Stalin, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War Era Explained

Stalin's Rise to Power and the Post-Lenin Power Struggle

The Soviet economic system persisted for around 60 years, and even after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the basic elements of the system survived. The leaders exercising the most substantial influence on this system were Vladimir I. Lenin and Stalin, who established the prevailing patterns of collectivization and industrialization that became the defining characteristics of the Soviet Union's centrally planned economy. By 1980, however, the inherent defects of the system had become apparent as the national economy suffered. Shortly thereafter, reform programs began to alter the traditional structure. One of the chief reformers of the late 1980s, Boris Yeltsin, oversaw the substantial dismantling of the central planning system in the early 1990s.

After Lenin's death, two conflicting schools of thought emerged regarding the future of the Soviet Union. Left-wing communists believed that world revolution was essential for the survival of socialism in the economically backward Soviet Union. Trotsky, one of the primary proponents of this position, called for Soviet support of a permanent world revolutionary movement. In terms of domestic policy, the left wing advocated rapid economic development and the creation of a socialist society. The right wing of the party, by contrast, recognized that world revolution was unlikely in the immediate future and supported the gradual development of the Soviet Union through continuation of pragmatic programs such as the New Economic Policy (NEP). Even Bukharin, one of the major right-wing theoreticians, believed that socialism could not triumph in the Soviet Union without assistance from more economically advanced socialist countries.

Against this backdrop of competing visions for the Soviet future, the leading figures of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) — the new name of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) as of December 1925 — competed for influence. The Kamenev–Zinoviev–Stalin troika, though it nominally supported the militant international program, successfully maneuvered against Trotsky and engineered his removal as commissar of war in 1925. In the meantime, Stalin gradually consolidated his power base, and when he had achieved sufficient strength, he broke with Kamenev and Zinoviev. Recognizing Stalin's political power too late, Kamenev and Zinoviev reconciled with Trotsky in order to unite against their former partner. Stalin countered their attacks with his well-timed formulation of the theory of "socialism in one country." This doctrine — calling for the construction of a socialist society in the Soviet Union regardless of the international situation — distanced Stalin from the left and won the support of Bukharin and the party's right wing. With this support, Stalin expelled the leaders of the "Left Opposition" from their positions in 1926 and 1927 and forced Trotsky into exile in 1928. As the NEP era drew to a close, open debate within the party became increasingly restricted as Stalin methodically eliminated his opponents.

Under Stalin, the government socialized agriculture and created a massive bureaucracy to administer policy. Stalin's campaign of forced collectivization, which began in 1929, stripped the peasantry of their land, machinery, livestock, and grain stores. By 1937, the government had organized approximately 99% of the Soviet countryside into state-run collective farms. Under this inefficient system, agricultural production declined rather than increased. The situation persisted into the 1980s, when Soviet farmers averaged roughly 10% of the output of their counterparts in the United States.

Soviet Agricultural Collectivization and Its Failures

During Stalin's regime, the government assigned virtually all farmland to one of two basic agricultural production organizations: state farms and collective farms. The state farm had been envisioned in 1918 as the ideal model for socialist agriculture — a large, modern enterprise directed and financed by the government. Its workforce received wages and social benefits comparable to those enjoyed by industrial workers. The collective farm, by contrast, was a self-financed producer cooperative that farmed parcels of land granted to it rent-free by the state and that paid its members according to their contribution of labor.

In their early stages, the two types of organizations also functioned differently in the distribution of agricultural goods. State farms delivered their entire output to state procurement agencies in accordance with state production quotas. Collective farms also received quotas but were free to sell surplus output in collective-farm markets, where prices were determined by supply and demand. Over time, the distinction between the two types of farms gradually narrowed, and the government converted many collective farms to state farms in order to exercise greater control.

Private plots also played a critical role in the Soviet agricultural system. The government allotted small plots to individual farming households to produce food for personal use and for sale as an income supplement. Throughout the Soviet period, the productivity of private plots far exceeded their size: with only 3% of total sown area in the 1980s, they produced over a quarter of total agricultural output.

A number of factors made the Soviet collectivized system inefficient throughout its history. Because farmers were paid the same wages regardless of productivity, there was no incentive to work harder or more efficiently. Input allocation and output levels were decided by administrators who were often unaware of the needs and capabilities of individual farms, and the high degree of subsidization eliminated any incentive to adopt more efficient production methods.

The Warsaw Pact: Formation, Function, and Dissolution

The Warsaw Pact, formally known as the Warsaw Treaty, was a military alliance of Eastern European Soviet Bloc countries intended to counter the perceived threat from the NATO alliance, which had been established in 1949. The treaty was drafted by Khrushchev in 1955 and signed in Warsaw on May 14, 1955. Its members were the Communist countries of Eastern Europe: the Soviet Union, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia — Yugoslavia being the notable exception. The members of the Warsaw Pact pledged to defend one another if any member were attacked.

The Warsaw Pact was dominated by the Soviet Union, and efforts by member countries to leave the alliance were suppressed by force. During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, for example, Hungary planned to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact and declare itself neutral in the Cold War conflict between East and West. In October 1956, the Red Army entered Hungary and crushed the resistance within two weeks. Warsaw Pact forces were similarly deployed during the 1968 Prague Spring, when they invaded Czechoslovakia to suppress the democratic reforms being implemented by its government. This intervention brought into sharp relief the Soviet policy governing the Warsaw Pact — the Brezhnev Doctrine — which stated: "When forces that are hostile to socialism and try to turn the development of some socialist country towards capitalism, it becomes not only a problem of the country concerned, but a common problem and concern of all socialist countries." Following the invasion of Czechoslovakia, Albania formally withdrew from the pact, although it had effectively ceased supporting the alliance as early as 1962.

