Was Joseph Stalin Good for the
USSR?
Joseph Stalin, born Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, was born on December 18, 1879, in
Gori, Georgia, a part of Russia. When he was 16, he started reading the writings of Karl Marx
and Vladimir Lenin and joined a group devoted to promoting a revolution against the monarchy
and Tsar Nicholas II. After being arrested and set to Siberia for his beliefs, he changed his name
to “Stalin” meaning “steel” in Russian.
Eventually, Stalin would rise through the ranks of the Bolshevik party and help
overthrow the tsar in February 1917. By October, the Bolsheviks would be in complete control
of the Russian government under Vladimir Lenin. After Lenin’s death in 1924, Stalin took
control and consolidated power by lying about, executing, and deporting political rivals, leaving
him as the victor in his quest for power.
Once in power, Stalin implemented collectivization which combined all of the
agricultural farms into large state-owned farms and forced the peasants to work on them,
essentially turning them back into serfs. Stalin also implemented 3 “Five Year Plans” that set in
motion a period of rapid industrialization, but at the cost of millions of lives.
When Hitler and the Nazis attacked in June 1941, Stalin was the man at the helm and
directed the forces to push back against the German invaders.
You will read 11 documents about Joseph Stalin, his policies, and their effects and
answer the question: Joseph Stalin: Was He Good for the USSR?
Document 1
Source: John Scott, Behind the Urals: An American Worker in Russia’s City of Steel, 1942.
Note: John Scott left the United States in 1931 after being appalled by the depression in the US.
He obtained training as a welder then went to the Soviet Union, specifically to a city called
Magnitogorsk, sometimes called the “Soviet Pittsburgh”. He lived in Russia for 5 years.
“It was not only in the mill that changes were noticeable. The city of Magnitogorsk grew and
developed from the dirty, chaotic, construction camp of the early thirties (1930’s) into a
reasonably healthy and habitable city. A streetcar line was constructed and went into
operation. New stores were built, and supplies of all kinds made their appearance in quantity
and at reasonable prices. Fuel, clothing of all kinds, and other elementary necessities became
available. It was no longer necessary to steal in order to live.
Improved living conditions in Magnitogorsk were a reflection of a similar trend
throughout the Soviet Union. Collectivization was producing results. Many collective farms in
the Urals became quite prosperous. Food cards, restricted stores, and other expressions of
deficit economy disappeared. Similar grocery products and drygoods could be bought in 1935
and 1936 in open stores, often without even the inconvenience of a queue (line).
Life had become ‘better and more joyful’ as Stalin put it. There was more to eat, more to wear
and every indication that the improvement would continue.“
Document 2
Source: Joseph Stalin, “Speech to Industrial Managers”, February 1931
“To slow down would mean falling behind. And those who fall behind are beaten. But we do not
want to be beaten! One feature of the old Russia was the continual beatings she suffered for
falling behind, for her backwardness. Do you want our Socialist fatherland to be beaten? If you
don’t want this, you must help end our backwardness. You must help develop a real Bolshevik
tempo (speed) in building our Socialist economy. There is no other road. We lag behind the
advanced (industrialized) countries by fifty to a hundred years. We must make good this distance
in ten years. Either we do it, or we shall be crushed.”
Document 3
Source: Nikita Khrushchev, “Secret Speech”, February 25, 1956
Note: This is called the “Secret Speech” because it was not published for public view, but
spoken in front of the 20th Congress of Soviet Communist party.
“...Stalin acted not through persuasion, and patient cooperation with people, but by imposing
his concepts and demanding absolute submission to his opinion. Whoever opposed this
concept or tried to prove his viewpoint and correctness of his position was doomed to removal
from the leading collective and to subsequent moral and physical annihilation. This was
especially true during the period following the 17th Party Congress when many prominent Party
leaders and rank and file Party workers, honest and dedicated to the cause of communism, fell
victim to Stalin’s despotism.
We must affirm that the Party fought a serious fight against the Trotskyites* rightists and
bourgeois** nationalists, and that it disarmed ideologically all the enemies of Leninism. This
ideological fight was carried on successfully, and as a result the Party was strengthened and
tempered. Here Stalin played a positive role.
Let us consider for a moment what would have happened if in 1928-1929 the political line of
right deviation had prevailed among us, or orientation toward “cotton-dress
industrialization”*** or toward the kulak****. We would not now have a powerful heavy
industry, we would not have the collective farms, and we would find ourselves disarmed and
weak in a capitalist encirclement.
