Timeline of Germany (1930s) Jan 30, 1933. Top. Stalin’s agent Andrey Zhdanov took control of Leningrad, and from 1935 to 1939 almost all Kirov’s following was extirpated. Because the USSR was the only communist state at the time, it had minimal trade contact with the rest of the world. 1914: World War I breaks out in the Balkans, pitting Britain, France, Italy, Russia, Serbia, USA and Japan against Austria, Germany and Turkey (400,000 Russian soldiers die in 1914 alone) 1916: Russia has already suffered almost two million deaths in WWI . Bukharin was accused of planning to murder Lenin in 1918, though he denied this particular slander. History of Coffee Makers. In History. But while these trials received considerable publicity they were not made the central feature of Soviet politics. This was given to Japan by the Treaty of Versailles. In fact, Nazi rule was at first interpreted as a victory for the communists, in that capitalism had been driven to its last resource, of naked force, and must soon collapse. Starting in March it rapidly developed a mass character. And there were, from Stalin’s point of view, further signs of insubordination. It is now clear that Stalin had no intention of becoming involved militarily. Top. 1936: Millions die in Stalin's Great Purge (through 1953) Top. At this time a further social and economic component of the Stalinist system became very important. Over the next few years opposition was reduced to a few party groups who clandestinely discussed the removal of Stalin and the reversal of the disastrous economic policies: Sergey Syrtsov (candidate member of the Politburo), Besso Lominadze, and others in 1930; Mikhail Ryutin and other Rightists in 1931–32; Aleksandr Smirnov and others in 1932–33. The fuse was first lit at the beginning of the 1930s, when Japan's aggressive Kwantung Army—on its own initiative—occupied China's Manchurian … Oddly. The same can be said of the Magnitogorsk foundries and other great factories. Major events in the last 100 years. The purges in the USSR started in the mid-1930’s and continued throughout the late 1930’s. Thousands of writers, artists, scientists and political leaders were executed or exiled. Zinovyev, Kamenev, and 14 others confessed to terrorist plots in conjunction with Trotsky and were shot. In literature the dogmatic RAPPists were discredited, and a new Union of Soviet Writers held its first Congress in 1934 under the new doctrine of “Socialist Realism.” Although the new policy was less overtly restrictive of the arts, this too was used for the rest of the Stalin period as a criterion for silencing or purging independent voices. Nevertheless, during this period a number of important industrial enterprises were completed, though there was much waste as well. The primary task, as to an only slightly lesser degree throughout the Stalin epoch and even later, was the buildup of heavy industry. The officer corps as a whole lost about half its members. These are striking figures, though they did not change the U.S.S.R. into an urbanized country in the Western sense. Oddly. Timeline of Russian / Soviet History, 1914-1939 . Hence, everything had to be handled on the basis of myth and coercion rather than through rationality and cooperation. In August 1936 the NKVD set up the Zinovyev-Kamenev trial (to be followed by two similar trials in 1937 and 1938). Heavy pressure was now put on these latter three, and they were forced to accept Soviet garrisons under treaties signed in September and October. Historical Events for the Year 1930. It was, or was the basis of, a set of real governmental and economic actions. The army also suffered heavy losses. Soviet Union - Soviet Union - Into the war: 1940–45: The period between the Pact of 1939 and the German invasion saw internal consolidation. The U.S.S.R. from the death of Lenin to the death of Stalin. Bukharin, Rykov, and others, among them the former police commissar Yagoda, confessed to several murders, including those of Kirov and the writer Maxim Gorky, as well as to treason, espionage, and so on. These years had in fact seen the establishment of a new social and economic system. Stalin went on record in favour of the concessions to the more moderate policy proposed at the Congress. A planned economy was to be introduced with, as its first task, the direction of all possible resources into intensive industrialization. Post-USSR, a Russian-American task force found that 119 American prisoners in Germany had been held back by the NKVD because they had Russian, Ukrainian, or Jewish names. Ring in the new year with a Britannica Membership. The FBI under J. Edgar Hoover went after gangsters, and Franklin D. Roosevelt became synonymous with the decade with his New Deal and "fireside chats." The local leaderships in Leningrad, in Ukraine, and elsewhere were almost annihilated. In fact, the USSR was regarded as an economic powerhouse in the 1930s. This time around, disillusionment has come a … (The Mensheviks were almost all economists and specialists accused of trying to establish Five-Year Plan figures lower than the country’s capability—though in fact they had tended to err on the optimistic side.) This reflected the Soviet desire of territorial gains. It was only then revealed by Soviet economists that the true rate of growth in production over the period (including that of the Second Five-Year Plan, slightly less strongly stressing heavy industry, which now followed) was only about 3.5 percent per annum, about the same as that of Germany over the same span of time. The system expanded further and became a regular feature of Soviet life. During 1937 and 1938 the terror reached its climax. The Five-Year Plan had not been finalized by the time it was announced in April–May 1929, though it had been expected to come into operation six months earlier. Starting with the Kansas Securities Act in 1911, states adopted a variety of laws to protect investors from fraud and raise capital for business. It was charged that the assassin was a member of a Zinovyevite terrorist group in Leningrad, all of whom were promptly shot. Members of both groups held minor posts of varying importance. He was reported to have planned to criticize the new repressions at what came to be known as the “February–March” 1937 plenum of the Central Committee. But it was linked with the policy of payment by piecework, intended to set the individual worker’s targets in industry higher than was normally possible, and was highly unpopular. However, the real breakthrough happened in 1930 when universal primary education was introduced in the USSR. Under the Secret Protocols of the Pact (as amended later in the month) the Soviet Union received western Ukraine and western Belorussia, together with the three Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. These