AP European History

## Learning Outcomes

- Explain how Stalin consolidated power after Lenin’s death
- Identify the main features of **Stalinism** as a form of totalitarian rule
- Understand how the **Five-Year Plans** and collectivization were linked
- Explain how forced collectivization and grain requisitioning contributed to the famine of **1932–1933**
- Distinguish between **dekulakization** and the **Great Purge**
- Recall the role of the **NKVD**, show trials, and the **Gulag** in Stalinist repression
- Evaluate the consequences of Stalin’s policies for Soviet society and for Europe before World War II

## AP European History Syllabus

For the AP European History, you are expected to understand Stalinism as a major example of totalitarian rule in the interwar period, with a focus on the following syllabus points:

- Know that **Joseph Stalin** emerged as Lenin’s successor by defeating rivals such as **Leon Trotsky** and **Nikolai Bukharin**
- Identify the main features of **Stalinism**: one-party dictatorship, propaganda, command economy, forced industrialization, collectivization, and terror
- Understand how the **First Five-Year Plan** began in **1928** and aimed at rapid heavy industrialization
- Explain how **collectivization**, **grain requisitioning**, and **dekulakization** contributed to famine in **1932–1933**
- Know that the famine affected several Soviet regions, and that **Holodomor** refers specifically to the famine in Soviet Ukraine
- Understand that the **Great Purge** or **Great Terror** peaked in **1936–1938** and used show trials, arrests, executions, and labor camps
- Identify the role of the **NKVD**, the **Gulag**, and the purge of the **Red Army officer corps**
- Explain how Stalinist repression both strengthened Soviet state power and weakened parts of Soviet society, including military leadership before World War II

## Test Your Knowledge

_Attempt these questions before reading this article. If you find some difficult or cannot remember the answers, look more closely at that area during your revision._

1. How did Stalin turn a party leadership struggle into personal dictatorship?
2. Why were collectivization and industrialization closely linked in Stalin’s policies?
3. What caused the famine of **1932–1933**, and why was Ukraine hit so hard?
4. What was the difference between dekulakization and the Great Purge?
5. How did the NKVD, show trials, and the Gulag help Stalin maintain power?

## Introduction

Stalinism matters in AP European History because it shows how a modern state could use ideology, economic planning, propaganda, and terror to refashion society. In Unit 8, Stalin’s Soviet Union stands beside fascist Italy and Nazi Germany as one of the clearest examples of twentieth-century dictatorship. The exam often tests not just what Stalin did, but how his policies connected: industrial goals led to coercion in the countryside, coercion produced famine, and fear helped secure political control.

Stalin’s rule also matters because it complicates simple ideas of “modernization.” The Soviet Union did become a major industrial power by the late 1930s. But this change came through forced collectivization, mass repression, labor camps, and purges. For AP essays, that tension is central: Stalin strengthened the Soviet state while inflicting immense human suffering.

> **Key Term: Stalinism**
> The Soviet system under Joseph Stalin, marked by one-party dictatorship, central economic planning, forced industrialization, collectivization, censorship, propaganda, and terror.

### Stalin’s rise and the making of a totalitarian state

When **Lenin** died in **1924**, there was no automatic successor. Stalin did not seem the obvious choice. **Trotsky** had prestige as leader of the Red Army, and **Bukharin** was influential in party debates. Stalin, however, had one major advantage: he understood that control of the party machinery could matter more than brilliance in theory.

He first worked with Bukharin to isolate Trotsky and the Left Opposition. Once Trotsky was expelled from the party in **1927**, Stalin no longer needed Bukharin in the same way. He then turned against Bukharin as well. This pattern is worth noticing. Stalin did not simply defeat one rival; he used temporary alliances, then discarded them. That is a classic method of power consolidation.

By the later 1920s, Stalin had done more than win an argument. He had begun to turn the Soviet state into a system centered on himself. One-party rule already existed under Lenin, but Stalin greatly intensified centralization. He expanded censorship, promoted a **cult of personality**, and used fear to prevent opposition from forming.

> **Key Term: totalitarianism**
> A system of rule in which the state seeks to control politics, society, culture, ideas, and often private life through propaganda, surveillance, censorship, and terror.

A key AP distinction is this: there was continuity from Lenin to Stalin because both ruled through a one-party communist state. But there was also major change because Stalin pushed coercion, personal dictatorship, and social control much further.

The regime’s propaganda portrayed Stalin as wise, heroic, and almost infallible. Official culture, including **Socialist Realism**, showed idealized workers, peasants, and state leadership rather than real hardship. This matters because totalitarian systems do not rely on terror alone. They also try to shape what people think is normal, admirable, and true.

