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118-494: The governorate was originally created on 5 February 1919 on orders of People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Kliment Voroshylov and the same day confirmed by the Council of People's Commissars of Ukraine. It was created on eastern territories of Yekaterinoslav Governorate including counties of Bakhmut and Slovianoserbsk . Due to invasion of Anton Denikin troops the guberniya was dissolved in summer of 1919 and its territory

236-512: A Vice-chairman of the Soviet Union as evidence that he intended Trotsky to be his successor as head of government. In his biography of Trotsky, British historian Isaac Deutscher writes that, faced with the evidence, "only the blind and the deaf could be unaware of the contrast between Stalinism and Leninism." Similarly, historian Moshe Lewin writes, "The Soviet regime underwent a long period of 'Stalinism,' which in its basic features

354-472: A cult of personality he thought might later be used against him by the same people who praised him excessively, one of those being Khrushchev—a prominent user of the term during Stalin's life who was later responsible for de-Stalinization and the beginning of the Khrushchev Thaw era. Some historians view Stalinism as a reflection of the ideologies of Leninism and Marxism , but some argue that it

472-471: A figurehead political post. Voroshilov was again re-elected to the Central Committee in 1966. Voroshilov was awarded a second medal of Hero of the Soviet Union 1968. During a winter night in 1969, Voroshilov started to feel unwell. His family proposed to call an ambulance immediately, but he adamantly refused. In the morning he put on his military uniform , and after calling a car, he went to

590-468: A reformist social democracy rather than a form of revolutionary communism. Sheng Shicai , a Chinese warlord with Communist leanings, invited Soviet intervention and allowed Stalinist rule to extend to Xinjiang province in the 1930s. In 1937, Sheng conducted a purge similar to the Great Purge , imprisoning, torturing, and killing about 100,000 people, many of them Uyghurs . Cybernetics :

708-422: A "Zinovievite"). Frunze was urged by a group of Stalin's hand-picked doctors to have surgery to treat an old stomach ulcer , despite previous doctors' recommendations to avoid surgery and Frunze's own unwillingness. He died on the operating table of a massive overdose of chloroform , an anaesthetic. Voroshilov became a full member of the newly formed Politburo in 1926, remaining a member until 1960. Voroshilov

826-831: A Russian worker's family in Ukraine, Voroshilov took part in the Russian Revolution of 1917 as an early member of the Bolsheviks . He served with distinction at the Battle of Tsaritsyn , during which he became a close friend of Stalin. Voroshilov was elected to the Central Committee of the Communist Party in 1921, and in 1925 Stalin appointed him People's Commissar for Military and Navy Affairs (later People's Commissar for Defence). In 1926, he became

944-583: A counter-attack against German tanks armed only with a pistol. However, the style of counterattack he launched had long since been abandoned by strategists and drew mostly contempt from his military colleagues; he failed to prevent the Germans from surrounding Leningrad and he was dismissed from his post and replaced by Georgy Zhukov on 8 September 1941. Stalin had a political need for popular wartime leaders, however, and Voroshilov remained as an important figurehead. Between 1945 and 1947, Voroshilov supervised

1062-764: A full member of the Politburo . In 1935, Voroshilov was named a Marshal of the Soviet Union. At the outbreak of World War II , Voroshilov was held responsible for Soviet failures in Finland during the Winter War and was replaced as Defense Commissar by Semyon Timoshenko . Following the German invasion in June 1941, he was recalled and appointed to the State Defense Committee . Voroshilov failed to stop

1180-484: A general, the Red Army suffered about 320,000 casualties compared to 70,000 Finnish casualties. When the leadership gathered at Stalin's dacha at Kuntsevo , Stalin shouted at Voroshilov for the losses; Voroshilov replied in kind, blaming the failure on Stalin for eliminating the Red Army's best generals in his purges. Voroshilov followed this retort by smashing a platter of food on the table. Nikita Khrushchev said it

1298-521: A key factor in the Soviet famine of 1930–1933 ; some scholars believe that Holodomor , which started near the end of 1932, was when the famine turned into an instrument of genocide; the Ukrainian government now recognizes it as such. Some scholars dispute the intentionality of the famine. The Stalinist era was largely regressive on social issues. Despite a brief period of decriminalization under Lenin,

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1416-423: A more critical and ambivalent attitude towards his cult of personality. The cult of personality served to legitimate Stalin's authority, establish continuity with Lenin as his "discipline, student and mentee" in the view of his wider followers. His successor, Nikita Khrushchev , would later denounce the cult of personality around Stalin as contradictory to Leninist principles and party discourse. Stalin blamed

1534-516: A nearby village, at the age of 12, and received two years' schooling. During his school years, Voroshilov became a close friend and almost a member of the family of Semyon Ryzhkov . In 1896, he started work in a factory near his home village, where he led a strike in 1899. In 1903, he enrolled in a German owned factory in Luhansk (which was renamed Vorshilov during the Stalin era). There, he joined

1652-399: A reactionary pseudoscience that appeared in the U.S.A. after World War II and also spread through other capitalist countries. Cybernetics clearly reflects one of the basic features of the bourgeois worldview—its inhumanity, striving to transform workers into an extension of the machine, into a tool of production, and an instrument of war. At the same time, for cybernetics an imperialistic utopia

1770-498: A theory standing in sharp contrast to Trotsky's permanent revolution and all earlier socialistic theses. The revolution did not spread outside Russia as Lenin had assumed it soon would. The revolution had not succeeded even within other former territories of the Russian Empire ―such as Poland , Finland , Lithuania , Latvia , and Estonia . On the contrary, these countries had returned to capitalist bourgeois rule. He

