The Five Year Plans had already caused a lot of distress to workers as Stalin was strict about targets not being met. Society had become unstable as a result of the Five Year Plans, mass urbanisation and violence in overcrowded, unsanitary cities. Mass urbanisation had brought a large workforce to the cities but this was followed by violence and social tension. Because of this there was a lot of hostility towards the communist party which was beginning to worry the government. M.Lewin describes this as a “quicksand society”[ix] which describes just how unstable the attitudes were towards the leadership. Stalin, it can be argued, resorted to the purges to prevent criticism of the leadership. The totalitarian viewpoint would be that Stalin used the purges to control the general population which I agree with, however the revisionist viewpoint would be that the centre used the purges to try and gain control of the chaos but it spiralled out of control and created a momentum of its own. I believe that the social instability within the main cities from mass urbanisation and the dissent that the Five Year Plans created contributed to the continuation of the purges as the leadership and Stalin needed to find a way to control the chaos. However I do not believe that this was the work of Stalin’s paranoia but Stalin doing what he believed as necessary to keep…
The Five-Year Plan (FYPs) were introduced by Joseph Stalin for Soviet industrialisation.The series of FYPs were meant to modernise Soviet industry and to match and overtake the other Western powers who by an industrial revolution had managed to modernise their industries and increase their industrial output. The FYPs were implemented to fulfil various purposes.Most of the USSR was very backward in the industrial sector.The USSR had the resources but did not have the infrastructure and…
Joseph Stalin in the 1930’s was a cruel and bitter dictator. Joseph Stalin grew up with a harsh family that changed his ways of living. Joseph Stalin ruled for the Soviet Union for more than two decades. We see Joseph Stalin trying to come up with plans to try and help the Soviet Union in World War II. Some of his plans worked, but most of them failed. Joseph Stalin did whatever it would take to be the highest power of the USSR. Stalin was a ruler with great anger that constantly was building up…
Sansoucy was diagnosed with sarcoma, a cancer that develops in certain tissues like bone or muscle. Though rare in comparison to other cancers, approximately 4,870 adults and children (2,600 males and 2,270 females) were predicted to die from sarcoma this year. The five year survival rate (percentage of individuals who live at least five years after diagnosis) for this serious disease depends on the location of the tumors. Localized sarcomas are given an 83% five-year survival rate while…
Union turned from a rural farming country to an industrialized power house in just a matter of years, Stalin’s plans were more harmful than helpful to the Soviet Union because of the famine he caused, and the millions that died because of his actions. Joseph Stalin was one of the leaders of the Bolsheviks or communist party that took control of Russia on October 24, 1917. During the Russian Revolution, he was a general who fought in major battles in the Russian Civil War that followed the…
Adolf Hitler of Germany and Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union were authoritarian leaders who had a major impact on the economic state of their respective countries in the early to mid 20th century. Their respective economic policies mainly focused on the industrialisation and modernisation of their countries as both countries had a relatively weak economy in comparison to the rest of the Western world at the time. Furthermore, both countries practiced autarky and rearmament as a means of…
in the revolution. One example of this is Napoleon's plan for the windmill representing Joseph Stalin's five year plans. Its representation in Animal Farm was well done, and while it was missing some aspects, it overall did a sufficient job at portraying this event in history. After Vladimir Lenin died, Joseph Stalin came to power, despite Leon Trotsky being Lenin's first choice as a replacement (Hindsight). Once Stalin was a Soviet leader, he was ¨ready to initiate the next stage in the Soviet…
Joseph Stalin was one of the greatest leaders in modern history, not only because he lead his country to pushing the German’s back from the USSR (The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) into the heart of the Germany but also because he modernised a country that was a hundred years behind the rest of the world in very little time. Stalin had successfully implemented two five year plans between the years 1928 and 1938. BBC Believes that the first two five-year plans were concentrated on industry…
Nikita Khrushchev, sought to “De-Stalinise” Russia by rejecting ‘the Stalin cult,’ to attempt to reform Russian government and society. However, questions arise on whether Khrushchev’s reforms were executed effectively due to limited changes being made during his regime. As a result, some historians have argued that the Stalinist regime was continued by the Soviets. De- Stalinisation was ‘doomed to failure, because the system’s inherent instability meant that radical changes, whether in the…
Joseph Stalin watched the fall of the Romanovs, the rise of communism, helped win a world war, and killed millions of his own people. All of this started December 18, 1879, the day he was born. Originally he was born Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. Born to a poor family with an abusive father his mother encouraged him to become a priest. She enrolled him do so he enrolled in a school. However in 1899 he dropped out and left his hometown of Gori, Georgia. He then joined the Social Democratic…