How did Stalin come to power and stay there? Essay

Stalin came to power in 1929, after out-manoeuvring his opposition in the Communist Party through political scheming and taking advantage of the mistakes they made. He stayed in power by getting rid of his opponents in brutal and unfair ways. It took Stalin 5 years to become completely established as Lenin’s successor. Stalin started his climb to power when Lenin gave him the important job of requisitioning grain from Southern farmers in order to feed the North. As a reward for this, Lenin made him responsible for the Red Army in the South. This brought him in direct conflict with Trotsky. He was then given the position of General Secretary of the party. By taking on many important jobs he was able to create an important power base because he had many supporters who owed their position to him. Before Lenin died, he had to decide who would succeed him; the obvious two choices were Trotsky and Stalin. Although it was very close Lenin had wanted Trotsky to be the one, this was a major draw back for Stalin. No one really knew about this until after Lenin died. Lenin’s funeral was a good time for Stalin to be back at the top. Before the funeral he had told Trotsky, who was ill at the time, that it was on a different date to the time it really was. As Trotsky was out of the picture for a while, it meant Stalin could take the glory for organising the funeral and leading the mourning. When Trotsky arrived for what he thought was the date of the funeral, he was told that he had missed it and this put him out of favour with the people of Russia. When Lenin’s Testament was about to be released to the public, Zinoviev saved Stalin from losing his chance by saying that it was out of date and it was never made public. By this time Stalin was Head of the Control Commission, which meant he could purge and expel members who were unreliable and control party membership. He was also made the party’s Orgburo; this meant he ran its’ organisational matters. By this time, Trotsky was furious and in his anger he gave up his only symbol of power by resigning as Commissar of War. Trotsky seriously underestimated the threat that Stalin was to him until it was too late. He was arrogant and often offended other senior Party members and made little effort to build up support for himself in the ranks of the Party. Many people in the USSR were frightened of him because they were worried that he would involve the USSR in new wars. They were tired of war and revolution and Stalin seemed to understand the people’s feelings. Stalin was now in the spotlight; he joined the Rightists, attacked the leftists and forced them out, this left space that was filled immediately by Stalin’s supporters. He then turned on the Rightists, voted then out and filled these spaces with more of his supporters. By his 50th birthday in December 1929, Stalin was finally made Leader of the Soviet Union and Stalin’s supporters now filled most of the Politburo. Once Stalin was in power he found it easy to stay there, through harsh ways he defeated his opponents. As Stalin’s supporters now filled the Politburo, he now had a good relationship with the members, which meant he could make as many new policies as he wanted without having people oppose them. Stalin made new economic and social policies all of which were carried through. As part of his economic policies, Stalin decided to modernise the USSR as it was far behind any other country, technology wise. Stalin himself said, â€Å"We are 50 to 100 years behind the advanced countries.† To start with brought peasants in from the country to towns to work in newly built factories. He dedicated these factories to building artillery. He came up with 3 ‘Five Year Plans’ each of which were set up to enable the USSR to ‘Catch-Up’ with technology. The 1st FYP was dedicated to building new industrial cities from nothing and setting up steel mills in many places. The 2nd FYP was focused on the 1st but built upon it. Heavy industry was still a priority but other areas, such as mining for lead, tin, zinc and other minerals, transport and communications and railways and canals, were developed. The 3rd FYP was in 1938. Some factories were to switch to the production of consumer goods such as, cars, radios, clothing etc; however, this plan was disrupted by the Second World War and so was not completed. Stalin also made some social polices which helped him keep the USSR under control; most of these were harsh and brutal. For example, he arrested people if they had links to Trotsky, he sent workers to labour camps, and he would put people in show trials for making the slightest mistake. These were important because people lived in fear and this made him very powerful because it squashed any opposition. Other policies, however, made him popular because they improved the way people lived, for example he improved living conditions for people throughout the USSR and he made factories produce consumer goods. This made the public happy. Education and religion were also factors of Stalin’s social policies, children in schools were shown pictures of party leaders which they burned when a new person was arrested and churches were closed and the ‘League of Militant Atheists’ was set up. These were both ways of subduing the public into supporting Stalin, which kept him in power longer. Another factor that helped Stalin stay in power was the fact that he was a cult figure; everybody knew Stalin was the leader, whole buildings were covered in portraits of his face and almost everything was named after him. He had many other names such as ‘Man of Steel’, ‘Iron Soldier’ and Universal Genius’, which proved how much the public liked him. People at meetings applauded whenever his name was mentioned and films, poems, plays, stories and novels celebrated his life. It even seemed Stalin could improve some ones love life. This all was a very important factor, which helped Stalin stay in power because he was so popular. Stalin was able to succeed Lenin because he was a very clever politician and planned his rise to power very carefully. He made sure he was close to Lenin so that he was popular with the people. He used the positions of power that he held very shrewdly by making sure that anyone who opposed him lost their job and putting in their place people who would support him. He was very ruthless and played those who opposed him, such as Trotsky and Bukharin, off against one another. Once in power he ruled by fear by controlling the people so that they would be too afraid to oppose him. He used the secret police to crush any opposition. He remained popular with the people by developing the ‘Cult of the Personality’; history was rewritten so that Lenin and Stalin were the only heroes of the Revolution. He used propaganda to good effect especially in Education. Portraits, photographs and statues of Stalin were everywhere and everything was done to promote Stalin from street names to poems about him or music composed praising him. Religious worship was banned, as he did not want the people to have any loyalty other than to him. Stalin had control of everything, from the economy to the mass media and freedom of speech was denied to Soviet citizens. So it was by these means that Stalin was able to take power and hold on to it after Lenin’s death. Bibliography: My Coursework Book Modern World History Text Book