Political Authority and government: the consolidation

"Now the republic hangs by a hair." Cheka, 1921

📌 Why was War Communism introduced?

• 1920s study: 42% of Moscow prostitutes came from bourgeois families
• Some women and girls were selling sex in exchange for soap or a loaf of bread
• A centralised system was needed to ensure the army was supplied
• This system could be continued into pace time
• Solution: War communism
• Bringing military discipline and efficiency to the economy
• Increasing state control of the economy
• Popular with the party as it showed a rapid route to socialism
• Began with grain requisitioning

Grain requisitioning

• May 1918: Food-Supplies Dictatorship set up
• Units of Red Guards and soldiers forcibly requisitioned food from peasants
• They resisted bitterly

Labour discipline

• Brought back to the workplace
• Fines for lateness and absenteeism
• Internal passports were introduced to stop fleeing to the countryside
• Piece-work rates brought back
• Bonuses brought back
• A workbook was needed to get rations

Nationalism of industry

• July 1918: decree on nationalisation brought industry under state control
• Administered by the Supreme Council of National Economy (Vesenkha)
• Workers' committees were replaced by single managers reporting to central authorities
• Often the old bourgeois managers now called specialists
• Did nothing by itself to increase production

Banning of private trade

• All private trade and manufacture were banned
• The industry was not producing enough consumer goods
• An enormous black market developed
• Most people could not have survived without this

Rationing

• Class-based rationing introduced
• Red Army soldiers and the labour force were given priority
• Smaller rations are given to civil servants and professional people such as doctors
• Smallest rations were given to burzhooi or middle classes
• These were barely enough to live on

The Cheka

The Cheka

By 1921: 31,000 frontline agents and 143,000 employees

• The Cheka was the secret police
• HQ was Lubianka in Moscow
• By September 1918, most districts throughout Russia had a Cheka branch
• Reported directly to Lenin and the Politburo

The Red Terror

• An assassination attempt on Lenin on the 30th of August 1918 launched the Cheka's Red Terror
• Intensified what was already happening
• Earlier in August Lenin sent a letter to Bolshevik leaders in Penza stated his determination to use terror to intimidate the whole rural population in the fight to obtain food for the towns and the army
• There were public hangings
• Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries were excluded from taking part in soviets

The Red Terror

• From June onwards SRs had been arrested in large numbers along with anarchists and other members of extreme left groups
• Many Kadets were already in prison, others fled to the south
• Tsar Nicholas along with his family and servants was shot on the 17 of July 1918 in Ekaterinburg in the Urals
• Execution now became the rule, prisoners in many cities were shot out of hand
• Official records put the death figures at the hands of the Cheka for the years 1918-20 at nearly 13,000
• Estimates put the real figure at 500,000

Class warfare

• Some Bolsheviks talked of wiping out the middle class completely
• The real purpose of the terror was to terrify all hostile groups
• Victims included large numbers of workers, peasants, princes, priests, prostitutes, judges, merchants, traders, even children
• All were guilty of 'bourgeois provocation' or counter-revolution
• No one was sure who the counter-revolutionaries were
• In the cities, Cheka arrests were terrifyingly random
• People were arrested for being near scenes of 'bourgeois provocation' or because they were acquaintances of suspects
• In the provinces, it was worse since local Cheka bosses controlled their patch and acted as petty tyrants with no court of appeal
• There was little central control
• The Cheka was particularly active in the countryside
• They helped requisition brigades to collect grain from the peasants
• Quotas were filled even if this left peasants starving
• Some brigades were little more than bandits – they took more than just-food
• Peasants resisted in a wave of uprisings and attacked the collectors
• Bolshevik Party officials were murdered
• The Cheka and Red Army units gave no quarter
• The Bolsheviks were effectively at war with the peasants
• To house all the dissident workers, troublesome peasants and bourgeois saboteurs, the Bolsheviks set up concentration and labour camps
• The machinery of terror and the police state were created under Lenin, not Stalin
• Hundreds of thousands perished
• No accurate figures are available as proper records were not kept or were lost

This was very counter-intuitive – communism and socialism was a people's movement

📌 So why were the Bolsheviks killing the people?

