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Martemyan Ryutin

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Martemyan Nikitich Ryutin (Russian: Мартемьян Никитич Рютин , romanized : Martem'yan Nikítich Ryutin ; 13 February 1890 – 10 January 1937) was a Russian Marxist activist, Bolshevik revolutionary, and a political functionary of the Russian Communist Party . Ryutin is best remembered as the leader of a pro-peasant political faction organized against Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in the early 1930s and as the primary author of a 200-page oppositional platform. Ryutin was arrested by the Soviet secret police, along with his co-thinkers, in what has come to be known as the Ryutin Affair . He was executed in January 1937 as part of the "Yezhovshchina" ( Great Purge ) conducted against political oppositionists and suspected economic " wreckers " and spies.

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130-718: During the final years of the Soviet Union , Ryutin was politically rehabilitated, and his lengthy critique of Stalin and his policies was published for the first time. The document saw its first edition in English translation in 2010. Martemyan Nikitich Ryutin was born on February 13 [ O.S. February 1] 1890 to a peasant family in Verkhne-Ryutino, a village in Irkutsk oblast in Siberia , then part of

260-655: A famine between 1930 and 1933 that killed millions. The Soviet forced labour camp system of the Gulag was expanded. During the late 1930s, Stalin's government conducted the Great Purge to remove opponents, resulting in mass death, imprisonment, and deportation. In 1939, the USSR and Nazi Germany signed a nonaggression pact , but in 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union in the largest land invasion in history, opening

390-481: A transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. During its existence, it was the largest country by area , extending across eleven time zones and sharing borders with twelve countries , and the third-most populous country . An overall successor to the Russian Empire , it was nominally organized as a federal union of national republics , the largest and most populous of which

520-820: A Siberian reserve regiment, and was transferred to Harbin , in China, where he was elected chairman of the Harbin garrison Soviet during the February Revolution , and joined the Bolsheviks in summer 1917, around the time that he was elected chairman of Harbin Soviet , but in December was forced to return to Irkutsk after the Chinese had threatened military action against radicalised Russian units in Harbin. During

650-711: A byproduct of the glasnost campaign of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev , the Supreme Court of the USSR formally rehabilitated Martemyan Ryutin. The so-called Ryutin Platform, long locked in the archives of the KGB, was published for the first time in 1990, serialized in five parts in the official journal of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Izvestiya TsK KPSS (News of

780-566: A call for armed revolution. On September 22, 1932, Ryutin was arrested and held for investigation. At his first interrogation, held September 24, Ryutin confirmed that he had been politically opposed to Stalin and his policies since 1928. On September 27, the Central Control Commission decided to expel 14 members of the party due to their alleged connection with Ryutin's factional group. At a second investigative hearing, conducted September 28, Ryutin acknowledged authorship of

910-665: A camp in Central Asia in 1937 and his older son Vassily (born 1910) shot to death in Lefortovo prison in that same year. His widow was sent to a camp of the Gulag located in Karaganda , where she also perished. Only a daughter, Lyubov Ryutina, survived the terror. At the 20th Congress of the CPSU , Ryutin's daughter proposed the posthumous rehabilitation of her father and two brothers. This effort failed. On June 13, 1988, as

1040-541: A closer relationship with France and Britain. In 1939, half a year after the Munich Agreement , the USSR attempted to form an anti-Nazi alliance with France and Britain. Adolf Hitler proposed a better deal, which would give the USSR control over much of Eastern Europe through the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact . In September, Germany invaded Poland, and the USSR also invaded later that month, resulting in

1170-532: A death sentence for Ryutin during Politburo deliberations, ultimately a 10-year sentence in prison resulted from his pro forma trial. Ryutin was sent first to the Ural region before being returned to Suzdal , northeast of Moscow near the city of Vladimir . In prison, he was thrown into the company of left wing oppositionists to whom he had dealt out such rough treatment five years earlier. A fellow prisoner, Ante Ciliga wrote: Ryutin in prison! This same Ryutin who ...

1300-476: A fleet of strategic bombers and during war situation was to eradicate enemy infrastructure and nuclear capacity. The air force also had a number of fighters and tactical bombers to support the army in the war. Strategic missile forces had more than 1,400 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), deployed between 28 bases and 300 command centers. War Communism War communism or military communism ( Russian : Военный коммунизм , Vojenný kommunizm )

1430-519: A greater union which he initially named as the Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia (Russian: Союз Советских Республик Европы и Азии , romanized : Soyuz Sovyetskikh Respublik Evropy i Azii ). Joseph Stalin initially resisted Lenin's proposal but ultimately accepted it, and with Lenin's agreement he changed the name to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), although all republics began as socialist soviet and did not change to

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1560-495: A list of names of those expelled for participation in the Ryutin group. The expulsions meted were for a period of one year. The Ryutin Platform was different from previous communist oppositional documents in that it was almost completely suppressed. As historian Catherine Merridale notes "The official attitude towards the 1932 crisis was to pretend all was well; the press was full of accounts of successes and improvements. To have

1690-404: A massive fall in the real income of the working class, high taxation, and an inflationary fall in the value of the currency. In the countryside, Ryutin declared, expropriation through the exertion of brute force had created "appalling impoverishment of the masses and famine" and the flight of "all the young and healthy people" from the countryside. Millions of surplus people cluttered the cities of

1820-550: A medium of exchange and, by 1921, heavy industry output had fallen to 20% of 1913 levels. 90% of wages were paid with goods rather than money. 70% of locomotives were in need of repair, and food requisitioning, combined with the effects of seven years of war and a severe drought, contributed to a famine that caused between 3 and 10 million deaths. Coal production decreased from 27.5 million tons (1913) to 7 million tons (1920), while overall factory production also declined from 10,000 million roubles to 1,000 million roubles. According to

