Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com www.ebook777.com How Lenin and Stalin Brainwashed Russians Historical Facts and Propaganda Posters (Volume 1 - from 1917 to 1939) By Larisa Vetrova www.russianhistory.club Copyright: Larisa Vetrova Publishing (see page on Legal Notice and Copyright)
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com www.ebook777.com Table of Contents Preface: Why this book exists Introduction Chapter 1. the Bolshevik Propaganda Chapter 2. Background of the February & October 1917 Revolutions Chapter 3. The RED Army Chapter 4. Main Principles of Marxism-Leninism Chapter 5. The Executioners: Cheka and NKVD Chapter 6. Lenin's Political, Economical & Social Impact on the Russian Society Chapter 7. Building the NEW Soviet Man and Enhancing Women's Roles Chapter 8. Promoting Literacy Chapter 9. Industrialization and Collectivization from late nineteenth century to 1939 Chapter 10. Persecution of Religions and Intelligentsia Chapter 11. Indoctrinating People at ALL Levels Chapter 12. The Silent Power Struggle in the Central Committee Chapter 13. Stalin and The Great Terror Chapter 14. Lenin' and Stalin's Cult of Personality Chapter 15. A Tragic Family Story Chapter 16. The Non-Aggression Pact between Germany and the USSR Some Preliminary Conclusions Thank You About me & Contact Details Appendix 1 - Resources Accessed + Link to Glossary Acknowledgements Legal Notice and Copyright Disclaimer
Preface: Why this book exists As a Russian citizen, I lived most of my life in Soviet Russia, witnessed the fall of the Berlin wall and the total meltdown of the USSR. In 1990, I watched with despair how Russia struggled to join the advanced industrial nations. In 1994, I experienced also another string of difficult events with the one thousand percent devaluation of the Ruble. In 2002, I left Russia for the first time and settled in beautiful Belgium. I quickly learned French. Mingling with French-speaking Europeans, I was surprised to learn that although most of them knew of World War II acts of war, hardly any of them understood the role of the Soviet Army. They also could not truly comprehend what happened in Russia between 1917 and 1940, or between 1945 to 1990. I certainly cannot blame them as information barely traveled across the iron curtain (all Russian dictators did hide the systematic onslaught perpetrated on several generations of innocent Russians). It is the main reason why I decided to venture into writing a trilogy to give a concise and easy-toread narrations of the Soviet Russia. Follow me. I am certain that you will form a different opinion on the Russian society and on why Russians are so sad not to be fully accepted in Europe. Russia today, unlike former USSR, is a newlyborn country where principles of democracy are restated. And contrary to Western mass media fabricated fears, modern Russia is certainly not a threat for Western Europe. My native country is just too busy reconstructing itself, having long ago abandoned her old Soviet dream of world hegemony.
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Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com www.ebook777.com Introduction The "Once Upon a Time" fallacy that communism could bring Universal Happiness hides in its secret caves, the seeds of the most insidious aggression on human life. Obvious similarities exist when we compare the two most totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century, the Soviets and the fascists. Having lived three long decades in a personality-crushing Soviet environment with its pseudo-humanistic facade, was an everyday challenge. How could the communists fascinate so many intellectuals in our Western world? Visual symbols crafted by skilled Russian artists hold part of the answer. Have a look below at one of the main symbols of the Soviet era. The sculpture, made of stainless steel by Vera Mukhina, "Worker and Collective Farm Girl", was created for the 1937 Paris World Exhibition. The monumental sculpture, incarnates the newly heralded masters of the USSR, that is the working class and the collective farmers. They raised the symbol of Soviet power high - the hammer and sickle. The sculpture, twenty-five meters high, graced the exhibition pavilion of the Soviet Union. The people of Paris used to come and look at the sculpture several times a day. It was delicate and fascinating as it constantly changed its color: at sunrise, it was pink; in the afternoon, bright silver; and at sunset, gold. The same sculpture has been glorified on a poster (see page after Chapter 1 on Bolshevik propaganda). Here lies one of the biggest falsehoods: the Soviets managed to create artifacts having strong visual appeal to move the minds and souls of its admirers. In the very same year of Paris exhibition,1937, millions of innocent Russians had already died of starvation, had been tortured and then shot summarily or had been sent for twenty to twenty-five years in Soviet concentration camps. With this first book covering the period of the Bolshevik Revolution that erupted in St. Petersburg on October 1917 until 1939, you will discover key historical facts, unknown to many. Sixteen insightful chapters will give you clues on how and why such a self-inflicted Holocaust could have ever happened to the Russian population. Discovering chapter after chapter how Bolsheviks massacred the Russian population, I am convinced that the Soviet's colorful, joyful on occasions, propaganda posters and their total disconnect with reality will trigger nightmarish feelings in your soul.
Chapter 1. The Bolshevik Propaganda Within the vast Russian continent, the Bolsheviks faced a very difficult situation when spreading their new political vision. Most means of production and distribution of written materials were collapsing. To disseminate the Marxism-Leninism principles outside of the two main city centers (St. Petersburg and Moscow), Lenin and his followers could only reach out to the masses via newspapers. But even this communication channel was somewhat clamped by a lack of paper and ink that did not allow to reach the masses. Pravda, the official party newspaper had a daily distribution of about 150,000 copies to reach out a population estimated in a 1895 census, at 125 million (to give our readers some point of comparison, the US population in 1900 was 76 million). To make matters worse, illiteracy was very high at eighty-two percent with the bulk of illiterate persons being the workers and peasants targeted by the communists. Radio was also not available (it was officially introduced in November 1924) hence, the Soviets had to rely on posters, a visual mass medium that quickly proved to be effective. Another key aspect was that visual messages could be tightly controlled centrally by the Soviets. The Soviets prepared as well a total of five propaganda trains (respectively named Lenin, Sverdlov, October Revolution, Red East and Red Cossack). All of them were fully painted with political slogans and equipped with a cinematograph, a printing press, a library, and additional wagons to allow the Soviet crew to travel for prolonged propaganda journeys. As the majority of the intelligentsia was concentrated in St. Petersburg and Moscow, the Bolsheviks used posters as a perfect medium to reach the uneducated population of Russia. The poster art depicting a New Social Man, free from stratified social classes was fundamental to impose their ideologies. The poster art was clear to everyone, and short, snappy text, the slogan that came with the image, memorable, with its strong call to action. Propaganda posters were sent to the civil war frontlines. They were stuck on the walls of cities and villages, vilifying the White Guard generals and attacking presumed foreign invaders. At the bottom of the poster, communists usually placed the inscription, "Anyone who tears away or paint over the poster participates in a counter-revolutionary cause". Posters were considered to be a powerful weapon, and as a weapon, they were cherished. Furthermore, Bolsheviks understood extremely well that the communist movement could only take root with large public support. Posters were also ideal to reach a vast audience of illiterate people and could be adapted to changing political needs. Consider Lenin s quote below as a testimony on how he was fond of visually conveying Bolshevik goals. He fully realized that communist ideology and school of thought (by no means easy to comprehend by barely literate peasants) needed strong support from the masses. Below, you will find a typical poster from 1937 glorifying the workers (holding a hammer) and peasants (holding a sickle).
'The art of any propagandist and agitator consists in his ability to find the best means of influencing any given audience, by presenting a definite truth, in such a way as to make it most convincing, most easy to digest, most graphic, and most strongly impressive.' Lenin, The Slogans and Organisation of Social-Democratic Work (1919) 'Print is the Sharpest and Strongest Weapon of our Party' Stalin
1937 Long Live the Union of Workers and Peasants - Foundation of Our Soviet Power
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com www.ebook777.com Chapter 2. Background of the February & October 1917 Revolutions End of the nineteenth century and early-years of the next saw a rapid industrialization of Russia. Large Industrial conglomerates developed around St. Petersburg, Moscow and in the Urals region. An industrial workers' class started to blossom fueled by substantial foreign investments. In short, Russia was on its way to become a formidable player among industrialized nations. Unluckily, the fast-paced industrial transformation did create major issues within the working class. Labor unions were rarely accepted, safety at work was extremely poor, long hours and no social benefits created huge social tensions, leading to riots all around the country. One might conclude that the Imperial Tsarist regime mishandled these much needed crucial changes. Many historians generally consider that the genuine causes of the revolution dates back to the 19th century with unmet needs to modernize social, economical and political structures established by an Autocratic Tsarist model. On January 1905, a large crowd of peasants held a peaceful manifestation in St. Petersburg about their working conditions (often peasants after their harvests used to move to industrial cities to supplement their income in flourishing industries). The Tsar Nicholas II ordered his troops to open fire in the crowd resulting in more than one thousand deaths. As no credible actions were taken to solve these social critical issues, unrest continued to spread across Russia becoming then a perfect breeding ground for communist agitators. The first major upheaval to move from a Tsarist regime to a Soviet-controlled state actually took place in February 1917 when mass movements with the support of the armed forces clashed with the police and the last loyal forces to the Tsar. The confrontation lasted less than a week and led to the abdication of Nicholas II and the end of the Romanov monarchy. Thereafter, a Provisional Government was formed with a house representatives composed of Liberals and Socialists with a mandate to shape political reforms. At the same time, a Communist group formed a parallel political party called Petrograd Soviet (St. Petersburg was renamed Petrograd in 1914). By October 1917, bread riots took place with once again the support of armed forces that had deserted the World War I battlefields (the loyal Tsarist troops were still fighting on the western front). It threw Petrograd into chaos with the dissolution of the Douma (house of Representatives) and arrest of its members. A Red Army was rapidly formed to crush the Enemies namely anybody not accepting the Dictatorship of the Reds. Back from exile in Switzerland, Lenin crystallized rapidly the Communist coup and seized full control of country institutions. A skilled orator, Lenin quickly gained wide popular support with powerful slogans such as All Powers to the Soviets, All Land to Those who Work It or Peace, Bread and Land.