"War communism played the greatest role in consolidating the Bolshevik state" Assess the validity of this view. [25 marks]

• Balanced evaluation
• Range of factors
• Counter-arguments: Red Terror, Red Revolution, First Measures, Civil War
• Make your claim and sustain it throughout your essay

Intro

For War Communism to play the greatest role in consolidating the Bolshevik State, it needs to have impacted the whole of society economically and politically, establishing control and a clear purpose. It can be strongly argued that the impact of the Red Terror played a far more significant role in consolidating Bolshevik power. It affected the whole of society, implementing a strong sense of political control and power over the people, held together by the violence of the Bolshevik party and the Cheka, their secret police force, therefore making it more significant than War Communism.

The Expansion of The Great Terror

Stalin versus the rest of the party

• NKVD order 00447
• The role of Yezhov
• The role of Stalin

NKVD Order 00447

• 30th July 1937
• At the core in terms of numbers during the 1937-38 Great Terror
• Triggered by instructions sent by Stalin to Yezhov and the First Secretary of every republic
• Instigated a sweep of former Kulaks, active anti-Soviet elements and criminals
• Stalin feared the Kulaks who had completed their sentences were a threat in times of war
• The order divided them into two categories
• First category: were to be immediately arrested and after having their case considered by the Troiki they were to be shot
• Second category: subject to arrest and confinement in camps for a term ranging from 8-10 years
• Quotas of people to be arrested were established for every republic and region
• The highest was for Moscow with its region of 35000 -- 5000 to be shot
• Estimates of victims vary from 600,000 to 800,000
• From the end of August local leaders (e.g. Khrushchev) requested quota increases
• Always granted
• NKVD massively over-fulfilled their target
• Social cleansing on a massive scale

Yezhov

• Joined the Party in 1917
• Stalin brought him into the Central Committee in 1927
• Stalin gave him an investigative role
• Made head of the NKVD in Sept 1936 after the first show trial
• The Great Terror was called the Yezhovshchina
• Known as the 'Bloodthirsty Dwarf' or the 'Iron Hedgehog' (damn bro had a reputation)

Nikolai Yezhov

• He had a repellent personality
• A Pravda article says that women working in the NKVD were frightened of meeting him even in the corridors
• He lacked 'any trace of conscience or moral principles'

National Sweeps

• Next largest element
• Only recently explored by historians
• Mass campaign from Aug 1937 to uproot and deport national minorities from USSR's western borders
• There were fears they'd form a fifth column and collude with invaders
• Polish Operation: 140,000 arrested, 110,000 of whom were shot
• From Feb 1938 national operations were the prime function of the NKVD
• At least 250,000 were killed
• This ethnic cleansing continued during and after the war

📌 How many were killed in the Terror?

1937-38

• 1.5 million arrested
• 1.3 million of whom were sentenced
• 681,692 of whom were shot
• Most recent analysis suggests under-reporting of executions by some regional NKVDs
• Figures may have been up to 25% higher
• Large numbers died in the camps
• Based on NKVD data and demographic statistics, there is an estimated figure of between 950,000 and 1.2 million deaths

Stalin's role in the Terror

• Chief mover, agent, and director of the Terror
• Stalin authorised the Terror
• Stalin was paranoid about everyone
• Orchestrated the propaganda campaign in the press
• Orchestrated specific points in the prosecution cases in the three major show trials of old rivals
• Appointed Yezhov to step up the terror and records show Yezhov was his most frequent visitor in the Kremlin
• Stalin agreed to local requests to increase the quota of victims
• Liked to incriminate his top colleagues by making them join him in signing hundreds of death warrants containing thousands of names
• Demanded death penalties at the Shakhty trial (first big show trial in 1928)
• Extended this to Party oppositionists after the Ryutin Platform
• Willingness to purge whole categories of people was seen when he called for the 'elimination of the Kulaks as a class'.
• Only Stalin could start and end the mass arrests and executions
• He did stop them in November 1938

The End of the Terror

• Administrative systems were falling apart with key personnel missing
• Economic growth was severely curtailed
• Purges were destabilising Russian society
• Stalin called an end to the Terror in November 1938
• A joint Sovnarkom-Central Committee resolution forbade the carrying out of 'mass operations for arrest and exile'
• Yezhov was replaced as head of the NKVD a week later by Beria
• There was a review of the arrests
• A significant number were let out of the gulags
• Served to associate the excesses of the Terror with Yezhov
• It was as also to give the message that the system had been stabilised
• There was no real relaxation in state repression
• Yezhov was shot in February 1940

How powerful was Stalin by 1941?

