Russian_Revolution_----_(5_Stalin’s_Revolution)

About 150,000 workers and Communists entered higher education, primarily studying engineering.

It was a Soviet affirmative action program aimed at training proletarian replacements for the bourgeois intelligentsia, focusing on recruiting from the lower classes.

Notable figures included Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, and Aleksei Kosygin.

The proportion of officially collectivized peasant households dropped from over half to under a quarter.

The Civil War was their revolutionary touchstone and the source of much of their rhetorical imagery.

Millions of peasants left villages due to collectivization, dekulakization, famine, or were drawn to towns by new job opportunities.

It was part of the Cultural Revolution aimed at eliminating elitism and privilege.

Food rationing, queues, shortages of consumer goods, overcrowding, and deterioration of urban services.

Young radicals saw the Cultural Revolution as a vindication and an unleashing, viewing it as an iconoclastic and belligerent youth movement.

Trade unions lost their ability to advocate for workers' interests in negotiations with management.

The urban population increased by almost twelve million.

The liquidation of the kulaks as a class.

The urban population rose from 29 million in 1929 to almost 40 million in 1933, a 38% increase.

They were instinctively hostile to most existing authorities and institutions, suspecting them of bureaucratic and counter-revolutionary tendencies.

The Cultural Revolution was initiated by Stalin's faction of the party leadership in the spring of 1928, coupled with the announcement of the Shakhty trial and a call for Communist vigilance in the cultural sphere.

Stalin's Revolution extended direct state control over the urban economy and increased the state's ability to exploit peasant agriculture.

By 1932, 62 percent of peasant households had been collectivized, and by 1937, this figure rose to 93 percent.

The press became less lively and informative, focusing on economic achievements while ignoring setbacks and the famine.

It led to a significant number of workers being promoted into industrial management and government positions, with over 140,000 blue-collar workers becoming leading cadres by the end of 1933.

Stalin believed it was imperative to train proletarian replacements quickly and to abolish the old dichotomy of Reds and experts, creating a new intelligentsia from the urban working class.

The migration contributed to the subsequent weakness of collectivized agriculture and demoralization of the peasantry.

The primary objective was to reorganize peasant life and establish administrative controls that would reach down to village level.

Urban wives began working due to insufficient income, while rural wives were often deserted by husbands who moved to towns.

Local officials were supposed to encourage peasants to organize into collectives voluntarily, but this often involved coercion and pressure to produce quick results.

The regime reintroduced internal passports, issuing them automatically to the urban population but not to the rural one, to prevent starving peasants from leaving the countryside.

The population of Moscow increased from just over 2 million in 1926 to 3.7 million in 1933.

The regime arrested expropriated kulaks and organized mass deportations to Siberia, while also backing away from extreme confrontation as spring sowing approached.

Peasants suspected that the kolkhoz was the work of Antichrist due to the anti-religious campaigns carried out by militants.

Stalin stated that the belief in imminent apocalyptic change was mistaken, but this was largely ignored by the activists.

The Rightists were depicted as protectors of the bourgeois intelligentsia, over-reliant on non-party experts, and prone to 'rotten liberalism' and bureaucratic methods.

They expected it to rationalize agricultural production and reduce the number of working hands required.

Living standards and real wages dropped sharply for most workers during the First Five-Year Plan.

It greatly strengthened the state’s police arm.

The celebration of Stalin's fiftieth birthday at the end of 1929.

The peasants used passive resistance and evasion to cope with the demands of the regime.

More than half were put to work in industry and construction but were forbidden to move out of the region to which they had been deported.

Many peasants slaughtered their animals on the spot or rushed to sell them in towns rather than hand them over to the collectivizers.

The main objective was rapid industrialization, which required a rapidly expanding urban labor force.

The activists envisioned new 'socialist cities', communal living projects, and the transformation of nature, embodying the idea of the 'new Soviet man'.

The Gulag supplied convict labor in areas where free labor was in short supply.

The aim was to drag Russia out of backwardness.

The Komsomol disrupted work in government offices and attempted to abolish local education departments, claiming they were bureaucratic.

They launched a campaign against Gorky at a time when party leaders were trying to persuade him to return from exile.

The leadership became increasingly secretive, with minutes of Central Committee meetings no longer routinely circulated.

It implied a withdrawal from the outside world and contributed to cultural isolation.

Organized recruitment of labor should replace spontaneous and unpredictable peasant departures.

381,000 peasant households, which is at least 1.5 million people.

He appeared to deprecate such enthusiasm, mindful of Lenin's example.

Living standards declined for almost all classes, with peasants suffering the most due to collectivization.

The Cultural Revolution appealed to Communist youth, militant Communist organizations, and even some non-Communist intellectuals who opposed the established leadership.

Stalin claimed that kolkhozes had become so attractive that peasants no longer felt the urge to flee rural life.

The management was taken over by an appointed chairman, usually a worker or Communist from the towns.

The quotas were very high, leading to famine in major grain-producing areas like Ukraine and Central Volga in the winter of 1932-33.

Local Communists intimidated kulak families, drove them from their homes, and confiscated their property, often with the support of poorer peasants.

Many children were lost or abandoned, leading to the formation of gangs of homeless youth (besprizornye).

Contact with the West became much more restricted and dangerous, reflecting a growing xenophobia.

The Komsomol Central Committee and its secretariat sought a larger policy-making role and suspected that many institutions had succumbed to bureaucratic degeneration.

RAPP used 'proletarian' as a synonym for 'Communist', aiming to establish their dominance in the literary field as the Communist Party's sole representatives.

In 'Dizzy with Success', Stalin blamed local authorities for exceeding their instructions and ordered the return of most collectivized animals to their original owners.

It left a complex legacy of bitterness, fear, and suspicion, encouraging practices such as denunciation, purging, and 'self-criticism'.

The ban on factions became a practical reality, with potential factions turning into conspiracies.

Collectivizers attempted to take possession of villagers' animals, declaring them the property of the collective, often leading to outrage among the peasants.

Skilled workers were often promoted into management or mobilized to distant construction sites.

The Soviet press portrayed the kolkhoz as a much larger unit with transformed agricultural methods due to mechanization and the introduction of tractors.

To establish Communist and proletarian hegemony and assert party control over cultural life.

The kulaks and private entrepreneurs (Nepmen).

It reinforced their belief that collectivization was a second serfdom.

The relationship between collectivization and the Soviet industrialization drive is compared to the enclosure movement and Britain's industrial revolution.