Russia and the Soviet Union 1917–1941

Russia and the Soviet Union 1917–1941 is one of eight National Studies options in Section II. You answer one 25-mark extended response (one of two alternatives), about 1,000 words in roughly 45 minutes. The syllabus key features are: Bolshevik ideology in theory and practice; competing visions for the party and the USSR; consolidation of power; political, economic, social and cultural transformation; the nature and impact of Stalinism; and Soviet foreign policy.

• Survey: Bolshevik ideology, the October 1917 seizure of power and early Soviet government; the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the Civil War and the New Economic Policy.
• Focus of study: the creation of the USSR and the power struggle after Lenin; the nature of Stalin's dictatorship; economic transformation (Five-Year Plans, collectivisation); political transformation (party growth, terror, show trials, Gulag, propaganda, censorship); social and cultural change; Soviet foreign policy 1917–1941 and the role of ideology in it.

Dates before February 1918 are often given in the Old Style (Julian) calendar, 13 days behind the Western calendar: the October Revolution (25 October OS) was 7 November NS. Either is fine if you are consistent.

Ideology

Bolsheviks followed Marxism as developed by Lenin: history moves through class struggle towards a classless communist society. Lenin added the idea of a vanguard party of professional revolutionaries leading the workers, and a dictatorship of the proletariat to defend the revolution. In practice, ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ became the dictatorship of the party.

Taking and holding power

• October 1917: the Bolsheviks, through the Petrograd Soviet's Military Revolutionary Committee led by Trotsky, overthrew the Provisional Government. The new government was the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom), chaired by Lenin.
• Early decrees: the Decree on Land (peasants take the land), the Decree on Peace, workers' control of factories.
• The Cheka (December 1917), the secret police under Felix Dzerzhinsky.
• The Constituent Assembly (elected November 1917; the SRs won most seats) was closed after one day in January 1918.
• Brest-Litovsk (March 1918): peace with Germany at the cost of huge territory, population and resources. Lenin argued ‘peace at any price’ was needed for survival.

Civil War and War Communism, 1918–1921

The Reds fought the Whites (monarchists, liberals and others), national movements, peasant ‘Green’ armies and foreign interventions. The Reds won because of Trotsky's Red Army, control of the central heartland and railways, the Whites' divisions, and ruthless War Communism (grain requisitioning, nationalisation) backed by the Red Terror. The Tsar and his family were shot in July 1918.

NEP and political tightening

War Communism caused famine and revolts. After the Kronstadt rising (March 1921), Lenin introduced the New Economic Policy: a tax in kind replaced requisitioning, peasants could sell surplus, and small private trade returned, while the state kept the ‘commanding heights’. At the same Tenth Party Congress, factions were banned — an important tool Stalin later used against his rivals. The USSR was formally created in December 1922.

Why Stalin won:

• Control of the party machine: as General Secretary he made appointments and controlled who attended congresses; the ‘Lenin enrolment’ (1924) brought in many new members.
• Tactics: shifting alliances — first with Zinoviev and Kamenev against Trotsky, then with Bukharin against the Left, then against Bukharin.
• Lenin's Testament, which proposed removing Stalin, was not published.
• Ideas: Socialism in One Country was more appealing than Permanent Revolution.
• Rivals' mistakes: Trotsky was seen as arrogant and a possible ‘Bonaparte’; opponents underestimated Stalin as a grey bureaucrat.

Economic transformation

The Five-Year Plans (from 1928) were run by Gosplan, with very high targets for heavy industry. Achievements: huge increases in coal, steel, oil and electricity; new industrial cities such as Magnitogorsk; the Dnieper dam; by 1941 the USSR was a major industrial power able to fight Germany. Costs: low-quality consumer goods and housing, harsh labour discipline, forced labour, and statistics inflated by managers afraid of failing. The Stakhanovite movement (from 1935) celebrated workers who smashed quotas.

Collectivisation (from 1929) forced peasants into collective farms to supply grain for the cities and for export. ‘Kulaks’ (better-off peasants, or anyone labelled as such) were deported or shot. Peasants resisted by slaughtering livestock. The famine of 1932–33 killed millions, especially in Ukraine (the Holodomor) and Kazakhstan. Grain output fell, but the state's share of grain rose, which was what Stalin wanted.