1950-432: A membership of "fifteen at most." Outside of this small group, it seems that only a handful of party leaders were familiar with the content of the document, including most notably Nikolai Uglanov, According to his widow, Nikolai Bukharin was not aware of the document or its content. What is clear is that when the secret police discovered the existence of the document, they took its appeal to "destroy Stalin's dictatorship" as

2080-597: A new profitable market. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Stalin ordered Marxist-Leninist parties across the world to strongly oppose non-Marxist political parties, labour unions or other organizations on the left, which they labelled social fascists . In the usage of the Soviet Union, and of the Comintern and its affiliated parties in this period, the epithet fascist was used to describe capitalist society in general and virtually any anti-Soviet or anti-Stalinist activity or opinion. Stalin reversed himself in 1934 with

2210-457: A radical restructuring of Soviet agriculture through a drive for collectivization . The Central Committee determined to send Ryutin back to his native village in Siberia to report on the progress of collectivization in the grain-producing areas of Siberia. As a child of a peasant family, Ryutin understood full well the unpopularity of the collectivization idea with the peasantry as a whole, and

2340-631: A status that is retained by the Russian Federation . Covering a sixth of Earth's land surface, its size was comparable to that of North America . Two other successor states, Kazakhstan and Ukraine , rank among the top 10 countries by land area, and the largest country entirely in Europe, respectively. The European portion accounted for a quarter of the country's area and was the cultural and economic center. The eastern part in Asia extended to

2470-584: A thirst for a new, this time bloody, reprisal, I have categorically refused and continue to refuse to plead guilty to the charges brought against me." On January 10, 1937, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced him to death. He was executed that same day. The rest of Ryutin's family also suffered brutal repression at the hands of the state, with his younger son Vissarion (born 1913) similarly retried and executed in

2600-475: A union of equals, in practice the Soviet Union was dominated by Russians . The domination was so absolute that for most of its existence, the country was commonly (but incorrectly) referred to as 'Russia'. While the Russian SFSR was technically only one republic within the larger union, it was by far the largest (both in terms of population and area), most powerful, and most highly developed. The Russian SFSR

2730-510: Is derived from the Russian word sovet (Russian: совет ), meaning 'council', 'assembly', 'advice', ultimately deriving from the proto-Slavic verbal stem of * vět-iti ('to inform'), related to Slavic věst ('news'), English wise . The word sovietnik means 'councillor'. Some organizations in Russian history were called council (Russian: совет ). In the Russian Empire ,

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2860-587: Is his background, his education , his profession . These are the questions that will determine the fate of the accused. That is the meaning and essence of the Red Terror ." During his rule, Stalin always made the final policy decisions. Otherwise, Soviet foreign policy was set by the commission on the Foreign Policy of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , or by

2990-520: The Council of People's Commissars ), headed by the Chairman (Premier) and managing an enormous bureaucracy responsible for the administration of the economy and society. State and party structures of the constituent republics largely emulated the structure of the central institutions, although the Russian SFSR, unlike the other constituent republics, for most of its history had no republican branch of

3120-606: The Eastern Front of World War II . The Soviets played a decisive role in defeating the Axis powers , suffering an estimated 27 million casualties , which accounted for most Allied losses. In the aftermath of the war , the Soviet Union consolidated the territory occupied by the Red Army , forming satellite states , and undertook rapid economic development which cemented its status as a superpower . Geopolitical tensions with

3250-755: The Land Forces , the Air Force , the Navy , Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) and the Internal Troops . The OGPU later became independent and in 1934 joined the NKVD secret police, and so its internal troops were under the joint leadership of the defense and internal commissariats. After World War II, Strategic Missile Forces (1959), Air Defense Forces (1948) and National Civil Defense Forces (1970) were formed, which ranked first, third, and sixth in

3380-528: The Moscow State Institute of International Relations . The Marxist-Leninist leadership of the Soviet Union intensely debated foreign policy issues and changed directions several times. Even after Stalin assumed dictatorial control in the late 1920s, there were debates, and he frequently changed positions. During the country's early period, it was assumed that Communist revolutions would break out soon in every major industrial country, and it

3510-597: The Pacific Ocean to the east and Afghanistan to the south, and, except some areas in Central Asia , was much less populous. It spanned over 10,000 kilometres (6,200 mi) east to west across 11 time zones , and over 7,200 kilometres (4,500 mi) north to south. It had five climate zones: tundra , taiga , steppes , desert and mountains . The USSR, like Russia , had the world's longest border , measuring over 60,000 kilometres (37,000 mi), or 1 + 1 ⁄ 2 circumferences of Earth. Two-thirds of it

3640-790: The Popular Front program that called on all Marxist parties to join with all anti-Fascist political, labour, and organizational forces that were opposed to fascism , especially of the Nazi variety. The rapid growth of power in Nazi Germany encouraged both Paris and Moscow to form a military alliance, and the Franco-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance was signed in May 1935. A firm believer in collective security, Stalin's foreign minister Maxim Litvinov worked very hard to form

3770-527: The Red Army in halting the advance of the White Army , and in helping the Bolsheviks to re-conquer most of the territory of the former Russian Empire . In the cities and surrounding countryside, the population experienced hardships as a result of the war. Peasants, because of the extreme scarcity, were beginning to refuse to co-operate in giving food for the war effort. Workers began migrating from

3900-823: The Russian Civil War which followed the 1917 revolution, Ryutin commanded a military group in the Irkutsk region. Following his time in the military, Ryutin became a full-time political functionary of the Russian Communist Party (bolsheviks) , the RKP(b). From 1920 to 1921 he was the head of the Irkutsk Guberniya Committee of the RKP(b). In 1922 he was made Secretary of the Dagestan Oblast Committee of

4030-755: The Russian Empire . He was descended from an Estonian rebel who was exiled to Siberia in 1830. He worked in a factory from the age of 13, but later graduated from the Irkutsk Teachers' Seminary, and worked as a teacher and journalist. In October 1914, he joined the Menshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party Drafted into the Russian Army in June 1915, he reached the rank of ensign in

