Stalin played a minor role in creating the Soviet state but established it as a powerful nation through totalitarian control. He collectivized agriculture and implemented five-year plans to industrialize the economy and make it state-controlled. Stalin also created a cult of personality around himself and used the Great Terror to eliminate opposition. This allowed Stalin to completely control all aspects of Soviet politics, society, and the economy.

1. Stalin Dossier Rob Close
Although Stalin’s role in creating the Soviet State was minor his role in establishing
the U.S.S.R. as a nation was immense. Through a totalitarian approach Stalin
controlled all aspects of life. He controlled the output of artists, collectivised the
economy so it was state controlled, created a cult of personality around himself and
used the Great Terror as a way to ensure he would have no opposition. It was in this
way that Stalin remodelled the Soviet state successfully into a stronger nation where
the state influenced all aspects of the economy, society and politics.
Stalin only played a minor role in the creation of the Soviet state. During Lenin’s rule
he was not seen as a man of action and generally concerned himself with
administrative work. His first major work for Russia was the foundation of the official
newspaper, Pravada. He then continued to assist implementing the Nomenklatura
System where the General Secretary held a large amount of power by being the only
person to be a part of the Politburo, Orgburo and Secretariat. Stalin recognised the
control he could exercise on all parts of the party and became General Secretary in
April 1922. Yet still Stalin did not make great changes to the State until he had
complete control in 1928. Therefore, Stalin’s role in the creation of the Soviet state
was minor but after gaining control of the party he steered the U.S.S.R. into a new
direction.
This new direction was Stalinism. Stalinism is a version of communist theory based
on the policies of Joseph Stalin. The formation of this began in 1913 with Stalin’s
work concerning nationalities in a future communist state ‘Marxism and the National
Question’, were he proclaimed the nation as a ‘capitalist phenomenon’. Stalin
believed in the theory of an aggravated class struggle he used this as a basis to
suppress political opponents as victims of this struggle. In many ways it was
synonymous with totalitarianism.
A prime concern of Stalinism was to establish Russia as a stable world power.
According to Stalin, ‘Other countries are 50 years ahead of Russia. We must make
good this distance in 10 years’. The survival of Russia relied on the transformation
into a modern society. All policies of Stalin and therefore the influence it had on life
stemmed from this belief. The life of Russians changed dramatically due to the
introduction of collectivisation and industrialisation, the use of a cultural revolution
and the development of a climate of fear.
Collectivisation, introduced in 1928, was the policy that entailed all work must be to
the benefit of the state. Primarily in agriculture, this led to amalgamation of private
plots of lands, owned by the Kulak class, into government farms. This class of land
owning peasants was eliminated in a process known as Dekulakisation. Individuals
were indoctrinated to put the needs of the collective, state, over that of their own. This
changed the culture of Russian society as bettering the state became a common goal
of many. For example, the state procured grain from rural areas as it was needed in
the cities to support industrialisation. Overall, this led to an increase in efficiency,
which allowed people to move to cities yet agricultural production fell in the early
1930’s by almost 40%. This policy, along the NKVD, the name of the Cheka from
1923, eliminated those with capitalist beliefs, the Kulaks. Although this supported
industrialisation, there was also widespread famine in rural areas.
The second phase of this plan aimed to industrialise the country and create a
command economy under the control of Gosplan, the state planning committee. Due
to Stalin’s belief in socialism in one country, the U.S.S.R. had to be self-sufficient.
This was done through the implementation of Five Year Plans whose goals assisted
the collective, not the individual. The First Five Year Plan, 1928-1932, focused on
increasing efficiency of existing heavy industry. Although industrial output increased