'While the bourgeois state methodically concentrates all its efforts on doping the urban workers, adapting all the literature published at state expense and at the expense of the tsarist and bourgeois parties for this purpose, we can and must utilise our political power to make the urban worker an effective vehicle of communist ideas among the rural proletariat.' Lenin in "Pages from a diary" - 1923 'Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.' Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program (1875) 'We fully regard civil wars, i.e., wars waged by the oppressed class against the oppressing class, slaves against slave-owners, serfs against land-owners, and wage-workers against the bourgeoisie, as legitimate, progressive and necessary.' Lenin, Socialism and War (1915
1917 Fight for Your Freedom
Note on poster below: in 1917, communists had not yet established their dictatorship and were forced to play the democratic game by voting for representatives at the House of Representatives (Douma) 1917 Vote for list no.7 - The Russian Labor Union Defending Women Rights
Note on poster below: Right after the defeat of Russia in a war against Japan in 1905, a first revolution started in St. Petersburg (then capital of Russia) but the coup failed after the Tsarist troops shot the demonstrators marching on the Winter Palace (now the Hermitage Museum). During World War I, around nineteen million Tsarist Russian troops fought the Coalition forces (Germany, Empire Austro- Hungary) on the Eastern front. Among the Russian troops, it is estimated that five million died between 1914 and 1916. The Bolshevik poster shows Tsar Nicholas II marching on dead Russians soldiers killed in World War I. Bourgeois, Orthodox Church and Russian Generals endorsed his decision to enter World War I. 1917
Note on poster below: The civil war has been glorified and romanticized by Soviet art and literature. In reality, it was as most civil wars are, full of horrific and cruel events with several millions victims. Few anti-bolsheviks posters have been preserved due to their systematic destruction by the Soviets. The poster shows the Red army pillaging a Cossack pro-whites farm. 1918 How the Bolsheviks behave raiding anti-red Cossack villages
Chapter 3. The RED Army Right after the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, an army was established and officially took the name of Workers and Peasants Red Army (It was renamed the "Soviet Army" in 1946). These Bolshevik armed forces were essential for the Communists to stop several coalition armies attacking the new Communist regime. During World War I, a huge imperial Russian army (estimated at nineteen million soldiers and officers, representing more than 15 percent of the Russian population) had been fighting Germany on the eastern front with little success. Under equipped as well as poorly trained and supervised, it had lost close to nine million soldiers through desertions, deaths, the wounded or prisoners. In July 1918, upon Lenin s order, the Romanov imperial family was assassinated in Yekaterinburg. Supported by Western allies, so-called "White" officers and troops loyal to the late emperor managed to form three powerful forces (attacking respectively from the south, east and northwest), reinforced on the southern front by the famed and feared Cossacks. In 1919, these three White armies made very significant progress, threatening the stability of the newly born Soviet regime. Leon Trotsky, a determined Bolshevik and a long-time companion of Lenin in exile, was appointed commander-in-chief with the title of people s commissar of military and naval affairs. When he took over the Red Army, it consisted of only 350 regiments (about half a million men) to fight on the three coalition fronts. Trotsky, recognized by Lenin for his organizational skills, immediately took the following actions: Started demanding negotiations to stop mutual aggressions between Russia and the World War I Central forces (Germany, Austria, Bulgaria and Turkey). The Bolsheviks despised such negotiations with imperialistic states like Germany or Austria, but had little choice being confronted with burning internal affairs. After a few weeks, Trotsky managed to sign the Brest- Litovsk treaty in March 1918 with the following terms: forfeiture of all territorial claims on Finland, the Baltic States, Belarus and Ukraine; Return to the Ottoman Empire of territories lost during the Russo-Turkish war (1877-1878); Payment of six billion marks for foreign-owned property seized by the Bolsheviks (equivalent to US$ 1 billion in 1918 $). In 1922 with the Treaty of Rapallo, Germany and the USSR ultimately agreed to cancel all bilateral claims of the Brest-Litovsk treaty; Creation of a military council of former high-level Russian Generals acting as advisers to Trotsky; Raised an army of three million soldiers through forced conscriptions; Mandatory training and obedience; Less well known, is that Trotsky used "anti-retreat squads" preventing the regular troops from retreating. These units had instructions to shoot retreating soldiers or possible deserters (note that similar special troops had historically already been deployed within the conquests of the Roman Empire and in Napoleonic battles); To ensure political compliance with Bolsheviks principles, each battalion had at its helm a political commissar in charge of not only of educating the troops, but also holding the responsibility to counter sign all decisions from high-level officers.
By October 1919, all three White armies (vastly outnumbered by the Red Army troops) had been defeated. One could say that Trotsky saved the Soviet regime from falling into oblivion. Another primary element of the Red army domination is most probably the effective use of well- crafted posters. These did generally impress naive illiterate peasants-soldiers, who trusted the new Bolshevik regime would lead them to a better future. We should not forget that peasants were deeply religious and used to worship God and his saints praying in front of colorful icons. In a sense, through well-crafted posters, Bolsheviks successfully used this Russian cultural attribute to win commitment from the peasant-class soldiers. 'Where force is necessary, there it must be applied boldly, decisively and completely. But one must know the limitations of force; one must know when to blend force with a maneuver, a blow with an agreement' Leon Trotsky(Lev Davidovich Bronstein) 'in the soviet army, it takes more courage to retreat than to advance' Stalin
1918 Allegory to Our Powerful Red Army
Chapter 4. Main Principles of Marxism-Leninism Marx, followed by Lenin defined Socialism as a State wherein all property is owned and managed by the state to benefit all people equally. Proceeds from industrial, agricultural and commercial activities are supposed to be redistributed by the state according to individual s skills and needs. The Socialist regime had over ambitious goals. The Bolsheviks wanted to institute a social welfare state with free education, major improvements in public health, providing for child-care and social benefits. All these measures were considered of prime importance to raise labor productivity in industrial and agricultural activities. Education was extended beyond the school years. All workers had to attend long meetings aimed at developing the conscience of the proletariat to class ideas. The key themes endlessly imposed to the population were: Abolition of personal property; No political power to the bourgeois; Establishment of a new social order where citizens had to comply with the new social norms of communism; Emancipation of women to guarantee their participation into the production processes; Separation from the past with its Tsarist and bourgeois values; Overall ownership of all productive assets managed through central planning, eliminating market and price mechanisms. Observe that these are in complete opposition to Capitalism principles of private ownership of production assets and accumulation of capital; all processes operating in a market economy system; Enforcement of the one-party system; From an international viewpoint, opposition to colonialism, imperialism and fascism. 'A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of communism.' Marx & Engels, Communist Manifesto (1848) 'Under private property... Each tries to establish over the other an alien power, so as thereby to find satisfaction of his own selfish need. The increase in the quantity of objects is therefore accompanied by an extension of the realm of the alien powers to which man is subjected, and every new product represents a new potentiality of mutual swindling and mutual plundering.' Marx in 'Human Requirements and Division of Labour" (1844)
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com www.ebook777.com 'The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private property, he abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian; the proletarian can free himself only by abolishing private property in general Engels, Principles of Communism (1847 "Mankind is divided into rich and poor, into property owners and exploited; to abstract oneself from this fundamental division and from the antagonism between poor and rich means abstracting oneself from fundamental facts" Stalin
1919 Worker! Only by Breaking the Chains of Darkness You Will Enjoy the Benefits of Socialism
Chapter 5. The Executioners: Cheka and NKVD The Tsar Nicholas II Secret Police: Okhrana This is a short section as it is somewhat out of scope of this book. However, I think it is important to say a few words about the special police reporting to the tsar Nicholas II. First, Okhrana was a small police unit mainly preoccupied to protect the Tsar. Other duties were to control agitators groups through infiltrations and control of their activities. As far as the number of executions goes, there are unfortunately no official records as Okhrana archives were ransacked and burned during the 1917 revolution. Compared to the Soviet police, Okhrana was not a blood thirsty organization, relying mostly on sending suspects for a few years in Siberia (see below the horrifying numbers reached by the Soviets). The most notable fact was the execution of five revolutionaries arrested in March 1897 (namely one year after Nicholas II coronation). They were preparing the assassination of the reigning Tsar. Among the people executed was the older brother of Lenin, Alexander Ulyanov (Lenin was seventeen at the time). Extermination of several social groups This overarching goal of the Soviet regime was consistent with its desire to create a New Man that would fit the Soviet vision of standardazing ideas and behaviors of the Russian population. Clearly, creating ONE model of a NEW Soviet man devoting his energy to the grandiose goals of the Soviets, was paramount for the new political regime. As a consequence, all social classes (to the exception of the worker, peasant and Soviet-entrapped intellectual classes) had to disappear to ensure the new Soviet model could be accepted throughout the Russian population. Once the Red army managed in 1920 to win over the White army, a brutal cleansing led by a newly created secret police, the Cheka, started. Several social groups that could threaten the hegemony of the Soviets: bourgeois, intellectuals, kulaks (rich peasants) were rapidly eliminated through savaged killings (in Cheka jails), deportation to Gulags (Soviet concentration camps often located in the most inhospitable parts of Russia, namely in freezing upper North) or for the fortunate one's, banished for ten or fifteen years in far away Siberia. Cheka Right after the Bolshevik coup, Lenin did not lose time. He created on 20 December 1917, the Cheka (in Russian All of Russia - Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counter-Revolution and Sabotage ) in charge of identifying and arresting all potential non-compliant dissidents. The first Cheka unit was organized in St. Petersburg by Felix Dzerzhinsky as Cheka Director (Lenin had the highest respect for him for his past revolutionary activities). Immediately, the new secret police director opened a unit in Moscow and frantically, organized a myriad of local Cheka committees. All these Cheka committees hunted down targeted groups: priests,
bourgeois, kulaks, intellectuals, political dissidents. Massive arrests took place, resulting in systematic torture followed by summary executions without trials. These executions were justified on the ground to protect the Russian Socialist-Communist Revolution. Dzerzhinsky recognized as a skilled organizer by Lenin expanded Cheka activities in: Setting up labor camps and Gulags; Requisitioning of food; Clamping revolts and riots of workers and peasants; Bringing down Red army mutinies. By February 1922, the Chekists numbered 200,000, had started what s called The Red Terror. They slaughtered in a span of four years, 1.7 million people (according to official records recently opened to public eyes). Such number does not account for hundreds of thousands convicts sent to labor camps. NKVD In February 1922, the Cheka, mostly run by psychopathic killers at all levels of its centralized and local units, was dissolved as Lenin declared the War Communism era was over. To replace it, Lenin and the Central Committee transformed the Cheka into a new organization named NKVD (a precursor of KGB), adding new responsibilities to include intelligence service. For the excellent work done at Cheka helm, Dzerzhinsky was appointed head of this new institution. The NKVD saw their powers apparently limited as they could no longer execute people at will. They were supposed to run judicial trials where charges had to be collected for a tribunal to decide (a cosmetic move as the whole justice apparatus was corrupt). Though it sounded a slight improvement from past practices, anonymous denunciations or statements obtained under torture were enough either to be shot or sent for fifteen or twenty years in gulag camps. It is sobering to know that usually, as per Stalin s order, the spouse would get the same sentence with children sent to orphanages. NKVD had the following Soviet-enforced duties: Running of Gulag forced labor camps (in 1935, around 300,000 convicts served sentences in 496 camps); Mass deportations of several ethnic minorities in unpopulated regions of Russia; Similar treatment for clergy and their believers; Staffing of Soviet borders and espionage/counter-espionage; Internationally, in charge of kidnapping and assassinations of dissidents; In the 1930s, organized defamations and killings of Soviet members opposed to Stalin; Participation in the 1938 Spanish Civil War, where large NKVD units in Madrid transposed their Bolshevik practices of torture and executions on Spanish Nationalists and Catholics (fighting for General Franco domination).
