Example research essay topic: Work Outside The Home Secret Police - 892 words

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Stalin: Did His Rule Benefit Russian Society Stalin: Did His Rule Benefit Russian Society And The Russian People? Another change under Stalin was that there was an equality of rights for women. They were urged to work outside the home and to liberate themselves sexually. Divorces and abortions were also made very easy.

Young women were constantly told that they should be fully equal to men, that they could and should do anything men could do... (McKay 932). Most women had to work outside the home because it took both the husband and wife working to support their family. But, the woman had a heavy burden of household chores in her off hours. Soviet men still considered the home and the children the wifes responsibilities (McKay 933). Along with some of these beneficial changes that Stalin made to society came some non-beneficial ones, specifically the purges. One of the first to be eliminated was Stalin's wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, who after being ridiculed by her husband at a party for the fifteenth anniversary of the revolution on November 8, 1932, apparently shot herself (Lewis 83 - 84; McKay 930).

Then, at four oclock in the afternoon of December 1, 1934, a young disillusioned Communist named Leonid V. Nikolaev shot Stalin's number-two man, Sergei Kirov, who had just been offered Stalin's job of General Secretary from the senior members of the Party (Marrin 116; Lewis 86; McKay 930; Treadgold 278). Stalin used Kirov's death to launch a reign of terror. Stalin blamed Kirov's death on foreign powers, the exiled Trotsky, and the moderates. Stalin ordered the purification of the party. On August 19, 1936, sixteen old Bolsheviks were publicly tried for conspiring with Trotsky and for the murder of Kirov (Dmytryshyn 179 - 181; Treadgold 279).

Anyone connected anyway to Nikolayev was also arrested. Robert Conquest explains: Everyone who was remotely connected with the case was seized. One woman had worked as a librarian at the Young Communist Club in Leningrad which had been disbanded in the mid-twenties but, with which Nikolayev had in some way been associated. Not only was she arrested, but also her sister with whom she lived, her sisters husband, the secretary of her Party cell, and all those who had recommended her for jobs (Lewis 90).

Then in January 1937 there was another trial for seventeen more party members. They were accused of conspiring with Nazi Germany and Japan to dismember the USSR (Dmytryshyn 181). The trials and arrests continued. There were mass arrests, confessions extracted by force, and the executions and deportations of thousands of peasants. Soviet officers were also arrested and convicted. The Red Army lost three of its five field marshals, fourteen of its sixteen army commanders, sixty of its sixty-seven corps commanders, 136 of its 199 division commanders, 220 brigade commanders, all eleven deputy commissars of war, seventy-five members of the Supreme Military Council, all military district commanders, all air force officers, all except one navy fleet commander, and all eight Red Navy admirals.

In addition, the army lost half of its officer corps, 35, 000 men ranging from colonels to company commanders (Dmytryshyn 180 - 182; Marrin 127). Many that suffered from the purges were sent to labor camps or were just executed by the secret police. Local units of secret police were even ordered to arrest a certain percentage of the people in their districts (McKay 931). Graves were discovered in 1934 holding over 9, 000 bodies of people killed around 1938 in the Ukraine. Since then mass burial sights have been discovered outside major cities such as Minsk, Kiev, and Novosibirsk, and one with possibly 40, 000 bodies in the Kirov region of Donetsk. A burial sight at Chelyabinsk, was found to contain more than 80, 000 people.

Zenon Pozniak, an archaeologist who has excavated many of these burial plots also found 510 burial pits in Kuropaty and calculated that each one contained about 150 bodies. That could mean there are around 75, 000 bodies in there. Apparently there were as many as 1, 000 pits originally (Lewis 106 - 107). Pozniak has also researched the circumstances of these peoples deaths: They were shot by NKVD (secret police) soldiers in NKVD uniform. They shot them from behind, in the back and pushed them into the pit. When that group was finished, they covered the corpses with sand like a layer cake.

They got the contents of the next lorry and shot them, and in that way they filled the pit right up to the top... people who lived in the villages nearby told us that... the earth would breathe. Some people werent actually dead when they were buried, and the earth breathed and heaved and the blood came through (Lewis 107). Stalin used the Five Year Plans to make great strides in industrializing Russia. When he tried to equal that success with agricultural growth he met some resistance and ended up liquidating a class and causing famine.

Socially, he gave some important social benefits to workers and gave women equal rights. But, he also tried to purge the country and eliminated a lot of the Party, most of the army, and a good part of the workers and peasants. Stalin made several industrial improvements for his country but, that does not even begin to equal the death and destruction that he caused.

Research essay sample on Work Outside The Home Secret Police