Q3. what did stalin do to control the people of russia?

(cult of personality/terror state/purges)                                                                                                                                        


Salin controlled Russia by forcing the people to worship him as the leader. He portrayed himself as a fatherly, cheerful and popular man. Stalin had his pictures and statues placed almost everywhere. All offices, classrooms and factory floors had pictures of Stalin and the successes of the country were attributed to him. Stalin also censored anything that might reflect badly on him. History books and photographs were changed to make him the hero of the Revolution, and obliterate the names of purged people. The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin in 1936–1938. Before 1934, Stalin had dealt with his opponents by expelling them from the Communist Party or sending them into exile. On 1 December 1934, Sergei Kirov, head of the Communist Party in Leningrad was shot dead outside his office. Kirov's murder marked the beginning of Stalin's purges. Stalin used Kirov's death as an excuse to launch an attack against his opponents in the Communist Party. He accused his opponents of murdering Kirov and of plotting to assassinate Stalin himself. The first to be arrested were the followers of Zinoviev. Altogether, thousands of people were arrested by the NKVD in the weeks after Kirov's murder. Between 1934 and 1935. the number of those send to prison and gulages (labour camps) more than tripled. In 1936, the old Bolshevik leaders, such as Kamenev and Zinoviev, were put on show trails. They confessed to all the charges against them must to the shock of the Russian public. The leaders were executed after their confessions. The purges continued from 1934 to 1938. During the period of the purges, people were encouraged to inform on their fellow workers, their neighbours and family members if they made any comments against Stalin or the Soviet Union. There was much fear and suspicion. As no evidence was needed for an arrest, anyone who had a grudge could get rid of another person by denouncing him to the NKVD. The NKVD would often take people away from their homes in the middle of the night or in the early hours of the morning. Thus, many Russians were afraid of answering the door at night because they assumed that the NKVD had come to take someone away.