Russian History
Reign of Lenin--Death of Lenin and the struggle to replace him.
In March 1923, Lenin suffered a debilitating stroke. He was politically taken out of the equation and the struggle to replace him began. In January 1924, he died. His body was preserved and is still on public display in Moscow. The great atheist's body is still worshipped to this day. Until the fall of the Soviet Union, his corpse was the closest thing to God the Russians could legally worship.
This truce lasted until 1927. During this time, the Reds mostly left the peasants alone. Though subject to high taxes and periodic Red Terror the peasants not only got agriculture moving again, but there was enough to eat.
The GPU (which replaced the Cheka) was whittled down in size and Dzerzhinsky died in 1926. However, the Soviet concentration camp system was perfected. Dozens of new camps were created and were run as a cash source for the regime. To be profitable, the GPU used the slave labor of the prisoners to make money and expand the system. Mortality was high in the camps, however, the GPU could always find new "enemies" to throw into the camps. New criminals such as "counterrevolutionaries," and "socially dangerous person" were codified, thereby making Terror part of the legal system. Tens of thousands were arrested for being "kulaks" or other "socially dangerous elements."
Finally in 1926 and 1927 Josef Stalin defeated his enemies Zinoviev and Trotsky to take power in Russia. ''Zinovievites" and "Trotskyites" were hunted down and imprisoned. Trotsky was exiled from Russia in early 1928.
However, Stalin and other Bolsheviks viewed the last several years of truce, and especially the NEP as a betrayal of principle. Many wanted to settle the problem of the peasant once and for all. At the end of 1927, the harvest came in way under projection. Though the harvest was fairly good, it was almost 33% lower than the enormous crop of the previous year. The peasants had seen prices for grain drop and had accordingly planted less grain.
To Stalin, however, this was viewed as a "strike" by the peasants and especially the "kulaks" ("rich" peasants). Stalin brought back requisitioning and sometimes even quintupled the amount of food to be requisitioned. On the kulaks, Stalin decreed a 1000% increase in their taxes in only two years. These repressive measures found the "missing" 33% of food. However, the next year the peasants planted only enough food for themselves and families with very little extra. Little extra planting meant virtually no food for people in cities. It was a recipe for famine. And Josef Stalin would decide who would starve.
The winter of 1928-29 showed a disastrous drop in food production. To get more food, requisitioning started again. This time, however, the peasants resisted. 1300 peasant riots erupted in 1928 and 1929. 3,200 soviet officials suffered terrorist attacks by peasants. Stalin suspended the NEP and decided agriculture was to be Collectivized--all peasants would simply be workers on government farms--the Kolkhozy. The great dream of Russian peasants, owning their own land and selling the fruits of their labor in a free market was gone. To save their dream from death, the peasants would resist. Josef Stalin decided the dream, and resistors, would die together. Stalin called this, in a famous article, The Great Turning Point.