Destalinization

DESTALINI﻿ ZATION! YOyoyo. Welcome to Ashlex O'Lashneill Send your answers to::::: baybee_crash@hotmail.com or dressagequeen01@gmail.com

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Powerpoint for Destalinization:

__**Summary**__

 * =====The process begun by Nikita Khrushchev, following the death of former Russian dictator Stalin in March 1953. =====
 * =====Khrushchev was recognized for first discrediting Stalin and then reforming Soviet Russia, leading to large numbers being released from imprisonment in Gulags, a temporary thaw in the Cold War, a slight relaxation in censorship and an increase in consumer goods (an era dubbed as ‘The Thaw’ or ‘Khrushchev’s Thaw’) =====
 * =====This new direction was announced by Khrushchev at a speech to the Twentieth Party Congress of the CPSU on February 25th 1956 entitled ‘On the Personality Cult and its Consequences’ in which he attacked Stalin, his tyrannical rule and the crimes of that era against the party. =====
 * =====The speech was a calculated risk by Khrushchev, who had been prominent in Stalin’s later government, that he could attack and undermine Stalin, allowing non-Stalinist policies to be introduced, without flawing his reputation. As everyone high up in Russia’s ruling party also owed their positions to Stalin, there was no one who could attack Khrushchev without sharing the same guilt. =====
 * =====There was disappointment, especially in the West, that Destalinization did not lead to greater liberalization in Russia and it finished with Khrushchev’s removal from power in 1964. =====

__**Sources**__
[Source A from the Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the 84th Congress, 2nd Session (May 22, 1956-June 11, 1956), C11, Part 7 (June 4, 1956). The complete text of Khrushchev's Secret Speech is available online (Internet Modern History Sourcebook) at [].]

"We have to consider seriously and analyze correctly [the crimes of the Stalin era] in order that we may preclude any possibility of a repetition in any form whatever of what took place during the life of Stalin, who absolutely did not tolerate collegiality in leadership and in work, and who practiced brutal violence, not only toward everything which opposed him, but also toward that which seemed to his capricious and despotic character, contrary to his concepts.

"Stalin acted not through persuasion, explanation, and patient cooperation with people, but by imposing his concepts and demanding absolute submission to his opinion. Whoever opposed this concept or tried to prove his viewpoint, and the correctness of his position, was doomed to removal from the leading collective and to subsequent moral and physical annihilation. This was especially true during the period following the XVIIth Party Congress [1934], when many prominent Party leaders and rank-and-file Party workers, honest and dedicated to the cause of Communism, fell victim to Stalin's despotism. . . ."

[Source B from G. F. Hudson, (May 1957) //Why Did Khrushchev Do It? De-Stalinization and the Manner of Stalin's Death//, [|http://www.commentarymagazine.com].]

A Year has passed since Khrushchev by his speech to the closed session of the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist party hurled the image of Stalin from the lofty pedestal on which it had been raised by the organized worship of the world Communist movement. Today, efforts are being made to restore the somewhat battered statue to a position of honor, on a pedestal not quite as high as that which it formerly occupied, but still far exceeding the worth of the dead dictator as portrayed in the scathing indictment of Khrushchev's speech. In the meantime the disastrous effects for international Communism of the denunciation of Stalin have become fully apparent. It was impossible to hold up to execration and ridicule the man who for thirty years had been the leader of the world's orthodox Communists without discrediting the party which had sustained his leadership and calling in question the virtue of a political system which could produce such results. Not only were great numbers of the fellow-travelers and camp-followers of Communism shocked and alienated by the scandal, but the most zealous and devout of the adherents of the creed—those who for years had blindly followed every turn and twist of the party line because of their faith in an infallible leader—were suddenly and utterly let down. In the recent events in Eastern Europe nothing has been more striking than the spread of disaffection in the ranks of the Communist parties themselves, and especially among the young, but this is not to be wondered at if it is borne in mind how their indoctrination had been undone by the reversal overnight of everything they had been previously taught about the history of their revolution.

[Source C from Tim Woodring, (Jul 25, 2009) //Stalino Russia,// http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_XFchCE691Tw/TCV2xmiGMQI/AAAAAAAABBY/-5u1ofT9hpQ/s1600/stalin7.jpg.]  This page presents the geographical name data for //Stalino// in //Russia//, as supplied by the US military intelligence in electronic format



[Source D from Tony Cliff, (1956) Russia from Stalin to Khrushchev, []\]

