Silver Persian said:
My teachers has given us one of the Q's from the 2004 HSC, which as (approximately)
Evaluate the impact of Lenin's death upon the leadership of the party and the debate on modernisation
For modernisation, I should be talking about 5 yr plans, NEP, collectivisation and stuff, right? But when it says debate, it that just the debate about NEP after Lenin died, because their wasn;t really any policy 'debate' after 1928ish.
*slightly confused*
It is just me or is this question slightly odd
we got a much more straightforward question, about stalin and how he rose to totalitarianism....
with the leadership part you will obviously have to talk about the power struggle between Stalin and his various opponents, and why he became the successor even though trotsky seemed more logical - positions in the party and govt, his political skills,
identifying his views and attitudes with Lenin which meant that if anyone argued with him it would be like arguing against leninist policy, big no no. use the stuff you got in class, there has to be something in it.
yes, the debate was going on before Lenin died. But Lenin died in 1924. So there's heaps to talk about. I'm a bit rusty so I apologise if i get any of this wrong, or don't go into enough detail.
Lenin introduced NEP after the civil war after war communism wasn't needed any more, and food requisitioning didn't work out. remember, Kronstadt was when Lenin really sat up and went OK, the way we're going at the moment is going to get us kicked out.
Now NEP was only meant to be temporary, and there were two opinions, Bukharin and the Left Opposition, Bukharin liked NEP and wanted to retain it for longer, but short term measure, Trotsky wanted it abolished and a stricter policy imposed. Lenin then banned factions. This is really very important because this gave Stalin the fuel he needed to burn his opponents. Lenin initiated all this.
The modernisation debate was central to the power struggle between the triumvirate and Trotsky. The triumvirate supported NEP and Trotsky the Left Opposition view. When they successfully deported Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev then turned around and began to argue for Trotsky's view which was hypocritical since they'd only recently denounced it. They recanted later but it did them little use, being executed later by Stalin.
THEN it was Stalin vs the Right Opposition (Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky) - by then he had rejected policies he previously supported and adopted policies similar to Trotsky's.
So Stalin effectively stood back and watched his rivals dig their own graves.
Modernisation - Trotsky's policy was the only one that would effectively support the heavy industrial growth that Russia needed - NEP was definitely not going to get the kind of results Stalin was looking for.
I hope that helped, like I said, rusty! I need to study more. goddamn it!
