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Notes
- ^ Despite abolishing the office of General Secretary in 1952, Stalin continued to exercise its powers as the Secretariat's highest-ranking member.
- ^ After Stalin's death, Georgy Malenkov succeeded him as both head of government and the highest-ranking member of the party apparatus.
- ^ The Constituent Assembly was declared dissolved by the Bolshevik-Left SR Soviet government, rendering the end the term served.
- ^ a b c Stalin's original Georgian name was Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili (იოსებ ბესარიონის ძე ჯუღაშვილი). The Russian equivalent of this is Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili (Иосиф Виссарионович Джугашвили). During his years as a revolutionary, he adopted the alias "Stalin", and after the October Revolution he made it his legal name.
- ^ 21 December [O.S. 9] 1879 (Soviet records)
- ^ While forced to give up control of the Secretariat almost immediately after succeeding Stalin as the body's de facto head, Malenkov was still recognised as "first among equals" within the regime for over a year. As late as March 1954, he remained listed as first in the Soviet leadership and continued to chair meetings of the Politburo.
- ^
- ^ Although there is inconsistency among published sources about Stalin's exact date of birth, Ioseb Jughashvili is found in the records of the Uspensky Church in Gori, Georgia as born on 18 December (Old Style: 6 December) 1878. This birth date is maintained in his school leaving certificate, his extensive tsarist Russia police file, a police arrest record from 18 April 1902 which gave his age as 23 years, and all other surviving pre-Revolution documents. As late as 1921, Stalin himself listed his birthday as 18 December 1878 in a curriculum vitae in his own handwriting. After coming to power in 1922, Stalin gave his birth date as 21 December 1879 (Old Style date 9 December 1879). That became the day his birthday was celebrated in the Soviet Union.
How Did Joseph Stalin Die?
Stalin, who grew increasingly paranoid in his later years, died on March 5, 1953, at age 74, after suffering a stroke. His body was embalmed and preserved in Lenin’s mausoleum in Moscow’s Red Square until 1961, when it was removed and buried near the Kremlin walls as part of the de-Stalinization process initiated by Stalin’s successor Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971).
By some estimates, he was responsible for the deaths of 20 million people during his brutal rule.
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Post-war reconstruction and famine: 1945–1947
After the war, Stalin was—according to Service—at the "apex of his career". Within the Soviet Union he was widely regarded as the embodiment of victory and patriotism. His armies controlled Central and Eastern Europe up to the River Elbe. In June 1945, Stalin adopted the title of Generalissimus, and stood atop Lenin's Mausoleum to watch a celebratory parade led by Zhukov through Red Square. At a banquet held for army commanders, he described the Russian people as "the outstanding nation" and "leading force" within the Soviet Union, the first time that he had unequivocally endorsed the Russians over other Soviet nationalities. In 1946, the state published Stalin's Collected Works. In 1947, it brought out a second edition of his official biography, which eulogised him to a greater extent than its predecessor. He was quoted in Pravda on a daily basis and pictures of him remained pervasive on the walls of workplaces and homes.
Banner of Stalin in Budapest in 1949
Despite his strengthened international position, Stalin was cautious about internal dissent and desire for change among the population. He was also concerned about his returning armies, who had been exposed to a wide range of consumer goods in Germany, much of which they had looted and brought back with them. In this he recalled the 1825 Decembrist Revolt by Russian soldiers returning from having defeated France in the Napoleonic Wars. He ensured that returning Soviet prisoners of war went through "filtration" camps as they arrived in the Soviet Union, in which 2,775,700 were interrogated to determine if they were traitors. About half were then imprisoned in labour camps. In the Baltic states, where there was much opposition to Soviet rule, de-kulakisation and de-clericalisation programs were initiated, resulting in 142,000 deportations between 1945 and 1949. The Gulag system of labour camps was expanded further. By January 1953, three per cent of the Soviet population was imprisoned or in internal exile, with 2.8 million in "special settlements" in isolated areas and another 2.5 million in camps, penal colonies, and prisons.
