The totalitarian political system in the USSR in the 30s formed around a single figure - Joseph Stalin. It was he who consistently, step by step, destroyed competitors and objectionable, establishing a regime of personal unquestioning power in the country.
Background of repression
In the first years of the existence of the Soviet state, the leading role in the party was occupied by Lenin. He managed to control various groups within the Bolshevik leadership at the expense of his authority. The conditions of the civil war also affected. However, with the advent of peace, it became clear that the USSR could no longer exist in a state of war communism, accompanied by endless repression.
Shortly before his death, Lenin became the initiator of a new economic policy. She helped rebuild the country after several years of military devastation. In 1924, Lenin died, and the Soviet Union was again at a crossroads.
The struggle within the party leadership
The tyrannical political system in the USSR in the 1930s was precisely that, because the Bolsheviks did not create legitimate tools for transferring power. After the death of Lenin , the struggle of his supporters for supremacy began. The party’s most charismatic figure was the experienced revolutionary Lev Trotsky. He was one of the direct organizers of the October Revolution and an important military commander during the Civil War.
However, Trotsky lost the hardware fight to Joseph Stalin, whom at first no one took seriously. The Secretary General (then this position was nominal) took turns cracking down on all his competitors. Trotsky was in exile, but even abroad he was not safe. He will be killed much later - in Mexico in 1940.
In the Union, Stalin began to organize the first demonstrative political processes that demonstrated what the repressions in the USSR would be like in the 30s. The Bolsheviks of the first draft were later convicted and executed. They were the same age as Lenin, for many years they were in exile under the tsar and came to Russia in the famous sealed carriage. They were shot: Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin - everyone who was in the opposition or could claim first place in the party.
Planned Economy
At the turn of the 1920s and 1930s, five-year plans were introduced. Plans for the development of the national economy of the USSR were strictly regulated by the state center. Stalin wanted to create a new heavy and military industry in the country. The construction of hydroelectric power stations and other modern infrastructure has begun.
At the same time, Stalin organized several political processes related to the so-called pests, that is, people who specifically spoiled production. It was a campaign to repress the class of "technical intelligentsia", especially engineers. The process of the Industrial Party took place, then the Shakhty affair, etc.
Dispossession
The process of industrialization was extremely painful. He was accompanied by pogroms in the village. The political system in the USSR in 30 years destroyed the small prosperous peasantry who worked on their plots, with the help of which it was fed.
Instead, the state created collective farms in the villages. In collective farms began to drive all the peasants. Dissatisfied were repressed and sent to camps. In the village, it became frequent to denounce “kulaks” who hid their crops from the authorities. Entire families were exiled to Siberia and Kazakhstan.
The Gulag
Under Stalin, all prison camps were united in the Gulag. The heyday of this system came at the end of the 30s. Then the famous 58th political article appeared, according to which hundreds of thousands of people got into the camps. Mass repressions in the USSR in the 30s were necessary, firstly, to intimidate the population, and secondly, to provide the state with cheap labor.
In fact, prisoners became slaves. Their working conditions were inhuman. With the help of convicts, many industrial construction projects were implemented. Of particular importance in the Soviet press was the coverage of the creation of the White Sea Canal. The result of such forced industrialization was the emergence of a powerful defense industry and the impoverishment of the village. The destruction of agriculture was accompanied by massive famine.
Great terror
The Stalinist totalitarian regime in the USSR in 30 years needed regular repression. By this time, the party apparatus had completely replaced state authorities. The political system in the USSR in 30 years was formed around the decisions of the CPSU (b).
In 1934, one of the party leaders, Sergei Kirov, was killed in Leningrad. Stalin used his death as a pretext for cleaning inside the CPSU (B.). Reprisals against ordinary communists began. The political system of the USSR in 30 years, in short, led to the fact that the security agencies shot people according to orders from above, which indicated the necessary number of death sentences for high treason.
Similar processes took place in the army. It shot executives who went through the Civil War and had great professional experience. In the years 1937-1938. repressions also took on a national character. Poles, Latvians, Greeks, Finns, Chinese and other ethnic minorities went to the Gulag.
Foreign policy
As before, the foreign policy of the USSR in the 30s set itself the main goal - to arrange a world revolution. After the Civil War, this plan failed when the war with Poland was lost. The first half of his reign, Stalin in foreign affairs relied on the Comintern - a community of communist parties around the world.
With the advent of Hitler in Germany, the foreign policy of the USSR in the 30 years began to focus on rapprochement with the Reich. Economic cooperation and diplomatic contacts were strengthened. In 1939, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed. According to this document, the states agreed not to attack each other and divided Eastern Europe into spheres of influence.
Soon the Soviet-Finnish war began. By this time, the Red Army was beheaded by the repressions of its leadership. For example, three of the first five Soviet marshals were shot. The fatal fallacy of this policy again affected two years later, when the Great Patriotic War began.