Original subtitles

in 1922 the Soviet Union was formed a

new nation that would have a profound

impact on the entire globe

it would emerge from the remnants of the

Russian Empire after a long and bloody

Civil War

Russia in the aftermath of the bolsharik

Revolution was a country in absolute

turmoil a brutal and bloody Clash of

arms trying to wipe out this new regime

before it can take control of the

country the Bolsheviks finally succeeded

in about 1922 and then came the hard

work of trying to create for the first

time ever a new socialist country

from out of nowhere Vladimir Lenin had

become the leader of the largest Nation

on Earth and was now imposing his will

Lenin won the war Lenin won the

revolution Lenin is one of those amazing

figures who really are decisive in

history once got understand that Lenin

was an autocratic character who really

didn't want anyone to succeed him that's

true of most autocratic characters in

history but Lenin would have a successor

who proved to be the most ruthless of

all figures when dealing with both his

own people and his foreign enemies

foreign

they realized after the revolution that

the Soviet Union was surrounded by

enemies didn't have a friend in the

world they felt that way and they were

probably right and the only defense was

to build an enormous army with a lot of

tanks and a lot of aircraft and a lot of

ships

which they did

in the aftermath of World War II the

Soviet Union emerged as a new Global

superpower that matched the once Mighty

Russian Empire of old

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who were then

yeah we were saying

great achievements by the Soviet Union

they launched the Sputnik satellite

fantastic scientific achievement they

put the first man into space Yuri gagari

fantastic achievement and so people were

saying they saw the Soviet Union as a

genuine comparable competitor with the

United States

now a century from its formation the

Soviet Union seems to define the whole

of the 20th century

[Music]

thank you

[Music]

in 1917 the Romanov Dynasty fell and

Vladimir learning and the Bolsheviks had

managed to seize power in the Russian

Revolution this new government signed

the Treaty of breast litowsk with

essential Powers bringing an end to

Russian involvement in World War one but

despite an end to the conflict with

foreign governments the battle for

Russia itself would continue for years

[Music]