2. Stalin Dossier Rob Close
to some extent the production of consumer goods was largely ignored and the price
rose leading to a drop in the standard of living. The Second Five Year Plan,
1933-1937, focused partly on righting this imbalance and also on the increase in
technical expertise. Education and training of the work force began, the number of
engineers rose from 47,000 in 1928 to over 900,000 in 1941. The coming war that
Stalin predicted with Germany led to him modifying the goals, putting less
importance on consumer goods and more importance on armaments. The increase in
industrialisation significantly increased urbanisation. This put pressure on resources
and in general the standard of living fell. Conversely, the proletariat, supporters of the
communist party, increased. Overall, Leonard believes collectivisation and
industrialisation was ‘profoundly negative…created massive shortages’ but it also
increased efficiency of the railways and heavy industry which improved the economy
in the long term. Although the Five Year Plans did not improve the Soviet economy
to the extent Stalin expected, they did go some way to bringing Russia in line with the
other world powers.
Stalin revolutionised the culture of Russia. He encourage experimentation in art, that
conformed with soviet policy, dissolved religion and changed the education system
and increasing divorce rates and shortages led to instability at home. The culture of
the Russian worker centred around the need to prioritise the collective. This idea was
indoctrinated into them at school, which was opened up to more children and workers
who were actively encouraged to seek extra education and art was used as propaganda
to enhance this belief. A group emerged know as Stakhanovists who were a series of
workers that became celebrities because they greatly exceeded their quotas, they also
received material rewards, such as better housing, this encouraged people to work
longer and harder to meet the high quotas. Stalinists built on this image to reconstruct
the human species into the idyllic Soviet man which was portrayed as the hero in all
art, media and propaganda. This captured revolutionary and nationalistic passions and
led to a zealous belief in collectivisation and coupled with propaganda portraying
Stalin as the grandfather of Russia this led to a personality cult surrounding the man.
In some ways, the rights of citizens improved in the U.S.S.R. as a part of this
revolution. Every citizen had the right to vote, but only for candidates from the
Communist Party and employment was guaranteed. This aimed to prove Russia was
an acceptable ally to Britain and France. The culture of the collective and the
personality cult infected every part of the society so much so that historian Fitzpatrick
states that ‘people no longer conversed about ordinary life but rather all conversations
were political.’ The policies of Stalin revolutionised culture and changed the way
Russians thought and acted on a daily basis.
The factors already mentioned, led to a climate of fear in the Soviet Union. Friends
and even family were encourage by the NKVD to denounce each others as saboteurs.
Such persons were executed or taken to the Gulags. The creation of this fear was
justified by the pretence that the USSR was a nation under siege because of
backwardness. Officials were afraid of not meeting the unrealistically high targets of
the Five Year Plans. This led to the creation of a world of pretence. The ‘Plans’ set
goals but lacked actual planning of how these should be achieved. This fatal flaw led
to a lack of cooperation between factories as fear of failure led to an ‘every man for
himself’ mentality. This led to the reporting of inflated figures when the goals were
not reached. Therefore the government belied the targets were being reached and
these where then raised in the Second Five Year Plan. This circle of pretence occurred
right across society and led to very few targets actually being met. This climate of fear
laid the way for totalitarianism to become accepted in society as people were afraid of
retribution.

3. Stalin Dossier Rob Close
It is obvious that Stalinism is a form of totalitarianism. Totalitarianism has six main
features, one party, one ideology, police terror, a communication monopoly, weapons
monopoly and a directed economy. The Politburo was under direct control of Stalin
who would meet with the members individually not together. The Party Congress also
met infrequently, under Lenin the meetings were annual but by 1925 there were three
years between meetings. As Stalin was a member of the Politburo, Orgburo and
Secretariat Stalin was able to place his supporters in positions, democracy within the
party was no longer practised. The NKVD used to force against real and imagined
‘Saboteurs’. Counter-revolutionaries, the capitalist Kulak class and Stalin’s political
enemies were all sentenced to death or sent to the Gulags on charges of sabotaging the
collective. This created the period of The Great Terror in 1936-1938. All art, film,
radio and literature had to be vetted by the Party to ensure it was portraying
Communist values. Education was also changed to follow the party line. Stalin
gradually took away individual freedoms harnessing the belief in the collective and
the climate of fear. For instance, internal passports were introduced, something which
Lenin had abolished in 1917. Finally, the implementation of collectivisation brought
the economy under state control. Therefore Stalinism clearly exhibits the
characteristics of totalitarianism.
The force used by the NKVD between 1936 and 1938has become known as the Great
Terror. Stalin aimed to eliminate those disloyal to him and although this occurred, it
also isolated Stalin with advisors who lacked experience and skewed facts so they
were what Stalin wanted to hear. The purges were unleashed from the top down,
starting with the murder of Kirov in 1934 Stalin personally approved 44,000 victims,
who were seen as threats to Stalin’s rule, from the government, military and
intelligence services and in doing so aimed to refresh party membership with
loyalists. This added to the climate of fear as friends and family denounced each
other. The purges had far reaching effects across all of the state but the Politburo
recovered relatively quickly and little experience was completely lost. Yet for the Red
Army the purges were a catastrophe. 34,301 officers were expelled and so a
monumental amount of combat and tactical experience was lost. Of the 101 Supreme
Military leaders 11 were arrested and 80 were shot. Three out of five Marshalls of the
Soviet Union, the highest rank of the armed forces, were executed as were all the
commanders of military districts in Russia. This led to poor reports of the situation in
the military reaching Stalin as well as a grave lack of experience commanders. This
was a major factor in the loss of the Winter War in 1940 and forced Stalin to appease
Hitler so as to buy time to build up the military. Although the purges aimed to give
Stalin better control of the state, they actually left him further disconnected from
reality as advisors who lacked experienced told Stalin only what he wanted to hear.
Stalin did not play a large role in the creation of the soviet state. Yet he played an
important role in establishing the Soviet State and it’s policies. Stalin used a ruthless
totalitarian style of government where he controlled the economy through
collectivisation and the Five Year Plans, politics through placing supporters in
positions of power and using his position as General Secretary to control all aspects of
the government and society through using the cult of personality and the Great Terror
to effectively alter the culture of the Russian people. In this way the Soviet State was
remodelled to allow so Stalin could have complete control over all aspects of the state
and it’s people.

4. Stalin Dossier Rob Close
Bibliography
Kershaw, Ian. Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World, 1940-1941.
Penguin. 2008.
Fitzpatrick, Sheila. Everyday Stalinism – Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times.
Oxford University Press. New York. 1991.
“Stalin’s Russia”. Think Quest.
http://library.thinkquest.org/C0112205/stalinsrussia.html Accessed: 10/03/09
Brooman JB, Stalin and the Soviet Union, Longman Group, USA, 1988.