The NKVD were ordered to catalogue the scale of destruction during the war. It was established that 1,710 Soviet towns and 70,000 villages had been destroyed. The NKVD recorded that between 26 and 27 million Soviet citizens had been killed, with millions more being wounded, malnourished, or orphaned. In the war's aftermath, some of Stalin's associates suggested modifications to government policy. Post-war Soviet society was more tolerant than its pre-war phase in various respects. Stalin allowed the Russian Orthodox Church to retain the churches it had opened during the war. Academia and the arts were also allowed greater freedom than they had prior to 1941. Recognising the need for drastic steps to be taken to combat inflation and promote economic regeneration, in December 1947 Stalin's government devalued the ruble and abolished the ration-book system. Capital punishment was abolished in 1947 but reinstalled in 1950.
Stalin's health was deteriorating, and heart problems forced a two-month vacation in the latter part of 1945. He grew increasingly concerned that senior political and military figures might try to oust him; he prevented any of them from becoming powerful enough to rival him and had their apartments bugged with listening devices. He demoted Molotov, and increasingly favoured Beria and Malenkov for key positions. In 1949, he brought Nikita Khrushchev from Ukraine to Moscow, appointing him a Central Committee secretary and the head of the city's party branch. In the Leningrad Affair, the city's leadership was purged amid accusations of treachery; executions of many of the accused took place in 1950.
In the post-war period there were often food shortages in Soviet cities, and the USSR experienced a major famine from 1946 to 1947. Sparked by a drought and ensuing bad harvest in 1946, it was exacerbated by government policy towards food procurement, including the state's decision to build up stocks and export food internationally rather than distributing it to famine hit areas. Current estimates indicate that between one million and 1.5 million people died from malnutrition or disease as a result. While agricultural production stagnated, Stalin focused on a series of major infrastructure projects, including the construction of hydroelectric plants, canals, and railway lines running to the polar north. Much of this was constructed by prison labour.
Major crises: 1932–1939
Famine
Within the Soviet Union, there was widespread civic disgruntlement against Stalin's government. Social unrest, previously restricted largely to the countryside, was increasingly evident in urban areas, prompting Stalin to ease on some of his economic policies in 1932. In May 1932, he introduced a system of kolkhoz markets where peasants could trade their surplus produce. At the same time, penal sanctions became more severe; at Stalin's instigation, in August 1932 a decree was introduced wherein the theft of even a handful of grain could be a capital offence. The second five-year plan had its production quotas reduced from that of the first, with the main emphasis now being on improving living conditions. It therefore emphasised the expansion of housing space and the production of consumer goods. Like its predecessor, this plan was repeatedly amended to meet changing situations; there was for instance an increasing emphasis placed on armament production after Adolf Hitler became German chancellor in 1933.
The Soviet Union experienced a major famine which peaked in the winter of 1932–33; between five and seven million people died. The worst affected areas were Ukraine and the North Caucasus, although the famine also affected Kazakhstan and several Russian provinces. Historians have long debated whether Stalin's government had intended the famine to occur or not; there are no known documents in which Stalin or his government explicitly called for starvation to be used against the population. The 1931 and 1932 harvests had been poor ones because of weather conditions and had followed several years in which lower productivity had resulted in a gradual decline in output. Government policies—including the focus on rapid industrialisation, the socialisation of livestock, and the emphasis on sown areas over crop rotation—exacerbated the problem; the state had also failed to build reserve grain stocks for such an emergency. Stalin blamed the famine on hostile elements and sabotage within the peasantry; his government provided small amounts of food to famine-struck rural areas, although this was wholly insufficient to deal with the levels of starvation. The Soviet government believed that food supplies should be prioritised for the urban workforce; for Stalin, the fate of Soviet industrialisation was far more important than the lives of the peasantry. Grain exports, which were a major means of Soviet payment for machinery, declined heavily. Stalin would not acknowledge that his policies had contributed to the famine, the existence of which was kept secret from foreign observers.
Pact with Nazi Germany: 1939–1941
As a Marxist–Leninist, Stalin expected an inevitable conflict between competing capitalist powers; after Nazi Germany annexed Austria and then part of Czechoslovakia in 1938, Stalin recognised a war was looming. He sought to maintain Soviet neutrality, hoping that a German war against France and Britain would lead to Soviet dominance in Europe. Militarily, the Soviets also faced a threat from the east, with Soviet troops clashing with the expansionist Japanese in the latter part of the 1930s. Stalin initiated a military build-up, with the Red Army more than doubling between January 1939 and June 1941, although in its haste to expand many of its officers were poorly trained. Between 1940 and 1941 he also purged the military, leaving it with a severe shortage of trained officers when war broke out.