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4160-516: The Soviet republics , and the control of the Communist Party weakened. The failed coup attempt in August 1991 against Gorbachev by hardline communists hastened the end of the Soviet Union , which formally dissolved on December 26, 1991, ending nearly seven decades of Soviet rule. With an area of 22,402,200 square kilometres (8,649,500 sq mi), the Soviet Union was the world's largest country,

4290-702: The State Council , which functioned from 1810 to 1917, was referred to as a Council of Ministers. The Soviets as workers' councils first appeared during the 1905 Russian Revolution . Although they were quickly suppressed by the Imperial army, after the February Revolution of 1917 , workers' and soldiers' Soviets emerged throughout the country and shared power with the Russian Provisional Government . The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin , demanded that all power be transferred to

4420-635: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), saying that it was "overly juridical" and potentially infringed on national sovereignty. The Soviet Union later signed legally-binding human rights documents, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1973 (and the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights ), but they were neither widely known or accessible to people living under Communist rule, nor were they taken seriously by

4550-467: The dictatorship of the proletariat have been led into an unknown blind alley by Stalin and his retinue and are now living through a mortally dangerous crisis. With the help of deception and slander, with the help of unbelievable pressures and terror, Stalin in the last five years has sifted out and removed from the leadership all the best, genuinely Bolshevik party cadres, has established in the VKP(b) and in

4680-769: The largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world . As an Allied nation, it was a founding member of the United Nations as well as one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council . Before its dissolution, the USSR was one of the world's two superpowers through its hegemony in Eastern Europe, global diplomatic and ideological influence (particularly in the Global South ), military and economic strengths, and scientific accomplishments. The word soviet

4810-485: The right to food , the right to work , and the right to education . The Soviet conception of human rights was very different from international law . According to Soviet legal theory , "it is the government who is the beneficiary of human rights which are to be asserted against the individual". The Soviet state was considered as the source of human rights. Therefore, the Soviet legal system considered law an arm of politics and it also considered courts agencies of

4940-470: The ruling and military castes to maintain power and control in the Soviet regions, rather than any coherent political ideology . The Soviet propaganda justified it by claiming that the Bolsheviks adopted this policy with the goal of keeping towns (the proletarian power-base) and the Red Army stocked with food and weapons since circumstances dictated new economic measures. The deadly Russian famine of 1921–22 , which killed about five million people,

5070-548: The "reddest of the reds". The nature of these uprisings and their leadership were also of significant concern because they were generally left-wing uprisings led by opposition leftists, thus creating competition with the Bolsheviks. According to David Christian , the Cheka, the state Communist Party secret police, reported 118 peasant uprisings in February 1921. David Christian, in his book Imperial and Soviet Russia , summarises

5200-703: The 1920s, it refused to rubber stamp proposals from the party and Council of Ministers. In 1990, Gorbachev introduced and assumed the position of the President of the Soviet Union , concentrated power in his executive office, independent of the party, and subordinated the government, now renamed the Cabinet of Ministers of the USSR , to himself. Tensions grew between the Union-wide authorities under Gorbachev, reformists led in Russia by Boris Yeltsin and controlling

5330-482: The 1950s, the Soviet Union expanded its efforts in space exploration and took a lead in the Space Race with the first artificial satellite , the first human spaceflight , the first space station , and the first probe to land on another planet . In 1985, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev , sought to reform the country through his policies of glasnost and perestroika . In 1989, various countries of

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5460-601: The 1990s, people in the West were also interested in the radioactive hazards of nuclear facilities, decommissioned nuclear submarines , and the processing of nuclear waste or spent nuclear fuel . It was also known in the early 1990s that the USSR had transported radioactive material to the Barents Sea and Kara Sea , which was later confirmed by the Russian parliament. The crash of the K-141 Kursk submarine in 2000 in

5590-488: The Bolshevik leaders expected an immediate and large-scale increase in economic output. This view was also held by Bukharin, who said that "We conceived War Communism as the universal, so to say 'normal' form of the economic policy of the victorious proletariat and not as being related to the war, that is, conforming to a definite state of the civil war". War communism was largely successful at its primary purpose of aiding

5720-630: The Bolsheviks to win the Civil War and stabilize the crisis of the nation. Trotsky had proposed the principles underlying the N.E.P. in 1921 to the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to mitigate urgent economic matters arising from war communism and reproached Lenin privately about the delayed government response in 1922-1923. A black market emerged in Russia, despite the threat of martial law against profiteering. The ruble collapsed, with barter increasingly replacing money as

5850-401: The CC of the CPSU). The source of this publication was an official typescript of the original handwritten document; the original, if it still exists in the archives, remains to be located. The Ryutin Platform was published in English translation for the first time in 2010. Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ( USSR ), commonly known as the Soviet Union , was

5980-427: The CPSU, being ruled directly by the union-wide party until 1990. Local authorities were organized likewise into party committees , local Soviets and executive committees . While the state system was nominally federal, the party was unitary. The state security police (the KGB and its predecessor agencies ) played an important role in Soviet politics. It was instrumental in the Red Terror and Great Purge , but

6110-410: The Communist Party in the fall of 1930. Ryutin was accused of "propagandizing right-opportunist views" and the move was made not just from the Central Committee of the VKP(b), but to expel him from the VKP(b) completely. Despite having made an aggressive defense of his position before the Central Control Commission , the Communist Party's disciplinary body, Ryutin's expulsion was ultimately confirmed by

6240-417: The Communist Party, headed by Joseph Stalin, took a radical turn towards forcing the sales of grain at below-market prices by the peasantry. This action drew the opposition of moderate Bolsheviks who opposed the use of force and coercion against the peasantry as the manifestation of the failed agrarian policies of War Communism . The radical Stalin faction worked to capture key positions in the party to assure

