Five-Year Plan Stalin decided the economy must be given a quick upgrade, and so he launched his Five-Year Plan, announced in 1929. Pipes describes how this put the entire economy under state control. The government promised if the people worked hard to meet the goal of tripling production, the outcome would be an increased standard of living for all. Neither took place. Instead, Alec Nove, a specialist in the early socialist Russian economy declared, “1933 was the culmination of the most precipitous peacetime decline in living standard known in recorded history.” Destruction of Kulak Class Much cost of industrialization was provided by printing additional currency, new taxes, and the export of grain and even art. But this was not enough, so Stalin decided farmland must be appropriated. Much like Mao, Stalin decreed that collectivization of all farms was necessary for the creation of modern Russia. This was done by eliminating the Kulaks, being the farm owners, either by deportation to the hinterlands, or by entry into concentration camps, and their property then confiscated. The poorer farm workers also lost everything, and became, functionally speaking, land-based slaves of the state, according to Pipes. Forced Famine Like Lenin before him, and Mao after, Stalin created a forced famine to break the backs of the poor farmers. In a single year, 1932-33, the artificial famine killed between 6-7 million peasants in the Ukraine, North Caucasus, and Kazakhstan. Enough food was grown to easily keep all alive, and even export some, but instead—almost all grain was shipped out while the growers starved to death. The military was used to stop peasants from leaving affected areas. This policy achieved a short-term spike in income, but destroyed Russian agriculture for decades afterwards, writes Pipes. Great Terror Stalin had learned the only way to keep a tyrannical socialist empire in order was to foment crisis. After the forced famine ended, he moved on to sheer terror. Stalin had one of his greatest backers, Sergei Kirov, assassinated, because of jealousy and fear of having a rival. He then used this as an excuse to launch the Great Terror, a purge almost unequaled in human history. This was an attack against the entire population. Party membership was no defense, and neither was being apolitical. At the peak of 1937-38, huge numbers of innocent citizens were rounded up, claims Pipes. Said Stalin, “One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic.” The ruling Russian bureaucracy, the so-called Politburo, would call individuals in and give them a couple-minute trial in front of a troika, aka a tribunal. No defense was allowed and then the defendant was sentenced to death, exile, or was sent to a concentration camp for hard labor. At the height of the Great Terror, the Politburo would simply send quotas for the number of citizens it wanted murdered to each district. For instance, on June 2, 1937, a quota was sent out calling for 35,000 Moscow residents to be brought to these fictitious trials, and 5,000 of these pre-ordered shot. Then, in July 1937, each region was given a quota of 70,000 persons to be brought to trial and then shot immediately afterwards, says Pipes. Many were simply picked out of crowds, or grabbed walking down the street, by zealous secret policemen. The more educated, and often Party members, were chosen because they were considered likelier to become critics of the state. Various sensational crimes were invariably charged, such as espionage, terrorism, or attempting to restore capitalism. And of Stalin’s original group of competitors to replace Lenin, all the rest coincidentally died during this time. Pressure was put on the general populace to inform on each-other’s activities. Many people were rounded up and tortured for confessions, normally made up on the spot to stop the torment. During the period of the Great Terror, between 1932-39, probably ten million innocent people were killed. And all the orders were signed by Stalin, himself, according to Pipes. In short, Stalin used the Great Terror to liquidate all his enemies, reduce the numbers of potential future competitors to his crown, and also completely eviscerate all dissent in the society at large. Kolyma One of the most remarkable elements of Stalin’s reign was his sending of prisoners to the Kolyma region of Siberia to mine for gold, other precious metals, and even uranium. At first, men were sent to this coldest region of Russia to mine in the interest of making money for the state. But the camps quickly degraded into simply another place for Stalin to dispose of humans he did not want. The trip to the camps by ship, by itself, killed many prisoners. And the typical lifespan of someone sent there was about 9 months, such was the grueling work schedule, temperature, and smallness of diet. And when these men died, they were not buried, but simply tossed outside to be eaten by wild animals. Yet, this diabolical hell became even worse for some persons. In the astounding short, true story, “Kolyma Streetcar,” Elena Glinka recounts how ships of female political and criminal convicts were occasionally sent to camps in the Kolyma region, and released to the men and guards. The miners, half-starved and exhausted by the work-schedule and almost degenerated into animals, would take a break. They would herd the unknowing women into a mess hall, and then spend days gang-raping them until they all died from shock. Overall, no less than 3 million innocent persons died in the Kolyma region concentration camps. But many more persons were pointlessly eliminated in the entire Gulag Peninsula Russian concentration camp system. Conclusion All the incredibly cruel and willfully stupid acts by Joseph Stalin cannot be recounted here. But Uncle Joe goes down as yet another failed, heartless, egotistical, bloodthirsty, unjust, rude, and functionally illiterate Marxist tyrant. Stalin killed many of the best people in society out of fear, which had especially bad results when Russia was attacked by Nazi Germany, as most of the experienced Red Army officers had already been executed in the Great Terror. He was also a horrific economic planner, because he had no training and was too vain to admit he needed any, and so his centrally planned economy was a perpetual under or non-performer. Like a true Marxist, he hated capitalism, once saying, “America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within.” But more than anything, Stalin’s idea of killing as way to building a better society was a contradictory and devilish vision that utterly destroyed the heart of Russia for generations, and from which it has yet to recover. For these reasons, and many more, Stalin should never be held up as a leader by any person interested in democracy, justice or human rights. canadafreepress/index.php/article/19314
Posted on: Fri, 21 Mar 2014 21:00:45 +0000
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