1888-477: Is an unprincipled intriguer, who subordinates everything to the preservation of his own power. He changes his theory according to whom he needs to get rid of. Bukharin on Stalin's theoretical position, 1928. Despite this, by the autumn of 1924, Stalin's notion of socialism in Soviet Russia was initially considered next to blasphemy by other Politburo members , including Zinoviev and Kamenev to

2006-515: Is characteristic—replacing living, thinking man, fighting for his interests, by a machine, both in industry and in war. The instigators of a new world war use cybernetics in their dirty, practical affairs. "Cybernetics" in the Short Philosophical Dictionary , 1954 Under Stalin, repression was extended to academic scholarship, the natural sciences, and literary fields. In particular, Einstein's theory of relativity

2124-630: Is extremely difficult. Workers are starving, there is a lack of clothes. Despite the revolutionary Soviet mood, strikes erupt here and there. You have to be surprised that workers are working at all. To fight famine in the region, a big help was received from such international organizations like the American Relief Administration , the Fridtjof Nansen 's mission of the International Red Cross , and

2242-594: Is separate from the socialist ideals it stemmed from. After a political struggle that culminated in the defeat of the Bukharinists (the "Party's Right Tendency "), Stalinism was free to shape policy without opposition, ushering in an era of harsh totalitarianism that worked toward rapid industrialization regardless of the human cost. From 1917 to 1924, though often appearing united, Stalin, Vladimir Lenin , and Leon Trotsky had discernible ideological differences. In his dispute with Trotsky, Stalin de-emphasized

2360-500: Is that from 1930 to 1953, around 1.5 to 1.7 million perished in the gulag system. In February 1956, Nikita Khrushchev condemned the deportations as a violation of Leninism and reversed most of them, although it was not until 1991 that the Tatars, Meskhetians , and Volga Germans were allowed to return en masse to their homelands. At the start of the 1930s, Stalin launched a wave of radical economic policies that completely overhauled

2478-477: Is the totalitarian means of governing and Marxist–Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union (USSR) from 1924 to 1953 by dictator Joseph Stalin and in Soviet satellite states between 1944 and 1953. Stalin had previously made a career as a gangster and robber , working to fund revolutionary activities, before eventually becoming General Secretary of the Soviet Union . Stalinism included

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2596-489: Is the 1938 publication, History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) , in which the history of the governing party was significantly altered and revised including the importance of the leading figures during the Bolshevik revolution. Retrospectively, Lenin's primary associates such as Zinoviev, Trotsky, Radek and Bukharin were presented as "vacillating", "opportunists" and "foreign spies" whereas Stalin

2714-493: Is used to describe the period during which Joseph Stalin was the leader of the Soviet Union while serving as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 to his death on 5 March 1953. It was a development of Leninism , and while Stalin avoided using the term "Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism", he allowed others to do so. Following Lenin's death, Stalin contributed to

2832-644: The Bolsheviks , and acted as a strike leader during the 1905 revolution . In April 1906, he travelled to Stockholm for the Fourth Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), using the provocative pseudonym 'Volodya Antimekov' or Anti- Menshevik . In Stockholm, he shared a room with the delegate from Georgia, Josif Dzhugashvili, later known as Stalin. In spring 1907, he travelled to London for

2950-418: The Communist Party of Palestine , spent twenty five years in Stalin's prisons and concentrations camps after the purges in 1937. Shortly before, during, and immediately after World War II , Stalin conducted a series of deportations that profoundly affected the ethnic map of the Soviet Union. Separatism , resistance to Soviet rule, and collaboration with the invading Germans were the official reasons for

3068-471: The Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , Stalin consolidated nearly absolute power in the 1930s with a Great Purge of the party that claimed to expel "opportunists" and "counter-revolutionary infiltrators". Those targeted by the purge were often expelled from the party; more severe measures ranged from banishment to the Gulag labor camps to execution after trials held by NKVD troikas . In

3186-707: The Workers International Relief . Despite protests from the local gubernatorial administration, in February 1924 a big portion of the region's south including such cities like Taganrog and Shakhty was passed on to the newly created South-Eastern Oblast of the Russian SFSR . In return, the Ukrainian SSR insignificant territorial gains in area of Sloboda Ukraine near Grayvoron , Putyvl , and Belgorod . On 14 February 1925, it

3304-550: The bourgeois state ) must become stronger before it can wither away. In Stalin's view, counter-revolutionary elements will attempt to derail the transition to full communism , and the state must be powerful enough to defeat them. For this reason, communist regimes influenced by Stalin are totalitarian . Other leftists, such as anarcho-communists , have criticized the party-state of the Stalin-era Soviet Union, accusing it of being bureaucratic and calling it

3422-485: The bourgeoisie , better-off peasants (" kulaks "), and those of the working class who demonstrated " counter-revolutionary " sympathies. This resulted in mass repression of such people and their families , including mass arrests, show trials , executions, and imprisonment in forced labor camps known as gulags . The most notorious examples were the Great Purge and the Dekulakization campaign. Stalinism

3540-498: The death penalty was extended to adolescents as young as 12 years old in 1935. After that, several trials, known as the Moscow Trials , were held, but the procedures were replicated throughout the country. Article 58 of the legal code, which listed prohibited anti-Soviet activities as a counter-revolutionary crime, was applied most broadly. Many alleged anti-Soviet pretexts were used to brand individuals as "enemies of

3658-477: The kulaks for inciting reactionary violence against the people during the implementation of agricultural collectivization . In response, the state, under Stalin's leadership, initiated a violent campaign against them. This kind of campaign was later known as classicide , though several international legislatures have passed resolutions declaring the campaign a genocide. Some historians dispute that these social-class actions constitute genocide. As head of

