Suprun, Mikhail N., Professor, Doctor of Science (Hist.), Head of the Department of History of the Pomor State University in Archangel E-mail: vma@pomorsu.ru Tel. 8182-274412 (home) 8182-274072 (office) SECOND WORLD WAR & THE INDUSTRIALISATION PROCESS IN THE RUSSIAN NORTH AREA The modernization and industrialization in the USSR have very specific features due to the specific features of the totalitarian Soviet system itself. <...> The Soviet totalitarism, being rooted on a quite centralized tsarist monarchy had been constructed in the emergency conditions of the Great European and Russian Civil wars. <...> Starting from the beginning the Soviet system showed its main features as: strong centralization with it’s Party substitution of the subordinate organizations, strict total control over all spheres of life of the society from the center. <...> Having the above mentioned main features this strict pyramid of the new power put the individual in a very definite place in this system – to be no more than a small screw in the huge mechanism of the system in order to realize without thinking-over main goals of the leaders of this system. <...> At the beginning of it’s existence the system needed to achieve the victory in the Civil war (1917-1920), then – to rehabilitate the economy with the help of the New Economic Policy (NEP) –1920-1926/27, then came «Industrialization», «Collectivization», «Cultural revolution»… All goals of the kind supposed to be achieved with as they called it «activity of the peoples’ masses». <...> The Soviet system did not create anything new in choosing the instruments, control levers in order to influence the «activity». <...> But it changed rapidly the accents in usage those control levers. 1) Factor of fear («Beria’s -Ejov’s or Dzerjinsky’s – syndrome») became the main instrument of influence the peoples’ activity («knout» in the arms of the power holders). <...> This «factor of fear» give the key to understand the appearance of GULAG system in the Soviet Russia as an objective feature of the totalitarian state. <...> The undoubted advantage of the system was it’s ability to mobilize all it’s recourses to solve one main problem, subordinate all efforts of the system in a very short period of time. <...> And it showed itself very effective in the extreme conditions like Civil war or the Second World War. <...> But such a system may effectively function only during a short historical period and shows it <...>
SECOND_WORLD_WAR__&_THE_INDUSTRIALISATION_PROCESS_IN_THE_RUSSIAN_NORTH_AREA..pdf
Suprun, Mikhail N., Professor, Doctor of Science (Hist.),
Head of the Department of History of the Pomor State University in Archangel
E-mail: vma@pomorsu.ru
Tel. 8182-274412 (home)
8182-274072 (office)
SECOND WORLD WAR & THE INDUSTRIALISATION PROCESS
IN THE RUSSIAN NORTH AREA
The modernization and industrialization in the USSR have very specific features due to
the specific features of the totalitarian Soviet system itself.
The Soviet totalitarism, being rooted on a quite centralized tsarist monarchy had been
constructed in the emergency conditions of the Great European and Russian Civil wars. The
emergency conditions usually propose strong centralization of the power. Bolsheviks erected
such a centralization in an absolute having created the most centralized system never known to
any global civilization or any state in the world history, as soon as at least not a single political
power in the historical perspective managed to gain a total influence over the economy.
Starting from the beginning the Soviet system showed its main features as: strong
centralization with it’s Party substitution of the subordinate organizations, strict total control
over all spheres of life of the society from the center. The strengthening of the control lead to
the increase of the State machinery – State bureaucratization.1 As soon as majority of the new
Soviet bureaucrats were not experienced in the state management they had no choice than to
apply to the military-commanding forced methods.
Having the above mentioned main features this strict pyramid of the new power put the
individual in a very definite place in this system – to be no more than a small screw in the huge
mechanism of the system in order to realize without thinking-over main goals of the leaders of
this system.
Usually those goals were huge and comprehensive and changed in different historical
periods. At the beginning of it’s existence the system needed to achieve the victory in the Civil
war (1917-1920), then – to rehabilitate the economy with the help of the New Economic
Policy (NEP) –1920-1926/27, then came «Industrialization», «Collectivization», «Cultural
revolution»… All goals of the kind supposed to be achieved with as they called it «activity of the
peoples’ masses».
The Soviet system did not create anything new in choosing the instruments, control
levers in order to influence the «activity». But it changed rapidly the accents in usage those
control levers.
1)
Factor of fear («Beria’s -Ejov’s or Dzerjinsky’s – syndrome») became the main
instrument of influence the peoples’ activity («knout» in the arms of the power holders). This
«factor of fear» give the key to understand the appearance of GULAG system in the Soviet
Russia as an objective feature of the totalitarian state. Together with «the factor of fear» the
ideological factor («honey-cake») with it’s huge propaganda machine became another most
strong instrument in the arms of the power-holders. (In the economic sphere of life of the society
this factor showed itself most vividly in the so called «socialist competition»). It was a well
known «policy of threats and bribery», but this time - in arms of Bolsheviks
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