Trace Stalin's rise to power in the Soviet Union and the connection between economic policies, political policies, the absence of a free press and systematic violations of human rights.
Each part of the question should have someone answering it in each of the classes. That means that a person in per. 4 will have a person from per. 5 and 7 doing the same thing. You should all help each other
Stalin’s rise to power in relation to his economic policies • Stalin disagreed with Lenin’s NEP, preferred “pure communism” Why? • It’d take too long for the economy to grow freely (NEP), when Russia still had its traditional economic weaknesses. ex • Russia had to rely on domestic resources in order to improve (no foreign finance) • Majority of Russians contributed through the agricultural sector, 78% • Therefore, the only way to raise money to industrialize was collectivization of agriculture What does that mean? • State to control agriculture • Interposed in between rural producers and urban consumers, withdrawal of wealth from both • Ways: o forced the peasants into communes o destroyed the kulaks o controlled agricultural output o fixed the prices of wages and food • private consumption- 50%, state use- 50%
After the Russian Revolution, Stalin spent time building his post as general secretary. Stalin made a promising speech at Lenin’s funeral promising to keep his reforms. People viewed Stalin as a moderate who followed always compromised to avoid dangerous situations such as revolution. He had fantastic ability to take advantage of the other leader’s weaknesses. He also had many good stratagies.(http://www.helium.com/items/933786-how-stalin-took-control-of-the-soviet-union) Soon, a triumvirate formed of Stalin, Kamenev, and Zinoviev. This triumvirate governed against Trotsky. Soon Stalin switched sides and joined with Bukharin. From here, have had control over the party and the country. (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/stalin.html)
i researched Stalin's use of propaganda, or control of the press, to control ppls opinion of him. he controlled all newpapers, movies and radio stations, so that only what he wanted ppl to see was seen. He also burned down churches and synagogues while capturing or killing religious leaders. He also sed his power to control the educational system so that ppl would only learn what he wanted them to learn. which gave him complete control of the publics opinion of himself.
i think everyone should at least look at this site for information to start with because this appears to b where mrs. grossman got her question from :) http://www.eurekacityschools.org/ehs/perryr/GLWeb/StarTESTReview/10.7.2.pdf
This is about the violation of human rights... The military was one of the biggest groups of people to cause many of the deaths. Most of the deaths were caused as a result of injuries. For the first year, conscripts had to complete many menial and degrading tasks. Many of the second year soldiers had absolute authority over the first year conscripts. This promoted the frequent use of hazing. Hazing is when someone is subject to harassment or ridicule. Most of the reprimands are seldom. So many people got away with it. http://www.du.edu/korbel/hrhw/digest/russia/military.pdf
On Friday we will continue to read and take notes and develop ideas that will round out our information. Remember you will be organizing your thoughts into a coherent, easy to understand, easy to follow format for a class discussion. I'm looking for critical thought questions from all of you, just like your dialectical questions.
"We are 100 years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this lag in ten years. Either we do it, or they crush us!" Josef Stalin, speech to the Fourth Plenum of Industrial Managers, Feb. 4, 1931.
Good site for economic policies and where i got the quote from: http://www.emayzine.com/lectures/STALIN.html
It's Friday, Yeeaaay! Today, catch up on what others have written. Also, continue your own research. Work on the following today. 1. get eye-witness accounts. Get examples and stories from actual people who lived under these totalitarian regimes. 2. Share info. 3. Ask critical thought questions from group 4. Respond to others. 5. Document and save all your work to your student folder.
Here is some information that i was ablw to find on Wikipedia.• Stalinism is a term that purportedly describes the political system of the Soviet Union under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, from 1929-1953.
• Not commonly used as a positive term
• The groundwork for the Soviet policy concerning nationalities, laid in Stalin's 1913 work Marxism and the National Question, praised by Lenin.
• Socialism in One Country,
• The theory of aggravation of the class struggle along with the development of socialism, a theoretical base supporting the repression of political opponents as necessary.
Stalin had said in one of his speeches on the problems of Leninism, that if the Soviet union was to be one socialist country, it would need help from other more advanced countries like Germany or Austria.
He also supported repressing political opponents as neccessary, meaning he would do whatever had to be done in order to achieve socialism in the Soviet Union.
Stalin put the press under full government control and did not give the people very much freedom which caused them to dislike the government. According to the Soviet constitution,each individual was guaranteed civil rights, but had to sacrifice them and their desires to fulfill the needs of the collective. Open criticism of the Communist Party could not be allowed because it could hurt the interests of the state, society, and the progress of socialism.
I understand what you are talking about Rebecca and I agree. If there are any disruptions to Stalin's socialist nation, then he will get rid of all threats like Bismark did when he united Germany.
Stalin used the Five Year Plan that built factories,hydro-electric dams, canals, railways and more. The Five Year Plan caused Russia to become more modernized. The country now had electricity and most people lived in new households.
Stalin used the captalist mechanism for supply and demand to regenerate the economy of Russia. He also made agriculture worth more to motivate the peasants to make crops for cities.
Andrew Sukovich, lord of pie, is having some trouble finding stuff on my part of the question. About the press and stuff. So if someone could help me out with that...that'd be good.
Goals- Five Year Plans • to change economic base of Russia from farming to industry • modernization, 100 yrs behind • Success, at the cost of peasants’ rights and life quality
five year plans: •established for industries, agriculture, energy, trade, railway construction and the education of the peasants •to show the world the success of the revolution created by stalin, opposite of NEP in teh hope that the rest of the world would adopt socialism/communism
quotation from stalin: "Agriculture is developing slowly, comrades. This is because we have about 25 million individually owned farms. They are the most primitive and undeveloped form of economy We must do our utmost to develop large farms and to convert them into grain factories for the country organised on a modem scientific basis."
Stalin’s violation of human rights: I know this isn’t my part of the question but I wanted to respond. Anyways, Stalin was personally responsible for the murder of more people than any other human being in the 20th century - and probably any other century. He used Lenin’s slave labor camps and turned it into a secret empire. He purposely created famines in order to sustain war efforts. He even ordered death to fellow communists. (http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/bcaplan/museum/comfaq.htm#part5)
The Lord of Pie got something. Maybe not good, but I got it. And here. It. Is. Censorship of anything that might reflect badly on Stalin
Propaganda everywhere - pictures, statues, continuous praise and applause
Places named after him
Mothers taught their children that Stalin was ‘the wisest man of the age’
History books and photographs were changed to make him the hero of the Revolution, and obliterate the names of purged people (e.g. Trotsky). ((http://www.johndclare.net/Russ12.htm))
A primary issue around which these party struggles centered was the course of the Russian economy. The right wing, led by Bukharin, favored granting concessions to the peasantry and continuing Lenin's New Economic Policy (NEP). The left, represented by Kamenev and Zinoviev, wished to proceed with industrialization on a large scale at the expense of the peasants. Stalin's position wavered, depending on the political situation, and the NEP continued until 1928 with considerable success. Then Stalin reversed this policy and inaugurated collectivization of agriculture and the Five-Year Plan. Ruthless measures were taken against the kulaks, the farmers who had risen to prosperity under the NEP.
Eric Holden says 2 consequenses to a socialist comand economy. 1)Agriculture decreased tremendously B/C peasants resisted and grew enough for themselves 2)Amount of farm workers dropped from 75 to less than 50% of population btwn 1928 and 1940
Btwn 1930-38,25 million peasants forcibly relocated to urban areas- become urban workers by intensive training, harsh dicipline
• The Ukrainians wanted to gain independence and when the Czar was overthrown, they prematurely declared their independence • They were ultimately crushed by both the Red Army and the White Army • To help ease tensions in the region, Lenin instituted the NEP that allowed some private enterprise • When Stalin came to power, he undid these reforms • Stalin then imposed very tough rules on the populace, including taking their food to be distributed elsewhere. Stalin also took away their ownership of the land that they worked on • Stalin responded by wanting to eliminate the kulaks (formerly wealthy peasants) he once said that his policies’ goal was "liquidating the Kulaks as a class." • Kulaks were robbed of their possessions and around 10 million were shipped to prison camps in Siberia where one third of them died from exposure, starvation, beatings, and executions • Men and older boys, along with childless women and unmarried girls, also became slave-workers in Soviet-run mines and big industrial projects. • Everyone else was forced to comply with collectivization and those who didn’t were declared kulaks and deported • The Ukrainians rioted by burning and destroying farms, tools, and crops. They also killed locale rulers and landowners • Soviet troops and secret police (GPU) were sent in as crowd control and GPU death squads murdered those who resisted • Stalin also imposed a policy that deliberately caused mass starvation, by increasing quotas of food to be shipped to other parts of the country and soon there was no food in the Ukraine • It has been estimated that had Stalin not used the wheat from the Ukraine to export for financial aid for his Five-year Plans and for the military build up, that there would have been enough for 2 years worth of food for the Ukrainian population
This is one of many example of Stalin’s ruthless ignorance of human rights. By this single act alone, he killed around 7,000,000 people and made many more homeless. He deliberately took away the food and deliberately murdered thousands or millions more during their brief rebellions. He is truly an evil made.
from http://www.unitedhumanrights.org/Genocide/Ukraine_famine.htm
Economic Control: Stalin’s government made all economic decisions in a system that was known as command economy. Economic control included: • Setting goals for rapid industrial growth • Choosing workers and setting their wages • Telling workers where they could live • Organizing collective farms, to produce food for the state Political Control: Stalin held absolute power, outlawed all other political parties, and demanded obedience, which was enforced in part by secret police (and a system of police terror that treated ordinary citizens like criminals). Government control included: • Using tanks and weapons to stop protests • Tapping telephone lines and reading mail • Jailing and executing political opponents • Asserting the right to punish any person for disobedience—almost any act
"We are 100 years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this lag in ten years. Either we do it, or they crush us!" Josef Stalin, speech to the Fourth Plenum of Industrial Managers, Feb. 4, 1931.
Good site for economic policies and where i got the quote from: http://www.emayzine.com/lectures/STALIN.html
Hi rebecca. I am responding to your question about if Stalin thought his human rights would be successful. I think that maybe he neede more people to support him so he decided that if he forced them to support him, they would have no other choice. That is why he treated so many people so badly. I could be dead wrong though!:)
Stalin had absolute power which meant that he could basically do whatever he wanted. He enforced obedience from all people by using a secret police, and treated regular citizens like criminals. This control of the people was done by invading privacy and arresting anyone for any little insignificant reason. The government used weapons to stop protests, punished people for no reason at all, arresting and killing political opponents, and listened to private phone conversations and read mail of citizens without their consent.
im going to throw something else in about my topic: to make himself look better to the public a man named Kirov was assassinated and many ppl think that stalin actually called the hit himself. but instead of being arrested stalin was able to use his total rule of russia to get many of his political enemies put in jail for a crime they were most likely not involved in. i think this is one of the best exaof how exmples of how far he was willing to go to keep his image good in the eyes of the public
I know that I do not have this topic but I stumbbled across this cite and it might help. I think that it's for economic or political policies. It has to deal with the fall of communism and the rise of neo-communism.
Stalin's Rise to Power: Joseph Stalin was born in Gori, Georgia in 1879. In 1901 Stalin joined the Social Democratic Labour Party and was arrested many times over the next 15 years for coordinating strikes and protests. In 1903, Stalin supported Lenin and joined the Bolsheviks, who “argued for a small party of professional revolutionaries with a large fringe of non-party sympathizers and supporters.” On the other hand, Leon Trotsky supported Julius Martov, who formed the Mensheviks, and believed in a “large party of activists.” As an editor of a major newspaper, Stalin supported Lenin openly. As a reward for his loyal support, Lenin invited Stalin to meet him in 1905 in Finland, and appointed him Commissar of Nationalities in 1917. When Lenin died in 1924, Stalin and Trotsky fought for his position. Stalin won over most of the support, and tool control over the Soviet Union.
hw comment-Stalin's rise to power: While Lenin was dying, Trotsky and Stalin were fighting for his position. Initially, Trotsky seemed like a better candidate because of his brilliant speeches and military skills. Stalin was only the editor of a newspaper at the time, and seemed unimportant. In addition, Lenin wrote a letter saying that Trotsky should succeed him and get rid of Stalin, but this letter was never shown to parliament so it had no impact. Stalin decided to team up with several party members who starting to criticize Trotsky and his past, eventually removing him from the race, and giving Stalin the power.
