Negative impacts of Stalin's rule
1)Holodomor
THE LITERAL TRANSLATION FOR "HOLODOMOR" IN UKRAINIAN IS DEATH BY STARVATION.
Holodomor , the man-made famine (from 1932 to 1933), killed up to 12 million Russians in Soviet Ukraine. Even though this famine could have been prevented, the Soviet Russian officials did not take any necessary action to prevent the life threatening famine which almost wiped out the Soviet Ukraine.
A survivor of Holodomor wrote a petition to the government saying that, "Please return the grain that you have confiscated from me. If you don’t return it I’ll die. I’m 78 years old and I’m incapable of searching for food by myself."
1)Holodomor
THE LITERAL TRANSLATION FOR "HOLODOMOR" IN UKRAINIAN IS DEATH BY STARVATION.
Holodomor , the man-made famine (from 1932 to 1933), killed up to 12 million Russians in Soviet Ukraine. Even though this famine could have been prevented, the Soviet Russian officials did not take any necessary action to prevent the life threatening famine which almost wiped out the Soviet Ukraine.
A survivor of Holodomor wrote a petition to the government saying that, "Please return the grain that you have confiscated from me. If you don’t return it I’ll die. I’m 78 years old and I’m incapable of searching for food by myself."
Another survivor said, "I remember Holodomor very well, but have no wish to recall it. There were so many people dying then. They were lying out in the streets, in the fields, floating in the flux. My uncle lived in Derevka – he died of hunger and my aunt went crazy – she ate her own child. At the time one couldn’t hear the dogs barking – they were all eaten up."
A)Soviet authorities set quotas for Ukraine at exceedingly high levels.
A)Soviet authorities set quotas for Ukraine at exceedingly high levels.
The famine was also caused by the food requisition actions carried out by the Soviet authorities. The unfair demands of the government in 1932 and 1933 for better harvest of food led to the starvation of many Soviet Russians.
B)Imposement of special sanctions and blockade.
Villages which were considered ‘underperforming’ in their harvest were completely exterminated by starvation. Great measures were taken to persecute those withholding or bargaining grain which was done frequently by officials who raided the farm to collect grains. The officials who raided the farms also simply did not care whether or not the peasants retained enough grain to feed themselves or enough seeds left for next harvest.
C)Restriction of migration.
The army prevented starving farmers from travelling into territories where food was more available . Close to 250,000 people were arrested and sentenced for trying to escape from their hunger-stricken regions.
D)Gleaning prohibited
Several new laws were adopted by Josef Stalin to legalize the act of collecting left over crops from the farmers even after they have been commercially harvested . This meant that farmers who took crops fro their own personal use were sentenced to death . This ultimately caused many people in Ukraine to starve to death or risk their lives trying to save food for their family.
E)No aid provided
Researchers claim that Russian authorities did not provide aid for the hunger-stricken regions. Only after July 1933 the officials sent grains to the villages affected . Till then, the villages did not get any aid from the authorities.
F)Continuation to export
Ever since the disastrous harvest which pulled the Soviet Russia out of the picture as a wheat-exporting nation , there was raging controversy of the starvation in Soviet Russia.But, nstead of retaining its crop to feed the starving people, Soviet Russia continued to export grain and other food
In 1934, Stalin turned against members of his own communist party.In 1937, he launched the GREAT PURGE, a campaign of terror directed at all those who tried to threatened his power. Thousands of Bolcheviks who helped Stalin come into power were executed by him.They were sent into labour camps and tortured.
The most infamous case is that of Leon Trotsky, whose family was almost annihilated, before he himself was killed in Mexico by NKVD(Stalin's secret police) agent Ramon mercader, who was part of an assassination task force put together by Special Agent Pavel Sudoplatov, under the personal orders of Joseph Stalin.
2)The Great Purges
In 1934, Stalin turned against members of his own communist party.In 1937, he launched the GREAT PURGE, a campaign of terror directed at all those who tried to threatened his power. Thousands of Bolcheviks who helped Stalin come into power were executed by him.They were sent into labour camps and tortured.
The most infamous case is that of Leon Trotsky, whose family was almost annihilated, before he himself was killed in Mexico by NKVD(Stalin's secret police) agent Ramon mercader, who was part of an assassination task force put together by Special Agent Pavel Sudoplatov, under the personal orders of Joseph Stalin.
Repression against perceived enemies of the Bolsheviks had been a systematic method of instilling fear and facilitating social control, which was being continuously applied by Lenin since the October Revolution.
Eventually almost all of the Bolsheviks who had played prominent roles during the Russian Revolution of 1917, or in Lenin's Soviet government afterwards, were executed. Out of six members of the original policy making body of the Bolsheviks party during the 1917 October Revolution ,who lived until the Great Purge, Stalin himself was the only one who remained in the Soviet Union, alive.
However, the trials and executions of the former Bolshevik leaders, while being the most visible part, were only a minor part of the purges.In the 1920s and 1930s, two thousand writers, intellectuals, and artists were imprisoned and 1,500 died in prisons and concentration camps.But the toll was especially high among writers.
For
example,writer Isaac Bbabel was arrested in May 1939, and according
to his confession paper (which contained a blood stain) he
"confessed" to being a member of Trotskyist organization and being
recruited by French writer Andre Malraux to spy for France.
The 'Kulak operation'
was largest single campaign of repression in the Purges of 1937-38, with
669,929 peasants and commoners arrested with 376,202 executed, more than
half the total of known executions.
By the summer of 1938,
Stalin and his circle realized that the purges had gone too far; Yezhov was
relieved from his post as head of the NKVD and was eventually purged
himself.
3)Mass forcible transfers of people living in the U.S.S.R
The process of dekulakization continued from the early 1930s to 1950s. The kulaks, who were primarily peasants, suffered terribly during these deportations. Many died before being transported, and the survivors met with overcrowding, shortages of food and medicine, and unsanitary conditions, all of which caused thousands of deaths, before arriving at their Gulag(labour camps) or exile destinations.
The other major groups which faced deportation were ethnic, national or religious minorities. During Stalin's rule, Volga Germans, Poles from eastern Poland, Finns from the north, Balts, and large groups of minorities from the Crimean region, were all deported to remote Gulag camps, suffering very large numbers of deaths along the way. This continued throughout Stalin's life.
4)The Secret Police(NKVD)
he first secret police, called the Cheka, was established in December 1917 as a temporary institution to be abolished once Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks had consolidated their power. The original Cheka, headed by Feliks Dzerzhinskii, was empowered only to investigate "counterrevolutionary" crimes. But it soon acquired powers of summary justice and began a campaign of terror against the propertied classes and enemies of Bolshevism. Although many Bolsheviks viewed the Cheka with repugnance and spoke out against its excesses, its continued existence was seen as crucial to the survival of the new regime.
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| U.S.S.R PROPAGENDA POSTER ON NKVD |
Civil War (1918-21) ended and the threat of domestic and foreign opposition had receded, the Cheka was disbanded. Its functions were transferred in 1922 to the State Political Directorate, or GPU, which was initially less powerful than than former. Repression against the population lessened. But under party leader Joseph Stalin, the secret police again acquired vast punitive powers and in 1934 was renamed the People's Comissariat for Internal Affairs, or NKVD.The secret police remained the most powerful and feared Soviet institution throughout the Stalinist period.The NKVD often carried out the purches and organized the Gulag.Their main role was to impose terror and eliminate any threat to Stalin's rule. Through rule of fear and terror Stalin sustained his position and maintained his very harsh way of ruling as nobody could question him.
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