6370-399: The Communist Party, including Grigory Zinoviev , Lev Kamenev , and Karl Radek , were called before the Central Control Committee and interrogated about whether they were aware of or had read the so-called Ryutin Platform. Even knowing of the document and failing to report that knowledge was considered a crime. Zinoviev and Kamenev were again expelled from the party for their failure to report

6500-411: The Communist authorities. Under Joseph Stalin , the death penalty was extended to adolescents as young as 12 years old in 1935. Sergei Kovalev recalled "the famous article 125 of the Constitution which enumerated all basic civil and political rights" in the Soviet Union. But when he and other prisoners attempted to use this as a legal basis for their abuse complaints, their prosecutor's argument

6630-481: The Politburo after the deaths of Lenin and Stalin, as well as after Khrushchev's dismissal, itself due to a decision by both the Politburo and the Central Committee. All leaders of the Communist Party before Gorbachev died in office, except Georgy Malenkov and Khrushchev, both dismissed from the party leadership amid internal struggle within the party. Between 1988 and 1990, facing considerable opposition, Mikhail Gorbachev enacted reforms shifting power away from

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6760-467: The Politburo on October 5, 1930. Now outside the party, Ryutin no longer had protection against the secret police (OGPU). On November 13, 1930, Ryutin was arrested by the OGPU, charged with having engaged in counterrevolutionary agitation. Ryutin was held in jail for investigation but was ultimately released on January 17, 1931, for lack of sufficient evidence. Upon his release, Ryutin was assigned work as an economist for an electrical production unit. In

6890-491: The Red Army to protect against raids from anti-communist forces. A series of workers' strikes and peasants' rebellions against war communism policies broke out all over the country, such as the Tambov Rebellion (1920–1921), which was neutralized by the Red Army. A turning point came with the Kronstadt rebellion at the Kronstadt naval base in early March 1921, which also ended with a Bolshevik victory. The rebellion startled Lenin because Bolsheviks considered Kronstadt sailors

7020-420: The Russian name of the Soviet Union as СС has been taboo, the reason being that СС as a Russian Cyrillic abbreviation is associated with the infamous Schutzstaffel of Nazi Germany , as SS is in English. In English-language media, the state was referred to as the Soviet Union or the USSR. The Russian SFSR dominated the Soviet Union to such an extent that, for most of the Soviet Union's existence, it

7150-450: The Soviet Union and turned into SSRs, which was not recognized by most of the international community and was considered an illegal occupation . After the Soviet invasion of Finland , the Karelo-Finnish SSR was formed on annexed territory as a Union Republic in March 1940 and then incorporated into Russia as the Karelian ASSR in 1956. Between July 1956 and September 1991, there were 15 union republics (see map below). While nominally

7280-477: The Soviet Union . Boris Yeltsin , the leader of the RSFSR, oversaw its reconstitution into the Russian Federation , which became the Soviet Union's successor state; all other republics emerged as fully independent post-Soviet states . During its existence, the Soviet Union produced many significant social and technological achievements and innovations . It had the world's second-largest economy and largest standing military. An NPT-designated state , it wielded

7410-417: The Soviet Union's priorities changed. Despite previous conflict with the United Kingdom , Vyacheslav Molotov dropped his post war border demands. The Cold War was a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc , which began following World War II in 1945. The term cold war is used because there

7540-480: The Soviet Union's superpower status, the economy struggled due to its centralized nature, technological backwardness, and inefficiencies. The vast military expenditures and burdens of maintaining the Eastern Bloc, further strained the Soviet economy. In the 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev 's policies of Glasnost (openness) and Perestroika (restructuring) aimed to revitalize the Soviet system but instead accelerated its unraveling. Nationalist movements gained momentum across

7670-424: The Soviet authorities admitted. The Soviet Union was the world's second largest producer of harmful emissions. In 1988, total emissions in the Soviet Union were about 79% of those in the United States. But since the Soviet GNP was only 54% of that of the United States, this means that the Soviet Union generated 1.5 times more pollution than the United States per unit of GNP. The Soviet Chernobyl disaster in 1986

7800-406: The Soviets, and gained support from the workers and soldiers. After the October Revolution , in which the Bolsheviks seized power from the Provisional Government in the name of the Soviets, Lenin proclaimed the formation of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic (RSFSR). During the Georgian Affair of 1922, Lenin called for the Russian SFSR and other national Soviet republics to form

7930-415: The Supreme Soviet were members of the CPSU. Of the party heads themselves, Stalin (1941–1953) and Khrushchev (1958–1964) were Premiers. Upon the forced retirement of Khrushchev, the party leader was prohibited from this kind of double membership, but the later General Secretaries for at least some part of their tenure occupied the mostly ceremonial position of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet ,

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8060-551: The US led to the Cold War . The American-led Western Bloc coalesced into NATO in 1949, prompting the Soviet Union to form its own military alliance, the Warsaw Pact , in 1955. Neither side engaged in direct military confrontation, and instead fought on an ideological basis and through proxy wars . In 1953, following Stalin's death , the Soviet Union undertook a campaign of de-Stalinization under Nikita Khrushchev , which saw reversals and rejections of Stalinist policies. This campaign caused tensions with Communist China . During

8190-430: The USSR. Moscow eventually stopped threatening other states, and instead worked to open peaceful relationships in terms of trade, and diplomatic recognition. The United Kingdom dismissed the warnings of Winston Churchill and a few others about a continuing Marxist-Leninist threat, and opened trade relations and de facto diplomatic recognition in 1922. There was hope for a settlement of the pre-war Tsarist debts, but it

8320-409: The Warsaw Pact overthrew their Soviet-backed regimes , and nationalist and separatist movements erupted across the Soviet Union. In 1991, amid efforts to preserve the country as a renewed federation , an attempted coup against Gorbachev by hardline communists prompted the largest republics—Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus—to secede. On December 26, Gorbachev officially recognized the dissolution of

