countries and even Japan, nevertheless during 1880s and 1890s industrialisation was begun. Interestingly, most of this development was encouraged and supported by the state rather than by indigenous entrepreneurship; foreign capital and entrepreneur-managers were brought in to begin development of heavy industry (coal mining, iron and steel, etc.) on the basis of government loans and/or loan guarantees. Thus, industrialisation under the tsars was done largely on the basis of ‘state capitalism’ just as it was later in the Soviet Union.

- it has been argued that there is in fact a good deal of parallelism between U.S. and Russia/Soviet Union over the last 100 years or so (see graph above). Of course, Russia/Soviet Union started very much lower. The point is that Stalin’s forced, rapid industrialisation mostly made up for the time and production lost because of the revolution and civil war. In fact, in the last few years under glasnost, scholars in the Soviet Union have said that many of the production figures given under Stalin’s orders were exaggerated; therefore, Stalin’s achievements were perhaps a bit less than was believed.


- Walt. W. Rostow in The Stages of Economic Growth has attempted to provide an analytical framework which allows comparisons among a number of nations of the processes and pace of economic growth and development. He argued that the stages and processes of transforming to an industrial society are the same regardless of ideology or system—capitalist, communist or whatever. The transition is difficult and has heavy costs; the benefits emerge only after 3-4 generations. His model allows some comparisons.

- Rostow’s scheme delineates 5 stages of economic growth:

  1. Traditional society—pre-Newtonian: the basic assumption and proposition is that modern industrial societies are significantly different from traditional pre-Newtonian societies. In industrialised societies, change and growth are on-going and institutionalised; the systematic pursuit of scientific information and technological applications means that change is continuous and has in fact become one of the chief characteristics (i.e., industrial societies are programmed for ‘progress’). Traditional societies were not based on change; change took place, but one change did not automatically lead on to the next.

    - normally, there was a ceiling on attainable output per head. That ceiling could change (new crops, introduction of irrigation, other innovations) but this was not an on-going process; it was usually a one-of-a kind change and might even be accidental. As a result, wealth and well-being tended to fluctuate with political stability and trade and the size of the population.

    - traditional societies had to devote a high proportion of their resources (people especially) to agriculture (sometimes 90% or more of the population, compared to less than 6% now in Canada); society was organised hierarchically (aristocracy—peasants).

    - generally, the outlook was fatalistic, that the range of possibilities open to one’s grandchildren would be essentially the same as for oneself.

  2. Preconditions for Take-off; Rostow argues that the process began ‘naturally’ in the first industrialisation in Britain; the correct combination of the development of science (Newton), a flexible and fluid social system, and an entrepreneurial elite came together at the time. After that, other societies had the example of Britain to indicate that industrial society was possible and desirable. However, some societies are forced into action by a jolt or shock. He argues, for example, that U. S. Admiral Perry’s arrival in Tokyo Bay with powerful naval ships in the 1860s was such a jolt for Japan.

    - during this period, substantial shake-ups in the social system begin to take place; especially, it is necessary to get large transfers of labour from agriculture to industrial activities and that means that the rigidities of the traditional agricultural class systems must be loosened. New leaders and entrepreneurs who are anxious to make the change and who are able to provide the leadership come to the fore. Various other activities, including the beginning of innovation, may begin to take place on a limited scale. Annual investment is maintained at 5-15% of GDP.

  3. Take-off and drive for maturity: this is the great watershed of history for modern societies. This is when change and transformation begin to be built into the entire system. It also requires vast investments (up to 20% of GNP being invested annually), both in physical elements (roads, railroads, factories, etc.) and in human elements (education and training), often for a prolonged period before much return in the form of higher standards of living are realised. Huge increases in productivity in agriculture are necessary in order to allow large-scale transfer of labour to other, non-agricultural tasks. This period seems to take in the vicinity of about 60 years or about 3 generations. In addition to the long period of heavy reinvestment required, humans may require that long to adapt to the different lifestyle required in an environment of constant change and adaptation.

    [This image likening industrialisation to an airplane has been widely accepted; journalists and commentators frequently refer to it when talking about developing countries.]

