Joseph Stalin Dbq

Over the 30 years of Joseph Stalin’s dictatorship, the estimated death toll ranged from 28 to 40 million people, whom died from a variety of things, such as famine, executions, and a very large war. Stalin assumed autocratic rule of the Soviet Union in 1924 following the death of Lenin. Stalin made a variety of reforms, but his main focus was on the economic issues that was occurring in the communist country at the time. Stalin made his economic reforms solely to make the most amount of money possibly, even if millions of people had to die. I completely contest to Stalin’s beliefs and ideas during this very controversial time in the USSR. Joseph Stalin was able to expropriate the farms of the Kulaks and turn their wealth and success into dust. According to document 1 written by Stalin, states “... Now we are able to carry on a determined offensive against the kulaks… to eliminate them as a class… Now, the kulaks are being …show more content…
The Kulaks were seen as an “enemy” to the government and the peasant class because they were trying to make money on the side. The expropriation of the Kulaks is wrong, it is encouraged by the government and Stalin, and having a farm seized that has been in some of these kulak’s families for generations weakens the economy. An entire social class is now being threatened by Stalin, when he states “Now we are able to carry on a determined offensive against the kulaks”, Stalin is implying that he will execute kulaks on sight, even if they were following the collective farm laws. Document 9, Famine of Tatiana Pawlichka supports the claim above, “The villagers tried to go out in the fields to look for grain left behind by the harvest; the communists would arrest them and shoot at