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Socialism in One Country: The Soviet Union under Stalin 1924–33

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The Age of Catastrophe
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383FROMTHEARMISTICETOTHEWORLDECONOMICCRISISThe shift in power from parliament to the president could already be foreseen on 27 March. The political right both inside and outside parliament had wanted this development, because to them there seemed no other way of destroying the Weimar welfare state. This was the short- term goal of the proponents of presidential government – their aim was not just to prevent a trivial increase in national insurance contributions. As a result, the political right bore most of the responsibility for all that was to follow on from the fall of Müller’s government.The moderate left accepted this rejection of parliamentary democracy as a price worth paying and cannot therefore be acquitted of the charge of complicity in the shift to a presidential system. The Social Democrats could have prevented the disintegration of the grand coalition at the end of March 1930, albeit at the price of party unity. And their actions would in any case have been effective only in the shorter term, for the government alliance would almost certainly not have survived once its principal goal – the ratification of the Young laws – had been achieved. Even so, it would have been only right and proper for them to accept the solution held out to them by Brüning, for now the Social Democrats could only reproach themselves in the bitterest of terms: at the decisive moment they had not done everything in their power to preserve parliamentary democ-racy and prevent Germany’s relapse into an authoritarian state.Socialism in One Country: The Soviet Union under Stalin 1924–33While the capitalist countries of the West were being sucked into the mael-strom of a world economic crisis in 1929, the Soviet Union was devoting itself to what Joseph Stalin called ‘building socialism in one country’. ‘Undoubtedly, things would be vastly easier if the victory of socialism in the West came to our aid,’ the secretary general of the Russian Communist Party explained to an audience of students at Moscow’s Sverdlov University on 9 June 1925. ‘But, firstly, the victory of socialism in the West is not “happening” as quickly as we would like; and, secondly, those difficulties can be surmounted and we are already surmounting them, as you know.’Misguidedly appealing to Lenin, Stalin claimed that in 1915 the latter had already given a basically affirmative answer to the ‘question of the possibility of building socialism in one country’ at the time of the ‘imperialist war’.109 In his article ‘On the Slogan for a United States of Europe’, Lenin had declared that ‘the victory of socialism is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country alone’ if the ‘victorious proletariat of that country’ were to succeed in ‘attracting to its cause the oppressed classes of other countries, stirring upris-ings in those countries against the capitalists, and in case of need using even armed force against the exploiting classes and their states’.110Lenin had fallen out with Stalin in 1922, accusing him of being ‘too rude’ and in a codicil to his will of 4 January 1923 asking the Communist Party to
© Yale University Press, New Haven

383FROMTHEARMISTICETOTHEWORLDECONOMICCRISISThe shift in power from parliament to the president could already be foreseen on 27 March. The political right both inside and outside parliament had wanted this development, because to them there seemed no other way of destroying the Weimar welfare state. This was the short- term goal of the proponents of presidential government – their aim was not just to prevent a trivial increase in national insurance contributions. As a result, the political right bore most of the responsibility for all that was to follow on from the fall of Müller’s government.The moderate left accepted this rejection of parliamentary democracy as a price worth paying and cannot therefore be acquitted of the charge of complicity in the shift to a presidential system. The Social Democrats could have prevented the disintegration of the grand coalition at the end of March 1930, albeit at the price of party unity. And their actions would in any case have been effective only in the shorter term, for the government alliance would almost certainly not have survived