Ideology and Coercion in Stalin’s Soviet Union: Collectivization, Class Violence, and the Consolidation of State Power

This paper examines the role of Marxist-Leninist ideologies in shaping state violence under Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union from the 1920s to the 1930s. My argument is that Stalin used a Marxist-Leninist ideological framework to justify coercive means solely for the purpose of consolidating authoritarian power. Drawing on historiographical debates among intentionalist, structuralist, and revisionist scholars, this study adopts a rather intentionalist perspective on Stalin’s agency in interpreting and applying ideology. Through an analysis of economic and political legislation, the subjectivization and marginalization of the peasantry, the Gulag system, the Five-Year Plan, and political purges, the paper demonstrates how ideological rhetoric was used to legitimize repression and economic transformation. These policies, while presented as necessary for the advancement of socialism, resulted in widespread famine, devastation, and embedded terror within the U.S.S.R. Therefore, my research highlights the extent to which Stalin’s interpretation of the ideological framework can be coerced to rationalize state repression, which, in turn, contributes to the broader, intertwined dilemma of how political power, ideology, and violence are intertwined.