To what extent did Stalin's achievements justify his methods?

In his obituary of Stalin Isaac Deutscher wrote that Stalin had found the Soviet Union using the wooden plough and left it using nuclear reactors.  For many people even now, despite widespread knowledge of famine, labour camps and terror, Stalin is admired for his part in modernising the Soviet Union and turning it into a Great Power.  In particular, the success of the Soviet system in making the country defensible is often seen as the core of Stalin’s achievement. 

There are few greater contrasts in modern history than that between Russia’s performance in the two World Wars.  In 1914, brief success turned into desperate failure and collapse.  In 1941, initial disaster became crushing victory….  At the same time, others argue that Stalin had endangered the country rather than strengthened it.  When asked whether, without Stalin, the Soviet Army could have won the battle of Stalingrad, a Soviet general replied, ‘Without Stalin, the Germans might not have reached Stalingrad’.  Can we resolve the paradox of Stalin’s influence over the war?

Perhaps the most decisive element in modern war is productive capacity and it is usually here that Stalin is given most credit for his contribution to the war effort.  According to this line of reasoning, Stalin laid the foundations of Soviet industry and massively increased its productive capacity.  In addition, the profile of Soviet industry as it developed in the 1930s shows Stalin's imprint most strongly.  The defence industries were a priority sector.  This did not necessarily make economic sense but was essential to the war effort.  This applied not only to the production of defence equipment but, even more, to the location of key industries.  In particular, an industrial infrastructure began to appear in the Urals and western Siberia, places in which pure economic considerations would not have led to the implantation of industry.  Here was the industrial platform from which the equipment was produced to bring victory.  It should also be noted that another major plank of the Soviet Union's recovery – the evacuation of some 1,500 factories from vulnerable locations in the west to safer havens in the east – could only have happened because the very barest essentials, such as shells of buildings, primitive rail links and nearby power stations, could be developed quickly to accommodate the transferred equipment and personnel.  Finally, even though individual initiative played a large part, the highly centralised nature of the Soviet economy made it much easier to transfer resources to the war effort than was the case in the market economies, where the private interests of industrial producers (notably for profits) and private consumers had to be accommodated.  Where the Soviet economy was able to devote about half of its economic resources (GDP) to the war effort, the western countries, including totalitarian Germany, had difficulty devoting more than 20 per cent of economic resources to the war. 

One other overlooked economic factor should also be added in Stalin’s favour.  Most historians and economists rightly condemn collectivisation for its extravagant waste of human and animal lives and resources.  Nonetheless, it should be remembered that although the village continued to suffer, the problem of state grain procurement - which had perplexed Tsarist, Provisional and early Soviet governments alike during the First World and Civil Wars – never reached the same level of acuteness in the Second World War.  Meagre though they were, sufficient rations were squeezed out to feed tens of millions of workers and soldiers.  Apart from labour camps and areas like Leningrad, which was under siege by the invaders, food shortages were not as critical as they had been in 1914-21 and there were no major famines. 

Given such strong evidence for Stalin’s contribution to modernisation and the war effort, what was the root of the Soviet general’s – scepticism? Other areas show a much more ambiguous picture of Stalin’s contribution. 

The next most crucial factor to Soviet victory was the incalculable contribution of its skilled social ‘managers’ in industry, the military and in civilian administration.  The war was an immense national effort on the part of the whole population.  Without able industrial administrators of the planning apparatus, the economic ministries and large factories, the intentions and policies of central government would have come to little.  Similarly, it was army officers from General Zhukov down on whom successful deployment of the armed forces rested.  Among these crucial cadres was the influence of Stalinism beneficial or constraining? It was precisely among these groups that the purges appear to have hit hardest.  Many of them had stepped into dead men’s shoes.  While their rise was based partly on merit, the fear that they might be the next victims had ambiguous effects.  At one level, if one’s life was on the line, one would strive to one’s utmost to please one’s superiors.  But did such pressure necessarily lead them to reach the best decisions? One cannot know for certain, but only the relatively ‘safe’ personnel, like Zhukov and the central command, dared argue with Stalin.  Further down, orders were implemented with iron will and anyone who disobeyed faced arrest and execution, even where the order was clearly inapplicable.  Such inflexibility had enormous costs.  At the end of the day, we cannot know if the unshakeable determination of ordinary people would have been as firm were it not for the fact that the Nazi occupation regime was worse than Stalinism itself.  Nazi Einsatzgruppen (extermination squads) were Stalin’s best ally in maintaining the war-fighting mentality of the ordinary population.  The horrors visited on the occupied areas outweighed even Stalin’s purges. 

In one final area, however, the Soviet general might have been correct.  The destructive nature of Stalin’s purges were well known outside the Soviet Union, especially the devastating consequences of the purge of the Red Army.  The army’s leading innovator, Tukhachevsky, was executed and half the officer corps were also executed or imprisoned.  As a result, foreign intelligence services reduced their assessments of Soviet defence capability.  Such views could only have encouraged Hitler to attack.  Similarly it is argued that the democracies found it distasteful to deal with the dictator Stalin and hence the common front between the Soviet Union and Britain and France, which might have deterred Hitler, never came about…. 

[Prof Read adds a paragraph about the Cold War.]

On balance, the above considerations suggest that, if anything, Stalin’s policies, particularly of industrialisation, did bring benefits for the Soviet Union, not least in winning the war.  However, …, we might also conclude that the cruelty and fear which accompanied Stalin’s policies, far from having been necessary, prevented them from being as effective and decisive as they might otherwise have been. 

This essay by Christopher Read, Dept. History, University of Warwick, was printed in Peter Catterall, Exam Essays in 20th Century World History (1999).