  4. Maturity: This stage is reached when the economy can produce almost anything (within the range of existing technology) that it wants. This stage was reached about 1850 in Britain. He argues that the launching of the satellite, sputnik, in the 1950s by the Soviet Union was an indication of maturity. He also says that maturity was reached in Canada in the 1950s and the building of fighter jet planes was an indication of that. However, maturity brings the ability to make choices and Canada’s decision under the Diefenbaker government to stop development of the Avro Arrow was a choice, not a necessity.

  5. High Mass Consumption: This stage is where industrialisation really begins to bear fruit as the focus of production increasingly shifts to consumer durable goods and rising standards of consumption. Rostow argues that the family automobile is the ultimate consumer good and uses the availability of the car as a proxy for this stage. The social welfare state is one direction that society can take with its new resources and ability to choose how its resources will be used.

- Rostow also hypothesised (in the late 1950s while the baby boom was still in progress in North America and just before the pill) that perhaps society was moving into a further (sixth) stage where ‘spiritual’ or family concerns were beginning to take precedence over the materialism of high mass consumption. However, the 1950s in the U.S. has been called the Great Barbecue when mass consumption really spread. In the 1960s and 70s, drop-out and commune movements, the ‘quality of life’ movements, and a plethora of exotic religious sects did denounce mass consumption materialism, but the latter still seems to be dominant; moreover, ‘yuppieism’ in the 1980s was high mass consumption materialism with a vengeance.

- from present day perspectives, one thing that is glaringly missing from Rostow’s analysis is any discussion of pollution and environmental costs and the prospect that continued uninhibited and careless industrialisation may make our planet uninhabitable. Rostow’s is a very optimistic ‘progress’.

Some Points to Consider

What does all this by Rostow mean?

- first Rostow argued that the underlying details of the industrialisation are relatively the same regardless of ideology or system—capitalist, communist or whatever. The transition is difficult and has large, high costs—social costs as well as financial; large investments are required over 3 generations or so before the big payoffs begin (the benefits of compound interest as Rostow characterises it).

- the benefits do come eventually. Much larger output which can (although not of necessity) be turned to consumer goods and thus higher standards of living; this can make possible a greater choice in lifestyles and the ways people construct their lives.

- the handling of these two aspects can be done very differently:

- it is important to recognise that Rostow was attempting to provide an alternative analysis to Marxist approaches (in fact, the sub-title of the book is A Non-Communist Manifesto). Rostow’s stages of growth model has been applied in detail to Britain in Phyllis Deane’s The First Industrial Revolution.


- Marxist delineations of who paid the price for industrialisation in Britain:

  1. Marx and Engels argued that the capital accumulation to carry out industrialisation was achieved by exploitation of British workers (slums, child labour, long hours, enclosures, etc.); they argued that it was a horrifying ordeal (lurid image of capitalism, oozing blood from every pore’—as Engels put it in The Condition of the English Working Classes).
  2. later Marxists shifted to imperialism as the explanation of what kept capitalism (and industrialisation) going. Thus, it was colonial peoples who bore most of the burden.
  3. Eric Williams, in Capitalism and Slavery , argued that industrialisation in Britain was paid for by the slave trade and slavery.

- each of these explanations has been examined and can be seriously criticised:

- Marxist criticisms of industrialisation under capitalism implied that a socialist or ‘communist’ approach would be better, more efficient, and less costly in lives and human cost. As an overtly Marxist/Leninist regime, did the industrialisation process in the USSR substantiate and realise these claims?

Industrialisation and the Economy in the Soviet Union

- as indicated earlier, industrialisation had begun in Tsarist Russia in the 1890s. Perhaps, because the peasantry were more backward in Russia than elsewhere in Europe, discipline to turn them into industrial workers was very harsh; they were often housed in single sex dormitories, wakened with whistles, marched to the factory, marched back again at the end of a 10 or 12 hour working day, and locked in until it was repeated again the next day.

- during W. W. 1, production declined drastically as millions of men were called into the army; as paralysis set in and spread, the decline deepened.

- then with the disruptions of the civil war, there were further reductions. As well, many harsh, arbitrary actions were required and taken; these actions had little to do with ideology, although the latter was undoubtedly used as a justification. The actions were more a product of the desperate war situation: food and supplies were commandeered (i.e., seized and confiscated), quotas on delivery of goods were imposed, and prices were fixed. Those who tried to hide food and supplies were treated very harshly, many being executed summarily.