in the beginning it seemed fairly simple

it seemed to be the Red Army which was

an army of soldiers with hardly any

officers and the other Army is the white

Army which you could say was an army of

officers with hardly any soldiers who

wanted to put Russia back to what it had

been before the first world war and

possibly continue that war to a victory

and then it got complicated for really

the better part of two three years this

struggle is taking place for control of

this vast and completely turbulent

country at the same time other things

are going on there is a famine there's a

war going on between Russia and Poland

at the same time and there are endless

mutinies rebellions taking places

notably the kronstadt Mutiny where the

sailors of the of the fleet rebel

against the new Bolshevik government so

not only is the bolshewik government

fighting for its very survival but it's

fighting against powerful and disparate

forces all of whom have one goal and

that is destroy it

various National groups formed their own

armies the ukrainians the Georgians and

and they all fought there was an

anarchist Army which fought all sides

sometimes allying with one so basically

red and white with various other

factions and of course from 1919 the

Japanese the French the British and the

Americans all thought they might

intervene and save something from the

situation so at least five or six

foreign armies also mostly fighting the

Bolsheviks and trying to help the whites

but in the end giving up because the

presence of foreign soldiers only made

the red armies stronger it increased

National feeling Among The Peasants and

the workers but while Lenin is the

overall leader of the Bolsheviks and

Trotsky as the leader of the Red Army

wound up victorious in the Russian Civil

War it was another figure who truly

established himself during the fighting

now

you or political police

and to check on the old GPU there it is

Rob cream the workers and peasants

inspection group whose Chief is one

Joseph bizarianovichvili

party name stallion

Stalin was born in Georgia or one of the

the national areas of the Russian Empire

he was uh the son of a Shoemaker

initially he was intended to go into the

the church uh he attended a seminary

he joined the Bolsheviks at a young age

and he became known for his practical

work working on in the underground

organizing bank robberies and and

political demonstrations he was never he

spent a few years abroad but he was he

was mainly an inside guy and in the

course of the Civil War he became in

charge of all of the Bolshevik cadres

the organization and he developed a

patronage Network in that way so then he

became obviously one of the potential

successors to Lenin

everyone underestimated him because he

pretended to be not as clever as he was

he pretended not to know foreign

languages he pretended not to have read

anything so they thought this is a

useful gopher he'll do as a sort of

Chief whip to get others into

organization and when they uh founded a

Central Committee they thought well

what's the most boring job on a

committee it's a secretary

but the point is uh that the secretary

if they have enough personality and

power and ruthlessness is the person who

determines what their gender is who is

going to receive that agenda who is

going to be notified of the meeting and

who's going to be allowed to speak and

who writes the notes and uh and so on so

as a result of that right to the end of

the Soviet Union the most powerful

person was the first Secretary of the

Central Committee not the president not

the chairman and that was Stalin's doing

one of Stalin's key tasks in the

Bolshevik party had been how the issue

of the nationalities that made up the

Russian Empire would be handled by this

new regime

you know his interest in the

nationalities and the creation of the

Soviet Union was that Lenin appointed

him in 1911 1912 to be his nationalities

expert and Stalin went to Vienna and

lived there for a few months and wrote

his his his paper on the nationalities

question which him and Lennon worked out

what to do with the nationalities you've

got to understand that the Russian

Empire was a multi-ethnic Empire it

contained something like a hundred tiny

ethnic groups but obviously a handful of

big ones the biggest them of course was

the Russians themselves Orthodox

Russians but then there were polls who

were catholic Finns who were Protestant

Georgians who had their own church

aziris and and chechens who were Muslim

so the big question

um in the Russian Empire was how do we

overthrow the tsar and how do we make

how do we liberate these peoples the

problem of national minorities had been

a thorny one throughout Europe

a Woodrow Wilson decided the solution

was to allow National groups to

self-determine themselves and create

Nations if they wanted to Russia was a

multinational Empire so so the problem

was how to organize the different

nationalities uh and Lenin decided that

nationalities should have their own

homelands that the Soviet Union would be

socialist in content nationalist in form

and so the republics were formed along

these National lines

so he'd retaken and reconquered Ukraine

and Bella Russia he'd retaken the

Caucasus including Georgia Stalin's

Homeland but he'd lost the baltics

states which became independent he'd

lost Finland and he'd lost Poland so how

