1 single political party- Stalin uses forms of terrorism like the purges, show trials and the terror to instil a doctrine of conformity and coercion of some of the members in his party. He executes his past allies that were previously heroes of the bolshevik revolution in Russia like Kamenev, Zinoviev. Additionally, he also takes control of the bureaucracy stemming from being the general secretary and uses this position to create a system of political patronage amongst his members. This all gets formalised in the 1936 constitution as his ideologies become legally binding across Russia, Lenin set precedents for Stalin's controls. There are people who argue that this simply is not true, citing the pluralistic structure of the Soviet government and the presence of the Politburo as checks on Stalin's power. But politically, the Soviet system had many characteristics of totalitarianism even before Stalin had consolidated his rule. Russia had become a one party state within a year of the Bolsheviks seizing power, a plutonomy of power was created and that party soon grew to have millions of members. Lenin limited freedom …show more content…
The command economy under Stalin is centralised with the success of each five-year plan. These goals are hence created to compel and urge each of the workers to comply to the economic goals set by the government. This allowed Stalin to control their lives and indoctrinate the working classes, additionally there is the presence of class warfare under Stalinism as throughout the 1930’s there was a major effort by the soviets to eliminate the kulaks of Russia(landowners) referred to as dekulakization and instead replace this with collectivisation, this was carried out by the OGPU police