Professor Brophy
History 102

Soviet Communism, 1917-45

Introduction
-the significance of Soviet  Communism for twentieth-century world history
The 1917 Revolutions
-Tsarist Russia: autocracy and delayed modernization
-the Great War
-Kerensky’s Provisional Government (Feb. 1917)
-council system (Soviets)
-Bolsheviks’ Red October

II. The Bolshevik’s Seizure of Power
-the political base of Bolshevism
-‘War Communism’
-Civil War, 1918-21
-the cost of power: famine, terror.

III. Impact of the Communist International,  1919-27
-belief in world revolution, 1918-23
-communist parties & Soviet influence: Italy, Hungary, Britain, France, U.S., Germany, Spain.
-the perceived threat of communism,
    1918-23; organized agitation, 1918-39
-communism: a key premise for fascism

IV. Soviet Society, 1921-27
-NEP, 1921-27: the ‘strategic retreat’; urban-rural economic problems; return  of private market
-death of Lenin (1924), his will, Stalin’s rise to power, 1925-28
-1926-28: return to prewar levels (agric. , industry, wages )
-Stalin’s shift to rapid industrialization

V. Rapid Industrialization and Collectivization, 1928-33
-the first Five Year Plan
-rapid industrialization: at whose cost?
-‘Kulaks’ and collectivization
-war on Kulaks: consolidation of 25 million farms into 200,000 collectives
-agricultural disaster and famine (5-7 million)

VI. Conclusion
-Stalin’s consolidation of Power, 1933-39
-cult of Stalin after WWII
-the legacies of Stalinist socialism

Estimates of Soviet Victims, 1926-1953

Collectivization:
-4 million in 1926-27 deportation
-7 million in 1932-33 famine
-3.5 million in deportations between
    1927-37

Political Purges:
1937-39: 7-8 million arrested, with one million sentenced to death
1936-53: approx. 12 million deaths in camps from mistreatment and hardship.

Ethnic Deportations after 1939:
Poles: 1.6 million
Baltic peoples: 200,000
Besarabians: 200,000
Volga Germans and Crimean Tatars: 1.5 million
Estimated Total:  20 million deaths.