Running Head: STALIN’S TERROR MACHINE

Stalin’s Terror Machine

There are a handful of names in modern history that are associated with the word “terror.” One of those names is Joseph Stalin. He served as the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union for a period of 30 years from 1922 until 1952. During his reign, millions perished as the result of his totalitarian terror machine. He eliminated all those who he saw as a threat, whether they were actually a threat or not. Stalin’s uses of propaganda were crucial in maintaining power. The totalitarian state controlled education; making sure that the subjects were in line with what Stalin wanted. History books were rewritten to overplay Stalin’s part in the Revolution of 1917 and his relationship with Lenin, who was a father of the revolution. Many previously printed books were banned and the new ones were censored. Stalin, just like Hitler, developed a cult of personality. Many people blindly believed everything that Stalin and the Communist Party put out. This blind belief coupled with fear gave Stalin the ability to use state terror against his own people. Many were executed and many more sent to perish in the vast emptiness of Siberia. In order to better understand state terrorism in The Soviet Union, it is important to understand what lead up to it, how and why the state used terrorism, how the international community viewed the situation, as well as what was the final outcome.
In order to comprehend state terror under Joseph Stalin, it is important to recognize what conditions led up to it. Vladimir Lenin was first the Soviet leader and in 1922 Lenin decided to give Stalin, who was a revolutionary, more power. Lenin had Stalin appointed to the position of General Secretary of The Soviet Union. The new position gave Stalin the ability to appoint his allies to key positions within the Soviet government. Shortly after the appointment of Stalin, Lenin suffered a stroke. Over the next two years, the relationship between Lenin and Stalin deteriorated. Lenin was increasingly against Stalin's political views and ambition. He even suggested that Stalin should be removed from the position of General Secretary (Service 2005.) Lenin died on January 21, 1924. Leon Trotsky, who was the head of The Military Revolutionary Committee, was a choice of many to become the General Secretary after Lenin’s death. Over the next three years, Trotsky and Stalin struggled for power due to their ideological differences. In 1927 Trotsky had lost his position on the Central Committee, was dismissed from the party, and forced to flee abroad. With Trotsky gone, Stalin consolidated all of the power. In 1928 Stalin installed an economic system of central planning (Termin 1991.) The system controlled everything from where to build factories to how farmers should plant their crops. He allocated natural resources for heavy industrial development at the expense of consumer products. At the same time, Stalin started collectivization: government owned and operated farms in which peasants pooled their lands. It is during this period where Stalin began using terror against his people. Some of the better off peasant class, known as Kulaks, rebelled against collectivization. Stalin would accept no resistance.
The Stalin terror machine began its operation. In 1930 and 1931 alone, over 1800,000 Kulaks were sent to prison labor camps. The reported number of Kulaks and their relatives who died in labor colonies from 1932 to 1940 was 389,521. Some of the former "Kulaks" and their families were victims of the purges of the late 1930s, with 669,929 arrested and 376,202 executed (Figes 2007.) In 1932 the totalitarian government of The Soviet Union passed the law known as the Law of Spikelets that initiated the second wave of arrests after Stalin. The law stated that for stealing government property the accused would be executed or sentenced to ten years of hard labor. Most of the people that were arrested were poor farmers. For taking as little as a handful of grain or seed, they were executed or sent away to Siberia. These early terrorist tactics served a dual purpose. First, they intimidated any opposition to the collectivization and the regime. Second, it provided cheap labor to the growing industrial machine of The Soviet Union. The prisoners laboring in Siberia’s camps worked in mines, fell timber, and built roads in cities in Siberia (Kolyma 1991.) Their labor supplemented the shortfalls of an ineffective economic system. While some labored in prison camps others starved. During the Soviet famine of 1932 to 1933 at least 5 million starved to death. Most of the deaths occurred in Ukraine due to Stalinist agricultural policies, and the push for industrialization of The Soviet Union. At the same time, Stalin was purging the Communist Party ranks of anyone he perceived as a threat. The ordered assassination, by Stalin, of influential Communist Party member Sergey Kirov in 1934, gave a reason to begin a period known as the Great Purge. The purge lasted six years. From 1937 to 1940 alone, Stalin’s secret police detained 1,548,366 persons, of whom 681,692 were shot- an average of 1,000 executions per day (Pipes 67.) Stalin purged most of the top and mid-level military leadership, whom he accused of being conspirators of Trotsky or being agents of a foreign state. The purge of the military contributed to the dismal performance of the Red Soviet Army in the early days of World War II. The terror machine went after intelligentsia: writers, poets, scientists, and etcetera. Most of the accused experienced a public show trial, where their neighbors and coworkers were forced to make false statements about them in order to preserve their own life or the lives of their family. The majority of those on trial confessed their guilt under repeated beatings and torture. Stalin used terror to keep people in the Soviet Union in a state of constant fear. No one could be trusted and the secret police were always right around the corner. The turbulent environment, terror, and propaganda reduced the chance of resistance in Stalin’s totalitarian state (Arendt 1951.) The terror was the key to survival for Stalin and he continued to implement those policies all the way to his death in 1953. Those on the outside of the closed Soviet state often did not see or understand what exactly went on within its borders.
The international community did not see the terror in Stalin’s totalitarian regime. This fact can be attributed to a few reasons; one being that the media exchange was nowhere as advanced in the 1930 through the 1950s as it is today. It is important to remember that foreign reporters and politicians had limited access and reported on what they saw with the access they had. For example: Walter Duranty, a reporter for the New York Times, wrote “Russian Hungry, But Not Starving” when writing a news cable about the Soviet famine of 1932 to 1933. American Ambassador to the Soviet Union Joseph Davies witnessed one of the public show trials. Twenty-one prominent Communist Party members were accused and found guilty of conspiracy against the state. The ambassador, like many others, thought they were guilty because all of them confessed. Even now at the age of information, there is still limited knowledge of what exactly happens in totalitarian states, such as North Korea. Information about terror in North Korea’s prison camps and executions there comes from only those who are able to escape. This was the case in The Soviet Union when some of the Gulag prisoners reached the safety of the West (Conquest 2007.) Even those who knew about the atrocities were suppressed, because the West needed Stalin to defeat Nazi Germany. Only after the death of Stalin in 1953 did the details of his terror against millions begin to emerge. In conclusion, Stalin would not have been able to maintain power if it was not for his use of terror against the people that were under his control. He saw the need to eliminate all those who opposed him, or those with divergent thought on how things should be ran in order to secure his rule. He effectively used unpredictability, propaganda, and fear in order to keep power in his hands. It was mostly innocent citizens that suffered as a result of Stalin’s terror machine. In his book, Robert Conquest writes- “Exact numbers may never be known with complete certainty, but the total of deaths caused by the whole range of the Soviet regime's terrors can hardly be lower than some thirteen to fifteen million." Those numbers are staggering. The numbers of those that were affected by the arrests and deaths of their loved ones will never be known. It is important to remember the terror of Stalin and never let it happen again.

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Oboznova, N. (Producer), & Micheev, M (Director), 1991, Kolyma Trilogy (Documentary), Russia: Lentelefilm. Retrieved From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIvWwK0QJ14 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahhq62FQWW0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsP0sYuof5U
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