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MAPS OF HISTORY · IB HISTORY · THE SOVIET UNION UNDER STALIN

IB HISTORY · 1924 – 1953 · 12 CHAPTERS

IB History: The Soviet Union under Stalin — notes, maps and essay plans

How one man came to rule a sixth of the world’s land: the succession he won, the revolution from above he imposed, the famines, camps and deportations it cost, and the system that outlived him.

This page gathers the atlas’s IB notes: where each of its 12 chapters fits the syllabus, the concepts and evidence it supports, practice questions with model essay plans, primary sources, and starting points for the Internal Assessment.

Map from The Soviet Union under Stalin, 1924–1953, chapter 3: The Famines
THE SOVIET UNION UNDER STALIN, 1924–1953 · CHAPTER 3
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Where it fits the course

Every chapter’s IB notes name the parts of the course it serves. Across the atlas they add up to this:

Chapter by chapter

The atlas holds 72 points of evidence and 26 primary sources across 12 chapters. Chapters 1 and 2 are free, so their evidence is shown here in full; for the others you get one point and the practice question, and the rest waits in the atlas. Each chapter title opens the chapter’s free page, with the full explanation.

1. The Succession

CHAPTER 1 · 1924–1929 · CONCEPTS: CAUSATION, SIGNIFICANCE

Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: Why did authoritarian rule emerge?Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How was it challenged?Paper 3 · Europe, section 13.8

EVIDENCE TO USE · ALL 6 POINTS (A FREE CHAPTER)

  1. Stalin became General Secretary in April 1922, a post his colleagues thought administrative; through the Secretariat he controlled the appointment of local party secretaries, who in turn chose the delegates to party congresses.
  2. Lenin’s postscript of 4 January 1923 called Stalin “too rude” and proposed removing him, yet in May 1924 Zinoviev and Kamenev persuaded the leadership to keep the Testament from publication and Stalin in office.
  3. The “Lenin Enrolment” of 1924 brought in more than 200,000 new members, mostly young workers who owed their careers to the apparatus Stalin ran, which helped turn appointments into votes.
  4. At the Fourteenth Congress in December 1925 the Leningrad delegation of Zinoviev and Kamenev was overwhelmingly outvoted, showing how quickly Stalin could turn on former allies once Trotsky had been weakened.
  5. Trotsky was expelled from the party in November 1927, exiled to Alma-Ata on 17 January 1928 and deported to Turkey in February 1929, so the leader of the Left was removed in stages.
  6. Stalin’s grain requisitions in Siberia in January–February 1928 broke the NEP compromise and set him against Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky, who were removed from their posts as the “Right deviation” in 1929–30.

2. The Great Turn: Collectivisation

CHAPTER 2 · 1929–1933 · CONCEPTS: CAUSATION, CHANGE

Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: Why did authoritarian rule emerge?Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How did it affect people’s lives?Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How was it challenged?Paper 3 · Europe, section 13.8

EVIDENCE TO USE · ALL 6 POINTS (A FREE CHAPTER)

  1. The Politburo resolution of 30 January 1930 divided kulaks into three categories and set initial targets of 60,000 for the camps and 150,000 for deportation, showing that dekulakisation was planned centrally with quotas.
  2. The share of collectivised peasant households rose from under a tenth in October 1929 to about 56 per cent by 1 March 1930, a pace that only coercion by officials, activists and the OGPU could achieve.
  3. Stalin’s article “Dizzy with Success” in Pravda on 2 March 1930 blamed local officials for “excesses”, and millions of peasants left the collective farms within weeks, revealing how little of the drive had been voluntary.
  4. The OGPU recorded about 13,750 mass disturbances in 1930 involving roughly 2.5 million participants, according to Lynne Viola, the largest rural revolt in Europe since the Russian civil war.
  5. About 1.8 million people were deported as “kulaks” in 1930–31 to special settlements in the Northern Krai, the Urals, western Siberia and Kazakhstan, where many died in the first winters.
  6. By 1937 over nine-tenths of peasant households were in collective farms, yet the numbers of horses and cattle had roughly halved by 1933 and did not recover until the 1950s.

3. The Famines

CHAPTER 3 · 1930–1933 · CONCEPTS: CONSEQUENCE, PERSPECTIVES

Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How did it affect people’s lives?Paper 3 · Europe, section 13.8

EVIDENCE TO USE · 1 OF 6

Practice question: Discuss the view that the Soviet famine of 1932–33 was the deliberate result of Stalin’s policies.

5 more points of evidence, 2 primary sources and the model plan for this question are in the IB notes of chapter 3 in the atlas.

4. The Five-Year Plans

CHAPTER 4 · 1928–1941 · CONCEPTS: CHANGE, CONSEQUENCE

Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How was it maintained?Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How did it affect people’s lives?Paper 3 · Europe, section 13.8

EVIDENCE TO USE · 1 OF 6

Practice question: To what extent did the Five-Year Plans achieve their aims by 1941?

