The Birth of the Soviet Union and the Rise of Stalin

THE INTERWAR PERIOD HIST 1301 | History The Birth of the Soviet Union and the Rise of Stalin Following the Bolshevik takeover of the government and Russia's precipitous exit from World War I, Lenin took steps to establish his authority inside the country. Between 1918 to 1921, a civil war broke out between the White Army, which stood for all the opposition forces, including the Russian upper classes, forces devoted to the monarchy, and the Menshevik party within the Russian Social Democrats, who were Lenin's foes. Members of the White Army differed in their desire for a tsarist administration to replace the anti-Bolshevik communist one. Despite being smaller, the Red Army was more organised and had a clear objective. In support of the White Army, troops from the United States, Britain, France, Japan, and other countries invaded and remained in Russia until 1920, although they were unable to prevent the Bolsheviks from taking power. The Bolsheviks gained power when the civil war concluded in 1921. The war had claimed the lives of nearly 1.5 million troops, but the number of civilian casualties was far higher—roughly eight million. Lenin and the Bolshevik leadership also attempted to seize territories outside of Russia that the now-deposed monarch had ruled during the civil war. Lenin entered these areas with the intention of establishing a federal state of republics headed by an elected committee of labour representatives known as the soviet. In this new "Soviet Union," each republic would stand for a particular ethnic group and have some degree of autonomy, but in the end, they would be ruled by the central authority. Many of these regions vehemently opposed the Bolsheviks' attempt to incorporate them. For instance, the Red Army invaded Ukraine in 1919 and encountered fierce opposition; but, by 1920, the Bolsheviks had gained power. Belarus was likewise rather readily founded as a Soviet country. Despite having limited autonomy, Belarus and Ukraine were dependent on Lenin's administration to set foreign policy. Some regions, such as the Caucasus, demonstrated greater controversy. The Bolsheviks absorbed Armenia and Azerbaijan in 1920. Georgia's administration, which was largely Menshevik, fought Bolshevik dominance, but in 1921 the Red Army also conquered this area. The USSR, or Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was founded in 1922. Russia and the territories it had annexed as soviet republics were combined under a new, centralised national government that was far different from the one the revolutionaries had imagined just a few years earlier. Through the civil war, the Bolsheviks strengthened their hold over the economy. This involved enforcing industrialization regulations and advancing the idea of doing away with private property. The national government set production limits and implemented nationwide rationing of products. The argument for this type of control was that it was required to satisfy military and governmental requirements, but the revolution's slogans about workers' greater authority under communism competed with the emphasis on top-down management. The Russian economy had seen severe disruptions as a result of both World War I and the civil war. Both industrial and agricultural production, especially grain output, had fallen well short of prewar levels. Both costs and joblessness were on the rise. In essence, the economy was insolvent. Lenin developed the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921, abandoning the previous economic strategy known as war communism in order to address these issues. The NEP brought certain elements of capitalism, such as enabling peasants to sell their goods on the market and permitting small firms to function via private rather than state ownership, but it retained the government's primary control over the economy. This was hardly the totalitarian communist state that Lenin had dreamed of. Rather, it was an emergency reaction to severe adversity and mounting dissatisfaction among the Russian populace. Russia's Communist Party bureaucracy had become incredibly complex and enormous at the end of the civil war. There were several tiers of leadership, ranging from the local to the national. Joseph Stalin was one who started taking use of his knowledge and command of this system. Georgia, a state within the Russian Empire, was where Stalin was raised in abject poverty. As an adult, he took on the surname Stalin, which translates to "man of steel," and in the early 1900s, he converted to Bolshevism. Stalin was appointed general secretary of the Communist Party in 1922. Despite the lowly status of the post, Stalin saw an opportunity to consolidate control in the background. Within the party, he was in charge of all appointments and could make sure that only individuals who shared his views were given these posts. Following Lenin's death in 1924, the Soviet Union experienced a power vacuum and a policy conflict. There were two very different directions that the nation might go. Leaders like Leon Trotsky, who was in charge of turning the Red Army into a solid combat force during the American Civil War, favoured one course over another. Trotsky aspired to bring an end to the more capitalistic policies of the NEP while still accelerating industrialization. Trotsky specifically believed that the Soviet Union would act as a model for other revolutionary forces around the globe. Those who favoured maintaining the NEP and taking a more gradual and moderate route to industrialization were on the other side. The forty-year-old Stalin tried to stay out of these particular discussions. Although he and Trotsky disagreed on communist doctrine and the direction of the Soviet Union, Stalin had the upper hand because of his hold over the Communist bureaucracy. Stalin expelled Trotsky from the Communist Party in 1927. Trotsky was driven into exile in 1929. In 1940, a Soviet spy killed him in Mexico. By the end of the 1920s, the collaborative attitude of the first few years of the decade had given way to oneman control, even if the new Soviet government did attempt to carry out some of the promises Bolshevism had made.