The Soviet Union

Part One: The Interwar Period: 1919-1939

The Russian Empire had collapsed in February 1917, falling into a morass of civil war. The Tsar was overthrown as the war effort collapsed, but the new Russian Republic intended to continue the fight against the Central Powers. In order to finally close the Eastern Front the Germans gave exiled communist leader Vladimir Lenin resources and sent him back to Russia aboard a special train. Lenin lost no time in taking charge of his Bolshevik movement once again, and toppling the Republic in late 1917.

Red Army soldiers during the Russian Civil War

The Bolsheviks immediately commenced negotiations to surrender to the Germans, and the country fell into civil war almost as quickly. The two main blocks that formed in the war were the Reds: Bolshevik communists under the leadership of Lenin, and the Whites: an alliance of Republicans, Monarchists, and others opposed to socialism, but with various different political goals. The Entente would also enter the war on the side of the Whites, with British, American and French troops landing in Murmansk, and at Vladivostok, this time with the Japanese as the Great War wound down. By 1919 the main White forces had been defeated, and the Entente withdrew by 1920. Fighting continued around the country until 1922, when the Reds took power over the former Empire and formed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or USSR.

Lenin addresses a crowd of Bolshevik supporters

Programs were instituted to replace the Imperial system with a new socialist order. The new Soviet government instituted a program of taxing food from the peasant farmers in order to support workers in the cities, and embarked on a program of electrification of the country. The Tsarist Okhrana secret police were replaced by the Cheka, who began to brutally repress all “enemies of the Revolution”. They kidnapped dissenters in the night, massacred entire villages, and set up an extensive spy network in the country. In 1920 the Soviets fought a war with the newly created Poland, and were defeated.

In early 1924 Lenin suffered a stroke and died. This led to a power struggle as the leaders of the Party were faced with the official successor, Josef Stalin, sparring with Lenin’s other favorite, Leon Trotsky. Stalin eventually won the power struggle, and became dictator of the Soviet Union. He quickly assumed total control of all private businesses (Lenin had allowed a small amount of them to remain), and enacted a “Five Year Plan” to rebuild the economy. He also intensified Lenin’s attacks against religion, imprisoning both clergy and believers, and demolishing churches across the country.

Mourners in line to view Lenin’s corpse on Red Square in Moscow

The USSR began to rapidly industrialize, with massive factories being built in the cities, and massive expansion of support industries for them, such as mining. The land-owning farmers, known as Kulaks, had their farms taken from them and placed into collectives. The resulting mismanagement and corruption caused a massive famine, resulting in the death of up to 5 million people.

Construction of a hydroelectric dam on the Dnepr River in the Ukrainian SSR

Lenin’s Cheka had been replaced by the NKVD, which Stalin used to ensure complete control over the country rested with him personally. In 1936 the NKVD began a process of blood purges, killing vast numbers of people perceived as enemies of Stalin, both in the government and outside it. Large numbers of people were deported to Gulags: forced labor camps in Siberia. Large numbers of writers, journalists, scientists and other members of the intelligentsia were murdered, as were anyone within the government who opposed Stalin’s policies.

Peasants walk past famine victims in Kharkiv

The Red Army was not immune to Stalin’s wrath: the purges extended into their ranks as well, effectively gutting the officer corps in the late 1930s. Soon this resulted in both a shortage of senior officers as well as rampant cronyism, promoting men based on party loyalty rather than military ability. So acute was the problem that the time spent in officer’s academies was shortened by a year or more to speed up replacement of officers, but almost everybody with real experience was discharged or killed by Stalin and the NKVD.

A mass execution by the NKVD in Vinnytsia

As Germany rose the Soviets did not know what to make of it. They had aided the communist Republicans in the Spanish Civil War against the German backed Nationalists, and the Nazis had moved to liquidate the Soviet allied German Communists. Despite this, Stalin had goals against Poland and the Baltic States, and thus when the Germans offered an alliance to take both of those objectives, the Soviets signed on in late summer 1939.