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Hello class, today I am going to explain the first stage in the Soviet Union.

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So let's start by looking at Stalin's government or dictatorship from 1927 to 1953.

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This period is called Stalinism because at that moment Stalin managed to impose a totalitarian political system over Russia.

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Stalin controlled everything at that moment, the political system, the economy and the society and he forced Russian people what to think or what to say in the country.

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So Stalin created a state based on state violence to purge his political opponents. He managed to exterminate all of them and this story actually began when Lenin died in 1924.

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At that moment there was a strong fight to become the first person in the Communist Party, the leader.

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And this fight between candidates ended in 1927 when Stalin became the new Lenin and he became the main leader in the Communist Party not only for being a butcher as I am going to explain in a minute.

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Stalin became the main leader I would say for two important reasons. One because he made a treaty with the regional leaders as he exploited his idea of one party state.

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Actually Stalin was afraid of expanding the revolution to all over Europe and he thought that it was a better idea to consolidate the party in Russia, to consolidate the party and the revolution first in Russia and then we will see what will happen.

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However Leon Trotsky had another idea in mind. Trotsky argued that they had to export the revolution to all over countries in Europe while Stalin as I said before supported the theory of socialism in only one country.

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He would prefer, Stalin as I mentioned before, he would prefer to consolidate socialism only in Russia and then we will see depends on the situation in Europe.

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And also the second reason Stalin became the main leader in the country due to his offensive strategy against peasants and priests, against the orthodox priests.

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The Communist Party thought that it was the moment to implement a complete communist system and for this reason they agreed to follow Stalin's strategy against peasants and against the orthodox religion in Russia.

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So when he won the battle against his comrades he purged his initial comrades on the right because he gave the order to kill, to assassinate Bukharin and Kamenev and also on the left he gave the order also to kill Zinoviev and Trotsky.

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Stalin at that moment thought that it was a better idea to develop a revolution without risking our own revolution and for this reason he didn't hesitate to kill, to purge his initial comrades.

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He stabbed them in his back, he stabbed them in their back because he killed all of them not only Trotsky and for this reason all of them Trotsky, Bukharin, Kamenev and Zinoviev disappeared from history.

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As we can see here we have the image of Lenin together with Trotsky and also here when Lenin, this photo came into its importance when Lenin came from Switzerland to Moscow and Trotsky was his initial comrade, his second hand.

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But Stalin managed to disappear them from history definitely. Actually Trotsky, his rival, was exiled to many many countries and in 1940 Trotsky was assassinated on Stalin's orders.

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Trotsky was assassinated actually in Mexico when one Spanish communist, Ramón Mercader, who was an agent of Stalin and Stalin's agent, killed him.

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So now we are going to explain the most important characteristics of Stalin's government because Stalin implemented a socialist economy which was at that moment pretty original and we have to put Stalin's government in historical context.

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Because in 1929 it was the moment when the Wall Street crashed and the economies of many many Western countries, Western democracies were almost in ruin, in bankruptcy and at that moment Stalin thought that his socialist economy was the superior way to organize the economy.

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So at that moment Stalin thought that communism was a serious alternative to capitalism.

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So now we are going to explain the most important elements in this socialist economy.

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In a socialist economy, like in the USSR under the rule of Stalin, the state became the owner of the land.

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And this land was collectively owned and farmed by cooperatives which were called kolkhozes or kolkhoz and it was also a state owned by farms which were called subhosses or subhoss.

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And in exchange for that peasants who were working on the cooperatives or in the farms, they received a salary.

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However, the communist state gave the impression, they made out that workers were the owners of these kolkhozes, cooperatives or subhosses, farms.

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But in reality the state was in reality the owner of the kolkhozes and the subhosses.

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So workers in Russia thought that they made the revolution for themselves to improve their rights but in reality the communist state made out that workers were the owners but in reality the communist state was the main owner of all resources in the economy.

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So as a result of that, I would say that Stalin created an elite inside of communist Russia and this elite were at the top of the society, belonged to the communist party and they were the owners of the resources.

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And the vast majority of the workers were working in the subhosses and in the kolkhozes in exchange for a low salary.

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And what happened with the peasants? Remember that Stalin had the idea in mind in his project to persecute peasants and the religion and the priests in the orthodox religion.

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Some peasants gave their lands without any problem to the state but other peasants were reluctant, they didn't want to give their lands to the state and those peasants who didn't want to give their lands to the state were the kulaks.

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What was the response of the state, of the communist state? Because some kulaks went on a strike, they didn't want to give their lands to the state and in response the answer for the state was terrible.

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Because Stalin organized the kulaks deportation and three million Ukrainians who didn't want to give their lands to the state were killed.

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They were sent to the concentration camps in Siberia and they died there, like the Jews who were deported by the Nazis during the Second World War.

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And also during Stalin's rule half of the Kazakhs from Kazakhstan died because they didn't want to give their lands to the state.