does he manage the rest of his Empire

and what does he do with these

nationalities because the Bolsheviks

have supported their right to freedom

and all of them have their own

nationalist movements now and all of

them would you know really would like to

be independent that was the big question

what do we do what kind of new country

do we create to keep these these

territories within our new Soviet

Bolshevik State and yet give them

freedom and that's the million Ruble

question

in December of 1922 the solution that

the Bolsheviks enacted was the creation

of a federal system of republics known

as the USSR

the name comes from the Union of Soviet

Socialist republics it was a union of

quasi-independent nominally independent

republics

it was Soviet because the the political

form was elected councils the Russian

word for Council is Soviet it was

socialist because the the state owned

the means of production to begin with

they had the Russian federal republic

which exists there was a Ukrainian

Republic once they'd entered Ukrainian

Independence which lasted until about

1920 and there was a Caucasian Republic

which later split into Georgia I mean

Azerbaijan Central Asia was still in

chaos until 1924 and the present stands

Kazakhstan Tajikistan Uzbekistan

Kyrgyzstan they didn't really emerge

until the middle of the 1920s when

they'd been pacified

there were great differences between

Lenin and Stalin about this new Union of

socialist republics Lenin saw it as a

decentralized system with each socialist

republic having considerable power over

their own Affairs Stalin saw it very

differently he wanted it ruled from the

center he wanted Russia as the dominant

Force Moscow as the center of power and

preferably himself running the whole

thing it was quite surprising given that

he himself was Georgian

at the same time as this new state was

being established its leader was falling

into a terrible state of health a series

of Strokes would render Lenin unable to

speak and a new leader would soon be

needed one man had long been plotting

for the position and he would eventually

become one of the most powerful and

feared figures in the whole world

foreign

in January 1924 Vladimir Lenin died the

battle for succession of leadership in

the Soviet Union was now truly underway

with one man Stalin determined to come

out on top

and then on January 21st 1924 the moon

faced balding dictator left the scene as

abruptly as he had appeared he literally

died of overwork his funeral was a

monstrous Affair hundreds of thousands

queued up in the streets in 25 degree

below zero weather it seemed that

everyone wanted to pay their last

respects

Stalin removed his Rivals systematically

with Incredible Ingenuity and in such a

way they didn't know it was happening

Lenin's great fear I think was that

Stalin would develop a personality cult

a cult that had already developed around

Lenin himself and in fact sullin

exploited this he built up the cult of

Lenin when Lenin died he took charge of

the funeral arrangements he wanted to

have complete control of what happened

to Lenin's Legacy it was Stalin who

wanted Lenin's body to be embalmed much

against the wishes of Lenin's Widow and

once Lenin was dead this personality

cult was transferred onto Stalin himself

and this would become one of the

Hallmarks of his entire Reign of Power

in the Soviet Union

Stalin was was left as the sort of

leading member of the leadership along

with Trotsky and there were other there

were other major figures um zenorife and

Cameron F and younger ones like bukharim

as well and recover who was who who were

also key figures but the the leading two

contenders was darling and Trotsky and

even though it's always this is always

presented as one of the great sort of

struggles and it was an amazing thing

that Stalin won this won this succession

struggle actually he'd really already

won it by the time Lenin died he was

already the leading figure in the regime

and you know somebody had to do

something pretty radical to stop him he

already controlled the Party Machine and

the party controlled the country so

Trotsky was actually his ideal

competitor Trotsky was very arrogant and

so famous and so preeminent and so

pleased himself that he really believed

that he didn't need to do much

organizing and he would simply be given

the leadership

the first thing he did was to tell

Trotsky he'd needed a rest

and suggested that Trotsky go to the

Caucasus and Trotsky who

called a very powerful figure could be

at times hysterical to have fainting

fits and feel suddenly

psychosomatically ill Trotsky consented

and he went pheasant shooting and the

instructions Stalin sent to the locals

was he is not to meet anybody he was not

to receive any telegrams or letters

so Trotsky missed Lenin's funeral

and you know people who Miss funerals

miss the will reading and miss the

distribution of the spoils

Stalin's Maneuvers during Lenin's

funeral would be the beginning of the

end for Leon trotsky's role in the newly

formed USSR and the beginning of

Stalin's radical plans for the nation

for Trotsky into Exile then Stalin

overrules his two Associates and ends

the New Economic Policy

in its place come three successive

five-year plans all designed to

emphasize productive capacity especially

heavy industry and power output

[Music]

