Notes for World History
WAS STALIN’S REGIME TOTALITARIAN?
- A perfect totalitarian regime is one in which there is a dictatorial rule on a one-party state which totally controls all activities- economical, political, social, intellectual and cultural- and directs them towards achieving the state’s goals.
- The state attempts to indoctrinate everybody with the party ideology and to mobilise society in its support
- Both mental and physical terror, and violence were used to crush opposition and keep the regime in power.
- There was ample evidence of all these characteristics at work in Stalin’s system. Hence, Stalin’s regime has been called by some as totalitarian, in many ways like Hitler’s Nazi in Germany.
- Although the regime had totalitarian aims, in practice it was far from successful.
- Stalin’s regime did not completely ignore public opinion- even Stalin wanted to be popular.
- Peasants and workers found plenty ways of ignoring or evading unpopular govt orders.
- The more the govt tried to tighten controls, the more counter-productive its efforts became, and the greater the tensions between central and regional leaderships.
EVERYDAY LIFE UNDER STALIN
- Everything, including food, seemed to be in short supply. This was partly because of the concentration on heavy industry at the expense of consumer goods.
- The 1930s were difficult time for many families because of the ‘disappearance’ of so many men during collectivization, the famine and the Purges.
- There was expansion of free, mass education. Education was the way by which the regime could turn the younger generation into good, orthodox Soviet citizens.
- Both Lenin and Stalin were atheists who accepted Marx’s claim that religion was merely an invention of the ruling classes to keep docile and under control. Lenin had launched a savage attack on the Orthodox Church.
- The years 1928 to 1931 became known as ‘the Cultural Revolution’, when the regime began to mobilize writers, artists and musicians to wage a cultural war against ‘bourgeois intellectuals’.
- Artists, sculptors and musicians were all expected to play their part in ‘socialist realism’. Abstract art was rejected and paintings were expected to portray workers working hard to fulfil their targets, scenes from the revolution or the civil war, or Revolutionary leaders.
ASSESSMENT OF STALIN
Stalin’s reputation in the USSR soon went into decline when Khrushchev delivered his sensational speech at the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956, denouncing Stalin’s excesses.
Pros:
- Collectivization, industrialization, the new constitution, the rise of the new bureaucracy, the spread of mass education- all these can be traced directly or indirectly to Stalin.
- Industrial modernization was a success in heavy industries and armaments.
- Living standards and real wages were lower before Stalin took control.
- Situation was so desperate when he came to power that only extraordinary methods could have brought success.
- He made USSR powerful enough to defeat the Germans.
- The regime was extremely popular with bureaucracy, army , navy and security forces as these were the people who had risen from the working classes and owed their privileged positions to Stalin.
- Stalin was also popular with the majority of ordinary people.
Cons:
- Collectivization was a disaster
- Industry failed to produce enough household goods, and much of what was produced was of poor quality.
- More industrial progress could have been made with conventional methods, perhaps even by simply continuing NEP.
- The claim that Russia won war due to Stalin is disputed. In fact his mistakes almost lost the war in early stages.
- The worst aspect of Stalinism was that it was responsible for about 20 million deaths over and above the victims of the war. This happened during collectivization, the famine, the Purges and the Great Terror.
WAS STALINISM A CONTINUATION OF LENINISM?
Similarities
- Towards the end of his life, Lenin suggested that NEP would improve people’s lives so much that ‘permanent revolution’ would not be necessary. This brought him closer to Stalin’s theory of ‘ socialism in one country’.
- Both Lenin and Stalin were violent and brutal in their methods.
Differences
- Stalin was much more of a dictator than Lenin was.
- It was only under Stalin that the party apparatus, the bureaucracy became all-powerful and synonymous with the state.
- Lenin used violence because the counter-revolutionary forces were very powerful. On the other hand, Stalin was under no such threat, and could have used alternative methods to deal with the opposition.
- Rule by one man was anti-Leninist- it went against the idea of rule by party on behalf of the working class.
- Stalin hijacked the revolution and betrayed the idealism of Marx and Lenin. Instead of a new, classless society in which everybody was free and equal, ordinary workers and peasants were just as exploited as they had been under Tsars.
