The Soviet Union Under Stalin

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The Soviet Union Under Stalin

• The Rise of the Totalitarianism

2
Five-Year Plans

• Stalin imposed control over the economy.
• Goals of five-year plans
• Build heavy industry
• Improve transportation
• Increase farm output
• Command economy government officials make all
  basic economic decisions

Joseph Stalin
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Effect of Command Economy

• Oil, coal, and steel production grew.
• Standard of living remained low as did wages.
  Workers not allowed to strike
  
• Central planning often inefficient consumer
  products scarce (clothing, cars, etc.)
  

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"To whom goes all national profits? In the CCCP,
to the workers."
5
Impact on Agriculture

• Government control of agriculture
• Collectives large farms owned and operated by
  peasants as a group
  
• State set prices and access to supplies
• Peasants who did not want to give up their land
  resisted the collectives.

Love Your Motherland
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Resistance

• Stalin blamed kulaks, wealthy farmers, for
  resistance killed or sent to labor camps
  
• Peasants rebelled by growing only enough food for
  themselves.
  
• In response, Stalin took their food to meet
  industrial goals Terror Famine

"We farmers, on the basis of complete
collectivization, will liquidate the kulaks as a
class."
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Terror Tactics

• Crimes against humanity
• Resisters to the regime sent to the Gulag, brutal
  labor camps
  
• Great Purge Stalin cracked down on Old
  Bolsheviks and others who didnt support him,
  putting them on trial and sending them to the
  Gulag

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Attempts to Control Thought

• Used propaganda to build up a cult of
  personality (radios, movies, schools)
  
• Censorship controlled books, music, and art
• Socialist realism show Soviet life in a positive
  light to promote communism

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Attempts to Control Thought

• Russification making a nationalitys culture
  more Russian
  
• Tried to make all 11 Soviet Socialist Republics
  (including Uzbek and Ukraine) as much like the
  Russian Soviet as possible

The Motherland Calls
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Attempts to Control Thought

• Strengthen hold on peoples minds by destroying
  their religious faith
  
• Atheism, the belief that there is no god, was the
  state policy.
  
• Replaced religion with Communist ideology
  (sacred text Marx and Lenins writings,
  shrine Lenins tomb, religious icons portaits
  of Stalin)

"Hail to the powerful air force of the country of
socialism"
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Is This Really Communism?
Communism
Peasants
Communists
Military leaders
Business managers
Soviet Society Under Stalin
Communists
Business managers
Military leaders
Peasants
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Soviet Society
13
Foreign Policy

• 1919, Lenin formed the Comintern Communist
  International, encourage world-wide revolution
  
• Fear of Bolshevik plots of revolution led to Red
  Scare