Bolshevik consolidation of power
The Bolshevik secret police formed in 1917 under Lenin
What is the Cheka?
January 21, 1924
Not unexpected but still shocked the nation
What is the death of Lenin?
The policy adopted by the Soviet government which aimed to transform traditional agriculture and to reduce the economic power of the kulaks
What is Collectivisation?
A system of government that is characterised by dictatorial rule that requires complete subservience to the state and often involves a suppression of opposition
What is Totalitarianism?
Given wider educational opportunities and encouraged to join the workforce, particularly during the ’30s.
What are women in the USSR?
Strict rationing
End of market economy
Grain requisitioning
What is War Communism?
All dissent and factionalism was strictly forbidden
What is the decree 'On Party Unity'?
Rapid industrialisation
Central planning
Command economy
Collectivisation
Remove opposition
What were the purposes of Stalin's 5 year plans?
These were used to give a pretense of legality to the process of the Great Purges
What are Show Trials?
Abortion outlawed
Divorce made more difficult
Government paid child support
What is the Family Code law (of 1936)?
Economically stuck in the Middle Ages
Socially it resembled Feudal system
Autocratic Government
What was Russia like before the Bolshevik Revolution?
Economic policy of the USSR from 1921 to 1928, representing a temporary retreat from socialism and introducing aspects of capitalism
What is the NEP?
The name for an incident in early 1923 during the NEP, when there was a widening gap between industrial and agricultural prices
What is the 'scissors crisis'?
After this person's death, Stalin launched his purge, claiming that he had uncovered a dangerous conspiracy of anti-Stalinist Communists
Who is Sergei Kirov?
A form of modern art imposed by Stalin and characterised by rigorously optimistic pictures of life in the USSR
What is 'Socialist Realism'?
Internationalism
Rapid transition to socialism
Dictatorship of proletariat
Worker's state
What was Bolshevik ideology in 1917?
"Comrade Stalin... has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution"
What is Lenin's "testament" to the Congress?
The State Planning Bureau (GOSPLAN) determined these 3 things.
What is grain production quotas, prices and wages?
Sentenced to death in absentia during the Moscow Trials. He was living in exile in Mexico when he was assassinated with an ice pick by a Spanish communist.
Who is Leon Trotsky?
“…Trotsky and his contemptible friends organised in the USSR gangs of murderers, wreckers and spies…(the aim of) these enemies of the people was to restore the yoke of the capitalists and the landlords to the USSR…”
What is Stalin's changes to the teaching of History?
Political unity
Propaganda
Terror
Better access to infrastructure, communications and supply lines.
Why did the Bolsheviks win the Civil War?
Party manoeuvring
Ideology
Cult of Lenin
Control of party bureaucracy
How did Stalin succeed against Trotsky in the post-Lenin power struggle?
Low living standards
Catastrophic famines
Millions deported to Gulag system
What are the failures of Stalin's economic transformation of USSR?
"To launch an offensive against the kulaks means that we must smash the kulaks, eliminate them as a class."
What is de-kulakisation?
the deliberate fixation of individual veneration and loyalty to an all-powerful leader, whose personality exemplified the nation
What is Stalin's Cult of Personality?