23a: Riding The Storm Out

Although he was not Lenin's choice of successor, Iosif Stalin acquired and built up his power over the Soviet Union by playing up to Soviet fears. In his view, the motherland of socialism was surrounded on the outside by ruthless capitalists and threatened from within by class enemies and counterrevolutionaries. He acquired supreme  power by playing Communist Party bosses off against each other and by inventing the cult of the deceasedLenin. Once in power, he tended the New Economic Policy and installed the dictatorial regime he believed would ensure Socialism in One Country. Millions of Soviet people paid for Stalin's decisions with their lives.

In segment 23b: Cult of Personality, Stalin patiently takes control of the Communist Party through planning. Because Stalin was neither a great speaker or great Marxist theoretician, his associates in power did not take him seriously. As general secretary of the Communist Party, he was regarded as a mere paper-shuffler. Flashier Communists like Kamenev and Zinoviev thought they were using Stalin against Trotsky, but the joke was on them. Stalin secured his power by setting up a cult of personality around the deceased Lenin, with himself as the humble high priest and Trotsky as the Judas figure who supposedly betrayed Lenin.

Segment 23c: The Time of Terror explains the two almost totally separate reigns of terror Stalin instituted upon securing his power in 1928 and 1929. The first wave of terror (1929-1932) was tied to the fulfillment of the First Five Year Plan and the collectivization of agriculture. The victims tended to be well-off peasants, or kulaks, and the Communist Party was left largely intact.  The second wave (1934-1939) was aimed more generally at the Communist Party and at society in general. It took place before a backdrop of Germany's scary rise to power and the Anti-Comintern Pact.

Segment 23d: The Great Patriotic War explains the series of bizarre foreign policy moves leading the Soviet Union into what is still called "The Great Patriotic War." Even though Stalin's agreement with Hitler was by the German invasion in June 1941, Stalin's motives are still important. The British and French were utterly clueless as to whether they wanted a Soviet alliance or not; the Japanese were trying to capture parts of Manchuria from the USSR. The Americans were busy avoiding foreign entanglements. From Stalin's vantage point, where else was the USSR to turn?