The Real Life Under Stalin
Joseph Stalin was a totalitarian dictator of the USSR for 25 years, from 1928 to 1953. Many things needed to be fixed in the USSR in those times. Stalin claimed he was fixing them. He fooled everybody into believing he was fixing these problems, but really, he lied and hid many things from the public. Life under Stalin wasn’t all it was told to be, because he lied about agriculture, education, and minority rights.
Stalin wanted people to believe many lies about agriculture in the USSR. We can see that through the famine and all the deaths that happened. Stalin had said that all people can benefit from agriculture because the Soviet government controlled most private farms and property, but really, no one did benefit anyone but the government. He wanted people to believe that collectivization was a really good thing, when in reality, it was terrible. It actually was so bad it led to a famine in 1932. Stalin refused to acknowledge that the famine existed, and over 5 million people died because of it. People who opposed collectivization, the Kulaks, got severe penalties. Stalin murdered, deported, and sent them to camps, which were extremely harsh. 12.5 million people died because of his cruelty to those opposing Stalin taking the land that they had previously owned.
In the USSR, the education system was bad and really needed to be fixed. Stalin said he was fixing the problem, but he lied about that too. Stalin had said everyone gets education, and he developed new elementary schools, high schools and colleges. But in reality, these schools were horrible. Over half of them were lacking central heating, running water, and sewers. Children were the future of the nation, and were easier to influence about the ways of communism, so Stalin took advantage of that. Schools became much more strict, and focused on classes that were necessary to develop skilled workers. Discipline was harsh for students, in order to make them disciplined...