Stalin

* In his role as dictator Josef Stalin determined the nature, style and direction of Communist USSR during the post-Revolutionary period from 1922-55.

* His belief in ‘Socialism in one country’ brought a myriad of socio-economic changes to modernize the previously backward USSR.

* These changes included the implementation of the industrialisation inducing 5 year plans and Collectivisation in an attempt to transform the peasant based and agriculturally backward state to a modern and competitive industrialised nation.

* Originally Stalin based his power on party bureaucracy however by the 1930s the basis for his power had shifted to the NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) and its use of force and terror in the Great Purges of the 1930s , the development of the Cult of Stalin and the period known as the Great Retreat.

* Russian society as a result of Stalin’s regime underwent a significant period of change and chaos .Through the nature of Stalin’s leadership the economic, social and political landscapes of the USSR post-revolution experienced many changes in Stalin’s aim of ‘Socialism in one country’.

* PARAGRAPH1-ECONOMIC

* The style of Stalin’s leadership was focused largely on building the strength of the Russian economy. Upon taking power of the USSR in the mid 1920s Stalin gradually came under the realisation that the Russian economy was backward and in desperate need of a far more modernised and industrialised base.

* This realisation was important in the formulation of Stalin’s belief in the theory of ‘Socialism in One Country’ which based the strength of a socialist economy in Russia upon the future Communist international expansion. In 1931 Stalin supposed that the Soviet Union was “50 to 1—years behind the advanced countries” and that they “must make good this distance in 10 years. Either we do it or we shall be crushed”.

* This statement was made partly due to the increased fear of invasion from a...