5 more points of evidence, 3 primary sources and the model plan for this question are in the IB notes of chapter 4 in the atlas.

5. The Gulag

CHAPTER 5 · 1930–1953 · CONCEPTS: CONTINUITY, CONSEQUENCE

Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How was it maintained?Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How did it affect people’s lives?Paper 3 · Europe, section 13.8

EVIDENCE TO USE · 1 OF 6

Practice question: Examine the role of the Gulag in maintaining Stalin’s authoritarian rule.

5 more points of evidence, 2 primary sources and the model plan for this question are in the IB notes of chapter 5 in the atlas.

6. The Great Terror

CHAPTER 6 · 1936–1938 · CONCEPTS: CAUSATION, PERSPECTIVES

Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How was it maintained?Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How was it challenged?Paper 3 · Europe, section 13.8

EVIDENCE TO USE · 1 OF 6

Practice question: “The Great Terror was the work of Stalin alone.” Discuss.

5 more points of evidence, 2 primary sources and the model plan for this question are in the IB notes of chapter 6 in the atlas.

7. Nations and Deportations

CHAPTER 7 · 1937–1944 · CONCEPTS: CONSEQUENCE, PERSPECTIVES

Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How was it maintained?Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How did it affect people’s lives?Paper 3 · Europe, section 13.8

EVIDENCE TO USE · 1 OF 6

Practice question: Examine the treatment of national minorities in the Soviet Union under Stalin.

5 more points of evidence, 3 primary sources and the model plan for this question are in the IB notes of chapter 7 in the atlas.

8. Propaganda and the Cult

CHAPTER 8 · 1929–1953 · CONCEPTS: SIGNIFICANCE, PERSPECTIVES

Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How was it maintained?Paper 3 · Europe, section 13.8

EVIDENCE TO USE · 1 OF 6

Practice question: Evaluate the importance of propaganda in maintaining Stalin’s rule between 1929 and 1953.

5 more points of evidence, 2 primary sources and the model plan for this question are in the IB notes of chapter 8 in the atlas.

9. Daily Life, Women and Family

CHAPTER 9 · 1930–1953 · CONCEPTS: CHANGE, CONTINUITY

Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How did it affect people’s lives?Paper 3 · Europe, section 13.8

EVIDENCE TO USE · 1 OF 6

Practice question: To what extent did the lives of Soviet women change under Stalin?

5 more points of evidence, 2 primary sources and the model plan for this question are in the IB notes of chapter 9 in the atlas.

10. Stalin at War

CHAPTER 10 · 1941–1945 · CONCEPTS: SIGNIFICANCE, CONSEQUENCE

Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How was it maintained?Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How did it affect people’s lives?Paper 3 · Europe, section 13.8

EVIDENCE TO USE · 1 OF 6

Practice question: Discuss the impact of the Second World War on Stalin’s authoritarian rule.

5 more points of evidence, 2 primary sources and the model plan for this question are in the IB notes of chapter 10 in the atlas.

11. High Stalinism

CHAPTER 11 · 1945–1953 · CONCEPTS: CONTINUITY, CHANGE

Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How was it maintained?Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How was it challenged?Paper 3 · Europe, section 13.11

EVIDENCE TO USE · 1 OF 6

Practice question: Compare and contrast the methods Stalin used to maintain control in the 1930s and after 1945.

5 more points of evidence, 2 primary sources and the model plan for this question are in the IB notes of chapter 11 in the atlas.

12. Death and Judgement

EPILOGUE · 1953–1956 · CONCEPTS: PERSPECTIVES, SIGNIFICANCE

Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule: How was it challenged?Paper 3 · Europe, section 13.11

EVIDENCE TO USE · 1 OF 6

Practice question: Examine the ways in which Stalin’s authoritarian rule was challenged, and why those challenges failed while he lived.

5 more points of evidence, 2 primary sources and the model plan for this question are in the IB notes of chapter 12 in the atlas.

Practice questions and essay plans

Every chapter ends with a practice question and a model plan: a thesis, three points with evidence and a link back to the question, a counter-argument and a judgement. The plan for chapter 1 is shown in full; for the others, here is the outline, and the rest is in the atlas.

PAPER 2 · THE SOVIET UNION UNDER STALIN · CHAPTER 1

To what extent was Stalin’s rise to power by 1929 the result of his control of the party apparatus?

THESIS

Control of the party apparatus was the decisive condition of Stalin’s rise, because it turned the power to appoint officials into reliable majorities at congresses. It worked, however, only because his rivals underestimated him and because his slogan of “socialism in one country” suited a party tired of waiting for world revolution.

