The Soviet Union
Creating the
“New Soviet Citizen”
Timeline of Early Soviet History
Russia governed by Czar until 1917;
autocratic political system & feudal
economy.
Country faced heavy military losses in
WWI; popular unrest.
Moderates lead revolution in May 1917;
Czar imprisoned.
Bolshevik Revolution in Nov. 1917; Czar
and his family murdered; Russia withdrew
from the war; moderates in exile.
Bolshevik Revolution
V. I. Lenin was the head of Soviet
government & Bolshevik Communist
party from 1917
to his death
in 1924.
Josef Stalin was a
top administrator in
Bolshevik Party
Lenin’s alteration of Marxism
Marx wrote that a communist
revolution can only occur in
advanced capitalist system. Russia
in 1917 had a feudal economy.
How could revolution occur there?
Through a radical party of
intellectuals to lead the workers.
Lenin’s revision of Marxism called
Marxism-Leninism.
Bolshevik Revolution
Lenin sanctioned brutal tactics to
seize power (e.g., “salami tactics”),
but not a totalitarian system because
no cult of the leader or total control
of society.
With Lenin’s death, a power struggle
ensued.
Stalin – a nationalist on the right –
seized power.
Joseph Stalin
Head of both the Communist party
and Soviet government from 1924 to
1953.
Most interested in power and not
ideology.
By 1928, established himself as
absolute dictator.
Increasingly paranoid & dangerous.
Stalin’s totalitarian elements
1. cult of the leader: the all-knowing
and all-seeing Father of the People.
Stalin’s totalitarian elements
2. radical ideology
Marxism-Leninism the driving rationale for
Stalin’s power grab. But Stalin altered the
ideology to serve his personal nationalist
ambitions.
Stalinism refers to a brand of communism
that is both extremely repressive and
nationalistic.
Stalin’s totalitarian elements
Stalin intertwined his own myth with the
revolutionary struggle. One current
gallery exhibit about Stalin notes:
“Only a few photographs of Stalin exist
from his youth and the early revolutionary
period. A past was created for Stalin
through works of art. He was often cut
and pasted into photographs to create an
artificial history which placed him at the
forefront of events.”
Stalin’s totalitarian elements
3. organization
Soviet communist party effectively
solidified Stalin’s power. Party cells
operated in every workplace & classroom,
with party members reporting on anyone
who was not loyal enough.
Stalin’s totalitarian elements
4. mass mobilization in the early
years.
5. secret police – the KGB.
Stalin’s totalitarian elements
6. central control of all organizations.
News media: no independent press; only
TASS news service.
Heavily centralized “command economy.”
Stalin’s 1st goal to create an advanced
industrial economy. Peasants resisted;
killings; exile. Severe agricultural losses
& famine. After a decade, millions dead.
Art, film, literature
was put in service
to the ideology.
Soviet art had to
praise noble
factory workers,
the “new Soviet
man & woman.”
Stalin’s totalitarian elements
7. Violence & Terror. Brutality on
massive scale. Targets: political
opponents & party rivals.
Stalin’s totalitarian elements
Creation of a gulag system. Gulags were
slave labor camps for critics, former
capitalists, non-cooperative peasants &
party rivals.
Stalin’s totalitarian elements
Political purges from 1934 to 1936
were called the Great Terror.
Show trials, with coerced confessions
and summary executions, from 1936
to 1938.
During his rule, one million direct
killings & 12 million deaths in Soviet
prisons & slave labor camps.