A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

The Soviet Union under Stalin 1035

Table 25.2. Defense Expenditures of the Great Powers, 1930-1938
(in millions of 1989 dollars)

Year Japan Italy Germany U.S.S.R. U.K. France U.S.

1930 218 266 162 772 512 498 699

1933 183 351 452 707 333 524 570

(^1934292455709) 3,479 540 707 803
(^1935300966) 1,607 5,517 646 867 806
(^1936313) 1,149 2,332 2,933 892 995 932
(^1937940) 1,235 3,298 3,446 1,245^890 1,032
(^1938) 1,740^746 7,415 5,429 1,863^919 1,131

Source: Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Vintage, 1989), p. 296.

at the same time (see Table 25.2). Germany also had the advantage of rearm­

ing with the most up-to-date war materials, including glistening fighter

planes of steel and bombers with four engines that increased their range.

The Soviet Union under Stalin

In the meantime, under Joseph Stalin (1879-1953), the Soviet Union was

transformed into a totalitarian Communist state. Stalin assured his dicta­

torship by purging dissident groups within the Soviet Leadership. The Left

Opposition to Stalin was led by Leon Trotsky (1879—1940) and Gregory

Zinoviev (1883—1936), the humorless but scrupulous curly-haired party

secretary of Leningrad (Petrograd’s name after Lenin’s death) and a former

ally of Stalin. The Left Opposition believed that the Soviet Union ought to

support independent—that is, non-Communist—working-class organiza­

tions, and criticized Stalin for abandoning Communist internationalism.

Stalin, in contrast, argued that the Bolsheviks first had to build “socialism

in one country”—that is, the Soviet Union. Between 1925 and 1927, Stalin

isolated leaders of the left by assigning their allies to inconsequential posts

in distant places.

Against the backdrop of a severe shortage of grain that lasted two years,

in 1927 the Left Opposition demanded an immediate accelerated industri­

alization in the state sector and worker mobilization against “bourgeois”

bureaucrats. It feared the effects of Lenin’s New Economic Policy (NEP),

which it viewed as having been an unnecessary ideological compromise

that risked bringing back capitalism (see Chapter 23). Wealthier peasant

proprietors, the Left Opposition argued, could be forced to provide the sur­

plus that would sustain gradual industrialization. If the state, which con­

trolled heavy industries, kept the prices of manufactured goods high, state

revenue would increase, permitting further industrial development. In