SOVIET ART **

This period of the Soviet Union was dominated by Joseph Stalin, who sought to reshape Soviet society with aggressive economic planning, in particular a sweeping collectivization of agriculture and development of industrial power. He also promoted a secret police and a mass mobilization party, which led to millions of deaths as a result of purges and collectivization efforts. World War II, known as "The Great Patriotic War" in the Soviet Union, devastated much of the USSR with about one out of every three World War II deaths being a citizen of the Soviet Union. After World War II, the Soviet Union's armies occupied eastern Europe, where Communist governments came to power into the Soviet bloc, whilst in western Europe, democratic governments were established, with the help of aid provided by the United States. The Cold War ensued as the USSR and the United States struggled indirectly for influence around the world. At the 15th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in December 1927, Stalin attacked the left by expelling Leon Trotsky and his supporters from the party and then moving against the right by abandoning Lenin's New Economic Policy which had been championed by Nikolai Bukharin and Alexei Ivanovich Rykov. Warning delegates of an impending capitalist encirclement, he insisted that survival and development could only occur by pursuing the rapid development of heavy industry" The party, under Stalin's direction, established Gosplan (the State Planning Commission), a state organization responsible for guiding the socialist economy toward accelerated industrialization.