Professional Documents
Culture Documents
What political and social changes took place in the Soviet Union between 1928 and
1933? How did the Bolsheviks succeed in introducing these changes? Why, in your
opinion, did they want to introduce these changes? In your answer, please make
specific references to the readings.
percentage of similar rates in England and the United States.1 This continuing economic
disappointment, combined with the June 1927 murder of a top Soviet official (rumored to
have been committed by a British agent) and severed relations with China created
desperate war paranoia among the top Soviet officials.2 Soviets began acting as though
invasion and war would inevitably land on their doorstep. Consequently, Stalin
proceeded to wage war against Bukharin’s moderate argument of staying the NEP course.
After some clever politicking in the Politburo and Central Committee, Stalin basically
gained complete party control and proceeded to declare an unofficial war on those classes
an aggressive offensive against the “enemies of the Communist state” in order to enforce
his hard-lined Ural-Siberian grain acquisition policy, Stalin officially abandoned his
previously moderate/centrist stance and actually outdid the Left of his own party.4 Thus,
following peasant grain withholding and slow rates of industrialization, Stalin revved up
the Soviet war machine; from 1928 through 1933, Stalin declared an understood martial
law and utilized all the weapons in his Soviet arsenal—terror, economic coercion, and
1
Suny, The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the USSR, and the Successor States (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1998), p. 242. “A constant problem for the government was low labor productivity. In 1926/27 the
average Soviet worker produced only one-half as much as a British worker and a quarter as much as an
American worker. In part this might be explained by the recent arrival of workers into an industry or their
lack of skills or labor discipline, but it was largely the result of a yawning technological gap between
Russia and the West.”
2
Notes taken from lecture (date)
3
Suny, p. 221
4
Suny, p. 221. According to historians, his radicalism “was a response to a grain collection crisis and a
stagnating industrial economy that had been created by his former moderate policies.
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Kathleen Fitzgerald, Soviet Take-Home Midterm
conformist culture—to target all non-worker classes, eventually centralizing all the
Once Stalin made his class war intentions clear, “the floodgates were opened for
intolerance swept through the country,” targeting the kulaks and bourgeoisie specialists
first.6 Now that NEP was touted by Stalin and his allies as a failure at military retreat, the
preventative war against enemies of the state.7 Almost immediately, the kulak was
declared the state’s enemy, a class that needed to be liquidated. Regarding the impending
de-kulakization, Molotov advised loyal Communists to “treat the kulak as a most cunning
and still undefeated enemy.”8 Under the previous imperial reign, these kulaks had been
envied social betters, and the resentful Stalinist Communists were sending the kulaks to
the GULag in order to prevent the kulaks from advocating a return to the previous system
of government, under which they had been so comfortable and successful.9 Similarly, the
Stalinists enacted a broad attack against the bourgeois specialist population, whom the
Stalinists believed were the likely leaders of the 1927 grain sabotaging and “wrecking.”10
Since Stalinists believed that law was tainted by the old bourgeoisie, they refused to use
legal methods in their war against the bourgeois kulaks and specialists; instead, the
Communists simply used terror methods like the GULag to demean and disempower
5
Suny, p. 221
6
Suny, p. 209
7
Lecture. The genealogical approach to arrests was eventually utilized by the Soviets in power. Under this
method, Russian residents who were related or associated with someone who had recently been arrested
were seen as possible future subversives and were often arrested as well.
8
Suny, p. 223.
9
Suny, p. 252.
10
Suny, p. 217, 235. In 1928, the Stalinists even held the very public Shakhty Trial at which engineers
were tried for “conspiring with the former owners of coal mines, now living abroad.” The bourgeois
specialists were seen as a class threat because they had held all the real power in the factories until Stalin
consolidated the power among the Red directors.
2
Kathleen Fitzgerald, Soviet Take-Home Midterm
recalled these types of unlawful arrests. “At first they took all kinds of oppositionists,
then old regime people, all kinds of “vons” and barons. But now it was doctors.”11
Similarly, the Soviets feared uprisings from the peasantry, so they waged another
war on this particular class, replacing their weapon of terrorizing with economic
sanctions instead. In Spring 1928, the first Five Year Plan was enacted by the Soviets.12
Under this plan, grain reacquisition from the peasants was required, with percentages
initially set at 5%, increased to 12% just one year later, and then immediately enlarged to
18%.13 The Soviets hoped that forced collectivization and economic sanctions against the
peasantry, who had previously withheld grain and directly harmed the economy under the
Ural-Siberian method, would increase the marketable grain surpluses and enable rapid
industrialization; however, the sullen peasantry fought back the only way they knew how
—by slaughtering livestock so the state cannot take it and holding mass disturbances.14
Stalin realized an angry and volatile peasant majority posed a serious threat to his
Success,” in which he “blamed the local officials for collectivization” and became an
instant father, savior, and cult figure.15 The resultant “Stalin cult” simply enabled more
aggressive economic war measures to be enacted by Stalin without any public stigma
being attached to his name.16 By the summer of 1932-33, the existence of a widespread
11
Chukovskaya, Sofia Petrovna (New York: Dutton, 1967), p. 31
12
Lecture
13
Lecture
Suny, p. 222. Under Stalin’s Ural-Siberian method, “instead of allowing peasants to trade at free-market
prices, the peasants were to be given contracts for acquiring industrial goods in exchange for grain.”
