Stalin: a totalitarian dictatorship
Stalin: a totalitarian dictatorship
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Stalin defeated Trotsky after Lenin’s death (1924-1927)
Stalin’s economic program  Quick industrialisation of a backward
country to construct “Socialism in one country” and transform the
USSR in a world power
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The state took over all the sectors of the Soviet economy
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The government passed five-year plans to conduct a centralised
economy
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Collectivization of agriculture  terrible social consequences
because peasants’ refusal to give up their new acquired lands
Results:
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Quick industrialisation based upon heavy industry (iron and steel,
coal, armament)
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Utter failure in farming
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Cruel repression and terrible death toll
Stalin: a totalitarian dictatorship
Stalin: a totalitarian dictatorship
Stalin: a totalitarian dictatorship
Stalin: a totalitarian dictatorship
Stalin: a totalitarian dictatorship
Stalin: a totalitarian dictatorship
Stalin: a totalitarian dictatorship
Stalin: a totalitarian dictatorship
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Industrialisation took place at a terrible
social cost
From the very beginning, Stalin set up
a dictatorship based upon terror
• Anticommunists
• Trostkyists
• Farmers against collectivisation…
• All sort of opponents within the
Communist Party
Stalin: a totalitarian dictatorship
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Unlike Hitler, Stalin’s repression was carried out massively within
his own party (SUCP)
• Power in the USSR was completely centralised  SUCP 
Secretary General (Stalin)
• “Great Purges” or “Moscow Trials” started in 1934 after Sergei
Kirov’s assassination
• The world was astonished when a great part of the Bolshevik
leaders went into trial, accused of being counterrevolutionaries
• After being drugged and tortured they confess that they
have been plotting against the USSR for years (“show
trials”)
• In 1939 70% of the SUCP had been purged  90% of the
Red Army generals were shot or sent to the Gulag
(concentration camps)
Stalin: a totalitarian dictatorship
Stalin: a totalitarian dictatorship
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Not only the SUCP was persecuted
Soviet society as a whole suffered the consequences of Stalin’s
dictatorship
The Checka, GPU, NKVD, KGB (Soviet subsequent secret political
police) repressed Soviet people
The year 1937 became was the apex of Stalinist repression
Over the purges of 1937 and 1938:
• 1.700.000 civilians were arrested
• More than two million were purged from their jobs
• About 700.000 were executed
• Millions of Soviet citizens were sent during Stalin’s dictatorships
to the Gulag (Soviet concentration camps system
Stalin: a totalitarian dictatorship
Stalin: a totalitarian dictatorship
Stalin: a totalitarian dictatorship
Stalin: a totalitarian dictatorship
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As a result of the repression, more and more power was
concentrated in Stalin’s hands
Stalin’s “cult of personality” was established in the USSR
Even in a more acute way that in the Duce or the Fuhrer,
the figure of Stalin was constantly praised by the Soviet
propaganda
Stalin: a totalitarian dictatorship
Stalin: a totalitarian dictatorship
Stalin: a society shaped by terror
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Soviet society was shaped by the urgent drive for
industrializing the USSR
Farmers went through all the hardships caused by
collectivization
Urban workers toiled 8 hours a day, 7 days a week
Subbotnik or “Communist Saturdays”: days
of volunteer work that became obligatory later
Stalin: a totalitarian dictatorship
Stalin: a society shaped by terror
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The Constitution of 1936 proclaimed that the USSR was
classless society… reality was altogether different
SUCP bureaucracy (about 14 million people) made up a
new upper class with different privileges:
• Higher salaries (4 to 20 times the average salary)
• Food extra rations
• Better accommodation…
All the members of the Communist bureaucracy were
subjected to Stalin’s will
1930s purges reminded everybody of this.
Stalin: a totalitarian dictatorship
Stalin: a society shaped by terror
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After some social changes after the revolution, Stalin
forced the Soviet to return to the traditional values of
hierarchy and authority (teachers, parents, army
commanders…)
The achievement of different women’s rights (divorce,
legal abortion - Decree on Women’s Healthcare-) and the
difficult social conditions over the civil war reduce the
Soviet birth rate  Stalin imposed again the traditional
family model (restrictions to divorce, abortion illegal…)
Internationalism was substituted by Russian nationalism