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By 1929, Stalin had defeated his political opponents and gained full control over the party. He organized a committee to begin the process of industrialization of the Soviet Union. Backlash against industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture escalated, which prompted Stalin to increase police presence in rural areas.
After the Russian February Revolution of 1917, the Provisional Government dissolved the Tsarist police and set up the People's Militias. The subsequent Russian October Revolution of 1917 saw a seizure of state power led by Lenin and the Bolsheviks , who established a new Bolshevik regime, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR).
Stalin's government feared attack from capitalist countries, [230] and many communists, including in Komsomol, OGPU, and the Red Army, were eager to be rid of the NEP and its market-oriented approach. [231] They had concerns about those who profited from the policy: affluent peasants known as "kulaks" and small business owners, or "NEPmen". [232]
In his "Secret Speech", delivered in 1956, Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin's successor, argued that Stalin's regime differed profusely from the leadership of Lenin. He was critical of the cult of the individual constructed around Stalin whereas Lenin stressed "the role of the people as the creator of history". [ 184 ]
The Gulag was an administrative body that watched over the camps; eventually, its name would retrospectively be used as a name for these camps. After Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin was able to take control of the government, and he began to form the gulag system
After Stalin's death on 5 March 1953, Beria's ambitions sprang into full force. In the uneasy silence following the cessation of Stalin's last agonies, he was the first to dart forward to kiss his lifeless form (a move likened by Montefiore to "wrenching a dead King's ring off his finger"). [ 59 ]
Two people, described as anti-communist activists by the Moscow Times, were arrested for throwing flowers and shouting abuse towards a statue of former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin on Tuesday ...
Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov (Russian: Николай Иванович Ежов, IPA: [nʲɪkɐˈlaj ɪˈvanəvʲɪtɕ (j)ɪˈʐof]; 1 May 1895 – 4 February 1940), also spelt Ezhov, was a Soviet secret police official under Joseph Stalin who was head of the NKVD from 1936 to 1938, during the height of the Great Purge.