Analysis Of Russia Under Joseph Stalin: Essay

Updated on April 21, 2013 thebeast02 moreContact Author Who was Joseph Stalin? Joseph Stalin was without a doubt one of the most powerful men in the world in the 1930’s. His control over the communist party led to massive collectivization and industrialization plans, as well as huge famines and enormous death tolls. Stalin’s determination to create a perfect society and to revolutionize Russia turned into mass paranoia and chaos. From creating a huge labor camp system, to massive murders of farmers who opposed him, Stalin was willing to run over anyone who got in the way of his utopia in the making. Stalin reminds these workers that they now have a fatherland which gives them something to defend. He gives them they question “Do you want our socialist fatherland to be beaten and to lose its independence,” (Stalin), of course, in this context the audience must have been cheering and chanting their love for Mother Russia. It is evident throughout this speech that Stalin finds Russian Independence to be the most important aspect of his entire reign of power.

However harsh the methods might be to achieve this he feels is vindicated by the goal. A sort of, the end justifies the means attitude. Stalin figures that however many Russian’s die while trying to put the fatherland ahead of the other capitalist nations, would be a very small amount in comparison to what it would be if they were to attacked again. At least they are dying for a just cause, in his eyes, by adding to the industrialization of their country. Stalin’s wording at the end of this speech is also very interesting. “Should the kulak… be permitted to join the collective farms? Of course not, for he is sworn enemy of the collective farm movement. Lev Koplev, a militant under Stalin, recalls some of the events that he took part in or witnessed during the raids of some small farms. Koplev remembers going into homes and being under the order to remove anything of value, silverware, stored food, cows, pigs, even extra clothing a family may have had.

He is reminded of the screams and pleas of the families, as they watched these men take away their possessions. Koplev mentions that he had to continuously remind himself that they were doing this for the good of society, and that it was necessary for the revolution to succeed. He had to remember that this was part of the five year plan, and that he could not give in to the miserable cries and screams of the families who they were taking everything from. Koplev later looks back at his time in the party and can’t believe some of the things that he was led to believe by Stalin during this time of collectivization. “With the rest of my generation I firmly believed the end justified the means”, Koplev writes. He says that this is what he had to repeat to himself whenever he began to doubt Stalin’s methods. When he saw what was really happening to the country. It became a requirement to look at the theoretical result of their actions, and to remember that the country would be better off after the suffering.

Koplev says that the greatest fear for the “disciples” of communism was to lose faith in the cause and to begin to doubt that what they were doing was for a noble cause. In this writing the mindset that was required for some of these secret police and other militants that Stalin commanded becomes clearer. Even though they struggled, at times, with their conscience, they were so sure that liquidating and stealing the property from the Kulaks was a necessity that they justified themselves by saying that it was for the good of the revolution. That it was necessary for communism to succeed and make the country a better place. Gulags were an essential part of Stalin’s plan to modernize Russia. Anyone who he thought was disloyal or a threat to his goal was either killed, liquidated as he would say, or put into a gulag. Gulags were labor camps spread throughout the Soviet Union, and the prisoners of the camps were called zeks.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a man who spent nine years inside of gulags and amazingly lived to tell the tale. He was awarded a Nobel Prize for one of his works and was exiled from Russia because of his accuracy. Solzhenitsyn tells us of some of the different jobs zeks were required to do on a daily basis, including hauling bricks, breaking stones, mining for gold, lead, and copper. By no means were these just prisoners, they were slaves. The zeks were fed very scarcely, just enough to keep them alive. The zeks only got the worst of the food that came out of the kitchens; anything decent was taken by the chiefs. Most of the time, the zeks were working in the Russian cold malnourished. The camps were usually tents, with a lamp. The prisoners had to carry their belongings with them at all times for fear of them being stolen.