Soviet Union

Flag of the Soviet Union from 1955-1991

The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922-1991. The USSR synthesized Marxism-Leninism, was the primary actor that defeated fascism in WW2. However, the USSR tragically fell to revisionism in 1956, causing systemic stagnation and bureaucratization across the 1960s-1980s. These all resulted into its ultimate downfall in 1991.

Established by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in the aftermath of the Russian Civil War, the USSR was led by Vladimir Lenin until his death in 1924. This period set a precedent for Leninism as a tradition and model for how socialist states should function. Joseph Stalin came to power after Lenin and began a process of mass industrialization, which was pivotal for the USSR's victory in the Great Patriotic War against fascism in 1941-1945. It was under Stalin that Marxism-Leninism completed its synthesization with Russian civilization and tradition. During Stalin's era, religion was reconciled with communism, and the precedent of socialist patriotism was reaffirmed. Stalin's death in 1953 led to a usurpation of the country by Nikita Khrushchev, who altered the class character of the CPSU and the Soviet state by replacing the dictatorship of the proletariat for a social-democratic All-People's State in 1956. These revisions turned the country towards social imperialism. The Khrushchev era ultimately contributed to the death of the country in 1991 due to the a wave of historical nihilism, foreign ideological infiltration, covert color revolutions and final capitulation to the West by Mikhail Gorbachev.

The USSR continues to have a strong legacy among the post-Soviet states. To this day, the USSR is remembered as the greatest time in history according to 75% of Russians, 54% of Belarusians, and an uncalculated majority of Kazakhs. Vladimir Lenin has a 56% approval rating in Russia today. Even higher, Joseph Stalin has a 70% approval rating in modern Russia. Stalin's approval in Georgia and Armenia also remains relatively high, at 45% and 38% respectively.

Stalinist era (1924-1956)

Stalin continued the model of Lenin, applying dialectical materialism to the Soviet situation.

"Nowhere is it said that I am a pupil of Lenin... In fact I considered myself, and still consider myself, a pupil of Lenin. I said this clearly in the well-known conversation with Ludwig... I am a pupil of Lenin’s, Lenin taught me, not the other way around. He laid out the road, and we are proceeding along this cleared road." - Stalin

Using Marxism, Stalin turned the Soviet Union from a backwater of poor peasants to an industrial superpower capable of steamrolling Western Europe (even able to defeat the British Empire after WWII). This industrialization did not require sacrificing lives, unlike the industrialization of America or Britain. It was done to make the working people richer, rather than the bourgeois owning class.

The USSR invited foreign capital, then copied their production techniques. (China used the same method with Deng Xiaoping's Reform and Opening Up, where foreign companies had to surrender IPs in order to come to China.) However, Western countries soon placed embargoes on the USSR, trying to stop its development.

Internally, the USSR initially used private enterprise to develop, under the New Economic Policy (NEP). But major companies were placed under state control.

Labor discipline was strict, and labor became intensified. But unlike in capitalist countries, the benefits went to the people. Therefore, the workers created the Stakhanovite movement, volunteering to work extra hard for the people's profit. Stalin encouraged this movement, and made sure workers were rewarded for their hard work, by expanding the piece-wage system (paying people for product, not time). Workers also got good bonuses for overtime.

Thanks to communism, working hours were cut in half. Under tsarism, 12 hours a day, 7 days a week was normal. Communism mandated that 7 hours a day, 6 days a week become standard. Stalin consistently fought for raising wages and lowering prices, saying that it was necessary to reach higher-stage communism.

Collectivization

Soviet collectivization has been portrayed as forced and unproductive. In reality, it was mostly voluntary and productive, since it was based on farms collectively using tractors, and therefore being collectively owned. It empowered and enriched peasants, ending the concentration of wealth by the kulak class.

The bourgeois claim collectivization caused famine. In reality, Russia etc never saw a drought-caused famine after collectivization. Before collectivization, droughts caused famine up to 3 times every decade, such as 1902, 1906, 1908, and 1911. Collectivization prevented famines by allowing grain to be stockpiled.

Collectivization was more efficient. Grain output temporarily fell because of terrorist sabotage, but rose afterwards.

