Stalin
Stalin came to power at a time when the peasants were beginning to make a means to an end and could see for themselves a better life. However, it was Stalin's attempt to make Russia a super power, which ultimately came at a very high price for the Russian people. A common misconception of Lenin is that he was a hero of the Russian people. To the extent that he played a major part in the overthrow of the oppressive Tsarist regime, this is true. However, in protecting the revolution, he had ordered the imprisonment and execution of millions of Russians. These arrests and executions were carried out by his secret police called the Cheka. The role of the Cheka changed during the civil war into an organ of terror, dispensing summary justice including executions and making mass arrests. Things were not all bad however, for the Russian peasants from 1921 onwards as the policy became more relaxed with the taxation on the peasants and the halting of forced grain requisitioning. This was extended with the introduction of the new economic policy (NEP). This new type of peasant in Russia came to be known as a Kulak. The Kulaks could buy their own land and sell off the extra crops they produced -Lenin introduced the Kulaks to appease the
There are stories of when Stalin gave public speeches that people would applaud him for hours because they feared that if they were seen to be the first to stop clapping that they would find themselves in Gulag camps or even executed. From 1934 to 1939 Stalin ordered a series of executions and imprisonments, largely directed towards people within his own government. In this speech Khrushchev said that all that Stalin did was anti-Marxist and anti-Leninist. Marshall Aid was a plan to support countries that remained capitalist. The people of East Berlin probably suffered more than anyone living within the soviet sphere of influence because they had almost all of their civil liberties removed, they weren't allowed to move around their own country and they had to live with a complete change in government, from a far right wing Government to a far left wing Government. During the first five-year plan cattle herds declined by almost 50% and the gross farm output by approximately 10%. In 1928, approximately 80% of the 150 million Soviet citizens were engaged in agriculture. 9 million tons) fell far short of the prescribed target of 10 million tons: but large-scale industrial production more than doubled. The second response of America was the introduction of Marshall Aid. By 1940 the per capita production of fruit crops, meat, and eggs still did not attain the level of 1928, while it was as late as 1957 before the number of cattle was restored to the pre-collectivization level. Stalin was one of the few national leaders to commit war crimes against his own country in the purges of 1936, 37 and 38. In1956, three years after Stalin's death his successor Nikita Khrushchev addressed the twentieth century congress. Coal and pig iron production doubled. Brought a spectacular rise in steel production of more than 15 million tons, placing the Soviet Union not far behind Germany as one of the major steel-producing countries of the world.
Common topics in this essay:
War II,
Soviet Union,
,
Rykov Party,
Red Army,
NEP Peasants,
Alongside Stalin's,
Union Germany,
Union Stalin's,
East Berlin,
soviet union,
five-year plans,
collective farms,
marshall aid,
russian people,
sphere influence,
stalin's five plans,
peasant households,
five-year plan,
production doubled,
steel production,
soviet sphere influence,
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Acceptance Essays
