*Shortly before he died, Lenin warned that Joseph Stalin, the General Secretary of the Communist Party, was becoming too powerful.  However, with many of Stalin's friends in positions of power and with Stalin successfully presenting himself as a compromise between the (relatively) right-wing Bukharin and the permanent Revolution of Leon Trotsky (also vilified as a Jew), the Man of Steel was able to make himself dictator of the Soviet Union following Lenin's death in 1924.

*At first Stalin did not make many changes (beyond exiling Trotsky).  He allowed the New Economic Plan to continue until 1929, when he reversed the policy (and forced his old ally Bukharin from power) and began to collectivise the farms. Many peasants, particularly (but not only) the prosperous kulaks, resisted this, often destroying crops, dismantling machinery, and slaughtering livestock rather than see it turned over to the state.

*Viewing the kulaks as a threat to socialism, he ordered prosperous farmers imprisoned or executed.  Another famine swept through the USSR in the late 1920s and early 1930s; perhaps ten million people starved.  People became so desperate that some resorted to cannibalism.

*Besides collectivising the farms, Stalin began to improve industry through a Five Year Plan (1929-1934).  There would later be many more Five Year Plans.

*The Five Year Plans were genuine attempts to build the Soviet economy, but they were also efforts to promote the power and prestige of the Soviet government, particularly Stalin, around whom a powerful cult of personality was developed.  His portraits were everywhere and he was presented as the saviour of the Soviet Union.  As his enemies were exiled, imprisoned, or murdered, they were airbrushed out of photographs.  If he mispronounced a Russian word, the dictionaries were changed to match it.  The USSR was a totalitarian state, and Stalin was the personification of the state.  The cult of personality developed around Stalin (and Lenin) was partly meant to take the place of the Russian Orthodox faith. 

*The Five Year Plans were experiments in a planned economy.  They were scientific, determining needs for raw materials against production quotas based on the needs of the population.  There was incentive to meet these goals—a factory manager who did not might be killed.

*Industrial cities like Magnitogorsk ('Magnetville') were built overnight in central Asia.

*Because part of the Five Year Plan was to glorify the state and Stalin, statistics often mattered as much as quality.  Stakhonovites—workers who worked without stopping, breaking records of production—were considered Hero Workers and given medals.  Factory managers who produced more than expected by the plan, or who completed a Five Year Plan in four years were viewed as great successes (even though the entire point of the Five Year Plan was to have exactly the right amount of raw materials and finished goods calculated ahead of time).  This often meant rushing jobs and stretching materials and producing shoddy goods.  On the other hand, factory managers who followed the Five Year Plans to the letter were sometimes seen as not trying hard enough.

*Furthermore, aside from the honour of being recognised as a Stakhanovite, there was not much incentive to work hard.  There was no profit for individuals, so as long as a worker did enough to stay out of trouble, there was no great reward for working harder.  Moreover, because serious mistakes might be punished severely, there were no good reasons to take risks or attempt innovations.

*Because the new factories turned out goods of low quality and still not in the quantity that people would have wished, shortages were common throughout the Soviet Union.  Lenin had promised 'Peace, Bread, and Land,' and bread was usually available, but many other foods (let alone luxuries) were not.  It was not uncommon to wait for hours in line to buy food when it was available, and to have one's name on a waiting list for greater luxuries such as a car or a house for years.  Housing was very scarce, despite the USSR's numerous construction projects, and many families were crowded into poorly-built and maintained apartment complexes.  Of course, for Communist Party officials, there were special stores, special houses, and many ways to skip ahead on waiting lists for luxuries.  As George Orwell put it, everyone was equal, but some were more equal than others.

*Art and literature, aside from socialist realism (realistic artwork designed to glorify socialism), were stifled.  Even socialist realist literature was not especially realistic, as it tended to idealise the workers, creating a perfect hero who overcomes all evil (in the form of caricatures of capitalists)--such literature was propaganda above all else (which does not mean that the Soviet Union did not produce any great works of art, even in literature, but there were limitations).

*As Stalin developed his plan of Socialism in One Country, he turned further from the ideal of worldwide revolution encompassing all nations even within the Soviet Union, as he began a programme of Russification, trying to make all the USSR’s culture Russian, despite the many non-Russian groups within in.  He encouraged the use of the Russian language and promoted the settlement of ethnic Russians in traditionally non-Russian areas.  At the time of their independence in 1991, Latvia was almost half Russian and Kazakhstan was more than half Russian (although these numbers have since declined).

*In the 1930s, Stalin became increasingly paranoid.  He saw enemies all around him, most of them imaginary.

*Stalin used the NKVD (part of which later became the KGB) to spy on his enemies, arrest them (often in secret), and murder them, imprison them, torture them, or exile them to gulags in Siberia (these were labour camps, where people did work ranging from logging to scientific research).   Stalin's view was 'no man—no problem.'

*Many were also made to stand trial, but most of these were show trials, in which the accused were forced to confess to crimes and plots they had never committed (often under threat of having their families killed or tortured if they did not comply) simply to prove the power of the Soviet State and the danger to it of conspirators.  In some cases, as more and more such show trials took place, targeting all levels of society, a sort of mass hysteria gripped people, until some victims began confessing spontaneously.

*The 1930s saw the Great Purge, in which Stalin killed many Old Bolsheviks (including Bukharin; Leon Trotsky was also murdered in 1940 by an NKVD agent working in Mexico), many military officers, and many people of all types across Russia. 

*The precise number of people killed by Stalin directly or who died as a result of the famines that resulted from his policies will probably never be known, but estimates range from 10 million to 40 million. However, as Stalin said, the death of one man is a tragedy; the death of millions is a statistic.