Russian+Revolution

=Information on the The Russian Revolution=

[]

The above link is a webquest that I found about this topic

[]

The link is to lesson plans on the Russian Revolution

The information below was taken from the database that the school subscribes to: Gale DisCovering Collection

"[|Stalin, Joseph (1879-1953)]."//UXL Biographies//. Online Detroit: UXL, 2003. //Discovering Collection//. Gale. Deer Park Sr High School NY. 20 July 2009 . **Born:**December 21, 1879 **in** Gori, Russia
 * Died:**March 5, 1953 **in** Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
 * Nationality:**Russian.
 * Occupation:**Revolutionary, Political Leader.
 * Table of Contents:**[|Biographical Essay]|[|Further Readings]|[|View Multimedia File(s)]

Joseph Stalin took control of the Soviet Union after the death of Bolshevik party leader Vladimir Lenin. During his dictatorial rule of the Soviet state, Stalin launched an ambitious program to develop heavy industry and collective (or communal, state-controlled) agriculture.

Biographical Essay:
Joseph Stalin was born Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili on December 21, 1879, in Gori, Georgia—a part of czarist Russia's empire in western Asia. (One ruler, called a czar in Russia, exercised unlimited power over the people.) His father, a former serf, was a shoemaker, and his mother was a domestic servant. Iosif, or Joseph, better known as "Soso," grew up speaking Georgian and only learned Russian at the age of eight or nine. In 1888 he began attending the church school at Gori. He did well in his classes, especially in religious studies, geography, and Georgian. He also studied Greek and Russian. When he left the school in 1894, he was near the top of his class. Stalin's mother wanted him to become a priest and was disappointed when he pursued another course in life. Years later, even after he had become leader of the Soviet Union, she considered him a failure for not having completed his religious studies.

Stalin won a scholarship to study at the Tbilisi Theological Seminary, Georgia's leading educational institution. During his first year there, he received high marks; the next year, however, he began to rebel against the institution's stern religious rules. He smuggled banned books into school, and at one point he was sent to a punishment cell for five hours for not bowing to a school official. By 1899 the seminary directors could stand no more of his antics. He was expelled.
 * //Seminary student//**

In about 1896 or 1897, while still at the seminary, Stalin began reading Marxist works, focusing especially on the writings of Russian Marxist Vladimir Lenin. Marxism—the belief that a revolution by the working class would eventually lead to a classless society—would furnish the basis of Stalin's worldview for the rest of his life. Stalin seems to have thought of himself as a champion of the people. He began using the pseudonym "Koba," after a fictional hero in Georgian literature whom he admired. In 1899 Stalin obtained his first and only regular employment outside of the Communist Party organization when he was hired as an accountant at the Tbilisi observatory. (Communism is a political system based on communal ownership of all property. Under Stalin, beginning in the late 1920s, the party became a highly centralized, dictatorial organization.) Russia's Social Democrats, members of a Communist Party opposed by the czar, had been using the observatory as a hideout, and Stalin ultimately joined them. A police raid exposed this association, and he was fired from his accounting job. From this point on, Stalin was a professional revolutionary.
 * //Discovery of Marx//**

At the turn of the twentieth century, Stalin became active in the militant wing of the Russian Social Democratic Party. He was arrested in 1902 and deported to Siberia, but he escaped and was back in Georgia two years later. He first met Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik faction of the Social Democratic Party, in 1905 and became a devoted follower. Lenin secretly approved of bank robberies, which he called "expropriations," to finance the Bolsheviks. In 1907 Stalin was involved in several bank heists in Georgia. To avoid connection with any illegal activities, the local party expelled him, and he disappeared. Stalin soon reappeared in Baku in Azerbaijan (a region of the former Soviet Union near the Caspian Sea), where he began organizing a Bolshevik faction. He spent the next few years in and out of trouble, spending time in exile in Siberia for his revolutionary activities.
 * //Early days as a revolutionary//**

In 1912 Lenin broke from the Social Democratic Party and formed a new party. Seeing Stalin as a "ruthless and dependable enforcer of the Bolsheviks' will" (Conquest, p. 48), Lenin nominated him to the party's Central Committee. However, Stalin was arrested shortly thereafter and exiled once again to Siberia, where he remained until the czar was overthrown in 1917.
 * //Associated with Lenin//**

By 1917 Joseph Dzhugashvili, who had used several pseudonyms, was calling himself "Stalin," which comes from the Russian word //stal',// meaning "steel." This could have been a Russification of Dzhugashvili, as //dzhuga// means "iron" in a Georgian dialect.
 * //Becoming "Stalin"//**

The Bolsheviks organized the overthrow of the Russian government in 1917. Lenin, the new ruler of Russia, named Stalin to his cabinet as Commissar of Nationalities. In this capacity, Stalin planted Bolshevik officials among the various ethnic groups in Russia in an effort to bring them under Moscow's rule. He also used his position to influence Bolshevik leaders such as Vyachislav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich, and Dmitri Voroshilov, who would support him in his drive for power. Lenin came to admire Stalin for his loyalty and dedication. Stalin appeared to enjoy the tediousness of office work, but he could also be a fierce and decisive leader. In 1920 American communist John Reed observed: "[Stalin's] not an intellectual.... He's not even well informed, but he knows what he wants. He's got the will-power, and he's going to be at the top of the pile some day" (Conquest, p. 96). Beginning in 1919, Lenin set up a number of agencies to manage government affairs. A zealous supporter of the communist cause, Stalin volunteered to be a member of various party committees and newly formed agencies. The most important of these new agencies was the Secretariat, which grew from thirty members in 1919 to more than six hundred in 1922. That year, Lenin gave Stalin "formal possession of [the] private little empire" he had so lovingly assembled by making him general secretary of the party Central Committee (Johnson, p. 84).
 * //The new Soviet government//**

Under Stalin, the Secretariat became the Communist Party's real center of power. As general secretary, he had the power to appoint local secretaries who would, in turn, select delegates to party congresses. In this manner, Stalin gradually packed the party's legislative bodies and staff with his own supporters. In May 1922 Lenin suffered the first of a series of debilitating strokes, and his health began to deteriorate. Later that year, he expressed second thoughts about having given Stalin so much power. He dictated a document known as his "testament," which severely criticized Stalin, although it also contained criticism of the other leading Bolsheviks. As Lenin's illness worsened, though, he lost virtually all of his influence. Lenin was faulted by the Bolsheviks for allegedly compromising on some of the Communist Party's ideals, and political turmoil began to brew in the Soviet Union even before his death in January 1924. After Lenin died, the party, now called the All-Union Communist Party, was headed by a "collective leadership" that included Stalin; Leon Trotsky, who had organized the Red Army (the official name of the Soviet Army) and still headed it; Lev Kamenev and Grigori Zinoviev, the party bosses in Moscow and Leningrad, respectively; and Nikolai Bukharin, the party's leading theorist. Each of these men was ambitious and hoped to serve as the party's next leader. A shrewd and ruthless politician, Stalin was able to maneuver his opponents out of power by skillfully manipulating their jealousies and personal rivalries. First, he aligned himself with Kamenev and Zinoviev against Trotsky, who was soon ousted as head of the army. (He was later driven into exile and killed by one of Stalin's agents in Mexico City.) Next, Stalin teamed up with Bukharin in order to move against Kamenev and Zinoviev. He defended the New Economic Policy (NEP), a series of free-market reforms introduced by Lenin in 1921 that were supported by Bukharin. Stalin also endorsed Bukharin's proposal that the Soviets should build "socialism in one country" rather than waste their efforts on trying to incite world revolution. Meanwhile, Stalin's agents within the party undermined popular support for Kamenev and Zinoviev. Delegates at the Fourteenth Party Congress in 1925 voted to expel them both. Stalin then turned against Bukharin, who met secretly with Kamenev and Zinoviev, warning that Stalin would eventually "strangle" them if not stopped (Johnson, p. 266). However, it was by this time much too late: Stalin had gained absolute control of the party. He later had Kamenev, Zinoviev, and Bukharin shot.
 * //Taking control//**

Once in control of the Soviet Union, Stalin began to push a plan for rapid, forced industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture. The organization of farming around small family farms, Stalin believed, produced uncontrollable "anarchic" and "capitalist" forces. (Anarchy is a state of disorder resulting from a lack of government authority; capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership and free market ideals.) Stalin decided to push for full and immediate action on a plan that would force farmers to abandon their individual farms and move onto state-owned "collective" farms (Malia, p. 222). Although the Soviet economy was in a shambles and food in the cities was in short supply, collectivization and forced industrialization would fulfill a number of needs. For one thing, the change would rapidly add to Stalin's "proletarian" (industrial worker) base in a party that ruled a largely agricultural country. Many Marxists were by this time tired of compromising with capitalism; they longed for a "socialist offensive" that would hasten the pace of change. Stalin also believed that the Soviet Union had to undergo a transformation into a great industrial power if it were to be taken seriously as a "great world power."
 * //Leader of the Soviet Union//**

Stalin's "Five-Year Plan" for industrialization officially began in 1928. Factories, dams, and other enterprises were constructed all across the Soviet Union in accordance with grandiose plans drawn up by government planning agencies. In late 1932 the plan was declared a success. Soviet factories were by then producing basic industrial products such as steel, machine tools, and tractors. However, these achievements had a high cost and caused much suffering for the Russian people. Workers were paid low wages, and many made only enough to buy the basic necessities of life and little else. Consumer goods and food were often scarce. Changing jobs without permission became illegal, and interior passports were issued to restrict free movement among citizens. Much of the construction work on canals, mines, and other enterprises was performed by political prisoners who were sent by the millions into the Gulag, a network of labor camps for people accused of committing crimes against the state. Anyone accused of sabotage (deliberate destructive acts by a discontented employee against an employer) or "wrecking" could be shot. Beginning in 1928, "show trials" of saboteurs were staged as a warning to dissidents and as a means of instilling fear among the populace of "foreign agents." Meanwhile, in late 1929 the government moved to collectivize agriculture, but this policy met with massive resistance from the farmers, who resented being driven from their land. Those who resisted were labeled //kulaks// (meaning "tightwads") and were characterized as greedy, wealthy farmers who exploited their poorer neighbors. The government ruthlessly pursued its drive to collectivize the rural population. Millions of kulaks were shot or sent to labor camps. In the Ukraine, South Russia, and Khazakstan, millions more died in artificial famines created when Soviet officials confiscated the farmers' grain. By 1939 most of Soviet agriculture had been collectivized.
 * //The Five-Year Plan//**

In the midst of World War II, Stalin reportedly told British prime minister Winston Churchill that the collectivization of Russian farms—which forced 26,000,000 farmers onto 250,000 collective farms and spawned devastating "artificial" famines—had cost the lives of 10,000,000 Soviet people. (Spielvogel, p. 960) Because of the ensuing chaos, Stalin eased up somewhat on his collectivization policy. Collective farmers were then allowed to keep their own houses and tools and to grow food for their own use in small, private gardens. Some experts claim, however, that Soviet agriculture has never recovered from the damage done by the collectivization policy begun by Stalin.
 * //The results of collectivism//**

Although Stalin had stayed in the background during the years of the Soviet Union's power struggle, he developed a so-called "cult of personality" around himself. Dozens of cities, towns, and villages were named after him, as was the tallest mountain in the Soviet Union. His name was even mentioned in the Soviet national anthem.
 * //Building his image//**

