Secondary Source #1
The CHEKA (sometimes called VeCHEKA) was the much-feared Bolshevik secret police, though to most Russians it was no secret. Formed in the wake of the October 1917 revolution, the CHEKA began as a small agency responsible for dealing with threats to the new regime. It was to be the “sword and shield of the revolution”: defending the Soviet regime by attacking the enemies within. But as opposition to the new regime grew in 1918, so too did the size and scope of the CHEKA. Led by Felix Dzerzhinsky, a fanatical Bolshevik cut from the same mould as Lenin, the CHEKA ballooned from a couple of hundred investigators to a bureaucratic and paramilitary behemoth containing more than 100,000 men. More significantly, the CHEKA operated outside the rule of law: it acted of its own accord, investigated and arrested whoever it chose, and answered to no-one.
During its four year lifespan, the CHEKA carried out arrests, interrogations, executions and campaigns entirely of its own accord.
With this free rein the CHEKA was able to persecute, detain, torture and summarily execute thousands of suspected spies, tsarists, counter-revolutionaries, kulaks, black-marketeers and other ‘enemies of the state’. Official government figures suggest that just over 12,000 people were killed by Chekists in 1918-20. Some historians suggest that 200,000 or more are more realistic figures.
The CHEKA is often described as the ‘Bolshevik secret police’ but in reality only some of its operations were secretive or concealed. The existence and activities of the CHEKA were widely known and many of its operations were conducted openly and publicly. Though CHEKA agents had no standard uniform, most wore long leather coats and could be easily identified. All this was purposely done: to show Russians that the CHEKA was everywhere and could deal swiftly with those who betrayed or opposed the Bolshevik regime.
Primary Source #1: “Pravda Articles” (1949)
This is an excerpt from an article in the state run Soviet newspaper Pravda
“THE SOVIET people have boundless confidence in our Party, love the Party of Lenin and Stalin, deem it close and dear to them. Comrade Stalin values the confidence of the people highly and teaches the Party to prize this confidence. All Soviet people remember the moving words of our great leader which he spoke on May 24, 1945, at the Kremlin reception to the High Command of the Red Army when he gave a toast to the health of our Soviet people and expressed his warm thanks to the Russian people for their confidence in the Soviet Government in the hard days of the Great Patriotic War.
Under the leadership of Comrade Stalin, our people marches confidently on the road to Communism. With a feeling of great gratitude, turning their eyes to Comrade Stalin, the peoples of the Soviet Union, hundreds of millions of people of all countries of the world, progressive mankind see in Comrade Stalin their beloved leader and teacher, believe and know that the cause of Lenin and Stalin is invincible.”
Primary Source #2: Poster (translates as “Death to World Capitalism!”)
http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/196baur9q9unijpg/ku-xlarge.jpg
Secondary Source #1: “The Great Purges” from thinkquest.org
Under Stalin's totalitarian government of the 1930s, many purges were held, killing millions.
The main reason for the purges was because Stalin felt insecure. People were questioning his leadership, his methods and his policies. Many people were unhappy with the harshness of his Five Year Plans. He also faced criticism from within the party. Politicians who were overly critical of Stalin were at risk, but a few took their chances.
In 1934, Stalin passed a law that ordered anyone accused of terrorism and plots against the government was to be arrested and executed immediately after conviction. This law gave Stalin the chance to carry out the Great Purges properly and easily without any resistance.
The Great Purges
Stalin used this 1934 law to launch a massive purge of all the people, including Communist Party members and top government officials, who were potential rivals or threats to him, those who criticised his policies and even the innocent few. Stalin held show trials for those party members who opposed him. These trials were meant for the people to see and serve as a warning to any people planning to oppose Stalin. They were held in Moscow and were filmed at times to show in other parts of Russia, so that the people in those places would also receive the same precautionary warning.
The Great Purges had affected Russians all over as they lived in constant fear that they would be arrested and jailed, tortured or shot. It was common for ordinary citizens to accuse their neighbours or even family members of criticising Stalin so as to project a patriotic and loyal image of themselves in the hope that they would not be killed. In this way, all sectors of society were affected. People of every profession and background were purged. Over 10 million people were sent to labour camps where they often died, while a million were executed.
Primary Source #3: First Person account, “Growing up in Stalinist Russia.”
http://www.hoover.org/publications/hoover-digest/article/6897
Primary Source #4: Data from Great Purges
https://www.evernote.com/shard/s383/nl/65979320/7cd5cda9-718f-419b-98c6-0804f5e0625b/?csrfBusterToken=0f5f092f
Primary Source #5: Poster, translates as “To have more we must produce more”
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/Soviet_Poster_4.jpg
Primary Source #6: First person account by Victor Kravchenko, in his bookI Choose Freedom(1947)
Hundreds of suspects in Leningrad were rounded up and shot summarily, without trial. Hundreds of others, dragged from prison cells where they had been confined for years, were executed in a gesture of official vengeance against the Party's enemies. The first accounts of Kirov's death said that the assassin had acted as a tool of dastardly foreigners - Estonian, Polish, German and finally British. Then came a series of official reports vaguely linking Nikolayev with present and past followers of Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and other dissident old Bolsheviks. Almost hourly the circle of those supposedly implicated, directly or "morally", was widened until it embraced anyone and everyone who had ever raised a doubt about any Stalinist policy.
Characteristics of Soviet Communism under Stalin
• Working class unity against capitalism
• Execution or arrest of enemies or perceived enemies of the Stalin and the Bolsheviks
• State run newspaper as propaganda for Stalin
• Devotion to a supreme leader
• Emphasis on working class pride and/or community
Source / Characteristic of Soviet Communism under Stalin / Historical evidence