industrial capacity Rises nearly 300

percent

after the Civil War Lenin had promoted a

policy of compromise economic compromise

the New Economic Policy which allowed

quite a lot of Market forces to delay

communism because the country was so

impoverished and of course in the

Communist party there was a wide variety

of views about which way they should go

whether they should allow some some more

some Market forces or whether they

should have a strict communism with

collectivization but at the same time

another big issue was industry and

bazaars had begun to industrialize

Russia in the 1890s but of course that

had all been destroyed in the war and so

now they look towards America the rising

power and they saw this extraordinary

industrial miracle that was happening in

America with mass production and they

wanted it to

but while the Soviet Union wanted to

emulate the industrialization witnessed

in countries like the United States of

America it remained very wary of its

precarious place in international

affairs

holstric party

was

policy those on the left believed that a

revolution in one country could not

survive only by itself so they they

believed that only a World Revolution

could bring real socialism so they they

believe that Britain Germany France

United States also needed to become

socialist in order to make the

revolution succeed

uh and so part of the part of policy was

to organize and support foreign

communist parties to undermine

governments and to carry out this

revolution but at the same time the

Soviet Union needed to survive in the

world that existed so they were also

engaging in diplomatic relations with

these Powers trying to arrange a trade

deals so that they could borrow

technology in order to develop their own

economy so there was this two-pronged

policy on the one hand they were being

nice to to capitalist countries and the

other hand they were trying to undermine

them with their local communist parties

[Music]

foreign policy or you know changed and

he was extremely flexible with the

foreign policy but the essential thing

was just to strengthen the Soviet Union

wherever possible by any means possible

and in that sense you know he was

actually quite he was he was very

radical internally he was incredibly

murderous internally but out outside in

foreign policy he was you know very much

a traditional Statesman making alliances

you know winning friends trying to win

territory in order to make the USSR

great

the early years of the Soviet Union both

Lenin and Stalin after him really craved

foreign recognition they wanted this new

revolutionary state to be recognized by

countries across the world one of the

first Nations to enter into negotiations

was Great Britain and you get the

anglo-soviet trade agreement and then

you get diplomatic a recognition happens

soon after afterwards and eventually

America itself in the early 1930s will

recognize this new state and send an

ambassador to Moscow and soon after that

the Soviet Union is recognized by the

League of Nations in 1934 this is a key

moment for the Soviet Union at last it's

been recognized as an official country

on the world stage

while the USSR would eventually be

officially recognized on the world stage

it continued to have extremely tense

relationships with foreign powers but

one of the ussr's surprising

opportunities for Industrial Development

in this time was with the country it had

been in direct conflict with just a few

years prior during World War One Germany

Germany after the first world war was a

pariah state it wasn't allowed to have

an army wasn't allowed to have tanks or

airplanes so he came to agreement with

another prior State the Soviet Union and

they developed submarines tanks and

aircraft in various sites on the Volga

[Music]

first socialist country in the world so

it was a tremendous experiment in

transforming an economic system

modernized the country to build

hydroelectric dams to build the economy

the Soviet economic Elite decided that

centralized economic planning would be

the most efficient way to mobilize

resources so targets were set for every

sector of the economy by the center and

orders were given to all parts of the

economy to fulfill their parts of the

plan

so initially they recognized they needed

to build infrastructure and heavy

Industries a transportation energy

sector and machine Manufacturing in

order to provide the capacity to then

develop the economy further into

consumer goods and in a broad-based

economy but everything was mobilized uh

toward this this the plan

and so Stalin in the end embraced the

extreme leftist view of Communism which

was Collective eyes eliminatal property

but also to make this into a great power

and to promote industrialization and the

best way to do that was to collectivize

the fields and the farms and then sell

the grain abroad and buy technology to

industrialize the country and that was

the policy he decided on so it was an a

radical policy and by 90 about 1928 he

decided that that was the only way to go

to make the Soviet Union a great power

and and to ensure the survival of the

USSR and that was what he decided to do

and

he would do it at any cost

the economic policy enacted by Joseph

Stalin in the late 1920s would lead to a

wide-scale famine across the whole of

the USSR

[Music]