Despite all this slavish admiration and his near-total power, Stalin maintained an irrational fear of his enemies. In December 1934 Sergei Kirov, one of his old supporters, was murdered. The evidence of Stalin's involvement in the murder is strong, but it has never been proven. Still, Kirov's popularity among some Communist Party leaders may have angered Stalin. However, Stalin blamed the murder on his old enemies Kamenev and Zinoviev and then launched a series of purges (a method of removing or eliminating unwanted elements or members from an organization) in which millions of people were eventually shot or sent to the Gulag. Stalin personally signed orders for the execution of thousands of Soviet citizens. In a move that seriously impaired the Soviet Union's ability to defend itself, Stalin ordered a purge of the armed forces in 1937 that took the lives of most of the country's marshals, generals, and admirals. When World War II broke out a few years later, the Soviet Union would suffer severely for its lack of trained military leaders. By 1939 the Soviet Union's industrial base had been established and the nation's agriculture collectivized. Stalin slowed down the pace of the purges, although by 1940 there were fifteen million people in the Gulag. That year, Stalin's government made an agreement with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler of Germany to divide Eastern Europe between them—an agreement that freed Hitler of concern over his eastern frontier and helped to set off World War II.
 * //Stalin's obsessions//**

Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, forcing it into World War II on the side of the Allies (which included Great Britain, France, and the United States). When the war ended in 1945, the Soviets demanded and received control over much of Eastern Europe.
 * //Germany violates its agreement//**

Stalin began another series of purges after the war and reinstituted repressive measures that had been eased during the war. He then launched a so-called "Cold War" of propaganda, subversion, and threats against the Western Allies. As he grew older, his fears and suspicions increased, and eventually he trusted no one. On March 5, 1953, as he was apparently preparing another round of purges, he died of internal bleeding following a stroke. Stalin's economic planning and collective farms characterized the economy of the Soviet Union throughout the rest of the twentieth century. But he is perhaps most vividly remembered for his horrible legacy of death. During his rule, Stalin is estimated by some to have been responsible for the deaths of about twenty million people.
 * //"Cold War" history//**

FURTHER READINGS

 * Caulkins, Janet, //Joseph Stalin,// Franklin Watts, 1990.
 * Conquest, Robert, //Stalin: Breaker of Nations,// Viking Penguin, 1991.
 * Hoobler, Dorothy, and Thomas Hoobler, //Joseph Stalin,// Chelsea House, 1985.
 * Johnson, Paul, //Modern Times,// St. Martin's, 1983.
 * Kallen, Stuart A., //The Stalin Era: 1925-1953,// Abdo & Daughters, 1992.
 * Malia, Martin, //The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917-1991,// Free Press, 1994.
 * Marrin, Albert, //Stalin,// Viking Kestrel, 1988.
 * Otfinoski, Steven, //Joseph Stalin: Russia's Last Czar,// Millbrook Press, 1993.
 * Spielvogel, Jackson J., //Western Civilization,// 2nd ed., West, 1994.
 * Whitelaw, Nancy, //Joseph Stalin: From Peasant to Premier,// Dillon Press, 1992.


 * Gale Document Number:** EJ2108102152

"[|The Russian Revolution, 1881-1939]."//DISCovering World History//. Online Detroit: Gale, 2003. //Discovering Collection//. Gale. Deer Park Sr High School NY. 20 July 2009 . The Russian Revolution fundamentally transformed the political, economic, and sociological landscape of one of the world's largest and most populous countries. The episode dramatically altered the shape and character of international relations across the globe during the twentieth century as well, and would serve as an inspiration for future revolutionary groups. Prior to the Revolution, the Romanov Dynasty had enjoyed three hundred years of czarist rule over the country. Russia's small ruling class led lives marked by splendor and riches during much of this time, while generation after generation of the country's common people struggled to survive in a harsh and unforgiving agrarian society. In the years leading up to the twentieth century, dissatisfaction with the country's state of affairs grew among many sectors of Russian society. This widespread unhappiness, coupled with the military incompetence of the regime of Nicholas II, Russia's last czar, sparked cries of revolution across the land in 1905. By 1917 those cries had assumed sufficient strength to topple the czar; a new political party rose in his stead. This party, which came to be known as the Communist party, was led by Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, two of the most ruthlessly effective figures of the first half of the twentieth century.
 * Table of Contents:**[|Further Readings]|[|View Multimedia File(s)]

Alexander II, czar of Russia from 1855 to 1881, had launched reforms in a number of areas of Russian society during his tenure, the most notable of which was the emancipation of serfs in 1861. But the government, economic, and education reforms undertaken by both Alexander II and his successors, Alexander III (who ruled from 1881 to 1894) and Nicholas II, would not be enough to stop the riding tide of discontent. Russia still remained in the technological dark ages when compared with the modernization going on in Europe. Indeed, Russian society was under strain from a number of significant forces. Farmers remained chained to their small strips of land by the terms of the 1861 "emancipation," a fact of life that provided fertile ground for the seeds of bitterness. As Sheila Fitzpatrick writes in //The Russian Revolution,// "The terms of the Emancipation were intended to prevent a mass influx of peasants into the towns and the creation of a landless proletariat [working class] which would represent a danger to public order." But the terms also reinforced the power of village councils and communal possession of land, "making it almost impossible for peasants to consolidate their strips, expand or improve their holdings, or make the transition to independent small-farming." The peasant class's animosity toward the landholding nobles and the government thus continued to fester. Buffeted by the harsh environment and periodic famine conditions, Russia's peasants also found it necessary to supplement their agricultural earnings with work in area towns. Nearly half of Russia's farming families sent members to the country's rapidly industrializing towns, and the percentage was even greater in the less fertile areas of the country. Ironically, these treks to urban areas helped raise peasant literacy rates and gave farming villages greater exposure to the revolutionary ideas that were coalescing in the industrializing cities of Russia. By the late nineteenth century, Russia had embarked on a serious, if belated, effort to close the technological and diplomatic gap between itself and Europe. In 1893 a Franco-Russian alliance was established. Around the same time Russia embarked on a determined push toward industrialization. This effort, spurred by Sergei Witte, a Russian nobleman, included construction of a mammoth railroad network (the centerpiece of which was the Trans-Siberian Railway) that proved essential in transporting workers and goods throughout Russia's widely scattered industrial centers. But while Russia boasted rich natural resources and a giant labor pool, much of the financial burden of industrialization was placed on the backs of the peasant class. Industrialization had unintended consequences as well. Uncontrolled urban growth pushed workers into crowded and often miserable living conditions, and the social and moral underpinnings of society began to fray. People living in these industrial settings became increasingly alienated from each other, and from society in general. Such bleak surroundings would provide the ideal conditions for spreading revolutionary ideas.
 * Russian Society at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century**

During the last years of the nineteenth century, new political groups sprang up in the cities of Russia. These groups espoused a number of different political and philosophical belief systems, but perhaps the most important was the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP), an organization upholding the communist ideals of Karl Marx that was formed in 1898. In the first years of the twentieth century, devastating famines, massacres of Jews and other minorities, and intellectual unhappiness with the government all drove people into the arms of radical groups such as the Marxist RSDLP. Nicholas II, who assumed power in 1894, was ill-equipped to face the challenges before him. He was by most accounts a devoted father and husband, but as John M. Thompson writes in //Revolutionary Russia, 1917,// "his qualifications for leadership of a huge and seething society were almost nil. Not broadly educated, little interested in people and politics, encased in the attitudes and prejudices of his royal and noble milieu, he found it difficult even to comprehend, let alone adjust to, the changes taking place in Russian society." In 1904 the Russo-Japanese War erupted. This clash with Japan over the lands of Manchuria and Korea resulted in humiliating defeat and withdrawal for Russia, and was a key factor in the revolution that would break out in Russia the following year. As unrest mounted in both rural and urban areas, the army put down these local rebellions with sometimes brutal force. In the aftermath of the 1905 Revolution, Nicholas II agreed to institute reforms, including a constitutional—if still autocratic—government with an elected parliament (called a Duma). The Duma was suspended for a time within months of its creation, however, and possessed no real power until 1917. Other "reforms" came to be seen as a sham; trade unions and political parties had been legalized, for instance, yet state-sponsored intimidation or execution of members was not uncommon. The Russian economy stabilized somewhat in the aftermath of the 1905 rebellion, yet discontent grew across all levels of the population. Anger was further heightened by the unseemly influence that fanatical monk Grigori Rasputin enjoyed over the royal Romanov family. ( Rasputin was eventually assassinated by a group of alarmed noblemen in 1916.) Finally, Russia's entrance into World War I against Germany in 1914 ultimately spelled doom for Nicholas II. Devastating military losses in that conflict, coupled with growing food shortages and inflation, made the czar's position an increasingly precarious one. Nicholas II, though, remained seemingly unaware of the imminent threat to his reign. By early 1917 he had assumed field command of the Russian Army and was receiving dire warnings about the situation in Petrograd, the nation's capital and home of the royal family. Mikhail Heller and Aleksandr M. Nikrich note in //Utopia in Power// that one telegram from Duma president Mikhail Rodzyanko insisted that "anarchy rules in the capital. The government is paralyzed. The transportation of food and fuel is completely disorganized. Social unrest is mounting. The streets are the scene of disorderly shooting. Military units are firing on one another." Nicholas was unmoved by the message; indeed, he turned to an assistant after reading the telegram and, according to Aleksandr A. Blok's //The Last Days of Imperial Rule,// commented that "once again, this fat-bellied Rodzyanko has written me a lot of nonsense, which I won't even bother to answer." The czar would not recognize the seriousness of the threat to his regime until it was far too late.
 * The Regime of Russia's Last Czar**

The March Revolution of 1917 was marked by increasingly frenzied efforts by the czar to subdue the revolutionary fervor that was bloodying the streets of Petrograd, Moscow, and other places. These efforts proved unsuccessful and Nicholas II was forced to abdicate in favor of a provisional government formed by the Duma. While the czar's cause would continue to be championed by the "White" Russians—Romanov supporters as well as pro-parliamentary and moderate socialist factions— Nicholas II and his family were executed in 1918 by Communist Party representatives. A bloody struggle ensued as various political groups tried to seize control of the nation. Vladimir Lenin, a leader of the Bolshevik party and the RSDLP, of which the Bolsheviks were a part, ultimately emerged as the victor in this struggle. A longtime political exile, Lenin was aided in his 1917 return to Russia by Germany, which was correctly convinced that revolution would neutralize the country as a military threat. Brandishing calls for peace, land reform, and worker empowerment (summed up in the slogan "Land, Peace, and Bread"), by October Lenin and his Bolshevik followers were able to wrest control of the nation away from the provisional government of Aleksandr Kerensky. This would come to be called the Bolshevik Revolution, or the Russian Revolution. Upon assuming power, Lenin showed his determination to rid the country of external distractions so that he could launch the Marxist utopia that he had long championed. Russia reached agreement with Germany on ending hostilities in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the terms of which were dictated by the Germans. Despite non-cohesive and thus ineffectual resistance by the White Russians, Lenin was thus freed to construct his "dictatorship of the people"; in reality, however, the reins of dictatorship would be held by the Communist leadership.
 * A Country Transformed by Revolution**

In 1921 Lenin unveiled Russia's New Economic Policy (NEP), but the country was slow to respond. After all, the Revolution had left its mark across the country. Towns had withered, factories were silent, and much of the industrial working class had retreated to the hardscrabble world of farming. Recognizing that the peasant class would have to carry the country for a time, Lenin capitalized on the land redistribution measures that had been carried out during the Revolution; peasants were allowed to sell some produce for profit, and some small businesses became privately operated. Such quasi-capitalist arrangements bothered many Bolsheviks, but Lenin viewed the NEP as "a strategic retreat, a time for the Bolsheviks to rally their forces and gather strength before renewing the revolutionary assault," according to Fitzpatrick. By the mid-1920s Russia's economic and industrial production was approaching pre-war levels, and the country was able to resume its push toward a socialist utopia. This movement was formalized in 1922 as the Communist party united the fifteen separate republics that made up "Mother Russia" as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The Communists had firmly established themselves as the ruling governmental body in the USSR by the mid-1920s. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the ruling Communists cultivated a policy "aimed at liquidating the remains of private property in the country and in the city, at liquidating the petite bourgeoisie: private entrepreneurs, traders, artisans, cottage industries, and prosperous peasants," writes Andrei Sinyavsky in //Soviet Civilization.// "This was not only a political, social, and economic revolution, but also a fight for a new way of life and a new psychology of the man in socialist society. The source of all evil, of all vices—in the way of life and in human consciousness—was `property'. . . . The conventional revolutionary wisdom held that everything would be fine once there were no owners and no property." Those who supported this philosophy argued that communism would spread from Russia to other countries as well—the "domino theory"—a prophecy that eventually proved accurate. Indeed, the expansiveness of the Communist vision would prove a central factor in international politics for the remainder of the century.
 * A New Social Dynamic Emerges**

