Study Questions on Suny, chapters 5-6
Chapter 5
What are the "five easy steps" towards dictatorship that Suny discusses on p. 123?
Who had and who was denied political rights under the new, Bolshevik regime?
When did the Soviet government become a one-party government?
Does Suny think that the Bolsheviks were a "strong" party in early 1918? According to Suny, how did that factor into Lenin’s turning away from radical democracy?
What documents assigned in Daniels for week 3 seem to support the point that Suny makes in the second paragraph on p. 124?
According to Suny, did the Soviets after October 1917 function as democratic institutions? Explain.
According to Suny, what sorts of tendencies (culture) were emerging in the Bolshevik party in 1918? Did the Civil War lessen or magnify these tendencies?
Were the Bolsheviks consistent in their policy towards the opposition socialist parties? Explain.
Did the end of the Civil War result in a lessening of repression against the non-Bolshevik socialists? Explain. What became of multi-party politics in Soviet Russia?
Does Suny argue that dictatorship was the result of Bolshevik ideology, of policies they considered necessary during the Civil War, or a mixture of both?
What does Suny mean when he says that Lenin "defended the ‘productivist’ ideal…" (p. 126), and what documents assigned from Daniels for week 3 seem to support this statement?
What does Suny say about Lenin’s character as head of state?
Explain the organizational structure of the Soviet government as it functioned during the Civil War.
According to Suny, at what point did the Communist Party become "a state within a state," and what did that mean for the function of the soviets?
On p. 124 Suny says that the Civil War transformed the relationship between the party, state, and workers in 3 ways. What were these? Explain. What were the results?
According to Suny (p. 129), what had the function/purpose of the Communist Party become by 1921?
Does Suny think that the Communist Party was a highly disciplined monolith? Explain.
What was the Left Communist movement? What became of it?
What was the "Democratic centralist" movement? What did it protest against? Which documents assigned in Daniels for week 3 relate to these issues?
Did the party leadership simply crush the democratic centralists in 1919-1920? Explain.
Explain the positions taken on the "trade union question" at the 1921 10th Party Congress by Lenin (the "Platform of Ten"), by Trotsky and Bukharin (statization), and by the Workers’ Opposition.
Who "won" the 10th Party Congress debate on the trade union question? And what happened to the Workers’ Opposition?
After March 1921, would the Party permit factionalism? (what document from week 3 relates to this?)
How does Suny characterize the impact of the Civil War on the attitudes of Communist Party members by 1921?
Who rebelled against the Soviet government in Tambov, when, and why?
How does Suny explain workers’ protests in 1920-21?
Who rebelled at Kronstadt in 1921, why, and what became of the rebellion?
Why does Suny call March 1921 "a major turning point in early Soviet history"?
Besides the decision on factionalism, what other major decisions were made at the 10th Party Congress in March 1921?
What does Suny mean by "state capitalism"?
What was the basic idea of Lenin’s New Economic Policy?
How did Lenin justify such a change in policy?
What was the "smychka"?
According to Suny, what was Lenin’s model for the NEP?
What is Suny’s main point in this chapter?
Chapter 6
What was meant by the term "the nationality question"?
What had been Lenin’s view of the nationality question before 1917?
Who was put "in charge" of Soviet nationalities policy after 1917?
What position did Stalin and Bukharin take on the nationality question during the Civil War? Did Lenin agree? Explain.
What about Stalin’s plan for a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Lenin disagree with in 1922? Explain. Who "won" this first dispute over the Union?
When and why did Lenin try to warn the party leadership that Stalin was a threat? What was it that Lenin actually said about Stalin in 1923?
In the long-term, who really won the dispute between Lenin and Stalin over Soviet nationality policy?
Who was this Stalin fellow, anyway? What does Suny tell us about him? What was his role in 1917? During the Civil War?
What functions did Stalin control as head of the party’s Secretariat and in the Orgburo? Why was that so important?
Who were Stalin’s allies in 1923-25, and why?
What had happened to Lenin’s health in 1921-23?
Who were the most likely successors to Lenin? Explain.
At what point did Stalin and his allies begin pushing Trotsky out of the leadership? What were the main issues that Trotsky had raised in the "Platform of the Forty-Six"? what were the results?
In what ways did Stalin use Lenin’s death for his own political purposes?
Why wasn’t Lenin’s criticism of Stalin (in his Testament) made known in 1924?
How did Stalin succeed in labeling Trotsky as deviating from Leninism?
What was Trotsky’s status in the leadership by 1925?
Did the entire party agree about supporting the NEP economic policy? Explain.
Did NEP bring a higher standard of living right away in 1921? Explain. Did NEP help those starving in the 1921 famine?
What condition was the economy in by 1921? Explain.
Which recovered more rapidly—industry or agriculture? Explain.
What caused the "scissors crisis" of 1923? How did Bukharin want to "close the scissors"? What did the Politburo actually do about this crisis?
What was the main idea behind the slogan "Socialism in One Country"? How did Stalin and Bukharin use this idea to discredit Trotsky?
What was Trotsky’s position on industrialization and foreign trade in 1925?
What was Bukharin’s position on these questions?
Explain the basic criticism that Trotsky and the "Left Opposition" made of the Stalin-Bukharin economic program.
What happened to the Left Opposition at the 14th party congress?
Was Trotsky kicked out of the government in 1925? Kamenev? Zinoviev? Explain.
What was the "United Opposition"?
What happened to the United Opposition in the course of 1927?
Why did the Stalin faction in 1927 decide to adopt many of the proposals of the defeated Left Opposition?
How did Stalin deal with the 1927 grain crisis? Why was that so important?
Why had Lenin adopted a policy of peaceful coexistence? What did this involve?
By 1921, did Lenin support "revolutionary offensives" in foreign policy? Why not?
Why did the Soviet government and the German government sign the 1922 Rappallo Treaty?
Did all members of the Comintern agree with the new Soviet foreign policy? Explain.
What was the relationship between the Russian Communist Party and the Comintern?
Why was the Soviet Union felling increasingly isolated by the mid-1920s? How did the Soviet government respond?
Did Moscow support the nationalists or the communists in China in 1920-27? Explain. What happened in China in 1927 that, as Suny points out, was a great disaster for Soviet policy? Explain.
What were the causes of the 1927 war scare and how did it effect Soviet domestic politics?
Suny says that between 1917 and 1928 "the USSR moved from being a revolutionary power to become a more normal state…" What does he mean by this? Explain.
At the end of this chapter, Suny explains five reasons that Stalin was able to emerge as the most powerful leader in the Communist Party and the Soviet state by 1928. What is Suny’s main point about: the changing "rules of the political game"; Stalin’s control over the party secretariat; Stalin’s ideals of building socialism; Stalin’s personality; the weakness of Stalin’s opponents?