Obviously the NKVD did not publicize their ruthless practices through posters. I only have a photo of Misha Shamonin, a 13 years old boy caught in 1937 stealing two loaves of bread and shot the following day by the NKVD firing squad. As this book covers up to year 1939, I will expand on the revolting NKVD roles in the next one. 'A standing army and police are the chief instruments of state power'. Lenin, State and Revolution (1917) "The fact that you are free is not your achievement, but rather a failure on our side" Dzerzhinsky 'Mankind is divided between rich and poor, into property owners and exploited, and to abstract oneself from this fundamental division; and from the antagonism between rich and poor means abstracting oneself from fundamental facts' Stalin
1919 Death to World Capitalism
1920 The League between Western Nations hides itself Under the Mask of Peace
1919 The Red Army Protects All Nations within Great Russia
Chapter 6. Lenin's Political, Economical & Social Impact on the Russian Society Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov - Lenin is born in 1870 in an intellectual family (his father was part of the noble oligarchy instituted by the Tsar Nicholas II for his activity in the schooling system of Nizhni- Novgorod region). His mother from German-Swedish origins used to speak four languages (Russian, German, English and French). Note here that French was largely spoken by most noble families in Imperial Russia. Lenin was the second brother in a family of six children. He was an excellent student, but his youth was shattered twice: once when by the age of sixteen, his father died of a stroke and once more when his older brother Alexander was hanged after being tried for an assassination plot targeting the Tsar. Undoubtedly, the latter event had an immense influence on Lenin s behavior and future decisions. Later on, he joined the Law faculty of Kazan University, where he became quickly radicalized joining a group of students opposed to the Tsarist regime. During these years, he read Marx famous book Capital where Capitalism is rejected as the primary factor ultimately leading to class struggles. Taking part in anti-tsarist manifestations, he was expelled from the Kazan University. He eventually, received his Law degree in St. Petersburg University. His relentless drive to impose his views on proletariat attracted attention from the Imperial police, which sent him for an exile of three years in Eastern Siberia. Political activities prior to 1917 Revolution He then left Russia to settle down in London, Munich or Geneva, where with contributions of Western Marxists like Rosa Luxemburg and Leon Trotsky, he launched a subversive underground newspaper Iskra (Sparkle). His revolutionary, inflammatory writings were smuggled extensively in Russia, gaining influence among Marxist followers. After January 1905, civil unrest became widespread throughout Russia culminating in the Bloody Sunday event where the Tsarist police killed more than 1,000 civilians. These events forced the Tsar Nicholas II to propose fundamental political reforms listed in a public Manifesto. In December 1905, Lenin feeling safer after such official document from the ruling Tsar, returned to the semi autonomous Finland region to pursue his revolutionary activities. Regretfully for him, he was recognized as the main agitator motivating masses to rise against the Tsarist regime. As a result, he had to rapidly flee Finland and returned to safer shores in Switzerland. Participation in 1917 Revolution Beginning of 1917, with the consent of German authorities, Lenin left Geneva, traveled through Germany in a sealed train wagon to Trelleborg (Sweden), then to Helsinki (Finland) and Petrograd (new name given to St. Petersburg). To fund his revolutionary activities, it is now recognized that he traveled
with US$20 million received from foreign bankers (equivalent In today's $ to 408 million). On his arrival, a fairly short transition period took place when Lenin had to compose with existing political forces. Finally, in October 1917, the Bolsheviks deposed the Provisional government of Kerensky, dissolved the House of Representatives (Douma) and established the first Bolshevik Committee controlling now the former Russian Empire. Social and Economical Impact of Early Soviet Regime According to the Communist principles, all private assets became part of state-controlled institutions staffed by Soviet administrators. They virtually dismantled all complex economic mechanisms through forced nationalizations and arrest of previous owners (labeled Capitalists ). Unprepared to master rapidly such a massive overhaul, in 1920, industrial and agricultural production had dropped an astonishing eighty percent when compared with 1913 levels. Looking back to year 1891, Russia went through a famine that killed around half a million people due mainly to a severe winter, outdated agricultural methods and a cholera outbreak. Note that Lenin through his Soviet dogmatic decrees created a much larger famine in 1921. Historians agree that more than five million people died after arbitrary confiscations of wheat by the Red army, forced exportations of Russian grains, numerous anti-bolshevik peasants' insurrections. In fact, throughout the Soviet era, many historians claim that around twenty-five million people died, mostly atrociously in Soviet massacres against their own people (notice that this number does not account for WW II casualties, both in Soviet troops and among civilians). Nowadays, it is considered one of the greatest genocides of any political regime toward its own population (in sheer number, only Mao Tse Tung dictatorship shows higher figures). To put it in perspective, the number of Russian people slaughtered by the regime represented more than twelve percent of the USSR population. Spring 1921, Lenin accepted the fragile state of the Soviet economy in a Pravda article saying: unprecedentedly dislocated country is just barely beginning to recover, is only just realizing the full depth of its ruin, is suffering the most terrible hardships-stoppage of industry, crop failures, famine, epidemics. Fearing major social uprisings, he introduced the New Economic Policy (NEP) aimed at: Reintroducing mechanisms of a liberal economy by allowing activities of small enterprises (fewer than 20 workers); Reviving wage systems based on productivity; Allowing peasants to sell their production on open markets. On above measures, the Soviet Committees criticized Lenin as they felt he deviated from core Communist principles. His Last Days In 1922 and 1923, Lenin suffered from three strokes, forcing him to withdraw from active political work. On 24 January 1924, Vladimir Lenin died after a fourth stroke at the early age of 54. In a few years in charge of the USSR, Vladimir Lenin was the Undisputed Leader that triggered the
Soviet Revolution and shaped for many decades the Soviet institutions. He paved the way for a true Dictatorial Soviet State that was in a most questionable and dubious manner worsened by Josef Stalin (see another chapter in subsequent pages). Overall, the Russian population went through a long, almost endless string of horrendous sufferings. These dreadful "experiments" certainly gave them an extraordinary resilience to face disrupting events, as still perceived nowadays in the Russian population. What s more surprising is the sense of humor so widespread among Russians. 'You cannot make a revolution wearing white gloves' Lenin "Gaiety is the most outstanding feature of the Soviet Union" Stalin
Note on poster below: No propaganda words are written on this poster. Still, it refers to the underground propaganda newspaper Sparkle published by Lenin while in Geneva. Now this sparkle has ignited a revolutionary fire showing the Communist trail to be followed by the population. 1919
