The Soviet System in 1985 Was Still Mostly Stalin's:
Shortly after taking power, Stalin attempted to revitalize Russia’s stagnating economy through a massive industrialization drive. By pushing existing metallurgical plants to their limits and building new complexes in the Urals, Stalin hoped that Russia would no longer need to depend on machinery imports2. Though his Five-Year Plans were not always completely feasible, they were a means of reversing Russia’s chronic backwardness2. This effort lived on in Stalin’s legacy as his successors struggled to achieve parity with the West. In addition, Stalin’s Five-Year Plan system continued to push forward the Soviet Union’s industry well into the 1980s3.
Stalin believed that success in industry was inextricably tied to agriculture: collectivization would make grain plentiful and inexpensive2. By bringing peasant farms under state control, Stalin effectively ended market relations in agriculture. The state gained enormous control over farming – ninety-three per cent of peasant households were collectivized by 19372. Collective farms persisted in the Soviet Union for decades, throughout the administrations of both Khrushchev and Brezhnev.
Contrary to what Stalin had expected, the state monopoly of agriculture proved to be inefficient. “The list of weaknesses is a long one,” writes Lowe about the agriculture system under Brezhnev, which retained many faults from its Stalinist past: “It was too centralized…there was very little room for local discretion and initiative; many of the collective farms were too big…. Storage facilities were poor and so were the roads. On top of all that, there was the basic problem which had hampered collective farming from the beginning – lack of motivation”3. Though Brezhnev realized that the solution was de-centralization, Stalin’s legacy was so strong in the Soviet Union that Brezhnev would have had great difficulty passing such a measure3.
Stalin’s nationalism lived on after his death through Khrushchev and Brezhnev. Stalin encouraged nationalist sentiment during the war effort and stifled disagreement with the Great Terror; Khrushchev did not tolerate dissent in the Eastern Bloc. When Nagy took power in Hungary and attempted to make his country a neutral power, Khrushchev intervened with force3. “It was clear now that there were strict limits to Soviet toleration,” writes Lowe3. Brezhnev’s actions were similarly nationalistic: when Alexander Dubcek initiated liberal reforms in Prague in 1968, Russia responded with another military invasion. Some historians believe that Dubcek had set forth a “way out of the dead-end of Stalinism” and shown, through de-centralization and lifting of censorship, that “it was possible to reform the mess which communism had got itself into, thanks to Stalin”3. Brezhnev, though, was clearly unwilling to accept that non-Stalinist methods could work for the Soviet Union. In this way, Stalin’s nationalism had great influence – even decades later – through Khrushchev and Brezhnev.
Perhaps Stalin’s most lasting legacy was the powerful, bureaucratic Secretariat. He created a privileged nomenklatura class to administrate the bureaucracy: out of this class came Stalin’s successors. “With Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin among them, this generation of the administrative and specialist elite dominated Soviet society into the 1980s and provided the top post-Stalin leadership for the country,” writes Strayer1. In addition, this elite class dictated Brezhnev’s actions: most of his actions while in office were aimed at keeping the nomenklatura content and peaceable3. In this way Stalin’s nomenklatura – his greatest legacy – outlived him, produced his successors until Gorbachev, and dictated many of their actions.
Once in power, Stalin quickly departed from Lenin’s example with his frantic drives for industrialization and collectivization. His Five-Year Plan system, which provided targets for the newly industrialized USSR, continued to determine the industry’s actions for three decades after his death. His nationalism and intolerance played out through the foreign and domestic policies of both Khrushchev and Brezhnev. Finally, the nomenklatura class – which Stalin created – retained its power for decades and produced his first two successors. When Gorbachev took power in 1985, the system he inherited was undeniably Stalinist.