The Germans had quick success on the Western front (in Poland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and France) until June 1940, which enabled them to think about expansion towards the East. On 21 June 1941, Germany invaded the USSR, thus breaking the pact that had united them. In December, the Americans also joined the Allies after the attack on their Pearl Harbor naval base by Japan. Subsequently, the Soviets, Brits and Americans met on several occasions to decide on war strategies: in Moscow (August 1942), Tehran (November 1943), Yalta (February 1945) and Potsdam (July 1945).
Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Stalin at the Yalta Conference.
From the summer of 1942 onwards, the Germans lost more and more ground on Soviet territory. On 6 June 1944, the D-Day landings at Normandy opened up a second front in the West. The joint advances of Allied and Soviet troops left Germany trapped. It surrendered on 8 May 1945, putting an end to the war in Europe. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 led to the surrender of Japan on 2 September 1945 and the end of the conflict on a global level.
Highlights
From Lenin to Stalin: seizing power
During the civil war (1918-1922), Stalin was worked very closely with Lenin, who liked him for his unfailing determination and fearlessness in action. He maintained his trust in him in the years that followed, to the extent that in 1922, Stalin was appointed General Secretary of the Communist Party, a role that he would keep for 30 years. However, relations between the two men were not devoid of conflict, and Lenin was under no illusions about his successor, whom he described as too brutal in his political testament, even recommending the Party to dismiss him. When Lenin died on 21 January 1924, he left an opening for someone to replace him as the head of state.
Photo of Stalin and Lenin.
In the tactical battle that followed, Stalin proved that he was the most skilled and managed to eliminate the other succession candidates one by one. For several years, he had appointed his men to the most important positions in order to control strategic bodies and essential positions for power. He first formed an alliance with Zinoviev (1883-1936) and Kamenev (1883-1936) against Trotsky, only to then turn on them later. To assert his legitimacy, he made sure his ideology followed that of Lenin, and readily claimed to be his ‘best disciple’. By putting forward some simple ideas, and making other schools of thought seem like deviations that threatened the Party’s unity, he managed to present himself as the heir of the late Soviet leader, with whom working-class activists identified.
The real casualty
Trotsky was the real casualty of the battle to become Lenin’s successor, and would remain Stalin’s permanent rival. An early revolutionary and great theoretician of Marxism, he played a decisive role in the civil war by creating and organising the Red Army. Expected to succeed Lenin, he did not become aware of the threat posed by Stalin until it was too late. After being exiled from the Soviet Union in 1919, he continued to denounce Stalin’s policies and the abandoning of the global revolution during his exile, which led him to Turkey, France and Norway, then Mexico from 1937 onwards, where one of Stalin’s agents found and assassinated him three years later.
The establishment of a dictatorship
Stalin surrounded himself with a group of collaborators who were loyal to him and his ideas. The Party’s executives were thus greatly changed between 1920 and 1930, in order to eliminate the first generation of Bolshevism that was more attached to Lenin. Instead, he promoted new men, with no reference to the past, who owed him everything and were completely devoted to him. He thus concentrated more and more power under the pretext of necessary centralisation: the state was now functioning according to the decisions of a limited group of people, who made them informally and in small committees.
His personal power was accompanied by the intensive propaganda campaign, which was undertaken through posters, newspapers, the radio and television programmes. All intellectuals had to be at the service of the new regime. Propaganda was also used as a vehicle for Stalin’s cult of personality, which meant that both his biography and the history books were rewritten to give him a major role in the underground resistance and the revolution. It also strived to emphasise his great achievements to hide the extreme poverty, waste and abuses of power that were corrupting the USSR, thus showing the world not as it was, but rather as it should be in an ideal socialist state. Propaganda was also directed abroad to promote the Soviet model: when capitalist countries were badly affected by the crisis of 1929, model farms and factories were set up especially for visits from foreign delegations.
Parade thrown in honour of Stalin.
Finally, as religion was considered to be a rival ideology, churches were closed and turned into warehouses and garages, and monasteries were pillaged. The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow was even blown up on 5 December 1931, and religious holidays were outlawed. Soviet holidays were thus created to regulate daily life.
Did you know?
As an example of the excessive nature of the cult of personality, a giant statue of Stalin, erected at the top of Mount Elbrus, the highest of the Caucasus Mountains, bore the inscription: “On the highest peak in Europe we have erected the statue of the greatest man of all time.”
Rapid industrialisation
Having noticed that Russia was technologically far behind Western European countries, Stalin decided to make the USSR a great industrial and military power. To do this, he used centralised planning to lead industrial development: he drew up his notorious five-year plans, which defined the objectives to meet over five years in terms of production. The first plan, launched in 1928, prioritised heavy industry and infrastructure. Workers, who were continuously increasing in number, were badly paid and subjected to heavy pressure to meet the very ambitious objectives set in these plans.
Did you know?