14
Lecture. Between 1928 and 1933, the peasants slaughter approximately ½ cattle and ½ horses.
Suny, p. 217.
15
Suny, p. 224
16
Suny p. 224-25.
Lecture. In fact, “Father Stalin,” supposed protector of the peasant cause, actually made a decision
following the poor harvest of 1932 the struck a hard blow to his peasant followers. Since the state wanted
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Kathleen Fitzgerald, Soviet Take-Home Midterm
famine was obvious to everyone, and Stalin’s unchecked power enabled him to attack the
peasantry even further by “containing” the famine within their “expendable” population.17
Rounding out the Soviet Cultural Revolution war, which had begun in March
1928, was the Soviet use of art, literature, and science as weapons to strengthen the
Soviet war against deviations from Bolshevik norms.18 Under the Cultural Revolution of
this period, scientists and writers were forced to conform to strict new policies that
viewed art and literature as “means for changing social reality.”19 Traditionally, culture
had been a uniting factor among the tsars and nobility; now, the Soviets were using the
same tools that had once suppressed their radical, Communist factions to create a new,
hard-lined proletarian intelligentsia which would soon replace the older bourgeois
intelligentsia.20 In a sense, this new cultural army would endorse a uniformity of Soviet
culture and Russian language by serving as models of the ideal, educated, technical
workers who would eventually combat all Russian backwardness.21 Similarly, the official
novels, songs, and films of the period served as Soviet propaganda bullets striking at the
heart of those who doubted the “Arcadian paradise” that was supposed to have existed
to export as much grain as possible, a decision was made that the grain would be forcibly taken from the
peasantry, despite the fact that this would leave relatively no food to feed the peasant farmers. The Soviet
Union leader consciously concentrated the famine into certain peasant areas so as to ensure the feeding of
urban workers and the army, both of which were essential to the union.
17
Lecture.
Dolot, Execution By Hunger (New York: Norton & Company, Inc., 1987), p. xi. “When it became clear in
the course of 1932 that the quota for state grain procurement could not physically be met, Stalin in his fury
ordered all the available stocks to be seized, no matter what the consequences for the local population.”
18
Suny, p. 209
19
Suny, p. 212
20
Lecture
21
Lecture.
Dolot, p. 36-37. This new revival of Russian nationalism directly contradicted the “tread softly” and
affirmative action policies of Lenin. Soft-line introduction of Soviet policies disappears completely and
becomes evident in the examples of Communist enforcers like Ivan Khizhniak and Vasil Khomenko, whose
“sadism made him infamous in our [Ukrainian] village.”
22
Suny p. 229. This is quite evident in the numerous plays and public statements of “What is to be done?”
This became a galvanizing and poetic statement of the period, and even today it is closely associated with
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Kathleen Fitzgerald, Soviet Take-Home Midterm
From 1928 until December 1934, Stalin created political structures and social
conditions that overwhelmed both the weakened Russian society and the “dangerous”
class factions that were “thwarting” Soviet industrialization. As a result, Stalin was able
operate.23 Stalin’s own paranoid suspicion and unwillingness to “tolerate the slightest
restraint on his absolute power” caused him to declare war on nearly every faction,
including his own administrative elite.24 Ironically, not only did this consolidation of
protecting power decrease the security of the overall Soviet state (as was seen in the
The Bolsheviks took over political control of a well-established state, with a long
history of independence and territorial expansion, in 1917. With references to the
readings and lectures, discuss the Russian Revolution and Stalin’s political/social
transformations in the context of the long-term patterns of Russian history.
Soviet propaganda. It asks the question “what is to be done” to fix the illiteracy and backwardness of the
society while at the same time allowing for rapid industrialization. It is associated with the idealized,
perfect Soviet state—one in which the countryside and all its residents are completely devoted to the cause.
23
Suny p. 261
24
Suny p. 262
25
Suny p. 258-59
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Initially, it would appear that Russia’s long-lasting imperial government and the
radical Soviet Union exhort diametrically opposed principles and therefore ought to be
antithetical in their practicing policies. After all, Czar Nicholas II and his family were
actuality, however, the transition between the guiding principles of the czarist regime and
those which formed the Soviet Union was quite gradual. In both the imperial and Soviet
states, the ruling class (the intellectuals, aristocracy, and nobles in the former, and the
both Russian states forced the peasant class to support industrialization either by
sacrificing vital bushels of grain or by underconsuming.27 And while the initial Leninist
October Revolution of 1917 did not seem to support the ruling precedence begun during
the Muscovite rule of Ivan III, “the Great” (1462-1505), Stalin’s eventual re-shaping of
Soviet rule eerily resembled Ivan’s rule. Both Stalin’s rule and the tsarist reign were
autocratic states with highly centralized power, militaristic tendencies, and “absolute
power in the hands of the grand duke [later the tsar, and even later Stalin].”28 Ironically,
both “Father Tsar” and “Father Stalin” were viewed as protecting the peasantry from the
problematic nobles and bureaucratic officials, even though neither really did anything of
the kind.29 Consequently, despite the fact that the Bolsheviks originated as a dissenting
group underneath the tsarist rule, the old imperial cleavages continued to guide the
26
Suny, p. 7. Many intellectuals saw the large peasant class as an obstacle to social progress and economic
development, just as the later Bolsheviks thought the peasants were the primary obstacle to rapid
industrialization.