1920 You, Did You Get Already Registered as a Volunteer?
Chapter 7. Building the NEW Soviet Man and Enhancing Women's Roles The New Soviet Man The idea of shaping a new psychology in the Russian population to meet the Bolshevik Utopia was one of the central topics cherished by the Communist Ideologues. They were extremely keen to extirpate from any ordinary citizen any behavioral traits that could be related to the bourgeois class. They felt that it was the best way to control ideologically the masses. Class-conscious behavior meant unconditional submission to the Marxism-Leninism principles. Lenin, the Mastermind of the 1917 Revolution knew that despite the abolition of slavery in 1861, throughout Russia many bourgeois had still very large estates with committed liberated-serfs trusting their old masters. Moreover, one of the Nicholas II ministers, Stolypin, promoted a far-reaching agricultural reform in 1905 resulting in a new class of pro active farmers (called "Kulaks") rapidly building large agricultural estates. These farmers had gained full ownership of these domains, enriching themselves. Lenin had therefore no choice but to rely on the nascent groups of industrial workers and landless agricultural workers to spearhead the Bolshevik Revolution. Besides, the Communist regime revoked all property rights belonging to previous Tsarist owners. All assets (land, buildings, factories, machinery, stocks, and so forth) were swiftly transferred to local Soviet Committees, each headed by a Commissar, to be managed for the good of all Russian citizens. To overcome the emotional shock of lost assets, built sometimes over several generations, the Bolsheviks needed to create among the masses an image of a New Man free from any allegiance to Imperial Russia. This New Man, a representation of an Ideal Soviet Man, was proclaimed to promote the image of a Russian citizen for whom there was no social classes and ready to devote all his energy to become heroes of the Workers or Peasants class. Likewise, all five-year plans called for such Superman skilled to meet ever-increasing production quotas and uplift USSR to new industrial levels comparable to the most advanced Western Nations. Was the Bolshevik s program successful? We doubt it as the majority of the population was fully immersed into widespread police coercion, constant social terror evidently not conducive to adopt freely new social norms. Enhance Women's Roles Women's movements were very strong in mid-1920s. Feminism became quickly a political tool in the Soviet ideological propaganda. The Soviets strove to win women's hearts. The ideological leaders considered that women's minds were the most receptive to past unfulfilled promises of bright and cloudless futures.
He was aware that major recent events had bled severely the productive capacity of Russia as millions of men had been killed or maimed during World War I, hundreds of thousands had been murdered by the secret police and many had died in the first 1921 famine. Lenin s way to rebuild some productive capacity within the USSR was to call upon the female workforce neglected before the revolution. Realigning gender equality became one of the cornerstones of the 1917 Soviet Revolution. Rapidly, comprehensive changes took place to ensure women could participate in the social and industrial life and potentially become economically free from men. To accomplish a rapid inclusion of women into the workforce, a Family Code was enacted legalizing many aspects of women everyday's concerns: civil marriage was instituted, illegitimate children were given the same rights as legitimate one's, paid maternity leave was granted, abortion was legalized, divorce was allowed, rights were given in case of illness and minimum wages were set. All these measures led to a sharp increase of women participating in the productive workforce. Let's not forget (see chapter on literacy), that women were mostly relieved from children s education as the state was providing all core education to form the new Soviet society. Through these measures, women were progressively described as strong and entrusted with authority, leading to the opportunity for them to reach equality with men. Surprisingly enough, foreigners traveling in Russia today can often meet many women in business or scientific circles being as assertive as any Russian man: certainly a legacy from those days "In the course of two years, Soviet power in one of the most backward countries of Europe did more to emancipate women and to make their status equal to that of the "strong" sex than all the advanced, enlightened, "democratic" republics of the world did in the course of 130 years." Lenin, Soviet Power and the Status of Women (1919)
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com www.ebook777.com 1920 On the 1st of May, Let's Work for Free as a Worker's Gift to the Soviet Regime
1920 The Last Stronghold of the White army in Crimea Should be Annihilated without Mercy
1920 Deserters are as Destructive for the Soviets as Capitalists
1920 Comrade Lenin Cleans Up Dirt from the Planet
Chapter 8. Promoting Literacy In the early days of the Soviet Revolution (that is in the first two decades of the twentieth century), it is estimated that the literacy rate among the Russian population was only around twenty-five percent in the countryside, with much higher percentages reported for St. Petersburg and Moscow (when most Western nations had in those days a literacy rate of around eighty percent). The Soviets realized that to promote efficiently the radical new communist ideas, posters or meetings where masses were progressively educated in the communist principles, had to be supplemented by concerted efforts to raise the literacy rate. Doing so, they expected to outreach a much greater readership of communist books, published speeches and newspaper propaganda. The Kremlin was particularly keen to build a large audience for the official party newspaper called Pravda (ironically, Pravda means in English The Truth ). To ascertain that literacy rates could improve quickly, the Soviets set up early mandatory schooling where young pupils were indoctrinated by communist teachers trying to separate them from their families. The Communists considered that young brains could be polluted by communist-averse ideas still existing in family circles. During high school, mandatory classes on the communist political system (part of the school program) reviewed to a sickening degree Marxist-Leninism principles. A key idea relentlessly pushed forward was that children were the new generation of the World Revolution and would form the New Soviet Man society. By 1950, the USSR had reached a literacy rate close to one hundred percent, surely a remarkable achievement in only one generation. "Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted Lenin
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com www.ebook777.com 1920 An illiterate person is comparable to a blind person, he will always be surrounded by catastrophic events
1921 I Must Work but My Rifle is Always Ready Next to Me
Chapter 9. Industrialization and Collectivization from late nineteenth century to 1939 Soon after Lenin s death in 1924, the Communist Central Committee launched the first five-year plan seeking to position the new Soviet state into the club of Western developed nations. The Bolsheviks wanted first to prove that the communist ideology could match the achievements of those countries and do so by uplifting the standards of living of workers and peasants. Though an economy needs a multitude of interrelated skills and business flows to achieve efficiency and equilibrium, the Bolsheviks had simplified the workforce into two major classes, the Workers and Peasants (well exemplified by the hammer and sickle on the Soviet flag). How did the Bolsheviks get organized? Not benefiting of capitalistic managerial organizations and regulations, Stalin and the Soviets had to establish a strong central administration in charge of planning every aspect of the communist economy. Strict standards of production with price controls were put in place. He gave the priority to boost as much as feasible heavy industry while collectivization was supposed to feed primarily the industrial workers and incidentally, the general population and the peasant class. You will read below, that if industrialization was a success, collectivization led to deadly consequences for the peasant class. Industrialization Before the 1917 revolution, two Tsars (Alexander II and Alexander III) realized that significant reforms were needed to bring Russia into the main league of industrial countries, like Britain, France and to some extent Belgium. They introduced economic and social reforms (like abolition of serfdom and allowing foreign investments with limited repatriation of profits). These reforms attracted much needed foreign capital, creating a strong base to build industrial plants (namely in St. Petersburg, Moscow and the Urals region). Moreover, these large industrial centers attracted workers from the mainland. Alexander II and his son identified a skilled railroad engineer (Sergei Witte) appointing him to a position of overseeing all railroads activities in the Russian Empire. Gaining the trust of both Tsars, he moved up to become Finance Minister. By 1900, Russia was the world s fourth-largest steel producer and second-largest supplier of petroleum. Unfortunately, the rapid pace of industrialization did not permit Sergei Witte to cater for the housing needs of the new workers who lived in pitiful conditions. As a result, large groups of industrial workers became dissatisfied, a breeding ground ideal for Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky to base their revolutionary activities. Two years after the 1917 revolution, industrial output had fallen to an abysmal fourteen percent of pre-1917 levels.