8450-449: The accident, but this led to a relatively low number of deaths (WHO data, 2005). Another major radioactive accident was the Kyshtym disaster . The Kola Peninsula was one of the places with major problems. Around the industrial cities of Monchegorsk and Norilsk , where nickel , for example, is mined, all forests have been destroyed by contamination, while the northern and other parts of Russia have been affected by emissions. During

8580-522: The ascent of the Bolsheviks. However, the goals of the Bolsheviks in implementing war communism are a matter of controversy. Some commentators, including a number of Bolsheviks, have argued that its sole purpose was to win the war. Vladimir Lenin, for instance, said that "the confiscation of surpluses from the peasants was a measure with which we were saddled by the imperative conditions of war-time." Other Bolsheviks, such as Yurii Larin , Lev Kritzman , Leonid Krasin , and Nikolai Bukharin , argued that it

8710-476: The cities to the countryside, where the chances to feed themselves were higher, thus further decreasing the possibility of barter of industrial goods for food and worsening the plight of the remaining urban population and further weakening the economy and industrial production. Between 1918 and 1920, Petrograd lost 70% of its population, while Moscow lost over 50%. Barrier troops were also used to enforce Bolshevik control over food supplies in areas controlled by

8840-429: The country was limited. The state restricted rights of citizens to private property . According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , human rights are the "basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled." including the right to life and liberty , freedom of expression , and equality before the law ; and social, cultural and economic rights, including the right to participate in culture ,

8970-442: The creation of new state commissions and committees. It gained additional powers relating to the approval of the Five-Year Plans and the government budget . The Supreme Soviet elected a Presidium (successor of the Central Executive Committee ) to wield its power between plenary sessions, ordinarily held twice a year, and appointed the Supreme Court , the Procurator General and the Council of Ministers (known before 1946 as

9100-409: The degree of power consolidation, it was either the Politburo as a collective body or the General Secretary, who always was one of the Politburo members, that effectively led the party and the country (except for the period of the highly personalized authority of Stalin, exercised directly through his position in the Council of Ministers rather than the Politburo after 1941). They were not controlled by

9230-432: The duty of the Russian Bolsheviks to protect what they had in Russia, and avoid military confrontations that might destroy their bridgehead. Russia was now a pariah state, along with Germany. The two came to terms in 1922 with the Treaty of Rapallo that settled long-standing grievances. At the same time, the two countries secretly set up training programs for the illegal German army and air force operations at hidden camps in

9360-481: The end of the month, Ryutin had been removed from his position as Secretary of the city party committee. Ryutin was transferred to the position of Deputy Editor of Red Star, the official organ of the Red Army . He retained his seat as a candidate member of the Central Committee of the VKP(b) at this time, however. In 1929, faced with bitter peasant opposition to forced requisitioning, the Stalin faction moved towards

9490-449: The existence of the document. During the Great Purge of 1937–38, Ryutin was brought back to Moscow from Suzdal prison to be retried. The guards had to use force to move him because he refused to leave his cell voluntarily. Under interrogation, on 4 November 1936, he wrote a note saying: "Being absolutely certain of my innocence and finding the present indictment absolutely unlawful, arbitrary and partial, dictated solely by animosity and by

9620-404: The famine casualties. War communism included the following policies: It has long been debated whether "war communism" represented an actual economic policy in the proper sense of the phrase, or merely a set of measures intended to win the civil war. Historians have noted that both Tsarist Russia government councils and other opposition parties had advocated for food requisitioning prior to

9750-775: The founding republics who signed the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR in December 1922. In 1924, during the national delimitation in Central Asia, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan were formed from parts of Russia's Turkestan ASSR and two Soviet dependencies, the Khorezm and Bukharan PSPs . In 1929, Tajikistan was split off from the Uzbekistan SSR. With the constitution of 1936, the Transcaucasian SFSR

9880-410: The general party membership, as the key principle of the party organization was democratic centralism , demanding strict subordination to higher bodies, and elections went uncontested, endorsing the candidates proposed from above. The Communist Party maintained its dominance over the state mainly through its control over the system of appointments . All senior government officials and most deputies of

10010-525: The globe. The post-Stalin leadership, particularly under Nikita Khrushchev , initiated a de-Stalinization process, leading to a period of liberalization and relative openness known as the Khrushchev Thaw . However, the subsequent era under Leonid Brezhnev , referred to as the Era of Stagnation , was marked by economic decline, political corruption, and a rigid gerontocracy . Despite efforts to maintain

10140-497: The government. Extensive extrajudicial powers were given to the Soviet secret police agencies . In practice, the Soviet government significantly curbed the rule of law , civil liberties , protection of law and guarantees of property , which were considered as examples of "bourgeois morality" by Soviet law theorists such as Andrey Vyshinsky . The USSR and other countries in the Soviet Bloc had abstained from affirming

10270-518: The highest bodies of the party and making the Supreme Soviet less dependent on them. The Congress of People's Deputies was established, the majority of whose members were directly elected in competitive elections held in March 1989, the first in Soviet history. The Congress now elected the Supreme Soviet, which became a full-time parliament, and much stronger than before. For the first time since

10400-472: The implementation of socialist policies and the New Economic Policy (NEP), which allowed for market-oriented reforms. The rise of Joseph Stalin in the late 1920s ushered in an era of intense centralization and totalitarianism. Stalin's rule was characterized by the forced collectivization of agriculture , rapid industrialization , and the Great Purge , which eliminated perceived enemies of

10530-563: The implementation of the collectivization program. In February 1930, the Soviet government created a new body, the All-Union Cinema Industry Combine or Soyuzkino, to plan and regulate the cinema industry across the whole of the USSR. As this body's first chairman, Ryutin defended the right of cinema organisations to take independent initiative, and persuaded the Politburo to delay bringing cinema industries in

