The political system in the USSR in the 1930s, the totalitarian regime

The totalitarian political system in the USSR in the 1930s was formed around a single figure - Joseph Stalin. It was he who consistently, step by step destroyed the competitors and unwanted, establishing in the country a regime of personal unquestioning power.

Prerequisites for repression

In the first years of the existence of the Soviet state, the leading role in the party was occupied by Lenin. He managed to control various groups within the Bolshevik leadership at the expense of his authority. The conditions of the civil war also affected. However, with the onset of peace it became clear that the USSR could no longer exist in a state of war communism accompanied by endless repressions.

Shortly before his death, Lenin became the initiator of a new economic policy. It helped restore the country after several years of military disruption. In 1924, Lenin died, and the Soviet Union again found itself at a crossroads.

The struggle within the party leadership

The tyrannical political system in the USSR in the 1930s was precisely this because the Bolsheviks did not create legitimate instruments for the transfer of power. After Lenin 's death , his supporters began to struggle for supremacy. The most charismatic figure of the party was an experienced revolutionary Lev Trotsky. He was one of the direct organizers of the October Revolution and an important military leader during the Civil War.

However, Trotsky lost the hardware struggle to Joseph Stalin, whom no one initially took seriously. The Secretary-General (then this post was nominal) took turns in cracking down on all his competitors. Trotsky was in exile, but even abroad he was not safe. He will be killed much later - in Mexico in 1940.

In the Soviet Union, Stalin began organizing the first demonstrative political processes, which demonstrated the repression in the USSR in the 1930s. Later, the Bolsheviks of the first draft were convicted and shot. They were peers of Lenin, for many years were in emigration under the tsar and came to Russia in the famous sealed car. They were shot: Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin - all who were in opposition or could claim the first place in the party.

Planned Economy

At the turn of the 20's and 30's, five-year plans were introduced. Plans for the development of the national economy of the USSR were tightly regulated by the state center. Stalin wanted to create a new heavy and military industry in the country. The construction of a hydroelectric power station and other modern infrastructure began.

At the same time, Stalin organized several political processes associated with so-called pests, that is, people who had specially spoiled production. It was a campaign to repress the class of "technical intelligentsia," especially engineers. The process of the Industrial Party, then the Shakhty case, etc., went through.

Dekulakization

The process of industrialization was extremely painful. It was accompanied by pogroms in the village. The political system in the USSR in the 1930s destroyed a small prosperous peasantry, working on its own plots, with which it fed.

Instead, the state created collective farms in the villages. Collective farms began to drive all the peasants. Dissatisfied repressed and sent to the camp. In the village, the frequent denunciation of "kulaks" hiding their harvest from the authorities. In Siberia and Kazakhstan they were exiled by whole families.

GULAG

Under Stalin all camps for prisoners were united in the Gulag. The heyday of this system came in the late 30's. At the same time, a famous 58th political article appeared, according to which hundreds of thousands of people got into the camps. Mass repressions in the USSR in the 1930s were necessary, first, to frighten the population, and secondly, to provide the state with cheap labor.

In fact, prisoners became slaves. The conditions of their work were inhuman. With the help of the zeks, many industrial construction projects were implemented. A special scope in the Soviet press was taken by the coverage of the creation of the White Sea Canal. The result of such forced industrialization was the emergence of a powerful military-industrial complex and the impoverishment of the village. The destruction of agriculture was accompanied by massive famine.

The Great Terror

Stalin's totalitarian regime in the USSR in the 30 years needed regular repression. By this time, the party apparatus had completely replaced state authorities. The political system in the USSR in the 1930s was formed around the decisions of the CPSU (b).

In 1934, one of the party leaders, Sergei Kirov, was killed in Leningrad. Stalin used his death as an excuse for cleaning inside the CPSU (b). Began massacre of ordinary Communists. The political system of the USSR in the 1930s, briefly, led to the fact that the state security organs shot people on orders from above, in which the necessary number of death sentences for high treason was indicated.

Similar processes took place in the army. It shot the leaders who passed the Civil War and had great professional experience. In the years 1937-1938. Repression has also taken on a national character. Poles, Latvians, Greeks, Finns, Chinese and other ethnic minorities went to the Gulag.

Foreign policy

As before, the foreign policy of the USSR in the 1930s set itself the main goal - to organize a world revolution. After the Civil War, this plan failed when the war with Poland was lost. During the first half of his reign, Stalin relied on the Comintern in foreign affairs, a commonwealth of communist parties around the world.

With Hitler's rise to power in Germany, the Soviet Union's foreign policy in the 1930s began to focus on rapprochement with the Reich. Economic cooperation and diplomatic contacts were strengthened. In 1939 the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed. According to this document, the states agreed not to attack each other and divided Eastern Europe into spheres of influence.

Soon the Soviet-Finnish war began. By this time, the Red Army was beheaded by the repression of its leadership. For example, of the first five Soviet marshals, three were shot. The fatal error of this policy again affected another two years later, when the Great Patriotic War began.