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3776-642: The 1920s but these groups were later rigorously repressed during the Stalinist era. Socialist realism was imposed in artistic production and other creative industries such as music , film along with sports were subject to extreme levels of political control. Historical falsification of political events such as the October Revolution and the Brest-Litovsk Treaty became a distinctive element of Stalin's regime. A notable example

3894-635: The 1930s and 1940s, the Soviet leadership sent NKVD squads into other countries to murder defectors and opponents of the Soviet regime. Victims of such plots included Trotsky, Yevhen Konovalets , Ignace Poretsky , Rudolf Klement, Alexander Kutepov , Evgeny Miller , and the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification ( POUM ) leadership in Catalonia (e.g., Andréu Nin Pérez ). Joseph Berger-Barzilai , co-founder of

4012-434: The 1930s, Stalin became increasingly worried about Leningrad party head Sergei Kirov 's growing popularity. At the 1934 Party Congress , where the vote for the new Central Committee was held, Kirov received only three negative votes (the fewest of any candidate), while Stalin received over 100. After Kirov's assassination, which Stalin may have orchestrated, Stalin invented a detailed scheme to implicate opposition leaders in

4130-427: The 1930s, denouncing many of his own military colleagues and subordinates when asked to do so by Stalin. He wrote personal letters to exiled former Soviet officers and diplomats such as commissar Mikhail Ostrovsky, asking them to return voluntarily to the Soviet Union and falsely reassuring them that they would not face retribution from authorities. Voroshilov personally signed 185 documented execution lists, fourth among

4248-466: The 1934 Criminal Code re-criminalized homosexuality. Abortion was made illegal again in 1936 after controversial debate among citizens, and women's issues were largely ignored. Stalin considered the political and economic system under his rule to be Marxism–Leninism , which he considered the only legitimate successor of Marxism and Leninism . The historiography of Stalin is diverse, with many different aspects of continuity and discontinuity between

4366-621: The 1950s with his well-documented participation in the deadly purges of the 1930s (as described above) was noted even at the time by Khrushchev, who asked him, "So when were you acting according to your conscience, then or now?" After Khrushchev removed most of the Stalinists like Molotov and Malenkov from the party, Voroshilov's career began to fade. On 7 May 1960, the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union granted Voroshilov's request for retirement and elected Leonid Brezhnev chairman of

4484-470: The 26 June 1953 arrest of Lavrenty Beria after Stalin's death. One of Voroshilov's responsibilities as chairman of the Presidium was to oversee the appeal review of Soviet death row inmates. Analysis by Jeffrey S. Hardy and Yana Skorobogatov describe his role thus: "Chairman Voroshilov presided over the meetings and clearly had the most influential voice, but split votes were not uncommon and Voroshilov

4602-470: The Central Asian republics. By some estimates, up to 43% of the resettled population died of diseases and malnutrition. According to official Soviet estimates, more than 14 million people passed through the gulags from 1929 to 1953, with a further 7 to 8 million deported and exiled to remote areas of the Soviet Union (including entire nationalities in several cases). The emergent scholarly consensus

4720-466: The Central Committee, which ended with the arrests of Nikolai Bukharin and Alexei Rykov , whom Voroshilov denounced as "renegades". In the early stages, he seemed to have believed that the purge would not affect the armed forces, and was seemingly unprepared for the arrest of Marshal Tukhachevsky and others in April and May. Voroshilov did not personally share the paranoia towards upper-class elements of

4838-530: The Communist Party to remove Stalin from his post as its General Secretary .Trotsky also argued that he and Lenin had intended to lift the ban on the opposition parties such as the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries as soon as the economic and social conditions of Soviet Russia had improved. Lenin's Testament , the document containing this order, was suppressed after Lenin's death. Various historians have cited Lenin's proposal to appoint Trotsky as

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4956-734: The Fifth RSDLP Congress. On his return, he was arrested and deported to Arkhangelsk , but in December he escaped and moved to Baku, where Stalin was also active. Arrested again in 1908, he was released from exile in 1912, and for a time worked in an ordnance factory in Tsaritsyn (Stalingrad/Volgagrad). Voroshilov was in Petrograd (St Petersburg) during the February Revolution , but returned to Luhansk, where he

5074-720: The German encirclement of Leningrad and was again relieved from his command in September 1941. After the war, Voroshilov oversaw the establishment of a socialist regime in Hungary . Following Stalin's death in 1953, Voroshilov was appointed Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet . His fortunes declined during the rise of Nikita Khrushchev and the Supreme Soviet turned against him. He peacefully resigned in 1960, although he came out of retirement in 1966 and re-joined

5192-605: The Lenin–Stalin relationship (during the Khrushchev Thaw and later) was that the overly autocratic Stalin had distorted the Leninism of the wise dedushka Lenin. But Volkogonov also lamented that this view eventually dissolved for those like him who had the scales fall from their eyes immediately before and after the dissolution of the Soviet Union . After researching the biographies in the Soviet archives, he came to

5310-516: The Military Revolutionary Council, knowing that he would be arrested on the way. When the Council met on 1 June 1937, Voroshilov vacated the chair to deliver a report in which he said, apologetically: "I could not believe we would reveal so many and such scoundrels in the ranks fo the highest command of our glorious, our valiant Workers' and Peasants' Army." After that, he played a central role in Stalin's Great Purge of

5428-619: The People's Commissar for War, who considered him undisciplined and unfit to command an army, and in October 1918 threatened him with court martial. Voroshilov was transferred to Ukraine, as commander of the Kharkiv military district, and later People's Commissar for War in the Ukraine soviet republic. He sided with the ' Military Opposition ', who opposed the formation of a centralised army, preferring to rely on local mobile units, and objected to

