Everyday Stalinism

7 Pages 1652 Words

later, private trade and business were eliminated, the state took over all distribution, and the state’s economy was completely centralized. Fitzpatrick describes how the leaders had hoped the peasants could pay most of the industrialization cost, but instead the urban population had to bear considerable costs instead. Millions of people went to the cities and many kulaks were deported (Fitzpatrick, 1999, 4). This lead to famine, shortages, and overcrowding. Many would say that communism needed more time to work and to create the abundance the people were promised, but it seemed in Russia that communist and scarcity would be linked for years to come (Fitzpatrick, 1999, 4).
The Communist party, among other things, demanded loyalty. Trotsky may have said it best when he said “The party is always right” (Fitzpatrick, 199, 19). There was a formal scale of punishment for those who violated the party in anyway. It started with a warning, went all the way up to expulsion from public life an...