Joseph Stalin Dbq Analysis

Stalin’s use of Strong language shows us how truly serious the Soviet Union were going to be in promoting and carrying out their plans. The use of state terror to encourage such production increases proves this even further. The regime also used propaganda in the form of Stakhanovism to promote the industrial revolution that the country went through. This use of propaganda promoted Aleksei Stakhanov as the ideal Soviet worker who could apparently produce one hundred and two tonnes of coal in one shift.

Joseph Stalin was and still is universally known for his harsh leadership in the Soviet Union. To examine the extent of his cruelness, World Civilization II: The Rise and Fall of Empires© 1500-present stated, "Stalin was not a communist; he was a sociopath. He enjoyed hurting people and ordering their deaths. In his time as dictator of the Soviet Union, he was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of his people, and the cruel torture and imprisonment of millions more" (Sattler, 71). However, this only scratches the surface of what Stalin put the Soviet Union through. Stalin was a very persuasive man, his writings make it seem as if he is in the right and is innocent. To support this statement, two pieces of Stalin's writings were

Post WWl, Russia was still not industrialized, suffering economically and politically and in no doubt in need of a leader after Lenin’s death. “His successor, Joseph Stalin, a ruthless dictator, seized power and turned Russia into a totalitarian state where the government controls all aspects of private and public life.” Stalin showed these traits by using methods of enforcement, state control of individuals and state control of society.

Joseph Stalin was a communist dictator who used deception and violence to gain power and rise as dictator. He came to power in the Soviet Union after the previous leader Lenin had died. Russia needed a successor to replace Lenin. Obviously,

Joseph Stalin, 1878-1953, established totalitarianism in Russia, and forever changed the nation. He used police force to gain power, and instilled fear in all of his followers. This reign of terror was known as the Blood Purges or the Great Terror. During the Blood Purges, Stalin blamed Russian citizens for crimes he committed, and imposed the worst of punishments on them. Death or being sent to a labor camp, such as Gulag, was the fate of most. From 1936 to 1938, people were being killed over paranoia and no actual evidence. The purges were aimed to efface the threat of political retaliation.

Before Stalin become an ally to the U.S. and U.K., he was an ally to Nazi Germany. Stalin sought to achieve only what he felt was in his best interest. Stalin wen so far as to break promises that he made at the conference of Yalta to organize free elections, and inserted a puppet government. Stalin believed that the communist political, social, and economic ideology was what he could spread throughout the world. Just as President Wilson wished to spread democracy far and wide, Stalin desired to spread communism far and wide.

Stalin Primary ambition was to turn what he believed to be the industrial backwater that was the Soviet Union into an economic a world superpower. His goal was to make up decades or even years of time in just a single decade. By the definition of his goal he succeed he had turned a mostly agricultural country into an industrial super power, but it did not come without a cost. Those cost fell on the soviet working class in two ways the first was their atrocious living conditions and the second was their personal freedoms.

They utilized most of the workforce to achieve their goal and they did achieve it quicker than most nations. What I don’t agree with is the Soviet Union’s neglect towards their consumer market. They focused all their energy in industrializing and when they reached their goal, they just kept on going. I believe that after industrializing, the Soviet Union should have let go of the command economy and slowly adopted a mixed economy. Additionally, after achieving the goal, they should have relieved some of the workforce that focused primarily on capital goods and redirected them to produce consumer goods.

The region known as one of the world’s superpowers lost dominance after seventy years of corruption and destruction. The Soviet Union was the largest Communist bloc, which were countries under Soviet influence. It ended in 1991 because the economy that was government run could no longer sustain. What important things about the Soviet Union should be placed in textbooks? Textbooks should emphasize the USSR’s size, The Great Terror, and their military strength, because they have shaped who this region is today.

This was similar to the United States of America, as the US was also trying to industrialize with a purpose of factories and people working in them. A big factor of the industrialization that both America and Russia shared was that both of these countries had a very unfair system for workers. The pay was not great, and people who were poor had it even worse. There is even an old saying that fits this very well, “The rich get richer”. This is true because the people who were already poor, who were working for the money so they could afford things like homes, food, water, and clothing, were staying poor, because their pay was so low that at the rate of them using their money for necessities, they were earning barely enough to afford them.

Under the shadow of the great industrial powers of the west, the Soviet Union was forced to rush the process of industrialization in order to catch up with it’s advanced neighboring states. Japan was in a similar position during the 20th century, though Japan’s reaction to the pressure was much more successful than Soviet industrialization. Japan’s industrialization was more prosperous and smooth than Russia’s because of the differences in treatment of factory workers, and adaptations to the developed foreign trade market, which ultimately diminished the efficiency of Russian industrialization.

Introduction Russia is generally apportioned the benefit of having introduced a political phenomenon that basically provided an alternative for capitalism; communism. Since this concept was only set in motion at the turn of the 20th century, we can therefore deduce that, to a large extent, Russia is, to most people, synonymous with leaders such as Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, and Gorbachev. This supposition is entirely based on the premise that the Russian revolution of 1914 inherently altered the socio-cultural and socio-political direction of the nation, bringing into birth a never before envisioned era where Russia was not ruled by the Tsars, but by simple men; men who spoke to and articulated the needs of the masses. To this extent, communism,

Imagine living in a society brainwashed by propaganda, where you only can think what you are told. From 1929-1953, citizens of the Soviet Union had to endure this under the rule of Joseph Stalin. Joseph Stalin ruled the Soviet Union in 1929 right after the death of Vladimir Lenin, the first leader of the Soviet Union. From the moment he came into power, Stalin started instilling fear in the population, and those he viewed as a threat were sent to his gulags or labor camps.

Introduction Joseph Stalin is perhaps one of the most important and discussed people in Russian history. He was arguably a feared tyrant cursed and despised by many. At the same time, one finds sufficient evidence for the adoration and worship of Stalin that used to exist in the minds of the citizens of the Soviet Union. One reason for this worship was the existence of the so called ‘Cult of Personality’ where Stalin was celebrated as a wise leader, father of all people, and the architect of victory of the Second World War. In his book, The Stalin Cult: A Study in the Alchemy of Power, Jan Plamper states that Stalin’s cult of personality was largely a visual phenomenon.

Lenin continued to give Stalin power and the people could not do anything to stop it. After Lenin’s death in 1924, Stalin had complete control over the communist party. By the late 1920s, he was the dictator of the Soviet Union. Stalin kept finding way to get more power and the people were not able to do anything to fix