The Soviet Central Committee became quickly aware of the dangers linked to under production in the steel industry at producing essential goods like farm equipment, machinery, arms and more. As mentioned in the chapter on Lenin, a New Economic Policy (NEP) had been set up, but fell short of Soviet expectations as it did not address heavy industries. After Lenin's death, the NEP was discontinued (with the corollary of executions and deportations for the New Capitalists who had dared to participate in it). Between 1928 and 1932, Stalin fearing invasions from Western nations in a fragile Soviet state, created massive industrial centers requiring thousands of male workers, a group that had been already much afflicted by unbearable losses during World War I, the civil war and organized famines. Note that from 1860 till 1914, Russia made giant leaps to become a modern state, catching up fast on the Western industrial world (large metallurgic plants in St. Petersburg, Moscow and in the Urals, coal extraction in Ukraine, Oil drilling in Bakou, production of cereals in the South-East, and more). Nevertheless, the new wealth was not evenly distributed and led to widespread discontent among the population. The Soviets realized in the early stages of the Revolution that to gain the favors of these workers was paramount to solidify their political position. The Soviets wanted to rapidly spread industrialization throughout Russia to counterbalance the large peasantry masses which had seen their land property rights seized by the Soviet collectivization program. Collectivization It is important here to turn the clock back before 1917 to understand the changes that took place within the peasant population and why the Soviet collectivization measures were so acutely opposed. Abolition of Serfdom and Reforms made by Tsar Alexander II In the second half of the nineteenth century, very significant social and political events took place under an enlightened Tsar, Alexander II. One of his greatest achievements was to abolish serfdom in 1861 and allowed local institutions to flourish to organize peasants lives. In troubled Russia, Alexander II (who had escaped from assassination coups seven times), wanted to rapidly bring exhaustive reforms namely within the peasant group (the largest in Russia representing eighty-two percent of the population with 125 million people). The substantial reform was meant to allow freed-serfs to own land and thereby giving them the conditions to prosper. Unfortunately, Alexander II had to compromise with the old established Oligarchy that had for centuries titles on large estates. Hence the compromise he reached with landowners was unsatisfactory. Land owners forced to relinquish part of their estates to former serfs allocated to them the least productive lands. Furthermore, peasants had to mortgage allocated strips of land for the rest of their lifetime (and even beyond shifting the mortgage burden to their heirs). The unfortunate consequences of his actions were: Continued dissatisfaction among the peasants;
Mass migration (about twenty percent of the peasantry moved East to Siberia) leaving large strips of land uncultivated; died of a last assassination coup when the day after he was ready to announce a Constitutional monarchy with elected parliamentary representatives and as an executive body, a government (is it an unusual coincidence or a coup from well-informed perpetrators?). This all-important political reform could have: positioned Russia on par with modern Western nations; defused the violent revolution that took place in 1917. The next Tsar, Alexander III was far less foresighted and just happy to maintain a status-quo while much needed reforms were ignored. Stolypin Reforms under Tsar Nicholas II The last Tsar Nicholas II had to react to a first revolution in 1905 that threatened the Imperial regime, therefore, he rapidly passed laws to form a house of representatives in charge of shaping long-awaited reforms. Nicholas II institutionalized an Imperial Russia executive body, a government consisting of a group of Ministers. In 1907, Stolypin became Prime Minister and immediately initiated comprehensive reforms in the Agricultural sector. Among the long suite of measures he made available to peasants were: Allowance for large-scale farming on family properties; Agricultural education and new farming methods; Promotion of Cooperatives; Improvements in granting credits; Numerous Incentives with resettlement benefits to colonize territories East of the Urals resulting in a free migration of peasant families estimated at ten million. Unfortunately and though Stolypin s decisions were excellent, it was too late to see them blossomed and stop the growing tide of revolutionary agitators. Lenin' and Stalin's Soviet Collectivization Needless to say, all measures carried out by Stolypin were scrapped in 1920 when the Soviets seized full control of former Imperial Russia. Land property was immediately transferred to the State. As the Soviet philosophy did forbid any possibility for individuals to own property or engage in personal or company businesses, new mechanisms to regulate the economy and achieve a smooth flow of goods and services had to be implemented. Stalin organized It within the First Five-Year Plan. The plan had two main pillars: massive growth of heavy industry and planned collectivization of all farming activities. Stalin s main purposes were to push for record growth in agricultural products both to feed the substantial migration of workers toward new industrial centers and to export agricultural goods to earn foreign currency reserves.
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com www.ebook777.com Undergoing such transformations was bound to create huge tremors among the peasant population. As mentioned above, through various reforms before the Soviet era, peasants had seen their demands progressively met. And suddenly, with a stroke of a pen from the Kremlin, they were faced with a completely new way of farming. All agricultural land was aggregated to form extensive farms organized as Kolkhozes, that is peasants were required to hand over all tracts of land they had painfully bought since the abolition of serfdom. These Kolkhozes were then organized as Cooperatives where participating peasants had access to whatever assets secured by the cooperative. Peasants were naturally requested to work extensively on these state farms. The Soviets made only one exception to sweeten this new agricultural model by permitting every farmer families to farm on a private acre. Furthermore, the Soviets requisitioned the biggest slice of crops, paying ridiculously low prices to participating peasants. The prices paid at farm gates were commonly less than five percent of what was charged by wholesalers at state level. To add to the burden of peasant families, most often, they were not paid in cash, but received instead only 500 grams of grain per working day. The Soviets underestimated also another key cultural factor with the fact that the peasant population was deeply attached to the Orthodox church. The population became aware quickly that the Soviets were persecuting orthodox priests through mass assassinations and church destructions. Rapidly, the Soviets were assimilated as leading an Anti-Christ movement, widely rejected within the illiterate peasant society. Peasants reacted by hoarding crops left over and killed most of their livestock, leading to a rapid collapse of grain production. This event quickly brought total disruption in the Soviet food supply. Famines ensued in traditional farming areas of Southern Russia. Today, historians reckon that between 1929 and 1933, thirty million people died of starvation. To make up for the lost labor in kolkhozes, Soviets organized agricultural labor camps (that is forced labor in concentration camps like). In 1932, Stalin declared that the five-year plan was a great success and ended it ahead of schedule! From an industry standpoint, the USSR had undeniably moved forward significantly. A recent 2011 study states that USSR was in 1928 in the fifth position among industrial nations and had moved even higher up in 1932 to seize the second position behind the USA first, but at what costs for the daily lives of the peasant population! "The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working Men of All Countries, Unite!" Marx & Engels, Communist Manifesto (1848)
1922 Everybody at Work, Each Blow of a Hammer Decreases our Confusion
1924 Knowledge and Work Will Give Us a New Way of Life
Chapter 10. Persecution of Religions and Intelligentsia Persecution of Religions The Orthodox Church has a rich past in Russia dating from the tenth- century when many churches were constructed. In the eleventh-century, monasteries began to flourish. Besides being devoted to spiritual work, these had also an important role in providing more formal education. In the thirteenth-century, the Russian Orthodox church shielded the population from the Tatar great invasion that could have engulfed the Christian faith throughout Russia. In the fourteenth-century, outstanding bishops worked to unite divided principalities, progressively strengthening an emerging Imperial Russia. By the end of the nineteenth-century, they were more than 80,000 churches or chapels, over 1,000 monasteries or convents served by 210,000 priests, monks and nuns. In almost every small town or sizable villages across the Russian continent, the Orthodox church was the primary center of devotion for the population. Observe that the above numbers are highly significant given the population size early twentieth-century (125 million according to the 1895 census). The Orthodox church became institutionalized with the Tsarist Imperial regime and as such was targeted by the Soviets as an enemy. The Soviets equally feared the overwhelming influence on the population belief system. Clearly the Bolsheviks wanted to reign on all ideological fronts. Soon after the October 1917 revolution, the Soviets declared the Orthodox church was no longer part of the State institutions and declared the state free from religious propaganda. For the first time in its history, the Orthodox church that had received many privileges (including large tracts of land) had no political backing. The Soviet Union was the first country in the world to declare liquidation of religions as an ideological goal. Toward that end, the Communist regime confiscated church property, ridiculed religion, harassed believers, and propagated atheism in schools and in party institutions (to join the party, a person had to declare being Atheist ). Furthermore, the Soviets began an aggressive campaign to destroy the Orthodox church through mass arrests and executions of priests and believers, closing of churches and other religious institutions and bans on all religious activity except for church services. Churches, monasteries and convents were either destroyed or converted to storage houses, movie theaters, and even swimming pools. The Soviet government was openly sponsoring and encouraging anti religious propaganda. Mass production of anti-religious literature was undertaken. One of the central events of the campaign was the release of the magazine "Godless at the machine". The first magazine called "Godless" (see a poster below) was published January 4, 1923.
Persecution of Intelligentsia From the onset of the revolution, the Bolsheviks had the drive to brush aside any challenges that could weaken their crusade to impose the Communist ideology. Lenin moved rapidly to annihilate two political groups. First in January 1918, he dissolved the freely elected Constituent Assembly headed by Kerensky. Second in March 1918; he similarly pushed the Left Social Revolutionary party to withdraw from the new political assembly. Members of these two groups were labeled Enemies of People and crushing repression started against them. Cheka, the Bolshevik police was particularly active to silence intellectual criticism from opposition newspapers. The printing of these were suspended temporarily, a decision that became soon permanent. In 1919, Lenin started to arrest scientists and professors and deported them to Siberia. The end goal of the Bolsheviks was to create a clean springboard to institute a new Soviet society based on hard-core principles of Marxism-Leninism. Academics and Artists felt betrayed as at the onset, they had supported the revolution, thinking it would bring a free society in Russia. Lenin was not surprised by the opposition of artists as he believed they were merely belonging to the bourgeois class. Between 1922 and 1927, having been muzzled by repression and relocations, intellectuals and artists went through a relatively peaceful period. Such period did not last long as in 1928, the Central Committee declared that literature would come under its direct control. In 1932, literature and artistic organizations were incorporated in special institutions geared to promote Social Realism. Through editorial boards, the Soviets managed to establish a complete censorship that lasted till the end of the Soviet Union. To illustrate the power of such censorship, literature masterpieces like Master & Marguerite from Bulgakov or Doctor Zhivago from Pasternak, though written during Stalin s days, could only be published years after his death. 'Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of people.' Marx, Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. Introduction (1843) 'The workers state has rejected church ceremony, and informed its citizens that they have the right to be born, to marry, and to die without the mysterious gestures and exhortations of persons clad in cassocks, gowns, and other ecclesiastical vestments. But custom finds it harder to discard ceremony than the state.' Trotsky, The Family and Ceremony (1923)
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Note on poster below: Orthodox churches, unlike Christian ones, do not represent God and his Saints with statues but Iconics paintings (colorful primitive paintings but without perspectives). An iconoclast is defined as a person destroying sacred Orthodox paintings or artifacts.
