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MAPS OF HISTORY · IB HISTORY · THE SOVIET UNION UNDER STALIN

IB HISTORY · 1924 – 1953 · 12 CHAPTERS

IB History: The Soviet Union under Stalin — notes, maps and essay plans

How did one man come to rule a sixth of the world’s land? Follow the succession Stalin won, the revolution from above he imposed, its cost in famines, camps and deportations, and the system that outlived him.

This page gathers the atlas’s IB notes: where each of its 12 chapters fits the syllabus, the concepts and evidence it supports, practice questions with model essay plans, primary sources, and starting points for the Internal Assessment.

Map from The Soviet Union under Stalin, 1924–1953, chapter 3: The Famines
THE SOVIET UNION UNDER STALIN, 1924–1953 · CHAPTER 3
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Where it fits the course

Every chapter’s IB notes name the parts of the course it serves. Across the atlas they add up to this:

Chapter by chapter

Across its 12 chapters, the atlas holds 72 points of evidence and 26 primary sources. Here you can read all the evidence for chapters 1 and 2. For each later chapter there is one point and the practice question; the rest is in the atlas. Select a chapter title to open its free page and read the full explanation.

1. The Succession

CHAPTER 1 · 1924–1929 · CONCEPTS: CAUSATION, SIGNIFICANCE

Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: Why did authoritarian rule emerge?Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How was it challenged?Paper 3 · Europe, section 13.8

EVIDENCE TO USE · ALL 6 POINTS (A FREE CHAPTER)

  1. When Stalin became General Secretary in April 1922, his colleagues regarded the job as administrative. Yet the Secretariat let him appoint local party secretaries, and those secretaries chose delegates to party congresses. Control over appointments could thus shape who voted at a congress.
  2. Lenin’s postscript of 4 January 1923 described Stalin as “too rude” and proposed his removal. The warning did not remove him: in May 1924 Zinoviev and Kamenev persuaded the leadership both to withhold the Testament from publication and to keep Stalin in office.
  3. The “Lenin Enrolment” of 1924 added more than 200,000 members, mostly young workers who owed their careers to the apparatus Stalin ran. Their arrival helped convert the apparatus’s power over appointments into votes.
  4. By the Fourteenth Congress in December 1925, Stalin had weakened Trotsky and turned against former allies. Zinoviev and Kamenev’s Leningrad delegation was overwhelmingly outvoted, showing how quickly that change of alliance could take effect.
  5. Trotsky, the leader of the Left, was removed in stages: expelled from the party in November 1927, exiled to Alma-Ata on 17 January 1928, and deported to Turkey in February 1929.
  6. In January–February 1928 Stalin requisitioned grain in Siberia, breaking the NEP compromise. This put him at odds with Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky, who were removed from their posts as the “Right deviation” in 1929–30.

2. The Great Turn: Collectivisation

CHAPTER 2 · 1929–1933 · CONCEPTS: CAUSATION, CHANGE

Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: Why did authoritarian rule emerge?Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How did it affect people’s lives?Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How was it challenged?Paper 3 · Europe, section 13.8

EVIDENCE TO USE · ALL 6 POINTS (A FREE CHAPTER)

  1. On 30 January 1930 the Politburo divided kulaks into three categories and set initial targets of 60,000 for the camps and 150,000 for deportation. The quotas show that dekulakisation was planned at the center.
  2. Fewer than a tenth of peasant households were collectivised in October 1929. By 1 March 1930, about 56 per cent were: such a rapid increase could be achieved only through coercion by officials, activists and the OGPU.
  3. Stalin blamed local officials for “excesses” in “Dizzy with Success”, published in Pravda on 2 March 1930. Within weeks, millions of peasants left collective farms. Their departure revealed how little of the drive had been voluntary.
  4. Lynne Viola reports that the OGPU recorded about 13,750 mass disturbances in 1930, with roughly 2.5 million participants. It was the largest rural revolt in Europe since the Russian civil war.
  5. About 1.8 million people were deported as “kulaks” in 1930–31. They were sent to special settlements in the Northern Krai, the Urals, western Siberia and Kazakhstan, and many died during the first winters.
  6. Collective farms contained over nine-tenths of peasant households by 1937. But by 1933 the numbers of horses and cattle had roughly halved, and they did not recover until the 1950s.

