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Throughout the history of the Soviet Union, various forms of political repression primarily existed as a means to suppress anti-communism and anti-sovietism. While these objectives were introduced after the October Revolution, many of these efforts took forms that were continuations of practices which were employed in the Russian Empire, particularly, the use of Siberian labor camps. These practices culminated during the Stalin era, when the rise of Nazi Germany was believed to pose a direct threat to state security through its incitement of counter-revolutionary elements within Russia, fears which were partially vindicated following Germany's invasion in 1941. After Stalin's death in 1953, the "Khrushchev Thaw" saw a relaxation of these practices, followed by the increased persecution of dissidents during the Brezhnev era. Under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev, the policies of glasnost and perestroika virtually removed all restrictions on anti-communist speech and organizing, contributing to the collapse of the Soviet state in 1991.
The Soviet invasion of Poland was a military operation by the Soviet Union without a formal declaration of war. On 17 September 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east, sixteen days after Germany invaded Poland from the west. Subsequent military operations lasted for the following 20 days and ended on 6 October 1939 with the two-way division and annexation of the entire territory of the Second Polish Republic by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. This division is sometimes called the Fourth Partition of Poland. The Soviet invasion of Poland was indirectly indicated in the "secret protocol" of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact signed on 23 August 1939, which divided Poland into "spheres of influence" of the two powers. German and Soviet cooperation in the invasion of Poland has been described as co-belligerence.
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The New Economic Policy (NEP) was an economic policy of the Soviet Union proposed by Vladimir Lenin in 1921 as a temporary expedient. Lenin characterized the NEP in 1922 as an economic system that would include "a free market and capitalism, both subject to state control," while socialized state enterprises would operate on "a profit basis."
The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPGB founded the Daily Worker. In 1936, members of the party were present at the Battle of Cable Street, helping organise resistance against the British Union of Fascists. In the Spanish Civil War the CPGB worked with the USSR to create the British Battalion of the International Brigades, which party activist Bill Alexander commanded.
Elections to the 9th All-Russian Congress of Soviets were held in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in the spring of 1921. They were the second elections in the history of the Soviet government, with the first such election in 1919, also to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, not including one to the Petrograd Soviet in 1917, before the last stage of the Russian Revolution. There was some tension that year because of the revolt of sailors in the Kronstadt rebellion, actions of the Workers Opposition and monarchists, recent failure of a "communist uprising" in Germany, all while the fierce Russian Civil War continued unabated.
Legislative elections were held in the Soviet Union in April 1927 to elect members of the Congress of Soviets, having originally been scheduled for 1 January. H. N. Brailsford, in his book, How the Soviets Work, he described how the elections work:
"A General Election was going on in Russia during my stay this year. Save for the reports in the news-papers, one would hardly have suspected it...There is no organization which could compile any alternative list of candidates, and if by mischance this were to happen in one electoral area, there could be no arrangement...No large issues of policy are ever settled at a Soviet election...The business of an election is rather to choose persons who will carry out the day to day work of administration. The entire structure of the Soviet system lends itself naturally to this limitation...The town and village Soviets, which are directly elected, are municipal authorities whose range of action and methods of work do not greatly differ from those of municipal bodies elsewhere...The atmosphere of a Soviet Election in Moscow is, accordingly, rather nearer to that of an English municipal election than to that of a Parliamentary General Election....The atmosphere of the election and, indeed, of debates in the Soviets themselves, is strangely remote from "politics" as Western democracies conceive them. A big family, animated by a single purpose, sits down on these occasions to administer its common property...The final stage in a Russian Election is the general meeting which adopts the candidates and gives them their mandates...I think that in any event unanimity would have been attained, which, indeed, is the purpose of elections in Russia."
This is a select bibliography of post World War II English language books and journal articles about the Revolutionary and Civil War era of Russian (Soviet) history. The sections "General Surveys" and "Biographies" contain books; other sections contain both books and journal articles. Book entries may have references to reviews published in English language academic journals or major newspapers when these could be considered helpful.
This is a select bibliography of post World War II English language books and journal articles about Stalinism and the Stalinist era of Soviet history. Book entries have references to journal reviews about them when helpful and available.
Below is a list of post World War II scholarly books and journal articles written in or translated into English about communism. Items on this list should be considered a non-exhaustive list of reliable sources related to the theory and practice of communism in its different forms.
References
- ↑ Hugh D. Hudson Jr., Peasants, Political Police, and the Early Soviet State: Surveillance and Accommodation Under the New Economic Policy, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, p. 51.
- ↑ Dorothy Atkinson, The End of the Russian Land Commune, 1905-1930, Sanford, CA: Sanford University Press, 1983, pp. 141, 280, 296, 298-299.
- ↑ The Voice of the People: Letters from the Soviet Village, 1918-1932, ed. C. J. Storella and A.K. Sokolov, New York: Yale University Press, 2012, p. 135.
- ↑ O. Velikanova, Popular Perceptions of Soviet Politics in the 1920s: Disenchantment of the Dreamers, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 22, 104, 120, 138, 140.
- ↑ Allan Todd, History for the IB Diploma Paper 3: The Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Russia (1924-2000) (Second Edition), Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016, pp. 22, 24-25, 31-33,35, 37, 56, 155.
- ↑ Xenia Joukoff Eudin and Harold Henry Fisher, Soviet Russia and the West, 1920-1927: A Documentary Survey, Sanford, CA: Sanford University Press, 1957, pp. 195, 264-265, 268, 269, 305, 306, 341.
- ↑ Theodore Draper, American Communism and Soviet Russia, London: Transaction Publishers, 2009, second printing, pp. 124, 127, 537.
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