were all fruitless, being exposed and denounced on short order. To cope with the large-scale arrests, special extra-legal tribunals were set up, in particular the notorious NKVD “troikas,” which sentenced hundreds of thousands of people to death in their absence. Stalin’s followers also progressively took over the Spanish government, especially concerning themselves with hunting down local Trotskyites. In 1933, he created the Central Purge Commission, which publicly investigated and tried members of the Communist Party for treason. On February 18, 1937, Stalin’s old ally and Politburo colleague Ordzhonikidze committed suicide. Both cases were mainly concerned with sabotage. And there was a noticeable, if not a major, thaw, including the end of bread rationing in 1935. The 17th Party Congress, assembling in January 1934, was described as the Congress of Victors. From November 1932 a single day’s unauthorized absence from work became punishable by instant dismissal. At the end of 1934, on December 1, came an event that was to be crucial to the final establishment of the Stalinist system. The former oppositionists had been, in the case of most of the Leftists, readmitted to the party; the Rightists had never been expelled. From the early 1930s onwards Stalin ruthlessly tightened his grip on the country. The struggles of the past few years over collectivization had been won, and a feeling had developed, even in high levels of the victorious Stalin apparat, that some degree of civil relaxation could now take place. Period: Sep 14, 1930 to Sep 1, 1939. The 16th Party Congress signaled the end of the Right “deviation” as the 15th Congress had marked that of the Left. During the 1930s, Stalin sought to eliminate all barriers to his complete and total exercise of power. And it was a concept—organizational, ideological, inspirational, and, it might almost be said, transcendental. In 1928, Stalin instituted a planned economy. A third response to the Depression was totalitarian communism. By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. Uniform Sale of Securities Act . Because the USSR was the only communist state at the time, it had minimal trade contact with the rest of the world. At the lower level, of the 2.3 million people who had been party members in 1935, just under half went to execution or died in labour camps. What Happened to Spanish Children Sent to the USSR in the 1930s? From 1928, in harmony with the increasing shift to the left at home, foreign and Comintern policy once again became radicalized, with the emphasis on the treason of the Social Democrats of the West. This was a misapprehension. (It should be noted that from 1926 to 1934 the chairman of this commission did not serve in the Politburo: Ordzhonikidze 1926–30; Andreyev 1930–31; Rudzutak from 1931.) The Soviet Union was especially devastated due to the mass destruction of the industrial base that it had built up in the 1930s. In the Communist Party the Stalinist grip had become complete in 1930 with the expulsion of Bukharin, Tomsky, and Rykov from the Politburo and Rykov’s replacement as chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars (the leading group of government administrators). And these cases were presented as the crucial element in the country’s public life. p.340 World War 1 began in 1914 and Great Depression happened in the 1930s. The Soviet Union had 13 percent, and Germany was third at 11 percent. Later in the year Stalin insisted on nearly doubling this rate. The effects were long-lasting. The second, which came later, was the claim that they had in fact secured unprecedented increases in production. While previous purges under Stalin involved the persecutions of kulaks (wealthy peasants), Nepmen (people who engaged in private enterprise during the New Economic Policy of the 1920s), clergymen, and former oppositionists, the Great Purge is characterized by imprisonments and exec… A vast publicity campaign ensued, and Stakhanovites emerged everywhere. Events of 1930. Timeline of Russian / Soviet History, 1914-1939 . Despite deep-seated mistrust and hostility between the Soviet Union and the Western democracies, Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 created an instant alliance between the Soviets and the two greatest powers in what the Soviet leaders had … Famine in USSR. • General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union – Joseph Stalin The USSR in the 1930s showed the benefits of having a planned economy. In 1936 a new constitution (often called the Stalin constitution) came into effect, guaranteeing all manner of human rights. In its initial form it prescribed goals for 50 industries and for agriculture and provided some relation between resources and possibilities, but over the period that followed it was treated mainly as a set of figures to be scaled upward. A similar ultimatum was issued to Finland, but the talks broke down, and on November 30, 1939, the U.S.S.R. attacked the country and immediately set up a Democratic Republic of Finland, headed by the communist Otto Kuusinen. Zinovyev, Kamenev, and several score of their followers were arrested and sentenced in closed court to jail terms as having “political responsibility” for (though not yet direct involvement in) the murder. The first was the claim by the communists that they were implementing a rational and fulfillable plan. The country was blanketed in extremes of adulation. Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany (Third Reich) ... Catherine the Great of Russia. In September 1934 the U.S.S.R. joined the League of Nations. 1914: World War I breaks out in the Balkans, pitting Britain, France, Italy, Russia, Serbia, USA and Japan against Austria, Germany and Turkey (400,000 Russian soldiers die in 1914 alone) 1916: Russia has already suffered almost two million deaths in WWI . At first these approaches bore no fruit, but in his policy speech to the 18th Party Congress in March 1939, Stalin announced that the U.S.S.R. would not help “warmongers” who wanted others to “pull their chestnuts out of the fire,” and Maksim Litvinov, the spokesman for collective security, was removed as People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs a few weeks later. Between 1929 and 1932, some 12.5 million new hands were reported to have entered urban work, 8.5 million of them from the countryside (though it was ruled that kulaks should not be given jobs in the factories). Meanwhile, not only in the U.S.S.R. but in the communist movement the world over, “Stakhanovite” became the favourite word for a “shock worker” in any economic—or political—field. And few genuine economic incentives were available: in 1933 worker’s real wages were about one-tenth of what they had been in 1926–27. 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