he did it by first of all introducing a

policy of collective Farms

they had been tried briefly in the 1920s

and found that peasants didn't want to

have their horses owned collectively and

rebelled against them that was quickly

abandoned

and then he tried again in 1929 and this

time it was organized with the help of

the Red Army and it is said for the

first time in Russian history peasants

at all the meat they wanted to because

rather than hand over their pigs and

sheep and cows they just had an enormous

feast and at as much as they could

one of both Lenin's policies and

Stalin's policies was the destruction of

the wealthy farming class the Yeoman

Farmers if you like these are farmers

who've had quite a lot of land and

produced a lot of produce which they

would then sell on this was deemed

unacceptable to the Bolshevik regime and

they were to be liquidated and other

Farmers the smaller peasant farmers were

to be gathered into Collective farms and

produce grain and supplies for the

benefit of the state this was an

absolute disaster because on the one

hand Stalin had wiped out the one class

of farmers that produced a surplus and

there was no longer any incentive for

the rest of the peasant Farmers to

produce any food that was going to be

taken from them anyway what happens next

is the Great Famine of the early 1930s

the regime would not listen to signals

from below they wouldn't listen to the

fact that there was no seed to plant and

they insisted on high quotas anyway and

this led to an even worse harvest the

next year with loss of life uh and

Devastation mostly in Ukraine because

this was the the main grain growing area

but it would also affected parts of

Southern Siberia and Eastern Russia as

well so historians who've looked very

closely at this don't believe this was a

deliberate attack on Ukrainian

nationalism or Ukrainian Independence it

was just a terribly tragic

manifestation of of the of mistakes made

in economic planning and an

unwillingness to collect unbiased

information but rather trying to believe

the most Rosy predictions and reports

rather than the actual reports

records weren't kept properly but we

know how many people died simply because

of the census report

that in 1937 there are about 12 million

people missing from the population

well they're shot there's people who

took the census and they had a new

census which was faked and the problem

with this famine was that there was a

depression going on all over Europe and

so on and there wasn't much demand for

buying grain from the Soviet Union so

the price wasn't good they had to sell

more and more in order to finance their

industrialization

so that famine killed an enormous number

of people between 10 million and perhaps

15 million because it happened not only

to ukrainians it happened to russian

Farmers uh there was a sort of insanity

about it

the agricultural policy and the workers

I think got party workers got quite

cynical they realized their job was to

destroy so Vineyards were torn up and

Farms destroyed animals destroyed the

grain wasn't even stored properly it

rotted in great Railway sightings so it

was a form of Madness but it did solve

one problem it got rid of the peasantry

as a force they were those who survived

were cowed

but it was not just the peasantry that

was terrorized the very leadership of

the government and the original

Bolshevik revolutionaries would also be

targeted

[Music]

he would take his old Bolshevik comrades

many of whom had helped him maneuver him

into the position of absolute power and

he would proceed to liquidate hit them

in these show trials that took place in

Moscow men like kamenev like zenoviev

were put on trial on trumped-up charges

and there was never any doubt that they

were going to be found guilty and he

really went through many of his old

bolshvik comrades they were put on trial

they were found guilty and they were

executed it was absolutely brutal these

are also the years of the Great

executions called yajav Shana in honor

of Stalin's executioner n.i yejov how

many people are permanently removed from

circulation no one knows in some

provinces as much as four percent of the

population vanishes

[Music]