- at the end of the civil war, the Bolsheviks faced a serious situation with the low levels of food and other production. This was when the NEP was implemented 1921-24. Although freedom of markets and of economic activity began to be restricted after 1924, it was not totally reversed until 1928. The NEP was a success, and production recovered to the 1914 levels by 1928.

- the period 1924-28 was also the time of the leadership struggle. Once Stalin had eliminated his rivals and established himself as the leader of the Communist Party, he also moved quickly to implement his programme for rapid industrialisation of the Soviet Union.

The Five Year Plans

- these were incredibly complex documents. The plans set targets (which became quotas) for virtually every natural and manufactured product. This meant starting with end products and then working back up the production process. They involved comprehensive sets of annual economic objectives designed to produce rapid, planned development and industrialisation.

- the plans were intended to solve what were believed to be inefficiencies and problems created by the lack of planning in capitalism. Sometimes, too much of a product was produced, but at others, too little; this created waste and inefficiencies according to this view. Careful and comprehensive planning was supposed to avoid this. Everything that was needed would be produced and nothing would be overproduced.

- as usually happens, most ‘planning’ degenerates into last year’s production plus a percentage increase. Planning was heavily centralised in Moscow and involved huge bureaucracies to draw up and monitor the plans. In practice, the system created vastly more inefficiencies than it avoided.

1st Five Year Plan 1928-32

 - it was actually declared completed after 4 years and a new five year plan was then inaugurated. In addition to the very ambitious annual increases in production, especially industrial production, the plan also had far-reaching social objectives.

- Stalin had already decided on a plan of socialism in one country (the Soviet Union) rather than the alternative of world revolution. Therefore, the idea was to build up the might of the Soviet Union as quickly and as far as possible so that it could defend itself against attack from ‘capitalist’ forces.

- Stalin also wanted to maintain the USSR’s autonomy and to avoid dependency; he wanted to achieve industrialisation as much as possible from domestic sources and domestic capital.

- the strategy for doing all this was ‘collectivisation’. Collectivisation would also secure many social and political objectives.

- what are ‘investment’ and ‘capital’? Our usual conceptions are normally sufficient but sometimes we need to think a bit more basically. When a factory or dam is built for example, there may be a long lapse during the construction phase until the finished work becomes productive (hydroelectric dams may take 10 years or more); during that time all the people working on materials, components and the project itself have to receive an income to meet their and their families’ necessities of life.

- in our system of capitalism, we derive most of the ‘capital’ for ‘investment’ by persuading some people not to use all their purchasing power for their own immediate consumption; this ‘saved’ purchasing power is then ‘loaned’ or ‘invested’ and thus provides the income for the workers building the asset. Thus, purchasing power is transferred voluntarily from individuals who have excess purchasing power beyond their needs to the workers involved in building the productive asset.

- however, there were not too many people around to provide large amounts of ‘capital’ and with a commitment to marxist ideology; also, the Stalin government was ideologically averse to pursuing ‘capitalist’ methods. Stalin was determined to avoid as far as possible foreign borrowing and therefore imported capital was not a solution; in any case, the Bolsheviks had repudiated all the debts of the earlier governments (Tsarist and ‘liberal’ Kerensky) and few foreigners were willing to make new loans to the Bolshevik government. Thus, the only source of ‘capital’ and of ‘savings’ was from the Soviet people out of current consumption; the state, as the investor, could get this only by taxation (including confiscation—either directly or, as some people argue, indirectly with low prices) and by keeping standards of living very low (i.e., some consumption would have to be transferred from those people producing consumer goods to those who were engaged in working on the ‘investments’).

- Stalin felt that the existing situation in agriculture (with the attitudes of peasants) was very inefficient; the peasants were very resistant to change. Peasants had welcomed the revolution and in many areas had taken advantage to seize and apportion the land in the large estates among themselves.

- earlier, the Bolsheviks had found many peasants hostile to the measures taken during the civil war; moreover, the NEP had been introduced primarily to appease the peasants, but many Bolsheviks were not happy at having to compromise on the ideology. Although private property was anathema to dedicated marxists, the Bolsheviks had not felt strong enough to do anything about the peasants’ rights to own land. From a sociological point of view, many Bolsheviks regarded the peasantry as an ‘backward’ class and were anxious to ‘proletarianize’ them.