> **Key Term: cult of personality**
> The use of propaganda and public imagery to present a leader as uniquely wise, heroic, and beyond criticism.
>
> **Test Tip:** In an SAQ or LEQ, do not describe Stalinism only as “dictatorship.” Add specific evidence such as one-party rule, propaganda, collectivization, censorship, NKVD terror, and show trials.

### Five-Year Plans, collectivization, and the road to famine

Once Stalin had secured his position, he changed Soviet economic policy sharply. Lenin’s **New Economic Policy** had allowed limited private activity. Stalin rejected that approach in favor of rapid state-directed development. The **First Five-Year Plan**, launched in **1928**, aimed to turn the Soviet Union from a largely agrarian society into an industrial power.

> **Key Term: Five-Year Plans**
> State economic plans, beginning in 1928, designed to accelerate industrial growth, especially heavy industry, through central planning.

Heavy industry was the priority: coal, steel, machinery, and infrastructure. Consumer goods mattered less. This is an easy point to miss. Stalin did not seek balanced growth. He wanted strategic industrial strength, partly because he feared that the Soviet Union would remain vulnerable unless it industrialized very quickly.

But industrialization required resources. The regime needed to feed growing urban populations, keep industrial workers supplied, and export grain to earn foreign currency for machinery purchases. That is why collectivization became so central.

> **Key Term: collectivization**
> The forced consolidation of peasant farms into large collective or state-run farms, mainly between 1928 and 1933, to increase state control over agriculture.

Collectivization was not voluntary reform. Peasants were forced into collective farms. The state wanted control over land, labor, livestock, and harvests. In theory, this would make agriculture more efficient and predictable. In practice, it caused chaos.

Many peasants resisted. Some slaughtered livestock rather than surrender it. Others hid grain or destroyed crops. The regime treated resistance not as a policy problem but as political sabotage. Stalin then launched **dekulakization**, a campaign against so-called kulaks.

> **Key Term: dekulakization**
> Stalin’s campaign, beginning in 1929, to eliminate kulaks as a class through confiscation, deportation, imprisonment, and execution.

Students often assume “kulaks” were always a clearly defined wealthy peasant class. In practice, the label was flexible. It could be applied broadly to anyone seen as resisting collectivization. That made dekulakization a political weapon as much as a social campaign.

The state also imposed heavy **grain requisitioning**. Local officials had to meet unrealistic quotas. Grain was seized even when villages lacked enough food for survival. If officials failed, they risked punishment themselves, so they often enforced policy brutally. Villages could be blacklisted. Peasants were restricted from leaving famine areas. The state did not respond to shortages with meaningful relief because meeting procurement targets remained the priority.

This produced the famine of **1932–1933**. It affected **Ukraine**, **Kazakhstan**, and parts of Russia. Ukraine suffered especially badly because it was a major grain-producing region and because Stalin linked grain collection there with fears of Ukrainian nationalism.

> **Key Term: grain requisitioning**
> The state seizure of grain from the countryside to feed cities, support industrialization, and earn export income.
>
> **Key Term: Holodomor**
> The famine in Soviet Ukraine during 1932–1933, widely described as man-made; historians debate whether it should be classified as genocide.

For AP purposes, be precise. The broader Soviet famine affected multiple regions. **Holodomor** refers specifically to the Ukrainian famine within that larger disaster. The famine was not simply a natural event. Poor harvests could worsen conditions, but state policy was central: forced collectivization, confiscatory quotas, repression, and restrictions on movement.

Kazakhstan also suffered terribly, though in a somewhat different way. There, collectivization and forced settlement devastated a pastoral economy based on herding. This is useful evidence if an essay asks for complexity rather than a single-region story.

The larger argument is clear: Stalinist modernization depended on coercion. Industrial goals led to collectivization, collectivization led to peasant resistance and state violence, and those policies helped produce famine.

> **Test Tip:** If a prompt asks about famine, use a cause-and-effect chain. For example: industrialization goals → collectivization → grain seizures and dekulakization → agricultural disruption and starvation.

### Purges, the NKVD, and everyday oppression

Economic violence in the countryside was only one part of Stalinist rule. In the 1930s, repression expanded into a broader system of surveillance, arrests, show trials, executions, and labor camps. The peak phase is known as the **Great Purge** or **Great Terror**, especially **1936–1938**.

> **Key Term: Great Purge / Great Terror**
> Stalin’s mass campaign of repression in the late 1930s involving arrests, executions, forced confessions, and labor camp sentences.

The murder of **Sergei Kirov** in **1934** gave Stalin a pretext for wider repression, though historians debate the exact extent of Stalin’s role in the event. What matters for AP is that after this moment the regime sharply intensified terror.

