Stalinist socialism is called thatsocio-political system, which was formed and existed in the era of Joseph Stalin's rule from the second half of the 1920s to 1953. During this period, the USSR experienced industrialization, collectivization, several waves of terror. The socialism of the Stalin era is a classic totalitarian state with a command economy and a wide repressive apparatus.
New economy
The first thing that relates to Stalinist socialism, -this is the accelerated industrialization that was carried out in the USSR in the 1930s. Having come to power, the Bolsheviks got a country destroyed by a long-term Civil War and a severe economic crisis. Therefore, to stabilize the situation, the party headed by Lenin decided to make an ideological compromise and initiated the NEP. This name was given to a new economic policy, which implied the existence of a free market enterprise.
NEP in the shortest possible time led torestoration of the country. Meanwhile, in 1924, Lenin died. The power became collective for a while. Eminent Bolsheviks were concentrated around the party steering, who were behind the organization of the October Revolution and the victory in the Civil War. Gradually, Stalin eliminated all his competitors. At the turn of the 1920s and 1930s, he established a one-man totalitarian power. Having secured his exclusive right to lead a huge state, the General Secretary of the Central Committee proceeded to industrialization. It became the basis of what will soon become known as Stalinist socialism.
Five Year Plan
План проведения индустриализации состоял из several important points. Began absorption by the public sector of the entire economy. The national economy now had to live according to five-year plans. Proclaimed "saving mode". All the funds of the country were abandoned for the construction of new factories and plants.
Наконец, сталинский социализм подразумевал саму industrialization - the creation of machine production in industry and other spheres of the national economy. Her goal was to move away from agrarian remnants of the economy. The country did not have enough experienced personnel, and the USSR itself was in international isolation. Therefore, the Politburo sought to ensure economic and technical independence from the West.
Forced industrialization was carried out foran account of the resources pumped out of the village, home loans, cheap labor, prison labor, and proletarian enthusiasm. "Economy mode" was reflected in everything - housing, food, salary. The state has created a system of tough exploitation of the population, limiting its consumption. In 1928-1935 There were grocery cards in the country. Forced industrialization was driven by ideology. The Soviet government still dreamed of a world revolution and hoped to use a short, peaceful respite to create a new economy, without which the struggle against the imperialists would be impossible. Therefore, the years of industrialization in the USSR (1930s) ended not only with the appearance of a qualitatively different economy, but also with the strengthening of the country's defense capability.
Shock construction
The first five-year plan fell on 1928-1932.New industrial facilities in this period appeared mainly in the field of energy, metallurgy and engineering. Separate plans were prepared for each industry and some particularly important economic regions (for example, Kuzbas). The Dneprostroi project, in the framework of which a hydroelectric power station and a dam on the Dnieper were built, was exemplary.
Stalinist socialism gave the country a newCoal and Metallurgical Center in the fields of Siberia and the Urals. Before that, most of the enterprises were located in the European part of the USSR. The first five years have changed the situation. Now Soviet industry was distributed over the territory of a huge country in a more balanced way. The transfer of enterprises to the east was also dictated by the fears of the political leadership of the war with the collective West.
In Stalin's time Dalstroy appeared,engaged in gold mining in the Far East (especially in Kolyma). The labor of GULAG prisoners was actively used in this region. These people built many enterprises of the first five-year plans. They also dug the famous Belomorkanal, which united the European river basins of the USSR.
Changes in agriculture
Together with industrialization, collectivization isthat relates to Stalinist socialism in the first place. Two processes went in parallel and synchronously. Without one, there would be no other. Collectivization is the process of the destruction of private farms in the countryside and the creation of common collective farms, which were one of the main symbols of the new socialist system.
В первое советское десятилетие перемены в The agrarian sector was almost not whipped up by the state. The collective farms existed along with the private farms of the kulaks — actually independent western-type farmers. These were enterprising peasants who earned average capital in the village. For the time being, Stalinist socialism did not restrict their activities.
In 1929, on the twelfth anniversary of the OctoberRevolution, the party's secretary general released the famous article "The Year of the Great Breakthrough." In it, Stalin announced the beginning of a new economic stage of development in the countryside. In December, he publicly made a call not to limit the kulaks, but to destroy him as a class. Immediately after these words, the so-called “complete collectivization” followed.
Disposition
Для завершения коллективизации власть used methods similar to the military. Communist agitators were sent to the villages. If, after a generally peaceful appeal, the peasant did not go to the collective farm and did not leave his individual household, he was repressed. Property confiscations were carried out.
Fists were considered to be the owners who used inhis farm hired labor, trading in products that owned the churn or windmills. In total, about 15–20% of peasants who did not want to go to collective farms were “treated”. Many of them, along with their families, were sent to camps, prisons, and exile. Such special settlers were deprived of civil rights.
"Dizzy with success"
Stalin’s long-term model of socialismdiffered irrepressible cruelty. Local party bodies and newspapers called for the "asset" not to be shy to incite hatred towards class-alien kulaks and other counter-revolutionaries. Middle peasants and their well-to-do neighbors often resisted repression. They killed the sent communists and the organizers of collectivization, fled to the cities, set fire to collective farms, and slaughtered their own cattle. The series of armed speeches was spontaneous. She did not take an organized character, and soon the state suppressed resistance.