THE THREE POINTS

  1. The Secretariat let Stalin build a loyal following inside the party before his rivals noticed.

    EVIDENCEAs General Secretary from April 1922 he placed provincial secretaries, who chose the delegates to congresses, and the Lenin Enrolment of 1924 added more than 200,000 members who owed their careers to the apparatus. Robert Daniels called the result a “circular flow of power”.

    LINKThis explains why Stalin won every important vote from 1925 to 1929.

  2. His rivals helped him because they feared Trotsky more than Stalin.

    EVIDENCEZinoviev and Kamenev shielded him from Lenin’s Testament in May 1924, then lost their Leningrad base in 1925; Bukharin allied with him against the United Opposition in 1926–27 and was himself defeated in 1929.

    LINKThe apparatus mattered because no rival coalition formed against it until it was too late.

  3. Stalin also offered the more attractive policy at each stage.

    EVIDENCE“Socialism in one country” promised progress without waiting for revolution in Europe, while Trotsky’s “permanent revolution” sounded risky; in 1928 Stalin adopted grain seizures, close to the Left’s programme, to isolate the Right.

    LINKFlexibility over policy turned organisational strength into political victory over both factions.

COUNTER-ARGUMENT

Historians such as Stephen Kotkin and Sheila Fitzpatrick argue that Stalin’s intelligence, ideological conviction and appeal to newly promoted officials mattered as much as manipulation. On this reading the apparatus reflected genuine support as well as patronage, and Stalin won because many communists preferred his blunt, practical style.

JUDGEMENT

The apparatus was the necessary instrument of Stalin’s rise, and his skill in choosing allies and policies explains how he used it. Without his rivals’ misjudgements, control of appointments alone would not have produced a dictator by 1929, so the best answer weighs the machine and the mistakes together.

Read the chapter behind this plan: The Succession.

PAPER 2 · THE SOVIET UNION UNDER STALIN · CHAPTER 3

Discuss the view that the Soviet famine of 1932–33 was the deliberate result of Stalin’s policies.

THESIS

The famine was the result of deliberate policies, since procurement quotas, collectivisation and punitive decrees caused it and deepened it. Whether Stalin intended mass death, and whether he targeted Ukrainians as a nation, remains debated, so a strong answer separates causation, which is clear, from intent, which is contested.

THE THREE POINTS

  1. Policy caused the famine.

  2. Measures taken in late 1932 deepened the famine in Ukraine and the Kuban.

  3. Kazakhstan shows that lethal policy did not require national targeting.

The evidence for each point, the counter-argument and the judgement are in the IB notes of chapter 3 in the atlas. Read the chapter first: The Famines.

PAPER 2 · THE SOVIET UNION UNDER STALIN · CHAPTER 12

Examine the ways in which Stalin’s authoritarian rule was challenged, and why those challenges failed while he lived.

THESIS

Stalin’s rule was challenged by party oppositions, peasants, national movements in the borderlands, a communist state abroad and, at the end, prisoners. All but Tito failed while Stalin lived because the regime combined overwhelming force with control of information and appointments, and real change came only after his death.

THE THREE POINTS

  1. Opposition inside the party was defeated by organisation and then by terror.

  2. Social and national resistance was crushed by mass force.

  3. Only Tito succeeded, from beyond the reach of Soviet troops.

The evidence for each point, the counter-argument and the judgement are in the IB notes of chapter 12 in the atlas. Read the chapter first: Death and Judgement.

PAPER 2 · THE SOVIET UNION UNDER STALIN · CHAPTER 4

To what extent did the Five-Year Plans achieve their aims by 1941?

THESIS

The plans largely achieved their central aim, a heavy-industrial and military base able to fight a modern war. They failed their stated social aims of rising living standards and efficient planning, so the verdict depends on whether the regime’s own priorities or socialism’s promises are used as the measure.

THE THREE POINTS

  1. Heavy industry grew very fast.

  2. The plans created a defensible industrial geography in the east.

  3. Living standards and efficiency suffered badly.

The evidence for each point, the counter-argument and the judgement are in the IB notes of chapter 4 in the atlas. Read the chapter first: The Five-Year Plans.

Primary sources

Each chapter’s IB notes carry primary sources with their origin and the context you need before reading them. The sources of chapter 1 are shown in full here.

TEXT · CHAPTER 1

Letter to the Congress (Lenin’s “Testament”) and its postscript

CREATOR
V. I. Lenin, dictated to his secretaries
DATE
24 December 1922; postscript 4 January 1923
ORIGIN
Notes dictated during Lenin’s illness, read to delegation leaders at the Thirteenth Party Congress in May 1924 and first published in the USSR in 1956

Context. Lenin was partly paralysed and isolated by his doctors when he dictated these notes. Some historians, notably Stephen Kotkin, question how far the typed text can be shown to be his own words.

