How Did Stalin Reinforce His Dictatorship in the 1930’s?

During the 1930’s, Stalin engaged in a range of measures to bolster his personal control of the USSR. This included purging Russia of anyone who he considered a threat or disloyal, building a personality cult and the introduction of a new constitution for the USSR in 1936.
In 1934, the use of purges were employed after the murder, most probably instructed by Stalin himself, of the leader of the Leningrad Communist Party, Kirov. The murder of Sergei Kirov was announced as part of a terrorist conspiracy involving Trotsky and was then used to arrest Zinoviev, who was given 10 years in prison, and Kamenev who received a 15 year sentence. This lead to an outbreak of purges by which anybody suspected of disloyalty was murdered, sent to prison camps, or put on public show trials at which they pleaded guilty to crimes that were not humanly possible. In reality, Kirov was most likely murdered by Stalin due to his higher levels of popularity and the incident at the 1934 part congress where he was tipped as a future leader. Kirov was also a critic of collectivisation and disagreed with Stalin’s style.
The Communist party was the political party most damaged by the effects of these purges. 20% of the party was purged, accused of being “trostskyies”, and were arrested, shot or sentenced to hard labour. Stalin enforced these purges with the use of the emergency decrees, which gave him extra powers to the NKPD to pursue traitors and was able to legalise torture trials and eradicate the use of witnesses or appeals in treason trials. Stalin also threatened the public with a 20 year prison sentence if they failed to inform of a person who may cause a threat or any cases of disloyalty. Stalin’s main rivals, Zinoviev, Kamenev and 14 other high ranking colleagues were charged falsely of terrorism. A further were put on trial for spying on Germany and Japan in 1937, all of whom confessed. In 1938, Bukahrin and Rykov, two other leading opponents of Stalin, were put on trial. These trials were published in newspapers, broadcasted on radio and planned demonstrations were held, demanding the death penalty.
A number of other groups across Russia were also greatly affected by the purges. 20% of the Bolshevik party membership suffered the purges and members were encouraged to condemn so-called counter revolutionaries. One man was given 10 years of hard labour simply for being the first to stop applauding at a speech in praise of Stalin. The head of the NKVD, Yagoda, was shot and replaced and the Armed Forces lost their highest ranking general after he was supposedly found guilty of spying in 1937. Over half the army officer court, over 350000 men, were sacked from their jobs. The ordinary people also began to experience the terror of the purges in the late 1930’s and lived in constant fear of the NKPD and the Black Ravens in the night.

However It was not only the political members that were affected by Stalin’s purges, and but the end of the 1930’s the Great Terror had spread to ordinary people.
Secondly, Stalin used propaganda and censorship as methods to reinforce his power in Russia. Propaganda was used to influence the public into believing that Stalin was a strong and honest leader. These forms of propaganda consisted of pictures of him surrounded by members of the public or small children offering him flowers to give the impression that he was a friendly man who cared about the people of Russia and manipulated photographs of himself and Lenin, who the Russian public viewed as a great role model, to make it seem that the relationship between the two was much closer than it was in reality. He portrayed himself as a hero by claiming that he was making Russia great again, and that only his methods were appropriate in doing so. He made sure that all his successes were recorded. He controlled what was published in Russia and made sure only positive things were stated about him. Stalin also named towns, cities, rivers and streets after himself, and honoured himself with titles such as “Father of Nations” and “Great Architect of Communism”; this helped create the heroic image he had created of who he was.
The 1936 constitution also helped Stalin in reinforcing his power in Russia. The 1936 constitution renamed the Central Executive Committee to the Supreme Soviet and was empowered to set up Commissions which oversaw most of the government. The leader of the committee was declared to be the Head of State, consequently, the constitution focussed power through the control of the government into Stalin’s hands. The constitution also gave all members of the Communist party the right to vote and supplied the whole Russian public with work, health protection, healthcare in times of old age or sickness, housing and an education. This made it very popular with the Russian people, and therefore boosted Stalin’s popularity.
The revolutionised education system was another factor that had a great impact on Stalin’s reinforcement of power. Whilst Lenin was still in power, he enforced a decree that provided 10 years free education to all boys and girls in an experimental way with no uniform or school fees as he felt that Communism could not run as long as there was mass illiteracy and ignorance. In the 1930’s, Stalin revolutionised this decree, formulating the lessons around preparing students for life in industry by attaching each school to a factory, farm or productive unit. Harsh forms of discipline were imposed by new rules and single- sex education was encouraged whilst uniforms were reinforced to eliminate individualism. A 6 day timetable was constructed that consisted of prominently Russian based subjects such as Russian literature, Russian language and History 5 times a week and was clearly extremely biased. Despite the strict rules of the education system, it was an extremely popular policy and due to the biased nature of the teaching, students grew up ready to work on the land or in the factories and were fully supportive of the communist party.
The policy of Russification was the last element that aided Stalin in maintaining his power in Russia. Stalin would not tolerate ethnic minorities, despite the fact he was a Georgian, and went to great lengths to pass himself of as a Russian. When Stalin was appointed by Lenin as the Commissar for Nationalities, Stalin made sure that Russian officials had power over the non-russians and even used his position to prevent his homeland of Georgia from becoming an independent republic. When Stalin took full power, he started the policy of “Russification” in which he took special measures to ensure that the minor nations were crushed. To ensure this, he enforced four hours of Russian language a week in schools, made Russian the university language and banned any other language being used in court cases. He also abolished territorial units in the Red Army and made Russian the language of military command. This helped Stalin to establish Communist values throughout the USSR and abolished the minorities that may disobey his rule.
In conclusion, I feel that it was a combination of all of these factors that resulted in Stalin’s reinforcement of power. The use of purges, the cult of personality, the 1936 constitution, the education policy and “Russification” all played a significant part in Stalin’s success as althogether, they worked to eliminate opposing power and centralized the power that Stalin obtained in Moscow. This meant that Stalin took place at the top of the power hierarchy and his authority was concentrated in his hands, not only in a legal sense through the 1936 constitution, but mentally through his methods of propaganda, censorship and the use of fear that manipulated Russia into obeying his rule.