This could help some people out who have economic policies. The revolution opened the door for Russia to fully enter the industrial age. Prior to 1917, Russia was a mostly agrarian nation that had dabbled in industrial development only to a limited degree. By 1917, Russia’s European neighbors had embraced industrialization for more than half a century, making technological advancements such as widespread electrification, which Russia had yet to achieve. After the revolution, new urban-industrial regions appeared quickly in Russia and became increasingly important to the country’s development. The population was drawn to the cities in huge numbers. Education also took a major upswing, and illiteracy was almost entirely eradicated.
Dan, Very good and important point. Sarah, valuable information in helping to understand the background for Stalin's economic and political policies. To all, continue looking for human rights violations. Nice work Allie, Sam. Look up the Gulag Archipeligo and see what you can find. Check out the trials of "criminals" also. Time span look into the Great Purge of the 1930s.
Stalin's political policies were oppressive and cruel. Many people believe that he did this to make sure that no one tried to go against him and the government. Do you think that there were any other reasons to why Stalin would set up a government and his political policies this way?
Eric Holden says these are the output in millions of tons of coal, iron ore, oil, pig iron, and steel before the first 5 year plan(1927), after the first 5 yr pln(1932), and after the 2nd 5 yr pln(1937) the goal amount is also included the goals were unrealistic and only accounted for industrial products
Eric Holden says... Lack of care and co-ordination over vast investment plans led to waste. E.g. the largest iron and steel complex in Europe was built at Magnitogorsk, but found to be uneconomic when finished because trains used 40% of the coal they carried on the 1500 mile journey east.
The 5 year plans called for drastic changes in manufacturing to try to meet the goals set in place by stalin. the changes were for the good of the country, but were rushed and not well thought out. Therefore they proved costly and debenificial in the long run.
Stalin’s 5 year plans involved bringing agriculture under government control. Many peasants were put into collectives. Around 23% of them were in collectives by 1933, and 90% were in collectives by 1937. All or most agricultural products increased, including grain. In 1929, 10.8 million tons of grain were produced, 23.3 million tons by 1933, and 31.8 million tons by 1937. More results of the collectivization of agriculture were violence, increased repression, and the elimination of the kulak class.
Stalin’s rise to power in relation to his economic policies • Stalin disagreed with Lenin’s NEP, preferred “pure communism” • Relationship between Lenin and Stalin* • Left-radical (Stalin) • Right- conservative (Lenin, NEP) Why? • Russia needed to rebuild after damages of WWI, Russian Revolution, Civil War • It’d take too long for the economy to grow freely (NEP), when Russia still had its traditional economic weaknesses. ex • Russia had to rely on domestic resources in order to improve (no foreign finance) • Majority of Russians contributed through the agricultural sector, 78% • Therefore, the only way to raise money to industrialize (immediate) was collectivization of agriculture Quotation from Stalin:”Agriculture is developing slowly, comrades. This is because we have about 25 million individually owned farms. They are the most primitive and undeveloped form of economy We must do our utmost to develop large farms and to convert them into grain factories for the country organised on a modem scientific basis." What does that mean? • State to control agriculture • Peasants must work to feed the urban workers in the factories • Interposed in between rural producers and urban consumers, withdrawal of wealth from both How? • forced the peasants into communes • destroyed the kulaks • controlled agricultural output • fixed the prices of wages and food • private consumption- 50%, state use- 50% • Effect of collectivization: peasants were unhappy and refused to produce. Gov. police intervenes—30 mil peasants die of starvation • Collectivization used to support Five Year Plans Goals- Five Year Plans • to change economic base of Russia from farming to industry • modernization, 100 yrs behind • Success, at the cost of peasants’ rights and life quality o Factories o hydro-electric dams, canals, railways and other infrastructural projects o Holodomor- Ukrainian famine
• established for industries, agriculture, energy, trade, railway construction and the education of the peasants to show the world the success of the revolution
hey, uh it would be great if everyone could just click on their names above their posts, go to edit profile, then scroll down to identity-display name and add their period number and waht topic they are researching becuase me is getting confuzzzzzzled
the website actually seems to a little Stalinist, but isn't really. The author included a quote from a book by Gábor Tamás Rittersporn called: Stalinist Simplifications and Soviet Complications: Social Tensions and Political Conflict in the USSR, 1933--1953
he says, "In other words, Rittersporn is saying: Look, I can prove that most of the current ideas about Stalin are absolutely false. But to say this requires a giant hurdle. If you state, even timidly, certain undeniable truths about the Soviet Union in the thirties, you are immediately labeled `Stalinist'. Bourgeois propaganda has spread a false but very powerful image of Stalin, an image that is almost impossible to correct, since emotions run so high as soon as the subject is broached. The books about the purges written by great Western specialists, such as Conquest, Deutscher, Schapiro and Fainsod, are worthless, superficial, and written with the utmost contempt for the most elementary rules learnt by a first-year history student. In fact, these works are written to give an academic and scientific cover for the anti-Communist policies of the Western leaders. They present under a scientific cover the defence of capitalist interests and values and the ideological preconceptions of the big bourgeoisie."
I find this interesting because since we live in one of those Western Capitalist nations, we can never really know for a fact because most information you find online is from a Western nation or a communist nation. Either source cannot be trusted. This little snipit shows how easily anyones opinion could be twisted (this is a comment for Stalins media repression) even our own because the adults of our time and authors of our books lived in the anti-communist era of our nations history and so their ideas and opinions are biased and we have to really state the facts first, then draw our own individual opinions based on those facts and not call our opinions facts. So I should actually take back that first comment on how the website is Stalinist because the author says multiple times that he is just stating facts.
• The Great Purge was aimed at “purifying or purging” the Communist party and instilling fearful respect into the populace, especially the upper-class • It involved the NKVD (the new secret police name) usually creating false stories about terrorist groups, plots, and thoughts to arrest selected “enemies of the state” • These victims (whether guilty or not) were then tried briefly if they were lucky and either executed publicly as an example or shipped into long Siberian exiles. • The NKVD would ask the two questions “Who recruited you?” and “Who did you recruit?” • This meant that whether the victims lied or not, the NKVD now had a list of more names of people to murder • The Ukraine suffered the most, as with many other cases of Stalin’s brutality • Exact numbers will never be known, but it is estimated that 37% of the Communist party in the Ukraine was executed • Overall, it is estimated that around 500,000 people were executed and between 3-12 million were sent to labor camps, but the numbers are probably much higher. Most of these victims were thought to be Ukrainian
just some general background on the great purge (Soviet holocaust): It was campaigns of political repression oppression in the Soviet Union led by Stalin. The communist party was removed, there was repression of presents, red army leadership (an army of the working class organized by the Bolshevik's. They struggled for capitalism. It was soon renamed the Soviet Army), persecution of independent people, widespread police surveillance, imprisonment, and killings.
Stalin's main goal during the great purge was to execute anyone who was a threat to him. While doing so, he got rid of all of the great and crucial leaders of Russia. He also weekend leadership of the red army. On top of that, soldiers were reluctant to follow Stalin's policies of collectivization. This created an army completely unprepared for World War 2. Another reason he caused so much fear and sacrificed many lives was so that the remaining people would feel insecure, resulting in their dependence of him.
info from: http://www.pvhs.chico.k12.ca.us/~bsilva/projects/russia/stalin/great_purge.htm
the website below is really good for general research on Stalin. http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/1525 this website is all about analysis. the article is written by a man who is talking all about Stalin's reasons behind his cruelty and oppressiveness. Here is a really good quote!
"Stalin's killing and imprisonment of millions of Soviet citizens are cited as irrational acts attributed by psychiatrists to paranoia or worse mental illness (Rancour-Lafferiere, 2004), to his violent Caucasus upbringing (Baberowski, 2005), or to other idiosyncratic factors that render the deaths of millions a "historical accident." This article sugests that it is possible that Stalin was so cruel and horrible because of a mental illness or his upbringing. Do you think that this assumption could be true? Let me know what you think!
Hey guys, it's Elaine. I'll help Allie with the Political Policies. Sorry that I came in late and all... Hopefully I can add in some info not already stated. :)
It might have been something to do with that. After all, Mrs. Grossman mentioned in class that people believed that Stalin's father was physically abusive to both him and his mother.
Another site that I looked at said that he was paranoid over any and every one. He looked behind his back so much that he suspected his closest advisors of working for opposite causes. Only after much convincing, as well as evidence, would Stalin relax in their presence. It doesn't suggest any reason for the paranoia, however.
I found it interesting, though, that the site stated that Stalin took extra measures to protect himself (paranoia was obviously part of the reason for this). Not only did he assign laws before going around them to do as he wished, he also separated himself from the Soviet Propaganda. He believed that, should they make a mistake, he would therefore not be blamed for it or viewed as the "enemy".
However, how a man could become so paranoid from a messed up childhood? There must be something more to that; his father had most likely died already, so he wasn't the reason. Therefore, do you believe that Stalin got more involved in the "mob" scene than believed, and made many enemies because of it?
In 1939, Leon Trotsky moved to Mexico city. After dealing with health problems and considering suicide, Leon wrote the document "Trotsky's Testament", where he denied Stalin's accusations of him being betraying the working class. He also thanked his family and friends for loving and supporting him. In 1940, Trotsky survived a raid on his home by several of Stalin's assassins, but was not so lucky later that year when another agent entered his home. His name was Ramon Mercader, and he killed Trotsky by driving an ice axe into his skull. Leon did not die instantly, but remained alive for another day. His final words were, "I will not survive this attack. Stalin has finally accomplished the task he attempted unsuccessfully before."
ok so Andie "Lord of Pie" I no you were having trouble finding things on absence of a free press: the government controlled what books were published, what music was heard, and which art was displayed. If an artist were to ignore the communist guidelines they wouldn't be able to get materials, work space, or jobs. Under Stalin's totalitarian policies, writers, artists, and composers faced persecution from the government.
I have just learned that Stalin actually experienced the poverty that the peasants were mad about. The URL for this website is http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSstalin.htm. You can also go to Google.com and type in Joseph Stalin, And you will find information on him at that site.
I can understand him trying to make laws that would allow poverty to continue so that he could let everyone know how hard it was to live before he came to power.
This is in answer to matt's question, above. stalin's actions when hewas in power is not justified by his upbringing. It's true that he wanted support to keep his power,but in the end it really didn't matter what other people thought of him. He was a dictator. He wasn't puposely trying to treat the peasants poorly, he had no choice because their resistance threatened his power. Stalin was willing to do whatever necessary (violations of human rights) to keep his power. I don't think his own childhood would impact him in the way you said.
andy sukovich, this may help you withthe censorship of the press. This page contains links to helpful sites: http://www.casahistoria.net/Stalin2.htm#The_Stalinist_State
teh economy during stalin canbe compared to a machine. tehre was little incentive for workers towork, as all were paid the same amount of money.Strict laws were established, and in some places there was forced labor. industrial success was possible because of the fear of those laws (stalin) and their belief in the communist party and future rewards. teh developmentof the economy has much to do with the political aspect. stalin was absolute and instilled much fear, for example in the great purges.
under stalin and his economic policies, the russian economy did improve much, at the cost of agriculture and mostly peasnats' quality of life. maybe collectivisation could have worked if it happened in phases(some private farms), and not as a mass collectivization.
i don't think communism is a good thing, but according to the solid information it wasn't such a bad thing for russia's industry and succeeded in making it in to a more modern country.
do you think stalin was a necessary component in russia?