📌 What was the status of his power by 1941?

Personal dictatorship

• Stalin's word was law
• No challenge to authority
• System moulded to his will
• Arbitrary and unpredictable

Terror and force

• Central to rule
• Great Terror: cemented rule
• NKVD feared
• Network of informants
• Citizens highly restricted

Ideology

• Committed
• Marxist revolutionary
• The upheaval of millions of lives
• Stalinism built on Marxism-Leninism

No political opposition

• Purges of Party
• Old Bolsheviks removed
• Politburo: disappears
• Central Committee meetings declined
• Complete control

A new elite

• The Cultural Revolution opened up positions
• Owed everything to Stalin
• Kept loyal by material rewards
• Constantly under threat

Propaganda and censorship

• The heart of the system
• Integrated everywhere
• Propaganda backed up by censorship
• Stalin emphasised as Russia's saviour

Cult of personality

• Underpin Stalin as the Lenin of today
• Bind Party and People to Stalin
• Identify regime achievements with Stalin
• Project a father-like persona

Stalinist economy

• Five-Year Plan centrepiece of Soviet life
• Everyone = employee of the state
• Clear-out of economic managers
• Industrialised society

Tradition

• Links with cult of personality
• 'The people need a Tsar' ~ Stalin
• Appeal to Russian nationalism

📌 How far was Stalin's Russia a totalitarian state?

Evidence for:

• McCauley: "Stalin came nearer to creating the model totalitarian state than anyone before or since"
• Those in the gulags had no rights, completely at the mercy of their guards
• Politburo members dependent on Stalin
• Police and Party authorities became obsessed with the fear of social disorder
• The NKVD operations
• Emphasis on Russian culture
• Alienation of anyone non-Russian/anti-Soviet
• Terror central to the regime
• The party had become a submissive tool

Evidence against:

• Full of contradictions and inefficiencies
• Stalin was dependent on Party elites and regional subordinates to get policies put into action
• In turn, they had to interact with society as a whole
• Considerable disorderliness despite surface obedience to orders
• Soviet people were not just passive agents subject to those at the top
• Developed a way to deal with the state
• Resistance and avoidance
• Interpreting communist party ideas and values to match their interests
• Some just took up the Soviet way of thinking
• Tried to eradicate anti-Soviet elements in their life
• Peasants found all sorts of ways to subvert the running of the Kolkhozy
• Lack of effort, non-cooperation, insubordination
• Party/local officials caught by contradictions in policy

Historian's interpretations

• Barber estimated one-fifth of all workers enthusiastically supported the regime and its politics while another minority opposed it but did not overtly
• The need to be seen as 'the Lenin of today' has been identified by some as a psychological driver for Stalin's revolution

Schapiro & Ulam:

• Lenin and a small group of Bolsheviks seized power
• Imposed their will on an unwilling populace
• To stay in power they applied a regime of terror
• Within the framework of a highly centralised state
• Lenin and Stalin were virtually the same
• Stalin carried on what Lenin started
• Stalinism was simply the fully developed version of Lenin's repressive creed of revolution

Cohen:

• Acknowledged the Bolshevism of 1921-28 contained the 'seeds' of Stalinism
• Also argued circumstances played their part
• Civil war, terrible economic conditions, failure of world revolution to materialise
• Forced Lenin to develop a highly centralised state after the revolution

With this view if Lenin had lived he would have:

• allowed a more enlightened state to develop
• encouraged more democracy
• not supported forced collectivisation or the purges
• abhorred the cult of personality
• Opening of the archives has challenged the latter view: Lenin was more ruthless than sometimes supposed
• Actively encouraged terror to smash his enemies and was a fierce class warrior
• Moulded the state out of chaos after WWI
• Was a one-party authoritarian state

Kotkin:

• Thinks continuity is self-evident
• Wants us to see that much of what is thought of as the worst of Stalin's rule is present in Lenin's
• That does not mean Stalin did not have a decisive influence