- at an economic level, agriculture tied up a great portion of the population, and it was known that in the west productivity in agriculture was very much higher than in Russia/Soviet Union.

- collectivisation, it was thought, would solve all these problems:

Implementation of Collectivisation

 - this was when revolution really began in the Soviet Union. What took place was one of the greatest and largest upheavals in human history. The effects of the collectivisation were compounded by the drought which hit the Soviet Union at the same time that North America was feeling the effects in the 1930s. Either of these would have been devastating to the people, but together, they were catastrophic. Ways of life and relationships which had existed for hundreds of years were uprooted and destroyed in a few months or years. Not only were ways of life destroyed but the loss of life over the next ten years was incredible; estimates of loss of life range from 5-20 million.

- the Party and its planners had expected opposition from many of the peasants but the scale of the resistance was an over-whelming surprise. Many peasants were outraged; initially, they tried very old, often used methods of hiding their crops, animals and equipment. When that availed them nothing as large numbers of party members, supported by police and army, began searching and confiscating everything, the peasants began killing and destroying everything rather than turn it over to the government (see table 5.1 on handout).

- the government responded to this ‘anti-social’ and ‘counter-revolutionary’ behaviour by unloosing a terror campaign upon anyone who offered opposition and sometimes even indiscriminately. Some people were tried and executed rather summarily while vast numbers of others were sentenced to long prison terms to be served in forced labour camps, often in remote, inhospitable areas (this was one way to get labour for difficult, unattractive locations and situations).

- those who remained behind in agriculture on the newly collectivized farms faced heavy quotas for the production and delivery of food and raw materials; the quotas had to be met before the needs of people in the collectives could be met. If production was low, the quotas still had to met and people were left with little or nothing. As a result, malnutrition and starvation were prevalent; starvation and disease accounted for a large percentage of the death toll noted above.

- as part of its campaign in the countryside, the Party attempted to make the Kulaks the scapegoats because many other peasants already resented and disliked them. Thus, it was asserted that the Kulaks were providing almost all the resistance; the Party’s claim was that its policies in the countryside were merely ‘liquidating the Kulaks’—in both the literal and figurative senses of the term ‘liquidate’.

- there were an estimated 28 million peasants in the Soviet Union:

Kulaks.......................1.5-2 million
middle peasants............15-18 million
poor peasants.................5-8 million
- Kulaks were richer peasants with enough land that they and their families were not able to do all the work themselves and thus had to employ other peasants. The middle peasants had small amounts of land, but not enough that they would have to employ others regularly; in fact, some might have to work occasionally for Kulaks if their land was not sufficient to provide adequately for the family. The poor peasants had little or no land and made their living from working for others. As noted, the Kulaks were often envied and even disliked by other peasants.

- the numbers above indicate that the Kulaks could not by themselves have mounted the widespread resistance which emerged against collectivisation. The poor peasants had little to lose and probably acquiesced; indeed, many even joined in the campaign against the Kulaks. However, the bulk of the resistance came from the middle peasants because they formed the over-whelming majority of peasants; their land and other property formed the largest proportion of what was being confiscated.

- it has been said that the collectivisation was a massive war by the Soviet government against its peasant and agricultural labour force. Stalin was absolutely intractable and insisted on pushing ahead regardless of costs. Party members who questioned the policies or the implementation, even to the extent of suggesting that the process be slowed down a bit, were dealt with harshly. Even when the drought added to the misery and death tolls in the 30s, Stalin refused to allow any slackening of the collectivisation and industrialisation.

- another way of assessing this process was in terms of standards of living; from the hardships and very low levels of the civil war period, living standards had made very significant recoveries under the NEP during the 1920s. This was especially true for the peasants with land (the Kulaks particularly) and skilled workers. However, 1928 was a high point that was not reached again until well after WW2 (the enormous strains and deterioration of the collectivisation and forced industrialisation were perhaps just beginning to be rectified when the devastation of the German invasion and war plunged huge numbers of the population into desperate reductions of living standards to below subsistence levels—more millions of people [perhaps 15-20 million] perished during the war):

- conditions were often very poor; in Moscow in 1935:

- there was some recovery of living standards from 1936, but in 1937, average real wages were only 85% of 1928 levels. However, Stalin used incentives and wage inequalities (exactly the same as happened under capitalism) so that skilled workers might well make more than in 1928 while averages were being depressed by a flood of unskilled peasants who had to accept very low wages.