The **NKVD**, the Soviet secret police, became the main instrument of repression. It carried out arrests, interrogations, torture, executions, deportations, and much of the camp system. Under **Nikolai Yezhov**, the terror reached its peak so strongly that the period is often called **Yezhovshchina**.

> **Key Term: NKVD**
> The Soviet secret police under Stalin, responsible for surveillance, arrests, interrogations, executions, and much of the terror apparatus.

The best-known public face of the purge was the **show trial**. Former leading Bolsheviks such as **Zinoviev**, **Kamenev**, and **Bukharin** were forced to confess to absurd crimes in staged court proceedings. These trials had several purposes at once. They removed old rivals, frightened party members, and created the false appearance that repression was legal and necessary.

> **Key Term: show trials**
> Public trials in which verdicts were predetermined and confessions were coerced in order to justify repression.

The Great Purge did not target only famous revolutionaries. It also struck ordinary citizens, local officials, intellectuals, workers, peasants, and especially the military. Stalin purged much of the **Red Army officer corps**, including **Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky**. This helped remove possible rivals but also weakened Soviet military leadership just before World War II.

Another pillar of repression was the **Gulag** system.

> **Key Term: Gulag**
> The Soviet network of forced labor camps used to punish, isolate, and exploit prisoners, including political prisoners and alleged class enemies.

The Gulag was not just a prison system. It was also an economic resource. Prisoners were used for labor in brutal conditions, often in remote regions. This shows another key feature of Stalinism: terror served both political and economic purposes.

The **1936 Constitution**, sometimes called the “Stalin Constitution,” formally promised rights and democratic structures. In reality, it did not limit the dictatorship. This gap between official claims and political reality is classic totalitarianism. On paper there were rights; in practice there was surveillance, censorship, and fear.

For AP comparison questions, Stalin’s system can be compared with Nazi Germany. Both used propaganda, secret police, leader worship, and one-party rule. But their ideological focus differed. Stalinist repression was framed mainly in terms of class, political loyalty, and state enemies, whereas Nazi repression centered on race, especially antisemitism.

### Why Stalinism matters for AP arguments

Stalinism is not just a list of brutal events. It is a case study in causation, continuity and change, and comparison, all of which AP examiners reward.

First, Stalinism shows that modernization can be coercive. Students often write as if industrial growth proves policy success. That is too simple. A stronger argument says that Stalin did make the Soviet Union a major industrial power, but the method relied on forced collectivization, famine, terror, and labor camps.

Second, Stalinism shows continuity and change from the Bolshevik Revolution. There was continuity because one-party communist rule and repression already existed. There was change because Stalin intensified control, expanded terror, and centered power on himself more fully than Lenin had.

Third, Stalinism fits wider Unit 8 themes. It grew partly out of post-World War I instability, fear, and disillusionment with older systems. It also helps explain later events. Soviet industrialization helped the USSR survive and eventually defeat Nazi Germany, but the purge of the officer corps weakened the country before the war began.

If you are writing a Long Essay Question, a strong thesis often balances these points. For example: Stalinism strengthened Soviet state power and accelerated industrialization, but it did so through collectivization, famine, purges, and repression that inflicted enormous social damage. That kind of sentence already sets up evaluation.

> **Test Tip:** For an LEQ or DBQ, avoid writing “Stalin was bad” or “Stalin modernized Russia.” Both are too thin. Use paired judgement: what he achieved, how he achieved it, and what it cost.

## Key Point Checklist

_This article has covered the following key knowledge points:_

- **Stalin** emerged as Lenin’s successor by defeating rivals such as **Trotsky** and **Bukharin**
- **Stalinism** combined one-party dictatorship, propaganda, central planning, censorship, and terror
- The **First Five-Year Plan** began in **1928** and focused on rapid heavy industrialization
- **Collectivization** aimed to bring agriculture under state control and support industrial growth
- **Dekulakization** targeted so-called kulaks through confiscation, deportation, imprisonment, and execution
- **Grain requisitioning** and forced collectivization were major causes of the famine of **1932–1933**
- The famine affected several Soviet regions; **Holodomor** refers specifically to the Ukrainian famine
- The **Great Purge** peaked in **1936–1938** and eliminated real and imagined enemies
- The **NKVD** carried out arrests, interrogations, executions, deportations, and surveillance
- **Show trials** forced public confessions from leading Bolsheviks such as **Bukharin**
- The **Gulag** system punished and exploited prisoners through forced labor
- Stalin strengthened Soviet power but weakened society and the military through fear and repression

## Key Terms and Concepts

- Stalinism
- totalitarianism
- cult of personality
- Five-Year Plans
- collectivization
- dekulakization
- grain requisitioning
- Holodomor
- Great Purge / Great Terror
- NKVD
- show trials
- Gulag


Fascism and Totalitarianism - Stalinism caused famine purges oppression