How Lenin Paved The Way For Stalin’s Great Terror
Throughout the history of the Soviet Union, there have been numerous leaders who would influence future leaders with their policies and actions. However, there has been no greater influence than Vladimir Lenin had on Joseph Stalin’s style of leadership. Lenin’s policies and actions from 1917 to 1924 indirectly caused many of Stalin’s ideas to come to fruition, including his infamous Great Terror movement from 1936 to 1938. The Great Terror is one of Stalin’s most devastating policies of the 1930s, however his idea was not original. Rather, Stalin borrowed from Lenin’s ideas in order to execute the Great Terror. Stalin’s Great Terror began to formulate in 1934. During the Seventeenth Party …show more content…
Lenin’s first purge cut the party’s membership of 700,000 by more than a quarter in 1921. By 1924, party membership was cut in half. The party purges would further increase the power of the party dictatorship, and by eliminating dissenters of the party, there was hardly any opposition to Lenin’s power. Similarly, Stalin used party purges during the Great Terror. However, he extended his purges beyond the party and included the general population as a target. Between 1937-1938, approximately 1.6 million people were arrested by the NKVD and about 700,000 were executed. This statistic does not include the people who died from malnutrition in Stalin’s slave labor camps. Aside from the NKVD arrests, Soviet courts convicted more than 7 million people between 1937 and …show more content…
Institutionalized terror was created by Lenin’s regime, whose actions during 1917 and 1924 paved the way towards Stalin’s Great Terror. The connections between Lenin’s policies and Stalin’s Great Terror show a recurring pattern in the Soviet Union; unoriginality. The Great Terror was merely just an expansion of Lenin’s main policy idea of “On Party Unity”. Lenin’s government used repression as an asset, which gave the state almost unlimited power over the people. After Lenin’s death, Stalin painted him as a god toward the people, while using Lenin’s policies and political structure in order to execute mass murders and spread terror throughout the Soviet Union. Consequently, Lenin is just as responsible for the Great Terror as Stalin is from a policy
Throughout the history of the Soviet Union, there have been numerous leaders who would influence future leaders with their policies and actions. However, there has been no greater influence than Vladimir Lenin had on Joseph Stalin’s style of leadership. Lenin’s policies and actions from 1917 to 1924 indirectly caused many of Stalin’s ideas to come to fruition, including his infamous Great Terror movement from 1936 to 1938. The Great Terror is one of Stalin’s most devastating policies of the 1930s, however his idea was not original. Rather, Stalin borrowed from Lenin’s ideas in order to execute the Great Terror. Stalin’s Great Terror began to formulate in 1934. During the Seventeenth Party …show more content…
Lenin’s first purge cut the party’s membership of 700,000 by more than a quarter in 1921. By 1924, party membership was cut in half. The party purges would further increase the power of the party dictatorship, and by eliminating dissenters of the party, there was hardly any opposition to Lenin’s power. Similarly, Stalin used party purges during the Great Terror. However, he extended his purges beyond the party and included the general population as a target. Between 1937-1938, approximately 1.6 million people were arrested by the NKVD and about 700,000 were executed. This statistic does not include the people who died from malnutrition in Stalin’s slave labor camps. Aside from the NKVD arrests, Soviet courts convicted more than 7 million people between 1937 and …show more content…
Institutionalized terror was created by Lenin’s regime, whose actions during 1917 and 1924 paved the way towards Stalin’s Great Terror. The connections between Lenin’s policies and Stalin’s Great Terror show a recurring pattern in the Soviet Union; unoriginality. The Great Terror was merely just an expansion of Lenin’s main policy idea of “On Party Unity”. Lenin’s government used repression as an asset, which gave the state almost unlimited power over the people. After Lenin’s death, Stalin painted him as a god toward the people, while using Lenin’s policies and political structure in order to execute mass murders and spread terror throughout the Soviet Union. Consequently, Lenin is just as responsible for the Great Terror as Stalin is from a policy