10660-637: The implementation of the policies which they favored. At the September 24 and October 8 sessions of the Krasnopresnenskii raikom — gatherings in which Stalin himself participated — Ryutin came under fire for his alleged support of a "Right Opposition" led by Bukharin and Uglanov. Ryutin garnered no favor by remarking at one session that Stalin had his faults, "which Lenin had talked about" — a pointed reference to Lenin's so-called " last will " which even drew criticism from his factional ally Uglanov. By

10790-484: The interim, the Soviet economy had gone from bad to worse. The grain shortage of 1928 had given way to complete disorganization of agriculture by the ill-conceived collectivization campaign of 1929–30, which — exacerbated by drought — had ultimately resulted in a massive famine in Ukraine , Kazakhstan and parts of southern Russia in 1932 and 1933. The entire Soviet economy was in a state of crisis. In March 1932 Ryutin

10920-463: The last public demonstration by the left, when Trotsky and other spoke at the funeral of Adolph Joffe , who had committed suicide in protest at the state of the Communist party. Ryutin spoke on behalf of the leadership in such a confrontational style that Trotsky had to intervene to dissuade the crowd from attacking him. With a new wave of grain procurement difficulties emerging in the fall of 1928,

11050-486: The most common Russian initialization is Союз ССР (transliteration: Soyuz SSR ) which essentially translates to Union of SSRs in English. In addition, the Russian short form name Советский Союз (transliteration: Sovyetsky Soyuz , which literally means Soviet Union ) is also commonly used, but only in its unabbreviated form. Since the start of the Great Patriotic War at the latest, abbreviating

11180-549: The nation while the countryside starved, Ryutin charged. A second document, "Appeal to All Members of the VKP(b)," was also prepared and circulated on behalf of a faction called the Union of Marxists-Leninists . In this document, Ryutin placed the blame for the Soviet Union's catastrophic economic situation on the doorstep of General Secretary of the Communist Party Joseph Stalin, writing: "The party and

11310-417: The newly elected Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR , and communist hardliners. On 19–21 August 1991, a group of hardliners staged a coup attempt . The coup failed, and the State Council of the Soviet Union became the highest organ of state power 'in the period of transition'. Gorbachev resigned as General Secretary, only remaining President for the final months of the existence of the USSR. The judiciary

11440-400: The nominal head of state . The institutions at lower levels were overseen and at times supplanted by primary party organizations . However, in practice the degree of control the party was able to exercise over the state bureaucracy, particularly after the death of Stalin, was far from total, with the bureaucracy pursuing different interests that were at times in conflict with the party, nor

11570-608: The official Soviet system of importance (ground forces were second, Air Force fourth, and Navy fifth). The army had the greatest political influence. In 1989, there served two million soldiers divided between 150 motorized and 52 armored divisions. Until the early 1960s, the Soviet navy was a rather small military branch, but after the Caribbean crisis , under the leadership of Sergei Gorshkov , it expanded significantly. It became known for battlecruisers and submarines. In 1989, there served 500 000 men. The Soviet Air Force focused on

11700-544: The only legal party and the final policymaker in the country. At the top of the Communist Party was the Central Committee , elected at Party Congresses and Conferences. In turn, the Central Committee voted for a Politburo (called the Presidium between 1952 and 1966), Secretariat and the general secretary (First Secretary from 1953 to 1966), the de facto highest office in the Soviet Union. Depending on

11830-694: The other order until 1936 . In addition, in the regional languages of several republics, the word council or conciliar in the respective language was only quite late changed to an adaptation of the Russian soviet and never in others, e.g. Ukrainian SSR . СССР (in the Latin alphabet: SSSR ) is the abbreviation of the Russian-language cognate of USSR, as written in Cyrillic letters . The Soviets used this abbreviation so frequently that audiences worldwide became familiar with its meaning. After this,

11960-570: The partition of Poland. In response, Britain and France declared war on Germany, marking the beginning of World War II . Up until his death in 1953, Joseph Stalin controlled all foreign relations of the Soviet Union during the interwar period . Despite the increasing build-up of Germany 's war machine and the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War , the Soviet Union did not cooperate with any other nation, choosing to follow its own path. However, after Operation Barbarossa ,

12090-482: The party's highest body the Politburo . Operations were handled by the separate Ministry of Foreign Affairs . It was known as the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs (or Narkomindel), until 1946. The most influential spokesmen were Georgy Chicherin (1872–1936), Maxim Litvinov (1876–1951), Vyacheslav Molotov (1890–1986), Andrey Vyshinsky (1883–1954) and Andrei Gromyko (1909–1989). Intellectuals were based in

12220-492: The party, a position which he retained through 1924, when he was transferred to Moscow. In the capital, Ryutin was first named the head of the Zamoskvoreche Raion Committee of the Communist Party. He was promoted to head of the more important Krasnaya Presnya Raion Committee in 1927. Ryutin was elected as a delegate to the 14th Congress (December 1925) and 15th Congress (December 1927) of what

12350-406: The period when the 'moderates' were on the same side as Joseph Stalin against Leon Trotsky and the left, Ryutin held hard line views on party discipline. In 1923, he declared: The party cannot be without leaders ... The Mensheviks and those petty-bourgeois groups with which we have come to blows, were always inclined to speak a great deal about democratism. We, however, have always subordinated

12480-463: The potential for economic catastrophe represented by the program. Upon his return to Moscow, Ryutin sharply criticized the collectivization program in a report to the Politburo . This report drew Stalin's ire, but he nevertheless made use of Ryutin's analysis as part of his seminal article, " Dizzy with Success ." In January 1930, Ryutin published an article in Red Star which again publicly challenged

12610-560: The principles of democratism to revolutionary expediency. We will continue to do this in the future." During 1927, Ryutin was the main organiser of the strong arm squads known as 'Uglanov's hooligans', who used intimidation to break up opposition meetings in the Krasnaya Presnya district. In November 1927, he and others forced their way into a locked building where Ivar Smilga and Yevgeni Preobrazhensky were holding an opposition meeting, and began assaulting them. He also disrupted