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">...But the present leaders want to start with a clean slate. Even if they benefited from and were active in the mass murders, even if they helped create the slave camps and implement the forced collectivisation and the other monstrosities of the State Capitalist regime, it serves their purpose to put the responsibility at the door of the dead master. Even the most sordid gangsters aim to achieve respectability.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">After nearly thirty years of quick industrialisation the people of Russia are still poverty-stricken. Fact upon fact shows this. For instance, in 1953 there were fewer cows than in 1916, as Khrushchev himself admitted (N.S. Khrushchev, Measures for the Further Development of Agriculture in the USSR, Moscow 1953); butter production in Siberia (a famous butter exporter before the First World War), was smaller in 1952 than in 1913; the output of vegetables was extremely low (ibid.); housing conditions are terrible, whole families live in one room, sharing a kitchen with other families; queues form in shops to buy bad quality expensive consumer goods – a sure testimony to their scarcity. On the other hand, production of steel, coal, electricity, machines and so on increases continuously. This disproportion between production and the satisfaction of their daily needs must certainly make the Russian people very disgruntled, to say the least.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">When Stalin was alive he claimed all industrial achievements as his own, putting the responsibility for all scarcities, defects and poverty on subordinate officials who were duly liquidated. With Stalin dead the leaders have a choice. They can either raise living standards by greatly increasing capital investments in light industry, by encouraging livestock production, building houses for the people on a large scale, cutting armaments and investments in heavy industry, curtailing the privileges of the bureaucracy, and so on – all of which goes very much against the grain of Bureaucratic State Capitalism; or, alternatively, they can choose a much cheaper and easier way. They can put the responsibility for the suffering of the people on the dead dictator and his executioner Beria, and ask the people to wait. After all, it is only three years since the devil died. You can’t expect us to undo his works in such a short time.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">But even if the main reason for purging Stalin is to buy time for Stalinism, there is no doubt that the present leaders would like to get rid of a number of the excesses – excesses in terms of the needs and interests of the totalitarian bureaucratic regime itself – of the last few years of Stalin’s rule.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">[Source E from Anonymous (2010) //Destalinization//, www.123helpme.com ]

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Khrushchev worked hard to be agreeable with the majority of the people he ruled. He went against many of Stalin's policies and gave the people a much greater sense of freedom. There was free political discussion, a standard 40 hour work week where people were free to change jobs, better government planning of production, and eased travel restrictions over the "Iron Curtain." Because he went away from Stalin's collectivization, industry and farm production suffered, and most of the nation's wheat was purchased from the West; the only counteraction to this was a happier constituency. Khrushchev established a policy of "peaceful co-existence" with the West in 1956 (Hirschfeld, 38-39).

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">It helped the war-battered nation avoid further war with the West and it helped the nation to keep up with world technology. Stalin wanted to spread Communism where ever he could and however he could. Khrushchev, too, wanted to spread the political system, but he did it through words, and encouraged riots in other nations. These differences, along with a win in the space race, gave Khrushchev a popular image with the common people; but he was scorned by the neo-Stalinists and those who held a lot of power in the Communist Party.Probably the most notable achievement of Khrushchev was his process of "Destalinization." A political ploy to erase the past and ease the minds of those who suffered under the dictator. Khrushchev worked to denounce his former leader's doings and clean up the image of the nation on a worldwide scale. It is interesting to note though that Khrushchev worked with Stalin since nearly the time when Stalin took power at the uprisal of the modern Communist Party. He never made his newly found hatred for the man obvious while Stalin was in office, perhaps to protect himself, and perhaps to keep him rising through the ranks of the party. Only after Stalin's death did Khrushchev express his views on the leader's tyranny. The cities which were once named in honor of Stalin were given new names or returned to their old names (ex. Stalingrad returned to Volgograd) (Rutherford, 80). The statues and pictures of Stalin which were erected were destroyed, and letters were sent to families of those killed in battle which criticized Stalin's weak leadership during the time of war.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Perhaps the most notable example of Destalinazation was a clandestine speech that Khrushchev gave to top officials of the Communist Party where he denounced Stalin and criticized the dictator and those who agreed with his views which murdered so many Russian citizens. The speech was supposedly kept a secret so that the Capitalist media would not receive word of it and gain an edge over the Communists if they knew of the strife that was occurring within the party. Stalin's grave was plundered and vandalized during this process, and Khrushchev gained approval from the West. It had a negative effect on Communism as a whole in that denouncing Stalin was basically denouncing Communism from its roots. Revolts broke out against the Communist governments in Poland and Hungary, and the USSR spent money to thwart these disturbances which might have helped to bolster Capitalism in the nearby areas.

PAPER 1

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Questions:

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">1) <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">a)What does the illustrator in Source C depict about Stalin? (3) <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">b) How do the Russians regard Stalin according to Source C? What do they believe of his leadership? (2)

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">2) To what extent does Source B support Source A regarding destalinization? Are there any differences in their viewpoints? (6)

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">3) Evaluate Source D, with reference to origin and purpose, the values and limitations of this article on how this source views destalinization. (6)

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">4) Using these sources and your own knowledge, how was destalinization perceived by the Russian citizens? (8)