As requested by Alston here is a model answer of what a "how successful" type question will look like. Question: How successful was Stalin's leadership of Russia?
Stalin was a success to a great extent. He effectively modernised Russia through his five-year plans and introduced collectivisation. However, he used terror to make the people obey him and destroyed any politically opponents, drastically reducing the freedom of people in Russia.
He had success in modernising Russia but millions of peasants died in the process of agricultural modernisation.
Stalin took Russia from a backward state to a thriving modern state. His five-year plans increased resource production tremendously and Russia was producing its own iron, oil and steel. New factories like Magnitogorsk and other industries also were constructed. Many, were east of the Ural mountains.This industrialisation enabled it to fight Germany when they attacked. In the 1930s, free education, subsidised health care and leisure facilities like parks and gymnasiums were constructed to improve the lives of the Russians. Collectivisation also enabled Russia to modernise its farms by introducing tractors and machines.
However, there were failings in his leadership policies and decisions. Worker's conditions in the initial years of the five-year plans were horrible with dangerous and unhealthy conditions and long hours imposed. Many workers were also untrained, leading to spoilt machinery that could not be fixed. Furthermore, collectivisation led many farmers to burn or grow less crops causing a massive famine in which 10 million died. Many peasants, especially kulaks, were killed or sent to labor camps. Many of his political opponents were killed in his purges and there was no freedom of speech as anyone suspected of opposing him was arrested by the NKVD, his secret regime. HE also controlled education and culture, art and made sure people saw only positive images of him.
Hence, although Stalin's leadership of Russia was successful in many ways that he industrialised Russia and enabled her to defeat Germany, it was done at the expense of the workers and the killing of many peasants. His rule was brutal and he was responsible for both restricting the freedom of expression and the types of media people received as well as killing millions of peasants as a result of his plans as well as for keeping dissent against him in check.
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4 comments:
HI, I am Jonathan here from 4/7. I truly appreciate your effort to post such topics that are useful to us.Thank you. I must admit you are an articulate speaker. Your posts is presented with clarity and effectiveness. I am writing in today is to request for a answer for a question relative to your latest post, which is "How successful was Hitler's leadership of Germany?" It would be a great pleasure as well if you could post it and once again Thank you. :D
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What if I said Stalin's leadership of Russia was only successful to a certain small extent (does it even make sense? )
Although Stalin contributed to the economic progress,
- increased greatly the production of coal, steel, oil and iron
- many new industrial cities and and factories set up
- worker's salary was higher under Stalin's reward for work policy..
-eg. eg. eg.
Humanitarian wise, Stalin sucked quite a lot because
- Workers had to work for long hours and meet impossible targets
- Sold crops to other countries although his own country was suffering from major food shortage (eg. famine in Ukraine in 1931 )
- People lived in fear of the NKVD
- Monetary amount of salary rose, but in actual fact, due to shortage of consumer goods, real value dropped.
- eg. eg.
Conclusion
Stalin's leadership of Russia was only sucessful to a certain small extent because although he was successful in turning Russia from a backward country to a thriving modern state, he was unsuccessful as a leader because he did not serve his people's humanitarian needs well and many died in the process of building this modern state. The end was not worth the means and in this way, Stalin was only successful to a certain small extent.
Is this reasoning valid for saying that Stalin's leadership of Russia was nt successful?
And is there a better way to express my phrase of "certain small extent [which is a certain extent but certain extent is actually like sitting on the fence so its a small extent but I don't wanna discredit Stalin's economic policy too much. haha] or is it better expressed as certain/small extent?
I thought communism was all about equality between workers.. How come Stalin actually has a reward for work scheme where people get rewarded for their production? Isn't this like democracy and meritocracy?
Why did Stalin ban people from practising a certain religion? Was he afraid that the religious leaders will be like "Stalin's actions are agaisnt god's will" and people will be anti Stalin?
For Atiqah's question
I think that your answer is a good and valid one. Millions died due to his rule either through the purges or the famine.
How I think you should phrase it could be to qualify it right at the start: Stalin was successful economically and militarily later but failed miserably to serve the needs of his people. Hence he is only successful in certain aspects of being a leader and experiences varied success in different aspects of governing.
The reason why Stalin had to introduce the work for reward scheme was that there were some practical flaws to the application of communism. Think about it this way, if everyone is earning the same, why should i work harder then the person next to me? there's no reason too. So, communism in practice would never really work out as the ideals say because of the nature of humans, whether its greed or selfishness...it would take alot of education to make the people believe in it and make it work.
On religion, yes, on one hand you do have the aspect of the power of the church and many european leaders including those in the 15th centuries and even before that were wary of its power. Secondly, communism is suppose to be godless in its application. As Karl Marx famously said "religion is the opium of the masses"
Hope this helps.
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