1924 I am Godless and I am an Iconoclast
1924 Commemoration of Lenin's Death in 1924
1925 You Have to Help Others to Disband Illiteracy - Let's Unite with the Committee "Stop illiteracy"
Chapter 11. Indoctrinating People at ALL Levels Besides being remarkable Marxist-Leninist ideologues, Lenin and Stalin recognized the value of mobilizing people in grandiose meetings meant to glorify ideas and achievements of the USSR. Already beginning of the 1920 s, through their contacts with Red Brigades active in Germany, Bolsheviks saw that repeated mass movements could easily displace unwanted political establishments. Such mass movements were successfully organized by Hitler after 1933 to unite the German population around the Nazis' ideology. Political leader of the Soviet Central Committee, Lenin was also considered the unchallenged Soviet mastermind bringing Marxism-Leninism doctrine to the general public. Thus Lenin drew plans to educate all levels of the Russian population to these ironclad principles. In a way, he was the forerunner of Hitler in organizing mass movements and addressing thousands of captivated supporters. Lenin likewise, did not neglect to detail how the Soviets would administer this huge country (for more than 15 years in exile in Western Europe, Lenin wrote extensively on Social-Democracy and how it could be carried out). From the center of Soviet power, the Central Committee created several layers of Soviet hierarchies with their corresponding administrative units called Committees. For instance, in the Red army, reorganized by Leon Trotsky in 1918, a Political Commissar was nominated for each battalion (typically, a Red army division had 15,000 troops divided into 3 regiments, themselves comprising 3 battalions). The political commissar had full authority over army officers and were accountable solely to the Council of Political Commissars. They had three key roles: To make sure military orders complied with detailed decrees from the Central Committee (all key decisions taken by military officers had to be countersigned by the political commissar); To ascertain that Soviet principles were constantly reinforced through frequent political meetings; To act in a Disciplinary role going up to dismissal of any soldier or officer, appointing new incumbents, holding ad hoc trials whose decisions could lead to immediate executions. No age groups were forgotten in this all-important indoctrination. From young children till the end of university years, mandatory classes on Marxism-Leninism were set up as early as 1918. Likewise, families to please the Soviets had to send their children as early as nine of age to join first the little Octobrists, graduating as Young Pioneers at 14, to finally reach the active Komsomols' group till the age of 28, after which they were supposed to join the Communist Party. Though the membership in the Communist party started slowly with less than six million members, it increased dramatically after 1928 under Stalin s supervision. To boost membership, the Soviets conceived the plan of granting state-sponsored holidays and made it one of the key requirements to enter higher education. Add the fact that ALL factories, Kolkhozes, Research centers, and more, had a political unit headed by a full-time communist party secretary (often with staff attached). Their roles was to make sure ANY worker did not deviate from the party lines. In case it was so, the person was called first to be confronted
by this unit with possible internal sanctions. Then in case of recurrence, the case was brought up to the Cheka (or GPU after 1922), a grievous meeting as it could lead at once to long periods in labor camps or worse end up in a summary execution. Note that families were not left unscathed as Stalin s standing orders was to send the spouse to a similar labor camp with children sent to orphanages. Living under constant fears, knowing the desperate consequences it could lead to, families had to strictly follow the party lines. 'This struggle must be organised, according to "all the rules of the art", by people who are professionally engaged in revolutionary activity. The fact that the masses are spontaneously being drawn into the movement does not make the organisation of this struggle less necessary. On the contrary, it makes it more necessary.' Lenin, The Primitiveness of the Economists and the Organization of the Revolutionaries (1901) 'Modesty and simplicity. Crystalline honesty and principled behavior. Clarity of goals and toughness of character, overcoming all and every obstacle. Personal courage. These are the traits of great Stalin. These are the traits we should inoculate to our Pioneers.' Pravda 'But the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised through an organisation embracing the whole of that class, because in all capitalist countries (and not only over here, in one of the most backward) the proletariat is still so divided, so degraded, and so corrupted in parts (by imperialism in some countries) that an organisation taking in the whole proletariat cannot directly exercise proletarian dictatorship.' Lenin, The Trade Unions, The Present Situation and Trotsky's Mistakes (1920)
1925 Long Live the Proletarian Revolution
Note on poster below: In June 1905, sailors of the main battleship of the Tsar's Black Sea fleet mutinied against their officers and sailed toward Odessa where major uprisings were taking place. Pretty soon, major parts of the city's port were in flames and several thousand revolutionaries were creating havoc in the city using the red flag as their insurrection emblem. Upon Tsar Nicholas II order, his troops reinforced by Cossacks opened fire against the insurrectionists, killing several thousands. Note that the Potemkin sailors did not participate in the city uprising, but was nevertheless paramount in galvanizing the Odessa revolutionaries. The Bolshevik regime wanting to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the Potemkin mutiny, asked the film director to craft a silent movie of the event. Today, it is considered worldwide as one of the best silent movie ever made.
1925 The Potemkin Battleship - an Eisenstein Movie
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com www.ebook777.com 1926 Liberated Women Build Socialism!
? 1926 STOP Prostitution!
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com www.ebook777.com 1927 Commemorating Ten Years of Our Soviet Revolution
Note on poster below: in 1905 (after the Russian fleet had been defeated by Japan), the Battleship Potemkin (named after a Prince who lived at the time of Empress Catherine II) was moored in St. Petersburg. The crew mutinied during the first Revolution of 1905, severely repressed by the Tsarist troops. The poster makes a parallel between this first insurrection and the final October 1917 Revolution. 1927 "The Battleship Potemkin"
Note on poster below: USSR only joined the Olympic Committee in 1951 to participate in its First Olympic games in 1952 in Helsinki. Meanwhile USSR organized a few Spartakiades where Soviet Republics were competing in games similar to the Olympics. The name of Spartakiade was chosen after the Spartacus name, a famous gladiator who united slaves to fight the Roman Empire. 1928 Spartakiades held in August 1928 in Moscow
Chapter 12. The Silent Power Struggle in the Central Committee Starting a few weeks after Lenin s death in January 1924, a malicious power struggle took place within the Kremlin walls. The top Bolshevik leaders did not want their dissensions to leak within the general population. Trotsky after defeating the White armies did not stay idle and kept himself busy chasing the Bourgeois class taking devastating, almost pathological actions: Gulags (Soviets Concentration camps); Mandatory Labor Camps (namely to compensate for a sharp drop in agricultural production); Militarization of Labor; State-controlled labor unions; Summary executions. All above actions were strictly conducted by the secret-police Cheka and in line with Lenin s Grand- Plan. In Lenin s views, Trotsky, nonetheless, had a major weakness being viewed as a loner and not a professional revolutionist able to win large factions to his ideas. The struggle started on the contested nomination of Stalin to the new post of Secretary-General of the Central Committee. Lenin between strokes (he had four, the last one being fatal) appointed Stalin to the top post, but a few months before his death, he wrote his testament indicating that Stalin was rude, obsessed by seizing power and unfit to drive the Bolshevik party. The testament was almost totally occulted by Stalin during one of his frequent visits to Lenin in Gorky. Upon Lenin s death, Stalin formed a Troïka (Triumvirate) made up of himself, Zinoviev and Kamenev. The Troïka had overall responsibilities to shape the future of the Soviet State and appoint or dismiss any officials. After the victory against the White armies, and all associated measures taken by Trotsky (see above), the Bolshevik elite, now in the middle of implementing the New Economic Policy (NEP) wanted to come to a period where the Russian population could absorb more peacefully the drastic changes brought by the Soviets. The Troïka tested its newly-acquired political power by progressively sidelining Trotsky into roles far less central to the future of the USSR. As expected, Trotsky found himself isolated and even more so when in 1923, during the yearly Congress, Trotsky delivered a speech on instilling more democracy within the Central Committee. Such uncalled-for speech did little to bring back Trotsky into the inner circle of Soviet decision-making. Soon after the Congress, Trotsky went to the Caucasian region to take some rest from his illness (he was diagnosed having Tuberculosis). Then, when Lenin died, Stalin sent to Trotsky a telex giving incorrect dates for the scheduled funeral. His absence for the burial of the most prominent men in the USSR did little to enhance Trotsky s credibility within the party apparatus. On the ideological front, Trotsky distanced himself even more from Troïka ideas when claiming that a true Socialist society should be imposed through a worldwide revolution while the Troïka wanted only
to build socialism in Russia. The Troïka further weakened Trotsky s achievements while in charge of Military Affairs. In January 1925, Trotsky resigned from his powerful post when shortly after Zinoviev requested his expulsion from the Communist party. Throughout 1926 and 1927, Trotsky tried to form a counter faction to weaken the Troïka's grip on the communist party. Ultimately, he was expelled from the party in October 1927. Trotsky was then exiled in Kazakhstan in January 1928 and from down there, went to Turkey in February 1929. In 1936, fearing for his life as many White officers had settled down in Turkey, he moved to Mexico, where he was assassinated on Stalin s order on 20 August 1940. 'Comrade Stalin, having become Secretary-General, has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution.' Lenin, Letter to the Congress (1922)
Note on below Sketch: This is not a poster but a sketch drawn by Yuri Annenkov in 1922. In the same year, the sketch appeared in Time magazine. 1922 (Lev Davidovich Bronstein) - Leon Trotsky
1929 Celebration of the 1st of May
Note on poster below: Two types of farms were created by the Soviets soon after the revolution: Kolkhozes and Sovkhozes. Kolkhozes were collective farms resulting from aggregating all private farms (no longer properties of peasants) into a large agricultural domain where means of production were shared between participating peasants. Sovkhozes were state farms where peasants were employed to farm (similar to the status of industrial workers). One should remember that starting in 1861 with the abolition of serfdom and measures progressively introduced till early nineteen-hundreds had given a new sense of freedom and entrepreneurship to a large majority of illiterate peasants still working with outdated tools. The brutal shift imposed by the Soviets did raise major pockets of resistance among farmers leading to riots severely repressed by Cheka, the Soviet secret police. To appease the peasant population, the Soviets allowed each family to farm on a half-acre personal plot and raise a few animals. 1929 height: 333.00px; margin-left: 0.00px; margin-top: 0.00px;" title=""> Everybody Goes to Work at the Kolkhoze