3. The Famines

CHAPTER 3 · 1930–1933 · CONCEPTS: CONSEQUENCE, PERSPECTIVES

Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How did it affect people’s lives?Paper 3 · Europe, section 13.8

EVIDENCE TO USE · 1 OF 6

Practice question: Discuss the view that Stalin’s policies deliberately brought about the Soviet famine of 1932–33.

5 more points of evidence, 2 primary sources and the model plan for this question are in the IB notes of chapter 3 in the atlas.

4. The Five-Year Plans

CHAPTER 4 · 1928–1941 · CONCEPTS: CHANGE, CONSEQUENCE

Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How was it maintained?Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How did it affect people’s lives?Paper 3 · Europe, section 13.8

EVIDENCE TO USE · 1 OF 6

Practice question: How far had the Five-Year Plans achieved their aims by 1941?

5 more points of evidence, 3 primary sources and the model plan for this question are in the IB notes of chapter 4 in the atlas.

5. The Gulag

CHAPTER 5 · 1930–1953 · CONCEPTS: CONTINUITY, CONSEQUENCE

Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How was it maintained?Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How did it affect people’s lives?Paper 3 · Europe, section 13.8

EVIDENCE TO USE · 1 OF 6

Practice question: Examine the role of the Gulag in maintaining Stalin’s authoritarian rule.

5 more points of evidence, 2 primary sources and the model plan for this question are in the IB notes of chapter 5 in the atlas.

6. The Great Terror

CHAPTER 6 · 1936–1938 · CONCEPTS: CAUSATION, PERSPECTIVES

Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How was it maintained?Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How was it challenged?Paper 3 · Europe, section 13.8

EVIDENCE TO USE · 1 OF 6

Practice question: “The Great Terror was the work of Stalin alone.” Discuss.

5 more points of evidence, 2 primary sources and the model plan for this question are in the IB notes of chapter 6 in the atlas.

7. Nations and Deportations

CHAPTER 7 · 1937–1944 · CONCEPTS: CONSEQUENCE, PERSPECTIVES

Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How was it maintained?Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How did it affect people’s lives?Paper 3 · Europe, section 13.8

EVIDENCE TO USE · 1 OF 6

Practice question: Examine how national minorities were treated in the Soviet Union under Stalin.

5 more points of evidence, 3 primary sources and the model plan for this question are in the IB notes of chapter 7 in the atlas.

8. Propaganda and the Cult

CHAPTER 8 · 1929–1953 · CONCEPTS: SIGNIFICANCE, PERSPECTIVES

Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How was it maintained?Paper 3 · Europe, section 13.8

EVIDENCE TO USE · 1 OF 6

Practice question: How important was propaganda in maintaining Stalin’s rule between 1929 and 1953? Evaluate its contribution.

5 more points of evidence, 2 primary sources and the model plan for this question are in the IB notes of chapter 8 in the atlas.

9. Daily Life, Women and Family

CHAPTER 9 · 1930–1953 · CONCEPTS: CHANGE, CONTINUITY

Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How did it affect people’s lives?Paper 3 · Europe, section 13.8

EVIDENCE TO USE · 1 OF 6

Practice question: To what extent did the lives of Soviet women change under Stalin?

5 more points of evidence, 2 primary sources and the model plan for this question are in the IB notes of chapter 9 in the atlas.

10. Stalin at War

CHAPTER 10 · 1941–1945 · CONCEPTS: SIGNIFICANCE, CONSEQUENCE

Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How was it maintained?Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How did it affect people’s lives?Paper 3 · Europe, section 13.8

EVIDENCE TO USE · 1 OF 6

Practice question: Discuss the impact of the Second World War on Stalin’s authoritarian rule.

