The third presentation in the series called Political Ideologies. It is suitable for History and International Relations from Year 9 to university level. It contains the following: Stalin, socialism in one country, the five years plan, economic Stalinism, nomenklatura, NKVD, secret police, Stalin's doctrine.

1. POLITICS
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
WORLD AFFAIRS
POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES
STALINISM

3. JOSEPH STALIN 1879-1953
Russian revolutionary and leader of the Soviet Union, 1924–53. Stalin,
the son of a shoemaker, was expelled from his seminary for
revolutionary activities and joined the Bolsheviks in 1903.
He became general secretary of the Communist Party in 1922, and after
winning the struggle for power following Lenin's death he established a
monolithic command–administrative system, sustained by widespread
terror and a cult of personality.

5. SOCIALISM IN ONE COUNTRY
Soviet communism was no less deeply influenced by the rule of Joseph
Stalin than that of Lenin. Indeed more so, as the Soviet Union was more
profoundly affected by Stalin's ‘second revolution’ in the 1930s than it
had been by the October Revolution.
Stalin's most important ideological shift was to embrace the doctrine of
‘Socialism in One Country’, initially developed by Bukharin.
Announced in 1924, this proclaimed that the Soviet Union could
succeed in ‘building socialism’ without the need for international
revolution. This clearly distinguished him from his rival for power, Leon
Trotsky (and, indeed, from Lenin and Marx), who maintained an
unswerving commitment to internationalism.

7. THE FIVE YEARS PLAN
After consolidating himself in power, however, Stalin oversaw a
dramatic economic and political upheaval, commencing with the
announcement of the first Five Year Plan in 1928.
Under Lenin's New Economic Policy, introduced in 1921, the Soviet
Union had developed a mixed economy in which agriculture and small-
scale industry remained in private hands, while the state controlled
only what Lenin called the ‘commanding heights of the economy’.
Stalin's Five Year Plans, however, brought about rapid industrialization
as well as the swift and total eradication of private enterprise.

9. ECONOMIC STALINISM
From 1929 agriculture was collectivized, and Soviet peasants were
forced at the cost of literally millions of lives to give up their land and
join state or collective farms.
Economic Stalinism therefore took the form of state collectivization or
‘state socialism’.
The capitalist market was entirely removed and replaced by a system of
central planning, dominated by the State Planning Committee,
‘Gosplan’, and administered by a collection of powerful economic
ministries based in Moscow.

11. NOMENKLATURA
Major political changes accompanied this ‘second revolution’. In order
to achieve power, Stalin had exploited his position as general secretary
of the Communist Party by ensuring that his supporters were
appointed to influential posts within the party apparatus.
Party officials were appointed from above by a system known as the
nomenklatura, rather than being elected from below.
Democratic centralism became less democratic and more centralized,
leading to a ‘circular flow of power’ in which the party leader acquired
unrivalled authority by virtue of his control over patronage and
promotion.

13. NKVD - SECRET POLICE
During the 1930s Stalin used this power to brutal effect, removing
anyone suspected of disloyalty or criticism in an increasingly violent
series of purges carried out by the secret police, the NKVD.
The membership of the Communist Party was almost halved, over a
million people lost their lives, including all surviving members of Lenin's
Politburo, and many millions were imprisoned in labour camps, or
gulags.
Political Stalinism was therefore a form of totalitarian dictatorship,
operating through a monolithic ruling party, in which all forms of
debate or criticism were eradicated by terror in what amounted to a
civil war conducted against the party itself.

15. STALIN’S DOCTRINE
Despite his voluminous writings, Stalin was not a significant
theoretician, Stalinism referring more to a distinctive politico-economic
system than to a body of ideas.
His ideological heritage flows from the doctrine of ‘Socialism in One
Country’, which dictated the drive for industrialization and
collectivization, justified by the need to resist capitalist encirclement
and to eliminate the kulaks (rich peasants) as a class.
Stalin thus fused a quasi-Marxist notion of class war with an appeal to
Russian nationalism.