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com www.ebook777.com Note on poster below: Obviously the Soviets put an intense pressure on the daily lives of the Russian male population - millions died in World War I, the civil war, famines, arbitrary arrests followed by assassinations or deportations to labor camps, forced migrations. All these events completely destabilized lives of ordinary citizens. No wonder that many men tried to heal their wounds by drinking vodka. Just to put things in perspective, recent studies showed that consumption of alcohol in Russia is equal to what is observed today in France or Italy. 1929 Let's Break This Bottle of Alcohol! It's Our Cultural Revolution
1930 8th of March - International Day of Working Women - the Day of Socialist Competition
1930 Comrades, Come With Us to Work at the Kolkhoze
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com www.ebook777.com 1930 Let's Achieve Our First Five Year Plan
Chapter 13. Stalin and The Great Terror Stalin's life till 1929 First a few facts about Stalin background before 1917. It should help us understand his personality and which events triggered him to become the undisputed leader in the Soviet Union (He was the longest serving dictator ruling the Politburo of the Central Committee from 1924 till his death in 1953 or for 31 years). Stalin (his nickname means a Man made of Steel ) is born in 1878 in Gori, Tiflis region, Georgia as Josef Vissarionovich Jughashvili. He was the son of a cobbler and a housemaid and had many health issues at a young age. The two most notable ones were a shorter and stiff left arm after a horse carriage accident and at seven, he was plagued with smallpox that permanently scarred the left side of his face. At the age of sixteen, he joined a Russian Orthodox Seminary, but in his first year became an atheist and started to read revolutionary books. At the age of 21, he was expelled from the Monastery as he did not pass the final exams. He immediately went underground and leading a group of like-minded companions started his revolutionary career by robbing banks, extortions, and assassinations (shocking skills that apparently forged his character for the rest of his life). His revolutionary ideas and his illicit achievements attracted the attention of Lenin and he was soon integrated into Lenin inner circle. In October 1917, he was accepted in the Bolshevik Central Committee set up by Lenin. Within the Politburo (the highest decision-making body of the Soviet Regime), Stalin being in charge of National Affairs, Lenin sent him to lead the Red Army with Leon Trotsky. His cruel methods of executing systematically former White officers, deserters, and counter revolutionary civilians did impress Lenin, who appointed him in April 1922 as General Secretary of the Central Committee. Less than a month later, Lenin had his first stroke forcing him to rest permanently in Gorky and reduce his participation in current affairs. Stalin was then acting as his primary contact with the Central Committee. In 1922, Lenin had a second stroke forcing him to rely even more on Stalin. During his retreat, Lenin felt he had to start writing his political testament where he originally nominated Stalin as his heir. But, progressively, the relationship between them deteriorated and Lenin changed his testament discarding Stalin as rude and overly ambitious. After a fourth stroke on 21 January 1924, Lenin died. Stalin knew that Lenin did not favor him to lead the Soviet Union and he managed to change Lenin s testament thereby staying the presumptive heir. What follows in the next 5-6 years could easily be compared to Middle Ages intrigues where every one of the other six Politburo members - Bukharin, Kamenev, Rykov, Tomsky, Trotsky and Zinoviev maneuvered to grab the top post. Stalin using hidden tactics, managed in 1927 to oust Kamenev, Zinoviev and Trotsky from the Communist party. By end of 1929, Stalin had seized full control of the Central Committee to become the undisputed leader of the USSR.
The Great Terror The Great Terror (named also "The Great Purge") was carried through by Stalin between 1936 and 1938 on the pretext to purge the USSR from social groups labeled as counter revolutionaries or enemies of people. Stalin purged the ranks of the communist party, bureaucrats, the Red army, intelligentsia and professionals, as well as peasants (once more). National minorities accused of Fifth Column activities were also included in his insanely devious goals. In the same purge, Stalin crushed as well the Left and Right wings of the Communist party represented by Trotsky and Bukharin. Stalin achieved his abominable deeds assisted by the NKVD secret police, systematic torture, vicious coercions and rigged trials. Upon tribunal decisions, the convicts were either summarily executed by the NKVD or sent to Gulag camps (USSR version of Nazi concentration camps) for 15-20 years detentions. Notice that people arrested could be convicted as early as twelve. To add to this frightening picture, wives of persons arrested asked to be divorced immediately (usually granted on the day requested) to sever any existing link with her husband. In case she would not do so, she would be immediately arrested and convicted to fifteen or twenty years of labor camp; any family children were then being sent to orphanages. One of the alleged reasons to justify these killings was to suppress any attempt of sabotage and espionage and create a great fear syndrome among the population. Naturally, the great terror ensured complete compliance to whatever missions the Soviet party would give to any given citizen. In two years, the Great Terror assassinated between 600,000 to 1.2 million people. 'We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.' Marx, Editorial in Final edition of Neue Rheinische Zeitung (1849) 'One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic' Stalin 'We must execute not only the guilty. Execution of the innocent will impress the masses even more.' Nikolai Krylenko, Chief Prosecutor of USSR (at the end of the Purge process, Stalin ordered the execution of Krylenko)
Note on poster below: It is quite surprising that Stalin only appears on a poster in 1930. After all, Lenin death dates from 1924. The only plausible explanation is that the overall command of the Communist party by Stalin took a few years as Lenin s testament did not nominate Stalin as his successor. 1930 Following Lenin's Legacy, Let's Build Socialism Together
Note on poster below: Already in 1915, before the 1917 revolution, Lenin founded the first communist group promoting the World Communism. The group took the name of Comintern or Communist International. The main mission of Comintern was to overthrow even by armed force all Bourgeois classes in the world to institute a Soviet World Order. Fortunately, non-russian communist factions did not endorse the idea being already traumatized by the killing fields of World War I. In 1919, Lenin held the First congress of the Comintern with delegates from more than 30 countries. Between 1925 and 1935, several congresses were held, but the Comintern movement progressively died and was dissolved in April 1943 as the USSR had to regroup its forces to tackle internal issues. It somewhat revived after World War II. 1930 USSR Comintern - Our Brigade Spearheads Proletariat in the Whole World
1931 Our First Five Year Plan is Absolutely Realistic. It's Us, the Real People Who Breathe Life Into It
1933 Women in Our Kolkhozes Are Our Great Strength
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com www.ebook777.com 1935 Bolshevik's Crops Need to be Harvested by Stakhanovists
1935 Now Every Family member of a Kolkhoze Can Live in Dignity if They Live Honestly, are Not Lazy, Nor Behave like a Tramp or a Thief
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com www.ebook777.com Note on poster below: in August 1935, a coal miner claimed he had mined 102 tons of coal in his workday or fourteen times the daily quota allotted. In September, Stakhanov did even better by mining 227 tons of coal. Thereafter he was heralded as a Work Hero and received the highest medals existing in the USSR. His exploits were largely publicized throughout the USSR and a Stakhanovite Movement was formed. Workers who produced significantly above quotas could become part of the movement, being highly recognized within their communities. 1935 We Are Going to Fight Against Fake Stakhanovists
1935 Hello Stakhanovists - The Respected People of Our Great Soviet Nation
1937 Extermination for Spies and Saboteurs sent by Fascist Trotsky and Bukharin
Chapter 14. Lenin' and Stalin's Cult of Personality Deeply embedded in the Russian ethos, and for centuries, the Russian population always searched for a strong leader to guide the country. Conscious of it, Lenin did start a cult of his own image supported by two ideological and influential communist leaders from the nineteenth century, Marx and Engels. In the USSR days, one could see at almost every corner of offices, many artifacts showing faces of Lenin, Marx and Engels conveying to the Russian population the legitimacy of Communist ideology. After Lenin s death in 1924, Joseph Stalin did not start immediately his cult of personality as he was still struggling to become the undisputed leader of the USSR (see chapter on Stalin). By the end of 1929, Stalin having seized full control of the Central Committee, his cult of personality jump-started with a grandiose celebration for Stalin's 50th birthday. From that moment onward, it became a prominent part of Soviet life. For the next 24 years of Stalin's dictatorship, the Soviet press presented Stalin as an all-powerful, allknowing and all-kind leader. Stalin's name and image became ubiquitous in all corners of the USSR. From 1936, Soviet journalism started calling Josef Stalin, the Father of Nations (nations encompassing here the multitude of nations within USSR). Stalin s image portrayed as a kind father for any Russian, was clearly how the Soviet propagandists drew a parallel with existing traditional religious symbols (namely iconic representations). Likewise, words used by the state-controlled press, were selected to strengthen the emerging cult of personality. Notice that for centuries, the Orthodox Church had used the term "Father" when referring to God. Though persecuting the Orthodox clergy in all corners of Russia, the Bolsheviks adopted the Orthodox traditions of processions and widespread devotion to icons in Stalinist parades. Effigies were meant to position Stalin almost as a godlike personage worth worshiping. The press and the propaganda apparatus worked to shift religious beliefs away from religion toward Stalin almost sanctifying his image. Many communist meetings acclaimed the dictator as "Our Best Collective Farm Worker", "Our Shockworker, Our Best of Best", or "Our Darling, Our Guiding Star". On the communist ideological front, Stalin wanted to associate his name with Lenin, presenting himself as the sole credible figure in charge of maintaining and advancing Lenin s legacy. Stalin claimed in his public speeches that Lenin had identified the various social forces shaping all societies. Hence the Soviet state could easily unite all Soviet-accepted social forces to meet totally the needs of Russian people. 'Thank you, Stalin. Thank you because I am joyful. Thank you because I am well. No matter how old I become, I shall never forget how we received Stalin two days ago. centuries will pass, and the generations still to come will regard us as the happiest of mortals, as the most fortunate of men, because
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com www.ebook777.com we lived in the century of centuries, because we were privileged to see Stalin, our inspired leader. Yes, and we regard ourselves as the happiest of mortals because we are the contemporaries of a man who never had an equal in world history.' Pravda 1937 Quote from the Website HistoryGuide.org of Professor Steven Kreis - American Public University System.
