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By 1934 Stalin had consolidated his power
Tools of terror inherited from Lenin were put to use
 “Wrecking” and “counterrevolutionary activity”
“Portrait of Stalin in Blood,” 54 mis.
invoked to justify repression
http://youtu.be/gtWkn5IhfqU
 Legal process used to enforce political decisions
▪ Liquidating opponents through scapegoating and falsification
▪ Secret police with unbridled powers
▪ Criminal codes with special class of counterrevolutionary crimes
Show trials under Lenin
▪ 1918 - Persecution of SR’s - Trial of Iulii Martov and the newspaper Vpered
▪ 1920 - August - Menshevik Trial “Tactical Centre”
▪ 1922 - June 8 - August 7 - Trial of Social Revolutionaries
Initial show trials under Stalin
▪ 1928 - Shakhty trial
▪ 1930 - Industrial Party trial
▪ 1931 - “Union Bureau” of Menshevik Party
▪ 1933 - Metropolitan-Vickers Trial - aka “Engineer’s Trial”
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Less chaos, many improvements
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Increase in income and industrial productivity
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1935 – rationing abolished but consumer goods still
in extremely short supply
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Greater productivity
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Ex-peasants adjust to industrial workplace
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Response to moral appeals, piece-rates
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Production norms increased; punishment for noncompliance
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Rewards for “shock workers” – “Stakhanovites”
Harsh industrial discipline
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Absenteeism
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“Wrecking” applied to accidents and failure to meet quotas
Rural conditions remain exceedingly harsh
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Peasant lives controlled by collective
▪ No social “safety net”
▪ Collective only provides grain; peasants depend on own plot & animal for food
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Primary education
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Thousands of new schools in countryside
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Forced assignment of teachers
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Significant reduction in illiteracy
Secondary education
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Industrialization required expanded technical training
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Increased attention to teaching hard sciences (mathematics, physics)
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Goal to replace the old intelligentsia whose loyalties are doubtful with a new, loyal cadre of
technical experts
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The “Congress of Victors”
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Stalin’s policies affirmed, declared a “genius”
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Peasants fully collectivized
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Rapid industrialization underway
...and the rest of the story
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Undercurrent of dissatisfaction
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Stalin’s autocratic decision-making
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Repressions used to support industrialization
and collectivization rub many raw
Fear and terror become part of Party life
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Self-criticism institutionalized
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Of 2,000 delegates to the Congress, more than half
arrested before next Congress in 1939
Stalin begins promoting up-and-coming favorites
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Nikita Khrushchev, later First Secretary of the C.P. (1953-64)
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Alexei Kosygin, later Chairman of Council of Ministers (1964-80)
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1926-34 top Communist Party leader in Leningrad
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Popular conciliator, supported by “rightists”
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Disputes Stalin’s radical “leftist” methods
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Stalin worries about an alliance between Kirov and
moderates:
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Bukharin, Piatakov, Kamenev and Ordzhonikidze
December 1, 1934, Kirov shot by Leonid Nikolayev, a “misfit”
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Stalin issues decree forbidding appeal of death sentences
for counterrevolutionary crimes
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Executions must take place within 24 hours
December 5 – “Trial of the White Guardists”
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37 shot in Leningrad, 29 in Moscow
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December 17 - Zinoviev arrested
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December 28-29 – “Leningrad Centre” – Kirov murder trial
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Nikolayev and 13 others shot
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1935 - January 15-18 - "Moscow Centre" trial
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Zinoviev, Kamenev and 17 others convicted for
guiding counter-revolutionary activities of
Zinovievites and "fanning" the inclinations of Kirov’s killers
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Zinoviev and Kamenev held "morally responsible" for assassinating Kirov
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Zinoviev gets 10 years; Kamenev, 5 years
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Administrative decisions send 49 others to labor camps and 29 to exile.
1935 - January 23 – Secret police officials trial
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Medved, chief of Leningrad GPU and 11 subordinates accused of dereliction of duty – knew
about the Kirov plot but did not properly investigate.
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All defendants confess, draw one to ten years imprisonment
1935 - July 25 - Kamenev and others - Plot against Stalin
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Thirty-eight defendants including Kamenev accused of plotting against Stalin
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Two defendants shot; Kamenev gets 10 years
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Personality cult centered on the “Great Leader”
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Instead of “withering away” the state gains authority
over all aspects of life
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Justifications
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Internal threats: Wreckers and counterrevolutionaries
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External threats: Western hostility, rise of Nazism
Repudiation of Marxism
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Egalitarianism declared “bourgeois”
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Internationalism defeated – nationalism revived
Greatly expanded political education
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Denounce enemies – foreign and domestic
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Tight controls over media
“Socialist realism” in the arts
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Censorship – ideas are weapons; dire consequences of nonconformity
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No irony or ambiguity; everyone depicted in a stereotypical way
▪ Enthusiastic workers, dastardly enemies, Stalinism as the answer