5546-605: The Politburo, was in itself a crucial factor in Stalin's rise to power". Cinematic productions served to foster the cult of personality around Stalin with adherents to the party line receiving Stalin prizes . Although, film directors and their assistants were still liable to mass arrests during the Great Terror. Censorship of films contributed to a mythologizing of history as seen with the films First Cavalry Army (1941) and Defence of Tsaritsyn (1942) in which Stalin

5664-583: The Presidium of the Supreme Council (the head of state). The Central Committee also relieved him of duties as a member of the Party Presidium (as the Politburo had been called since 1952) on 16 July 1960. In October 1961, his political defeat was complete at the 22nd party congress when he was excluded from election to the Central Committee. Following Khrushchev's fall from power, Soviet leader Brezhnev brought Voroshilov out of retirement into

5782-457: The Red Army leadership a whole. They were hopelessly ineffective: territorial conscript Alexey Grigorovich Maslov noted that he never fired a shot during his training, while it was noted that these units only underwent real training in the one month a year when experienced veterans returned. Voroshilov commanded Soviet troops during the Winter War from November 1939 to January 1940 but, due to poor Soviet planning and Voroshilov's incompetence as

5900-457: The Soviet Union . Stalin's death on 5 March 1953 prompted major changes in the Soviet leadership . On 15 March 1953, Voroshilov was approved as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (i.e., the head of state) with Nikita Khrushchev as First Secretary of the Communist Party and Georgy Malenkov as Premier of the Soviet Union . Voroshilov, Malenkov, and Khrushchev brought about

6018-418: The Soviet Union, transforming a peasant society into an industrial state with a literate population and a remarkable scientific superstructure." Robert Conquest disputes that conclusion, writing, "Russia had already been fourth to fifth among industrial economies before World War I", and that Russian industrial advances could have been achieved without collectivization, famine, or terror. According to Conquest,

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6136-467: The Soviet leadership after Molotov , Stalin and Kaganovich . He had no problem denouncing officers he disliked such as Tukhachevsky. Despite taking part in the purging of many "mechanisers" (supporters of wide usage of tanks rather than cavalry) from the Red Army, Voroshilov became convinced that reliance on cavalry should be decreased while more modern arms should receive higher priority. Marshal Budyonny tried to recruit him to his cause of protecting

6254-566: The Stalin era. Soviet scientists were forced to denounce any work that contradicted Lysenko. Over 3,000 biologists were imprisoned, fired, or executed for attempting to oppose Lysenkoism and genetic research was effectively destroyed until the death of Stalin in 1953. Due to the ideological influence of Lysenkoism , crop yields in the USSR declined. Orthodoxy was enforced in the cultural sphere . Prior to Stalin's rule, literary, religious and national representatives had some level of autonomy in

6372-588: The United States, pragmatically setting up joint-venture contracts with major American private enterprises such as the Ford Motor Company , which, under state supervision, assisted in developing the basis of the industry of the Soviet economy from the late 1920s to the 1930s. After the American private enterprises had completed their tasks, Soviet state enterprises took over. Stalinism

6490-611: The West, and Stalin and the majority of the Communist Party felt the NEP not only to be compromising communist ideals but also not delivering satisfactory economic performance or creating the envisaged socialist society. According to historian Sheila Fitzpatrick , the scholarly consensus was that Stalin appropriated the position of the Left Opposition on such matters as industrialisation and collectivisation . Trotsky maintained that

6608-978: The archives, contends that, before the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of the archives for historical research, "our understanding of the scale and the nature of Soviet repression has been extremely poor" and that some specialists who wish to maintain earlier high estimates of the Stalinist death toll are "finding it difficult to adapt to the new circumstances when the archives are open and when there are plenty of irrefutable data" and instead "hang on to their old Sovietological methods with round-about calculations based on odd statements from emigres and other informants who are supposed to have superior knowledge." Stalin personally signed 357 proscription lists in 1937 and 1938 that condemned 40,000 people to execution, about 90% of whom are confirmed to have been shot. While reviewing one such list, he reportedly muttered to no one in particular: "Who's going to remember all this riff-raff in ten or twenty years? No one. Who remembers

6726-839: The autocratic system in the Communist Party . They also note that Lenin put a ban on factions within the Russian Communist Party and introduced the one-party state in 1921—a move that enabled Stalin to get rid of his rivals easily after Lenin's death and cite Felix Dzerzhinsky , who, during the Bolshevik struggle against opponents in the Russian Civil War , exclaimed: "We stand for organized terror—this should be frankly stated." Opponents of this view include revisionist historians and many post–Cold War and otherwise dissident Soviet historians, including Roy Medvedev , who argues that although "one could list

6844-448: The creation of a one man totalitarian police state , rapid industrialization , the theory of socialism in one country (until 1939), forced collectivization of agriculture , intensification of class conflict , a cult of personality , and subordination of the interests of foreign communist parties to those of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , which Stalinism deemed the leading vanguard party of communist revolution at

6962-591: The deportations. Individual circumstances of those spending time in German-occupied territories were not examined. After the brief Nazi occupation of the Caucasus , the entire population of five of the small highland peoples and the Crimean Tatars —more than a million people in total—were deported without notice or any opportunity to take their possessions. As a result of Stalin's lack of trust in

7080-640: The disproportions and imbalances which became characteristic of Stalinist planning in the 1930s such as the underdeveloped consumer base along with the priority focus on heavy industry were due to a number of avoidable problems. He argued that the industrial drive had been enacted under more severe circumstances, several years later and in a less rational manner than originally conceived by the Left Opposition. Fredric Jameson has said that "Stalinism was…a success and fulfilled its historic mission, socially as well as economically" given that it "modernized

7198-499: The establishment of the socialist republic in postwar Hungary . He attributed the poor showing of the Hungarian Communist Party in the October 1945 Budapest municipal elections to the number of minorities in leadership positions, arguing that it was "detrimental to the party that its leaders are not of Hungarian origin". In 1952, Voroshilov was appointed a member of the Presidium of the Communist Party of