Background

While state-owned industry dominated the cities, the free market countryside saw rising inequality. The best farm equipment (means of production) was being accumulated by a few kulaks, rich peasants. More and more middle peasants, who owned their own land, were turned into poor peasants, who owned nothing (maybe a shack) and worked on kulaks' land. Kulaks often controlled corrupt local leaders.

Poor and middle peasants wrote to Stalin asking for help. Collectivization and later dekulakization were fundamentally a bottom-up movement.

Stalin answered them in 1928 by providing free tractors to peasants who formed collective farms. (The function of the Machine Tractor Stations.) This libertarian solution relied on the people's initiative combined with the centrally planned industry.

Stalin believed that collectivization must be voluntary. The tractors were the material basis for collectivization, as they were used collectively, and therefore the ownership also should be collective.

In 1930, 25,000 workers from the cities volunteered to go to the countryside to explain and support collectivization, and check on local bureaucrats.

1932 Famine

Collectivization raised grain output so much that the USSR began exporting grain. But terrorists wrecking the collective farms, combined with drought, caused a famine.

The wrecking was led by the kulaks. Some middle peasants joined in because of forced collectivization by local leaders (against Party policy). Bukharin and Trotsky and their followers supported both the sabotage and the forced collectivization, hoping to blame Stalin and take power.

1928-1930: Dizzy with Success

Despite Stalin's orders, some collectivization was involuntary / excessive. Local Party leaders, out of idealism or corruption, forced peasants to collectivize by denying them water or education.

We know that in a number of areas of Turkestan there have already been attempts to “overtake and outstrip” the advanced areas of the U.S.S.R. by threatening to use armed force, by threatening that peasants who are not yet ready to join the collective farms will be deprived of irrigation water and manufactured goods.

What can there be in common between this Sergeant Prishibeyev “policy” and the Party’s policy of relying on the voluntary principle and of taking local peculiarities into account in collective-farm development? Clearly, there is not and cannot be anything in common between them.

Who benefits by these distortions, this bureaucratic decreeing of the collective-farm movement, these unworthy threats against the peasants? Nobody, except our enemies!

- Joseph Stalin, Dizzy with Success (1930)

Kulaks supported forced collectivization to discredit all collective farms. So did right-wingers like Bukharin, in secret.

1930-1932: Rectification

After Stalin wrote against forced and excessive collectivization in 1930, they were reversed, as local communists could point to Stalin's words as authority.

Some areas lost collectivization numbers in 1931. By 1932, collectivization had accelerated once again.

1932-1933: Sabotage and famine

Kulaks and some lazy farmers were stealing grain from the collective farms to resell it at high prices. On top of armed robbery, they would sabotage collective farms by attacking collective farmers and Party members, destroying tractors, and committing arson.

As the struggle with them intensified, kulaks burned crops and mass slaughtered livestock. This, combined with drought, caused famine. (Even a major anticommunist reporter admitted this.)

Kulaks organized uprisings and went to war with working peasants. Nikolai Bukharin and his Right Opposition in the Communist Party secretly supported them against Stalin.

The resulting crackdown saw the end of the kulak class - dekulakization. Grain robbers were sent to prison for 10 years. Many were deported to Siberian gulags. Terrorists and arsonists were executed.

Corrupt bureaucrats also oppressed collective farms and set up state farms to take from them. Some farmers rioted as a result. When Stalin and his allies removed the corrupt, farmers thanked them.

Incompetent officials who had allowed sabotage or forceful collectivization were removed.

Political departments were set up in 1933 to help farms work better, raising the harvest a lot.

Soviet aid

More and more aid was sent as the famine progressed, and Soviet grain exports stopped.

Myths/criticism

• "Why was grain exported from the countryside?"

To feed the cities. Feeding urban workers was prioritized because they did not produce their own food. Therefore more peasants died than workers.

• "Why was grain confiscated?"

To feed people. The Soviets rationed the grain to minimize starvation. Private owners hoarded it to sell at high prices, starving the poor.

• "Why did they crack down on peasants stealing grain from farms?" (Law of Spikelets)

So the state could ration the grain, instead of chaotic stealing and private hoarding.

• "Why did they execute so many?"

A ten-year prison sentence was given to those who stole. Execution was only for "systematic theft ..., embezzlement by organized groups, embezzlement on a large scale, embezzlement with violent acts, terrorist acts, arson, etc."

Genocide?