Thanks for the website Sam. It really helped. Here is more information... Most of the violations of human rights happened during the Great Purge. Most of the slodiers were tormented. The experienced recruits would make fun of the new recruits. Not only was there oral abuse but there was also physical abuse. The soldiers were made to do things that they either shouldn't or didn't need to do. Stalin also wanted everyone to be on his side.
Why do you think that if Stalin wanted everyone to be on his side he started treating people like he did? What was the point of it?
And Andrew Sukovich(lord of pie) has returned. With some stuff. From the internet. And here it is. "> Censorship in the Soviet Union Censorship in the Soviet Union was pervasive and strictly enforced.
Censorship was performed in two main directions:
State secrets were handled by Main Administration for Safeguarding State Secrets in the Press (also known as Glavlit) was in charge of censoring all publications and broadcasting for state secrets Censorship of "political correctness", in accordance with the official ideology and politics of the Comunist Party was performed by several organizations: Goskomizdat censored all printed matter: fiction, poetry, etc. Goskino, in charge of cinema Gosteleradio, in charge of radio and television broadcasting Vladimir Lenin believed that literature and art could be exploited for ideological and political as well as educational purposes. As a result, the party rapidly established control over print and electronic media, book publishing and distribution, bookstores and libraries, and it created or abolished newspapers and periodicals at will." -http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Censorship-in-the-Soviet-Union
And since people aparently started putting in dialectical questions, why did the Communist party need to control the public opinion?
Yes I think I would. You can call me cold hearted evil or a commie, but the fact of the matter is that Stalin was quite a dirty-political genius. How else could he have taken power? He would have been planning for years in advance to take power. If he starved the people before his rule then doled out the food when he gained power and established order, then they definitely would approve of his regime more because they got food. Mrs. Grossman always says that it is about "Who has the power, Who wants the power?" and in this case, the power is food. In Russia everyone wants food because there never is nor was enough. Food was practically more valuable than gold, for the peasants at least, because gold was all good and dandy to look at, but you wouldn't die if you didn't look at it enough. The peasants making up the majority of the country would want the food and Stalin knew and had enough food to feed them all, but he withheld it to gain support. It is a brilliant tactic. It is similar to what Hitler did in Germany because he rationed food into minuscule amounts. If one joined the Wermacht, Juggenheim (Hitler youth) or one of dozens of other organizations that were Nazi-party-boy-scout-groups, and this included women to, then your family received practically twice as much, allowing all to eat. This created massive support for Hitler because everyone was brainwashed into thinking that necessity=food=Hitler Youth=support Hitler. Stalin did almost the same thing.
hey, uh it would be great if everyone could just click on their names above their posts, go to edit profile, then scroll down to identity-display name and add their period number and waht topic they are researching becuase me is getting confuzzzzzzled
Hey Elaine! I'm looking forward to working with you on this project! Thanks for answering my question. To answer your question on Stalin's secret "mob" activities, I believe that it was very possible that he was involved. However, I don't think that he needed to keep that a secret. If he wanted to hurt or punish someone for any reason, he could've done so easily using his secret police. Also, it seems from other research that I've done that he didn't want to keep his cruelty a secret so that people were afraid of him and didn't want to oppose him. As Mrs. Grossman said in class, he didn't have a conscience and didn't lose sleep over the fact that he was murdering innocent people. Why do you think it was so easily for Stalin to gain power if he was so cruel and evil? Did he hide his cruelty in the beginning, or did others not take it seriously? Also, why do you think that other people in power followed Stalin's brutal ideas? Were they also just as unsensitive, or was there another reason to their ignorance?
responding to matts post that said: I can understand him trying to make laws that would allow poverty to continue so that he could let everyone know how hard it was to live before he came to power.
I disagree with that. If he made laws that allowed poverty to continue then it would still be hard to live and would be no different than it was before he came into power. It would actually be worse since he came after Lenin who was very popular, despite the fact that he created famine, disease, and civil war. Lenin had triumphed but he needed to fix the economy which was in ruins but then he died and it was Stalin's job to fix the economy. Instead he further weakened it. Also, the reason Stalin created poverty was so that the people would be very dependent on him, not so that he could show the people how hard times were before him.
Hey everyone, I'm a little behind on posting my information about Stalin’s connection to the economic policies but here's what I found…. Stalin made many different changes to the economy of Russia, negative and positive. He concentrated on the output of heavy industry such as farm machines, transportation and other heavy industry. Through his five year plan where the economy was placed under a command economy Russia had arose much more oil coal and steel production, while mining expanded and many new railroads were built. Despite the increase in many areas of the economy, the workers were still in very bad conditions. Some workers managed to acquire wealth by becoming a skilled industry worker while others continued to receive low wages. Another big point was that the quality of the products was very low due to the managers of the industries only wanting to meet there quota and not caring for quality. The Soviet Union under Stalin increased in heavy industry but failed in making consumer goods such as clothing, cars and refrigerators. Under Stalin agriculture came under government control. Peasants were forced to work on collectives where they could keep their property but had to turn over all their grains and livestock. This caused many problems with angry peasants who killed livestock and burned grain due to problems such as starvation and the unfairness of the collectization. So as you can see, though Stalin increased the industry and many other things in the Soviet Union, he also caused much distress and problems within the economy.
Here is some info about violations of human rights...
First of all everybody knows that Stalin was a very peranoid and crazy man. But the genocides that he created are even more sick and crazy. The Ukraine famine has recently been reconginzed as one of the most destructive genocides of the 20th century. The total death toll was about six to seven million. Stalin starved the people because they refused to give up thier crops or because they killed thier livestock.
Another genocide that Stalin created was the labour camps. In order for Stalin to meet the demands of the Five-Year Plan, he forced people to meet their quotas. If they didn't, they were sent to labour camps were most of them were worked to death. However, there were many more men in these camps then women. These camps also had millions more deaths along with the people that were killed from starvation.
Not only did Stalin kill ordinary citizens for no reason but he also began to turn to his communist party. If one of them said they should have reconciliation with the peasantry or a greater internal democracy, Stalin toke it as an unaccaptable threat. Anyone who was not completly loyal to him had to be "weeded out." However, there were hundreds of thousands that weren't completly loyal to him. That would be another reason why he created so many genocides. Because he was trying to "weed out" all those unloyal to him.
Most people also called these genocides "gendercides" because he toke mostly of not all men and put them into labour camps. There were almost no women in these camps. One women however still vividly remembers her experience of the capms...
Else Rutgers, now 92, was one of around 200 Swiss Communists who emigrated to Moscow after the Russian Revolution of 1917 - and one of the few to survive the Gulag.
Rutgers was 19 years old when she left Zurich for Moscow with her husband, Wim, a Dutch Communist. It was to be 25 years before she would return home.
“I don’t know how I coped with everything that was thrown at me,” Rutgers told swissinfo. “Of course we realised too late what Stalin’s regime was really like.”
As a child, Rutgers was raised believing in the ideals of socialism by her father, a member of the Swiss Communist Party.
“Every Sunday I would go on Communist rallies with him, much to my mother’s dismay,” Rutgers recalls. “My father was even forced out of his job because of his party membership.”
Millions perished in the gulags (SF)Purges The Rutgers arrived in Moscow in 1932. Although both of them found work - Wim as an engineer and Else as a teacher – life in the poverty-stricken metropolis was hard.
“With so much poverty, it was hard to maintain our faith in the system, but we kept thinking that the regime was still only a few years old.”
Life took a turn for the worse in 1934, when Stalin began his sweeping purge of the Communist party to weed out alleged traitors and spies.
“Friends suddenly vanished, even though I knew they were Communists. We realised that things were moving in the wrong direction far earlier than a lot of Russians, who just didn’t want to see what was happening.”
On June 22, 1941, the day German forces crossed into the USSR, Else was imprisoned by the secret police. Along with hundreds of other foreigners, she was put on a train from Moscow to the southern city of Saratov.
“It was cold and there wasn’t much to eat and our bodies were crawling with bugs,” Else recalls. “But the most painful thing was being separated from my young son Petja and not knowing where he was.”
During her imprisonment, Else also lost touch with Wim, with whom she had maintained close contact though they were by now divorced.
“Wim had also been denounced and lost his job,” Rutgers explains. “There was no trace of him after 1942. We still don’t know what happened to him.”
Many of her fellow prison inmates were less fortunate. As “counter-revolutionaries”, they had to serve ten years in the country’s harshest labour camps. Hardly any of them survived.
Rutgers spent over a year doing hard labour in the camp, digging a canal out of the frozen Kazakh ground with pickaxes.
This was some of the story of Elise Rutgers. There is more first hand account info at
the worst thing bout stalin is that e was a none descriminate killer. it was almost like he didnt even reallize that ppl were dieing. and when ppl think of terrible dictators, they think of hitler first when rly stalin was much worse. at least in my opinion. not they werent both terrible men. i wonder y stalins crueltys seem to b less well known?
Well, I won't start going off on Hitler and his many acts against people, but I have to say that Stalin most likely covered up most of his crueler moments. If he had not, he most likely would have not been viewed in such a positive light by his people.
This site, though I didn't read it fully, paints a pretty good picture of how little information was really given to the people. It also shows, however, how much hope the people had in him. And this is all, by the way, coming from a first-person perspective.
Here’s information on the absence of a free press and systematic violations of human rights: Stalin would use methods that would have appalled Lenin. He wanted famine to keep the war efforts, was responsible for death of thousands and forced collectivization of agriculture. With the absence of free press it restricted the people causing them to revolt even more. The Great Purge showed that Stalin had no human sentiment. Stalin had prided himself on maintaining the legacy of Lenin as a founding father for the Soviet Union and the future Socialist world. Although, the human rights of Lenin would have differed very much from Stalin’s. Stalin thought he could fight political dissent through violence and killings. It was as if Stalin had so much power that he could not control all of it and he abused this power.
Melissa Kahn: Trace of Stalin's power in Soviet Union • Stalin, in contrast to his rival, Trotsky, felt that he should focus efforts at home and in the countries they already controlled rather than all over the world like Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev had wanted to do. This plan had already failed during and after World War I. Stalin eventually took over the party and kept Trotsky from having any real power. • Stalin was interested in making the Soviet Union an industrial power and so he developed a command economy, where the government made all decisions about the economy. The government eventually owned and controlled all businesses and finances. They also controlled all of the agriculture. • Stalin’s government came up with his Five-Year Plan which included a period of aggressive industrialization and economic collectivization. They set high goals for workers to achieve in manufacturing, transportation, and natural resource production. Workers could get bonuses if they met goals. Managers were mostly interested in quantity, not quality.
Stalin gained complete political control through the use of secret police and unjust policies. His government invaded citizen's privacy and treated them all as criminals. He also used weapons to prevent protests and eliminated any opposing polital forces. Andrew V.
Stalin gained complete political control through the use of secret police and unjust policies. His government invaded citizen's privacy and treated them all as criminals. He also used weapons to prevent protests and eliminated any opposing polital forces. Andrew V.
Hi Mrs. Grossman I am still having problems with posting my blog. I can however read everyone's comments. Everytime I try to post, it says choose a profile and I already did this. I can do the work, would you rather I send you an email or write out on paper? question 2- Stalin's rise to power Trace Stalin's rise to power: Stalin first started to gain power when he took miltary leadership positions in the Russian Cvil war and the Soviet Polish war. Once he gained respect on the battlefield Lenin upgraded him to General Secretary. Now this is really when he started to move up in the Russian world. His job was to fire any people that he thought was not up to pare and once he fired that person he would have to hire another. Now Stalin used this power to the fullest extent. If one person didnt like Stalin or dissagreed with his ideas he would fire them, thus increasing his influence and power in Russia. And when Lenin died the leadership position was between Trostky and Stalin. But Stalin already had it in the bag because Stalin made sure that everybody in the party was voting for him not Trostky, a power he had gained when he was General secretary. And that's Stalin's rise to power
Responding to Steven’s response: I think that Stalin’s cruelties were less known for a couple of reasons. One was that he did a better job of covering up what he had done. For instance, Stalin was much more discreet in his use of propaganda in comparison to Hitler. Also, Hitler invaded other countries, not just Germany and killed people of different religions and cultures. This made Hitler’s cruelty known and his name feared throughout many nations. Where as Stalin only killed people who were a threat/opposed his power and he only executed people who opposed him within Russia. Therefore, Stalin’s cruelty was mostly only known in Russia. His act of cruelty was less spread because only his country was involved.