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7316-547: The fall of 1920, White guards armies of Pyotr Wrangel were conducting some military operations against the Workers and Peasants Red Army (RKKA). During this period the gubernatorial seat was relocated from Luhansk to Bakhmut (which in 1924 was renamed Artemivsk). Following the retreat of White Guards from the region, Donets Governorate was visited by Leon Trotsky who on 19 November 1920 wrote to Lenin , Situation in Donbas

7434-407: The heritage of his birth-country (Ukraine) and to the previous family name of Voroshylo . In his published autobiography, Voroshilov described a childhood of extreme hardship, working from the age of six or seven, and receiving frequent beatings from wealthy peasants, which left him with a lifelong aversion to ' kulaks '. He grew up illiterate, until he was able to enroll in a newly opened school in

7552-489: The high-profile executions in this period. Many military leaders were convicted of treason, and a large-scale purge of Red Army officers followed. The repression of many formerly high-ranking revolutionaries and party members led Trotsky to claim that a "river of blood" separated Stalin's regime from Lenin's. In August 1940, Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico, where he had lived in exile since January 1937. This eliminated

7670-770: The hospital himself, fully decorated. Voroshilov died on 2 December, at the age of 88, and was buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis , in one of the twelve individual tombs located between the Lenin Mausoleum and the Kremlin wall . Voroshilov was married to Ekaterina Voroshilova , born Golda Gorbman, a Ukrainian Jew from Mardarovka. She changed her name when she converted to Orthodox Christianity in order to be allowed to marry Voroshilov. They met while both were exiled in Arkhangelsk , where Ekaterina

7788-424: The idea of " permanent revolution "—by presenting the latter as a defeatist with little faith in Russian workers' abilities to construct socialism. The term Stalinism came into prominence during the mid-1930s when Lazar Kaganovich , a Soviet politician and associate of Stalin, reportedly declared: "Let's replace Long Live Leninism with Long Live Stalinism!" Stalin dismissed this as excessive and contributing to

7906-467: The industrial and agricultural face of the Soviet Union. This became known as the Great Turn as Russia turned away from the mixed-economic type New Economic Policy (NEP) and adopted a planned economy . Lenin implemented the NEP to ensure the survival of the socialist state following seven years of war ( World War I , 1914–1917, and the subsequent Civil War , 1917–1921) and rebuilt Soviet production to its 1913 levels. But Russia still lagged far behind

8024-659: The industrial successes were far less than claimed, and the Soviet-style industrialization was "an anti-innovative dead-end." Stephen Kotkin said those who argue collectivization was necessary are "dead wrong", writing that it "only seemed necessary within the straitjacket of Communist ideology and its repudiation of capitalism. And economically, collectivization failed to deliver." Kotkin further claimed that it decreased harvests instead of increasing them, as peasants tended to resist heavy taxes by producing fewer goods, caring only about their own subsistence. According to several Western historians, Stalinist agricultural policies were

8142-450: The influence of alcohol; he judged those convicted of political crimes or acts with financial motives more harshly. During his tenure, many individuals sentenced to death had their punishments commuted to prison terms of varying lengths. The authors of the study observe that his successor, Brezhnev, took a noticeably harder line in appeals cases. However, the contrast between Voroshilov's relatively magnanimous attitude toward pardon cases in

8260-441: The instigators of these reforms which positively impacted the Red Army. These commanders themselves turned out not to be able to carry out such operations in practice. Voroshilov and Kulik turned out to be unable to put these reforms into practice. One of these reforms was a reorganization of Red Army field units which accidentally moved Red Army organization to a far less advanced state than it had been in 1936. This reorganization

8378-542: The intellectual left; Rykov , Bukharin , and Tomsky to the pragmatic right; and the powerful Trotsky, who belonged to no side but his own. None would even consider Stalin's concept a potential addition to communist ideology. Stalin's socialism in one country doctrine could not be imposed until he had come close to being the Soviet Union's autocratic ruler around 1929. Bukharin and the Right Opposition expressed their support for imposing Stalin's ideas, as Trotsky had been exiled, and Zinoviev and Kamenev had been expelled from

8496-605: The last of Stalin's opponents among the former Party leadership. Mass operations of the NKVD also targeted "national contingents" (foreign ethnicities) such as Poles , ethnic Germans , and Koreans . A total of 350,000 (144,000 of them Poles) were arrested and 247,157 (110,000 Poles) were executed. Many Americans who had emigrated to the Soviet Union during the worst of the Great Depression were executed, while others were sent to prison camps or gulags. Concurrent with

8614-599: The latter imagery having gained ascendency during the Great Patrotic War and Cold War . Some scholars have argued that Stalin took an active involvement with the construction of the cult of personality with writers such as Isaac Deutscher and Erik van Ree noting that Stalin had absorbed elements from the cult of Tsars, Orthodox Christianity and highlighting specific acts such as Lenin's embalming . Yet, other scholars have drawn on primary accounts from Stalin's associates such as Molotov which suggested he took

8732-502: The loyalty of particular ethnicities, groups such as the Soviet Koreans , Volga Germans , Crimean Tatars, Chechens , and many Poles, were forcibly moved out of strategic areas and relocated to places in the central Soviet Union, especially Kazakhstan . By some estimates, hundreds of thousands of deportees may have died en route. It is estimated that between 1941 and 1949, nearly 3.3 million people were deported to Siberia and

8850-452: The murder, including Trotsky, Lev Kamenev , and Grigory Zinoviev . Thereafter, the investigations and trials expanded. Stalin passed a new law on "terrorist organizations and terrorist acts" that were to be investigated for no more than ten days, with no prosecution, defense attorneys, or appeals, followed by a sentence to be imposed "quickly." Stalin's Politburo also issued directives on quotas for mass arrests and executions. Under Stalin,