- there were some improvements, especially in education and in health. By the late 1930s, the USSR is said to have had more doctors per thousand of population than in the major countries of the west; however, the training and expertise of many of these doctors was probably less than in Europe and N. America.

- also, very substantial progress was made on industrialisation; see table 5.2 on the handout, but keep in mind, that official production figures were long regarded with some suspicion outside the USSR and have now been declared by Soviet scholars under glasnost to be exaggerated.

Criteria in evaluating industrialisation in the Soviet Union

 Was it effective? (i.e., did it get the job done?)

 - may have to give a qualified affirmative; even ignoring and discounting the exaggerated statistics, production in the USSR did make substantial strides. This showed up in WW2 when, despite the massive disruption and destruction in the most heavily industrialised areas in the western USSR, the Soviet Union out-produced Germany in a number of key areas, including tanks and airplanes (not trucks however, as Canada and the US helped substantially).

- however, while Soviet military and space technology was very impressive both in quantity and quality, in consumer goods Soviet performance was abysmal because so few resources were left. Moreover, the Soviet economy could no longer stand the strain of the arms race in the 1980s and the Soviet Union finally had to abandon the effort to match the US.

Was it efficient? (i.e., did they make optimum use of the resources?)

 - millions of lives were wasted in the 1930s, and thus the waste of human labour resources was incredible.

- the massive planning gobbled up millions of workers in the planning bureaucracies who actually made nothing themselves.

- the planning process was not able to cope with the complexities of a massive economy and screw-ups were endemic and very inefficient.

- the use of so much coercion creates inefficiencies:

- the great scandal of the Soviet Union was the incredible waste; in agriculture, huge proportions, 20-50% (sometimes more) of produce never was harvested and frequently rotted in the fields.

- millions of people spent incredible amounts of time standing in lineups and trying to scrounge for things—not time to do their work!

Was it humane? (i.e., was it less bloody than industrialisation in capitalist countries?)

 - certainly, there was a great deal to criticise in Britain and elsewhere. Often the costs and burdens were borne inequitably. Often the benefits were not shared equitably. That is what the creation of the welfare state has been about, the attempt to increase the levels of equity in these matters. But does any society have such loss of life as in the Soviet Union? China too experienced some pretty horrendous hardships and large number of lives lost in its industrialisation under Mao.

The Soviet Union and Political Control

- the Soviet Union was a very complex entity; there were about 19 republics plus a number of autonomous territories; in fact, there was a federation, the Russian Federation of Soviet Socialist Republics (the vast area which includes the old heartland of Russia, as well as the huge expanse of Siberia stretching to the Pacific; this is the Russia controlled by Yeltzen), within the federated union.

- given the great distances, the diversity of language, religion and culture, the different statuses of the components in a multi-level federal system, the Soviet Union should have been a nightmare to govern and administer (compare the difficulties we have in Canada with a system that is much less diverse and symmetrically organised; some of the current fancy proposals for asymmetrical federalism may, if implemented, make Canada more complex). The centripedal forces were very great. It is true that the bureaucracies did cut across some of the divisions and had links to many parts of the Union, but centrifugal forces were few.

- in fact, from the time of the revolution until the loosening up in the late 1980s, it was the Communist Party which held the entire ungainly entity (called by many, correctly I think, an empire) together; once the coherence of the Communist Party itself was lost, there was no chance of maintaining the structure. It was the Party which restricted, suppressed or controlled all the tensions, conflicts and clashing interests of the enormous diversities and the problems inherent in any federation (jurisdictional disputes and conflicts over division of powers, among others).

- the Party set up a parallel structure to the state structure. There was a high degree of common membership; while there were some non-party members in the state structure at the lower levels, this was less common at higher levels (republic Soviets) and disappeared altogether at the highest levels. The same was true of the state bureaucracies as well. The Party had a high degree of discipline and authority extending from the top down. In this way, the Party could make decisions and have them implemented and imposed throughout the vast structure and system.