Steven, I think you're right. Stalin has to be just as bad as Hitler, if not worse. The reason his cruelty isnt' so well known has Hitler's might be because not everyone knows about him and what he did. By the time Hitler was in power, people had already caught ont o what he was doing and addressed that it was wrong. The people in Russia during Stalin didn;t know about all the people he killed, or that he was a bad thing for the country.
I would say that as time progresses and mankind experiences more, we become more sensitive to these types of things, proving that yes, we do learn from history.
Economic planning in the Soviet Union under Stalin “was often done based on faulty or outdated information” so there were shortages of some supplies like consumer goods and large amounts of other supplies. The 5 year plans focused on heavy industry and not many consumer goods were produced. This caused a black market to develop. These consumer goods would only be more widely produced after Stalin’s death.
3 questions about Stalin are- 1) Why do you think he was so cruel and cold hearted? Do you think his childhood could have anything to do with it? 2) Do you think Russia would be different today if Trotsky took power instead of Stalin? What would some differences be? 3) Why would Stalin have Trotsky murdered even though he was outside of Russia? Was he really out of the picture for Stalin?
I really like your last question, Dan. It's really creative. For the first question, however, you might want to go a little bit more into it, since we've already pretty much learned the answer to that in class. But over all, impressive! :)
Anyway, I'm posting tonight on how Stalin created a political image of what the people wanted. Mrs. Grossman mentioned how he had a "photographic" ear (hmm... doesn't look right), which really did help him with his campaign and future rule. By listening to the world around him, and taking whatever thoughts he deemed reasonable enough to note, he created his base and outward appearance. Should the people have known what was really going on in his head, there would have been a very different response to many (if not all) of his ideas. Here is the clip that I got this from; let it be known that it is a direct quote.
In 1924, Lenin died and Stalin began his characteristic political moves. He embarrassed and undermined other political bigwigs in the party, either by forming alliances with other leaders or by publicly humiliating them. But one by one, all the people who have aligned with him also got destroyed. An example was his chief competitor Trotsky, who was eventually eliminated from the Party politics.
"Stalin worked hard to create an appeal with the masses by depicting himself as someone who was from them. He was later accused of creating a ‘cult of the personality’. He used his concept of ‘Socialism in One Country’ to generate hope in the minds of the Soviet people who were tired of war and hunger. "
To Steven about his question on Hitler and Stalin, I agree with Elaine that Stalin had so much control over the press that no one really knows about his cruelty except for people who actually research it. I think that Hitler's holocaust is more well known because after the war when people were liberated, many people did everything they could to tell the public. There wasn't any way that it could be kept a secret, unlike in Stalin's stituation. Even by reading less than a paragraph at the website that Elaine posted, it is clear that many thought of Stalin as a great leader because he controlled what people knew. The website was made by someone who had met Stalin multiple times, and describes what it was like. They mention how it was a dream of theirs to meet Stalin, and how great an honor it was. It is obvious that Stalin didn't reveal the true Stalin when talking to others; he did everything he could to make a good and false impression. "During the twelve days of our stay in Moscow we met Comrade Stalin several times, and the talks which we held with him, his sincere, comradely advice and instructions, have remained and will remain forever dear to us."
dan, in response to question3) Why would Stalin have Trotsky murdered even though he was outside of Russia? Was he really out of the picture for Stalin? well i think that even when in exile, he could still be viewed as a threat because there's always the chance that he will return to Russia. Take Lenin for instance, who was sent away and then Germany aided his return causing him to completely revolutionize Russia and change everything.
I think that Trotsky would have run the U.S.S.R. in a radically different way than Stalin did, since Trotsky opposed almost everything Stalin did. Even so, many of Trotsky’s ideas turned out to be surprisingly similar in some ways to Stalin’s policies, particularly economically. Other differences are shown in some areas such as their foreign policies and political theory. These differences could have had a great impact on the course of both Soviet and world history.
From Matthew DiBuduo in Period 4, Hi Lili. To respond to your post on March 4, at 4:10 AM, In what ways were Stalin's economic policies identical to Trotsky's.
Kevin Kochiss said.. In my opinion I think Stalin new what he was doing when he outlawed human rights and freedom of the press. See he had a plan for Russia and himself. He wanted to gain power and keep it, so anybody he felt that was a threat to his power he had killed. Although you dwell on the fact that he killed so many people, in essence he had to in order to stay in power. When he was in power you cant say that he wasnt beneficial. He had a dream of making Russia a leading world power and an industrial giant. He turned Russia from farms and poor peasants to the amazing country it is today, and to gain success you need to make sacrifices. He also brought Russia 200 years into the future. I mean think about if Stalin didnt kill those people and the country had a revolution. Stalin would lose power as well Russia. He also brought peace and order in a time of need when the country had been devastated by the Great War. In conclusion, I think it was necessary for Stalin to kill those people that threatened him and his work, Death solves all problems - no man, no problem, -Joseph Stalin. I think Joseph just loved his country more than anything else. He was never out though making his own mark on history but rather Russias. I dont however agree on the killings of innocent people who hadnt created a conflict with Stalin or made any hint at a revolution. The killings of those people were just cruel. Source: http://www.euroclio.eu/joomla/index.php/History-Education-News/General/Russia-Peddling-Stalin.html http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/joseph_stalin.html
Great, I think it would be a good idea to put our facts into a word document in presentation form and post it onto this blog so that other classes can offer tips.
Hi team 2. It's Matt DiBuduo. I would like to take care of tracing Stalin's rise to power.
ReplyDeleteMelissa- I will do the trace of Stalin's rise to power in the Soviet Union.
ReplyDeleteCara- I will do the connection between economic policies.
ReplyDeleteHey Melissa, it's Matthew, if you would like to do Stalin's rise to power, I will take care of his connections between ECONOMIC policies.
ReplyDeleteRebecca- I will do the connection between the absence of a free press and systematic violations of human rights.
ReplyDeleteAlright then, I will do the connection between the POLITICAL policies.
ReplyDeleteMatt, I'm going to cover the economic policies.
ReplyDeleteHi Matt, I will cover Stalin's rise to power in the Soviet Union. Thank you for letting me do it.
ReplyDeleteHave we come to an agreement?
ReplyDeleteI'll do how Stalin rose to power in the soviet union.
ReplyDeleteI think we've already come to an agreement of what everyone has decided to do.
ReplyDeleteShawn, I think Melissa took Stalin's rise to power. See what else can be done.
ReplyDeleteHey Melissa, Wikipedia has some information on Stalin's rise to power.
ReplyDeleteEverybody, begin researching soon. Don't forget to save everything to a word document in your student folder. Back up all your work.
ReplyDeleteSG
Melissa-Sorry Shawn. Thank you Matt
ReplyDeleteOk ill help with ecomomic and political policies.
ReplyDeleteMelissa- What about Kevin?
ReplyDeleteHow many people are in group 2?
ReplyDeleteThere's six.
ReplyDeleteThis may be a problem because there are only 5 topics to cover. However, 2 people can work on one topic.
ReplyDeleteOkay Matt, do you still want to do Stalin's rise to power? We can work on it together.
ReplyDeleteI have already begun research on POLITICAL policies, but I understand Shawn also decided to do POLITICAL policies. Can you join me Shawn?
ReplyDeleteMelissa- Okay Matt, that sounds good.
ReplyDeleteYea matt ill help you
ReplyDeleteKevin can help me or Rebecca.
ReplyDeleteI actually learned that the correct term for the political policies for the Soviet Union is STALINISM.
ReplyDeleteI got the political policies for pd. 5
ReplyDeletei would like to research teh connection to economic policies for period 5
ReplyDeleteactually someone else can have political stuff, i got violations of human rights
ReplyDeleteAndrew Sukovich, lord of the universe(and pie) will do "the absence of a free press"
ReplyDeleteI'll trace his rise to power for periodfive :)
ReplyDelete-Lili
I will do the human rights part
ReplyDeleteperiod 5
ReplyDeletejust a reminder, everyone remember to site where you got your sources!!
ReplyDeleteHere ajota
ReplyDeletehttp://www.unitedhumanrights.org/Genocide/Ukraine_famine.htm
Period 5.
ReplyDeleteThe lord of the universe and pie is in period 5
Each part of the question should have someone answering it in each of the classes. That means that a person in per. 4 will have a person from per. 5 and 7 doing the same thing. You should all help each other
ReplyDeletesam i will help you
ReplyDeleteEric will do economic policies with WeiWei
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI Andrew V. will also do Stalin's rise to power in period 5
ReplyDeleteSo...
ReplyDeleteTwo Andrews.
Lord of pie and Andrew V.
Confusion time.
nevermind about what I said before AJ
ReplyDeleteSo this is it
ReplyDeleteEconomics:
-Wei Wei
-Eric H
POlitical
-Andrew V
Human Rights
-AJ
-Sam
Rise to power
-Lili
free press
-Andrew S
anyone else?
Stalin’s rise to power in relation to his economic policies
ReplyDelete• Stalin disagreed with Lenin’s NEP, preferred “pure communism”
Why?
• It’d take too long for the economy to grow freely (NEP), when Russia still had its traditional economic weaknesses. ex
• Russia had to rely on domestic resources in order to improve (no foreign finance)
• Majority of Russians contributed through the agricultural sector, 78%
• Therefore, the only way to raise money to industrialize was collectivization of agriculture
What does that mean?
• State to control agriculture
• Interposed in between rural producers and urban consumers, withdrawal of wealth from both
• Ways:
o forced the peasants into communes
o destroyed the kulaks
o controlled agricultural output
o fixed the prices of wages and food
• private consumption- 50%, state use- 50%
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitextlo/prof_josephstalin.html
ReplyDeletethis is good for political policies
to all: don't forget to back up your research on a word document and save it to your student folder. SG
ReplyDeleteTo all: Don't forget that I'm looking for responses as well as info. passed to each other. Give and take. SG
ReplyDeleteStalin's Rise to Power:
ReplyDeleteAfter the Russian Revolution, Stalin spent time building his post as general secretary. Stalin made a promising speech at Lenin’s funeral promising to keep his reforms. People viewed Stalin as a moderate who followed always compromised to avoid dangerous situations such as revolution. He had fantastic ability to take advantage of the other leader’s weaknesses. He also had many good stratagies.(http://www.helium.com/items/933786-how-stalin-took-control-of-the-soviet-union)
Soon, a triumvirate formed of Stalin, Kamenev, and Zinoviev. This triumvirate governed against Trotsky. Soon Stalin switched sides and joined with Bukharin. From here, have had control over the party and the country. (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/stalin.html)
I will do Stalin's rise to power
ReplyDeletei will work on Stalin's censorship of the press
ReplyDeleteI guess that I will do the systematic violations of human rights.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteok ill do political policies!
ReplyDeleteI'll do economic policies.
ReplyDeleteSo what does that leave me to do?
ReplyDeletethis is a really good website for violation of human rights.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.du.edu/korbel/hrhw/digest/russia/military.pdf
um kevin you can help someone else with a topic you can pick which part you want to help with
ReplyDeleteOK i guess I'll help Avery with economic policies.
ReplyDeleteAlrgiht this is what I got
ReplyDeleteRise to Power-
Dan
Censorship-
Steven
Systematic Violations-
Sarah
Political Policies-
Allie
Economic Policies-
Avery
Kevin
Agreed?
yeah. thats good.
ReplyDeletei researched Stalin's use of propaganda, or control of the press, to control ppls opinion of him. he controlled all newpapers, movies and radio stations, so that only what he wanted ppl to see was seen. He also burned down churches and synagogues while capturing or killing religious leaders. He also sed his power to control the educational system so that ppl would only learn what he wanted them to learn. which gave him complete control of the publics opinion of himself.
