A common misconception of Lenin is that he was a hero of the Russian people. To the extent that he played a major part in the overthrow of the oppressive Tsarist regime, this is true. However, in protecting the revolution, he had ordered the imprisonment and execution of millions of Russians. These arrests and executions were carried out by his secret police called the Cheka. The role of the Cheka changed during the civil war into an organ of terror, dispensing summary justice including executions and making mass arrests.

Things were not all bad however, for the Russian peasants from 1921 onwards as the policy became more relaxed with the taxation on the peasants and the halting of forced grain requisitioning. This was extended with the introduction of the new economic policy (NEP). This new type of peasant in Russia came to be known as a Kulak. The Kulaks could buy their own land and sell off the extra crops they produced -Lenin introduced the Kulaks to appease the

What the people of Russia thought was bad under Lenin did not compare with what Stalin's political system of terror had in store for them. With Lenin's death and Stalin's rise as leader came a time of complete political upheaval. This is evidenced by the purges of the 1930s which sent millions of Russians to their deaths, or to the Gulags. It was the secret police, known as the NKVD, who acted upon Stalin's orders that the population feared most of all. The Kulaks, who were middle-class Russians, were forced out of their way of life and as a result agricultural production was rapidly reduced. The show trials of the thirties had firmly established Stalin as the leader of the Soviet Union.

In conclusion, this essay says that the end does not justify the means. Stalin's oppression over his people did bring about Russia's recovery, but at a very high price. Therefore, it is Stalin's totalitarian terror that everyone remembers and his achievements were very small in comparison.

From 1934 to 1939 Stalin ordered a series of executions and imprisonments, largely directed towards people within his own government. Half of the members of the first Council of Peoples Commissars were executed in 1938. Some government officials executed were accused of being Nazi agents or sympathizers, while others were accused for planning to overthrow the Soviet government. Members of the Left Opposition who were allowed to return to the party after accepting Stalinism were soon executed; those who remained abroad were hunted down and killed. Also executed were people belonging to the right-wing of the party (Bukharin and others). On pg 332 in the book Stalin, Works Stalin says at a speech in Red Square.

If the people knew what Stalin was doing to them. The question is why didn't they do something about it? They didn't not try to stop him and this was for two main reasons: first, what he was doing to the Russian people terrified them. There are stories of when Stalin gave public speeches that people would applaud him for hours because they feared that if they were seen to be the first to stop clapping that they would find themselves in Gulag camps or even executed. Second, was the cult of a personality. There were pictures of Stalin and pro Stalin propaganda everywhere. This built him up to be like a perfect and God-like deity.

"As a practical test of 'planned economics' the scheme has quite clearly failed."

people. These Kulaks however, were to suffer terribly under Stalin.

By mid-1931 53% of the peasants once again lived on collective farms. After this the same combination of persuasion and coercion that had been applied earlier steadily raised the percentage of peasants on collective farms until it reached 94% in 1938. In many cases military units were called on to subdue unruly peasants, and decrees for the protection of socialist property sanctioned the shooting of thousands of peasants for stealing such items as rope or sheaves of straw or for the ''hoarding of small coin.'' Hundreds of thousands

Some common words found in the essay are:
War II, Soviet Union, , Rykov Party, Red Army, NEP Peasants, Alongside Stalin's, Union Germany, Union Stalin's, East Berlin, soviet union, five-year plans, collective farms, marshall aid, russian people, sphere influence, stalin's five plans, peasant households, five-year plan, production doubled, steel production, soviet sphere influence,
Approximate Word count = 2034
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)