once its principal goal – the ratification of the Young laws – had been achieved. Even so, it would have been only right and proper for them to accept the solution held out to them by Brüning, for now the Social Democrats could only reproach themselves in the bitterest of terms: at the decisive moment they had not done everything in their power to preserve parliamentary democ-racy and prevent Germany’s relapse into an authoritarian state.Socialism in One Country: The Soviet Union under Stalin 1924–33While the capitalist countries of the West were being sucked into the mael-strom of a world economic crisis in 1929, the Soviet Union was devoting itself to what Joseph Stalin called ‘building socialism in one country’. ‘Undoubtedly, things would be vastly easier if the victory of socialism in the West came to our aid,’ the secretary general of the Russian Communist Party explained to an audience of students at Moscow’s Sverdlov University on 9 June 1925. ‘But, firstly, the victory of socialism in the West is not “happening” as quickly as we would like; and, secondly, those difficulties can be surmounted and we are already surmounting them, as you know.’Misguidedly appealing to Lenin, Stalin claimed that in 1915 the latter had already given a basically affirmative answer to the ‘question of the possibility of building socialism in one country’ at the time of the ‘imperialist war’.109 In his article ‘On the Slogan for a United States of Europe’, Lenin had declared that ‘the victory of socialism is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country alone’ if the ‘victorious proletariat of that country’ were to succeed in ‘attracting to its cause the oppressed classes of other countries, stirring upris-ings in those countries against the capitalists, and in case of need using even armed force against the exploiting classes and their states’.110Lenin had fallen out with Stalin in 1922, accusing him of being ‘too rude’ and in a codicil to his will of 4 January 1923 asking the Communist Party to
© Yale University Press, New Haven

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. CONTENTS vii
  3. Introduction xi
  4. 1. The Twentieth Century’s Seminal Catastrophe: The First World War
  5. Battles and War Crimes: Military Action: 1914–16 1
  6. War Aims, Ideological Warfare, Opposition to the War 7
  7. A Year to Remember: The Russian Revolution; the United States Enters the War 19
  8. Freedom for Civilized Nations: Woodrow Wilson’s New World Order 52
  9. Two Countries Lie in Ruins; One is Reborn: Germany, Austria–Hungary and Poland at the End of the First World War 60
  10. Trust Gambled Away and Violence Unleashed: The Legacy of the First World War 86
  11. 2. From the Armistice to the World Economic Crisis: 1918–33
  12. The Pace of Revolution Slows: Germany on the Way to the Weimar Republic 92
  13. A Blighted New Beginning: Austria and Hungary in 1918/19 105
  14. The Struggle for Independence: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Finland 110
  15. The East Remains Red: The Russian Civil War and the Foundation of the Third International 112
  16. The Victors Move to the Right: The Western Powers on the Eve of the Paris Peace Talks 118
  17. A Fragile Peace: From Versailles to the League of Nations 122
  18. Protest, Prohibition, Prosperity: The United States in the 1920s 151
  19. The International Revolution is Delayed: The Rise of the Soviet Union and the Divisions within Left- wing Parties in Europe 160
  20. Three Elections and a Secession: Post- war Britain 180
  21. Confrontations and Compromises: France 1919–22 188
  22. A Democracy Self- destructs: Italy’s Road to Fascism 193
  23. A Republic Put to the Test: Germany 1919–22 201
  24. A Year of Decisions: 1923. From the Occupation of the Ruhr to the Dawes Plan 223
  25. Right Against Left: Culture and Society in the Weimar Republic 237
  26. Authoritarian Transformation (I): The New States of Poland, Czechoslovakia and the Baltic Region 245
  27. Authoritarian Transformation (II): From the Balkans to the Iberian Peninsula 277
  28. Democracy Evolves: From Sweden to Switzerland 301
  29. Fascism in Power: Italy under Mussolini 320
  30. From Poincaré to Poincaré: France between 1923 and 1929 338
  31. From Empire to Commonwealth: Britain under Baldwin 351
  32. From Dawes to Young: Germany under Stresemann 360
  33. Socialism in One Country: The Soviet Union under Stalin 1924–33 383
  34. Boom, Crisis and Depression: The United States 1928–33 400
