Stalin’s Administration

Stalin’s Administration

Union of Soviet Socialist RepublicsUSSR

SWBAT: explain how Stalin controlled what people thought in the Soviet Union

Do Now• Have you ever been late to school?• Have you ever told a joke about a

government official?• If your family was starving, would you take

a few potatoes left in a field after harvest?

• In the Stalin era, a person who arrived late to work three times could be sent to the Gulag for three years.

• In the Stalin era, many were sent to the Gulag for up to 25 years for telling an innocent joke about a Communist Party official.

• In the Stalin era, a person could be sent to the Gulag for up to ten years for such petty theft.

Do Now: Tuesday 4.9.13

• Pick up your group’s project

• You have 15 minutes to finish! – then you will present them!–Make sure you can explain

HOW & WHY your symbol will promote fear in the USSR

Stalin’s Industrialization

• Five-Year Plan: 1928-1938– improving heavy industry -

coal, oil, steel and electricity.• Stakhanovites• Gulag• Kulak• Education schemes were

introduced to train skilled, literate workers.

• Strikers were shot, & slow workers could be executed or imprisoned

Maria Tchebotareva

Trying to feed her four hungry children during the massive 1932-1933 famine, the peasant mother allegedly stole three pounds of rye from her former field—confiscated by the state as part of collectivization. Soviet authorities sentenced her to ten years in the Gulag. When her sentence expired in 1943, it was arbitrarily extended until the end of the war in 1945. After her release, she was required to live in exile near her Gulag camp north of the Arctic Circle, and she was not able to return home until 1956, after the death of Stalin. Maria Tchebotareva never found her children after her release.

Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.

Ivan Burylov• Seeking the appearance of democracy,

the Soviet Union held elections, but only one Communist Party candidate appeared on the ballot for each office. Fear of punishment ensured that nearly all Soviet citizens “voted” by taking their ballot and ceremoniously placing it into a ballot box.

• In 1949, Ivan Burylov, a beekeeper, protested this absurd ritual by writing the word “Comedy” on his “secret” ballot. Soviet authorities linked the ballot to Burylov and sentenced him to eight years in camps for this “crime.”

• Courtesy of the State Perm Region Archive of Political Repression.

• Arrest of a so-called “rich peasant” in 1930. This peasant, Mikhailov, had attempted escape from a state-owned farm where he had been sent into exile.

• Courtesy of the Central Russian State Film and Video Archive.

• Trial of so-called “rich peasants” in 1929. Stalin’s drive to seize all private land in the 1920s and 1930s met significant resistance. Some victims were shot, some were arrested and sent into the Gulag camps, and many were exiled to remote parts of the country.

• Courtesy of the Central Russian State Film and Video Archive.

• Soviet Propaganda Poster• “Look Me in the Eyes and Tell

Me Honestly:Who is your friend? Who is your enemy?You have no friends among capitalists.You have no enemies among the workers. Only in a union of the workers of all nations will you be victorious over capitalism and liberated from exploitation.Down with national antagonisms!Workers of the world unite!” Courtesy of the State Perm Region Archive of Political Repression.

Gulag Camps

Magadan Region

• Magadan

• stalin

Wives of Prisoners

• When married men were sentenced to a labor camp the wives and children they left behind were victimized as well. Friends and neighbors might turn against them, for fear of associating with “wives of enemies of the people.”

• One prisoner stated, “I often thought of my wife. She was worse off than me. I was after all in the company of other outcasts whereas she was among free people among whom there might be many who would shun her...”

There were three main types of prison camps

• Camps surrounded by barbed wire with guards in watchtowers, where prisoners lived in crowded barracks. Prisoners could move within the camp zone, but could not leave the zone. If they were caught beyond the “prison zone,” they were automatically shot.

• Stricter camps with barred windows, locked barracks and restricted movement within the camp zone.

• Unguarded camps in remote regions of the USSR, where labor was controlled but prisoners had complete freedom of movement.

• obsessed with construction of enormous projects that would make other industrialized countries envious of the USSR.

• Canal linking the Moscow River to the Volga River

• Railway between Lake Baikal and the Amur River

• Construction of hydroelectric dams

Exit Ticket – CHOOSE ONEA. After people were arrested they were often asked to

sign a confession based on lies. Some people signed these immediately as they felt that holding out would not change their fate and would only prolong their torture. However, there were others who refused to confess even when faced with months of torture. Which strategy would you have used and why?

B. If the outcome of the incarceration process was inevitable under Stalin, why did the Soviet authorities insist on spending time and money to go through the whole process of arrest, interrogation, and trial?