When Lenin died in 1924, a struggle ensued for control of the party and, by extension, the country. Joseph Stalin emerged as the country's new dictator. By 1929, when longtime rival Leon Trotsky was exiled, Stalin was firmly in power. A ruthless dictator, he quickly set a course of isolationism and nationalism, policies that would effectively cut the USSR off from much of the rest of Western civilization. Stalin built up his power base with ruthless precision, and the Communist party and the government—which were by now viewed as one and the same—assumed ever-increasing political control. "Society's spiritual life was harnessed to the state's chariot to an extent that would have seemed impossible not long before," writes Heller and Nekrich. Stalin "concentrated all power, material and spiritual, in his hands. He was praised and glorified without restraint. A single word from him could start or stop the entire country. He would utter brief slogans and entire policies would change." Millions of Russian people were slaughtered during his regime, and those that survived lived in virtual slavery under the dark shadow of the state. Yet Stalin insisted that life was grand for his subjects, and when he made such pronouncements, "the country, bathed in blood and tears, was compelled to rejoice."
 * Stalin Assumes Power**

In 1928 Stalin launched the first of his Five-Year Plans. This program reorganized the Soviet Union's agricultural world in accordance with collectivization theories, but its primary aim was to speed industrialization and economic modernization across the nation. The state emphasized iron and steel production, which it viewed as essential to fulfilling its military aspirations, and enormous construction projects that would be the cornerstones of the Russian economy in the future. The first Five-Year Plan further consolidated control of the country's economy with the state as well. The introduction of a system of economic quotas for both manufacturing and trade would become a hallmark of the Soviet economy. As the state assumed ever-greater control of all facets of Soviet life, a bureaucracy of enormous proportions developed. This unwieldy body, observes Heller and Nekrich, "was sluggish and incapable of independent action, consisting as it did of two incompatible elements: unskilled, often illiterate Communist leaders; and the civil servants under them, who trembled with fear—a fear the leaders cultivated perennially and systematically." Indeed, fear would be the fuel that kept the gears of the state machine slowly grinding.
 * Russia's Five-Year Plans**

Stalin presided over a basic reorientation of Russian culture and society during the 1930s. He instituted severe policies in the realms of art, education, religion, and family life that had a tremendous impact on all Soviet citizens, from the poorest peasant to Moscow's leading intellectuals. This process came to be known as Stalinization. In 1929 laws were passed under which the practice and spread of religion became a crime against the state. Churches were destroyed, priests were stripped of their civil rights, and their children were forced to renounce their fathers or risk death. Three years later a program for the total eradication of religion from the Soviet Union was announced: "the very notion of God will be expunged as a survival of the Middle Ages and an instrument for holding down the working masses," the official announcement proclaimed. The Communist party and the Soviet State subsequently established themselves in the place formerly occupied by religion. The study of history, science, the arts, and other subjects also underwent significant change in the 1930s, as the government introduced new conservative standards designed to focus education efforts on increasing worker skills and productivity. Finally, Stalin insisted on a return to "traditional family values." Homosexual behavior and abortion were criminalized, divorces were made much more difficult to obtain, and the Marxist-inspired drive for women's emancipation fell into disrepair. To ensure that the masses heeded this new emphasis, it was understood that the state had an obligation to scrutinize all members of Russian society; thousands who were found wanting were punished severely.
 * Attacks on Education and Religion**

Throughout his tenure as dictator, but especially in the late 1930s, Stalin regularly instituted "purges" of real or imagined political enemies from the Soviet Union. No one was safe from these purges, which were first aimed within the ranks of the Communist party in 1929, 1933-34, 1935, and 1936. The most widespread purge, however, took place in 1937 and 1938, as every region of the country was required to meet its quota of enemies of the state. "This was not a purge in the usual sense," writes Fitzpatrick, "since no systematic review of party membership was involved; but it was directed in the first instance against party members, particularly those in high official positions," and on down into the general population. "In the Great Purges . . . suspicion was often equivalent to conviction, evidence of criminal acts was unnecessary, and the punishment for counter-revolutionary crimes was death or a labour-camp sentence." The Soviet Union's penal network of prison camps, or //gulags,// had been in operation since the Revolution, but under Stalin it reached new and horrifying heights. TheGreat Purge of 1937-38 alone sent millions of political prisoners to the gulags, where many died of starvation or exposure to the elements. Stalin had, in effect, transformed Russia into a totalitarian state—a Soviet Union wherein every aspect of its cititzen's daily lives, from family matters to vocation, was under the control of the Communist party leadership. Heller and Nekrich note that at the time of Stalin's death in 1953, "the Communist party of the Soviet Union had about 7 million members. At the other end of society, in the Gulag camps, there were 8 million people. The entire system balanced between these two extremes." In the meantime, escalating tensions in Europe commanded the USSR's attention as well. Stalin had long coveted an alliance with Germany, which had provided valuable financial assistance during the first Five-Year Plan; the Soviet Union made a number of diplomatic overtures to its neighbor to the west. Both sides were uncomfortable with certain aspects of the other nation's political and philosophical make-up, but as Germany became increasingly aggressive in Europe and the clouds of World War II began to gather, Adolf Hitler's generals counseled him against trying to win a two-front war. Nazi Germany began to view a treaty with the Soviets in a more favorable light, and on August 23, 1939, the Nazi-Soviet pact was signed. World War II began one week later.
 * Russia's "Purges"**

FURTHER READINGS

 * Fitzpatrick, Sheila. //The Russian Revolution//. 2nd. Oxford University Press, 1994.
 * Heller, Mikhail; Aleksandr M. Nekrich. //Utopia in Power//: //The History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to the Present//. Summit Books, 1982.
 * Hobsbawm, Eric. //The Age of Extremes//: //A History of the World, 1914-1991//. Pantheon, 1994.
 * Moynahan, Brian. //Comrades//: //1917—Russia in Revolution//. Little, Brown, 1992.
 * Salisbury, Harrison E. //Black Night, White Snow//: //Russia's Revolutions//. Doubleday, 1978.
 * Sinyavsky, Andrei. //Soviet Civilizations//: //A Cultural History//. Arcade, 1990.
 * Thompson, John M. //Revolutionary Russia, 1917//. Macmillan, 1989.


 * Gale Document Number:** EJ2105230053

"[|Lenin, Vladimir Ilich (1870-1924)]."//Encyclopedia of World Biography//. Suzanne M. Bourgoin. 2nd Detroit: Gale Research, 1998. 17 vols. //Discovering Collection//. Gale. Deer Park Sr High School NY. 20 July 2009 . **Born:**April 10, 1870 **in** Ulianovsk, Russia
 * Died:**January 21, 1924 **in** Moscow, Russia
 * Nationality:**Russian.
 * Occupation:**statesman.
 * Updated**12/12/1998
 * Table of Contents:**[|Biographical Essay]|[|Further Readings]

Biographical Essay:
Russian statesman Vladimir Ilich Lenin (1870-1924) was the creator of the Bolshevik party, the Soviet state, and the Third International. He was a successful revolutionary leader and an important contributor to revolutionary socialist theory. Few events have shaped contemporary history as profoundly as the Russian Revolution and the Communist revolutions that followed it. Each one of them was made in the name of V. I. Lenin, his doctrines, and his political practices. Contemporary thinking about world affairs has been greatly influenced by Lenin's impetus and contributions. From Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points to today's preoccupation with wars of national liberation, imperialism, and decolonization, many important issues of contemporary social science were first raised or disseminated by Lenin; even some of the terms he used have entered into everyone's vocabulary. The very opposition to Lenin often takes Leninist forms.

V. I. Lenin was born in Simbirsk (today Ulianovsk) on April 10 (Old Style), 1870. His real family name was Ulianov, and his father, Ilia Nikolaevich Ulianov, was a high official in the czarist educational bureaucracy who had risen into the nobility. Vladimir received the conventional education given to the sons of the Russian upper class but turned into a radical dissenter. One impetus to his conversion doubtless was the execution by hanging of his older brother Alexander in 1887; Alexander and a few associates had conspired to assassinate the Emperor. Lenin graduated from secondary school with high honors, enrolled at Kazan University, but was expelled after participating in a demonstration. He retired to the family estate but was permitted to continue his studies in absentia. He obtained a law degree in 1891. When, in 1893, he moved to St. Petersburg, Lenin was already a Marxist and a revolutionary by profession, joining like-minded intellectuals in study groups, writing polemical pamphlets and articles, and seeking to organize workers. The St. Petersburg Union for the Struggle for the Liberation of Labor, which Lenin helped create, was one of the important nuclei of the Russian Marxist movement. The most important work from this period is a lengthy pamphlet, "What Are the 'Friends of the People,' and How Do They Fight against Social-Democracy?" In it Lenin presents the essentials of his entire outlook. In 1897 Lenin was arrested, spent some months in jail, and was finally sentenced to 3 years of exile in the Siberian village of Shushenskoe. He was joined there by a fellow Marxist, Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya, whom he married in 1898. In his Siberian exile he produced a major study of the Russian economy, //The Development of Capitalism in Russia,// in which he sought to demonstrate that, despite its backwardness, the economy of his country had definitely transformed itself into a capitalist one. If Lenin had produced nothing else than this learned though controversial work, he would today be known as one of the leading Russian economists of his period.
 * Formative Years**

Not long after his release from Siberia in the summer of 1900, Lenin moved to Europe, where he spent most of the next 17 years, moving from one country to another at frequent intervals, periods of feverish activity alternating with those of total frustration. His first step was to join the editorial board of //Iskra// (//The Spark//), then the central newspaper of Russian Marxism, where he served together with the top leaders of the movement. After parting from //Iskra,// he edited a succession of papers of his own and contributed to other socialist journals. His journalistic activity was closely linked with organizational work, partly because the underground organizational network within Russia to some extent revolved around the distribution of clandestine literature. Organizational activity, in turn, was linked with the selection and training of personnel. For some time Lenin conducted a training school for Russian revolutionaries at Longjumeau, a suburb of Paris. A perennial problem was that of financing the movement and its leaders' activities in their European exile. Lenin personally could usually depend on financial support from his mother; but her pension could not pay for his political activities. Much of the early history of Russian Marxism can be understood only in the light of these pressing money problems.
 * Emigration to Europe**