5 more points of evidence, 2 primary sources and the model plan for this question are in the IB notes of chapter 10 in the atlas.

11. High Stalinism

CHAPTER 11 · 1945–1953 · CONCEPTS: CONTINUITY, CHANGE

Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How was it maintained?Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How was it challenged?Paper 3 · Europe, section 13.11

EVIDENCE TO USE · 1 OF 6

Practice question: Compare and contrast how Stalin maintained control in the 1930s and after 1945.

5 more points of evidence, 2 primary sources and the model plan for this question are in the IB notes of chapter 11 in the atlas.

12. Death and Judgement

EPILOGUE · 1953–1956 · CONCEPTS: PERSPECTIVES, SIGNIFICANCE

Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How was it challenged?Paper 3 · Europe, section 13.11

EVIDENCE TO USE · 1 OF 6

Practice question: Examine how Stalin’s authoritarian rule was challenged, and explain why those challenges failed during his lifetime.

5 more points of evidence, 2 primary sources and the model plan for this question are in the IB notes of chapter 12 in the atlas.

Practice questions and essay plans

Each chapter closes with a practice question and a model plan. The plan gives a thesis, three points with evidence and a link back to the question, a counter-argument and a judgement. Chapter 1’s plan appears here in full. The other plans are outlined here and given in full in the atlas.

PAPER 2 · THE SOVIET UNION UNDER STALIN · CHAPTER 1

How far did control of the party apparatus account for Stalin’s rise to power by 1929?

THESIS

The party apparatus was the decisive condition of Stalin’s rise because appointments could be translated into dependable majorities at congresses. That power became effective in a particular political situation: his rivals underestimated him, while “socialism in one country” appealed to a party tired of waiting for world revolution.

THE THREE POINTS

  1. Through the Secretariat, Stalin built a loyal following within the party before his rivals recognized what he was doing.

    EVIDENCEFrom April 1922, as General Secretary, he placed provincial secretaries who chose delegates to congresses. The Lenin Enrolment of 1924 brought in more than 200,000 members whose careers depended on the apparatus. Robert Daniels called the result a “circular flow of power”.

    LINKThe chain from appointments to delegates helps explain Stalin’s victories in every important vote from 1925 to 1929.

  2. Stalin’s rivals gave him opportunities because they feared Trotsky more than they feared him.

    EVIDENCEIn May 1924 Zinoviev and Kamenev protected Stalin from Lenin’s Testament; by 1925 they had lost their Leningrad base. Bukharin joined Stalin against the United Opposition in 1926–27, then suffered defeat himself in 1929.

    LINKThese shifting alliances left a coalition against the apparatus to form only when it was too late.

  3. At each stage Stalin also advanced the policy that held the greater appeal.

    EVIDENCE“Socialism in one country” offered progress without waiting for a European revolution, whereas Trotsky’s “permanent revolution” sounded risky. In 1928 Stalin adopted grain seizures, a measure close to the Left’s programme, and so isolated the Right.

    LINKBy changing policy, Stalin used his organizational strength to win political victories over both factions.

COUNTER-ARGUMENT

Stephen Kotkin and Sheila Fitzpatrick, among other historians, give weight to Stalin’s intelligence, ideological conviction and appeal to newly promoted officials, arguing that these mattered as much as manipulation. On their reading, the apparatus expressed genuine support as well as patronage: many communists preferred Stalin’s blunt, practical style.

JUDGEMENT

The apparatus supplied a necessary instrument, but Stalin still had to use it. His choices of allies and policies, and his rivals’ misjudgements, explain how appointments became power. Without those mistakes, control of appointments alone would not have produced a dictator by 1929; the machine and the mistakes belong together in the judgement.

Read the chapter behind this plan: The Succession.

PAPER 2 · THE SOVIET UNION UNDER STALIN · CHAPTER 3

Discuss the view that Stalin’s policies deliberately brought about the Soviet famine of 1932–33.

