What was 'Stalinism' and what was its overall impact on the USSR in the period?

?
View mindmap
  • What was 'Stalinism' and what was its overall impact on the USSR in the period?
    • Stalinism resulted in the Ussr becoming one vast labour camp, where the sole aim of its citizens was to work for the greater good of the state, the 'state' being the leadership of Joseph Stalin.
    • Others believe that Stalin adapted Lenin's policies and was less concerned with ideology and more with the struggle for and retention of power.
    • Stalinism was, therefore, not coherent philosphy, but rather a means of putting policies into practice.
    • Stalinism was Stalin's version of Lenins Marxist philosophy. War Comminusm was an earlier version of state control. Stalinism did not differ much from Lenin.
    • - it included an extensive use of propaganda to establish a personality cult around an absolute dicatato, as well as extensive use of the secret police to maintain social submission and silence political dissent.
    • Whilist this was meant that industrial and agricultural resources could all be used for a single purpose, it also meant that individuality was suppressed and new ideas strangled.
    • 'Socialist Realism' the only acceptable form of art, resulted in mundance, figurative structures and paintings.
    • Music, as Prokofiev and Shostakovich found to their cost, had to be morally uplifting and reflect the coming transcedence of the proletariat.
    • Self expression was stifiled and history was re-written to fit Stalin's version of the recent past. Trotsky became the villian and Stalin himself the hero of the revolution and the Civil War.
    • The Cult of Personality created a plethora of streets, buildings and even cities and towns being renamewd in the honour of the wisest man of the twentieth century.
    • Eventually, the term 'Stalinism' was created by one of Stalin's toadies, Lazar Kaganovich, although his leader never used the term, as far as we know, he always referred to himself as Marxist0Leninist.

Comments

No comments have yet been made

Similar History resources:

See all History resources »See all Stalinist Russia resources »