Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (interwar period, 1921-1939): NEP, Famine and Terror.

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Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (interwar period, 1921-1939): NEP, Famine and Terror

Transcript of Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (interwar period, 1921-1939): NEP, Famine and Terror.

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (interwar period, 1921-1939):

NEP, Famine and Terror

Multinational USSR

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

Show Trials, 1936-38

Many Bolsheviks leaders wiped out of history

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