THESIS

Procurement quotas, collectivisation and punitive decrees were deliberate policies, and they caused and deepened the famine. But causing mass death and intending it are different things. Whether Stalin intended those deaths, or targeted Ukrainians as a nation, remains contested; an answer should keep the clear evidence of causation separate from the debate over intent.

THE THREE POINTS

  1. Soviet policy caused the famine.

  2. In Ukraine and the Kuban, later measures made the famine worse.

  3. Kazakhstan shows that a policy could be lethal without national targeting.

The evidence for each point, the counter-argument and the judgement are in the IB notes of chapter 3 in the atlas. Read the chapter first: The Famines.

PAPER 2 · THE SOVIET UNION UNDER STALIN · CHAPTER 12

Examine how Stalin’s authoritarian rule was challenged, and explain why those challenges failed during his lifetime.

THESIS

Stalin faced challenges from party oppositions, peasants, national movements in the borderlands, a communist state abroad and, at the end of his life, prisoners. Tito alone succeeded while Stalin lived. Elsewhere, overwhelming force and control over information and appointments defeated opposition; real change came only after Stalin’s death.

THE THREE POINTS

  1. Stalin defeated party opposition first through organisation, then through terror.

  2. The regime used mass force against social and national resistance.

  3. Tito succeeded beyond the reach of Soviet troops.

The evidence for each point, the counter-argument and the judgement are in the IB notes of chapter 12 in the atlas. Read the chapter first: Death and Judgement.

PAPER 2 · THE SOVIET UNION UNDER STALIN · CHAPTER 4

How far had the Five-Year Plans achieved their aims by 1941?

THESIS

The plans largely achieved their central aim: they built a heavy-industrial and military base capable of fighting a modern war. Their stated social aims of rising living standards and efficient planning were another matter. To judge the plans, we must decide whether to measure them by the regime’s priorities or by socialism’s promises.

THE THREE POINTS

  1. Heavy industry expanded rapidly.

  2. Industry in the east gave the Soviet Union a defensible base.

  3. The gains came alongside serious losses in living standards and efficiency.

The evidence for each point, the counter-argument and the judgement are in the IB notes of chapter 4 in the atlas. Read the chapter first: The Five-Year Plans.

Primary sources

Before reading a primary source, it helps to know where it came from and its context. Each chapter’s IB notes provide both. Here are the sources from chapter 1 in full.

TEXT · CHAPTER 1

Letter to the Congress (Lenin’s “Testament”) and its postscript

CREATOR
V. I. Lenin, dictated to his secretaries
DATE
24 December 1922; postscript 4 January 1923
ORIGIN
Notes dictated during Lenin’s illness, read to delegation leaders at the Thirteenth Party Congress in May 1924 and first published in the USSR in 1956

Context. Lenin was partly paralysed and isolated by his doctors when he dictated the notes. How far can the typed text be shown to contain his own words? Some historians, notably Stephen Kotkin, question this.

“Comrade Stalin, having become General Secretary, has concentrated immense power in his hands, and I am not sure that he will always be capable of using that power with sufficient caution. Comrade Trotsky, on the other hand, … is distinguished not only by outstanding ability. Personally he is perhaps the most capable man in the present Central Committee, but he also has excessive self-confidence and an excessive interest in the purely administrative side of affairs. … Stalin is too rude, and this defect, entirely tolerable in our midst and in dealings among us communists, becomes intolerable in the office of General Secretary. I therefore propose that the comrades think of a way of moving Stalin from this post and appointing another man who in all other respects differs from Comrade Stalin by one advantage only, namely that he is more tolerant, more loyal, more polite and more considerate to comrades, less capricious, and so on.”

Translation: Maps of History, from the Russian text (Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 45). The author died in 1924. · original ↗

TEXT · CHAPTER 1

My Life (memoir), on Stalin’s appointment as General Secretary

CREATOR
Leon Trotsky
DATE
Written in exile in 1929; published 1930
ORIGIN
Autobiography written on the island of Prinkipo after Trotsky’s deportation from the USSR (Berlin: Granit, 1930; New York: Scribner, 1930)

Context. Trotsky wrote the memoir as Stalin’s defeated rival, and his account misdates the appointment. Stalin became General Secretary in April 1922, after the Eleventh Congress.

