Joseph Stalin Dbq Essay

Throughout Russia’s history, there have been many rulers that tried to manage their country in different ways. Even though, all of these rulers had their own unique ways of ruling, all of them were seen as terrible by the people. This eventually led to a tipping point for the Russian citizens and the Russian Revolution took place. The goal for these people was to gain freedom from their oppressive czar but instead, they got an even worse leader. Joseph Stalin was a leader of the Soviet Union from 1929 to 1953 and he was known for his ability to strike fear into people. Stalin used this fear to corrupt the minds of people into doing exactly what he wanted them to do. Although, many people had opposing viewpoints concerning Joseph Stalin, there

To do this, he used his totalitarian government to set up a secret police that would carry out his dirty work. He gave them unlimited power to convict or even murder people that swayed from his beliefs. This caused people to think that he was power hungry and not fit to rule. They wanted him to be replaced by someone that was less rude and more thoughtful of the Russian citizens. (Document One) Stalin didn’t just use the secret police to crush the hopes and dreams of his people. He also banned religion. This was done because he believed in science and he didn’t want people to focus on life without communism. (Document Four) Stalin’s political actions can be seen as completely tyrannical but he did impact society as

He thought up two plans, known as the first and second five year plans, to catch Russia up to the rest of the world in ten years. To do this, Russia’s economy would turn into a command economy. Each industry had a target goal to reach and all government money was invested into industry, energy, and transportation. This had both positive and negative consequences. The production of consumer goods decreased but amazing progress was made. Steel production and the electricity generation increased. Another focus for Stalin was on agriculture. His plan was to use collective farming to produce more food by less people. The people working these farms objected the idea and often destroyed their crops and livestock rather than giving it to the government. Stalin’s response to this was to take the food by force and kill any protesters. This caused a famine to take place and many more people died. Some people even turned to cannibalism in order to survive. (Document Three) Stalin didn’t care about any of this as long as his plans went