who helped Stalin seize power are

quickly disposed of to have been a

friend of either one of them is now a

crime for this and related Act

activities well over half of the top

communist leadership and thousands of

lesser officials vanish as do most of

the army officers

well the show trials were masterpieces

of propaganda they were meant to be

public displays of Crime and Punishment

and they were carefully rehearsed they

were carefully prepared those that were

sentenced in these trials their

confessions were scripted hundreds of

people were invited to witness them they

were covered by the media and they were

an attempt to prove to the people at

large that there were enemies in the

country and and that Stalin was doing a

good job of finding them and rooting

them out it was also a demonstration to

foreign governments that the Soviet

Union was was intent on on preserving

its integrity and Stalin was helped by

his chief of police at the time who was

a decadent poet and who had a lot to do

with the theater

and I if you know the stanislavski

method of acting which still survives

today the stanislavsky method of acting

is very destructive for the actor

because it tells the actor you've got to

be whoever you are

and prisoners when arrested and

interrogated were trained just as

stanislavski trained actors they were

their trials were rehearsed so when they

appeared in court they would say yes I'm

terribly guilty I bet a Japanese spy all

my life and they would then of course

make mistakes saying they'd met somebody

in a hotel which hadn't existed for 40

years a lot of foreigners are convinced

quite influential foreigners historians

like Christopher Hill Bernard Shaw

people who thought had more brains were

convinced that he says he's guilty he

must be guilty a very few of yajav's

victims are given trials some of the

trials are remarkable for example

several defendants are convicted of

conspiring with Trotsky in 1936 in the

hotel Bristol in Copenhagen

in actual fact in 1936 the hotel was no

longer in business

[Music]

case in 1938 yejov himself is purged

together with many Purge judges labor

cap operators and the like

[Music]