“Stalin was put forward at the Tenth Congress, on Zinoviev’s initiative and against Lenin’s wishes, for the post of General Secretary. The congress was sure that the candidate had been proposed by the Central Committee as a whole. No one, however, attached any particular importance to this election. The post of General Secretary, first created at the Tenth Congress, could under Lenin have a technical and not a political character. And yet Lenin was uneasy: ‘This cook will make only spicy dishes,’ he said of Stalin.”

Translation: Maps of History, from the Russian text of Moia zhizn’ (1930). The author died in 1940; the work was first published in 1930. · original ↗

Every other source in the atlas (24)

Internal Assessment starting points

Each starting point is an idea for an investigation: a question, the concept it tests, the kinds of sources you could use and where they are held, and one caution. The investigation must be your own work, and your teacher approves the question.

How accurately did Western newspapers describe the Ukrainian famine as it was happening in 1933?

CONCEPTPerspectives

SOURCESArticles by Gareth Jones and Walter Duranty (March 1933); British Foreign Office reports; later survivor testimony.

CAUTIONConsider what the correspondents could see at the time, then compare their accounts with what the archives later revealed. A judgment made with hindsight alone would overlook the conditions in which they reported in 1933.

How much did workers’ lives in Magnitogorsk improve from 1932 to 1937?

CONCEPTChange

SOURCESJohn Scott’s memoir Behind the Urals (1942); Soviet newspapers; wage and housing statistics.

CAUTIONScott was sympathetic to the Soviet project and, as a foreigner, enjoyed privileges. Compare his impressions with the wage and housing statistics when judging workers’ lives.

What led some Western observers to accept the Moscow show trials of 1936–38 as credible?

CONCEPTPerspectives

SOURCESTrial transcripts published by the People’s Commissariat of Justice (1936–38); Joseph Davies, Mission to Moscow (1941); the Dewey Commission report (1937).

CAUTIONThe published transcripts were edited. Treat the trials as staged performances, and use archival evidence to test each confession.

How did Soviet posters portray the relationship between Stalin and Lenin from 1929 to 1953?

CONCEPTChange

SOURCESSoviet political posters and Pravda front pages from the birthday issues of 1929, 1939 and 1949.

CAUTIONFind the date and print run of each poster before comparing it with the others. Online reproductions are often undated or given the wrong label.

How do testimonies collected after 1989 remember the deportation of the Crimean Tatars in 1944?

CONCEPTSignificance

SOURCESOral testimony collections; the GKO decree of 11 May 1944; NKVD reports published in document collections.

CAUTIONThe testimony was recorded decades after the deportation, and later events shaped what people remembered. Compare these memories with documents from the time.

How much did the June 1940 labour decree change discipline in Soviet factories?

CONCEPTConsequence

SOURCESThe decree text; prosecution statistics; factory newspapers; workers’ letters.

CAUTIONProsecution totals show how the decree was enforced, but managers often ignored the law to retain workers. Factory records and letters can also show how people behaved.

What explains the protests in Tbilisi in March 1956 following the Secret Speech of 1956?

CONCEPTCausation

SOURCESThe text of the Secret Speech (US State Department, 1956); reports on the Georgian events; memoirs.

CAUTIONThe sources on the Tbilisi events are few and often partisan. Identify what they leave uncertain, including the number of dead.

Revision tools

The atlas ends with a map quiz that asks you to find places and moments on the map itself (part of every plan from Starter up). The quick quiz and the discussion questions with our answers are free pages on this site, and the printable study guide gathers every chapter’s notes into one document for revision.

CHAPTER 1 — THE SUCCESSIONMAP QUIZQUICK QUIZPRINTABLE STUDY GUIDEDISCUSSION QUESTIONSALL 12 CHAPTERS

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