ReplyDeleteFine with me!! :)
ReplyDeletewikipedia has a lot of really good info on political policies, which is called Stalinism.
ReplyDeleteTo all: don't forget to back up your research on a word document and save it to your student folder. SG
ReplyDeletei think everyone should at least look at this site for information to start with because this appears to b where mrs. grossman got her question from :) http://www.eurekacityschools.org/ehs/perryr/GLWeb/StarTESTReview/10.7.2.pdf
ReplyDeleteThis is about the violation of human rights...
ReplyDeleteThe military was one of the biggest groups of people to cause many of the deaths. Most of the deaths were caused as a result of injuries. For the first year, conscripts had to complete many menial and degrading tasks. Many of the second year soldiers had absolute authority over the first year conscripts. This promoted the frequent use of hazing. Hazing is when someone is subject to harassment or ridicule. Most of the reprimands are seldom. So many people got away with it.
http://www.du.edu/korbel/hrhw/digest/russia/military.pdf
Stevens right. Thats a mighty fine chunk of info you got there :) EVERYONE needs to look at it!
ReplyDeleteOn Friday we will continue to read and take notes and develop ideas that will round out our information. Remember you will be organizing your thoughts into a coherent, easy to understand, easy to follow format for a class discussion.
ReplyDeleteI'm looking for critical thought questions from all of you, just like your dialectical questions.
"We are 100 years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this lag in ten years. Either we do it, or they crush us!" Josef Stalin, speech to the Fourth Plenum of Industrial Managers, Feb. 4, 1931.
ReplyDeleteGood site for economic policies and where i got the quote from: http://www.emayzine.com/lectures/STALIN.html
It's Friday, Yeeaaay!
ReplyDeleteToday, catch up on what others have written.
Also, continue your own research. Work on the following today.
1. get eye-witness accounts. Get examples and stories from actual people who lived under these totalitarian regimes.
2. Share info.
3. Ask critical thought questions from group
4. Respond to others.
5. Document and save all your work to your student folder.
Hi there Period 4. Does everyone from team 2 have something to share with eachother?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.marxists.org/subject/stalinism/origins-future/index.htm
ReplyDeletegood site for info on stalinism
Here is some information that i was ablw to find on Wikipedia.• Stalinism is a term that purportedly describes the political system of the Soviet Union under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, from 1929-1953.
ReplyDelete• Not commonly used as a positive term
• The groundwork for the Soviet policy concerning nationalities, laid in Stalin's 1913 work Marxism and the National Question, praised by Lenin.
• Socialism in One Country,
• The theory of aggravation of the class struggle along with the development of socialism, a theoretical base supporting the repression of political opponents as necessary.
Source: Stalinism. 11 Feb. 2009. 12 Feb. 2009 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalinism>.
I'll take a look at it Shawn. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteMelissa-
ReplyDeletehttp://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/stalin.html
this is a good website for infomation on Stalin
Stalin had said in one of his speeches on the problems of Leninism, that if the Soviet union was to be one socialist country, it would need help from other more advanced countries like Germany or Austria.
ReplyDeleteHas anybody else found anything?
ReplyDeleteHe also supported repressing political opponents as neccessary, meaning he would do whatever had to be done in order to achieve socialism in the Soviet Union.
ReplyDeleteMelissa- There is good information ont he website i posted before.
ReplyDelete***on the website i posted before
ReplyDeleteStalin put the press under full government control and did not give the people very much freedom which caused them to dislike the government. According to the Soviet constitution,each individual was guaranteed civil rights, but had to sacrifice them and their desires to fulfill the needs of the collective. Open criticism of the Communist Party could not be allowed because it could hurt the interests of the state, society, and the progress of socialism.
ReplyDeleteI found out that the term STALINISM is not used as a positive term. This means that the political policies of Stalin were not good.
ReplyDeleteI understand what you are talking about Rebecca and I agree. If there are any disruptions to Stalin's socialist nation, then he will get rid of all threats like Bismark did when he united Germany.
ReplyDeleteStalin used the Five Year Plan that built factories,hydro-electric dams, canals, railways and more. The Five Year Plan caused Russia to become more modernized. The country now had electricity and most people lived in new households.
ReplyDeleteMelissa-
ReplyDeleteIn 1929, Stalin began to seize control of agriculture. -http://library.thinkquest.org/TQ0312702/stalin.htm
^ more info on Stalin
Stalin used the captalist mechanism for supply and demand to regenerate the economy of Russia. He also made agriculture worth more to motivate the peasants to make crops for cities.
ReplyDeleteHey Melissa, can you explain a bit more about how Stalin took control of agriculture.
ReplyDeleteHey Shawn, how did Stalin's capitalism method work out?
ReplyDeleteDid Stalin believe his human rights would be successful?
ReplyDeleteMelissa- Hi Matt, I wasnt finished with explaining the agriculture thing, but thank you for the reminder
ReplyDeleteAndrew Sukovich, lord of pie, is having some trouble finding stuff on my part of the question. About the press and stuff. So if someone could help me out with that...that'd be good.
ReplyDeleteGoals- Five Year Plans
ReplyDelete• to change economic base of Russia from farming to industry
• modernization, 100 yrs behind
• Success, at the cost of peasants’ rights and life quality
This is a relativly short yet helpful link about Stalin:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/stalin_joseph.shtml
i lost my document..........soooooooo............
ReplyDeletei gotta start again
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete• Effect of collectivization: peasants were unhappy and refused to produce. Gov. police intervenes—30 mil peasants die of starvation
ReplyDeletefive year plans:
ReplyDelete•established for industries, agriculture, energy, trade, railway construction and the education of the peasants
•to show the world the success of the revolution
created by stalin, opposite of NEP
in teh hope that the rest of the world would adopt socialism/communism
quotation from stalin: "Agriculture is developing slowly, comrades. This is because we have about 25 million individually owned farms. They are the most primitive and undeveloped form of economy We must do our utmost to develop large farms and to convert them into grain factories for the country organised on a modem scientific basis."
ReplyDeleteStalin’s violation of human rights:
ReplyDeleteI know this isn’t my part of the question but I wanted to respond. Anyways, Stalin was personally responsible for the murder of more people than any other human being in the 20th century - and probably any other century. He used Lenin’s slave labor camps and turned it into a secret empire. He purposely created famines in order to sustain war efforts. He even ordered death to fellow communists.
(http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/bcaplan/museum/comfaq.htm#part5)
The Lord of Pie got something. Maybe not good, but I got it. And here. It. Is.
ReplyDeleteCensorship of anything that might reflect badly on Stalin
Propaganda everywhere - pictures, statues, continuous praise and applause
Places named after him
Mothers taught their children that Stalin was ‘the wisest man of the age’
History books and photographs were changed to make him the hero of the Revolution, and obliterate the names of purged people (e.g. Trotsky).
((http://www.johndclare.net/Russ12.htm))
A primary issue around which these party struggles centered was the course of the Russian economy. The right wing, led by Bukharin, favored granting concessions to the peasantry and continuing Lenin's New Economic Policy (NEP). The left, represented by Kamenev and Zinoviev, wished to proceed with industrialization on a large scale at the expense of the peasants. Stalin's position wavered, depending on the political situation, and the NEP continued until 1928 with considerable success. Then Stalin reversed this policy and inaugurated collectivization of agriculture and the Five-Year Plan. Ruthless measures were taken against the kulaks, the farmers who had risen to prosperity under the NEP.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0861297.html
^ direct quotation
ReplyDeleteEric Holden says 2 consequenses to a socialist comand economy.
ReplyDelete1)Agriculture decreased tremendously B/C peasants resisted and grew enough for themselves
2)Amount of farm workers dropped from 75 to less than 50% of population btwn 1928 and 1940
Btwn 1930-38,25 million peasants forcibly relocated to urban areas- become urban workers by intensive training, harsh dicipline
Hope this is helpful this is a good site
http://www.emayzine.com/lectures/STALIN.html
• The Ukrainians wanted to gain independence and when the Czar was overthrown, they prematurely declared their independence
ReplyDelete• They were ultimately crushed by both the Red Army and the White Army
• To help ease tensions in the region, Lenin instituted the NEP that allowed some private enterprise
• When Stalin came to power, he undid these reforms
• Stalin then imposed very tough rules on the populace, including taking their food to be distributed elsewhere. Stalin also took away their ownership of the land that they worked on
• Stalin responded by wanting to eliminate the kulaks (formerly wealthy peasants) he once said that his policies’ goal was "liquidating the Kulaks as a class."
• Kulaks were robbed of their possessions and around 10 million were shipped to prison camps in Siberia where one third of them died from exposure, starvation, beatings, and executions
• Men and older boys, along with childless women and unmarried girls, also became slave-workers in Soviet-run mines and big industrial projects.
• Everyone else was forced to comply with collectivization and those who didn’t were declared kulaks and deported
• The Ukrainians rioted by burning and destroying farms, tools, and crops. They also killed locale rulers and landowners
• Soviet troops and secret police (GPU) were sent in as crowd control and GPU death squads murdered those who resisted
• Stalin also imposed a policy that deliberately caused mass starvation, by increasing quotas of food to be shipped to other parts of the country and soon there was no food in the Ukraine
• It has been estimated that had Stalin not used the wheat from the Ukraine to export for financial aid for his Five-year Plans and for the military build up, that there would have been enough for 2 years worth of food for the Ukrainian population
This is one of many example of Stalin’s ruthless ignorance of human rights. By this single act alone, he killed around 7,000,000 people and made many more homeless. He deliberately took away the food and deliberately murdered thousands or millions more during their brief rebellions. He is truly an evil made.
from http://www.unitedhumanrights.org/Genocide/Ukraine_famine.htm
Economic Control: Stalin’s government made all economic decisions in a system
ReplyDeletethat was known as command economy. Economic control included:
• Setting goals for rapid industrial growth
• Choosing workers and setting their wages
• Telling workers where they could live
• Organizing collective farms, to produce food for the state
Political Control: Stalin held absolute power, outlawed all other political parties,
and demanded obedience, which was enforced in part by secret police (and a system
of police terror that treated ordinary citizens like criminals). Government control
included:
• Using tanks and weapons to stop protests
• Tapping telephone lines and reading mail
• Jailing and executing political opponents
• Asserting the right to punish any person for disobedience—almost any act
http://www.eurekacityschools.org/ehs/perryr/GLWeb/StarTESTReview/10.7.2.pdf
Just in case evryone did'nt see this before:
ReplyDelete"We are 100 years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this lag in ten years. Either we do it, or they crush us!" Josef Stalin, speech to the Fourth Plenum of Industrial Managers, Feb. 4, 1931.
Good site for economic policies and where i got the quote from: http://www.emayzine.com/lectures/STALIN.html
Hi rebecca. I am responding to your question about if Stalin thought his human rights would be successful. I think that maybe he neede more people to support him so he decided that if he forced them to support him, they would have no other choice. That is why he treated so many people so badly. I could be dead wrong though!:)
ReplyDeleteThis is another good site for economic policies:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.angloeuropean.essex.sch.uk/History/IB_Notes/soveco.htm
Hey guys! I found some really great info on the cite that Stephen found!!(thanks by the way:]) Tell me what you think and if it helps!!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.eurekacityschools.org/ehs/perryr/GLWeb/StarTESTReview/10.7.2.pdf
Stalin had absolute power which meant that he could basically do whatever he wanted. He enforced obedience from all people by using a secret police, and treated regular citizens like criminals. This control of the people was done by invading privacy and arresting anyone for any little insignificant reason. The government used weapons to stop protests, punished people for no reason at all, arresting and killing political opponents, and listened to private phone conversations and read mail of citizens without their consent.
im going to throw something else in about my topic: to make himself look better to the public a man named Kirov was assassinated and many ppl think that stalin actually called the hit himself. but instead of being arrested stalin was able to use his total rule of russia to get many of his political enemies put in jail for a crime they were most likely not involved in. i think this is one of the best exaof how exmples of how far he was willing to go to keep his image good in the eyes of the public
ReplyDeletehey allie i dont care but just FYI my name is spelt steVen :P
ReplyDeleteI know that I do not have this topic but I stumbbled across this cite and it might help. I think that it's for economic or political policies. It has to deal with the fall of communism and the rise of neo-communism.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.boogieonline.com/revolution/commerce/economic/russiafall.html
Oh I'm sooo sorry about that!! yes, your name has a v instead of ph! I will remember that next time!