- the Party itself could have disputes and be the subject of political infighting and ambitions; however, Stalin during his period made the Party completely subservient to his will. Thus, the Party controlled the vast political and bureaucratic structures of the Soviet Union and Stalin rigidly and brutally controlled the Party; in this way, Stalin could control what happened in the Soviet Union in surprising detail.

Stalin

- at almost the same time that Stalin was unleashing the turmoil and convulsion of the collectivisation and industrialisation, he also set out to transform the Communist Party and then subsequently, the Red Army. The first of the Moscow trials took place in 1930-32, although these did not lead to a large bloodbath as few executions took place; the bloodbath began after 1932 and became especially prevalent in the infamous purges of 1937-38 (a KGB report issued under glasnost just a couple of years ago said that 750,000 were executed during Stalin’s period; while there was a small purge and show trials in the early 1950s, most of those executions were in the 1930s).

- these purges were characterised by rigged show trials with confessions elicited from people subjected to drugs, torture, threats to families etc. Again, it should be emphasised that the people tried and executed were primarily Party members, not ‘reactionaries’ or ‘counter-revolutionaries’, although those and similar labels were frequently affixed to these victims. Few of the old Bolsheviks survived the purges. The upper echelons of the Red Army were also decimated (3 of 5 marshals and up to 60% or more of the senior officers were executed; the Red Army was virtually decapitated less than two years before the outbreak of W.W. 2.

- there were also systematic attempts to build a cult of the leader:

- in other ways too, he was unlike the other dictators:

- curiously, many Bolsheviks and Communists, as indeed many people generally, believed as had the peasants earlier of the tsars, that Stalin didn’t know about the injustices and the terror, that it was being concealed from him. This was one of the reasons why there was such shock when Khrushchev revealed the truth that it was Stalin who had ordered and been directly responsible for the purges and terror.

- interpretations of Stalin vary:

- Stalin was always a nationalist; i.e., he was always concerned about Russia and the Soviet Union. Unlike most other Bolshevik leaders, Stalin had not travelled outside and had little knowledge of Europe. As noted earlier, once he had consolidated his position, he became a proponent for ‘socialism in one country’. He saw communists in other countries primarily in terms of how they could be used to assist the USSR rather than as a force for world revolution.

- under Stalin, the foreign policy of the USSR increasingly resembled that of the Tsarist governments, pursuing expansionist policies (at least to recover areas that had belonged to the empire before W. W. 1). He could be extraordinarily devious; for a long time in the later 1930s, Stalin employed Litvinov as his foreign minister because he was respected and trusted outside the USSR, especially in the democracies. However, when Stalin began to explore the possibility of closer relations with the Nazis, he dismissed Litvinov, who was a Jew, and appointed Molotov. Then he joined Hitler in dismembering Poland.

- under Stalin, the USSR became a growing problem for communists outside. The development of the totalitarian state and the terror were too much for a great many concerned idealistic people who had joined communist parties in the 1920s. Through the Communist International, Stalin tried to control communists and parties around the world. Anyone who refused to follow the party line, whatever that might be on a given day, was purged and driven out.

Stalin and Diplomacy in the late 1930s

- a serious criticism of the ‘appeasement’ politicians in the late 1930s was that they had, because they were conservative, failed to make a deal with Stalin in resisting Hitler’s expansionism in Central Europe; this then threw Stalin into the deal with Hitler, the Non-Aggression Pact of August 22, 1939 which allowed Hitler to launch his attack on Poland on September 1st. This criticism came not just from marxists and left-wing commentators but also from people such as Winston Churchill who said that he would ally with the Devil against Hitler.

- it is true that there was a considerable amount of dislike and revulsion against communism and the Soviet Union among moderate or conservative politicians. This certainly made them less than enthusiastic about working with Stalin.

- however, countries of eastern Europe were even more reluctant to open too close connections with the Soviet Union; this was especially true of Poland. Stalin was demanding permission to march into these countries to defend them. They had, quite justifiably, concerns about who provided the greater threat—Hitler or Stalin. Thus, British and French leaders faced great reluctance to make a deal with Stalin on the terms he was demanding.

How willing was Stalin to cooperate and ally with the democracies?

- this is a much debated question. I think that it is unlikely Stalin was willing to do this. Several times in 1936-39 Stalin made overtures to Hitler; Hitler had turned them down until the summer of 1939.

