The political system which existed in the Soviet Union under Stalin was a system of terror. The purges of the 1930s sent millions of Russians to their deaths or to the Gulags, the population was scared of the secret police, the NKVD, the forced collectivization of agriculture had wiped out a part of Russian society, the Kulaks. The show trials of the thirties had firmly established Stalin as the leader of the Soviet Union. What requires investigation is how far was this regime of terror a new entity in the Soviet Union or how far it was a continuation the state set up by Lenin after the Russian revolution in 1917.

The regime set up by Lenin did have a secret police, the Cheka and it was authoritarian, especially in the the years after the revolution and the civil war. There was forced grain requisitioning during the period of War Communism and political enemies were exiled. That is by no means in question. The difference is that during the Leninist years there was not the wholesale slaughter of millions of Soviet citizens as there was under Stalin in the 1930s. It can be argued therefore, that Stalinism was partly the outcome of Leninist political practice bec

"Children were encouraged to denounce their parents".

The NKVD, because of their need to obtain confessions from suspects, had to use torture to get them. There was not only the pain of the torture but the fear of reprisals against other members of your family if you do not tell the NKVD what they want to hear. This state of perpetual worry on the part of the people was unlike anything which there had been before, during Lenin's time as leader.

"..organ of terror, dispensing summary justice including executions, making mass arrests,..".

The terror started in 1934 after the assassination of Kirov, the first secretary of the Leningrad party. Kirov lead a majority which voted against Stalin on the Ryutin case. Stalin saw Kirov as a threat from now on even though there is little evidence to suggest that Kirov was against Stalin on many issues. Kirov was murdered on December 1st 1934 by a man named Nikoaelev. Stalin was not directly implicated in the murder but it has been suggested that Stalin, in a sense, allowed the killing to take place by ensuring that certain circumstances enabled the killer to get near to Kirov. One can see the advantages of this to Stalin, on the one hand it silenced a potential opponent and on the other it enabled the widespread clamp down on political opposition. So even if Stalin had not been involved in a plot to eliminate Kirov he used the event to silence all opponents.

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2689
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page double spaced)