History: Lenin and Stalin
The Russian Revolution of 1917 resulted in the overthrow of Czar Nicholas II and the fall of the Russian Empire. After the revolution, civil war erupted between the Bolsheviks and anti-Communist forces. By 1922 the Bolsheviks, led by V. I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky, had consolidated their power throughout most of the former empire. In December, 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was created when the soviet republics that had formed in Russia, the Ukraine, Byelorussia, and the Trans-Caucasian region were united. Lenin became the leader of the new country. A constitution was adopted in 1924. .
Lenin died in January, 1924. In the struggle for power that followed, Joseph Stalin, general secretary of the Communist party, joined with Lev Kamenev, a top party official, and Grigory Zinoviev, head of the Communist International, in opposing Trotsky. Trotsky argued for immediate world revolution. Stalin, however, insisted on building socialism in the Soviet Union first. Trotsky lost the struggle for power in 1925. Kamenev and Zinoviev later opposed Stalin and he had them removed from the government. In 1927 Trotsky was expelled from the party; in 1929 he was exiled from the Soviet Union.
In 1928, Communist leaders abandoned Lenin's New Economic Policy—a plan established in 1921 that provided for an economy with elements of socialism and capitalism—and embarked on their first Five-Year Plan. Their aim was to gradually remove all capitalist elements and to transform the Soviet Union from an agricultural into an industrial society. Specific goals were proclaimed for increased production in every area. The Soviet people were pushed to the limit of their capacity to fulfill the goals. Millions of people were used in slave labor.
One major objective was the collectivization of agriculture. Peasant landowners were required to give up their property and join state-run collective farms. The peasants, particularly the kulaks (richer peasants), resisted by destroying their property, crops, and livestock. About 5,000,000 kulaks were killed or put in slave labor camps. Agricultural production dropped drastically. In 1932–33, famine, caused by peasant destruction of crops and deliberate starvation by the government, led to millions of deaths.
The First Five-Year Plan, which ended in 1932, was highly successful in raising industrial production, and the Second Five-Year Plan was begun. Production goals covered more industries and collectivization continued. By 1937, about 95 per cent of the farmland had been collectivized, and about 93 per cent of the peasants belonged to collective farms. The Third Five-Year Plan, begun in 1937, was interrupted by World War II. In 1940, the government claimed that the gross national product had risen in 10 years from 32 billion rubles to 138 billion. The Soviet Union had become a major industrial power. Recovery of agriculture from the forced collectivization was slow, however, and production lagged.
Stalin, although undisputed dictator, suspected secret opposition against him everywhere. At his instigation, purges (expulsion of members) in the party and government were conducted to root out real or suspected enemies. During 1933–34, one-third of the party members were purged. In 1935, some of the "old Bolsheviks" were tried for treason and sent to prison. The next year they were tried again, and 16 of them, including Kamenev and Zinoviev, were shot. Other trials were held, and scores of top party leaders and some of the highest military commanders were executed. Huge purges of the party continued periodically until 1938.
Stalin's terror pervaded not only the party and the government, but all levels of Soviet life. Millions of people were arrested and taken away by the secret police. Their fate was usually to work in a slave labor camp run by the secret police until they died in anonymity. Slave labor was used to build many projects, such as dams and canals. By 1940, there were at least 10,000,000 prisoners in slave labor camps.
Meanwhile, in 1936, the Soviet government adopted a new constitution. It contained provisions guaranteeing civil rights, but these provisions were generally ignored by the country's rulers.
For years the Soviet regime stood generally aloof from other nations. Its foreign policy was guided by distrust of the capitalist countries. This distrust was mutual; the United States, for example, had refused to recognize the Communist government until 1933. With the growing power of Nazi Germany, however, the Soviet Union sought to establish friendly ties with such Western democracies as Great Britain and France. Soviet relations with Germany worsened during the Spanish Civil War, 1936–39, when the Soviets backed the Loyalist government while Germany and Italy supported General Franco's Nationalists.
The Soviet Union's relations with Great Britain and France deteriorated in 1938 when their leaders, meeting with Hitler at Munich, agreed to allow German forces to occupy part of Czechoslovakia. Soviet leaders feared that the Western democracies were trying to direct German expansionist efforts eastward.
In 1939, in the midst of an international crisis over Poland, the Soviet Union and Germany startled the world by concluding a pact of nonaggression and friendship. This pact bought time for the Soviet Union, which was unprepared for a major conflict, and erased Adolf Hitler's fear of fighting a two-front war. On September 1, 1939, Germany began World War II by invading Poland. On September 17 the Soviet army moved in from the east, and Poland for the fourth time in its history was divided up among its neighbors. On November 30, 1939, the Soviet Union attacked Finland.
The Finns fought bravely, but in March, 1940, were forced to make peace and cede several strategic areas to the Soviet Union. During this war the Soviet Union was expelled from the League of Nations for aggression. In June, 1940, the Soviets occupied and annexed Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, making them union republics.
The Soviet Union remained neutral while Germany was overrunning western Europe. Then, on June 22, 1941, the German army invaded the Soviet Union. By December most of the Ukraine was occupied, Leningrad was under siege, and Moscow was threatened. The Soviets regained some territory during the winter, but in 1942 the Germans advanced almost to the Caspian Sea. The turning point came at Stalingrad (Volgograd), scene of one of the war's bloodiest battles. The Germans made a supreme effort to capture this city but suffered the loss of their large army early in 1943. Then came the Soviet offensive, which continued until Berlin was reached in April, 1945.
After the German attack Great Britain promised to give the Soviet Union all possible aid against the common enemy. The United States sent lend-lease aid, which totaled more than $11,000,000,000 in goods during the war. Premier Stalin met with the leaders of the democracies in several wartime conferences—at Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam—to plan the conduct of the war and the making of peace. After the defeat of Germany in May, 1945, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan on August 8, 1945—two days after the first atomic bomb was dropped on Japan. Japan surrendered a few days later, and the Soviet Union occupied northern Korea and most of Manchuria.
In 1945 the Soviet Union cooperated with the other victor countries in setting up the United Nations. But a cold (non-shooting) war, in which the Soviet Union and the United States were the main adversaries, soon developed. The Soviets set up Communist regimes in the countries of eastern Europe after these nations were liberated from German occupation. These countries became satellites of the Soviet Union. Soviet military power seemed to be overwhelming and was viewed as a threat to the Western democracies. In 1949 the Soviet Union exploded its first nuclear weapon.
In describing the split between East and West, Winston Churchill said that an "iron curtain" had descended between eastern and western Europe. The Soviet Union tried to isolate the Communist area from the rest of the world. In the United Nations, the United States usually won majority support, but the Soviet Union often obstructed the will of the majority by use of its veto in the Security Council. Germany was split into two countries, East Germany (Communist) and West Germany (non-Communist). In 1948–49 the Soviets blocked Western access to Berlin, but the Western countries supplied the city by air. In 1948 the United States set up the Marshall Plan to rebuild western Europe and save it from Communism. In 1949 the United States with Canada and a number of western European powers formed an alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), to oppose the Soviet Union.
The Cold War intensified during the Korean War, 1950–53, when the Soviet Union indirectly supported China and North Korea against South Korea, the United States, and the United Nations. The Soviet Union did not send troops but did furnish supplies to the North Koreans.