Political transformation

• Party: membership grew, and the party became an instrument of Stalin's personal rule.
• Terror: after Sergei Kirov's murder (December 1934), the purges escalated. The show trials of 1936–38 destroyed the Old Bolsheviks (Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin); the army leadership was purged (Marshal Tukhachevsky, 1937); during the Great Terror (1937–38), run by the NKVD under Yezhov, about 680,000 people were executed and many more sent to the Gulag.
• Propaganda and censorship: the cult of personality presented Stalin as Lenin's true heir and the ‘father of the peoples’; history was rewritten and photos altered.
• The 1936 Constitution promised rights that were not respected in practice.

Social and cultural change

• Education and mobility: literacy and technical education expanded; a new generation of workers' children rose into management (historians such as Sheila Fitzpatrick stress this upward mobility).
• Women: millions joined the workforce, but the 1936 family law banned most abortions and made divorce harder — a ‘double burden’.
• Culture: socialist realism (from 1934) required art and literature to celebrate socialism; writers who resisted were silenced or arrested.
• Religion: churches were closed and clergy persecuted.
• Nationalities: policy shifted from encouraging local cultures in the 1920s to Russification and deportations of whole peoples later.

Two forces pulled against each other: ideology (world revolution, the Comintern founded 1919, fear of capitalist encirclement) and national security (pragmatic deals to survive).

1. 1917–1921: Brest-Litovsk, war with Poland (1920), the Comintern.
2. 1921–1933: the Treaty of Rapallo with Germany (1922), trade deals and recognition (Britain 1924, USA 1933), Socialism in One Country.
3. 1933–1939: after Hitler's rise, collective security under foreign minister Litvinov — joining the League (1934), the Franco-Soviet Pact (1935), the Popular Front strategy, aid to the Spanish Republic. Exclusion from the Munich Conference (1938) deepened distrust of Britain and France.
4. 1939–1941: the Nazi–Soviet Pact (23 August 1939) and its secret protocol; occupation of eastern Poland (September 1939), the Winter War with Finland (expulsion from the League, December 1939), annexation of the Baltic states (1940). The USSR was surprised by the German invasion of 22 June 1941.

Worked example (not a bank question). _‘Assess the significance of the New Economic Policy in the development of the Soviet state to 1928.’_

1. Thesis: NEP saved the regime economically, but its political side (the ban on factions) mattered more for the future because it created the conditions for Stalin's rise.
2. Paragraph 1 — economic recovery: why War Communism failed; NEP's measures; recovery of agricultural output by the mid-1920s.
3. Paragraph 2 — ideological debate: NEP as a ‘retreat’; Bukharin versus the Left; the ‘scissors crisis’ of 1923.
4. Paragraph 3 — political consequences: the ban on factions (1921) let Stalin label opponents ‘factionalists’.
5. Paragraph 4 — the end of NEP: the grain procurement crisis (1927–28) and Stalin's turn to forced collectivisation.
6. Conclusion: answer ‘assess the significance’ directly, weighing short-term and long-term importance.

Every paragraph opens with an argument sentence, uses specific evidence (dates, names, statistics) and ends by linking to the question.

• Writing a narrative from 1917 to 1941 instead of answering the question.
• Treating the Bolsheviks as a majority movement in 1917; they lost the Constituent Assembly elections.
• Mixing up War Communism (1918–21), NEP (1921–28) and the Five-Year Plans (from 1928).
• Giving production figures without explaining what they show about Soviet society.
• Explaining Stalin's victory only by Trotsky's mistakes.
• Presenting the Nazi–Soviet Pact as proof that ideology did not matter at all.

• Aim for a sustained, logical and cohesive response with accurate and relevant historical knowledge and historical terms and concepts. NESA's exam clarifications note that the Section II and III rubrics use the word ‘interpretation’, which you can show through others' views, your own, or both — so naming historians can strengthen an argument, but it is not required.
• Use historians to sharpen your argument: for example, the ‘totalitarian’ view of Stalinism (Robert Conquest) versus ‘revisionist’ social historians (Sheila Fitzpatrick, J. Arch Getty), or debates over whether Stalinism was a continuation of Leninism.
• Be precise with key terms: dictatorship of the proletariat, vanguard party, kulak, NEP, Gosplan, Stakhanovite, nomenklatura, socialist realism, show trial, Gulag.
• Prepare flexible paragraphs on the big themes (consolidation, the power struggle, economy, terror, society, foreign policy) so you can adapt them to either alternative.

• The core asks for an overview of Stalin's dictatorship and comparisons with Italy, Japan and Germany — this topic gives you the detail.
• Conflict in Europe 1935–1945 continues from the Nazi–Soviet Pact to Operation Barbarossa.
• The Cold War 1945–1991 shows how the Soviet system and its foreign policy developed after 1945.