ReplyDeletei dont care just sayin
ReplyDeletehttp://www.helium.com/items/933786-how-stalin-took-control-of-the-soviet-union <=== usefulness on "How Stalin took control of the Soviet Union"
ReplyDeleteis that a real URL?
ReplyDeletemine is......
ReplyDeletehttp://www.helium.com/items/933786-how-stalin-took-control-of-the-soviet-union
Does anyone else have any other information about the violations of human rights?
ReplyDeleteStalin's Rise to Power:
ReplyDeleteJoseph Stalin was born in Gori, Georgia in 1879. In 1901 Stalin joined the Social Democratic Labour Party and was arrested many times over the next 15 years for coordinating strikes and protests. In 1903, Stalin supported Lenin and joined the Bolsheviks, who “argued for a small party of professional revolutionaries with a large fringe of non-party sympathizers and supporters.” On the other hand, Leon Trotsky supported Julius Martov, who formed the Mensheviks, and believed in a “large party of activists.” As an editor of a major newspaper, Stalin supported Lenin openly. As a reward for his loyal support, Lenin invited Stalin to meet him in 1905 in Finland, and appointed him Commissar of Nationalities in 1917. When Lenin died in 1924, Stalin and Trotsky fought for his position. Stalin won over most of the support, and tool control over the Soviet Union.
Sarah u could talk bout how he imprisonned religious leaders and forced ppl to change their religion
ReplyDeleteHey guys! if anyone from period 4 or 5 has any good info on political policies or some good websites please let me know!!
ReplyDeletethis could help some people out in group 2
ReplyDeletehttp://www.sparknotes.com/history/european/russianrev/context.html
hw comment-Stalin's rise to power: While Lenin was dying, Trotsky and Stalin were fighting for his position. Initially, Trotsky seemed like a better candidate because of his brilliant speeches and military skills. Stalin was only the editor of a newspaper at the time, and seemed unimportant. In addition, Lenin wrote a letter saying that Trotsky should succeed him and get rid of Stalin, but this letter was never shown to parliament so it had no impact. Stalin decided to team up with several party members who starting to criticize Trotsky and his past, eventually removing him from the race, and giving Stalin the power.
ReplyDeleteThis could help some people out who have economic policies.
ReplyDeleteThe revolution opened the door for Russia to fully enter the industrial age. Prior to 1917, Russia was a mostly agrarian nation that had dabbled in industrial development only to a limited degree. By 1917, Russia’s European neighbors had embraced industrialization for more than half a century, making technological advancements such as widespread electrification, which Russia had yet to achieve. After the revolution, new urban-industrial regions appeared quickly in Russia and became increasingly important to the country’s development. The population was drawn to the cities in huge numbers. Education also took a major upswing, and illiteracy was almost entirely eradicated.
Dan, Very good and important point.
ReplyDeleteSarah, valuable information in helping to understand the background for Stalin's economic and political policies.
To all, continue looking for human rights violations. Nice work Allie, Sam.
Look up the Gulag Archipeligo and see what you can find. Check out the trials of "criminals" also. Time span look into the Great Purge of the 1930s.
Stalin's political policies were oppressive and cruel. Many people believe that he did this to make sure that no one tried to go against him and the government. Do you think that there were any other reasons to why Stalin would set up a government and his political policies this way?
ReplyDeleteEric Holden says these are the output in millions of tons of coal, iron ore, oil, pig iron, and steel before the first 5 year plan(1927), after the first 5 yr pln(1932), and after the 2nd 5 yr pln(1937) the goal amount is also included the goals were unrealistic and only accounted for industrial products
ReplyDeleteCOAL 1927-35 million tons,1932-64 mt(75 mt target)1937-128 mt (152 mt target)
OIL 1927-12 million tons,1932-21 mt (22 mt target),1937-29 mt (47 mt target)
IRON ORE 1927-5 million tons 1932-12 mt (19 mt target) 1937-unknown
PIG IRON 1927-3 million tons 1932-6 mt (10 mt target)1937-15 mt (16 mt target)
STEEL 1927-4 million tons,1932-6 mt (10 mt target),1937-18 mt (17 mt target)
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/Stalin.htm
Eric Holden says...
ReplyDeleteLack of care and co-ordination over vast investment plans led to waste. E.g. the largest iron and steel complex in Europe was built at Magnitogorsk, but found to be uneconomic when finished because trains used 40% of the coal they carried on the 1500 mile journey east.
The 5 year plans called for drastic changes in manufacturing to try to meet the goals set in place by stalin. the changes were for the good of the country, but were rushed and not well thought out. Therefore they proved costly and debenificial in the long run.
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/Stalin.htm
Stalin’s 5 year plans involved bringing agriculture under government control. Many peasants were put into collectives. Around 23% of them were in collectives by 1933, and 90% were in collectives by 1937. All or most agricultural products increased, including grain. In 1929, 10.8 million tons of grain were produced, 23.3 million tons by 1933, and 31.8 million tons by 1937. More results of the collectivization of agriculture were violence, increased repression, and the elimination of the kulak class.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.angloeuropean.essex.sch.uk/History/IB_Notes/soveco.htm
Stalin’s rise to power in relation to his economic policies
ReplyDelete• Stalin disagreed with Lenin’s NEP, preferred “pure communism”
• Relationship between Lenin and Stalin*
• Left-radical (Stalin)
• Right- conservative (Lenin, NEP)
Why?
• Russia needed to rebuild after damages of WWI, Russian Revolution, Civil War
• It’d take too long for the economy to grow freely (NEP), when Russia still had its traditional economic weaknesses. ex
• Russia had to rely on domestic resources in order to improve (no foreign finance)
• Majority of Russians contributed through the agricultural sector, 78%
• Therefore, the only way to raise money to industrialize (immediate) was collectivization of agriculture
Quotation from Stalin:”Agriculture is developing slowly, comrades. This is because we have about 25 million individually owned farms. They are the most primitive and undeveloped form of economy We must do our utmost to develop large farms and to convert them into grain factories for the country organised on a modem scientific basis."
What does that mean?
• State to control agriculture
• Peasants must work to feed the urban workers in the factories
• Interposed in between rural producers and urban consumers, withdrawal of wealth from both
How?
• forced the peasants into communes
• destroyed the kulaks
• controlled agricultural output
• fixed the prices of wages and food
• private consumption- 50%, state use- 50%
• Effect of collectivization: peasants were unhappy and refused to produce. Gov. police intervenes—30 mil peasants die of starvation
• Collectivization used to support Five Year Plans
Goals- Five Year Plans
• to change economic base of Russia from farming to industry
• modernization, 100 yrs behind
• Success, at the cost of peasants’ rights and life quality
o Factories
o hydro-electric dams, canals, railways and other infrastructural projects
o Holodomor- Ukrainian famine
• established for industries, agriculture, energy, trade, railway construction and the education of the peasants to show the world the success of the revolution
hey, uh it would be great if everyone could just click on their names above their posts, go to edit profile, then scroll down to identity-display name and add their period number and waht topic they are researching becuase me is getting confuzzzzzzled
ReplyDeletewhos doing human rights violations in the other periods?
ReplyDeletewhoever else is doing it should use this really good website on the great purge. I'm using also
ReplyDeletehttp://www.plp.org/books/Stalin/node86.html
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletethe website actually seems to a little Stalinist, but isn't really. The author included a quote from a book by Gábor Tamás Rittersporn called:
ReplyDeleteStalinist Simplifications and Soviet Complications: Social Tensions and Political Conflict in the USSR, 1933--1953
he says, "In other words, Rittersporn is saying: Look, I can prove that most of the current ideas about Stalin are absolutely false. But to say this requires a giant hurdle. If you state, even timidly, certain undeniable truths about the Soviet Union in the thirties, you are immediately labeled `Stalinist'. Bourgeois propaganda has spread a false but very powerful image of Stalin, an image that is almost impossible to correct, since emotions run so high as soon as the subject is broached. The books about the purges written by great Western specialists, such as Conquest, Deutscher, Schapiro and Fainsod, are worthless, superficial, and written with the utmost contempt for the most elementary rules learnt by a first-year history student. In fact, these works are written to give an academic and scientific cover for the anti-Communist policies of the Western leaders. They present under a scientific cover the defence of capitalist interests and values and the ideological preconceptions of the big bourgeoisie."
I find this interesting because since we live in one of those Western Capitalist nations, we can never really know for a fact because most information you find online is from a Western nation or a communist nation. Either source cannot be trusted. This little snipit shows how easily anyones opinion could be twisted (this is a comment for Stalins media repression) even our own because the adults of our time and authors of our books lived in the anti-communist era of our nations history and so their ideas and opinions are biased and we have to really state the facts first, then draw our own individual opinions based on those facts and not call our opinions facts. So I should actually take back that first comment on how the website is Stalinist because the author says multiple times that he is just stating facts.
here is a less in depth site for ciolations of rights on the Great Purge
ReplyDeletewww.brama.com/ukraine/history/terror/index.html
• The Great Purge was aimed at “purifying or purging” the Communist party and instilling fearful respect into the populace, especially the upper-class
ReplyDelete• It involved the NKVD (the new secret police name) usually creating false stories about terrorist groups, plots, and thoughts to arrest selected “enemies of the state”
• These victims (whether guilty or not) were then tried briefly if they were lucky and either executed publicly as an example or shipped into long Siberian exiles.
• The NKVD would ask the two questions “Who recruited you?” and “Who did you recruit?”
• This meant that whether the victims lied or not, the NKVD now had a list of more names of people to murder
• The Ukraine suffered the most, as with many other cases of Stalin’s brutality
• Exact numbers will never be known, but it is estimated that 37% of the Communist party in the Ukraine was executed
• Overall, it is estimated that around 500,000 people were executed and between 3-12 million were sent to labor camps, but the numbers are probably much higher. Most of these victims were thought to be Ukrainian
thats from the previously mentioned site
ReplyDeletejust some general background on the great purge (Soviet holocaust): It was campaigns of political repression oppression in the Soviet Union led by Stalin. The communist party was removed, there was repression of presents, red army leadership (an army of the working class organized by the Bolshevik's. They struggled for capitalism. It was soon renamed the Soviet Army), persecution of independent people, widespread police surveillance, imprisonment, and killings.
ReplyDeleteStalin's main goal during the great purge was to execute anyone who was a threat to him. While doing so, he got rid of all of the great and crucial leaders of Russia. He also weekend leadership of the red army. On top of that, soldiers were reluctant to follow Stalin's policies of collectivization. This created an army completely unprepared for World War 2. Another reason he caused so much fear and sacrificed many lives was so that the remaining people would feel insecure, resulting in their dependence of him.
ReplyDeleteinfo from:
http://www.pvhs.chico.k12.ca.us/~bsilva/projects/russia/stalin/great_purge.htm
Sam; keep in mind that whether millions were killed or just one, that Stalin abused his power.
ReplyDeleteSteve, good website, useful.
of course, that is why he is a dictartor
ReplyDeletethe website below is really good for general research on Stalin.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/1525
this website is all about analysis. the article is written by a man who is talking all about Stalin's reasons behind his cruelty and oppressiveness. Here is a really good quote!
"Stalin's killing and imprisonment of millions of Soviet citizens are cited as irrational acts attributed by psychiatrists to paranoia or worse mental illness (Rancour-Lafferiere, 2004), to his violent Caucasus upbringing (Baberowski, 2005), or to other idiosyncratic factors that render the deaths of millions a "historical accident."
This article sugests that it is possible that Stalin was so cruel and horrible because of a mental illness or his upbringing.