A Marxist movement had developed in Russia only during the last decade of the 19th century as a response to the rapid growth of industry, urban centers, and a proletariat. Its first intellectual spokesmen were people who had turned away from populism (//narodnichestvo//), which they regarded as a failure. Instead of relying on the peasantry, they placed their hopes on the workers as the revolutionary class. Rejecting the village socialism preached by the Narodniks, they opted for industrialization, modernization, and Westernization. Their immediate aim they declared to be a bourgeois revolution which would transform Russia into a democratic republic. In accepting this revolutionary scenario, Lenin added the important proviso that hegemony in the coming bourgeois revolution should remain with the proletariat as the most consistently revolutionary of all classes. At the same time, Lenin, more than most Marxists, made a clear distinction between the workers' movement, on the one hand, and the theoretical contribution to be made by intellectuals, on the other. Of the two, he considered the theoretical contribution the more important, the workers' movement being a merely spontaneous reaction to capitalist exploitation, whereas theory was an expression of consciousness, meaning science and rationality. Throughout his life Lenin insisted that consciousness must maintain leadership over spontaneity for revolutionary Marxism to succeed. This implies that the intellectual leaders must prepare the proletariat for its political tasks and must guide it in its action. Leadership and hierarchy thus become key concepts in the Leninist vocabulary, and the role and structure of the party must conform to this conception. The party is seen as the institutionalization of true consciousness. It must turn into the general staff of the revolution, subjecting the working class and indeed all its own members to command and discipline. Lenin expressed these ideas in his important book //What's To Be Done?// (1902), the title of the work expressing his indebtedness to Nikolai Chernyshevsky. When, in 1903, the leaders of Russian Marxism met for the first important party congress, formally the Second Congress, these ideas clashed head on with the conception of a looser, more democratic workers' party advanced by Lenin's old friend luli Martov. This disagreement over the nature and organization of the party was complicated by numerous other conflicts of view, and from its first important congress Russian Marxism emerged split into two factions. The one led by Lenin called itself the majority faction (//bolsheviki//); the other got stuck with the name of minority faction (//mensheviki//). Lenin's reaction to the split was expressed in his pamphlet "One Step Forward—Two Steps Back," published in 1904. Mensheviks and Bolsheviks disagreed not only over organizational questions but also over most other political problems, including the entire conception of a Marxist program for Russia and the methods to be employed by the party. Bolshevism, in general, stresses the need for revolution and the futility of incremental reforms; it emphasizes the goals of Marxism rather than the process, with its timetable, by which Marx thought the new order was to be reached; in comparison to menshevism it is impatient, pragmatic, and tough-minded. The Revolution of 1905 surprised all Russian revolutionary leaders, including the Bolsheviks. Lenin managed to return to Russia only in November, when the defeat of the revolution was a virtual certainty. But he was among the last to give up. For many more months he urged his followers to renew their revolutionary enthusiasm and activities and to prepare for an armed uprising. For some time afterward the technology of revolutionary warfare became the focus of his interest. His militancy was expressed in an anti-Menshevik pamphlet published in 1905, "Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution." The major impact of the aborted revolution and its aftermath was a decided change in Lenin's attitude toward the peasantry. Lenin came to recognize it as a class in its own right—not just as a rural proletariat—with its own interests, and as a valuable ally for the revolutionary proletariat. His pamphlet "The Agrarian Question in the Russian Revolution of 1905-7" presents these new views in systematic fashion.
 * His Thought**

In the 12 years between the Revolution of 1905 and that of 1917, bolshevism, which had begun as a faction within the Russian Social-Democratic Workers party, gradually emerged as an independent party that had cut its ties with all other Russian Marxists. The process entailed prolonged and bitter polemics against Mensheviks as well as against all those who worked for a reconciliation of the factions. It involved fights over funds, struggles for control of newspapers, the development of rival organizations, and meetings of rival congresses. Disputes concerned many questions about the goals and strategies of the movement, the role of national liberation movements within the Marxist party, and also philosophic controversies. Lenin's contribution to this last topic was published in 1909, //Materialism and Empirio-criticism//. Since about 1905 the international socialist movement had begun also to discuss the possibility of a major war breaking out. In its congresses of 1907 and 1912, resolutions were passed which condemned such wars in advance and pledged the parties of the proletariat not to support them. Lenin had wanted to go further than that. He had urged active opposition to the war effort and a transformation of any war into a proletarian revolution. He called his policy "revolutionary defeatism." When World War I broke out, most socialist leaders in the countries involved supported the war effort. For Lenin, this was proof that he and they shared no aims or views. The break between the two schools of Marxism had become irreconcilable. During the war Lenin lived in Switzerland. He attended several conferences of radical socialists opposed to the war or even agreeing with Lenin's revolutionary defeatism. He read extensively on the Marxist theory of state and wrote a first draft for a book on the subject, //The State and Revolution//. He also immersed himself in literature dealing with contemporary world politics and wrote a book which may, in the long run, be his most important one, //Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism// (1916), in which Marxism is effectively made applicable to the 20th century. By the beginning of 1917 he had fits of despondency and wrote to a close friend that he despaired of ever witnessing another revolution. This was about a month before the fall of czarism.
 * Bolshevism as an Independent Faction**

It took a good deal of negotiation and courage for Lenin and a group of like-minded Russian revolutionaries to travel from Switzerland back to Russia through enemy country (Germany). Much has been made of Lenin's negotiations with an enemy power and of the fact that some Bolshevik activities were supported financially by German intelligence agencies. There is no convincing evidence, however, which might show that acceptance of funds from objectionable sources made Lenin an agent of these sources in any way. And from his point of view the source of aid was immaterial; what counted was the use to which it was put. The man who returned to Russia in the famed "sealed train" in the spring of 1917 was of medium height, quite bald, except for the back of his head, with a reddish beard. The features of his face were arresting—slanted eyes that looked piercingly at others, and high cheek-bones under a towering forehead. The rest of his appearance was deceptively ordinary: a man of resolute movements clad quite conservatively in a middle-class suit. Versed in many languages, Lenin spoke Russian with a slight speech defect but was a powerful orator in small groups as well as before mass audiences. A tireless worker, he made others work tirelessly. Self-effacing, he sought to compel his collaborators to devote every ounce of their energy to the revolutionary task at hand. He was impatient with any extraneous activities, including small talk and abstract theoretical discussions. Indeed, he was suspicious of intellectuals and felt most at home in the company of simple folk. Having been brought up in the tradition of the Russian nobility, Lenin loved hunting, hiking, horseback riding, boating, mush-rooming, and the outdoor life in general. He sought to steel himself by systematic physical exercise and generally forbade himself those hobbies which he considered time-wasting or corrupting: chess, music, and companionship. While his life-style was that of a dedicated professional revolutionary, his tastes in art, morals, and manners were rather conventional. Once he had returned to Russia, Lenin worked feverishly and relentlessly to utilize the revolutionary situation that had been created by the fall of czarism so as to convert it into a proletarian revolution which would bring his own party into power. These were the crucial 6 months of his life, but space does not permit a detailed account of his activities in the period. The result of his activities is well known: Opinions in Russia quickly became more and more polarized. Moderate forces found themselves less and less able to maintain even the pretense of control. In the end, the so-called provisional government, then headed by Kerensky, simply melted away, and power literally fell into the hands of the Bolsheviks. As a result of this so-called October Revolution, Lenin found himself not only the leader of his party but also the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (equivalent to prime minister) of the newly proclaimed Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic.
 * Lenin in 1917**

During the first years of Lenin's rule as dictator of Russia, the major task he faced was that of establishing his and his party's authority in the country. Most of his policies can be understood in this light, even though he alienated some elements in the population while satisfying others. Examples are the expropriation of landholdings for distribution to the peasants, the separate peace treaty with Germany, and the nationalization of banks and industrial establishments. From 1918 to 1921 a fierce civil war raged which the Bolsheviks finally won against seemingly overwhelming odds. During the civil war Lenin tightened his party's dictatorship and eventually eliminated all rival parties from the political arena. A spirited defense of his dictatorship can be found in his "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky" (1918), in which he answers criticism from some more moderate Marxists. Lenin had to create an entirely new political system with the help of inexperienced personnel; he was heading a totally exhausted economy and had to devise desperate means for mobilizing people for work. Simultaneously he created the Third (Communist) International and vigorously promoted the spread of the revolution to other countries; and meanwhile he had to cope with dissent among his own party comrades, some of whom criticized him from the left. The pamphlet "Left-wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder" is a response to this criticism. When the civil war had been won and the regime established firmly, the economy was ruined, and much of the population was bitterly opposed to the regime. At this point Lenin reversed many of his policies and instituted a trenchant reform, called the New Economic Policy. It signified a temporary retreat from the goal of establishing communism at once and a resolve to make do with the social forces available: the Communist party declared itself ready to coexist and cooperate with features of the past, such as free enterprise, capitalist institutions, and capitalist states across the borders. For the time being, the Soviet economy would be a mixture of capitalist and socialist features. The stress of the party's policies would be on economic reconstruction and on the education of a peasant population for life in the 20th century. In the long run, Lenin hoped that both these policies would make the blessings of socialism obvious to all, so that the country would gradually grow into socialism. The wariness, the caution, the fear of excessive haste and impatience which Lenin showed in the years 1921-1923 are expressed only inadequately in the last few articles he wrote, such as "On Cooperation," "How We Must Reorganize the Workers and Peasants Inspectorate," and "Better Less but Better." In 1918 an assassin wounded Lenin; he recovered but may have suffered some lasting damage. On May 26, 1922, he suffered a serious stroke from which he recovered after some weeks, only to suffer a second stroke on December 16. He was so seriously incapacitated that he could participate in political matters only intermittently and feebly. An invalid, he lived in a country home at Gorki, near Moscow, where he died on Jan. 21, 1924. His body was preserved and is on view in the Lenin Mausoleum outside the walls of the Moscow Kremlin.
 * Ruler of Russia**

FURTHER READINGS

 * collections and selections of Lenin's writings have been published in English. No first-rate biography has as yet been written in English to match Gérard Walter, //Lénine// (1950). Louis Fischer, //The Life of Lenin// (1964), was praised highly. It is based on exhaustive research, is fair and comprehensive, but is disorganized and poorly written. Interesting glimpses into Lenin's life are provided by his widow, N. K. Krupskaya, //Memories of Lenin// (trans., 2 vols., 1930-1932); Nikolai Valentinov's studies, //Encounters with Lenin// (1953; trans. 1968) and //The Early Years of Lenin// (trans. 1969); Richard Pipes, //Social Democracy and the St. Petersburg Labor Movement, 1885-1897// (1963); Angelica Balabanoff, //Impressions of Lenin// (1964); and Leon Trotsky, //Lenin: Notes for a Biographer// (trans. 1971), with a good introduction by Bertram D. Wolfe. See also David Shub, //Lenin: A Biography// (1948; rev. ed. 1967); Moshe Lewin, //Lenin's Last Struggle// (1967; trans. 1968); and Isaac Deutscher, //Lenin's Childhood// (1970).
 * For a survey of Lenin's ideology see Leopold H. Haimson, //The Russian Marxists and the Origins of Bolshevism// (1955); Alfred G. Meyer, //Leninism// (1957); and Adam B. Ulam, //The Bolsheviks// (1965). A general appraisal of the man and his work is Leonard Schapiro and Peter Reddaway, eds., //Lenin: The Man, the Theorist, the Leader// (1967). For the broader political background see Arthur Rosenberg, //A History of Bolshevism// (1934); Leonard Schapiro, //The Communist Party of the Soviet Union// (1959); Robert V. Daniels, //The Conscience of the Revolution// (1960); and Theodore I. Dan, //The Origins of Bolshevism// (1964). An objective and concise biography is Helene Carrere d'Encausse's //Lenin// (2001).


