Stalinism

Stalinism A term that is generally identified with the economic, political, and social features imposed on Russia after 1929, until the first de-Stalinization attempt under Khrushchev in 1956. The period of High Stalinism commenced in 1934 with the purge trials subsequent to the Kirov murder. Physical terror and concentration or labour-camps, exile, and forced population movements, extermination, famine, and the total breakdown of social bonds of trust were just some of its features. One major characteristic was the forced collectivization of 100 million peasants, the legacy of which is still apparent in the food shortages and poverty-stricken countryside of much of the former Soviet Union. Forced industrialization and the first two Five-Year Plans saw the imposition of a harsh labour discipline as the country was put on a war footing and smoke-stack industries became the hall-mark of socialist progress. All this was overseen by a command economy which produced pathologies among worker and manager alike.

Ideologically, the system was underpinned by dialectical materialism of the most mechanical kind, as rooted in MELS—the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin—with the first three used to elaborate Stalin's own ‘cult of personality’. Socialist realism stunted the arts and culture. It is even questionable as to whether Stalinism helped the Soviet Union to survive the Nazi invasion in 1941, since not only was Stalin shown to be in gross error over the intentions of his partner in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, but the depredations of the purges (particularly within the Officer Corps) had left the army leaderless.

Stalinism was not just the personal construct of one man. It was rooted in the Bolshevik seizure of power and the closure of the Constituent Assembly in 1918, after unfavourable elections. It was presaged by the practices adopted during War Communism and its aftermath the Kronstadt Revolt, The Tenth Party Congress in March 1921 and banning of factions within the Party, as well as the defeat of the opposition from the Left ( Leon Trotsky) and Right ( Nikolai Bukharin)—all of which created the blueprint and the practical means for Stalin's subsequent policies. Stalinism as terror was always associated with Yezhov, Yadov, Beria, and the security apparatus, allowing Stalin to distance himself from the atrocities. This enabled him to foster the image of Popular Hero of the Motherland War, Father of the Nations, and Great Strategist, and evade responsibility for the 20 million war dead and the equal number lost through the terror. By the time of Stalin's death in 1953, Soviet society was permeated with suspicion, corruption, inefficiency, and waste, ruled over by the KGB and a demoralized Party. However, the USSR was a major world nuclear power with surrounding nations in thrall, and this sense of superpower status was to keep the neo-Stalinist system which he bequeathed functioning at least until 1991. See also COLLECTIVISM; MARXISM.