See also: Ukraine

It is convenient for anticommunists to portray the USSR as committing an intentional mass murder equivalent to the Holocaust. However, neither the idea of a planned famine nor targeting Ukrainians is accepted by most scholars of the 21st century.

There is plenty of blame to go around. It must be shared by the tens of thousands of activists and officials who carried out the policy and by the peasants who chose to slaughter animals, burn fields, and boycott cultivation in protest.

- John Arch Getty, historian and anarchist

The officials responsible for forced collectivization certainly carry blame. Undeniably, so do the saboteurs. Yet they are not even mentioned in the average American discussion of the famine, and the policy of forced collectivization is blamed on Stalin, despite his vocal opposition to it.

Ukrainians demand special recognition. But every breadbasket region suffered. Kazakhs have taken offense to the "Holodomor", claiming they were hit the hardest. South Russia was hit hard too, but Russians get no victim card (even though Stalin was Georgian).

There is zero evidence Stalin targeted Ukrainians. Ukrainian officials around Stalin, like Kaganovich, Podgorny and Brezhnev, have to be presented as "not real Ukrainians" to justify the theory of the "Holodomor".

Ukrainians share the same language and culture with Russians. With Belarusians, they make up the East Slavs. But Belarusians never claim they were a victim of Russia.

The myth of Ukrainians being targeted was started by Ukrainian Nazi puppets. Nazi propaganda projected onto the Soviets their own plan to starve the Slavs, the Hunger Plan (which was one reason they set up the Ukrainian puppet state, to separate the Ukrainian breadbasket from Russia).

Famines

Famines had been a regular thing before collectivization, happening every drought. Under tsarism, starvation was especially bad, but famines continued in the early USSR.

The US estimated famines in Russia happened once every 10 years. In fact, there were famines in 1901-1902, 1906-1908, 1911-12, 1918-1920 (the Civil War), 1920-1921, 1924, and 1928. All were due to drought or bad weather.

Collectivization ended drought-caused famines by allowing grain to be stockpiled well. After collectivization, drought struck again in 1936, 1939, 1946, 1948, and 1984. Besides 1946, none of these were famines.

1946 was the last famine in the USSR, due to the Nazis destroying Soviet grain stockpiles for 4 years. (The Nazis tried to starve the USSR, and the USA expected the USSR to starve during the war, but it lasted until after.)

1991 was the last famine in Russia (post USSR). It was due to capitalism taking over.

Trotskyism and the Purges

Stalin's most famous opponents were captivated by idealism over what the USSR should be, unlike the pragmatist Stalin, who worked with what it actually was.

"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past." - Marx

They blamed Stalin and his allies for every imperfection in the USSR. As they opposed the leadership, they began to degenerate into opposing communism. They secretly conspired to take out Stalin. They began working with British spies and Nazis, assassinating good communists, and even terrorizing innocent Soviet civilians. This is the degeneration of Trotskyism.

The Left Opposition

Trotsky wanted to invade Europe, Iran and Afghanistan to spread communism. Stalin wanted to build communism in one country.

Stalin recruited many workers to the Party, then held a referendum on Trotskyism. Over 90% of the Party voted against Trotsky.

Trotsky continued to organize his faction against Stalin, taking over printing presses to complain about Stalin. He worked with Zinoviev and Kamenev, forming the Left Opposition.

In 1929, Stalin allied with Bukharin against the Left Opposition. Trotsky was expelled from the USSR. Zinoviev and Kamenev were expelled from the Party.

Ryutin Affair

The opponents of Stalin rallied against collectivization, blaming Stalin for the famine. Some communists, like Grigori Tokaev who would become a British spy, became convinced Stalin had to go. Left oppositionists like Zinoviev wanted to collectivize earlier, but now they allied with Bukharin, who didn't want to collectivize at all. Both could blame Stalin for collectivizing at the "wrong time".

Bukharin's people had been secretly supporting forced collectivization in order to discredit collectivization. They also secretly supported kulak uprisings.

One of them, Martemyan Ryutin, wrote a pamphlet and a 200-page manifesto demanding to remove Stalin by force, reinstate Trotsky, and slow down industrialization and collectivization. Many of the opposition read it and did not report it to the authorities.

When this came to light, Stalin demanded that Ryutin be executed, but he was only sent to jail. Zinoviev and Kamenev were expelled from the Party again.