his basic plan was you know when he

looked at when he looked at the Soviet

Union he saw there was disloyalty in the

party a lot of people wanted to get rid

of him a lot of people weren't happy

with his collectivization policy and the

suffering of the peasants you know there

was just all in his own family and you

know also the party bosses had become

like little princes running their own

territories so he decided the way to

deal with this was by Bloodshed by

Terror quite deliberately and he

launched the great Terror in in 1935-36

in which there were a million people

basically innocent were executed

this is also a time when there's a great

expansion of the gulags these are these

uh prison camps often in far just

far-flung places in in Siberia miles

from anywhere where political prisoners

troublemakers or anyone deemed to be

hostile to the regime would be sent off

there often walking there under

unspeakable conditions and they'd be

simply locked away and they'd have to

work they were forced labor camps they

were fed uh very little food they were

held in the most primitive conditions

you know in the depths of winter in

Siberia it was freezing cold and

millions maybe one and a half million

two million people died in these camps

but it meant that by the end of the

1930s Stalin was absolute Master of the

Soviet Union he had simply wiped out

anyone who could challenge his

leadership some 2000 delegates who are

at the 1934 uh Communist Party Congress

two-thirds of them will would have lost

their lives by the end of the great

Terror so the leadership was

disproportionately targeted but there

are many other victims as well other

whole groups of victims were members of

national minorities who could be

suspected of disloyalty in case a war

came so there was a German minority in

Russia that had been there for 200 years

it was feared they would be disloyal so

they were rounded up unexecuted uh polls

living on the Borderlands between the

Soviet Union and Poland it was feared

that they would turn on the Soviet Union

in case of a war so they were also

targeted and victimized not for anything

they did but just for the the language

that they spoke basically

so it was a completely cynical thing it

went on for about 18 months

and then there were several incidents

which even Stalin realized made it

impossible to go on for instance there

was a low temperature laboratory in

Moscow and they'd arrested so many of

the scientists that it was about to

explode and destroy a large amount of

the new Russian underground that was

being built and so they decided to

reverse things the little chief of

police Nikolai Jeff had become a drunk

completely drunk and stopping to turn up

for work and Stalin decided to get rid

of him so the great Terror came to a

fairly sudden end towards the end of

1938

and 1939 became a sort of Almost

Paradise here in which you could write

what you like you could walk the streets

you could say what you like and nobody

seemed to be bothered didn't last long

but it was an extraordinary period 1939

if you look at the books published then

and you can see Stalin started relaxing

after the great Terror he was in some

ways morally exhausted it maybe that he

realized that he couldn't go on that

he'd be left with no population to rule

by the late 1930s the changing nature of

Europe refocused Stalin in the ussr's

attention on global rather than internal

affairs

great hope at the outset of the

bolsharik Revolution was that this would

spread to other countries notably

Germany which was seen as right foreign

but it didn't happen and events changed

rapidly in the 1930s Germany becomes the

dominant power in Europe Hitler is the

dominant personality in Europe and

Stalin recognizes this

Stalin wanted to safeguard the Soviet

Union as much as possible he regarded

Hitler as his first enemy but he also

regarded the Western democracies France

and Britain and America as capitalist

enemies who after all had intervened to

try and destroy the Soviet Union in the

in the Civil War so

he was very suspicious of them perhaps

more suspicious of them at least I

suppose he thought that the Nazism

a fascist movement opposed to Communism

at least came from revolutionary popular

roots and was run by a leader a single

leader like himself with whom he could

do business and so as War became closer

and the pressure Rose in Europe he

needed to make a decision on sides

Stalin's ultimate decision would be made

behind closed doors when Joachim Von

ribantrop the foreign minister of Nazi

Germany headed to Moscow in August of

1939 to meet with his Soviet equivalent

vyasha slav Molotov

a pact between the two Nations was being

prepared

in 1939

Stalin accepted that sooner or later he

was going to have to fight Hitler but he

did not believe that either it suited

the Soviet Union for it to happen soon

are all the Soviet Union was ready to do

so he also saw the opportunity of a

territorial booty in Finland in Romania

in Poland where she was happy to seize

on Stalin convinced himself that he was

offering Hitler such a good deal with

um oil wheat and many other Commodities

of which Germany was in desperate need

that he was confident that it was going

to be left to him Stalin on the Soviet

Union to choose the moment of which he

confronted Hitler in arms what he did

not recognize was that his timetable and

Hitler's timetable might not mess

in the end Stalin's predictions about

the timetable of the war in Europe would

prove disastrously wrong

in August 1939 it was publicly announced

that the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany

had signed a non-aggression pact

the news would cause shock waves around

the world

the lights began to burn all night

Moscow British and French military

missions arrived to confer with the

Soviet government

so did German Representatives

and on August 21st 1939

the world was set on its Heels by the

announcement of a treaty between the

Russians and the Germans in which they

agreed not to fight each other

here were the admitted Arch enemies in a

state of apparent friendship it was too

fantastic to make any sense it didn't

when the news of the monotoff ribbon

truck packed was announced to the world

the world was absolutely stunned this

had all taken place in secret all the

negotiations had taken place behind

closed doors no one could quite believe

in the west that Stalin would do a deal

with his arch enemy Hitler but also

inside the Soviet Union there was deep

and profound shock that Hitler who'd

been presented by the regime as the

ultimate monster suddenly Stalin was

sitting down and doing a deal not just a