The question is complicated by the fact that all that we have just discussed was done during
Stalin’s life, under his leadership and with his concurrence; here Stalin was convinced that it
was necessary for the defense of the interests of the working classes against the plotting of
enemies…We can not say that these were the deeds of a giddy despot. He considered that this
should be done in the interests of the Party, of the working masses, in the name of defense of
the revolution’s gains. “
*Trotskyites - a different ideology than what Stalin believed named after Leon Trotsky
** bourgeois – middle class capitalist who only cares about material things
***cotton-dress industrialization – a reference to the Western economic theories of the 1950’s
that recommended textile production as an easy first step towards the modernization of 3rd
world countries.
****kulak- a rich peasant and an enemy of the Bolsheviks
Document 4
Source: Neil de Marco, “Table of Industrial Production”, The World This Century: Working with
Evidence, 1997
Document 5
Source: A. Lavrov, “The People’s Dreams Have Come True!”, 1950
Note: The painting in the background is called Barge Haulers on the Volga and is of exploited
workers bringing in a barge from the river. It is a condemnation of how the tsarist regime treated
the workers. The newspaper says “Pravda” and is the official Communist newspaper. The boy’s
book says “The Railroad” and is a fiction book about a boy and his uncle traveling together.
Document 6
Source: Steven Minor, The Furies Unleashed: The Soviet Peoples at War, 1941-1945 (2016)
Document 7
Source: Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and Terror-Famine,
1986
“…In this period, of about the same length as that of the 1st World War, a struggle on the same
scale took place in the Soviet countryside. Though confined to a single state, the number dying
in Stalin’s war against the peasants was higher than the total deaths for all countries in WWI.
Stalin looms over the whole human tragedy of 1930-33. Above all, what characterizes the
period is the special brand of hypocrisy or evasion which he brought to it…deception was the
crux of every move…
But Stalin seems to have realized that only a mass terror throughout the body of a nation- that
is, the peasantry- could really reduce the country to submission. So, on Stalin’s insistence, a
decree went out which, if enforced, could only lead to starvation of the Ukrainian peasantry.
In a good harvest of 1930 it [what Ukraine provided] was 7.7 million tons of grain (33% of the
harvest) and although Ukraine only accounted for 27% of the total Soviet grain harvest, it had
to supply 38% of the grain deliveries. In 1931 the same 7.7 million tons was demanded of the
Ukraine, out of a harvest of only 19.3 million tons (42%). Only 7 million tons was actually
collected. But this already meant that what amounted, by earlier standards, to a famine was
afflicting Ukraine in the late spring of 1932.
In July the vital decisions were taken which were to lead to the holocaust of the next 8 months.
Stalin had again ordered a delivery target of 7.7 million tons- out of a harvest which the
conditions of collectivization had reduced to 2/3 of that (14.7 million tons).
Skrypnyk told the [Ukrainian Communist Party] frankly that peasants had told him that we had
everything taken from them. And Kossior, Chubar, and other also argued that the grain targets
were excessive.
However, Molotov (big wig from Moscow) called attempts to blame unrealistic plans for failure
‘anti-Bolshevik’ and concluded by saying ‘There will be no concessions or vacillations* in the
problem of fulfilment of the task set by the party and the Soviet government’.
Some slight ameliorations** were from time to time attempted by the Ukrainian authoritiesfor example if only to keep a work force operating. In July the Ukrainian Central Committee
ordered bread and fish to regions already suffering from famine, to be given only to those
actually working in the fields. Some village officials who gave the food to anyone who was
starving was described in an official report as ‘a waste of bread and fish’.
*vacillations -movements
**ameliorations - improvements
Document 8
Source: The Daily Express Monday, August 6, 1934
Document 9
Source: Robert Conquest, The Great Terror, 1968
“In 1932 and 1933 Ukraine, the North Caucasus, and the Lower Volga suffered a terrible famine.
There was enough grain, but it was taken away to the last kilogram. As recent Soviet accounts
put it, ‘this famine was organized by Stalin quite consciously and according to plan’. There
seems little doubt that the main idea was simply crushing the peasantry and the Ukrainians at
any cost…
…In 1937 and 1939, Yezhov (a colleague of Stalin’s) sent in to Stalin 383 lists, containing
thousands of names of figures important enough to require his personal approval for their
execution. As Yezhov was in power for just over 2 years- and, in fact, his effective working
period was rather less- this means that Stalin got such a list rather more often than every odd
day. A Soviet periodical now tells us that at a recent plenum (meeting) of the Central
Committee, the total number shot whose names appeared on lists signed by Stalin, Molotov,
Kaganovich and Malenkov though perhaps over a longer period, was given as 230,000.