To increase productivity and encourage workers to improve their work speed, the regime created small rewards (bonuses and better provisions). From 1935 onwards, it highlighted the performance of Alexey Stakhanov (1905-1977), a coal miner who supposedly extracted 14 times as much as the average, to create competition and encourage hyperproduction among workers: this marked the birth of the Stakhanovite movement.
Industrial growth was impressive and there was a sharp increase in the production of raw materials (steel, coal and electricity). Large-scale projects were launched and used as examples of the country’s rapid modernisation. The regime was particularly proud of its tractor and car factories, its steel production plants, the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station and the Moscow metro, whose first line was opened in 1935. This showcase of socialism, which was also deep enough to be used as a shelter in case of war, was decorated like an underground palace.
The forced collectivisation of the countryside
In the 1920s, Russia was a mostly agricultural country: 80% of its population were peasants who were opposed to collectivisation, preferring a fair distribution of the land and a reduction of taxes. This did not prevent Stalin from beginning the collectivisation of the countryside from November 1929, to improve provisions to towns. This measure meant that farmers were arranged in kolkhozes (collective farms) or sovkhozy (state-owned farms), and an entire social class was eliminated, the kulaks (the most affluent farmers), who were stripped of their property and deported to inhospitable regions or to labour camps. The kolkhoz farmers were not allowed to leave their villages without authorisation and were subjected to various chores (cutting down forests, building roads, etc.). They became disillusioned and made minimal effort to work on land that no longer belonged to them, and whose crops were bought by the state for amounts of money that were far too low for them to live off. The results of low production were requisitioned by the state to fulfil delivery schedules, leading to scarcity and famine in the countryside. The mass resistance to collectivisation and armed rebellions that it caused were carefully omit
ted from the official history books.
In 1935, collectivisation was considered complete, but it could only last with some concessions: small individual plots of land were conceded to farmers to enable them to meet their needs, and material and honorary benefits were created to motivate them.
Governing through terror
Cheka, the secret police founded in 1917 to fight the counter-revolution, was replaced in 1934 by the NKVD, the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, which would later become the KGB (Committee for State Security) after Stalin’s death. Promoted to the head of the NKVD in 1938, Lavrentiy Beria (1899-1953) became Stalin’s right-hand man and the main executor of his terror policy.
Under Stalin’s regime, the aim of terror was to fight against any kind of opposition: foreign spies, conspirators, suspected opponents and political, economic or military leaders who were suspected of being responsible for the difficulties encountered during the implementation of new measures. Everyone was a target, and for good reason: the progression towards socialism needed scapegoats to explain its failures. Stalin even went as far as establishing deportation and execution quotas which were fulfilled through imaginary accusations. Additionally, the regime encouraged informing and forced its citizens to live in fear and lies: the presumption of guilt reigned supreme and everyone became a potential suspect.
The Great Purge (mass repression operation from 1936 to 1938) was the context of the trials during which the main Bolshevik leaders who had opposed Stalin (including Zinoviev and Kamenev) were tried and sentenced. In order to charge them, all measures were allowed, from faking evidence to using torture. In 1937-1938, the purges extended to the army, spurred on by paranoia surrounding the former tsarist officers. The main generals, as well as many officers and soldiers, were arrested as part of this. In a short period of time, the army lost almost nearly 40 000 men.
In the final years of Stalin’s reign, the war on foreign influences started to take an anti-Semitic turn. Thousands of Jews were arrested or fired from their jobs under the pretext of accusations of anti-Russian or pro-imperialist activities: this was known as the ‘Doctors’ plot’, probably the beginning of a new series of great purges, which was interrupted by the dictator’s death.
Labour camps
The Gulag (“Chief Directorate of Camps”) was implemented in the 1930s at Stalin’s decision. It was a network of forced labour camps where the prisoners, who were in theory being ‘re-educated’ through labour, were exploited like slaves. They constituted a free workforce that enabled the natural riches of inhospitable regions to be exploited and guaranteed the development of the new socialist state. While some of them were political prisoners, most were ordinary citizens, victims of disproportionate punishment for petty theft. They worked to exploit minerals, wood and coal, as well as to build roads, canals and railroads.
Stalin against Hitler: the ‘Great Patriotic War’
On 23 August 1939, the Germans and Soviets signed a pact of non-aggression, including a secret protocol which recognised an area of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe. Stalin saw this as the opportunity to turn Germany’s imperialist aims towards Western Europe and to consider expansion in Eastern Europe or, otherwise, for a Bolshevik revolution to result. However, on the morning of 22 June 1941, Germany violated the pact: Operation Barbarossa, one of the largest military operations in history, was launched with the aim of destroying Jewish Bolshevism, which was corrupting the USSR, and those it considered as ‘sub-human Slavs’ through a rapid war.