27
Suny, p. 7. “Throughout Russia’s history, the peasants paid for the rest of society, for the state, for
industry, for the civilization of the towns and cities, which they despised and admired simultaneously.
Particularly in the last half century of tsarist rule, the government forced the peasants to ‘under consume’
… in order to tax their output and export grain abroad so that purchases and payments on the foreign loans
that financed Russia’s industrialization could be made.”
28
Suny, p. 5
29
Suny, p. 10
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Kathleen Fitzgerald, Soviet Take-Home Midterm
increasingly radical Soviet state; and even in those realms in which the two governments
oligarchic support—the Soviets were still using the tsarist rule as a counter-example to
their ideal.30 While the Russian tsarist state had been one of expansion, geographically
and culturally, thereby reducing the actual radicalism of the ruling tsar, once the Soviet
state decided to maintain the centralized autocracy but close the state off from all other
Perhaps the most obvious difference between the tsarist and Soviet regimes was
their disagreement about the severity of the threat from foreign nations. Traditionally,
Russia had always been a multinational empire—in fact, it had never existed as “a single
nation with a single culture and sense of collective identity.”31 Under tsarist rule,
therefore, the tsar traditionally formed a tight-knit alliance with the noble class, and
together the two explored and appreciated the Enlightened cultural ideas from the west as
a part of the paradoxically multicultural Russian nationalist culture. While the Russian
tsarist state did emphasize Russian nationalism, it did not do so to the punishment of
“foreign” elements and did not view Russia’s somewhat open cultural society as being
opposed to the cleavage of a strong, centralized state.32 In fact, the tsars and nobles even
adopted western Enlightenment ideas despite the disapproval of the great Russian mass,
who themselves remained wary of and hostile toward foreign influence.33 Ironically, this
extremely xenophobic faction eventually became the ruling class of Bolsheviks under the
Soviet Union.34 This is quite evident in John Scott’s description of being assigned to a
30
Lecture
31
Suny, p. 4
32
Lecture
33
Suny, p. 6
34
Suny, p. 15. Between this relatively culturally-open, tsarist society and the tsarist state “emerged the
alienated intelligentsia of liberals, radicals, and revolutionaries, which became a rival society with
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separate barrack in Magnitogorsk simply because he was a foreigner, and the government
whereas the tsarist nobility and ruling class had viewed geographic expansion and the
nationalist culture,” the Soviet trend toward geographic downsizing was directly linked to
the Bolshevik fear of foreign competition and WWI.36 While this policy of Soviet
isolation seemed like a rational and protective Bolshevik move at the time, it eventually
guided the centralized and autocratic Stalinist state toward increased fear and paranoia
Upon their takeover, the Bolshevik class, and ultimately Stalin, ruled Russia
single-handedly, without any support from the nation-state imperial scheme. Whereas
the Russian tsarist-noble mutually supportive alliance had always provided governing
support for the tsar, stabilization within the regime, and a preservation of long-established
economic practices (such as the nobles holding control over the peasants), the Bolshevik
1917 revolution put all the governmental faith in the intangible worker vanguard.38
Despite the fact that Stalin soon led the Soviet state back to “the autocratic nature of the
tsarist system, which allowed [him] to act in arbitrary and contradictory ways,” even the
initial move to have only select Bolsheviks lead the country (with the idea that they
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would eventually be joined by a worker majority) left the Soviet state open to threats of
militancy from within. Without the checks and balances that had been moderately
inherent within the tsarist-nobility ruling structure, the ruling Bolsheviks left themselves
open to someone like Stalin, who was never held accountable by say, a strong party of
land-owning nobles.39
Tsarist-rooted fear toward “alien authority” existed long before Stalin exacerbated
the problem by centralizing state power even more in order to prevent foreign
domination. Whether stemming from schismatic tendencies like those seen in the Old
death rather than succumbing to the Russian Orthodox Church’s foreign authority, or
from 200 years of Mongol rule of Russian lands, the seeds for the Soviet bloc and
isolation were already presented. All the geographic downsizing and xenophobia needed
in order to fuel a complete isolationist movement was a fearful leader like Joseph Stalin
who was ready to fix boundaries, and enforce extreme international policies in order to
39
Lecture