Communism in the Soviet Union (2024)

Introduction

Soviet Russia occupies a central place in twentieth-century history. It was led by Joseph Stalin from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953. During that time, the Soviet military played a leading role in the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II (1939–1945). Yet millions of people died as a consequence of Stalin’s reign. Consider terms like gulag: a system of cruel labor camps established by Stalin. It has become shorthand for the brutality of communist authoritarianism. Here we will consider the Soviet state in the 1920s and 1930s. Specifically, we will evaluate it in terms of totalitarian and authoritarian rule. These terms are often applied to the Soviet Union and other states of this period.

The rise of Stalin

Following the Russian Revolution in 1917, the Soviet Union took form during a period of deep crisis. Its first Premier¹ was Vladimir Lenin. He and the Bolshevik (communist) leadership faced big challenges. They had to guide Russia out of World War I (1914–1918). They also faced the famine of 1921–1922. Meanwhile, they needed to nationalize an economy that lagged behind its Western rivals. It was a difficult to-do list. To get out of the war—goal number one—Lenin had adopted “hardline War Communism.” This emergency policy gave the government direct control of the economy. Its strict measures went over badly with peasants and many others. So when he got to goals two and three, Lenin was forced to reconsider his approach.

The result was Lenin’s New Economic Policy (NEP) of 1921. It combined state control of the economy with elements of free-market capitalism. The NEP loosened the central government’s grip on private business and agriculture. For a time, the economy became more flexible and profitable. This “state capitalism” had some positive effects. It freed up workers from direct government interference in their enterprises. The policy also injected some life into the Russian economy. Lenin’s willingness to adapt proved successful, at least in the short term.

This shift showed that the Bolsheviks were flexible in the Soviet Union’s early years. They had a lot of political and ideological enthusiasm. But, they could be realistic and experimental. However, the rise of Joseph Stalin and Stalinism changed that.

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Stalin took power after Lenin’s death in 1924. He immediately returned the state to an authoritarian stance. He wanted complete command of the Soviet economy and society. He demonstrated his hardline approach during a food crisis in 1927–1929. Stalin argued that grain was a vital national resource. He then used state power to seize it from individual farmers. Stalin also waged class warfare against wealthy peasants, or kulaks. Whether they resisted or not, they faced a grim fate. Many were killed. Forced collectivization² in Ukraine took place during a famine there in 1932–1933. It resulted in the deaths of about four million Ukrainians. Historians refer to this as the Holodomor, regarded as one of the great moral disasters of the time. But Stalin and party elites still pursued a command economy. They stopped at nothing to achieve a “revolution from above” in which a centralized state used its power to control all of society. And that state was controlled by the Communist Party and Stalin.

The expansion of state power under Stalin wasn’t just about agriculture and industry. The whole economy was organized through a system of Five-Year Plans. As the 1930s wore on, Soviet leadership pushed for extreme forms of centralization. Stalin tried to ensure people’s loyalty through “purges.” He used this program of political suppression to eliminate anyone suspected of disloyalty. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens were sent to the gulags. Hundreds of thousands died.

This system didn’t work entirely as planned. Outwardly, it concentrated power in an authoritarian and totalitarian way. But historian Ronald Grigor Suny has argued that the reality was not so straightforward. In this period, he writes, the state was like a “disorganized, inefficient, and unresponsive” sea monster. In other words, it was powerful but very clumsy. With this in mind, we can think of Stalin’s Soviet Union in the 1930s as striving to become totalitarian. However, it failed to “totally” get there.

Social history affects how we understand the nature of Stalin’s rule. The state may have been as poorly run as Suny claims. Still, it had a big impact on how people there actually lived. State involvement at so many levels of everyday life did link people’s daily lives to politics and government policies. To get food and work, folks had to learn how to deal with the state authority, no matter how badly run. They had no choice. To do this, they developed a range of skills.

The main point here is that the state and the people adapted to each other. The state forced people to adopt certain behaviors to survive. People responded with innovations that the state did not anticipate. The state made its own adjustments to the workarounds of its people. The Soviet state in the 1930s may have strived to be totalitarian. However, we must consider the role of regular citizens in the shaping of the Soviet system. The Soviet people’s ability to adapt does not diminish the destructiveness of Stalinist rule. But it does make us reflect on the limits of totalitarianism.

Communism and Fascism

People often compare communism under Stalin with the fascism of Nazi Germany. Although the two systems opposed each other, they had similarities.

• Both exhibited an authoritarian impulse. Both sought to bring their people into line with the aims of the state.
• Both sought to install a totalitarian system. In other words, the central government wanted complete control of society.
• Both used violence to achieve political ends.
• Both rejected liberalism: individual freedom, free elections, and equality before the law.
• The fascist “new man” even resembled the “new Soviet man.” Each was a symbol of their movement’s values.

At the same time, fascism and Soviet communism differed in significant ways:

• The Soviets embraced left-wing socialist internationalism; fascists embraced right-wing ethnic nationalism.
• In theory, the Soviets rejected racism and ethnic nationalism. These doctrines were central to fascism.
• Soviet communism had official policies meant to erase class and gender inequalities. In contrast, fascists wanted to emphasize such social distinctions. For example, women’s roles were limited to marriage and motherhood. Fascists also celebrated a violent cult of masculinity.

In general, the Soviets continued to express the idea that humans could work together to create a better society. Their background and race did not matter. Fascists rejected any such idea.

1 A premier is a head of a government, like a prime minister.

2 Collectivization is the idea that, within a state, nothing can be privately owned because everything is meant to be shared with all members of the state.