12740-615: The state of Russia in 1921 after years of war communism: A government claiming to represent the people now found itself on the verge of being overthrown by that same working class. The crisis had undermined the loyalty of the villages, the towns and finally sections of the army. It was fully as serious as the crises faced by the tsarist government in 1905 and February 1917. The deadly Russian famine of 1921–22 , which killed about five million people battered an already war-torn Russia, Vladimir Lenin 's war communism policies took an unintended negative turn. The measure were harsh, but it did help

12870-714: The state. The Soviet Union played a crucial role in the Allied victory in World War II , but at a tremendous human cost, with millions of Soviet citizens perishing in the conflict. The Soviet Union emerged as one of the world's two superpowers, leading the Eastern Bloc in opposition to the Western Bloc during the Cold War . This period saw the USSR engage in an arms race, the Space Race , and proxy wars around

13000-469: The struggle for dominance was expressed via indirect means such as psychological warfare , propaganda campaigns, espionage , far-reaching embargoes , rivalry at sports events and technological competitions such as the Space Race . Constitutionally, the USSR was a federation of constituent Union Republics, which were either unitary states, such as Ukraine or Byelorussia (SSRs), or federations, such as Russia or Transcaucasia (SFSRs), all four being

13130-440: The truth so bluntly stated would have been very damaging. By 1932 it was possible to silence a critic like Ryutin. Opposition groups could no longer form easily, and they had no access to the media. So from the time of its appearance until 1988, little was known about the 'Ryutin Platform's' contents. No copy of it was available and scarcely any evidence for the existence of a 'Ryutin group' could be found. Stalin's policy in this case

13260-492: The truth". Human rights in the Soviet Union were severely limited. The Soviet Union was a totalitarian state from 1927 until 1953 and a one-party state until 1990. Freedom of speech was suppressed and dissent was punished. Independent political activities were not tolerated, whether these involved participation in free labour unions , private corporations , independent churches or opposition political parties . The freedom of movement within and especially outside

13390-401: The two key factional documents mentioned above and sought to take full responsibility for them, attempting to absolve his comrades from blame. Investigations continued, however, and on October 9, 1932, the Politburo of the Communist Party voted to expel another 24 individuals from the party in light of their alleged connections to Ryutin and his group. On October 11, 1932, Pravda published

13520-560: The various republics under central control. film On March 1 of that same year, Ryutin was made a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of National Economy (VSNKh), one of the leading state economic planning organizations of the period. Unlike Bukharin and other leading members of the so-called "Right" in the Communist Party, Ryutin refused to recant his views and endorse the policies of Stalin and his associates. The Stalin faction launched an effort to eliminate Ryutin from

13650-527: The west further raised concerns. In the past, there were accidents involving submarines K-19 , K-8 , a K-129 , K-27 , K-219 and K-278 Komsomolets . There were three power hierarchies in the Soviet Union: the legislature represented by the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union , the government represented by the Council of Ministers , and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU),

13780-406: The whole country his personal dictatorship , has broken with Leninism , has embarked on a path of the most ungovernable adventurism and wild personal arbitrariness." It is unclear how many individuals read the so-called Ryutin Platform or even how many knew of its existence. According to Russian historian Roy Medvedev , the opposition was organized by Ryutin with his friend P.A. Galkin and included

13910-506: The world's first constitutionally socialist state . The revolution was not accepted by all within the Russian Republic , resulting in the Russian Civil War . The RSFSR and its subordinate republics were merged into the Soviet Union in 1922. Following Lenin's death in 1924, Joseph Stalin came to power, inaugurating rapid industrialization and forced collectivization that led to significant economic growth but contributed to

14040-465: The world's largest lakes; the Caspian Sea (shared with Iran ), and Lake Baikal , the world's largest (by volume) and deepest freshwater lake that is also an internal body of water in Russia. Neighbouring countries were aware of the high levels of pollution in the Soviet Union but after the dissolution of the Soviet Union it was discovered that its environmental problems were greater than what

14170-471: Was 'not only to downgrade, crush, annihilate, but also to eliminate from memory, erase all evidence of the existence of the objectionable person.'" A three-person Collegium of the OGPU — consisting of GPU chairman Vyacheslav Menzhinsky , his successor Genrikh Yagoda , and future People's Commissar of Internal Affairs V. A. Balitsky — formally decided the charges against Ryutin. While Stalin reportedly advocated

14300-624: Was a coastline . The country bordered Afghanistan , the People's Republic of China , Czechoslovakia , Finland , Hungary , Iran , Mongolia , North Korea , Norway , Poland , Romania , and Turkey from 1945 to 1991. The Bering Strait separated the USSR from the United States . The country's highest mountain was Communism Peak (now Ismoil Somoni Peak ) in Tajikistan , at 7,495 metres (24,590 ft). The USSR also included most of

14430-401: Was a transitional step towards socialism. Commentators, such as the historian Richard Pipes , the philosopher Michael Polanyi , and economists, such as Paul Craig Roberts or Sheldon L. Richman, have argued that war communism was actually an attempt to immediately eliminate private property, commodity production and market exchange, and in that way to implement communist economics, and that

14560-539: Was also the industrial center of the Soviet Union. Historian Matthew White wrote that it was an open secret that the country's federal structure was 'window dressing' for Russian dominance. For that reason, the people of the USSR were usually called 'Russians', not 'Soviets', since 'everyone knew who really ran the show'. Under the Military Law of September 1925, the Soviet Armed Forces consisted of

14690-434: Was brought under strict party control after Stalin's death. Under Yuri Andropov , the KGB engaged in the suppression of political dissent and maintained an extensive network of informers, reasserting itself as a political actor to some extent independent of the party-state structure, culminating in the anti-corruption campaign targeting high-ranking party officials in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The constitution , which

