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Stalin 2 Essay, Research Paper

Stalin: Did his Rule Benefit Russian Society and the Russian People?

In this paper I plan to prove that even though Stalin made improvements in the Russian industrial system, his rule did not benefit Russian society and the Russian people. In order to accomplish this, several questions must be asked. How did Stalin affect Russia’s industrial power? How did Stalin try to change Russia’s agricultural system? What changes did Stalin make in society? What were Stalin’s purges, and who did they effect?

Joseph Vissarionovich Djugashvili was born on December 21, 1879, on the southern slopes of the Caucasus mountains, in the town of Gori. His mother, Ekaterina was the daughter of a peasant who married at fifteen and who lost her first three children at birth. Vissarion, his father, was a self-employed shoemaker who had a violent temper (Marrin 6-7).

Young Djugashvili was small and wiry and had a deeply pitted face from a small pox attack that nearly killed him. He also had blood poisoning in his left arm that was probably caused by Vissarion’s beating fists. The arm would stiffen at the elbow joint and wither, making it lame and useless for the rest of his life (Lewis 8; Marrin 8).

He was dedicated to only one person, his mother, and her only ambition was for her son to become a priest and to bless her with his own hands. But, this dream was crushed when Joseph was expelled from Tiflis Theological Seminary for reading “forbidden books” such as Marx and Lenin (Lewis 8; Marrin 20).

After his expulsion from Tiflis school, Joseph became a revolutionary. He organized strikes and demonstrations at factories and also found ways to gather money for Lenin and the Bolshevik party. He was banished to Siberia six times between the years 1903 and 1917. Each time, he escaped easily, except the last, when he was released because of the February revolution (Lewis 19; Marrin 24). After the death of his first wife, Ekaterina Svanidze, Joseph became more cold and tough. He gave the child that his wife bore him to her parents and even chose a new name for himself, Stalin, the Man of Steel (Marrin 26).

Then came the October Revolution and the rise of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Stalin became general secretary of the Bolshevik party’s Central Committee. He was also the commissar of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate and the commissar of nationalities (McKay 927; Treadgold 205). After Lenin’s, death Stalin gained power by allying himself with the moderates to fight off his rival, Leon Trotsky, who was a radical and another member of the Central Committee. Stalin expelled Trotsky and suppressed his radical followers. Then he turned against his own allies, the moderates. Stalin at last had gained complete control (McKay 927-928).

One of the great achievements that Stalin made for the Soviet Union were the Five Year Plans in industry. Russia had not yet had their industrial revolution and were far behind the other powers of the world. Even Stalin said,” We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or we shall be crushed.” So, that is what Stalin set out to do (Dmytryshyn 158).

The First Five Year Plan was adopted in April 1929 by the Sixteenth Party Conference. It’s purpose was to increase Russia’s industrial production. On December 31, 1932, the First Five Year Plan was declared officially completed ahead of schedule. Total industrial output increased two hundred and fifty percent, steel production increased three hundred percent, production of large-scale industry showed an increase of one hundred and eighteen percent, production of machinery and electrical equipment increased one hundred and fifty-seven percent, heavy metal increased sixty-seven percent, coal output increased eighty-nine percent, and consumer goods increased about seventy-three percent (Dmytryshyn 158; McKay 928; Treadgold 266).

After the success of the First Five Year Plan, the Seventeenth Party Congress formally adopted the Second Five Year Plan, covering the years 1933-1937 in January, 1934. To overcome the lacking of iron and steel, the Second Plan ordered construction of forty-five new blast furnaces, one hundred and sixty-four open-hearth furnaces, and one hundred and seven rolling mills. Other goals of the second plan were an expansion of machine tool production, the development and production of non-ferrous metals, and the improvement and double-tracking of the main railroad lines (Dmytryshyn 159).

The results of the Second Five Year Plan were that some items reached their estimated targets while others lagged behind. Overall, by the end of the Second Five Year Plan, the Soviet Union was emerging as a strong industrial country. It possessed increased capability to produce iron, steel, coal, and electric power. It also had a whole new range of new industries, including aviation, tractor, locomotive, chemical, aluminum, nickel, and tin. The Soviet Union now had a well-established industrial base capable of further expansion and growth (Dmytryshyn 160-161).

Although rapid industrialization helped improve Russia, it hurt the workers. “Industrialization moved so fast and was often so poorly planned that disasters frequently resulted . . .” (Marrin 102). The amount of work that had to be put in was also hard on the workers. The workers had to work longer under Stalin than when they were ruled by the tsars. “Depending on the industry, they worked between forty-eight and sixty hours a week, Sundays included . . .” (Marrin 103).

Once the industrial Five Year Plans started to roll, Stalin decided to make some agricultural changes to support the industrialization. In April, 1928, Stalin presented the draft of a new land law. Although the draft failed to become a law, it showed a couple of

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