“Comrade Stalin, having become General Secretary, has concentrated immense power in his hands, and I am not sure that he will always be capable of using that power with sufficient caution. Comrade Trotsky, on the other hand, … is distinguished not only by outstanding ability. Personally he is perhaps the most capable man in the present Central Committee, but he also has excessive self-confidence and an excessive interest in the purely administrative side of affairs. … Stalin is too rude, and this defect, entirely tolerable in our midst and in dealings among us communists, becomes intolerable in the office of General Secretary. I therefore propose that the comrades think of a way of moving Stalin from this post and appointing another man who in all other respects differs from Comrade Stalin by one advantage only, namely that he is more tolerant, more loyal, more polite and more considerate to comrades, less capricious, and so on.”

Translation: Maps of History, from the Russian text (Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 45). The author died in 1924. · original ↗

TEXT · CHAPTER 1

My Life (memoir), on Stalin’s appointment as General Secretary

CREATOR
Leon Trotsky
DATE
Written in exile in 1929; published 1930
ORIGIN
Autobiography written on the island of Prinkipo after Trotsky’s deportation from the USSR (Berlin: Granit, 1930; New York: Scribner, 1930)

Context. Trotsky wrote this as Stalin’s defeated rival. Stalin actually became General Secretary in April 1922, after the Eleventh Congress, so the memoir misdates the appointment.

“Stalin was put forward at the Tenth Congress, on Zinoviev’s initiative and against Lenin’s wishes, for the post of General Secretary. The congress was sure that the candidate had been proposed by the Central Committee as a whole. No one, however, attached any particular importance to this election. The post of General Secretary, first created at the Tenth Congress, could under Lenin have a technical and not a political character. And yet Lenin was uneasy: ‘This cook will make only spicy dishes,’ he said of Stalin.”

Translation: Maps of History, from the Russian text of Moia zhizn’ (1930). The author died in 1940; the work was first published in 1930. · original ↗

Every other source in the atlas (24)

Internal Assessment starting points

Each starting point is an idea for an investigation: a question, the concept it tests, the kinds of sources you could use and where they are held, and one caution. The investigation must be your own work, and your teacher approves the question.

How far did Western newspaper reporting in 1933 reflect what was happening in the Ukrainian famine?

CONCEPTPerspectives

SOURCESArticles by Gareth Jones and Walter Duranty (March 1933); British Foreign Office reports; later survivor testimony.

CAUTIONCompare what correspondents could actually see with what the archives later revealed, and avoid judging 1933 reporters only by hindsight.

To what extent did life for workers in Magnitogorsk improve between 1932 and 1937?

CONCEPTChange

SOURCESJohn Scott’s memoir Behind the Urals (1942); Soviet newspapers; wage and housing statistics.

CAUTIONScott was a sympathetic foreigner with privileges; test his impressions against statistics.

Why did some Western observers believe the Moscow show trials of 1936–38?

CONCEPTPerspectives

SOURCESTrial transcripts published by the People’s Commissariat of Justice (1936–38); Joseph Davies, Mission to Moscow (1941); the Dewey Commission report (1937).

CAUTIONThe transcripts were edited for publication, so read them as staged performances and test every confession against archival evidence.

How did Soviet posters present Stalin’s relationship with Lenin between 1929 and 1953?

CONCEPTChange

SOURCESSoviet political posters and Pravda front pages from the birthday issues of 1929, 1939 and 1949.

CAUTIONCheck the date and print run of each poster; many reproductions online are undated or mislabelled.

How is the 1944 deportation of the Crimean Tatars remembered in testimony collected after 1989?

CONCEPTSignificance

SOURCESOral testimony collections; the GKO decree of 11 May 1944; NKVD reports published in document collections.

CAUTIONMemories recorded decades later are shaped by later events; compare them with contemporary documents.

How far did the labour decree of June 1940 change discipline in Soviet factories?

CONCEPTConsequence

SOURCESThe decree text; prosecution statistics; factory newspapers; workers’ letters.

CAUTIONProsecution totals measure enforcement, and managers often ignored the law to keep workers, so look for evidence of behaviour in factory records and letters as well.

Why did the Secret Speech of 1956 provoke protest in Tbilisi in March 1956?

CONCEPTCausation

SOURCESThe text of the Secret Speech (US State Department, 1956); reports on the Georgian events; memoirs.

CAUTIONSources on the Tbilisi events are few and often partisan; state clearly what remains uncertain, such as the number of dead.

Revision tools

The atlas ends with a map quiz that asks you to find places and moments on the map itself (part of membership and of the Exam Sprint). The quick quiz and the discussion questions with our answers are free pages on this site, and the printable study guide gathers every chapter’s notes into one document for revision.

CHAPTER 1 — THE SUCCESSIONMAP QUIZQUICK QUIZPRINTABLE STUDY GUIDEDISCUSSION QUESTIONSALL 12 CHAPTERS

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