  35. The Logic of the Lesser Evil: Germany under Brüning 412
  36. Stagnation and Criticism of the System: France’s Third Republic 1929–33 433
  37. The Power of Continuity: Britain in the Early 1930s 442
  38. Weimar’s Downfall: Hitler’s Road to Power 452
  39. Storm Clouds in the Far East: Japan Invades Manchuria 477
  40. 3. Democracies and Dictatorships: 1933–9
  41. A New Deal for America: Roosevelt’s Presidency 1933–6 484
  42. The Process of Seizing Power: The Establishment of the National Socialist Dictatorship 1933–4 502
  43. Rome’s Second Empire: Fascist Italy and the War in Abyssinia 531
  44. The Great Terror: Stalin Builds Up his Dominion over the Soviet Union 540
  45. Setting the Course for War: National Socialist Germany 1934–8 553
  46. Early Signs of Appeasement: Britain 1933–8 571
  47. Mobilization of the Right, Popular Front on the Left: France 1933–8 581
  48. Battlefield of Extremes: The Spanish Civil War 1936–9 602
  49. A Model for Germany: The Anti- Semitic Policies of Fascist Italy 621
  50. Neighbours at Risk: Czechoslovakia, Poland and the Third Reich 1935–8 624
  51. Roosevelt’s Realpolitik: The United States from 1936 to 1938 632
  52. Reaching Out Across Borders: From the Austrian Anschluss to the Munich Agreement 639
  53. The ninth of November 1938: The History and Consequences of the Jewish Pogroms in Germany 651
  54. An Alliance of Opposites: The Second World War is Unleashed 655
  55. 4. Fault Lines in Western Civilization: The Second World War and the Holocaust
  56. War as Annihilation: The Fifth Partition of Poland 673
  57. From ‘Drôle de guerre’ to the Battle for Norway 679
  58. France’s Collapse: The Campaign in the West 685
  59. Tokyo, Washington, Berlin: A Change in International Politics 1940–41 696
  60. From ‘Barbarossa’ to Pearl Harbor: The Globalization of the War 711
  61. Genesis of Genocide: The ‘Final Solution’ (I) 723
  62. A Change of Direction: The Axis Powers go on the Defensive 736
  63. Home Fronts: Nations at War 742
  64. Occupation, Collaboration, Resistance (I): Eastern Central Europe, South- east and North- west Europe 755
  65. Occupation, Collaboration, Resistance (II): France 772
  66. ‘To cause this nation to vanish from the face of the earth’: The ‘Final Solution’ (II) 783
  67. Collapse of a Dictatorship: Italy 1943–4 797
  68. The Allies Advance: Eastern Asia and Europe 1943–4 806
  69. The twentieth of July 1944: German Resistance to Hitler 815
  70. The Partition of Europe (I): The Allies’ Post- war Plans 822
  71. Completion of a Mission: The ‘Final Solution’ (III) 832
  72. The End of the War (I): The Fall of the Third Reich 837
  73. The Partition of Europe (II): Radical Changes and Deportations 847
  74. New Beginnings and Traditions: Germany after Capitulation 856
  75. Potsdam: The Decision of the Three Great Powers 861
  76. The End of the War (II): The Atom Bomb and Japan’s Capitulation 870
  77. Guilt and Atonement: The Caesura of 1945 (I) 878
  78. West, East, Third World: The Caesura of 1945 (II) 894
  79. From World War to World War: Retrospective of an Exceptional Period 903
  80. List of abbreviations 917
  81. Notes 922
  82. Index 938
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https://doi.org/10.12987/9780300213096-029

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. CONTENTS vii
  3. Introduction xi
  4. 1. The Twentieth Century’s Seminal Catastrophe: The First World War
  5. Battles and War Crimes: Military Action: 1914–16 1
  6. War Aims, Ideological Warfare, Opposition to the War 7
  7. A Year to Remember: The Russian Revolution; the United States Enters the War 19
  8. Freedom for Civilized Nations: Woodrow Wilson’s New World Order 52
  9. Two Countries Lie in Ruins; One is Reborn: Germany, Austria–Hungary and Poland at the End of the First World War 60
  10. Trust Gambled Away and Violence Unleashed: The Legacy of the First World War 86
  11. 2. From the Armistice to the World Economic Crisis: 1918–33
  12. The Pace of Revolution Slows: Germany on the Way to the Weimar Republic 92
  13. A Blighted New Beginning: Austria and Hungary in 1918/19 105
  14. The Struggle for Independence: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Finland 110
  15. The East Remains Red: The Russian Civil War and the Foundation of the Third International 112
  16. The Victors Move to the Right: The Western Powers on the Eve of the Paris Peace Talks 118
  17. A Fragile Peace: From Versailles to the League of Nations 122