 * Gale Document Number:** EK1631003891

"[|Germany Defeated at Stalingrad, November 19, 1942-January 31, 1943]."//DISCovering World History//. Online Detroit: Gale, 2003. //Discovering Collection//. Gale. Deer Park Sr High School NY. 20 July 2009 .
 * Table of Contents:**[|Further Readings]

Adolf Hitler, Chancellor and Führer of Germany Hermann Göring, President of Germany's Council for War Economy and Commander of the //Luftwaffe// Friedrich Paulus, General, Commander German Sixth Army Field Marshal Erich Von Manstein, Commander German Army Group Don Front Joseph Stalin (Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili), Soviet Dictator Marshal Georgi Konstantinovich Zhukov, Russian Commander on Southwestern Front, and subsequently on Northern Front Andrei Ivanovich Yeremenko, General, Russian Commander at Stalingrad and the Southeast Front Konstantin Rokossovski, General, Russian Commander of the Don Front
 * Principal Personages**

When Germany invaded Soviet Russia in June, 1941, Adolf Hitler, Chancellor and Führer of Germany, was determined to conquer Russia and force a surrender within six months. Because the invasion was delayed and because Hitler pursued a broad frontal strategy instead of a decisive single thrust to Moscow, Hitler's aims were not realized. Early in December, 1941, German forces were halted before Moscow, and Joseph Stalin the Soviet Dictator, unleashed a counteroffensive that threatened to push the Germans back to their frontier. Hitler, however, ordered the German troops to stand fast, and they dug in for the winter. Thus, when spring came in 1942, the Germans were still deep within Russia and Hitler could plan a renewed assault aimed at forcing Russia to surrender. Hitler's plans for 1942 centered on two objectives: the capture of Leningrad in the North, and a drive upon the Donets industrial basin and the Caucasus oil fields in southern Russia. By midsummer the Germans had been unable to capture Leningrad. Hitler himself took personal command of the German troops in the South. There, although their drive had left an over-extended flank threatened by the Russian armies, they had already driven the Russians back and had proceeded well into the oil fields. Hitler then turned his attention upon the city of Stalingrad. Stalingrad, an industrial city, was on the Volga river. If the city could be captured, vital river traffic, especially of the oil being shipped to Moscow, could be stopped. Furthermore, such an attack would draw in the Russian army to battle the German forces; Hitler believed that Russian reserves were small and the capture of a few more troops would topple Stalin's regime. In September, therefore, he ordered General Friedrich Paulus and the German Sixth Army to capture Stalingrad and seize the left bank of the Volga in order to halt river traffic. Paulus reached Stalingrad in mid-September. As foreseen, the Russians rallied to the defense of the city. In the process of fighting, the city was reduced to rubble. This condition made the German task even more difficult, for pockets of resistance within the city continued to plague the Germans even after the main portion of the town was taken. Fighting continued into November. Meanwhile Marshal Georgi Zhukov, the Russian commander on the Western Front, planned a counteroffensive to relieve Stalingrad. Because Paulus' Sixth Army was overextended and the German troops were forced to cover a long flank, Zhukov formed two armies, commanded by General Andrei Yeremenko and General Konstantin Rokossovski, and on November 19, 1942, these two armies began an enveloping maneuver to trap Paulus in Stalingrad. By November 24, Paulus and 250,000 men were encircled. Although the Germans could have broken out and retreated at any time until mid-December, Hitler, despite pleas from his generals, ordered Paulus to stand fast, and he ordered Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, Commander of German Army Group Don, to send a force to Stalingrad to lift the siege and supply Paulus. Hermann Göring, President of the Council for War Economy and commander of the //Luftwaffe//, the German air force, assured Hitler that he could supply Paulus by air. When it became apparent that the //Luftwaffe// would not be able to carry out its task, Manstein asked Hitler to order Paulus to break out of the city and join his relief force; otherwise, Manstein said, he would not be able to relieve Paulus. Hitler refused Manstein's request, for the possession of Stalingrad had become a point of prestige. Manstein's force came within thirty miles of Stalingrad, but could get no farther, especially after Zhukov launched an offensive against his supply lines. By early January, Paulus had lost any chance of breaking out of the encirclement. His troops were tired, cold, hungry, and almost out of ammunition. Hitler still ordered him not to surrender but to fight to the last man if necessary. Paulus' men could not resist without ammunition, and on January 31, 1943, Paulus surrendered the Sixth Army to the Russians. The defeat of the Germans at Stalingrad marked the turn of the tide on the Eastern Front, for the Germans never again won a major battle in the East. The Russian offensive continued to push the Germans back for two years until April, 1945, when the Russians entered Berlin.
 * Summary of Event**

FURTHER READINGS
 > Schroter was a war correspondent with the German Sixth Army and his study was written with the help of official German records > Werth was an English correspondent with the Russian army. His work includes descriptions of the Battle of Stalingrad > Warlimont, German general, gives an insight into Hitler's strategic plans > This work contains an excellent criticism of German strategy and tactics at Stalingrad > A sound presentation of World War II from a specifically military point of view > Another extensive but readable history of the Second World War > A brilliant and popularly written history of the internal structure of the German State's power and policies under Hitler
 * Clark, Alan. //Barbarossa// : The Russian-German Conflict, 1941-1945. William Morrow and Co., Inc, 1965.
 * Carell, Paul. //Hitler Moves East, 1941-1943//. Trans. by Ewald Osers. Little, Brown, and Co, 1965.
 * Jacobsen, H. A., ed.; Ed. J. Rohwer. //Decisive Battles of World War II// : The German View. Trans. by Edward Fitzgerald. G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1965.
 * Schroter, Heinz. //Stalingrad//. Trans. by Constantine Fitzgibbon. E. P. Dutton and Company, 1958.
 * Werth, Alexander. //Russia at War, 1941-1945//. E. P. Dutton and Company, 1964.
 * Warlimont, Walter. //Inside Hitler's Headquarters, 1939-1945//. Trans. by R. H. Barry. Frederick A. Praeger, Publishers, Inc, 1964.
 * Fuller, GeneralJ. F. C. //The Second World War, 1939-1945//. Eyre and Spottis-woode, 1948.
 * Collier, Basil. //The Second World War// : A Military History. William Morrow and Co., Inc, 1967.
 * Young, Peter. //World War, 1939-1945//. Thomas Y. Cromwell, 1966.
 * Shirer, William L. //The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich//. Simon and Schuster, 1960.


 * Gale Document Number:** EJ2105241209

"[|Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich (1870-1924)]."//DISCovering Biography//. Online Detroit: Gale, 2003. //Discovering Collection//. Gale. Deer Park Sr High School NY. 20 July 2009 . **Born:**April 22, 1870 **in** Simbirsk, Russia
 * Died:**January, 1924
 * Nationality:**Russian.
 * Occupation:**leader, revolutionary.
 * Table of Contents:**[|Biographical Essay]|[|Chronology]|[|Further Readings]|[|View Multimedia File(s)]

"There is not another man who for twenty-four hours of the day is taken up with the revolution, . . . and who even in his sleep, dreams of nothing but revolution." PAVEL AXELROD

Biographical Essay:
Vladimir Lenin was a Bolshevik leader who used the opportunity presented by the collapse of the Russian monarchy in World War I to found a radically new political system that influenced the entire course of the 20th century. //Contributed by Neil Heyman, Professor of History, San Diego State University, San Diego, California// Name variations: Nicolai. Born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov in Simbirsk, a city in the Russian Empire, on April 22, 1870; died in January 1924; son of Ilya Ulyanov (a school administrator) and Maria Alexandrovna Blank Ulyanova; married: Nadezhda Krupskaya (a fellow revolutionary); no children. Predecessor: Alexander Kerensky, prime minister of the Provisional Government of 1917. Successor: Joseph Stalin emerged as the key leader of revolutionary Russia by 1929, five years after Lenin's death. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was the founder of the Russian Communist Party and the moving force behind the November 1917 Russian Revolution. His Soviet Union, the first state controlled by Marxist revolutionaries, deeply influenced the history of Europe, the United States, and the entire modern world. Ironically, Lenin held a lonely position on the extreme left wing of European Marxism in the early years of the 20th century. Even within Russian Marxism, he was an isolated figure during this period with a relatively small following. But the chaos of World War I and the collapse of the old political order in Russia at the start of 1917 created an opportunity that he used skillfully to take power. When his Bolshevik Party seized control of Russia's capital city Petrograd in November 1917, it marked a dramatic breakthrough for the Marxist revolutionary movement. Vladimir Ulyanov ("Lenin" was a revolutionary name that he adopted as an adult) was born in Simbirsk, a city on the Volga River, on April 22, 1870. He was the son of Ilya Ulyanov, a high-ranking school administrator and Maria Blank, a doctor's daughter of German descent. Paradoxically, the father of the future revolutionary attained the rank of a Russian nobleman. Lenin's early life was uneventful and happy, but his teenage years brought two tragedies. His 54-year-old father died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1886 (the same illness that probably caused Lenin's early death). Shortly after, Lenin's older brother Alexander, a biology student at the University of St. Petersburg, was arrested for plotting to murder Tsar Alexander III. Although his mother pleaded with government officials for clemency, Lenin's brother was executed by hanging in 1887. That same year, despite the black mark on the family name, Lenin received important assistance from Fedor Kerensky, the principal of his school, enabling him to enroll as a law student at the University of Kazan. Fedor's son Alexander Kerensky, whom Lenin did not know at this time, would later become one of his key opponents in 1917. Although Lenin was soon drawn into student politics and expelled from the university, he continued to study on his own and passed his examinations to become an attorney in 1891. The young law student read widely during those years; he was influenced by Nicholas Chernyshevsky, a writer of the 1860s who called for opponents of the existing political order in Russia to become professional revolutionaries. Lenin also found himself attracted by the theories of Karl Marx and Russian Marxists. These ideas focused on revolutions that would occur inevitably as a society developed economically. Marxists anticipated a revolution in Europe, and possibly Russia as well, that would be carried out by factory workers. As the young lawyer settled in the Russian capital of St. Petersburg in 1893, he already had a beard and balding head—physical features that would mark his appearance in later years as a successful revolutionary. There he became involved with the Marxist movement and met a fellow revolutionary, Nadezhda Krupskaya. His serious manner and his single-minded interest in revolution impressed other members of his political circle: they began to refer to him as //Starik,// "the old one." Lenin was arrested in 1895. Along with dozens of other members of his revolutionary circle, he spent the next years in prison and then in exile in Siberia. While in Siberia, he married Nadezhda Krupskaya in 1898; two years later, the couple settled in Switzerland after both had finished their terms of Siberian exile. Lenin made his mark on the Marxist movement in 1903 when a variety of Russian Marxists met at Brussels to set up a unified political party. After the Belgian police broke up the gathering, the delegates reconvened in London. This Second Congress of Russian Social Democrats debated the key issue of Party organization and membership. Lenin advocated a position he had set down the previous year in a pamphlet entitled //What is to be Done?// There he claimed that the factory workers, following their own ambitions and desires, would not choose to promote revolution. Instead, they would be satisfied with better wages and working conditions. Therefore, a revolutionary movement had to consist of professional full-time revolutionaries; the workers themselves could play only an auxiliary role. Lenin's other innovation was to call for a Russian revolutionary movement that included the peasantry. Karl Marx had always counted the peasants of Western and Central Europe as a conservative force who would stand in the way of revolution. Lenin looked at the impoverished Russian peasantry as a mass of angry and discontented individuals who would fight as effective allies in a workers' revolution. As Russia faced military defeats by Japan in the Far East and rising opposition at home, revolution broke out in 1905. But Lenin reached Russia late in the year and did not play a significant part in events. Returning to Switzerland following the revolution's failure, he began a new period of foreign exile that lasted until 1917. Lenin quarreled with other leaders of Russian Marxism over numerous issues. For example, there was sharp disagreement on the question of participating in elections for the //Duma,// the new Russian parliament set up in the aftermath of the 1905 Revolution. In early 1912, at a conference of Russian Marxists that Lenin brought together in Prague, he formally broke with his opponents and formed an independent Bolshevik Party. World War I provided Lenin with his opportunity to take power. At first, his prospects for success seemed slim. True to his reputation, he took a position on the war that isolated him from most Marxists both inside and outside Russia. As many Marxists decided to join in their country's war efforts—or to remain neutral—Lenin declared that the war offered an opportunity for successful revolution. To the shock of most of his fellow Russian Marxists, he declared that military defeat for Russia was a desirable step in bringing on revolution. At congresses of European Marxists held in Switzerland during the war, Lenin tried without success to win support for his position. At Zimmerwald in 1915, he was voted down decisively, but he convinced a stronger minority to back him at Kienthal in 1916. Nonetheless, by the start of the revolutionary year 1917, even Lenin was discouraged about the prospects for a revolutionary breakthrough. In a speech that he gave to young Swiss sympathizers in January 1917, he declared that the revolution might come only in their generation. Just a few weeks later, news reached Lenin of "bread riots" in Petrograd. (St. Petersburg had been renamed Petrograd at the start of World War I.) Those riots quickly developed to become the spontaneous March Revolution. The March Revolution led to the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of a Provisional Government made up of members of the Fourth //Duma.// Though political exiles in Siberia and abroad were free to come home, Lenin found that a difficult task. Neither France nor Italy would let him pass through. As Russia's allies, they saw only danger in allowing Lenin, a declared opponent of the war, to return to Petrograd. On the other hand, since Germany had tried to promote political unrest in Russia since the start of the war, the government in Berlin permitted Lenin and a party of his followers to cross German territory en route to Russia. To protect German soldiers and workers from Lenin's antiwar message, they insisted that the Russians travel in isolation: the famous "sealed train" of 1917. Once back in Russia, Lenin called for the overthrow of the Provisional Government, led by Alexander Kerensky. Making a broad appeal for change, he insisted that power be given, not to his Bolshevik Party, but to the //soviets// (organizations of workers, peasants, and soldiers). From March 1917 onward, //soviets// sprang up in many parts of the Russian Empire. They came to look to the //soviet// in the capital city of Petrograd for leadership. Following an unsuccessful offensive by the Russian army against the Austrians and Germans in July 1917, street demonstrations broke out. The government brought in reliable troops to put down this event of the "July Days," and officials released documents that appeared to show that Lenin and his fellow Bolsheviks were German spies. Leon Trotsky and other leading members of Lenin's party were arrested, while Lenin himself went into hiding in Finland.

