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How was the USSR ruled?
• Officially, Federation with widely dispersed powers
• In fact, highly centralized through the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU)
• All leading government officials were communists
Who ruled?• Lenin’s creation• Testament
(Dec. 1922)• died in 1924• Result: Power
struggle:• Josef Stalin• Leon Trotsky• Nikolai Bukharin• Lev Kamenev• Grigory Zinoviev
New Economic Policy (NEP), 1921-28
• State-owned large businesses• Private small and medium-sized
businesses• Some free trade• Peasants left alone to feed cities
(N. Bukharin)• Tax-in-kind• Little use of violence• NEPmen
NEP, 1921-1928
• National communist awakening
• Indigenization (korenizatsiia)
• Proletarian cultural flowering
• Dziga Vertov’s Man with Movie Camera (1929)
Stalin won (by 1928)
Why?• Not a man of
ideas• Ruthless• Patronage• Will to win• Used extreme
measures• Appealed to non-
intellectuals
The Great Turn, 1928->
• Move to Planned Economy• First Five-Year Plan, 1928-1932• Focus on Heavy Industry• Sacrificed consumer goods• Quotas for everything• Quantity over quality• Stakhanovites as role models
The Great Turn (cont.)Collectivization, 1929-1935• 1927: voluntary• 1929: forced• Main goal: control of food• Requisitions• Peasants resisted (1600 large-scale
revolts)• “Kulaks”• De-kulakization: by 1933, over two
million removed as “class enemies.”
The Great Famine, 1932-33
Causes:1. Requisitions for cities and export2. De-kulakization3. Poor collective farm management4. Livestock slaughtered5. Bad weather6. Border closing exacerbated deaths
About six million starved to deathMostly in Ukraine
The Terror, 1934-39
• Sergei Kirov, 1886-1934
• Leader of CPSU in Leningrad
• December 1, 1934: assassinated by a communist, Leonid Nikolaev
• Sparked Terror
Great Terror widens to army
• June 1937: Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevskii, and three army commanders shot.
• 3 of 5 Marshals shot
• 15 of 16 army commanders
• 60 of 67 corps commanders
• 70 percent of division commanders
Great Terror widens to soviet citizens, 1937-1938
• “kulak operations”– By Nov. 1938: 767,397 sentenced by
troikas• 386,798 put to death• Remainder to GULAG system
• “mass operations”– Poles, Germans, Latvians, Koreans,
Chinese– 335,513 sentences
• 247,157 to death• Remainder to GULAG system
Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev, 1892-1940 • Bolsheviks’ Muslim• Worked for Stalin at
NarKomNats• 1923 arrested, put on
“trial,” and released.• “Sultangalievism”• 1928 arrested, sentenced
to death• Commuted to 10 years in
Solovki labor camp• Released 1934• Arrested 1937• Executed 1940
Evgeniia Ginzburg, 1896-1977
• Journey into the Whirlwind
• Loyal, dedicated communist
• 1937: arrested• “Trotskyist”• “Conveyor belt”• GULAG• Magadan• 1955: released
Grappling with the numbers:number of prisoners in GULAG camps and colonies, 1930-1953
Year GULAG prisoners
Year GULAG prisoners
1930 179,000 1942 1,777,043
1931 212,000 1943 1,484,182
1932 268,700 1944 1,179,819
1933 334,300 1945 1,460,677
1934 510,307 1946 1,703,095
1935 965,742 1947 1,721,543
1936 1,296,494 1948 2,199,535
1937 1,196,369 1949 2,356,685
1938 1,881,570 1950 2,561,351
1939 1,672,438 1951 2,525,146
1940 1,659,992 1952 2,504,514
1941 1,929,729 1953 2,468,524
Consequences About three million arrested, 1937-
1938 How many killed?
681,692 people were executed during 1937–38
786,098 state prisoners shot, 1931-53 Memorial society released list of
1,345,796 victims for period, 1928-53 Exact figures will probably never be
determined, but about 20 million Initially, allowed considerable
‘upward mobility’ Gradually, greatly undermined
CPSU’s authority and legitimacy