8968-628: The names now of the boyars Ivan the Terrible got rid of? No one." In addition, Stalin dispatched a contingent of NKVD operatives to Mongolia , established a Mongolian version of the NKVD troika , and unleashed a bloody purge in which tens of thousands were executed as "Japanese spies", as Mongolian ruler Khorloogiin Choibalsan closely followed Stalin's lead. Stalin had ordered for 100,000 Buddhist lamas in Mongolia to be liquidated but

9086-589: The need for industrialization in the Soviet Union was emphasized because the Soviet Union had previously fallen behind economically compared to Western countries and also because socialist society needed industry to face the challenges posed by internal and external enemies of communism. Rapid industrialization was accompanied by mass collectivization of agriculture and rapid urbanization , which converted many small villages into industrial cities . To accelerate industrialization's development, Stalin imported materials, ideas, expertise, and workers from western Europe and

9204-477: The officer corps. He openly declared that the saboteurs in the Red Army were few in number and tried to save the lives of officers like Lukin , who would serve with distinction during the Second World War, and Sokolov-Strakhov, and he was sometimes successful. But on 30 May, he telephoned the commander of the Ukraine military district, Iona Yakir ordering him to take a train to Moscow for a meeting of

9322-760: The order for their execution in the Katyn massacre of 1940. Between 1941 and 1944, Voroshilov was a member of the State Defense Committee . After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Voroshilov became commander of the short-lived Northwestern Direction (July to August 1941), controlling several fronts . In September 1941 he commanded the Leningrad Front . Working alongside military commander Andrei Zhdanov as German advances threatened to cut off Leningrad , he displayed considerable personal bravery in defiance of heavy shelling at Ivanovskoye; at one point he rallied retreating troops and personally led

9440-425: The party. In a 1936 interview with journalist Roy W. Howard , Stalin articulated his rejection of world revolution and said, "We never had such plans and intentions" and "The export of revolution is nonsense". Traditional communist thought holds that the state will gradually " wither away " as the implementation of socialism reduces class distinction. But Stalin argued that the proletarian state (as opposed to

9558-620: The party. Voroshilov died in 1969 at the age of 88. Voroshilov was born in the settlement of Verkhnyeye, Bakhmut uyezd , Yekaterinoslav Governorate , Russian Empire (now part of Lysychansk city in Luhansk Oblast , Ukraine ). His father, a former soldier, was employed at different times as a railway worker or miner, and went through periods of unemployment. According to the Soviet Major General Petro Grigorenko , Voroshilov himself alluded to

9676-407: The people", starting the cycle of public persecution, often proceeding to interrogation, torture, and deportation, if not death. The Russian word troika thereby gained a new meaning: a quick, simplified trial by a committee of three subordinated to the NKVD troika—with sentencing carried out within 24 hours. Stalin's hand-picked executioner Vasili Blokhin was entrusted with carrying out some of

9794-727: The political leader Peljidiin Genden resisted the order. Under Stalinist influence in the Mongolian People's Republic , an estimated 17,000 monks were killed, official figures show. Stalinist forces also oversaw purges of anti-Stalinist elements among the Spanish Republican insurgents, including the Trotskyist allied POUM faction and anarchist groups, during the Spanish Civil War . During

9912-765: The political line of the party, because he was from a working class, a common man, very good orator. He was clean, yes. And he was personally devoted to Stalin. But his devotion was not very strong. However in this period he advocated Stalin very actively, supported him in everything, though not entirely sure in everything. It also affected their relationship. This is a very complex issue. This must be taken into account to understand why Stalin treated him critically and not invited him at all our conversations. At least at private ones. But he came by himself. Stalin frowned. Under Khrushchev, Voroshilov behaved badly." The Kliment Voroshilov (KV) series of tanks , used in World War II,

10030-575: The purges, efforts were made to rewrite the history in Soviet textbooks and other propaganda materials. Notable people executed by NKVD were removed from the texts and photographs as though they had never existed. In light of revelations from Soviet archives, historians now estimate that nearly 700,000 people (353,074 in 1937 and 328,612 in 1938) were executed in the course of the terror, the great mass of them ordinary Soviet citizens: workers, peasants, homemakers, teachers, priests, musicians, soldiers, pensioners, ballerinas, and beggars. Scholars estimate

10148-574: The recruitment into the Red Army of former officers from the Tsarist army. Voroshilov served as a member of the Central Committee from his election in 1921 until 1961. In April 1921, he was appointed commander of the North Caucasus military district. In March 1924, he was promoted to the post of commander of the Moscow military district. In 1925, after the death of Mikhail Frunze , Voroshilov

10266-504: The regimes Stalin and Lenin proposed. Some historians, such as Richard Pipes , consider Stalinism the natural consequence of Leninism: Stalin "faithfully implemented Lenin's domestic and foreign policy programs." Robert Service writes that "institutionally and ideologically Lenin laid the foundations for a Stalin [...] but the passage from Leninism to the worse terrors of Stalinism was not smooth and inevitable." Likewise, historian and Stalin biographer Edvard Radzinsky believes that Stalin

10384-786: The region was confirmed by the Sovnarkom (Council of People's Commissars of the Russian SFSR). In April 1920 the Donets Governorate was reestablished from the eastern portions of Yekaterinoslav and Kharkov Governorates as well as territories of the liquidated Don Republic . After defeat of Denikin, in the region were formed Bolshevik "ChON" detachments (special purpose detachments) of local Communist and Komsomol activists who fought against their former allied Makhno formations (so called "local banditry"). The struggle against so called " Makhnovshchina " continued until 1922. In