NATO and the Warsaw Pact countries never engaged each other in direct armed conflict but fought the Cold War for more than 35 years. In December 1988, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev announced the so-called Sinatra Doctrine, declaring that the Brezhnev Doctrine would be abandoned and that Eastern European countries would be free to determine their own paths. Once it became clear that the Soviet Union would no longer use force to hold the Warsaw Pact together, a series of rapid political changes swept Eastern Europe in 1989. The new governments were far less supportive of the alliance, and in January 1991 Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland announced that they would withdraw all support by July 1 of that year. Bulgaria followed in February, and it became apparent that the pact was effectively dead. The Soviet Union acknowledged this reality, and the Warsaw Pact was officially dissolved at a meeting in Prague on July 1, 1991.

The Battle of Stalingrad

The collectivization of agriculture represented not only an economic policy but also a military and political instrument. It was a tool of Russian domination over conquered nations — a means of stifling private initiative and imposing a totalitarian form of imperial-colonial control. Hundreds of thousands of privately owned farms represented hundreds of thousands of points of resistance to the Russian way of life. A collectivized village meant total control over the farmer. Collective farms in subjugated countries served as Russian control centers, and collectivization was also intended to cut off food assistance to insurgents. A Ukrainian peasant was by nature an individualist who rejected collective economy and stood for private ownership of land. Collectivization was therefore a thoroughly political and ideological measure, not merely an economic one — a method of national oppression that sought to impose a hostile ideology upon a subjugated people.

The French, English, Dutch, and Belgians did not impose their ways of life upon the countries they colonized to the same degree. Russia, by contrast, forcibly imposed its way of life upon subjugated nations as a mechanism of domination. In literature and art, for example, socialist realism functioned as a form of Russian imperialism — an attempt at spiritual Russification that, combined with linguistic Russification, sought to compel subjugated peoples to accept the reality of Russian hegemony as the subject of their creative output.

Russia sent its troops to seize the harvest — the bread — from Ukraine by force. Hundreds of thousands of Russian troops plundered Ukrainian villages, confiscating all grain and killing people. The Ukrainian peasantry resisted joining the kolkhoz and refused to surrender their land. An uneven battle ensued. Ukrainian villages rose against collectivization. Peasants perished in battle with Russian troops but did not submit to the collective farms. The struggle continued for many months before the Russian armies crushed the peasants' uprising. Grain was taken from Ukraine to Russia, and Ukrainian peasants perished by the millions in villages and in the streets of cities.

The Russian leaders Stalin and Molotov temporarily crushed the resistance of the Ukrainian nation at the cost of millions of Ukrainian lives. Several million so-called kulaks — Ukrainian well-to-do farmers — were forcibly deported to Siberia, either to concentration camps or to labor on canal construction projects. In total, the Ukrainian nation lost over ten million victims of Bolshevik terror during this period. The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) subsequently reorganized national resistance and continued the struggle.

Russia has always had cities that played a most significant role in its history, and Stalingrad is undoubtedly one of them. It has become the symbol of suffering and extraordinary fortitude of the Soviet people. The Battle of Stalingrad was one of the defining engagements of the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45 — the Soviet Union's war against Germany and its allies, Hungary, Italy, Romania, and Finland — which itself constituted the most critical theater of World War II. Fought with constantly escalating intensity on both sides, the battle lasted 200 days and nights, from July 17, 1942 to February 2, 1943, and can be divided into two periods: the defensive phase, from July 17 to November 18, 1942, and the offensive phase, from November 19, 1942 to February 2, 1943.

News of the battle's beginning reached the city of Stalingrad on July 22, 1942. By that same evening, all military enlistment offices were overcrowded with volunteers eager to join in the defense of their homeland. From the outset of the war, the USSR's armed forces comprised the Red Army (land forces), air forces, and naval forces. Germany, for its part, fielded the battle-hardened Wehrmacht — which had gained combat experience during the conquest of Eastern Europe — and included comparable land, air, and naval components. From the very first days of the conflict, Stalingrad became one of the largest arsenals in the southwest of the country. The city's plants and factories were devoted to the production and maintenance of tanks, artillery guns, mortars, watercraft, submachine guns, and other armaments. Several militia units were formed within the city, which also became a major medical center. The Stalingrad Defense Committee was established and played an important role in coordinating civil and military operations.

The German command's plans for the summer of 1942 aimed to destroy Soviet armies in the south of the country, seize the oil regions of the Caucasus and the agricultural regions of the Don and Kuban, sever communications between the center of the country and the Caucasus, and thereby create the conditions for a decisive end to the war. During December and January, the German 6th Army fought a desperate struggle against Soviet forces. Hitler ordered that German armies must not surrender and must fight to the last. Most soldiers obeyed and fought heroically to the death. Finally, with food and supplies exhausted, Field Marshal Paulus had no choice but to surrender the remnants of the 6th Army and the 4th Panzer Army.

Casualties on both sides were catastrophic. The Germans lost 147,000 men, and 91,000 were taken prisoner. The Red Army paid an enormous price for victory, with approximately half a million men killed in the battle. The Battle of Stalingrad demonstrated to the world that the mighty German war machine was vulnerable, and it gave the Red Army overwhelming confidence and renewed strength. The battle marked the decisive turning point on the Eastern Front, after which the Red Army began to push the invaders steadily out of the Soviet Union.