Now what?
Early years of the USSR
We got problems….
• Nationalization of land
• Extension of wide-spread economic
problems
• 5 million dead starvation
• peasant revolts  put down by military
• What to do??
New Economic Policy--1921
• Growing hatred of Bolsheviks by unions &
workers
• Temporary “retreat” to limited capitalism
– Compromise system
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Not widespread
Peasants can sell surplus crops/goods
TAXED—peasants bear brunt (as always)
“taxation in kind” -- successful
Lenin’s policies
• Govt is assigned control over all
– In charge of all materials of life
• Factories –workers committees (overseers)
– Ensure production numbers (quotas)
• Appropriated funds
– Bank accounts
• Abolished court system—install People’s
Court
• No titles of nobility
Russian Orthodox Church
• No more religious
instruction
• Churches turned into
museums or storage
facilities
• All religion derided
• Marriage—from
religious to civil
• Simpler to marry &
divorce (postcards)
Cheka
• Extraordinary Commission for Combating
Counterrevolution and Sabotage
• 1. To investigate and liquidate all attempts
or actions connected with counterrevolution or sabotage, no matter from
whom they may come, throughout Russia.
• 2. The handing over for trial by
Revolutionary Tribunal of all saboteurs and
counter-revolutionaries, and the elaboration
of measures to fight them
Feliks Dzerzhinsky
• “Bread War.”
• Elimination of the Kulaks
(“wealthy” peasant
farmers)
• Not only were individual
peasants executed but
entire families and whole
villages as well.
Foreign Policy
• Georgi Chicherin 1918-1930
• #1 objective—international recognition as
legitimate government & nation
• deep concerns about communism
– GB & USA (USA held out longest--1933)
– Rhetoric—international revolution – “Workers of the
World Unite” – “We will bury you!”
• Germany recognized first—outcast nation WWI
– Treaty of Rapallo —economic & political reasons
– Cancel mutual debts & territorial claims against the
other
– Lasted until Adolf
Maxim Litvinov
• Appointed by Lenin as
ambassador to Britian
• Arrested for prisoner
exchange
• “Roaming Ambassador”
• Largely responsible for
international recognition
• Harpo Marx & FDR
– Groucho’s bro
Central Committee of the
Communist Party
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Politburo --- Orgburo
Set up within the central committee
Need to make more rigid decisions
2 bodies—subordinate to central cmte
Politburo
• 5 members
–Lenin
–Trotsky
–Stalin
• Policy-making body
Orgburo --- Secretariat
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Implement policies
 a LOT of POWER
Check up and REGULATE
Determine promotions
Assign jobs
dictatorships
• We are being run by an elite dictatorship
of the proletariat and the Communist Party
Vladimir Lenin
• Disillusioned with masses
• No kind of freedom is more important than
the central idea of Bolshevism
• Masses—low cultural level
• Soviets should not have any say in
determining Party politics
• 1918—BolsheviksCommunists (name)
NEPmen
• New Economic Policy men
• Those who profited by some allowance of
capitalism
• Became small BUSINESSMEN—profited
due to limited capitalism
KULAKS
• peasants who used extra
surplusescapitalists
• Wealthy peasants
• Trotskyopposed NEPgave too many
concessions to peasants
• Believed in WORLD revolution
• “truer” socialism
…time marches on…
• Mid 1920s—USSR on way to full capitalism
– Consumer goods for people
• Caused dissension in Party
• 1924—Vladimir Lenin dead
– Party wo/rudder  power vacuum
Post-Lenin
• Power vacuum & struggle for power
• Left—Trotsky –WORLD REVOLUTION –
stop NEP
• Right—Nicholas Bukharin – World
Revolution & NEP
• Center—Josef Stalin – Russia as EXAMPLE
of socialism for the WORLD – world
revolution not as prominent (lip service) –
most effort needed to transform Russia
Trotsky
• World revolution~~SOCIALISM
• COMINTERN
• Communist international
– Promote world-wide communism
• Propaganda
• Infiltration
– stir up trouble
Trotsky
• NEP gave too many concessions to
peasants
•  peasants should be limited (thumb!)
• More cosmopolitan (exile experiences)
Josef Stalin
• Iosif Djugashvili
• “Man of Steel”
• Georgian—most of life in
Russia
• Not exposed to outside
• RUSSIAN!
– By choice
Stalin
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Radical convert
NEP? No standing one way or other
Could be seen as against
When in power—5-year Plans
Goal: transform Russia into socialist
example for World
• Always Russia #1
Stalin
• Attitude of Russian Communism
• Marxism-Leninism
– Pseudoscience
– Pseudoreligion (more later)
• Comprehensive—Russian style
• Ruthlessly intolerant
• Had ALL answers for EVERYTHING!!
– His way—there ain’t no highway!
Stalin
• People act the way they do because of their
class
•  change system to eleminate “badness”
• Pseudoreligion – doctrine of “salvation”
• Represented interests of masses (yeah, right!)
– Messiah – proletariat
– Paradise – classless society
– Church – Communist Party
– Scripture – Marx & Lenin
Stalin
• Gained eventual power
– Played others against each other (Trotsky v
Bukharin)
• Trotsky—1st to fall
– Lost military leadership
– Outlawed by Central Committee
– Condemned as “factionalist” (counterrevolutionary)
– Not present @ Lenin’s funeral (bad!)
– Refused to fight for position—arrogant
– Exiled OUT
– Assassinated – Mexico City (icepick)
Kamenev, STALIN, Zinoviev
• Triumvirate? Didn’t last…
• Stalin
– Controlled patronage in Party
– Recruited people loyal to HIM
– Called himself “Lenin’s right-hand man”
• NOT
– Purges—kill off “old guard” followers of Lenin
• no opposition
– 1936-1939 BLOODY
• Secret police—NKVD—hand-picked
Stalin: Man of Steel