- it is true that Stalin did try to cooperate with the democracies in regard to the Spanish Civil War (and got little cooperation in return). Stalin was convinced that the democracies were trying to manoeuvre Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union into fighting each other. This was certainly true of some politicians. Suspicion was very high on both sides.

- was Stalin so suspicious because he was himself trying to keep the Soviet Union safe by getting Hitler and the democracies fighting each other? In other words, did Stalin project his own thinking onto the politicians in the democracies or was he disappointed and disgusted by the lack of response and by their actions?

- certainly, Stalin thought that he had diverted Hitler away from the Soviet Union in the war against the democracies with the Non-Aggression Pact. But the Pact also gave Stalin almost half of Poland and left open Soviet involvement in the Baltic countries. Stalin clearly had territorial ambitions and the democracies were not willing to agree to Soviet expansionism in Eastern Europe. Hitler was willing to promise this as it would divert some attention away from his own aggression, and he regarded it as only temporary anyway.

Stalin and World War 2

- the evaluation of Stalin’s role as war leader has produced some debate.

- WW2 was an incredible ordeal and experience for the peoples of the USSR; loss of life is often estimated at upwards of 20 million people. Devastation was enormous, both the ‘scorched earth of the Red Army and the destruction unleashed by the German forces.

- eventually, the peoples of the USSR rallied around and chewed up the German military machine and its resources; over 70% of German casualties were suffered on the eastern front! It is hard to imagine the costs if the western allies had had to defeat Germany on their own. Thus, the Great Patriotic War, as WW2 has been known in the Soviet Union, was an enormous victory and achievement; so great was the victory that it established Soviet domination of eastern and central Europe for about 40 years.

What was Stalin’s role and how much credit does he deserve?

- there are 2 poles of interpretation:

What should be considered in making the assessment?

 1. Red Army purges 1937-38
 - these were very severe. 3 out of 5 marshals were removed/executed and up to 70% of senior officers in the next lower ranks. Some scholars have talked about the ‘decapitation’ of the Red Army. Why?
- Stalin was paranoid; the Party and the Red Army were the only possible power sources from which a challenge could be launched against Stalin and his monopolisation of power. The earlier round of purges in 1935-36 had mostly been directed at the Communist Party. Everyone of the old Bolsheviks were removed and most were executed or disappeared into forced labour prisons. The Red Army purges removed every possible threat there.
 - the effectiveness of the Red Army was seriously affected; few experienced leaders were left and efficiency was very low. This showed up in the inability of the Red Army to make much headway against the tiny, poorly equipped Finns in 1939-40.

- the poor condition of the Red Army was a powerful constraint on Stalin during this period. It helped lead to the Non-Aggression Pact. It was imperative to buy time to rebuild and reequip the Red Army before the Soviet Union could contemplate war. This was also a strong reason to fulfil the terms of the Non-Aggression Pact which included supplying Germany with a number of strategic minerals. Stalin was scrupulous in meeting these terms; the last shipment was sent only a few hours before the German attack.

2.Reequipping of the Red Army
 - Stalin realised that the equipment was outmoded and he attempted to get newer and better equipment. This is one area where the industrialisation of the 1930s began to pay off; most of the industrialisation had focused on heavy industry—steel, coal etc. that is needed for heavy war equipment.

- Stalin also had insisted on siting much industry farther to the east; this programme was massively speeded up after the invasion began. Over 2500 factories were dismantled, shipped east, assembled again and put into production in amazingly short time (some within 18 months) and all of this under the pressure of disastrous defeats and setbacks during the early stages of the invasion. This almost superhuman achievement was pushed and demanded by Stalin.

- by the end of the war, the Soviet Union had caught up to the Germans in both quantity and quality of aircraft; it had the biggest and best tanks and had lots of good artillery. The Soviet Union’s small rockets (known as Stalin’s organ) were as good as anyone’s. Again, Stalin’s will and determination were a major factor in these achievements.

3. Lack of preparation and anticipation of the attack.
 - this was a strange aspect. In keeping the terms of the Non-Aggression Pact by sending strategic raw materials, Stalin seemed to think that this would constrain Hitler into keeping the truce.

- Stalin had refused all requests to move additional troops to the western border or to allow construction of more elaborate defences. When Soviet commanders tried to put their forces on alert because of the heavy troop movements and flyovers of German aircraft in the days before the attack, Stalin had ordered that the troops should stand down. Apparently, Stalin did not want to give any excuse for the Germans to take offence.

