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Historical Background: Stalin took power in the early 1920s and became the leader of Russia. He was a paranoid man who created a number of policies which would end up killing millions of Russians (known as the purges or ‘the great purge’); many more would be deported into northern Siberia where they would be worked to death in forced labor camps. They were often charged with the crimes of being traitors of the state, and anyone who spoke out was killed. His five-year plans, which are some of his most famous policies, resulted in widespread industrial growth, making the Soviet Union the second most powerful industrial country, behind only the U.S.; and many cities were also created to exploit Russia’s vast mineral wealth. A large portion of the military was also ‘purged,’ resulting in near-defeat when Germany invaded the U.S.S.R.

Directions: Choose 8 of the 12 documents below to read and analyze. For each document, you are to develop a paragraph that clearly answers the topic question.

Topic Question: What are the major features of totalitarianism, and how did they impact the lives of citizens in the Soviet Union?

Document 1

“…We must pursue the removal of church property by any means necessary in order to secure for ourselves a fund of several hundred million gold rubles…In order to get our hands on this fund of several million gold rubles (and perhaps seven several hundred billion), we must do whatever is necessary. One clever writer of statecraft correctly said that if it is necessary for the realization of a well-known political goal to perform a series of brutal actions then it is necessary to do them in the most energetic manner and in the shortest time, because masses of people will not tolerate the protracted use of brutality.”

V.I. Lenin from the Library of Congress Internet Exhibit “Revelations from the Russian Archives Anti-Religious Campaigns, “ http://lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/anti.html

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Document 2

“…Comrade Stalin, having become Secretary-General, has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution. Comrade Trotsky, on the other hand, as his struggles against the Central Committee on the question of the Peoples Commissariat for Communications has already proved, is distinguished by his outstanding ability

V.I. Lenin from Internet Modern History Sourcebook, www. Fordham.deu/halsall/mod/lenin-testament.html__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Document 3

“…In the conditions now existing in the Soviet Union, opportunism in completed form would be an aspiration of the upper strata of the working class towards compromise with the developing new bourgeoisie (kulaks and NEPmen) and with world capitalism, at the expense of the interests of the broad mass of the workers and the peasant poor…In their bureaucratic self conceit, the Stalinists “facilitate” their maneuvers by cutting off the party, in essence of the matter, from all participation in the political decisions and thus avoiding its resistance”.

Leon Trotsky, Platform of the Joint Opposition, 1927, from The Trotsky Internet Archive, http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1927/opposition/index.htm________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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Document 4

“The Soviet government’s successes in the sphere of the collective farm movement are now being spoken of by everyone. Even our enemies are forced to admit that the successes are substantial. And they really are very great…There is no need to prove that these successes are of supreme importance for the sake of our country, for the whole working class, which is the leading force of our country, and lastly, for the party itself. To say nothing of the direct practical results, these successes are of immense practical value for the internal life of the party. They imbue our party with a spirit of cheerfulness and confidence in its strength.”.

J.V Stalin, “Dizzy with Success”, from Works. Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing House, 1955____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Document 5

Counterrevolutionary Crimes

“58-1 “Counterrevolutionary” is understood as any action directed toward the overthrow, subversion, or weakening of the power of worker-peasant councils or of their chosen (according to the Constitution of the USSR and the constitutions of union republics) worker-peasant government of the USSR, union and autonomous republics, or toward the subversion or weakening of the external security of the USSR and the fundamental economic, political, and national gains of the proletarian revolution”

“…the supreme measure of criminal punishment- shooting with confiscation of all property, or with mitigating circumstances-deprivation of liberty for a term of ten years with confiscation of all property”

“58-14 Counterrevolutionary sabotage, i.e. conscious failure to perform some defined duties or intentionally negligent fulfillment of them, with special purpose of weakening the authority of the government and functioning of the state apparatus, shall be punishable by-

“deprivation of liberty for a term of not less than one year, with confiscation of all or part of one’s property, with an increase, in especially aggravating circumstances, to the supreme measure of social defense-shooting, with confiscation of property”.

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Article 58, Criminal Code of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, http://www.cyberussr.com/rus/uk58-e.html

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Document 6

Stalin propaganda poster, reading: "Beloved Stalin—a fortune of the nation!"