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So Stalin, during the time of Stalinism, during the time of Stalin's rule, managed to organize a network of concentration camps in order to send his political, economic and social opponents such as the kulaks.

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There were at that moment a network of almost 500 concentration camps and two million people died in those concentration camps according to the Kulak Museum in Moscow.

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I took these figures from them, I took the data from this museum which is specialized in the concentration camps related to the kulaks.

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Here in red we might see the network of concentration camps in Russia at that moment.

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When I went to Russia, because I had the chance to give several speeches there, I managed to see, for example, the main doors in these concentration camps.

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This is a glove from a prisoner and actually we have here one of the jackets from the concentration camps and one of the prisoners managed to tell his story hidden inside of the jacket.

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For example, one of the most famous stories was the Alexander Solzhenitsyn story who wrote his story and he won as a consequence of that the Nobel Prize in Literature.

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You can read his experience in the kulaks in his book which is called Archipelago Gulag.

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So let me finish the conceptual map because in terms of the industrialization it was true that Stalin carried out a rapid industrialization and he was focused on metallurgical development in iron, in steel.

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He developed also chemical industries and arms industries based on weaponry.

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As a result of that, Stalin increased the production in Russia. Russia and the Soviet Union became the most important country in order to build tractors, for example.

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And at that moment many people moved from villages and towns to the cities in Russia, to St. Petersburg and to Moscow, above all.

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And it was also true that Stalin carried out a massive expansion on educational facilities. Educational facilities in Russia were completely free and they had a good standard for that moment.

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But it was also true that Stalin used the schools to control the population. Teachers became really important in the USSR because Stalin, when he came into power, he purged also teachers and he replaced them for teachers who were following the ideas from the Communist Party.

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And he used them as a way to control the population. In the banking system also the state, the Soviet state became the main owner of the banks. They were nationalized and the state planned each area of production in plans which were called five-year plans because they lasted five years.

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And in these plans, which were organized by the cost plan agency, the cost plan was the organization, here we have an image of a building which belonged at that moment to the cost plan.

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The cost plan in a communist economy was the institution which established the quota or the production and the economy had to reach the goal or the objective.

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They had to reach the target and exactly Stalin, together with his government, established their objectives, the amount of goods and the infrastructures that they had to build.

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And they had to fulfill, they had to produce all these goods and they had to build the infrastructures in the Soviet Union in this time frame, in five years.

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However, sometimes the economy ended in failure because they were not able to produce all products that the population demanded. So it was the main weaknesses in Soviet Russia.

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So it was true that after the first five-year plan from 1928 to 1932, Soviet Russia became an industrial and military power. Remember that they were living like in the Middle Ages in the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century became one of the most important industrial and military powers in the world.

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But as the main communist leaders, some communist leaders close to Stalin, they admitted that the human price was too high.

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Actually, here we have an image of the dam in Dnipro because it was true that communist Russia developed the economy a lot. There was a huge sharp increase in the economy, but the main strategy in the economy was in peril, in danger.

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Because from 1934 to 1936, it was true that the communists in Russia developed the economy, but at the same time they were sending people to the concentration camps.

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The human price was too high in the country and for this reason the strategy in the economy was in peril.

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So, as a consequence of that, Stalin managed to create an economic power and a military power, but his strategy, as I said before, was in peril, in danger.

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And this is the moment when Stalin decided to roll out the great terror, roll out, desplegar. Stalin desplegó la época del gran terror.

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Stalin rolled out the age of the great terror from 1937 to 1938 in order to control the country, to resolve the problem of instability in the country.

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He wanted to bring again the stability to the country and for this reason he purged again many engineers, teachers, and scientists because he thought that they were against the communist party.

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As a consequence of that, almost 2 million people died in the concentration camps. It was true that, as you can see here in terms of the economy, here we can see the data in terms of the economy related to the GDP, the wealth of the country, and it was undeniable that growth in the economy was evident.

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But the human price, as I said before many times, was too high for the Russians. The revolution after the purchase was stabilized. The USSR was unstoppable at that moment because the USSR became one of the most important superpowers in the world.

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Here we have the GDP in the country and it was superior than in Germany, almost superior than in Germany, and obviously superior than in Great Britain and France.

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But we can see that the USSR was a powerhouse at that moment, centro neurálgico. They were a superpower in terms of the army at the end of the Second World War, but it was a doom experiment, an experiment that ended in failure.

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Because they produced more coal, oil, electricity, iron, cement, and fertilizers. Here we have the figures in 1940 and comparing to the figures in 1928 the change was evident.

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But far from being superior, the communist model ended around the year 1989 during the time of Mikhail Gorbachev. Because far from being superior, there were many, many contradictions in the country.

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It was true that they became a military power, but in terms of the economy, they were like a third world country. They were like a country in the third world because they were not able to produce all products that the population demanded.