- in the 3 or 4 months preceding the attack, several warnings of the impending attack were sent to Stalin (i.e., in addition to the obvious signs of troop build-ups on the other side of the borders and greatly increased reconnaissance flights by German aircraft all along the border areas).

- even after the attack started, Stalin still thought it was a mistake. He thought that some hotheads in the German military were trying to create an incident that would provoke war and that as soon as Hitler learned of what was going on, he would repudiate and stop the attack!

4. Khrushchev’s claim of Stalin’s collapse
 - in the destalinisation, Khrushchev claimed that Stalin had collapsed once he realised that the attack was for real, retreated into his room for days and drank, and had had a nervous breakdown.

- it does seem that Stalin was briefly stunned, but Krushchev’s claims were almost certainly exaggerated.

5 Conduct of the war
 - as indicated, Stalin initially refused to believe that Hitler had ordered the attack and for some hours, he ordered his officers to hold back.

- the initial stages of the war were an absolute disaster for the Red Army; it was overwhelmed and cut to pieces. Several million men were killed or captured during the first 6 months of the war. Much of the responsibility for this rests with Stalin.

- however, Stalin soon came to have a big role in the Soviet war effort. He was ruthless with his generals and marshals but eventually found the men he needed, especially Zhukov. Stalin gave his generals responsibility, but he demanded that they report virtually every day. Also, it is clear that Stalin made many of the big decisions:

6 Rallying of the People
 - the Soviet people eventually did respond with incredible sacrifice; the Red Army used people to make up for deficiencies in equipment (the former were more easily replaced than the later). Soviet losses of life were staggering. Part of this willingness to die was a result of terror (some 13,000 Soviet troops were executed for cowardice and failing to obey orders in the defence of Stalingrad), but there was also incredible courage.

- there are probably at least 3 explanations for this:

  1. .the inherent patriotism of Russians and their willingness to defend Mother Russia;

  2. Stalin did a number of things:

    • he relaxed restrictions on religion and allowed a number of churches to reopen;
    • on 5 July 1941 for the first time, Stalin went on the radio, in itself an electrifying event for the Soviet people;
    • in the speech, Stalin referred to Mother Russia, a concept that the Communists had been trying to eradicate since the revolution as counter-revolutionary;
    • he also played up past glories under the tsars and especially referred to the defeat of Napolean’s army in 1812.

  3. Hitler and the Nazis did their part:

    - when the invasion first began, many people in the Ukraine and elsewhere welcomed the German forces; Stalin’s policies in the 1930s had brought enormous suffering, and the Germans were perceived as liberators from Stalin and the Soviet government. However, right behind the German army, the SS einzatzgruppen (special brigades of several hundred men each) moved in; their job was to clear out all ‘commissars’, Jews and ‘undesirables’ in preparation for the settlement of German settlers in the area of ‘lebensraum’.

    - these fanatics quickly became involved with atrocities and growing brutality; anyone in the Wehrmacht (German Army) who tried to stop the killing was told to mind his own business. The killing was often almost indiscriminate and extremely brutal, such as the massacre at Sobibor. It was these SS goons and savages who quickly turned opinion around. Resistance began to grow and to produce a vicious circle of reprisal and counter-reprisal; even the Stalinist regime began to look good in comparison. This early resistance was almost entirely spontaneous; only later did Stalin begin to drop supplies to resistance fighters and send in Party commissars to assert control.

7 Determining the Post-war Settlement
 - Stalin had a clear idea of what he wanted at the end of the war, and he was able to keep this focus much better than the other Allied leaders. For both Churchill and Roosevelt, the first priority was to defeat the Axis powers and then the settlement could be negotiated. Stalin, both at the summit conferences with the other Allied war leaders and in decisions (e.g., even before a country had been liberated from German forces, Stalin would have communists of that country ready to enter and work for their take-over), Stalin was preparing to ensure that his wishes would prevail.

- the enormous sacrifices of the Soviet people and the role the Red Army played in defeating Germany gave Stalin a strong hand, as did the fact that it was the Red Army which drove German forces out of central and eastern Europe. Moreover, the Red Army was in occupation in large numbers.

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