10502-411: The role of workers in advanced capitalist countries (e.g., he considered the U.S. working class "bourgeoisified" labor aristocracy ). All other October Revolution 1917 Bolshevik leaders regarded their revolution more or less as just the beginning, with Russia as the springboard on the road toward worldwide revolution. Stalin introduced the idea of socialism in one country by the autumn of 1924,

10620-561: The rudimentary nature of the command structure in tank units and other modern arms. When the Great Purge ended, some reforms were undertaken by the high command to reconcile Red Army doctrine (for example deep operations doctrine ) with the real state of the Red Army. The politically appointed commanders of the post-purge Red Army saw that the army, especially after the purge, was not suitable to carry out deep operations style warfare. Commanders such as Voroshilov and Kulik were among

10738-461: The same conclusion as Radzinsky and Kotkin (that Lenin had built a culture of violent autocratic totalitarianism of which Stalinism was a logical extension). Proponents of continuity cite a variety of contributory factors, such as that Lenin, not Stalin, introduced the Red Terror with its hostage-taking and internment camps , and that Lenin developed the infamous Article 58 and established

10856-516: The start. Other revisionist historians such as Orlando Figes , while critical of the Soviet era, acknowledge that Lenin actively sought to counter Stalin's growing influence, allying with Trotsky in 1922–23, opposing Stalin on foreign trade , and proposing party reforms including the democratization of the Central Committee and recruitment of 50-100 ordinary workers into the party's lower organs. Critics include anti-Stalinist communists such as Trotsky, who pointed out that Lenin attempted to persuade

10974-482: The status of cavalry in the Red Army but Voroshilov openly declared his intention to do the opposite. He praised the army's combined arms warfare capabilities as well as the high quality and ability to take initiative of the officers during the 1936 summer manoeuvers. However he also pointed out issues in the Red Army as a whole in his full report. Among the issues he pointed out were insufficient communication, ineffective staffs, insufficient cooperation between arms, and

11092-560: The theoretical debates within the Communist Party, namely by developing the idea of " Socialism in One Country ". This concept was intricately linked to factional struggles within the party, particularly against Trotsky. He first developed the idea in December 1924 and elaborated upon in his writings of 1925–26. Stalin's doctrine held that socialism could be completed in Russia but that its final victory could not be guaranteed because of

11210-628: The threat from capitalist intervention. For this reason, he retained the Leninist view that world revolution was still a necessity to ensure the ultimate victory of socialism. Although retaining the Marxist belief that the state would wither away as socialism transformed into pure communism, he believed that the Soviet state would remain until the final defeat of international capitalism. This concept synthesised Marxist and Leninist ideas with nationalist ideals, and served to discredit Trotsky—who promoted

11328-405: The time. After Stalin's death and the Khrushchev Thaw , a period of de-Stalinization began in the 1950s and 1960s, which caused the influence of Stalin's ideology to begin to wane in the USSR. Stalin's regime forcibly purged society of what it saw as threats to itself and its brand of communism (so-called " enemies of the people "), which included political dissidents , non-Soviet nationalists,

11446-496: The total death toll for the Great Purge (1936–1938) including fatalities attributed to imprisonment to be roughly 700,000-1.2 million. Many of the executed were interred in mass graves , with some significant killing and burial sites being Bykivnia , Kurapaty , and Butovo . Some Western experts believe the evidence released from the Soviet archives is understated, incomplete or unreliable. Conversely, historian Stephen G. Wheatcroft , who spent much of his career researching

11564-407: The various measures carried out by Stalin that were actually a continuation of anti-democratic trends and measures implemented under Lenin…in so many ways, Stalin acted, not in line with Lenin's clear instructions, but in defiance of them." In doing so, some historians have tried to distance Stalinism from Leninism to undermine the totalitarian view that Stalin's methods were inherent in communism from

11682-427: The views of opponents through an array of employed historians alongside economists to justify policy manoeuvering and safeguarding its own set of material interests. He cited a range of historical documents such as private letters, telegrams, party speeches, meeting minutes , and suppressed texts such as Lenin's Testament . British historian Orlando Figes argued that "The urge to silence Trotsky, and all criticism of

11800-399: Was a genuine follower of Lenin, exactly as he claimed. Another Stalin biographer, Stephen Kotkin , wrote that "his violence was not the product of his subconscious but of the Bolshevik engagement with Marxist–Leninist ideology." Dmitri Volkogonov , who wrote biographies of both Lenin and Stalin, wrote that during the 1960s through 1980s, an official patriotic Soviet de-Stalinized view of

11918-560: Was a prominent Soviet military officer and politician during the Stalin-era (1924-1953). He was one of the original five Marshals of the Soviet Union , the second highest military rank of the Soviet Union (junior to the Generalissimo of the Soviet Union , which was a post only held by Joseph Stalin ), and served as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet , the nominal Soviet head of state , from 1953 to 1960. Born to

12036-471: Was abolished. Created in 1919 as a temporary governorate, originally consisted of two counties of Yekaterinoslav Governorate Kliment Voroshylov Kliment Yefremovich Voroshilov ( Russian : Климент Ефремович Ворошилов pronounced ; Ukrainian : Климент Охрімович Ворошилов , romanized :  Klyment Okhrimovych Voroshylov ), popularly known as Klim Voroshilov (Russian: Клим Ворошилов ; 4 February 1881 – 2 December 1969),

12154-467: Was also marked by militant atheism, mass anti-religious persecution , and ethnic cleansing through forced deportations . Some historians, such as Robert Service , have blamed Stalinist policies, particularly collectivization, for causing famines such as the Holodomor . Other historians and scholars disagree on Stalinism's role. Officially designed to accelerate development toward communism ,

