Stalin's socialism: basic features and characteristics

Stalin's socialism is the socio-political system that was formed and existed in the era of Josef 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 classical totalitarian state with a command economy and a broad repressive apparatus.

New Economy

The first thing that relates to Stalin's socialism is the accelerated industrialization that was carried out in the USSR in the 1930s. Having come to power, the Bolsheviks received a country that was destroyed by the long years of the Civil War and a severe economic crisis. Therefore, in order to stabilize the situation, the party led by Lenin decided to make an ideological compromise and initiated the NEP. This name was given to the new economic policy, which implied the existence of free market entrepreneurship.

NEP in the shortest possible time led to the restoration of the country. Meanwhile, in 1924 Lenin died. The power for a while became collective. Around the party rudder was the eminent Bolsheviks who were behind the organization of the October Revolution and victory in the Civil War. Gradually, Stalin eliminated all his competitors. At the turn of the 1920s and 1930s, he established a single totalitarian power. Having secured its exclusive right to lead a huge state, the General Secretary of the Central Committee began industrialization. It became the basis of what will soon become known as Stalin's socialism.

Five-Year Plan

The industrialization plan consisted of several important points. The absorption by the public sector of the entire economy began. The national economy now had to live according to the five-year plans. The "saving regime" was proclaimed. All funds of the country were thrown on the construction of new factories and plants.

Finally, Stalin's socialism implied the very industrialization - the creation of machine production in industry and other spheres of the national economy. Its goal was to move away from agrarian remnants in the economy. The country did not have enough experienced staff, 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 at the expense of resources pumped out from the village, domestic loans, cheap labor, prisoners' labor and proletarian enthusiasm. "Economy mode" was reflected in everything - housing, food, wages. The state created a system of harsh exploitation of the population, limiting its consumption. In the years 1928-1935. In the country there were food cards. Forced industrialization was pushed by ideology. Soviet power still dreamed of a world revolution and hoped to take advantage of a short peace respite to create a new economy, without which it would be impossible to fight against the imperialists. Therefore, the years of industrialization in the USSR (1930) ended not just the appearance of a qualitatively different economy, but also 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 machine building. Separate plans were prepared for each industry and some particularly important economic regions (for example, Kuzbass). An exemplary project was the Dneprostroy, within which a hydroelectric power station and a dam on the Dnieper were built.

Stalin's socialism gave the country a new coal 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-year plans changed the state of affairs. Now the Soviet industry was distributed in a vast country more balanced. The transfer of enterprises to the east was also dictated by fears of 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). In this region the work of prisoners of the Gulag was actively used. It was these people who 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 is what concerns Stalin's socialism in the first place. The two processes went in parallel and synchronously. Without one there would be no other. Collectivization is the process of destroying private farms in the countryside and creating collective collective farms, which were one of the main symbols of the new socialist system.

In the first Soviet decade, changes in the agrarian sector were almost not whipped by the state. Collective farms existed together with private farms of kulaks - actually independent farmers of the western type. They were enterprising peasants, who earned average capital in the village. For the time being, Stalin's socialism did not limit their activities.

In 1929, on the twelfth anniversary of the October Revolution, the party general secretary published the famous article "The Year of the Great Break". In it, Stalin declared the beginning of a new economic stage of development in the countryside. In December, he publicly issued an appeal not to restrict the kulaks, but to destroy it as a class. Immediately after these words, the so-called "continuous collectivization" followed.

Dekulakization

To complete collectivization, the authorities used methods similar to military ones. Groups of communist agitators were sent to the villages. If, after generally peaceful appeals, the peasant did not go to the collective farm and did not leave his individual farm, he was repressed. The property was confiscated.

The kulaks were the owners who used hired labor, who traded in products, owned churns or windmills. In total, about 15-20% of the peasants were "processed", who did not want to go to the collective farms. Many of them, along with their families, were sent to camps, prisons and exile. Such special settlers were deprived of their civil rights.

"Dizziness from Success"

The long-standing Stalinist model of socialism was characterized by irrepressible cruelty. Local party organs and newspapers called for an "asset" not to hesitate to stir up hatred for class-alien kulaks and other counter-revolutionaries. Middle peasants and their well-off neighbors often resisted repression. They killed the communists sent and collectivization organizers, fled to the cities, set fire to the collective farms, cut their own cattle. The series of armed speeches was spontaneous. It did not take an organized character, and soon the state suppressed resistance.

The village in the Soviet era was tormented not only by Stalin's socialism. The introduction of the surplus appropriation during the Civil War, when agricultural producers were obliged to take part of their harvest to the state, also hurt the farmers. From time to time the Bolsheviks alternated pressure and easing in their pressure on the village.

In the spring of 1930, Stalin, frightened by the armed resistance of the kulaks, wrote a conciliatory article "Vertigo from Success". The rate of collectivization was somewhat reduced. A considerable part of the peasants left the collective farms. However, in autumn the repressions resumed. The active phase of collectivization ended in 1932, and in 1937 the collective farms consisted of about 93% of peasant farms.