Timeline. “Stalin and Socialist Realism”http://www.xtimeline.com/evt/view.aspx?id=46374__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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Document 7

“…It became apparent that many Party, Soviet and economic activists who were branded in 1937-1938 as “enemies” were actually never enemies, spies, wreckers, etc., but were always honest Communists… Stalin was a distrustful man, sickly suspicious; we know this from our work with him. He could look at a man and say: “Why are your eyes so shifty today? Or Why are you turning so much today and avoiding to look me directly in the eyes? The sickly suspicion created in him a general distrust even toward eminent Party workers whom he had known for years. Everywhere and in everything he saw ‘enemies”, “two-facers” and “spies”. Possessing unlimited power, he indulged in great willfulness and choked a person morally and physically. A situation was created where one could not express one’s own will”.

From a speech by Krushchev to the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (February 1956), The Anti-Stalin Campaign and International Communism. A Selection of Documents (ed.) by the Russian Institute, Columbia University (New York, 1956), extracts from pp.9-85____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Document 8

RESOLUTION OF THE COUNCIL OF PEOPLE'S COMMISSARS OF THE UKRAINIAN SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC AND OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY (BOLSHEVIK) OF UKRAINE ON BLACKLISTING VILLAGES THAT MALICIOUSLY SABOTAGE THE COLLECTION OF GRAIN.

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In view of the shameful collapse of grain collection in the more remote regions of Ukraine, the Council of People's Commissars and the Central Committee call upon the oblast executive committees and the oblast [party] committees as well as the raion executive committees and the raion [party] committees: to break up the sabotage of grain collection, which has been organized by kulak and counterrevolutionary elements; to liquidate the resistance of some of the rural communists, who in fact have become the leaders of the sabotage; to eliminate the passivity and complacency toward the saboteurs, incompatible with being a party member; and to ensure, with maximum speed, full and absolute compliance with the plan for grain collection.

The following measures should be undertaken with respect to these villages :

1. Immediate cessation of delivery of goods, complete suspension of cooperative and state trade in the villages, and removal of all available goods from cooperative and state stores.

2. Full prohibition of collective farm trade for both collective farms and collective farmers, and for private farmers.

3. Cessation of any sort of credit and demand for early repayment of credit and other financial obligations.

4. Investigation and purge of all sorts of foreign and hostile elements from cooperative and state institutions, to be carried out by organs of the Workers and Peasants Inspectorate.

5. Investigation and purge of collective farms in these villages, with removal of counterrevolutionary elements and organizers of grain collection disruption.

The Council of People's Commissars and the Central Committee call upon all collective and private farmers who are honest and dedicated to Soviet rule to organize all their efforts for a merciless struggle against kulaks and their accomplices in order to: defeat in their villages the kulak sabotage of grain collection; fulfill honestly and conscientiously their grain collection obligations to the Soviet authorities; and strengthen collective farms.

CHAIRMAN OF THE COUNCIL OF PEOPLE'S COMMISSARS OF THE UKRAINIAN SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC - V. CHUBAR'.

SECRETARY OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY (BOLSHEVIK) OF UKRAINE - S. KOSIOR.

6 December 1932.

Addendum to the minutes of Politburo [meeting] No. 93. http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/111famine.html

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Document 9

We Live, Not Feeling

We live, not feeling the country beneath us,Our speech inaudible ten steps away,But where they're up to half a conversation -- They'll speak of the Kremlin mountain man.

His thick fingers are fat like worms,And his words certain as pound weights.His cockroach whiskers laugh,And the tops of his boots glisten.

And all around his rabble of thick-skinned leaders,He plays through services of half-people.Some whistle, some meow, some snivel,He alone merely caterwauls and prods.

Like horseshoes he forges decree after decree -- Some get it in the forehead, some in the brow, some in the groin, and some in the eye.Whatever the execution -- it's a raspberry to himAnd his Georgian chest is broad.

---Osip Mandelstam, We Live, Not Feeling, 1934?

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Document 10

Modified photo of Joseph Stalin and Nikolai Yezhov, chief of the Soviet Secret Police; 1937

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Document 11

"Remember, this is a country where people were illiterate, lived in virtual darkness, wore birch-bark shoes. Even now, I think it's [achievements under Stalin] like something out of a fairy tale."

Tatiana Fedorova (laborer, Russia) Peoples Century, Red Flag, PBS-WGBH, Boston,

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1997

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Document 12

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