By the fall, however, Lenin found himself in a more favorable position. Kerensky's government had become discredited. For example, it had failed to produce land reform, and it had insisted on remaining in the war. In a spectacular example of leadership, Lenin convinced the other Bolshevik Party leaders to launch a coup in early November. This "November Revolution" easily succeeded in taking control of Petrograd with the help of the Red Guard, a militia formed from factory workers. Moscow fell into Bolshevik hands with more difficulty: Lenin's followers took control there only after a week of bloody fighting. Lenin's new government moved quickly to end the war with Germany. This had been a key promise the Bolsheviks—now renamed the Communists—had made throughout 1917. In another example of hardheaded and effective leadership, Lenin persuaded key members of his Party to accept the brutal Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918. Although this gave huge chunks of the old Russian Empire to Germany, Lenin was convinced that even this unfair treaty had to be accepted in order to end the war. By the close of 1918, Lenin's Party had established a dictatorship based upon a new secret police, the //Cheka//. Opponents of the Communists—many of them motivated by a desire to continue the war against Germany—had formed "White" armies to fight against Lenin's "Reds." When Lenin had been nearly assassinated by a political opponent in September 1918, his colleagues had launched a "Red Terror," in which thousands of enemies of the new government were executed. By the start of 1921, Lenin's Communists had defeated their White opponents in Russia's Civil War. Even intervention by foreign countries, including a full-scale Polish invasion of the Ukraine in 1920, had failed to weaken the revolutionary system Lenin had erected. Now, however, Lenin gave still another example of his political flexibility and his power over the Communist Party. Abandoning the radical economic program developed during the Civil War that had included government control over most of Russian industry and the confiscation of peasants' crops, Lenin called for a "New Economic Policy" (//NEP//) in which much of Russian economic life was to be returned to private ownership. Only in this way could the country hope to recover from seven years of war, revolution, and Civil War dating from 1914. In international affairs, Lenin also shifted direction. In 1917, he had hoped that the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia would quickly spread to the industrially advanced countries of Europe—to Germany, in particular. While he continued to hope for new revolutionary outbreaks, Lenin promoted a policy of restoring regular diplomatic relations with other major countries. In April 1922, for example, at the Genoa economic conference, Russia and Germany signed a crucial treaty, giving the new Russian government its first official diplomatic recognition by a foreign power. Another side of the //NEP// policy, however, was a harsh crackdown on anti-Communist political factions in Communist Russia. Leaders of rival groups were put on trial and sentenced to exile. Moreover, Lenin accompanied the moderation of //NEP// in economic affairs with a crackdown on factions within the Communist Party. In a system called "democratic centralism," once the Party had adopted a policy, no group within the Party could continue to oppose it. Lenin's career as a political leader was cut short by illness. In May 1922, at the age of 52, he suffered the first of a series of strokes. Even more severely disabled by a second stroke in December, he lived out the rest of his life as an invalid. In his last years, rival leaders like Trotsky and Joseph Stalin began to maneuver for power. Lenin became increasingly mistrustful of Stalin, whom he had made secretary-general of the Communist Party in 1922. From this position, and other Party and government posts he had collected, Stalin began to put his followers in key positions. Troubled by Stalin's policies toward non-Russian groups, as well as Stalin's brutal manner, Lenin wrote a blistering attack on him in a final "Testament." Some historians like Moshe Lewin have even argued that Lenin began to have doubts about the nature of the dictatorship he had established. But Lenin died in January 1924 without being able to block Stalin's continuing rise, and any doubts that he had about the Party's dictatorial rule were never translated into action. The death of the great revolutionary leader quickly led to the creation of a "Lenin cult." He would likely have been appalled to see how the story of his life was rewritten to make him appear a flawless revolutionary leader. From 1924 onward, Communist leaders claimed to be following Lenin's guidelines at all times. The sharpest shifts in policy were justified by ransacking Lenin's huge set of writings for an appropriate quotation.
 * Lenin's Party Takes Control**

CHRONOLOGY:

 * 1887 Execution of Lenin's brother
 * 1897 Lenin arrested and exiled to Siberia
 * 1902 Wrote //What is to be Done?//
 * 1903 Gathering of Second Congress of Russian Social Democrats
 * 1905 Revolution in Russia
 * 1912 Prague Congress
 * 1914 Start of World War I; Lenin moved to Switzerland
 * 1915 Zimmerwald Conference
 * 1916 Kienthal Conference
 * 1917 March Revolution; Lenin returned to Russia; July uprising; November Revolution
 * 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk; start of Civil War
 * 1921 End of Civil War; Lenin espoused New Economic Policy
 * 1922 Had first stroke; wrote "Testament"


 * The Life and Times of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870-1924)**
 * At the time of Lenin's birth:**
 * Ulysses S. Grant was president of the United States
 * Franco-Prussian War began
 * Charles Dickens died
 * Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) was discovered by Friederich Miescher
 * At the time of Lenin's death:**
 * Calvin Coolidge was president of the United States
 * U.S. Congress granted Native Americans the rights of U.S. citizens
 * Nellie Taylor Ross became first female governor
 * First winter Olympic Games held in Chamonix, France
 * The times:**
 * 1830-1914: Industrial Revolution
 * 1898: Spanish-American War
 * 1904-1905: Russo-Japanese War
 * 1914-1918: World War I
 * Lenin's contemporaries:**
 * Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) American inventor
 * Edith Wharton (1862-1937) American novelist
 * Henri Matisse (1869-1954) French painter
 * Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) American writer
 * Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) Russian communist and people's commissar in Soviet Union
 * Joseph Stalin (1879-1953) Soviet leader
 * Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German-born American physicist
 * Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) Italian Fascist premier
 * Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) German chancellor and führer
 * Selected world events:**
 * 1872: Susan B. Anthony and others arrested for trying to vote
 * 1902: Cuba declared independence from the United States
 * 1903: Orville and Wilbur Wright completed first air flight
 * 1908: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was created
 * 1916: First birth control clinic opened in Brooklyn
 * 1917: Bolshevik Revolution began in Russia
 * 1918: Last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, and his family were executed
 * 1920: Prohibition began in U.S.
 * 1922: Fascist revolution in Italy
 * 1923: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics established

FURTHER READINGS

 * Lewin, Moshe. //Lenin's Last Struggle.// Pantheon, 1968.
 * arkin, Nina. //Lenin Lives!: The Lenin Cult in Soviet Russia.// Harvard University Press, 1983.
 * Ulam, Adam. //The Bolsheviks// //: The Intellectual, Personal, and Political History of the Triumph of Communism in Russia.// Macmillan, 1965.
 * Warth, Robert D. //Lenin.// Twayne, 1973.
 * McNeal, Robert H. //The Bolshevik Tradition: Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev// //,// //Brezhnev.// 2nd ed. Prentice-Hall, 1975.
 * Pipes, Richard. //The Russian Revolution.// Knopf, 1990.
 * Schapiro, Leonard, and Peter Reddaway, eds. //Lenin: The Man, the Theorist, the Leader.// Praeger, 1967.
 * Theen, Rolf. //Lenin: Genesis and Development of a Revolutionary.// Princeton University Press, 1973.


 * Gale Document Number:** EJ2102101090

"[|Stalin Begins the Purge Trials, December 1, 1934]."//DISCovering World History//. Online Detroit: Gale, 2003. //Discovering Collection//. Gale. Deer Park Sr High School NY. 20 July 2009 . Stalin's consolidation of power in the Soviet Union
 * Table of Contents:**[|Further Readings]

Joseph Stalin (Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, 1879-1953), Dictator of the U.S.S.R., 1924-1953 Leon Trotsky (Leib Davydovich Bronstein, 1879-1940), eminent leader of the Russian Revolution and political opponent of Stalin Sergei Kirov (1886-1934), a member of the Central Committee of Communist Party of the U.S.S.R., 1922-1934 Grigori Evseevich Zinoviev (Hirsch Apfelbaum, 1883-1936), former Chairman of the Communist International, leader of the left opposition Nikolai Bukharin (1888-1938), leader of right opposition Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov (1895-1939), Soviet Minister of Internal Affairs, 1936-1938 Andrei Vyshinsky (1883-1954), Soviet State Prosecutor, 1935-1939
 * Principal Personages**

By 1934, Joseph Stalin had been leader of the Soviet state for ten years. He had defeated his rivals for the mantle of V. I. Lenin, the first Soviet leader, by a combination of political maneuvering and intrigue and by the skillful use of the Communist Party bureaucracy which he had developed as General-Secretary of the Party's Central Committee. However, his position was still far from secure. Stalin had achieved his preeminent place in Soviet society in large part by opposing the extreme left position of more famous Communists such as Leon Trotsky and Grigori Zinoviev. This popular position gained support both in the Communist Party and among the Soviet populace. Nevertheless, once the left was defeated, he reversed his policies and adopted the very methods he had originally denounced. Furthermore, the failures of some of these policies during the first five-year plan (begun in 1928 and curtailed in 1933) was causing Stalin some difficulties in the highest circles of the Communist ruling elite. Stalin's political problem was simple—how to get rid of the old Bolsheviks, whose reputations could once again make them his rivals, and, at the same time, to eliminate possible new rivals from the group which he had brought to influence in the 1920's but who were not sullied by the political conflicts of the past decade. To accomplish this, he introduced into revolutionary Russia a bizarre form of political terror and gave a new meaning to the word "purge." Within the higher circles of the party the most likely source of opposition was the popular Sergei Kirov, whom Stalin himself sponsored in his rise to prominence, and who was regarded as one of the most capable of the country's political leaders. On December 1, 1934, to the dismay of the nation, an obscure assailant (Leonid Nikolayev) shot Kirov to death. It appears probable, though it is not certain, that the assassination was part of a conspiracy; but the extent of the presumed conspiracy and the identities of the participants have been shrouded in some mystery. Many Western historians, buttressing their arguments with an apparent confirmation by Stalin's successor Nikita Khrushchev in 1956, believe that Stalin himself had a hand in the assassination. At the time, Stalin used the occasion of Kirov's murder to reveal to the world the existence of an enormous plot to overthrow his rule, directed, he said, by his archrival, Leon Trotsky (then living abroad). The plot supposedly involved tens of thousands of Soviet political and military personnel, in concert with the Fascist and capitalist foreign enemies of the state. Kirov's actual assassin and his closest associates accused as accessories were sentenced to death within a few weeks. Shortly thereafter, the state prosecutor arrested two prominent leaders of the former Left Opposition, Grigori Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, together with a number of their sympathizers, and charged them with maintaining a clandestine and illegal opposition group in Moscow. The prosecutor's office also charged them with providing ideological support for Kirov's assassins. Although charges of conspiracy against the state were not unprecedented in Soviet history, this was the first time that members of the Communist Party were so charged because of political opposition. The group was quickly tried in secret and sentenced to imprisonment. For a year and a half there were apparently no more major repercussions from the Kirov assassination. However, behind the scenes, Stalin prepared his full-scale assault on the old Bolsheviks. The allies he would use were concentrated in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, headed by Nikolai Yezhov, and the State Prosecutor's office of Andrei Vyshinsky. In August, 1936, Zinoviev and Kamenev went to trial with fourteen others, accused of the capital crime of conspiring against the Soviet government. This so-called "Trial of the Sixteen" was the first of three major show trials in the purges and countless scores of other secret and public processes. In January, 1937, seventeen left-wing defendants went on trial for conspiracy, and the next year, in the spring of 1938, twenty-one right-wing opponents of Stalin, including Nikolai Bukharin, were tried on the same charges. The bizarre nature of the show trials added an eerie, unreal atmosphere to the tragedy of the decimation of the ranks of the Old Bolsheviks. With brazen illogicality, the prosecutors charged life-long socialists with conspiring with their most implacable foes, including Nazi Germany, to overthrow the Soviet government. Easily refutable evidence, including impossible meetings and charges which could be proven false by examining public records and the foreign press, were introduced into court. Confounding matters, the accused almost invariably confessed to these unlikely crimes. Behind all stood the figure of Trotsky, who was accused of master-minding everything, but who in fact was living in exile, his influence in the Soviet Union a faded memory. All of the accused were found guilty, and most, but not all, were executed. Trotsky himself was assassinated in Mexico in August, 1940, by a man in the employ of the Soviet government. As a result of the purges, almost all of the old political leaders fell from power or disappeared. Ninety-eight of 139 members of the 1934 Central Committee were arrested during the purges. Furthermore, while in 1934 more than eighty percent of the high Communist officials were "long-time" party members (that is, they had joined before 1921), in 1939 only nineteen percent of the party elite fell into that category. Of the whole population, a minimum of seven million persons were arrested and perhaps a half million executed. At the end of the political purges, Stalin turned on the military; throughout 1937 and 1938 continuous waves of arrests decimated well over half of the Red Army command. The Stalinist purges have remained something of a mystery to the West, whose peoples find them so alien to their own society. First of all, commentators and authors have wondered why the defendants confessed to the absurd accusations. Were they drugged or beaten into submission? Did they believe that the absurdity of their confessions would prove their innocence before the world? Some, perhaps, were promised leniency; or maybe they ignored the question of their own guilt or innocence in the hope of saving the reputation of the Party to which they had devoted their lives. The question remains whether the purges were an inevitable part of the Communist Revolution or a product of Russia's peculiar history. Similarities to events in the reigns of Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, and Alexander I would indicate the latter. One thing seems certain: by means of the purges Stalin was able to secure his position from the threats of potential political and military rivals and rise above all his comrades to become a demigod beyond reproach in the Soviet Union.
 * Summary of Event**

