How did Stalin exploit the Russian lower class to further ...

How did Stalin exploit the Russian lower class to further his efforts in building a Communist

regime?

NAME

17 December 2012

Word Count: 1985

How did Stalin exploit the Russian lower class to further his efforts in building a Communist regime? A. Summary of Evidence

After the Bolsheviks under Lenin seized power in 1917 during the Russian Revolution, the Communist Regime began in the Soviet Union and remained for the decades to follow. After Lenin's death in 1923, Joseph Stalin became the leader of the Soviet Union. So, how did Stalin exploit the Russian lower class to further his efforts in building a Communist regime? Stalin's three objectives geared towards building his ideal Communist Soviet Union will be examined, including collectivization from the Russian lower class. In addition, I will examine how Stalin defied the original principles of Communism, by comparing the Communist Manifesto and Stalin's use of nomenklatura and propaganda.

WORD COUNT: B. Evidence I. Communist Principles "The proletariat is . . . from all classes of the population" (Marx and Engels 11) "When . . . capital is converted into common property . . . It is only the social character of the property that is changed. It loses its class character" (Marx and Engels 19) "The [Communist] ideal is one of full social equality that . . . calls for the dissolution of the individual in the community" (Pipes preface) "Marx and Engels formulated . . . that the ideal of a propertyless, egalitarian society . . . by virtue of the natural evolution of the economy, had to happen" (Pipes 9)

"In eastern Europe . . . revisions tended to exacerbate the elements of violence. The result was Communism. Marxism . . . flew in the face of reality" (Pipes 18) "Marx [and] Engels . . . were quite prepared to sacrifice the living for generations yet unborn" (Pipes 68) "Purges . . . went well beyond the logic of Communist rule" (Brown 76) II. Stalin's Objectives "The purging of hundreds of thousands of people produced an equivalent number of job vacancies" (Brown 66) "He [Stalin] had three related objectives: to build a powerful industrial base, to collectivize agriculture, and to impose on the national complete conformity" (Pipes 57) "Stalin appealed to traditional capitalist methods . . . [they] . . . hurt productivity" (Pipes 59) "[The bulk of capital] was extracted from the peasantry . . . the peasants would supply the food for the industrial labor force, cities, and armed forces at rock-bottom prices" (Pipes 59) "Peasants were herded into collective farms (kolkhozy), where they labored not for themselves but for the state" (Pipes 60) "In 1930 and 1931, 1,803,392 people suffered [from collectivization]" (Pipes 60) "The government resorted to extreme violence" (Pipes 61) "To break the resistance of the peasants . . . Stalin inflicted on . . . areas in 1932-33 an artificial famine" (Pipes 61) "Workers constituted a small proportion of Russia's population-at best 1 or 2 percent . . . [in 1917], only 5.3 percent of industrial workers belonged to the Bolshevik party" (Pipes

39) "Collectivization . . . finance[d] a good part of the industrialization drive; peasants' food was confiscated and distributed to the cities and industrial centers" (Pipes 62) "Famine struck, as a result of state requisitions . . . [by] 1933, some five million people had died" (Brown 63) " [Stalin] callously refused to alleviate [starvation], maintaining the bulk export of Soviet-produced foodstuffs" (Hingley 204) "`We now have the opportunity . . . to replace kulak production with production by collective and state farms'. This statement marks the transition from acute harassment to extermination" (Hingley 205) III. Nomenklatura "The top officials of the party and government, the so-called nomenklatura . . . enjoyed unique privileges, forming a new exploiting class" (Pipes 65) " `It's [nomenklatura] a life in which everything flows easily . . . You are like a king: just point your finger and it is done'" (Pipes 66) IV. Propaganda "The government . . . [promised] that [construction of socialism] would significantly improve living standards . . . living standards declined precipitously because financing the industrialization drive called for reducing wages to a minimum" (Pipes 59) "Many of the beneficiaries of rapid social mobility . . . came to the conclusion that [collectivization] had all been worthwhile . . . his victims, awaiting execution or doing forced labour in the camps . . . blamed neither Stalin nor the system" (Brown 67) "Article 125 [of the Soviet Constitution] began: `Citizens of the USSR shall be

guaranteed (a) freedom of speech; (b) freedom of the press; (c) freedom of assembly, including the holding of mass meetings; (d) freedom of street processions and demonstrations'. Not one of these freedoms existed in reality" (Brown 74) "`One cannot implant collective farms by violence; that would be stupid and reactionary'. Thus did [Stalin] blatantly disavow a procedure of which he himself had been chief" (Hingley 205) "Peasants . . . carried pictures of Stalin" (Hingley 205)

C. Evaluation of Sources Communism: A History by Richard Pipes details the rise of Communism as a

political party beginning at the theoretical and philosophical roots, through the practice of the theory in history. The purposes of the book is to compare the philosophical beginnings in Ancient Greece, including the teachings of Plato, and later, the Enlightenment thinkers, and how they affected the works of Marx and Engels. In addition, the philosophical teachings are applied to the historical application of Communism. Pipes fled occupied Poland, where he was born, alongside his family to the United States in 1939 (online). He "served as President Reagan's National Security Council adviser on Soviet and East European affairs, and in 1992 was an expert witness in the Russian Constitutional Court's trial against the Communist Party of the Soviet Union" (About the Author). In addition, he is the Baird Professor of History, Emeritus, at Harvard University, and has written various books and essays. Pipe's firsthand experience with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union is valuable to his account of the history of the party and it's principles. In a study of the corruption of Communism,

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