From 1941 to 1942, the Soviet army experienced some terrible disasters, and the losses were great. Convinced that Germany would not dare to confront the USSR alone, Stalin had scoffed at the many warning signs and reports from spies who had told him that an attack was imminent. The Soviet army was also ill-equipped, in a state of complete disarray following the purges and directed by inexperienced officers. Stalin, who had no military training, refused to listen to the opinions of experts, gave impossible orders and made one bad decision after another. He notably banned retreats and ordered his men to fight until their last breath, or risk death by firing squad. The Germans, who were clearly better prepared, therefore claimed many victims and a significant number of prisoners. The generals considered responsible for the Soviet defeat were arrested and executed under the pretext of treason.
On 4 September 1941, the German army besieged Leningrad. The blockade of the town lasted until 27 January 1944, or almost 900 days, and caused no fewer than one million deaths. The following month, Operation Typhoon allowed the Germans to get within a few dozen miles of Moscow, causing panic. While some of the administrations were evacuated, Stalin decided to stay to encourage the resistance. Finally, the exhaustion of the German troops, their difficulties with supplies and the harsh Russian winter allowed the Soviet counter-offensive to push them back by almost 100 miles.
Towns with many names
The city of St. Petersburg was renamed Petrograd at the beginning of the First World War in order to get rid of the Germanic sound of its name. It became Leningrad in 1924, following Lenin’s death, and was given its original name again in 1991, following the fall of the Soviet Union. Similarly, Tsaritsyn, the city where Stalin had organised the resistance to the White Army, became Stalingrad in 1925. It was renamed Volgograd in 1991.
In the spring of 1942, the Germans launched Case Blue, whose aim was to attack the southern USSR and Stalingrad, a crucial point for oil supplies and river sailing. From the end of August 1942 to January 1943, the Battle of Stalingrad resulted in incredible losses on both sides. The Soviets, who were aware of the city’s vital importance, put up a tireless resistance which the Germans had not expected at all. Its liberation was the first major defeat for Hitler and signalled a turning point in the war. Subsequently, the Germans continually retreated until the final Allied victory. Kiev was retaken on 6 November 1943, and Operation Bagration, launched by the Soviets on 22 June 1944 following the D-Day landings, took the German army by surprise and enabled the advance into Eastern Europe to continue.
A divide between two worlds
With the certainty of a final victory, the alliance of circumstance between Communists and capitalists began to slacken. Once the Eastern European territories had been liberated, Stalin appointed his supporters to power there. This was the case in Poland, then in Yugoslavia where Marshal Tito (1892-1980) seized power with the help of the Soviets. Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria and Albania also became satellite states of the USSR, joined in 1948 by Czechoslovakia: this was the creation of the Eastern bloc.
Seizing Berlin above anything else was the main objective of the last months of the war. On 30 April 1945, Marshal Zhukov’s (1896-1974) troops finally planted the Soviet flag on top of the Reichstag (German legislative chamber). Germany, which surrendered on 7 May, was then divided up by the victors into several occupation zones. On 24 June 1948, Stalin set up the blockade of West Berlin – occupied by the Allies but hemmed in by the Soviet occupation zone – to try to incorporate it. The Allies retaliated immediately by organising the Berlin airlift, forcing Stalin to lift the blockade on 12 May 1949.
The many Soviet intimidation attempts led to the creation of NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization), a defensive military organism for Western European and North American countries, in 1949. The threat was indeed real, and had led the United States to fight against the advance of Communism with the Truman Doctrine just two years earlier. Across American territory, Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908-1957) practically launched a witch-hunt against anyone suspected of having Communist sympathies.
The ideological conflict spread to other continents: Stalin signed an alliance treaty with the newly-founded People’s Republic of China and provided weapons to the North Korean dictator Kim Il-Sung (1912-1994) to invade the South, leading to the Korean War (1950-1953), which would end in a stalemate and the long-term division of the country.
Impact
A society suffering from shortages
The five-year plans established during Stalin’s dictatorship prioritised the production of capital goods to the detriment of consumer goods, creating a society suffering from shortages which was extremely far removed from the affluent society that socialism had promised. The serious food shortages caused by collectivisation led to the need for a rationing system for essential products and everyday consumer goods, which was enforced from 1930 to 1935 and then from 1940 to 1947. It would take 40 years before the level of food consumption of 1913 was reached again, while quality of life in the countryside never really improved. The situation was also critical in towns and cities, where accommodation was thin on the ground.
While Stalin wanted to fix his country, his five-year plans and their highly ambitious, indeed unachievable objectives in fact disrupted production. Many construction projects had to be stopped before their completion or were botched in order to meet deadlines. On the other hand, the emphasis on heavy industry and the war industry turned out to be decisive in the Second World War, despite the fact that the Soviet Union remained dependent on war material supplies from the Allies.
An appalling death toll
Between 1930 and 1953, almost a million death sentences for counter-revolutionaries, “enemies of the people” and “socially harmful elements” were handed down in the utmost secrecy. The number of people deported is estimated at over 7 million, with between 15 and 20 million people having spent time in Gulag camps.
Stalin: The Man of Steel (History) Page 2