12272-558: Was appointed People's Commissar (Minister) for Defence in 1934 and a Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1935. During the first of the Moscow trials , in August 1936, Voroshilov was one of four Politburo members who signed the order that appeals for clemency were to be denied and that the defendants were to be executed without delay. He was also of the main speakers at the March 1937 plenum of

12390-653: Was appointed People's Commissar for Military and Navy Affairs and Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the USSR , a post he held until 1934. Despite the high offices he held, Voroshilov appears not to have been part in the inner leadership. In November 1930, the chairman of the Russian government, Sergey Syrtsov alleged that a "tiny group", which excluded Voroshilov but included nominally much less senior figures such as Pavel Postyshev ,

12508-586: Was chairman of the town soviet, and was elected to the Constituent Assembly . His military career began early in 1918, when he was given command of the Fifth Ukrainian Army, which was made up of a few scattered units, who were driven out of Ukraine by the German army. After a long, hazardous retreat, his group reached Tsaritsyn, where Stalin was posted in summer 1918 as representative of the central party leadership, and where Voroshilov

12626-474: Was conceived by Kulik but put into practice by Voroshilov. When territorial units were abolished Voroshilov noted that among the reasons for disbanding them was inability to train conscripts in the use of modern technology. He had openly proclaimed that the system was inadequate in an era in which imperialist powers (such as Germany ) were expanding the capabilities of their armies. The territorial units had been very unpopular, not only with Voroshilov, but with

12744-499: Was depicted as the chief discipline during the revolution. However, in reality, Stalin was considered a relatively unknown figure with secondary importance at the time of the event. In his book, The Stalin School of Falsification , Leon Trotsky argued that the Stalinist faction routinely distorted political events, forged a theoretical basis for irreconcilable concepts such as the notion of "Socialism in One Country" and misrepresented

12862-592: Was given command of the Tenth Army. Stalin and Voroshilov led the Red Army 's 1918 defense of Tsaritsyn . They also sponsored the creation of the first Red Cavalry unit, commanded by Semyon Budyonny , which was composed chiefly of peasants from southern Russia. During the Polish–Soviet War , Voroshilov was political commissar with Budienny's First Cavalry. In Tsaritsyn, Voroshilov clashed with Leon Trotsky ,

12980-532: Was glorified as a central figure to the October Revolution . Conversely, the roles of other Soviet figures such as Lenin and Trotsky were diminished or misrepresented. In the aftermath of the succession struggle, in which Stalin had defeated both Left and Right Opposition , a cult of Stalin had materialised. From 1929 until 1953, there was a proliferation of architecture , statues , posters , banners and iconography featuring Stalin in which he

13098-474: Was increasingly identified with the state and seen as an emblem of Marxism. In July 1930, a state decree instructed 200 artists to prepare propaganda posters for the Five Year Plans and collectivsation measures. Historian Anita Pisch drew specific focus to the various manifestations of the personality cult in which Stalin was associated with the "Father", "Saviour" and "Warrior" cultural archetypes with

13216-554: Was making decisions "behind the back of the Politburo". His main accomplishment in this period was to move key Soviet war industries east of the Urals, so that the Soviet Union could strategically retreat, while keeping its manufacturing capability intact. Frunze's political position adhered to that of the Troika ( Grigory Zinoviev , Lev Kamenev , Stalin), but Stalin preferred to have a close, personal ally in charge (as opposed to Frunze,

13334-635: Was named after him. Two towns were also named after him: Voroshilovsk in Donbas (now Alchevsk) Voroshilovgrad in Ukraine (now changed back to the historical Luhansk ) and Voroshilov in the Soviet Far East (now renamed Ussuriysk after the Ussuri river), as well as the General Staff Academy in Moscow. Stavropol was called Voroshilovsk from 1935 to 1943. Stalinism Stalinism ( Russian : Сталинизм , Stalinizm )

13452-700: Was part of the South Russia , the Russian White South. With the defeat of the Denikin's armies, the governorate was under special jurisdiction of Donets Gubernatorial Executive Committee, while revival of local economy was conducted by the Ukrainian Industrial Bureau. On 15 March 1920 new administrative border contours were confirmed by the head of Ukrainian Soviet Labour Army, Iosif Stalin . On 23 March 1920 recreation of

13570-575: Was sent in 1906. While both serving on the Tsaritsyn Front in 1918, where Ekaterina was helping orphans, they adopted a four-year-old orphan boy who they named Petya. They also adopted the children of Mikhail Frunze following his death in 1925. During Stalin's rule, they lived in the Kremlin at the Horse Guards. His personality as it was described by Molotov in 1974: "Voroshilov was nice, but only in certain times. He always stood for

13688-455: Was sometimes outvoted... Throughout his tenure as Presidium chair, he behaved like someone who believed that one should follow established procedure and not act too quickly in matters of life and death." Hardy and Skorobogatov indicate that Voroshilov frequently exerted his influence on the committee toward leniency, especially in the case of those who expressed repentance in their appeal documents and those convicted of crimes of passion or under

13806-503: Was subject to public denunciation, many of his ideas were rejected on ideological grounds and condemned as "bourgeois idealism" in the Stalin era. A policy of ideological repression impacted various disciplinary fields such as genetics , cybernetics , biology , linguistics , physics , sociology , psychology , pedology , mathematical logic , economics and statistics . Pseudoscientific theories of Trofim Lysenko were favoured over other scientific disciplines during

13924-470: Was the only time he ever witnessed such an outburst. Voroshilov was nonetheless made the scapegoat for the initial failures in Finland. He was later replaced as Defense Commissar by Semyon Timoshenko . Voroshilov was then made Deputy Premier responsible for cultural matters. Voroshilov initially argued that thousands of Polish army officers captured in September 1939 should be released, but he later signed

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