the house that stalin built. the power structure of the russian state the “tsar” the boyars...
TRANSCRIPT
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THE HOUSE THAT STALIN BUILT
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The power structure of the Russian State
The “Tsar” The Boyars (chiefs of bureaucracy)
The intelligentsia (middle class, small layer)
The Narod (Common People)
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The Origin of the Soviet Union
• First World War: Russia fights against Germany and Austria.
• Russia becomes exhausted, the last Emperor Nicholas II abdicates.
• Lenin’s Bolshevik party overthrows the provisional government on 25th October / 7th November 1917.
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Vladimir Lenin (1917-1924)
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What was Bolshevism?
• 1903 Lenin splits the Socialist movement: instead of working through parliamentary means (menshevism or Social Democracy), he advocates a dictatorship of the proletariat.
• The Russian revolution was the first proletarian revolution. The Bolshevik party renamed Communist.
• Lenin unleashes terror in the name of class warfare.• In 1921, with the Civil War over, Lenin announces
the New Economic Plan, allows small business to thrive.
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The Soviet Empire?
• USSR occupies most of territory of the former Russian Empire.
• Exceptions: Finland, Poland, Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) which become independent in 1918 (and were reabsorbed after 1945).
• 1924 Lenin dies, Georgian Bolshevik Josef Stalin consolidates power.
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Josef Stalin (1924-1953)
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What was Stalinism?
• 1920s saw rise of Fascism in Germany, Italy: war inevitable to defend the only communist country
• Socialism in one country meant building a powerful industrial state
• 1928 First Five-Year Plan to raise production.• Millions arrested, used as slave labour in construction• Electrification of the country: dams and canals
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Collectivization of Agriculture
• Decision to sell grain abroad to purchase industrial equipment
• Peasants forced into collectives, contributing their own livestock, land, equipment
• Industrialization of agriculture: tractors and combines
• Partly class war against peasants
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“Holodomor”
• In 1933 the crops fail, Soviets confiscate grain
• Millions die of starvation in the villages, especially in Ukraine
• Was it genocide by Russians against Ukrainians?
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“Collectivization” of agriculture
Theory: • increased output possible due to concentration,
mechanization
Doubtful results: • eradication of peasants’ motivation • Millions of people are starved to death when
land and food is confiscated• Soviet agriculture permanently disabled
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Industrialization
Introduction of ambitious 5-year plans:• Successful development of heavy industry.• Tractors, trucks, planes, Moscow metro • Soviet Union becomes a sophisticated industrial
power • Massive exploitation of prisoners’ work. Labour
camps. • Stalin’s utopian projects: White (Belomor) Sea Canal
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PURGES: THE GREAT TERROR
Elimination of political rivals: • murder of Sergei Kirov (1934) • show trials of fellow Bolsheviks• the Great Terror (peak in 1937) • Millions arrested, shipped to Siberia, worked to death
in the GULAG camps
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Gulags: Labour camps
0
500,000
1,000,000
1,500,000
2,000,000
2,500,000
3,000,000
1945 1948 1951 1953
Camps ColoniesTotal
Official police data. Reported to Stalin by Minister Kruglov. Source: Ahlberg 1992
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Why the Terror?
• Stalin falsified history to eliminate Trotsky from the history books
• Wrote his own History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union exaggerating his own role
• Feared a coup d’état and his own replacement by Trotsky, in exile in various countries
• Trotsky finally murdered in Mexico City by a Soviet agent in 1940
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Socialist Realism
• Term invented in 1932 to set Soviet policy on literature as the central art-form.
• Promulgated at the first Congress of Union of Soviet Writers (1934) by Zhdanov.
• Objective: to control literature and make it serve Stalin’s objective of Socialism in one country.
• To replace ambiguous (hence dangerous) avant-garde art forms with more traditional ones.
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The Cultural Program
• Zhdanov’s assignment: develop model of organization for all the arts.
• Use the creation of artists’ unions to reward and control: dachas and royalties for the compliant; poverty and eventual arrest for the uncooperative.
• Literature model later applied to film, visual arts, music, even architecture.
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“Ever Higher”(Serafima Riangina, 1934)
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Voloshyn, Reconstruction of Dnieper Hydro Plant, 1947
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The Worker and the Collective Farmer(Рабочий и Колхозница) Vera Mukhina
Created for the 1937International
Exhibition inParis; re-erected in theExhibition of EconomicAchievements,
Moscow;Recently restored
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“Stalin as an organizer of the October Revolution” by Karp Trokhimenko
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“Roses for Stalin”Boris Vladimirsky
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Socialist Realism: Meaning?
Formula worked out by Maxim Gorky:•Literature must be realistic (i.e., believable).•Appeal to the newly literate masses of workers and peasants.•“Party-minded” (Marxist-Leninist)•Optimistic – apotheosis at end.
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“Sotsrealism” in literature
• “Bildungsroman” – about the education of an individual with whom the reader is supposed to identify.
• “young positive hero”of correct class background, i.e., son of worker,
• overcomes difficulties thanks to help of older Bolshevik, perhaps party member,
• triumphs over difficulties at the end and has his consciousness raised.
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Socialist Realist FilmLiubov Orlova in film Circus.
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The Prelude to WarMolotov-Ribbentrop pact 23 August 1939.
Germany and USSR:
secret protocols divide
Eastern Europe into
“spheres of interest.”
USSR granted Eastern
Poland, Estonia, Latvia,
Lithuania, Finland and
Bessarabia (Moldavia).
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Execution of Polish Officers
• In 1939 some 20,000 Polish officers surrendered to Soviets
• In 1940 Stalin gives the order for them to be executed
• Why? – they pose a risk in case of invasion; they represent a hostile force
• Falsification of history: Soviets claim they were murdered by the Germans
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THE SECOND WORLD WAR(THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR)
• June 22, 1941 Germany invades USSR.
• Defence of Moscow and Leningrad
• July 1942 - February 1943 the Battle of Stalingrad
• “Generals win battles, economies win wars.”
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Victory!
• In 1945 USSR is superpower.
• Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, part of Poland, Moldavia all absorbed into USSR.
• German city Königsberg (Kaliningrad) becomes Soviet.
•
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The Cold War
• “Soviet bloc” of occupied countries is formed:
East Germany (GDR), Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria.
Winston Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech (Fulton, Missouri, 1946
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“Personality Cult”
• Stalin as an Icon• Religious-style indoctrination • Forged history• Stalin = Motherland• People cried when he died • Denounced by Nikita Khrushchev on 25
February1956 at 20th Communist Party congress.• Most popular leader in Russia today