At any rate. We can envisage Stalin, on arrival at his office, as often as not finding in his in-tray
a list of a few hundred names for death, looking though and approving them, as part of the
ordinary routine of a Kremlin day. We are told in recent Soviet articles that on 12 December
1937 alone, Stalin and Molotov sanctioned 3, 167 death sentences and then went to the
cinema.
When Yezhov once sent a list of names to Stalin with a note ‘For eventual arrest: to be verified’,
Stalin wrote on it, ‘don’t verify. Arrest.’ ”
Document 10
Source: Melvyn Leffler, For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the
Cold War, 2007
“ Stalin knew he would have to fight a war with Germany, although he tried to delay it as long
as possible. He dramatically accelerated his rearmament efforts and staked out an ambitious
claim for a sphere of influence in southeastern Europe, Iran, and Turkey. His new vision of
security encompassed the Balkans, the Turkish Straits, and the Persian Gulf…Meanwhile, he
sought to appease Hitler, knowing that it was just a matter of time until war erupted…He
worked assiduously (tirelessly ) to avoid provocations that might justify a German attack.
[After the Nazi’s attacked in June 1941] On 3 July, Stalin addressed the nation. Invoking
patriotism rather than communism, he told his listeners, whom he called ‘friends’ and ‘brothers
and sisters’ that the country had been attacked without provocation. The homeland was
endangered. Patriotism demanded sacrifice. The enemy was fierce but could be defeated. It
would not be an ordinary war; it would be a total war. The next day Pravda called it a
‘Fatherland war’.
But Stalin did mobilize his iron will. He was after all, the man of steel. He did not leave
Moscow, and he personally assumed overall command of the war effort. For those weaker
than he, he had no mercy. He ordered that soldiers not retreat; should they do so, they were to
be shot. He ordered that soldiers not surrender; should they do so, they would never be
forgiven. If officers allowed themselves to be captured, their wives would be arrested. When
Stalin’s own son was captured by the Germans, Stalin refused to make a prisoner exchange. His
son’s wife was arrested and sent to a labor camp for 2 years.
From all over Europe and Asia communists fled to Moscow to survive fascism, Nazism, and
militarism. Communism now stood for liberation and reform. Stalin stood at the pinnacle of
this worldwide movement, which heralded him as the stoic, determined, courageous leader
who would not capitulate (give in) to the forces of darkness and evil. The war enshrouded him
with the nobility and prestige that he could never gain in peacetime as the brutal leader of the
dictator of the working class.
Document 11
Source: Valentina Bogdan, “Students in the 1st 5 year Plan” from the book In the Shadow of Revolution:
Life Stories of Russian Women from 1917 to the Second World War, 1973
Note: This is only a short excerpt from her memoirs, which were written for a Russian emigrant
population. As of this writing, she was living in England.
“In 1930 we were assigned to various departments, and, to my great joy, I was enrolled in the
Department of Mechanical Engineering- my first choice. Besides Tania, Lida, and me, there was only 1
other woman there; the other 26 people were men.
After the very first meeting of the year, Tania and Lida came back with the news: ‘They’re introducing a
new way of studying; the brigade method.’
‘What does that mean?’’
‘All of the students will be divided into brigades, with 3-5 people in each. The members of a brigade will
study and take oral exams together. Each brigade will be given a collective grade, so that if one member
fails, everyone has to take a makeup exam.’
‘But that’s terrible! Everyone studies differently. One person may find one subject difficult, and another
may find a different subject difficult, and a third may find everything difficult. So the whole brigade will
be no better than the worst student in it, with all the others having to explain things to him. I’m not
going to join a brigade; I’d rather study by myself.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Lida, ‘this decision has been handed down by the Commissariat of
Enlightenment. You have to obey if you want to stay in college. If I were you, I would not speak out
against the brigade method at the meeting; all you’ll accomplish will be to get the party committee mad
at you. Our party cell supports the decision, too. You can join any brigade you like. ‘
‘What’s supposed to be the advantage?’
‘They say that this will even out the academic level. The better students will have to help the weaker
ones and whip the lazy ones into shape.’
‘So the good students won’t be able to study anything in depth?’
‘I don’t know. They say it is a temporary measure.’