Pumping resources from the village

Many features of Stalin's socialism were an ugly product of totalitarianism and violence. Repression was 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 the MTS - machine and tractor stations. They existed in 1928-1958. MTS provided the collective farms with new equipment.

For example, the center of the Soviet tractor construction was Stalingrad, whose factory during the war was redesigned into a tank factory. Collective farms paid state machinery with their own products. So, MTS effectively pumped resources from the village. During the first five-year plans, the USSR actively exported grain abroad. Trade did not stop even during the terrible famine on the collective farms. The money spent on the sale of grain and other crops was spent by the government on the continuation of forced industrialization and the construction of a new military-industrial complex.

The successes of the mobilization economy at the same time led to a catastrophe in agriculture. The layer of the most enterprising, literate and active peasants was destroyed, while the new collective-farm movement entailed the degeneration of the peasantry. Resisting fists cut 26 million head of cattle (about 45%). The recovery of the population took another 30 years. Even the new agricultural machinery did not allow to bring the crops even to the NEP times. The figures were achieved not by high-quality work, but by an increase in acreage.

Splicing State and Party

In the mid-1930s, totalitarian socialism finally emerged in the USSR. Years of the policy of repression completely changed the society. However, the apogee of repression fell just in the second half of the 1930s, and it ended largely thanks to the coming war with Germany.

An important feature of totalitarian power was the merging of party and government bodies - the party fully controlled the legislative activity and the court, and the party itself held only one person in the gloves of the mittens . In total, Stalin conducted several waves of internal cleansing. At different times they concentrated on party or military personnel, but got to ordinary citizens.

Purge in the Party and the Army

Repression was carried out with the help of several times changed the name of special services (OGPU-NKVD-MGB). The state began to control all spheres of social activity and life, from sport and art to ideology. To create a "single line" Stalin consistently dealt with all his opponents within the party. They were Bolsheviks of the older generation, who knew the Secretary General as an illegal revolutionary. People like Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin ("Lenin's Guards"), all of them were victims of demonstration trials, in which they were publicly recognized as traitors to the Motherland.

The peak of repression against party cadres occurred in 1937-1938. At the same time, there was a purge in the Red Army. Its entire command structure was destroyed. Stalin was afraid of the military, considering them a threat to his sole authority. Not only the senior, but also the average command structure suffered. Qualified specialists who had experience in the Civil War practically disappeared. All this had a negative effect on the army, which in just a few years had to enter its biggest war.

Fight against pests and enemies of the people

The first demonstrative processes that raged throughout the country took place in the late 1920s. Such were the "Shakhty case" and the trial of the "Industrial Party". During this period, technical and engineering specialists were subjected to repression. Joseph Stalin, whose reign was a series of propaganda campaigns, was very fond of loud clichés and shortcuts. From his submission, such terms and symbols of the era appeared as "pests", "enemies of the people", "cosmopolitans".

Turning to repression was in 1934. Before that, the state terrorized the population, and now it has taken on the iconic party members. That year XVII Congress passed, which became known as the "Congress of the executed". It was voted for the new secretary general. Stalin was re-elected, but many did not support his candidacy. An important figure of the congress was all considered Sergei Kirov. A few months later he was shot by the unbalanced party worker Nikolayev in Smolny. Stalin took advantage of the figure of the deceased Kirov, making it a sacred symbol. A campaign was launched against traitors and conspirators who, as the propaganda explained, killed an important member of the party and were about to destroy it.

There were loud political labels: the White Guards, the Zinovievites, the Trotskyites. Secret service agents "uncovered" new secret organizations that were trying to harm the country and the party. Anti-Soviet activities were also attributed to random people who, by coincidence, had fallen under the skating rink of a totalitarian machine. In the most terrible years of terror, the NKVD approved the standards for the number of people shot and convicted, which local authorities had to diligently implement. The repressions were conducted under the slogans of the class struggle (the thesis was advanced that the more successful the building of socialism, the sharper the class struggle will become).

Stalin also did not forget to carry out purges in the special services themselves, whose hands and carried out numerous executions and trials. The NKVD has experienced several such campaigns. In the course of their death the most odious heads of this department - Yezhov and Yagoda. The state also kept an eye on the intelligentsia. They were writers, figures of cinema and theater (Mandelstam, Babel, Meyerhold), and inventors, physicists and designers (Landau, Tupolev, Korolev).

Stalin's socialism ended with the death of the leader in 1953, followed by Khrushchev's thaw and Brezhnev's developed socialism. In the USSR, the evaluation of those events changed depending on the conjuncture. Coming to power Khrushchev at the XX Congress of the CPSU condemned the cult of the personality of Stalin and his repression. Under Brezhnev, the official ideology applied to the figure of the leader softer.