  18. Protest, Prohibition, Prosperity: The United States in the 1920s 151
  19. The International Revolution is Delayed: The Rise of the Soviet Union and the Divisions within Left- wing Parties in Europe 160
  20. Three Elections and a Secession: Post- war Britain 180
  21. Confrontations and Compromises: France 1919–22 188
  22. A Democracy Self- destructs: Italy’s Road to Fascism 193
  23. A Republic Put to the Test: Germany 1919–22 201
  24. A Year of Decisions: 1923. From the Occupation of the Ruhr to the Dawes Plan 223
  25. Right Against Left: Culture and Society in the Weimar Republic 237
  26. Authoritarian Transformation (I): The New States of Poland, Czechoslovakia and the Baltic Region 245
  27. Authoritarian Transformation (II): From the Balkans to the Iberian Peninsula 277
  28. Democracy Evolves: From Sweden to Switzerland 301
  29. Fascism in Power: Italy under Mussolini 320
  30. From Poincaré to Poincaré: France between 1923 and 1929 338
  31. From Empire to Commonwealth: Britain under Baldwin 351
  32. From Dawes to Young: Germany under Stresemann 360
  33. Socialism in One Country: The Soviet Union under Stalin 1924–33 383
  34. Boom, Crisis and Depression: The United States 1928–33 400
  35. The Logic of the Lesser Evil: Germany under Brüning 412
  36. Stagnation and Criticism of the System: France’s Third Republic 1929–33 433
  37. The Power of Continuity: Britain in the Early 1930s 442
  38. Weimar’s Downfall: Hitler’s Road to Power 452
  39. Storm Clouds in the Far East: Japan Invades Manchuria 477
  40. 3. Democracies and Dictatorships: 1933–9
  41. A New Deal for America: Roosevelt’s Presidency 1933–6 484
  42. The Process of Seizing Power: The Establishment of the National Socialist Dictatorship 1933–4 502
  43. Rome’s Second Empire: Fascist Italy and the War in Abyssinia 531
  44. The Great Terror: Stalin Builds Up his Dominion over the Soviet Union 540
  45. Setting the Course for War: National Socialist Germany 1934–8 553
  46. Early Signs of Appeasement: Britain 1933–8 571
  47. Mobilization of the Right, Popular Front on the Left: France 1933–8 581
  48. Battlefield of Extremes: The Spanish Civil War 1936–9 602
  49. A Model for Germany: The Anti- Semitic Policies of Fascist Italy 621
  50. Neighbours at Risk: Czechoslovakia, Poland and the Third Reich 1935–8 624
  51. Roosevelt’s Realpolitik: The United States from 1936 to 1938 632
  52. Reaching Out Across Borders: From the Austrian Anschluss to the Munich Agreement 639
  53. The ninth of November 1938: The History and Consequences of the Jewish Pogroms in Germany 651
  54. An Alliance of Opposites: The Second World War is Unleashed 655
  55. 4. Fault Lines in Western Civilization: The Second World War and the Holocaust
  56. War as Annihilation: The Fifth Partition of Poland 673
  57. From ‘Drôle de guerre’ to the Battle for Norway 679
  58. France’s Collapse: The Campaign in the West 685
  59. Tokyo, Washington, Berlin: A Change in International Politics 1940–41 696
  60. From ‘Barbarossa’ to Pearl Harbor: The Globalization of the War 711
  61. Genesis of Genocide: The ‘Final Solution’ (I) 723
  62. A Change of Direction: The Axis Powers go on the Defensive 736
  63. Home Fronts: Nations at War 742
  64. Occupation, Collaboration, Resistance (I): Eastern Central Europe, South- east and North- west Europe 755
  65. Occupation, Collaboration, Resistance (II): France 772
  66. ‘To cause this nation to vanish from the face of the earth’: The ‘Final Solution’ (II) 783
  67. Collapse of a Dictatorship: Italy 1943–4 797
  68. The Allies Advance: Eastern Asia and Europe 1943–4 806
  69. The twentieth of July 1944: German Resistance to Hitler 815
  70. The Partition of Europe (I): The Allies’ Post- war Plans 822
  71. Completion of a Mission: The ‘Final Solution’ (III) 832
  72. The End of the War (I): The Fall of the Third Reich 837
  73. The Partition of Europe (II): Radical Changes and Deportations 847
  74. New Beginnings and Traditions: Germany after Capitulation 856
  75. Potsdam: The Decision of the Three Great Powers 861
  76. The End of the War (II): The Atom Bomb and Japan’s Capitulation 870
  77. Guilt and Atonement: The Caesura of 1945 (I) 878
  78. West, East, Third World: The Caesura of 1945 (II) 894
  79. From World War to World War: Retrospective of an Exceptional Period 903
  80. List of abbreviations 917
  81. Notes 922
  82. Index 938
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