Free Sample Essays > European History
Were Stalin’s methods the only ones appropriate to the task of transforming the Soviet Union into an industrial nation?
dismantle them, and therefore giving greater power further down the line. This partial demobilisation of the command economy delivered overwhelming numbers of tanks, aircraft, and artillery pieces to any front of war they were required. This method was again something new, and empathizes the skill Stalin had to react to circumstances and come out on top. His more appropriate method and style of leadership and more effective use of economic resources undoubtedly led to military victory. So the man totally responsible was Stalin. Stalin was the only dictator to come out victorious in 1945. Hitler committed suicide in the face of defeat. Franco and Salazar, kept their countries out of conflict. After 1945 until his death in 1953 Stalin launched a campaign of reconstruction and finally achieved his original objective of making the Soviet Union a superpower. He also extended Russian control, for the first time over most Eastern Europe and established a series of satellite states. The methods Stalin used to gain totalitarian measures were the fulfilment of Stalinism during his reign. The man behind the system grew in power and used this power to intensify the totalitarian nature of the regime. There was even forebodings in the West that this type of dictatorship might provide a general pattern for the future. This is in my view a very strong argument that Stalin’s methods were the only ones appropriate at the time. Stalin’s search for power was total and the methods he used were more extreme then had previously been used. Stalin was ruthless in his pursuit of power and efficient in his use of it, with the first point leading directly to the second. Ruthlessness and power combined to create a form of totalitarianism, which was more complete than that of Nazi Germany. Stalin created an industrial infrastructure, he cut down possible opposition by directly instigating purges, he changed the people’s cultural and social perception and he pursued a foreign policy, which, with the occasional changes in tactics, had an overall strategy of making Russia a world superpower. Because of these methods and developments and despite the suffering inflicted, the Soviet Union was able to inflict defeat on Nazi Germany. I doubt that had any other leader been in charge would had done so, and had USSR become a superpower. In the last analysis Stalin could claim that his methods “Soviet Russia had become stronger as a result of his grandiose campaigns of industrialisation, collectivisation and social transformation.” The very nature of the Russian national character allowed this to happen. Russian’s never knew democracy as they were always repressed and ruled by barons and tsars. They never knew freedom or democracy, as most people being surfs the majority didn’t know how to handle freedom, so they became puppets at the hands of a dictator. Lenin’s attempt at free enterprise wasn’t good enough for Stalin because it contradicted his nature, of a highly suspicious and ruthless dictator. Stalin eliminated all sense of the traditional religion, but people had to have [next page]