FURTHER READINGS
 > The standard study of the history of the Soviet Communist Party, which contains several chapters on the purges and their effect on the Party > A unique account, based on documents found among captured German archives showing how the purges affected a Soviet provincial city > An important study of the effects of the purges on the Soviet system > A history of Soviet political prisons both before and after the purges, written by the Soviet Union's most famous dissident > A famous allegory ostensibly depicting Stalin's Russia > Another famous novel about the purge trials
 * Conquest, Robert. //The Great Terror//: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties. Macmillan and Company, 1968.
 * Deutscher, Isaac. //Stalin//: A Political Biography. Oxford University Press, 1967.
 * Schapiro, Leonard. //The Communist Party of the Soviet Union//. Vintage Books, 1960.
 * Fainsod, Merle. //Smolensk Under Soviet Rule//. Harvard University Press, 1958.
 * Brzezinski, Zbigniew K. //The Permanent Purge//. Harvard University Press, 1958.
 * Solzhenitsyn, Alexander. //The Gulag Archipelago//. 2 vols. Harper & Row Publishers, 1974-1975.
 * Orwell, George. //Nineteen Eighty-Four//. Harcourt, Brace, 1949.
 * Koestler, Arthur. //Darkness at Noon//. The Modern Library, 1946.


 * Gale Document Number:** EJ2105241421

"[|Stalin Introduces Central Planning to the Soviet Union, 1929]."//DISCovering World History//. Online Detroit: Gale, 2003. //Discovering Collection//. Gale. Deer Park Sr High School NY. 20 July 2009 . By initiating the First Five-Year Plan, Stalin rejected the New Economic Policy and started large-scale industrialization and forced agricultural collectivization
 * Table of Contents:**[|Further Readings]

Joseph Stalin (1879-1953), the Soviet leader who established a centrally planned economy Vladimir Ilich Lenin (1870-1924), the leader of the Bolsheviks and founder of the Soviet Union Leon Trotsky (1879-1940), a radical Bolshevik leader who opposed Stalin but emphasized the role of industrialization Nikolai Bukharin (1888-1938), a Bolshevik leader, economist, and theorist who defended the New Economic Policy and was purged by Stalin Yevgeny Preobrazhensky (1886-1937), a leading Bolshevik, economist who called for massive development of heavy industry Lev Kamenev (1883-1936), a Bolshevik leader, who led the opposition against Stalin Grigori Zinoviev (1883-1936), a Bolshevik leader leading the opposition against Stalin Sergei Kirov (1886-1934), the first secretary of the Leningrad Communist Party organization
 * Principal Personages**

The year 1929 was one of tremendous turns in Soviet history. Having consolidated his power basis, Joseph Stalin introduced authoritarian central planning in the Soviet Union. He rejected the private profits and market mechanisms allowed by Vladimir Ilich Lenin's New Economic Policy. Stalin's First Five-Year Plan was implemented on October 1, 1928. Major goals of the plan included developing heavy industry and national defense. In order to extract profits from agriculture to invest in industry, Stalin also called for rapid agricultural collectivization. In short, the end of the 1920's featured the liquidation of the New Economic Policy and the initiation of a radically new phase in the development of the Soviet System. Stalin's revolution from above fundamentally transformed the nature of the Soviet economic system. When Lenin died in 1924, he left no designated political heir. One of his last messages, however, urged the Communist Party to reject Stalin as "too rude." Stalin, however, gained control of the party structure by virtue of his position as the party's general secretary. Stalin used this position to handpick supporters for leading party positions and defeated opponents including Lev Kamenev, Grigori Zinoviev, and Leon Trotsky by 1926. Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin's approach insisted on continuing to work within the framework of the New Economic Policy. Stalin was able to prevail over opposition led by Bukharin and Mikhail Tomsky in the course of a protracted struggle between July, 1928, and April, 1929. Stalin gained firm control of both domestic and foreign policy. An economic debate had begun in 1924. Yevgeny Preobrazhensky sharpened his criticism against the slow pace of industrialization, arguing for "primitive socialist accumulation." In other words, Preobrazhensky thought that industrialization should be financed largely through the difference between the value of agricultural produce and the value of the consumer goods and machinery peasants received in exchange. He insisted that setting artificially low agricultural prices and/or artificially high industrial goods prices was the politically advantageous method of accomplishing this accumulation. Bukharin was strongly against treating the peasantry as enemy. He argued for a policy encouraging the peasants to enrich themselves. When agriculture developed, according to Bukharin, there would be more funding for industrialization. Stalin in fact supported the idea of rapid industrialization and forced agricultural collectivization. Stalin tried to justify his position on industrialization by emphasizing the external threat facing the Soviet Union. He said that the country was fifty to one hundred years behind the advanced nations; if it did not catch up with these countries in about ten years, it would be crushed by advanced foreign aggressors. Thus, the focus of the First Five-Year Plan was defense and heavy industry. In the First Five-Year Plan, the priorities that emerged were sources of energy—coal and electric power—steel, and heavy engineering. Increases in agricultural production were expected but failed to materialize. Output of consumer goods fell below plan, and much small-scale handicraft industry, which had served local consumer markets, was closed down. The First Five-Year Plan went into operation in October, 1928, although its formal adoption did not take place until April, 1929. The objectives were stunning: total industrial output was to increase by 250 percent, and that of coal more than 330 percent. Output of pig iron was to be nearly tripled, and that of electric power to be more than quadrupled. Agricultural production was scheduled to increase 150 percent, and 20 percent of the peasants were to be collectivized. At first, optimism was rampant. In July, 1930, the party adopted a slogan: The Five-Year Plan in Four Years. During 1928 and 1929, dramatic shifts in policy took place. At the beginning of 1928, Stalin was already committed to the continued use of coercion, if it proved necessary, to secure essential supplies of grain, and to an accelerated but still protracted program of voluntary collectivization. In the summer of 1929, the party launched an all-out drive to collect more grain more rapidly than in any previous year; in November, the Soviet government called for the comprehensive collectivization of the main grain-surplus areas within five months. There was no blueprint to follow. The nature and principles of planning were worked out by trial and error. There was no theory; practice came first. Stalin personally and openly identified himself with the need for harsh emergency action. The First Five-Year Plan marked a return to the military traditions of War Communism. With approval by the party and government, the plan became law. The elements of the plan, as they affected business enterprises, were directives, and to contravene them was a criminal offense. The overall Five-Year Plan gave grand targets, and their detailed application was contained in annual or quarterly operative plans. This enabled revision during the course of the plan; such revision during the years of the First Five-Year Plan involved targets being raised. Periodic revision was also needed to maintain cohesion in the overall plan. Planned output was expressed in physical units. Plan fulfillment was achieved by producing the requisite number, size, weight, or volume of production. Compulsory procurement, with echoes of War Communism, had been initiated in 1928; this amounted to confiscation. Gradually a system emerged whereby fixed deliveries were made by collectives (and others) in return for fixed prices. A major set of events that preceded the forcible collectivization of agriculture involved the breakdown of the market relations between the regime and the peasantry in the winter of 1927-1928. The state had difficulty in obtaining enough grain from peasants. Expedient resolution of the grain crisis of the autumn of 1927 by administrative methods quickly consolidated the commitment of the party to the use of coercion against the peasants and to an ambitious program of rapid industrialization that would have been unachievable within the framework of the New Economic Policy. Late in 1929, the Communist Party called for the mobilization of twenty-five thousand urban workers to spearhead the agricultural collectivization drive. The //kulaks// (rich peasants) were to be liquidated as a class, and the expropriation of their property was sanctioned. All these policies had profound impacts on Soviet economic development.
 * Summary of Event**