14820-478: Was by then known as the All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks), the VKP(b). The latter elected him a candidate (non-voting) member of the Central Committee of the VKP(b). Ryutin was a supporter of the moderate agrarian policies of the New Economic Policy and held views closely associated with such "moderate" party leaders as Nikolai Bukharin , Nikolai Uglanov , and Alexei Rykov . During

14950-595: Was carried out within the terms of the Soviet Civil Code. Some Soviet legal scholars even said that "criminal repression" may be applied in the absence of guilt. Martin Latsis , chief of Soviet Ukraine 's secret police explained: "Do not look in the file of incriminating evidence to see whether or not the accused rose up against the Soviets with arms or words. Ask him instead to which class he belongs, what

15080-475: Was colloquially, but incorrectly, referred to as Russia . The history of the Soviet Union began with the ideals of the Bolshevik Revolution and ended in dissolution amidst economic collapse and political disintegration. Established in 1922 following the Russian Civil War , the Soviet Union quickly became a one-party state under the Communist Party . Its early years under Lenin were marked by

15210-404: Was dissolved, resulting in its constituent republics of Armenia , Georgia and Azerbaijan being elevated to Union Republics, while Kazakhstan and Kirghizia were split off from the Russian SFSR, resulting in the same status. In August 1940, Moldavia was formed from parts of Ukraine and Soviet-occupied Bessarabia , and Ukrainian SSR. Estonia , Latvia and Lithuania were also annexed by

15340-549: Was in part triggered by Vladimir Lenin 's war communism policies, especially food requisitioning. However, the famine was preceded by bad harvests , harsh winter, drought especially in the Volga Valley which was exacerbated by a range of factors including the war, the presence of the White Army and the methods of war communism. The outbreaks of diseases such as cholera and typhus were also contributing factors to

15470-424: Was no large-scale fighting directly between the two superpowers , but they each supported major regional conflicts known as proxy wars . The conflict was based around the ideological and geopolitical struggle for global influence by these two superpowers, following their temporary alliance and victory against Nazi Germany in 1945. Aside from the nuclear arsenal development and conventional military deployment,

15600-450: Was not independent of the other branches of government. The Supreme Court supervised the lower courts ( People's Court ) and applied the law as established by the constitution or as interpreted by the Supreme Soviet. The Constitutional Oversight Committee reviewed the constitutionality of laws and acts. The Soviet Union used the inquisitorial system of Roman law , where the judge, procurator , and defence attorney collaborate to "establish

15730-485: Was promulgated in 1924 , 1936 and 1977 , did not limit state power. No formal separation of powers existed between the Party, Supreme Soviet and Council of Ministers that represented executive and legislative branches of the government. The system was governed less by statute than by informal conventions, and no settled mechanism of leadership succession existed. Bitter and at times deadly power struggles took place in

15860-540: Was repeatedly postponed. Formal recognition came when the new Labour Party came to power in 1924. All the other countries followed suit in opening trade relations. Henry Ford opened large-scale business relations with the Soviets in the late 1920s, hoping that it would lead to long-term peace. Finally, in 1933, the United States officially recognized the USSR, a decision backed by the public opinion and especially by US business interests that expected an opening of

15990-543: Was that "the Constitution was written not for you, but for American Negroes, so that they know how happy the lives of Soviet citizens are". Crime was determined not as the infraction of law, instead, it was determined as any action which could threaten the Soviet state and society. For example, a desire to make a profit could be interpreted as a counter-revolutionary activity punishable by death. The liquidation and deportation of millions of peasants in 1928–31

16120-668: Was the Russian SFSR . In practice, its government and economy were highly centralized . As a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , it was a flagship communist state . Its capital and largest city was Moscow . The Soviet Union's roots lay in the October Revolution of 1917. The new government, led by Vladimir Lenin , established the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR),

16250-587: Was the Russian responsibility to assist them. The Comintern was the weapon of choice. A few revolutions did break out, but they were quickly suppressed (the longest lasting one was in Hungary)—the Hungarian Soviet Republic —lasted only from 21 March 1919 to 1 August 1919. The Russian Bolsheviks were in no position to give any help. By 1921, Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin realized that capitalism had stabilized itself in Europe and there would not be any widespread revolutions anytime soon. It became

16380-636: Was the economic and political system that existed in Soviet Russia during the Russian Civil War from 1918 to 1921. War communism began in June 1918, enforced by the Supreme Economic Council ( Russian : Высший Совет Народного Хозяйства ), known as the Vesenkha. It ended on 21 March 1921, with the beginning of the New Economic Policy , which lasted until 1928. The system has often been described as simple authoritarian control by

16510-488: Was the fiercest persecutor of Trotskyism, was now in prison, alone amongst his victims, delivered to their mercy. It was a great temptation. But since 1927 much water had flowed under the bridge, and it was no longer a question of 'widening the NEP' but of 'discussing the ultra-left adventure' of Stalin. The prison therefore received Ryutin coldly, but calmly. Late in 1932, a number of prominent leaders of opposition movements within

16640-404: Was the first major accident at a civilian nuclear power plant . Unparalleled in the world, it resulted in a large number of radioactive isotopes being released into the atmosphere. Radioactive doses were scattered relatively far. Although long-term effects of the accident were unknown, 4,000 new cases of thyroid cancer which resulted from the accident's contamination were reported at the time of

16770-486: Was the party itself monolithic from top to bottom, although factions were officially banned . The Supreme Soviet (successor of the Congress of Soviets ) was nominally the highest state body for most of the Soviet history, at first acting as a rubber stamp institution, approving and implementing all decisions made by the party. However, its powers and functions were extended in the late 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, including

16900-535: Was the principal writer of a 200-page document titled "Stalin and the Crisis of the Proletarian Dictatorship," the so-called "Ryutin Platform," which was self-prepared and secretly circulated from hand-to-hand among party members. The so-called Ryutin Platform attacked the " adventurist " tempos of industrialization that were part of the first five-year plan , charging that they had brought about

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