Do you think that this assumption could be true? Let me know what you think!
Hey guys, it's Elaine. I'll help Allie with the Political Policies. Sorry that I came in late and all... Hopefully I can add in some info not already stated. :)
ReplyDeleteIt might have been something to do with that.
ReplyDeleteAfter all, Mrs. Grossman mentioned in class that people believed that Stalin's father was physically abusive to both him and his mother.
Another site that I looked at said that he was paranoid over any and every one. He looked behind his back so much that he suspected his closest advisors of working for opposite causes. Only after much convincing, as well as evidence, would Stalin relax in their presence. It doesn't suggest any reason for the paranoia, however.
I found it interesting, though, that the site stated that Stalin took extra measures to protect himself (paranoia was obviously part of the reason for this). Not only did he assign laws before going around them to do as he wished, he also separated himself from the Soviet Propaganda. He believed that, should they make a mistake, he would therefore not be blamed for it or viewed as the "enemy".
However, how a man could become so paranoid from a messed up childhood? There must be something more to that; his father had most likely died already, so he wasn't the reason. Therefore, do you believe that Stalin got more involved in the "mob" scene than believed, and made many enemies because of it?
In 1939, Leon Trotsky moved to Mexico city. After dealing with health problems and considering suicide, Leon wrote the document "Trotsky's Testament", where he denied Stalin's accusations of him being betraying the working class. He also thanked his family and friends for loving and supporting him. In 1940, Trotsky survived a raid on his home by several of Stalin's assassins, but was not so lucky later that year when another agent entered his home. His name was Ramon Mercader, and he killed Trotsky by driving an ice axe into his skull. Leon did not die instantly, but remained alive for another day. His final words were, "I will not survive this attack. Stalin has finally accomplished the task he attempted unsuccessfully before."
ReplyDeleteok so Andie "Lord of Pie" I no you were having trouble finding things on absence of a free press: the government controlled what books were published, what music was heard, and which art was displayed. If an artist were to ignore the communist guidelines they wouldn't be able to get materials, work space, or jobs. Under Stalin's totalitarian policies, writers, artists, and composers faced persecution from the government.
ReplyDeleteHello all, it's Matt DiBuduo from period 4 with some new information on Stalin.
ReplyDeleteI have just learned that Stalin actually experienced the poverty that the peasants were mad about. The URL for this website is http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSstalin.htm. You can also go to Google.com and type in Joseph Stalin, And you will find information on him at that site.
ReplyDeleteI can understand him trying to make laws that would allow poverty to continue so that he could let everyone know how hard it was to live before he came to power.
ReplyDeleteWould any of you do the same thing if you had to deal with this type of lifestyle in the 1900's?
ReplyDeleteThis is in answer to matt's question, above.
ReplyDeletestalin's actions when hewas in power is not justified by his upbringing. It's true that he wanted support to keep his power,but in the end it really didn't matter what other people thought of him. He was a dictator. He wasn't puposely trying to treat the peasants poorly, he had no choice because their resistance threatened his power. Stalin was willing to do whatever necessary (violations of human rights) to keep his power. I don't think his own childhood would impact him in the way you said.
andy sukovich, this may help you withthe censorship of the press. This page contains links to helpful sites:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.casahistoria.net/Stalin2.htm#The_Stalinist_State
teh economy during stalin canbe compared to a machine. tehre was little incentive for workers towork, as all were paid the same amount of money.Strict laws were established, and in some places there was forced labor. industrial success was possible because of the fear of those laws (stalin) and their belief in the communist party and future rewards. teh developmentof the economy has much to do with the political aspect. stalin was absolute and instilled much fear, for example in the great purges.
ReplyDeleteunder stalin and his economic policies, the russian economy did improve much, at the cost of agriculture and mostly peasnats' quality of life. maybe collectivisation could have worked if it happened in phases(some private farms), and not as a mass collectivization.
ReplyDeletei don't think communism is a good thing, but according to the solid information it wasn't such a bad thing for russia's industry and succeeded in making it in to a more modern country.
do you think stalin was a necessary component in russia?
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the website Sam. It really helped. Here is more information...
ReplyDeleteMost of the violations of human rights happened during the Great Purge. Most of the slodiers were tormented. The experienced recruits would make fun of the new recruits. Not only was there oral abuse but there was also physical abuse. The soldiers were made to do things that they either shouldn't or didn't need to do.
Stalin also wanted everyone to be on his side.
Why do you think that if Stalin wanted everyone to be on his side he started treating people like he did? What was the point of it?
And Andrew Sukovich(lord of pie) has returned. With some stuff. From the internet. And here it is.
ReplyDelete"> Censorship in the Soviet Union
Censorship in the Soviet Union was pervasive and strictly enforced.
Censorship was performed in two main directions:
State secrets were handled by Main Administration for Safeguarding State Secrets in the Press (also known as Glavlit) was in charge of censoring all publications and broadcasting for state secrets
Censorship of "political correctness", in accordance with the official ideology and politics of the Comunist Party was performed by several organizations:
Goskomizdat censored all printed matter: fiction, poetry, etc.
Goskino, in charge of cinema
Gosteleradio, in charge of radio and television broadcasting
Vladimir Lenin believed that literature and art could be exploited for ideological and political as well as educational purposes. As a result, the party rapidly established control over print and electronic media, book publishing and distribution, bookstores and libraries, and it created or abolished newspapers and periodicals at will."
-http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Censorship-in-the-Soviet-Union
And since people aparently started putting in dialectical questions, why did the Communist party need to control the public opinion?
Yes I think I would. You can call me cold hearted evil or a commie, but the fact of the matter is that Stalin was quite a dirty-political genius. How else could he have taken power? He would have been planning for years in advance to take power. If he starved the people before his rule then doled out the food when he gained power and established order, then they definitely would approve of his regime more because they got food. Mrs. Grossman always says that it is about "Who has the power, Who wants the power?" and in this case, the power is food. In Russia everyone wants food because there never is nor was enough. Food was practically more valuable than gold, for the peasants at least, because gold was all good and dandy to look at, but you wouldn't die if you didn't look at it enough. The peasants making up the majority of the country would want the food and Stalin knew and had enough food to feed them all, but he withheld it to gain support. It is a brilliant tactic. It is similar to what Hitler did in Germany because he rationed food into minuscule amounts. If one joined the Wermacht, Juggenheim (Hitler youth) or one of dozens of other organizations that were Nazi-party-boy-scout-groups, and this included women to, then your family received practically twice as much, allowing all to eat. This created massive support for Hitler because everyone was brainwashed into thinking that necessity=food=Hitler Youth=support Hitler. Stalin did almost the same thing.
ReplyDeleteThat was in response to mat's question
ReplyDeleteThis might be a good site for anyone doing the rise of Stalin:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.fsmitha.com/h2/ch11.htm
hey, uh it would be great if everyone could just click on their names above their posts, go to edit profile, then scroll down to identity-display name and add their period number and waht topic they are researching becuase me is getting confuzzzzzzled
ReplyDeleteHey Elaine! I'm looking forward to working with you on this project! Thanks for answering my question. To answer your question on Stalin's secret "mob" activities, I believe that it was very possible that he was involved. However, I don't think that he needed to keep that a secret. If he wanted to hurt or punish someone for any reason, he could've done so easily using his secret police. Also, it seems from other research that I've done that he didn't want to keep his cruelty a secret so that people were afraid of him and didn't want to oppose him. As Mrs. Grossman said in class, he didn't have a conscience and didn't lose sleep over the fact that he was murdering innocent people.
ReplyDeleteWhy do you think it was so easily for Stalin to gain power if he was so cruel and evil? Did he hide his cruelty in the beginning, or did others not take it seriously? Also, why do you think that other people in power followed Stalin's brutal ideas? Were they also just as unsensitive, or was there another reason to their ignorance?
responding to matts post that said: I can understand him trying to make laws that would allow poverty to continue so that he could let everyone know how hard it was to live before he came to power.
ReplyDeleteI disagree with that. If he made laws that allowed poverty to continue then it would still be hard to live and would be no different than it was before he came into power. It would actually be worse since he came after Lenin who was very popular, despite the fact that he created famine, disease, and civil war. Lenin had triumphed but he needed to fix the economy which was in ruins but then he died and it was Stalin's job to fix the economy. Instead he further weakened it. Also, the reason Stalin created poverty was so that the people would be very dependent on him, not so that he could show the people how hard times were before him.
excellent exchange.
ReplyDeleteHey everyone, I'm a little behind on posting my information about Stalin’s connection to the economic policies but here's what I found….
ReplyDeleteStalin made many different changes to the economy of Russia, negative and positive. He concentrated on the output of heavy industry such as farm machines, transportation and other heavy industry. Through his five year plan where the economy was placed under a command economy Russia had arose much more oil coal and steel production, while mining expanded and many new railroads were built. Despite the increase in many areas of the economy, the workers were still in very bad conditions.
Some workers managed to acquire wealth by becoming a skilled industry worker while others continued to receive low wages. Another big point was that the quality of the products was very low due to the managers of the industries only wanting to meet there quota and not caring for quality. The Soviet Union under Stalin increased in heavy industry but failed in making consumer goods such as clothing, cars and refrigerators. Under Stalin agriculture came under government control. Peasants were forced to work on collectives where they could keep their property but had to turn over all their grains and livestock.
This caused many problems with angry peasants who killed livestock and burned grain due to problems such as starvation and the unfairness of the collectization. So as you can see, though Stalin increased the industry and many other things in the Soviet Union, he also caused much distress and problems within the economy.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHere is some info about violations of human rights...
ReplyDeleteFirst of all everybody knows that Stalin was a very peranoid and crazy man. But the genocides that he created are even more sick and crazy. The Ukraine famine has recently been reconginzed as one of the most destructive genocides of the 20th century. The total death toll was about six to seven million. Stalin starved the people because they refused to give up thier crops or because they killed thier livestock.
Another genocide that Stalin created was the labour camps. In order for Stalin to meet the demands of the Five-Year Plan, he forced people to meet their quotas. If they didn't, they were sent to labour camps were most of them were worked to death. However, there were many more men in these camps then women. These camps also had millions more deaths along with the people that were killed from starvation.
Not only did Stalin kill ordinary citizens for no reason but he also began to turn to his communist party. If one of them said they should have reconciliation with the peasantry or a greater internal democracy, Stalin toke it as an unaccaptable threat. Anyone who was not completly loyal to him had to be "weeded out." However, there were hundreds of thousands that weren't completly loyal to him. That would be another reason why he created so many genocides. Because he was trying to "weed out" all those unloyal to him.
Most people also called these genocides "gendercides" because he toke mostly of not all men and put them into labour camps. There were almost no women in these camps. One women however still vividly remembers her experience of the capms...
Else Rutgers, now 92, was one of around 200 Swiss Communists who emigrated to Moscow after the Russian Revolution of 1917 - and one of the few to survive the Gulag.
Rutgers was 19 years old when she left Zurich for Moscow with her husband, Wim, a Dutch Communist. It was to be 25 years before she would return home.
“I don’t know how I coped with everything that was thrown at me,” Rutgers told swissinfo. “Of course we realised too late what Stalin’s regime was really like.”
As a child, Rutgers was raised believing in the ideals of socialism by her father, a member of the Swiss Communist Party.
“Every Sunday I would go on Communist rallies with him, much to my mother’s dismay,” Rutgers recalls. “My father was even forced out of his job because of his party membership.”
Millions perished in the gulags (SF)Purges
The Rutgers arrived in Moscow in 1932. Although both of them found work - Wim as an engineer and Else as a teacher – life in the poverty-stricken metropolis was hard.
“With so much poverty, it was hard to maintain our faith in the system, but we kept thinking that the regime was still only a few years old.”
Life took a turn for the worse in 1934, when Stalin began his sweeping purge of the Communist party to weed out alleged traitors and spies.
“Friends suddenly vanished, even though I knew they were Communists. We realised that things were moving in the wrong direction far earlier than a lot of Russians, who just didn’t want to see what was happening.”