The most important impact of the introduction of authoritarian central planning was the tightening of state control on all major aspects of the Soviet economy. Under central planning, heavy industry and defense industry expanded at the cost of agriculture and consumer industry. The establishment of the Stalinist system involved not only material costs but also enormous human sacrifices. The will of the Communist Party permeated the machinery of the state, and the state controlled the energies of its subjects to an unprecedented degree. The party, through the state, took charge of all public affairs. The state was the only employer; all independent sources of income were eliminated. Even peasants, except for their garden plots, were now subject to state supervision of production. At the end of 1932, the First Five-Year Plan was declared to have been fulfilled, but the claim had a hollow ring. Stalin contended that production of machinery and electrical equipment had risen 157 percent, but it was admitted that output in heavy metallurgy had increased only 67 percent, coal output 89 percent, and consumer goods 73 percent. Even these figures are questionable. Under the impetus of the First Five-Year Plan and the industrialization drive of the 1930's, the Soviet Union undertook a massive program of importing foreign technology. In addition to advanced technology, the country imported skilled workers, technicians, and engineering consultants. The Soviets went on to combine borrowing with heavy investment in their own science and technology research and training programs. The forced collectivization of agriculture met both positive and passive resistance by the peasants. There were armed peasant uprisings against the Soviet government; such resistance movements were ruthlessly suppressed. Many peasants killed their animals before joining collective farms. In 1933, the number of horses in the Soviet Union was less than half the 1928 figure; during the period from 1929 to 1931 alone, the number of cattle fell by one-third and the number of sheep and goats by half. Peasants slaughtered their animals on such a scale that cattle and sheep numbers and total meat production did not reach their 1929 levels until after World War II. To ensure that grain would be collected and delivered to the state, machine tractor stations were established in 1933. Since grain was the foremost product subject to mechanized work at the time, the state was in a position to solve the grain procurement problem simply by retaining the necessary grain harvested by the machine tractor stations and by paying whatever price it desired. By July, 1934, 71.4 percent of households were officially collectivized. By 1937, private agriculture was virtually eliminated. The human costs of collectivization were extremely high. Soviet historians have concluded that nearly 300,000 families were exiled to distant regions during the collectivization drive, with the average family containing some four members. Several million people died during the collectivization. The 1917 revolution transformed the Russian political and economic system. The Stalinist revolution from above, however, was more fundamental and far-reaching in its socioeconomic and political impact. Stalin's revolution dramatically transformed state-market relations. In the 1930's, the foundation of the Soviet centralized administrative command economy was established. Soviet figures for growth in industrial production show 19 percent growth per year in the First Five-Year Plan. This is grossly exaggerated. Nevertheless, industrial growth during the period was impressive by many indicators. From 1928 to 1932, coal production increased from 35.4 million tons to 64.4 million tons and oil from 11.7 million tons to 21.4 million tons. Consumer goods and agricultural output, however, fell far short of targets. The extraordinary rates of growth projected in the First Five-Year Plan period were not achieved, but industry did grow rapidly. For example, the amount of oil produced rose from 11.7 million tons in 1928 to 31.1 million tons in 1940 to 70.8 million tons in 1955; that of coal from 35.4 million tons to 165.0 million in these years; that of steel from 4.3 million tons to 18.3 million; and that of electrical energy from 5.0 billion kilowatt-hours to 48.3 billion to 170.2 billion. The plan did not succeed in detail. Growth was uneven and unbalanced, and living standards were sacrificed. By 1937, 53.1 percent of national income (by Soviet definition) was produced by industry, compared with 41.7 percent in 1929. Industry accounted for 77.4 percent of aggregate production. Industry laid the foundation for defense and military production. The agricultural sector remained large and inefficient, continuing to employ 54 percent of the labor force in 1937. Terror was employed as an economic weapon. At one level, forced labor was used in some areas for particular projects, but more generally coercion, backed up by the real threat of imprisonment or worse, was used to implement policy. The system of planning as it emerged was so highly centralized that a small error could result in great problems, without there being any balancing mechanism as in a market economy. No real prices existed to indicate surpluses or shortages. Only terror and coercion could control the crises created by the demands put on the economy. The new collective enterprises were of two basic types: the state farm and the collective farm. The state farm was the full property of the Soviet government; its manager operated it with hired labor, in accordance with the directives of the Ministry of State Farms or any other ministry to which the farm in question was allotted. In contrast, the collective farm was supposed to be a self-governing cooperative made up of peasants who voluntarily pooled their means of production and divided the proceeds. The first decade of planning, 1928 to 1937, saw the creation of the Soviet centrally planned economic system. It saw also the extension of state control of all aspects of life and elaboration of a totalitarian system wherein Stalin exercised considerable personal power. The authoritarian central planning system formed the basic framework of the Soviet economy from the early 1930's to the late 1980's.
 * Impact of Event**

FURTHER READINGS
 > An influential revisionist study of Soviet history with emphases on change and continuity. Examines possible alternatives to the Stalinist system > Critically examines the collectivization of agriculture. Reveals terrible human suffering and sacrifice during Stalin's rule > The authoritative study of the collectivization of Soviet agriculture in connection with the industrialization program. Highly informative and analytical > Examines sociopolitical and cultural aspects of the dramatic transformation initiated by Stalin in 1928 > A comprehensive and interesting introduction to the history of the Soviet Union, with excellent analysis of the Stalin period > A good text explaining the development of the Soviet system and its policy process. Explores how Stalin consolidated his power and established the highly centralized system > A close examination of the origins, process, and characteristics of Soviet industrialization. Supported by quantitative data, though dated > An authoritative study of the sources, processes, and impacts of the Stalinist revolution, by a leading expert > An excellent study of the campaign of the twenty-five thousand members of the Soviet industrial proletariat who were recruited to participate in agricultural collectivization
 * Cohen, Stephen P. //Rethinking the Soviet Experience// : Politics and History Since 1917. Oxford University Press, 1985.
 * Conquest, Robert. //The Harvest of Sorrow// : Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine. Oxford University Press, 1986.
 * Davies, R. W. //The Socialist Offensive// : The Collectivization of Soviet Agriculture, 1929-1930. Harvard University Press, 1980.
 * Fitzpatrick, Sheila, ed. //Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928-1931//. Indiana University Press, 1984.
 * Hosking, Geoffrey. //The First Socialist Society// : A History of the Soviet Union from Within. Harvard University Press, 1985.
 * Hough, Jerry F. //How the Soviet Union Is Governed//. Harvard University Press, 1979.
 * Jasny, Naum. //Soviet Industrialization: 1928-1952//. University of Chicago Press, 1961.
 * Tucker, Robert C. //Stalin in Power// : The Revolution from Above, 1928-1941. W. W. Norton, 1990.
 * Viola, Lynne. //The Best Sons of the Fatherland// : Workers in the Vanguard of Soviet Collectivization. Oxford University Press, 1987.


 * Gale Document Number:** EJ2105240591

"[|Lenin, Vladimir (1870-1924)]."//UXL Biographies//. Online Detroit: UXL, 2003. //Discovering Collection//. Gale. Deer Park Sr High School NY. 20 July 2009 . **Born:**April 22, 1870 **in** Simbirsk, Russia
 * Died:**January 21, 1924 **in** Nizhni Novgorod, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
 * Nationality:**Russian.
 * Occupation:**Revolutionary, Political Leader.
 * Table of Contents:**[|Biographical Essay]|[|Further Readings]|[|View Multimedia File(s)]

Lenin firmly believed that what he did was best for his countrymen.

Biographical Essay:
Vladimir Lenin was one of the greatest revolutionary leaders of all time. He was the founder of the Russian Communist Party and the moving force behind the Russian Revolution of 1917. The government he created formed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.), better known as the Soviet Union. This federal republic lasted for sixty-nine years and deeply influenced the history of the entire modern world. In the few years he controlled the government, he ruled like a dictator, and those who opposed him suffered. But Lenin did not change the course of Russian history because he sought power and glory—he firmly believed that what he did was best for his countrymen. He was born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov on April 22, 1870, in Simbursk, a city on the Volga River (he adopted the revolutionary name "Lenin" when he was an adult). He was the son of Ilya Ulyanov, a school administrator, and Maria Alexandrovna Blank. Although his childhood was happy and uneventful, he suffered two tragedies when he was a teenager. In 1886 his father died from a cerebral hemorrhage. The following year his brother Alexander, a university student, was arrested and hanged for plotting to murder Czar Alexander III. The Russian people suffered under the czar. Although he had abolished serfdom, or the practice of using peasant farmers as slaves, he still ruled the country with unlimited power. Even worse, he persecuted anyone who disagreed with his policies. Influenced by the spread of Marxism, a theory and practice where workers control business and government, people in Russia wanted a greater voice in government and began rebelling. Lenin became a part of this rebellion while he was a law student at the University of Kazan. Although he was expelled because of his politics, he continued to study on his own and passed the exams to become a lawyer in 1891.

Two years later Lenin moved to St. Petersburg, then the capital of Russia. He joined a Marxist movement and met Nadezhda Krupskaya. His seriousness about being a revolutionary caused the other members in the movement to call him Starik, "the old one." In 1895 Lenin was arrested along with dozens of his companions (including Krupskaya), sent to prison for fourteen months, and then banished to Siberia (northern region of Russia) for three years. While in Siberia, he married Krupskaya. The couple settled in Switzerland after their exile in Siberia ended in 1900. Lenin continued his revolutionary activities. In 1902 he wrote a pamphlet, //What Is to Be Done?,// stating that only professional revolutionaries could bring about socialism (a political system where workers controlled businesses and the government). The following year Russian Marxists met in London to set up a unified political party. But they soon broke into two groups: those that agreed with Lenin's views were called Bolsheviks ("those of the majority"), while those who disagreed were called Mensheviks ("those of the minority").
 * //Lenin exiled to Siberia//**

Revolution broke out in Russia in 1905. A crowd of workers, seeking changes in labor laws, marched on the czar's palace and were fired on by troops. Hundreds of people were killed. Riots, strikes, and other outbreaks followed over the next few months before order was restored. Although Lenin went to Russia, he was too late to take part in the uprising. He returned to Switzerland, determined to continue the fight for socialism. In 1912, at another meeting of Russian Marxists, he broke with his opponents and officially formed the independent Bolshevik Party. Lenin's stand on World War I further separated him from other Marxists. Begun in 1914, the war pitted Russia, France, and England against Germany and Austria-Hungary. Many Russians supported the war, but Lenin did not. He believed a defeat for Russia would help bring about the revolution he wanted. In the beginning Lenin found little support for his views. But the war soon changed the Russian people's minds. By 1917 they were tired of fighting and had very little to eat. In March, in the city of Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg; named changed back to St. Petersburg in 1991), workers went on strike and began rioting for more food. The military, also hungry, refused to shoot the workers and joined the revolution. After a few weeks, the palace was captured and Czar Nicholas II was forced to give up the throne.
 * //Uprisings against the czar//**

A provisional, or temporary, government was set up under the leadership of Alexander Kerensky. Although he kept Russia in the war, Kerensky failed to solve the country's urgent economic problems. Lenin, therefore, wanted the provisional government removed and power given to political organizations of workers, peasants, and soldiers called soviets (Russian word for council). An uprising against the government in July was quickly put down, and Lenin was forced to flee to Finland. He soon returned, however, and formed the Red Guard, a militia of factory workers. With the help of this Guard, Lenin and the Bolsheviks overthrew the government in November. The Bolsheviks (who changed their name to the Communist party) were now in control. Lenin immediately sought to end the war with Germany, and in March 1918 Russia signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Although this unfair treaty gave huge sections of Russia to Germany, Lenin convinced his people it was necessary to end the war. Following this, Lenin's government seized privately owned lands and gave them to the peasants. It also gave workers control over factories. And to silence any opposition, the government formed a secret police force, the //Cheka//. This wasn't enough to stop a civil war. Beginning in 1918 anti-communists (called "Whites") formed armies to fight the communists (called "Reds"). Few lives had been lost in the November revolution, but thousands died in the civil war. Atrocities (acts of brutality) were committed by both sides, and the Russian land was devastated. But the Red Army, led by Leon Trotsky, proved too much for the Whites, and by 1921 the civil war was over.
 * //Bolsheviks seize the government//**

Trying to help Russia recover from years of revolution and civil war, Lenin began the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921. During the civil war, the government took control of almost everything. But the NEP allowed private owners to run small businesses and peasants to sell their farm products to other Russians. While this improved economic conditions in Russia, the political situation remained harsh. Lenin put leaders of all rival groups on trial; no one could question the policies of the Communist government. On December 30, 1922, the Communist party established the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It became the first state formed on Marx's principles of socialism, something for which Lenin had fought many years. But he did not live very long to enjoy it. He suffered the first of a series of strokes beginning in May 1922. Less than two years later, he was dead (he died on January 21, 1924, in Nizhni Novgorod, U.S.S.R. [present-day Russia]). To honor Lenin, the Soviet government put his body on permanent display in a red marble-and-granite mausoleum on Red Square in Moscow.
 * //Treats rivals harshly//**

FURTHER READINGS

 * Dunn, John M., //The Russian Revolution,// Lucent Books, 1994.
 * Haney, John D., //Vladimir Ilich Lenin,// Chelsea House, 1988.
 * Resnick, Abraham, //Lenin: Founder of the Soviet Union,// Children's Press, 1987.
 * Topalian, Elyse, //V. I. Lenin,// Franklin Watts, 1983.
 * Volkogonov, Dmitrii Antonovich, //Lenin: A New Biography,// Free Press, 1994.


 * Gale Document Number:** EJ2108101368