Деревню в советскую эпоху мучил не только Stalinist socialism. The introduction of the surplus during the Civil War, when agricultural producers were obliged to hand over part of their crops to the state, also hurt farmers. From time to time the Bolsheviks alternated pressure and weakening in their pressure on the village.
In the spring of 1930, Stalin, afraid of armedfist resistance, wrote a conciliatory article "Dizzy with success." The pace of collectivization was somewhat asleep. A significant part of the peasants left the collective farms. However, in the autumn of repression resumed. The active phase of collectivization ended in 1932, and in 1937 about 93% of peasant farms consisted on collective farms.
Pumping resources from the village
Many features of Stalinist socialism werethe ugly offspring of totalitarianism and violence. The repressions were justified by the construction of a new society and the expectations of a bright future. One of the main symbols of the socialist economy in the village was MTS - machine and tractor stations. They existed in 1928-1958. MTS provided collective farms with new equipment.
For example, the center of the Soviet tractorbecame Stalingrad, whose plant during the war was converted into a tank. Collective farms paid for state equipment with their own products. So, MTS effectively pumped resources from the village. During the first five-year periods the USSR actively exported grain abroad. Trade did not stop even during periods of terrible famine on collective farms. The proceeds from the sale of grain and other crops, the government spent on the continuation of forced industrialization and the construction of a new military-industrial complex.
Успехи мобилизационной экономики при этом привели to catastrophe in agriculture. The layer of the most enterprising, competent and active peasants was destroyed, while the new collective-farm movement caused the degeneration of the peasantry. Resisting fists slaughtered 26 million cattle (about 45%). It took another 30 years to restore the population. Even the new agricultural machinery did not allow bringing the crops to at least NEP times. The numbers were not achieved by high-quality work, but by an increase in acreage.
The merging of state and party
In the mid-1930s in the USSR finally formedtotalitarian socialism. Years of suppression policy completely changed society. However, the apogee of repression came just in the second half of the 1930s, and it ended largely due to the ensuing war with Germany.
An important feature of the totalitarian government wasmerging of party and state bodies - the party completely controlled the legislative activity and the court, and the party itself was held in the frenzy of only one person. Total Stalin spent several waves of internal cleansing. At various times they concentrated on party or military cadres, but they also got used to ordinary citizens.
Purges in the party and the army
Repression was carried out using several timeschanged the name of the special services (OGPU-NKVD-MGB). The state began to control all spheres of social activity and life, from sports and art to ideology. To create a "single line" Stalin consistently dealt with all his opponents within the party. These were the Bolsheviks of the older generation who knew the secretary general as an illegal revolutionary. People such as Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin ("Lenin's Guard") - they all became victims of demonstrative trials in which they were publicly recognized as traitors to the Motherland.
The peak of repression against party cadres fell on1937-1938 At the same time there was a purge in the Red Army. All its commanding staff was destroyed. Stalin was afraid of the military, considering them a threat to his sole authority. Not only the senior, but also the middle commanders suffered. Qualified professionals who had experience of the Civil War, almost disappeared. All of this had a negative effect on the army, which only a few years later had to enter its largest war.
Pest control and enemies of the people
Первые показательные процессы, прогремевшие на the whole country passed in the late 1920s. Such were the “Shakhty case” and the trial of the “Industrial Party”. During this period, technical and engineering specialists were repressed. Joseph Stalin, whose reign years passed in a series of propaganda campaigns, was very fond of loud cliches and shortcuts. With his submission, such terms and symbols of the epoch as "pests", "enemies of the people", and "cosmopolitans" appeared.
1934 was the turning point for repression.Before that, the state had terrorized the population, but now it has taken on the iconic party members. That year, the XVII Congress, which became known as the "Congress of those shot," was held. It voted for the new Secretary General. Stalin was re-elected, but many did not support his candidacy. Everyone considered Sergei Kirov to be an important congress figure. A few months later he was shot by an unbalanced party worker Nikolayev in Smolny. Stalin used the figure of the deceased Kirov, making it a sacred symbol. A campaign was launched against the traitors and conspirators, who, as propaganda explained, killed an important party member and were about to destroy it.
Loud political labels appeared:White Guards, Zinovievites, Trotskyists. The secret service agents "uncovered" new secret organizations that were trying to harm the country and the parties. Anti-Soviet activity was also attributed to random people who, by coincidence, fell under the rink of a totalitarian machine. In the most terrible years of terror, the NKVD approved standards for the number of people shot and convicted, which local authorities had to diligently carry out. Repressions were carried out under the slogans of the class struggle (the thesis was put forward that the more successful the construction of socialism is, the more acute the class struggle will become).
Do not forget to Stalin purge and in themselvesspecial services, whose hands and carried out numerous executions and trials. The NKVD experienced several such campaigns. The most odious heads of this department, Yezhov and Yagoda, died during them. Also, the state did not take its eyes off the intelligentsia. These were writers, film and theater figures (Mandelstam, Babel, Meyerhold), and inventors, physicists and designers (Landau, Tupolev, Korolev).
Stalinist socialism ended with deaththe leader in 1953, followed by the Khrushchev thaw and Brezhnev developed socialism. In the USSR, the assessment of those events varied depending on the conjuncture. Khrushchev, who came to power at the XX Congress of the CPSU, condemned the personality cult of Stalin and his repression. Under Brezhnev, the official ideology treated the leader’s figure more gently.