1937 Long Live to our Women of USSR, Free with Equal Rights
Note on poster below: Traditionally in Russia, the Air Force is part of the Army 1938 Greetings from the Bolsheviks to the Trusted Soldiers of our Socialist Country - Long Live to Our Red Army and Military Fleet
Note on poster below: keep in mind this joyful poster in light of the following chapter. 1939 Thank You, Comrade Stalin for Our Happy Children
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com www.ebook777.com Chapter 15. A Tragic Family Story Stalinist terror not only killed and destroyed lives of innumerable innocent prisoners, but deeply affected also their closest relatives, wives and children s. Nowadays, there are many books published in Russian from those who suffered excruciating pains during Stalin's purges, being members of families labeled "enemies of people". The term appeared in 1926 and called for the punishment, not only for the perpetrator (or falsely accused of it), but for his wife and children. On August 15, 1937 there was an NKVD operational order number 00486: "On operations repression of wives and children of traitors". One wonders what happened to children who were in living premises after their parents had been arrested? For a few of them (see my family story below) they benefited from fortunate circumstances. Close relatives like, grandparents, would pick and hide them, but only if they managed to cater for them anticipating an impending arrest. In the NKVD order instructing employees of the state security police about arrests of children, two checklists existed. The first one targeted pre school age children, while the other one was for children under 15. According to the operational order, all children were automatically considered orphans. Children entrapped mostly for an imaginary guilt of their parents were divided into the following categories: Camp children (children born in prison); Children of kulaks (peasant children, who during violent village collectivization managed to escape deportation, but later caught, convicted and sent to prison camps); Children of "enemies of people" (those whose parents had been arrested based on Article 58 from 1936). Children over 12 were commonly convicted as "family member traitor" and sent to labor camps, usually for a duration of 3 to 8 years. From 1947 to 1949, children of "enemies of people" were punished even more severely, being sentenced to 10-25 years of labor camps. A Bolshevik decree issued on 10 December 1940, called for the execution of children from the age of 12 for "... damage to rail or other sabotages." Recollection of many witnesses tells us how these children "Enemies of People" were mistreated in these labor camps. "There was very severe hunger and beatings, lack of suitable clothing and very poor heating. Even worse was the fate of those children in periods of collectivization and expulsions. They went with their parents to so-called special settlement areas. These settlements were in godforsaken places unsuitable for life. Facing conditions of constant hunger, the children of these exile areas were genuinely doomed for extinction. In a survey of living conditions in one such village (these villages numbered well over a thousand in inhospitable Siberia), Bushuyka, the starting population was 3,306 inhabitants. Among them, 1,415
were children under 14 (of which 184 children less than 5). All the fragile children had died within 8 months, giving a death rate of over fourty percent. In the village, the children's home in which they were forced to live, isolated from their parents, were just wooden barracks with double bunks". ----------------------------------------------------------- Here is a small but tragic episode of my family history. Note that such families' stories exist in almost every family of Russia. Facing a near total collapse of industrial and agricultural production, Lenin instituted from 1921 to early 1924, a "New Economic Policy - NEP) allowing "some freedom" to regenerate local economies. NEP conditions were strict (see article in Lenin's political, economical and social impact). My grandmother's brother did rent from the state (owning property was strictly forbidden) a small sunflower oil mill in the Southern East of Russia. Upon Lenin's death, The Central Committee decided to stop the experiment and proceeded to arrest former "Capitalist" owners. My granduncle was swiftly arrested. Fortunately, shortly before his arrest, my grandmother took her two young nephews in her family. What she did definitely saved them from almost imminent death in exile. My grandmother's brother was supposed to be shot, but he was temporarily saved following a letter from the workers of his small factory. When the secret police investigated his case (he was lucky as most often summary executions were performed routinely), the workers had written letters stating he was a good manager looking after them. They mentioned he had created a free nursery, granted free health care for them and their families and that they received an excellent pay. Eventually, he and his wife were sentenced to exile in one of these disastrous special settlements, where they died soon. ---------------------------------------------------------- Stalin declared "traitors" not only individuals but also entire nations. These were deported, and again scores of children died. For the millions of children orphaned, the Soviet government began to "remodel" and "reeducate" them in orphanages and children colonies. In many such institutions, they saw their names changed. And today those grown-up old people are still looking for their parents. Just to shed some light on above unspeakable practices, here are two examples. On August 4, 1938 in a single day, 17,355 children were snatched with a plan for another 5,000 children. In March 21, 1939, Beria (then Director of the NKVD) reported to Molotov (Commissar in charge of Foreign Affairs) that in labor camps for women prisoners, 4,500 toddlers had been counted, soon to be withdrawn from their mothers. People often ask whether Josef Stalin was better than Adolf Hitler. Look attentively at the photo below. It looks strikingly similar to a Nazi concentration camp, but for children. The sign reads in Russian 'emigrant camp, entrance to the camp or talking across the wires is strictly prohibited and could lead to execution.'
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com www.ebook777.com I sadly think further comments or comparisons are purposeless
emigrant camp, entrance to the camp or talking across the wires is strictly prohibited and could lead to execution
Chapter 16. The Non-Aggression Pact between Germany and the USSR The Non-Aggression Pact As of today, historians still debate what were Stalin s motivations to sign such a treaty. In short, the Non-Aggression Pact signed on 23 August 1939 between the USSR and Nazi Germany stipulated that neither countries would attack the other. The pact (also known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) was signed for a duration of ten years with an important part dedicated to strengthening bilateral economic ties that had started already in 1936. Photos taken during the signature ceremony, show a smiling Stalin, probably happy of the outcome. He knew that the USSR was not ready militarily to face the German troops. For the outside world, the pact was based on commercial grounds. The USSR would supply Nazi Germany with critical raw materials (phosphates, timber, grain, cotton, rubber and the much-needed gasoline). In return, the USSR received a German credit line of two hundred million marks. Such pact signed between two countries with totally opposite ideologies (one, extreme right-wing in Germany and the other, defending its extreme left-wing principles) surprised the two most concerned nations, Britain and France. They clearly felt Adolf Hitler was getting ready to start an all-out war and seek revenge for the World War I defeat with its aftermath. On the Soviets side, Stalin was aware that Hitler wanted to extend German territories eastwards under the Lebensraum (Living Space) policy. I should mention here a deciding and surprising historical fact about Africa. Germany had failed end of the nineteenth century to grab sizable mineral-rich colonial territories in Africa, contrary to France, Britain, Portugal and to some extent Belgium. Furthermore, Germany, in its late colonial drive, managed to control only three large but resource-poor African countries, respectively Cameroon, Tanzania and Namibia (countries later confiscated end of World War I). Hitler had therefore no choice but look eastwards for territorial expansion and access regions with resource potential, a fact well-known to Stalin. He knew as well the Nazis had murdered in Germany 22,000 Red Communist Activists through a shady collaboration between the two secret police forces (Gestapo on the German side and NKVD, the dreadful Soviet police). Stalin in his cynical and awful style had sacrificed loyal communist activists to maintain good political relationships with Germany. The Secret Protocol Only after the defeat of Germany in 1945, it was revealed that the pact contained also a Secret Protocol by which Germany and the USSR defined their spheres of influence in Eastern Europe, Finland and Romania. On 1 September 1939, Germany invaded the Western part of Poland, followed on 17 September by the Soviet troops entering Poland from the East side. Poland was crushed by these two super powers and surrendered on 2 October. On 28 September, the three Baltic states, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, signed a treaty with the USSR permitting Soviet troops to station in their countries. When the Soviet troops entered these territories, the
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com www.ebook777.com three countries were transformed into Soviet republics, resulting in thousands of executions of so-called anti soviet agitators and hundreds of thousands sent to gulags. Also in line with the secret protocol, Stalin attacked Finland on 30 November 1939, but unexpectedly tiny Finland resisted heroically to the Soviet troops onslaught. More than 200,000 Soviet soldiers lost their lives on the battlefields and the two countries preferred to sign a peace agreement whereby around ten percent of the Finnish territory was transferred to the USSR. One clause of the agreement allowed about 400,000 Finnish citizens to leave the seized territories and resettled in safe parts of Finland. Soon, Stalin proud of his intrigues skills, will have to face unexpectedly a bold move from Adolf Hitler (but this story is part of the second book in preparation). 'When diplomacy ends, war begins' Adolf Hitler
Signature on 23 August 1939 of the Non-Aggression Pact Between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia
Note on poster below: Stalin used to start his working day late in the evening, working most of the night. Often at two or three in the morning, he used to send a car to fetch one or several of his direct Politburo aides to work till dawn. Notice the lighted red star shining in the upper left-hand corner. It was illuminated every night on the tallest church of the Kremlin compound. 1939 While You Sleep, Stalin in the Kremlin works for You