On June 22, 1941, the day German forces crossed into the USSR, Else was imprisoned by the secret police. Along with hundreds of other foreigners, she was put on a train from Moscow to the southern city of Saratov.
“It was cold and there wasn’t much to eat and our bodies were crawling with bugs,” Else recalls. “But the most painful thing was being separated from my young son Petja and not knowing where he was.”
During her imprisonment, Else also lost touch with Wim, with whom she had maintained close contact though they were by now divorced.
“Wim had also been denounced and lost his job,” Rutgers explains. “There was no trace of him after 1942. We still don’t know what happened to him.”
Many of her fellow prison inmates were less fortunate. As “counter-revolutionaries”, they had to serve ten years in the country’s harshest labour camps. Hardly any of them survived.
Rutgers spent over a year doing hard labour in the camp, digging a canal out of the frozen Kazakh ground with pickaxes.
This was some of the story of Elise Rutgers. There is more first hand account info at
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/front/Survivor_of_Stalin_s_camps_recalls_the_horror.html?siteSect=105&sid=4889869&cKey=1084017569000&ty=st
the worst thing bout stalin is that e was a none descriminate killer. it was almost like he didnt even reallize that ppl were dieing. and when ppl think of terrible dictators, they think of hitler first when rly stalin was much worse. at least in my opinion. not they werent both terrible men. i wonder y stalins crueltys seem to b less well known?
ReplyDeleteWell, I won't start going off on Hitler and his many acts against people, but I have to say that Stalin most likely covered up most of his crueler moments. If he had not, he most likely would have not been viewed in such a positive light by his people.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/stalin/intro.htm
This site, though I didn't read it fully, paints a pretty good picture of how little information was really given to the people. It also shows, however, how much hope the people had in him. And this is all, by the way, coming from a first-person perspective.
Here’s information on the absence of a free press and systematic violations of human rights:
ReplyDeleteStalin would use methods that would have appalled Lenin. He wanted famine to keep the war efforts, was responsible for death of thousands and forced collectivization of agriculture. With the absence of free press it restricted the people causing them to revolt even more. The Great Purge showed that Stalin had no human sentiment. Stalin had prided himself on maintaining the legacy of Lenin as a founding father for the Soviet Union and the future Socialist world. Although, the human rights of Lenin would have differed very much from Stalin’s. Stalin thought he could fight political dissent through violence and killings. It was as if Stalin had so much power that he could not control all of it and he abused this power.
Melissa Kahn:
ReplyDeleteTrace of Stalin's power in Soviet Union
• Stalin, in contrast to his rival, Trotsky, felt that he should focus efforts at home and in the countries they already controlled rather than all over the world like Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev had wanted to do. This plan had already failed during and after World War I. Stalin eventually took over the party and kept Trotsky from having any real power.
• Stalin was interested in making the Soviet Union an industrial power and so he developed a command economy, where the government made all decisions about the economy. The government eventually owned and controlled all businesses and finances. They also controlled all of the agriculture.
• Stalin’s government came up with his Five-Year Plan which included a period of aggressive industrialization and economic collectivization. They set high goals for workers to achieve in manufacturing, transportation, and natural resource production. Workers could get bonuses if they met goals. Managers were mostly interested in quantity, not quality.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalin's_rise_to_power
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin
Melissa Kahn: Mrs. Grossman are we allowed to use the book as one of our resources?
ReplyDeleteStalin gained complete political control through the use of secret police and unjust policies. His government invaded citizen's privacy and treated them all as criminals. He also used weapons to prevent protests and eliminated any opposing polital forces.
ReplyDeleteAndrew V.
http://www.eurekacityschools.org/ehs/perryr/GLWeb/StarTESTReview/10.7.2.pdf
Stalin gained complete political control through the use of secret police and unjust policies. His government invaded citizen's privacy and treated them all as criminals. He also used weapons to prevent protests and eliminated any opposing polital forces.
ReplyDeleteAndrew V.
http://www.eurekacityschools.org/ehs/perryr/GLWeb/StarTESTReview/10.7.2.pdf
Hi Mrs. Grossman I am still having problems with posting my blog. I can however read everyone's comments. Everytime I try to post, it says choose a profile and I already did this. I can do the work, would you rather I send you an email or write out on paper? question 2- Stalin's rise to power Trace Stalin's rise to power: Stalin first started to gain power when he took miltary leadership positions in the Russian Cvil war and the Soviet Polish war. Once he gained respect on the battlefield Lenin upgraded him to General Secretary. Now this is really when he started to move up in the Russian world. His job was to fire any people that he thought was not up to pare and once he fired that person he would have to hire another. Now Stalin used this power to the fullest extent. If one person didnt like Stalin or dissagreed with his ideas he would fire them, thus increasing his influence and power in Russia. And when Lenin died the leadership position was between Trostky and Stalin. But Stalin already had it in the bag because Stalin made sure that everybody in the party was voting for him not Trostky, a power he had gained when he was General secretary. And that's Stalin's rise to power
ReplyDeleteThanks
Kevin Kochiss
Responding to Steven’s response:
ReplyDeleteI think that Stalin’s cruelties were less known for a couple of reasons. One was that he did a better job of covering up what he had done. For instance, Stalin was much more discreet in his use of propaganda in comparison to Hitler. Also, Hitler invaded other countries, not just Germany and killed people of different religions and cultures. This made Hitler’s cruelty known and his name feared throughout many nations. Where as Stalin only killed people who were a threat/opposed his power and he only executed people who opposed him within Russia. Therefore, Stalin’s cruelty was mostly only known in Russia. His act of cruelty was less spread because only his country was involved.
Steven, I think you're right. Stalin has to be just as bad as Hitler, if not worse. The reason his cruelty isnt' so well known has Hitler's might be because not everyone knows about him and what he did. By the time Hitler was in power, people had already caught ont o what he was doing and addressed that it was wrong. The people in Russia during Stalin didn;t know about all the people he killed, or that he was a bad thing for the country.
ReplyDeleteI would say that as time progresses and mankind experiences more, we become more sensitive to these types of things, proving that yes, we do learn from history.
ReplyDeleteCould Stalin be compared to Bismarck or Napoleon? He also wanted the best for Russia, despite that his ways and ideas to do it were flawed.
ReplyDeleteHe was a nationalist, was he a realist?Was Stalin a necessary component for Russia, were his ways necessary?
Economic planning in the Soviet Union under Stalin “was often done based on faulty or outdated information” so there were shortages of some supplies like consumer goods and large amounts of other supplies. The 5 year plans focused on heavy industry and not many consumer goods were produced. This caused a black market to develop. These consumer goods would only be more widely produced after Stalin’s death.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Soviet_Union
3 questions about Stalin are-
ReplyDelete1) Why do you think he was so cruel and cold hearted? Do you think his childhood could have anything to do with it?
2) Do you think Russia would be different today if Trotsky took power instead of Stalin? What would some differences be?
3) Why would Stalin have Trotsky murdered even though he was outside of Russia? Was he really out of the picture for Stalin?
I really like your last question, Dan. It's really creative. For the first question, however, you might want to go a little bit more into it, since we've already pretty much learned the answer to that in class. But over all, impressive! :)
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I'm posting tonight on how Stalin created a political image of what the people wanted. Mrs. Grossman mentioned how he had a "photographic" ear (hmm... doesn't look right), which really did help him with his campaign and future rule. By listening to the world around him, and taking whatever thoughts he deemed reasonable enough to note, he created his base and outward appearance. Should the people have known what was really going on in his head, there would have been a very different response to many (if not all) of his ideas. Here is the clip that I got this from; let it be known that it is a direct quote.
In 1924, Lenin died and Stalin began his characteristic political moves. He embarrassed and undermined other political bigwigs in the party, either by forming alliances with other leaders or by publicly humiliating them. But one by one, all the people who have aligned with him also got destroyed. An example was his chief competitor Trotsky, who was eventually eliminated from the Party politics.
"Stalin worked hard to create an appeal with the masses by depicting himself as someone who was from them. He was later accused of creating a ‘cult of the personality’. He used his concept of ‘Socialism in One Country’ to generate hope in the minds of the Soviet people who were tired of war and hunger. "
To Steven about his question on Hitler and Stalin, I agree with Elaine that Stalin had so much control over the press that no one really knows about his cruelty except for people who actually research it. I think that Hitler's holocaust is more well known because after the war when people were liberated, many people did everything they could to tell the public. There wasn't any way that it could be kept a secret, unlike in Stalin's stituation.
ReplyDeleteEven by reading less than a paragraph at the website that Elaine posted, it is clear that many thought of Stalin as a great leader because he controlled what people knew. The website was made by someone who had met Stalin multiple times, and describes what it was like. They mention how it was a dream of theirs to meet Stalin, and how great an honor it was. It is obvious that Stalin didn't reveal the true Stalin when talking to others; he did everything he could to make a good and false impression.
"During the twelve days of our stay in Moscow we met Comrade Stalin several times, and the talks which we held with him, his sincere, comradely advice and instructions, have remained and will remain forever dear to us."
Heres a question:
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think Stalin should have done instead of starving the Ukraine or having the Great Purge? If you think he was right, why?
dan, in response to question3) Why would Stalin have Trotsky murdered even though he was outside of Russia? Was he really out of the picture for Stalin? well i think that even when in exile, he could still be viewed as a threat because there's always the chance that he will return to Russia. Take Lenin for instance, who was sent away and then Germany aided his return causing him to completely revolutionize Russia and change everything.
ReplyDeleteand also for question 1)
ReplyDeleteI think that Trotsky would have run the U.S.S.R. in a radically different way than Stalin did, since Trotsky opposed almost everything Stalin did. Even so, many of Trotsky’s ideas turned out to be surprisingly similar in some ways to Stalin’s policies, particularly economically. Other differences are shown in some areas such as their foreign policies and political theory. These differences could have had a great impact on the course of both Soviet and world history.
From Matthew DiBuduo in Period 4,
ReplyDeleteHi Lili. To respond to your post on March 4, at 4:10 AM, In what ways were Stalin's economic policies identical to Trotsky's.
Also, how was Trotsky's political theory different from Stalin's?
ReplyDeleteKevin Kochiss said..
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion I think Stalin new what he was doing when he outlawed human rights and freedom of the press. See he had a plan for Russia and himself. He wanted to gain power and keep it, so anybody he felt that was a threat to his power he had killed. Although you dwell on the fact that he killed so many people, in essence he had to in order to stay in power. When he was in power you cant say that he wasnt beneficial. He had a dream of making Russia a leading world power and an industrial giant. He turned Russia from farms and poor peasants to the amazing country it is today, and to gain success you need to make sacrifices. He also brought Russia 200 years into the future. I mean think about if Stalin didnt kill those people and the country had a revolution. Stalin would lose power as well Russia. He also brought peace and order in a time of need when the country had been devastated by the Great War. In conclusion, I think it was necessary for Stalin to kill those people that threatened him and his work, Death solves all problems - no man, no problem, -Joseph Stalin. I think Joseph just loved his country more than anything else. He was never out though making his own mark on history but rather Russias.
I dont however agree on the killings of innocent people who hadnt created a conflict with Stalin or made any hint at a revolution. The killings of those people were just cruel.
Source: http://www.euroclio.eu/joomla/index.php/History-Education-News/General/Russia-Peddling-Stalin.html
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/joseph_stalin.html
Hey Period 4, can I just ask what topic everyone is covering?
ReplyDeleteMelissa Kahn:
ReplyDeleteHi Matt, I'm going to cover Stalin's rise to power in the Soviet Union.
Hey Matthew, I'm covering the economic policies.
ReplyDeleteHi matt, im covering violation of human rights and absence of the free press.
ReplyDeleteHey Matt Im helping melissa on Stalin's rise to power
ReplyDeleteGreat, I think it would be a good idea to put our facts into a word document in presentation form and post it onto this blog so that other classes can offer tips.
ReplyDeleteThats a good idea Matt
ReplyDelete