deal but signing a non-aggression pact

with him well Stalin and the Soviet

leaders were very much afraid of of

Hitler's intentions starting from when

Hitler came to power in 1933 with an

avowed anti-communist platform one of

the first things Hitler did was to

Outlaw the German Communist party and

imprisoned the German communists

it was starting in 1936 therefore the

Soviet Union adopted a policy of support

for popular fronts trying to Rally all

socialists and all moderates in popular

fronts against fascism so they're very

much trying to join an International

Coalition uh to fight Nazism and to

fight fascism from 1936 to 1939 Stalin

was trying to join various collective

security packs with Britain and with

France but they were not letting him in

and when Stalin was was excluded from

the Munich agreements he began to feel

that he was going to be excluded from

any protection that collective security

might give the Soviet Union so then they

started negotiating on the other side

for some sort of pact with with Hitler

that would protect them

many Communists in Western Europe and in

the United States were deeply bewildered

by the molotov remain pact this was

something completely unexpected

something they could not reconcile where

there are enormously high ideals but in

the end they did so they believed that

the common town and the Kremlin must

know what they were doing and so they

went along with it but it did so

extraordinary confusion in the minds of

Western communism

so it was a cynical thing to do

to to suddenly announce that the Germans

were friends and to start imprisoning

people that you denounced fettler in

their books and articles at Communist

Party dictate and for two years of

course this was official policy we

collaborate with Hitler because at least

he's fighting the capitalist West

just over a week after the molotov

ribbon Trot pack was announced Nazi

Germany invaded the Western half of

Poland marking the beginning of World

War II only a couple of weeks later the

Soviet Union took over the eastern half

of Poland in exactly the way that the

two Nations had secretly agreed

part of Poland passed over to the Soviet

Union and the three independent Baltic

states of Estonia Latvia and Lithuania

were also handed over to the Soviet

Union which gave them more space between

them and the expanding German Reich

which they hoped would help them if and

when an invasion came

he thought and he did he thought he'd

get the Baltic states he'd get half of

Poland and that half of Poland irritated

him enormously because it was the half

of Poland he had lost in 1920 when he

was in charge of the war there and it

had been settled by polish officers

uh so he took great care when he under

the middle model ribbon truck pack he

was entitled to take over that part of

Poland to slaughter 22 000 polish

officers who had taken prisoners and in

fact it made it much easier to cushion

the eventual Nazi Nazi invasion

the invasion of the Soviet Union itself

would occur on the 22nd of June 1941

when Operation Barbarossa was launched

on Hitler's orders

one of the most extraordinary stories of

the second World War

is that in Germany Stalin through

communist sympathizers had the most

superb intelligence of any service Any

Nation in the western world

and all his spies in Germany were

telling him repeatedly that Hitler was

going to attack him and they told him so

with the utmost Authority with the best

information

and all of this information was getting

through to Moscow and Stalin absolutely

refused to believe it he'd been warned

by Churchill himself had sent

intelligence to Stalin saying that this

is going to happen and most importantly

he'd been warned by his spies in Tokyo

notably Richard Serge had told him not

only that Hitler was going to invade but

he'd actually told him the exact date on

which the invasion was going to take

place Stalin refused to believe this and

dismiss these accounts as fabricated and

it meant that the Red Army was totally

unprepared

Hitler and Stalin read the same books

one of them is klausovitz on War

klausvitz fought with Napoleon realized

Napoleon's mistake was to fight on two

fronts in Spain and in Russia

well Stalin concluded if Hitler's read

this he knows I read it I know he only

fight on one front Hitler is busy

fighting Britain and France when he's

finished with them then we can have a

war but he's not going to attack me

until he's finished with them

and on that basis Stalin made one of the

biggest mistakes he ever made

when The Invasion came on the 22nd of

June 1941 where the Vermax rolled over

the Soviet Frontier on a massive 1 600

mile front millions of men tanks

Machinery rolling over this stunned

Stalin Stalin had no idea that Hitler

was going to invade his country it came

as a deep and profound shock

Stalin's Behavior

immediately in the aftermath of the

invasion of June 1941 was quite

extraordinary he went into seclusion for

days he many people afterwards thought

believed that his comrades were going to

kill him literally kill him murder him

assassinate him execute him because he

was alone responsible for this

extraordinary crime this extraordinary

Folly of allowing Germany a free pass

almost into the Soviet Union with that

Invasion and so

all these frightened men around him who

Stalin was expecting to kill him but for

the first few days they too were in

chaos they too were bewildered they too

couldn't think what to do and in the end

Stalin rallied Stalin came round Stalin

began once again at first cautiously at

first rather nervously to exercise his

authority at first Stalin faced

astonishing losses I think something

like six million men were lost in the

first in the first year of warfare and

Hitler raced towards Moscow towards

Leningrad into Ukraine towards harkov

taking everything before him before the

Russians started to sort of gather a

proper resistance and started to fight

back and stop them which they only

managed to do in October 1941 outside

Moscow but before then it looked like

everything was collapsing and Stalin

himself said Lenin left us a state and

we've screwed it up

and for a second he doubted that whether

he could do this and they came and got

him and said his henchman came and got

him and said we needed to take control

and when that happened it was as if the

mistake of of being of being surprised

by Hitler was forgiven and he was able

to start with a clean State and he did

but as the German Army moved ever closer

towards Moscow in 1941. it seemed to

many that just two decades after its

formation the Soviet Union was on the

brink of annihilation

[Music]

thank you