Secret opposition

The opposition to Stalin decided they had to get together again. They secretly formed the Bloc of Oppositions.

Documented evidence of this Bloc existing in 1932 came to light in 1980. Until then, Western historians claimed Stalin made it all up. After the evidence came out, Trotskyist historian Pierre Broue was forced to admit the Bloc existed, but claims it must have disbanded after 1932, because there is no written evidence of it. But there is no evidence of it disbanding.

Moscow Trials

In 1934, the opposition killed Sergei Kirov, who was Stalin's best friend and a good communist. Stalin didn't hold back any more, and sent the OGPU (secret police) down the tails of the opposition.

The investigation revealed a conspiracy to kill Kirov, that included the security forces of Moscow. This led to the Zinoviev-Kamenev Trial in 1936.

The second Moscow Trial was the Pyatakov-Radek Trial in January 1937.

Even the leader of the OGPU, Genrikh Yagoda, was exposed. He was put on trial in the Bukharin-Radek Trial in 1938. The OGPU was dissolved and replaced by the NKVD.

Those are the three public Moscow Trials. Because they are public, they are called "show trials" in the West.

General Tukhachevsky was exposed for plotting a military coup. He was put on trial before a secret military tribunal in June 1937. This is also called a "show trial" in the West, despite being private.

All these defendants were guilty of murder or complicity in murder. They were also accused of spying. Thus, they were executed.

Evidence

Trotsky went before the Dewey Commission in America to claim that he knew nothing about the Moscow Trials, and they were all a sham. But this was a lie.

J. Arch Getty discovered letter receipts between Trotsky and Soviet opposition leaders. But the contents of the letters were destroyed by the managers of the Trotsky archive at Harvard University.

By this point, the opposition members had clearly learned to avoid written evidence as much as possible. They were Old Bolsheviks, and the Bolsheviks had done the same thing under Tsarism, using only word of mouth. Therefore, the evidence for conspiracy becomes sparse, and Western historians can deny it.

But Grover Furr has unearthed some written evidence that the opposition was plotting terrorist attacks, confirming the allegations made at the Moscow Trials. Grover Furr also proved that they were working with Nazi Germany and Japan.

Torture

There is no evidence that torture was used to extract confessions for the Moscow Trials.

Torture was legalized at some point in 1937, according to the "Torture Telegram" of January 1939. It was probably July 1937, the start of the Yezhovshchina. However, before July 1937, the first two Moscow Trials and the Military Trial had already been finished, and Bukharin had already made his first confession.

Jules Humbert Droz from outside the USSR also wrote that Bukharin ordered him to commit acts of terror. Nonetheless, bourgeois historians claim Bukharin was innocent because he said so in a letter to Stalin. He also admitted his guilt in other letters.

Simon Sebag Montefiore used spurious evidence to claim Tukhachevsky was tortured, but this is a myth.

Yezhovshchina (Great Purge)

There were Trotskyist spy networks operating in the USSR, and backed by Britain, Nazi Germany, and Japan. The Moscow Trials had proven that. Tukhachevsky had threatened the USSR itself with a military coup.

In 1937, Stalin and the Politburo approved the use of torture in exceptional cases. It was not to extract confessions. It was only to reveal criminal associates before they carried out a crime. In other words, torture could only be used on those already proven guilty.

There were cases of Stalin personally approving the use of torture, such as on a man named Walter. In these cases, the victims had already been proven guilty, and were beaten to reveal other criminals. But what they said under torture was not to be used as solid evidence.

In July 1937, Yezhov met with the Politburo to gain approval for military tribunals to speed up executions of spies. This began the period known in Russia as Yezhovshchina, "the rule of Yezhov", or in the West as the "Great Purge". This lasted until the downfall of Yezhov in October 1938.

In those 15 months, Yezhov and his henchmen in the NKVD executed 680,000 people.

Stalin doubted they were all guilty. He initiated investigations into Yezhov and called him out in the Central Committee in January 1938. He sent Beria to watch over Yezhov in October 1938.

During the Yezhovshchina, the Central Committee repeatedly voted to purge itself of arrested members. As a result, most of its original members ended up dead.

Yezhov was fired from the NKVD in November 1938 and arrested in April 1939. He confessed to treason and framing thousands and was executed in 1940. His trial was in private, and many never even knew what happened to him. There is no evidence he was tortured.