To his successor Truman and Churchill this seeming promise meant that anyone over a certain age could freely. Stalin clearly had other ideas. He wanted to put what Churchill was to call an “Iron Curtain” around the USSR and that meant each eastern European country that was near to the Soviet border had to have a loyal communist government in power with leaders who would do what Stalin wished. Therefore, elections were never going to be fair. Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania all ended up with communist governments and had leaders who looked to Moscow for advice as opposed to the people of the country they governed.
Trotsky wanted to help communists in other countries to the revolution and push forward the revolution in the USSR. He wanted to end the NEP and introduce more socialist ways of running the economy; Stalin however believed they could build a fully economic state by helping the people within the USSR and not from outsiders. Members of the communist party like the policies of Stalin better than those of Trotsky’s, because they didn’t trust Trotsky to lead them into a better USSR. What Stalin meant by ‘socialism in one country’ was that the nations first was to consolidate Lenin’s revolution and the rule of the CPSU by turning the USSR into a modern state capable of defending itself against enemies, a majority of Russia’s population agreed with this. Although Zinoviev and Kamenev attacked Stalin calling a vote of no confidence in him, the ending of the NEP and a
Soon other major German ports like Kiel and Hamburg were under the control of the navy. This made the Prince and Kaiser worry that a revolution might occur and so they decide to abdicate Kaiser and Prince leaving the control of Germany in Friedrich Elbert. This means the Government had more of a control over Germany and could make changes to keep the people happy and prevent revolution. Moreover in the October reform Ludendorff realised that Germany was loosing the war and so he wanted to shift the blame from the army government and land owners and at the same time get the best possible peace terms. Germany terns from autocracy to constitutional monarchy as the blame would be on the newly formed government the Reichstag.
Once that enemy was near defeat, disagreements began to emerge. The West and the Soviet Union were never really `friends'. Towards the end of the war, relations between the West and the Soviet Union deteriorated so drastically that they were unable to cooperate in any way. The second factor is that the West was capitalist and democratic, whereas the USSR was communist and a one-party state. In a democratic system, different political parties are allowed and free elections are held so that the people can vote for their government whereas in a communist state, other parties are
War Communism was radical and involved the militarisation of Labour which was disliked by the people and made people focus purely on the needs of the war. This contrasts greatly with the First World War (WW1) because the Tsar didn’t militarise Labour completely and so the demand for supplies in WW1 couldn’t be met by the factories. Starvation was nothing new in Russia and during WW1 the supplies couldn’t reach the troops on the front line and so many soldiers had little to eat. With War Communism the majority of the food would be taken from a household to feed an army and the result was that Russians starved, this time the household starved and there was little incentive to grow more. War Communism was introduced as the focus of Lenin was on the military and getting supplies to the soldiers of Russia quickly.
By the outbreak of world war in 1939 Stalin had fully established a dictatorship in Russia. For this to be a totalitarian regime it needed several things.This included control over over the economy, political and social aspect of life. Stalin, although he does face fair oppositions, seems to have full control over all areas, with little room for diversity. In the case of economy we see a shift from a society largely based on agriculture to a society mainly based on industry. One of the main aims of the communist regime was to industrialise the country, they wanted to change Russia from a ‘backward peasant-based country’ to a modern more industry based society.
The Sovnarkom ruled by decree without going to the Soviet for approval. The early decrees shows that the Bolsheviks were willing to compromise their key principles to keep popular support. One of these decrees was the land decree. This decree gave the peasants the right to take over the estates of the gentry, without compensation, and to decide for themselves the best way to divide it up. Land could no longer be bought, sold or rented; it belonged to the ‘entire people’.
One of the ways how Stalin defeated the left side of the party was to make an alliance with Bukharin. This ended with Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev losing their power bases. This gave Stalin a lot more power and meant there was no real threat left. I know from my own knowledge that Trotsky formed the alliance with Zinoviev and Kamenev because Stalin was a big threat. Stalin was more popular because of Trotsky’s “political paralysis” he couldn’t be a good public speaker.
They attacked the NEP and the lack of free debate in the party, due to Lenin’s Decree of Party unity the ‘United Opposition’ was seen as a threat and they should be removed. Therefore the party removed all the members of the “United Opposition”, and elections in the city committees put new “loyal” members in control of Leningrad and Moscow. Now only the right-wing people were still in power beside Stalin, in 1927 there was a crisis of grain supply. The party set new measures as: 1) all soldiers should be sent into the country side to request grain. 2) All hoarded grain was to be confiscated.
The war had caused the USA and the USSR to become the new superpowers of the world. They had been allies in the defeat of Germany but with different ideologies, suspicions grew and conflicts began. The USA was democratic in that the public elected people from different parties whereas the USSR was a one party dictatorship where people could only vote for communists. This meant that everything was owned by the state and every one’s individual rights were closely controlled as they believed the most important thing was the good of society as a whole. This differs to the USA, who was Capitalist, which meant private individuals owned industry and kept the profits.