As Britain and France seemed unwilling to commit to an alliance with the Soviet Union, Stalin saw a better deal with the Germans. On 3 May 1939, Stalin replaced his western-oriented foreign minister Maxim Litvinov with Vyacheslav Molotov. In May 1939, Germany began negotiations with the Soviets, proposing that Eastern Europe be divided between the two powers. Stalin saw this as an opportunity both for territorial expansion and temporary peace with Germany. In August 1939, the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact with Germany, a non-aggression pact negotiated by Molotov and German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. A week later, Germany invaded Poland, sparking the UK and France to declare war on Germany. On 17 September, the Red Army entered eastern Poland, officially to restore order amid the collapse of the Polish state. On 28 September, Germany and the Soviet Union exchanged some of their newly conquered territories; Germany gained the linguistically Polish-dominated areas of Lublin Province and part of Warsaw Province while the Soviets gained Lithuania. A German–Soviet Frontier Treaty was signed shortly after, in Stalin's presence. The two states continued trading, undermining the British blockade of Germany.
The Soviets further demanded parts of eastern Finland, but the Finnish government refused. The Soviets invaded Finland in November 1939, yet despite numerical inferiority, the Finns kept the Red Army at bay. International opinion backed Finland, with the Soviets being expelled from the League of Nations. Embarrassed by their inability to defeat the Finns, the Soviets signed an interim peace treaty, in which they received territorial concessions from Finland. In June 1940, the Red Army occupied the Baltic states, which were forcibly merged into the Soviet Union in August; they also invaded and annexed Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, parts of Romania. The Soviets sought to forestall dissent in these new East European territories with mass repressions. One of the most noted instances was the Katyn massacre of April and May 1940, in which around 22,000 members of the Polish armed forces, police, and intelligentsia were executed.
The speed of the German victory over and occupation of France in mid-1940 took Stalin by surprise. He increasingly focused on appeasement with the Germans to delay any conflict with them. After the Tripartite Pact was signed by Axis Powers Germany, Japan, and Italy in October 1940, Stalin proposed that the USSR also join the Axis alliance. To demonstrate peaceful intentions toward Germany, in April 1941 the Soviets signed a neutrality pact with Japan. Although de facto head of government for a decade and a half, Stalin concluded that relations with Germany had deteriorated to such an extent that he needed to deal with the problem as de jure head of government as well: on 6 May, Stalin replaced Molotov as Premier of the Soviet Union.
Read a brief summary of this topic
Joseph Stalin, Russian in full Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin, original name (Georgian) Ioseb Dzhugashvili, (born December 18 [December 6, Old Style], 1878, Gori, Georgia, Russian Empire [see Researcher’s Note] —died March 5, 1953, Moscow, Russia, U.S.S.R.), secretary-general of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–53) and premier of the Soviet state (1941–53), who for a quarter of a century dictatorially ruled the Soviet Union and transformed it into a major world power.During the quarter of a century preceding his death, the Soviet dictator, forcibly its agriculture, consolidated his position by intensive police terror, helped to defeat in 1941–45, and extended Soviet controls to include a belt of eastern European states. Chief architect of Soviet totalitarianismmilitary-industrial complexnuclear age
Britannica Quiz
World War II: Fact or Fiction?
Does the term "D-Day" refer to the invasion of Japan? Did Turkey fight on the side of Germany in World War II? Sort fact from fiction in this World War II quiz. Stalin’s biography was long obscured by a Soviet-propagated “legend” exaggerating his prowess as a heroic boy-conspirator and faithful follower of , the founder of the Soviet Union. In his prime, Stalin was hailed as a universal genius, as a “shining sun,” or “the staff of life,” and also as a “great teacher and friend” (especially of those he most savagely persecuted); once he was even publicly as “Our Father” by a metropolitan of the . Achieving wide visual promotion through busts, statues, and icons of himself, the dictator became the object of a fanatical cult that, in private, he probably regarded with .
Monument of Joseph Stalin in front of the town hall in Gori, Georgia.
© Tomasz Parys/Shutterstock.comConsolidation of power
Magazines, newspapers and websites
- "Do Stalina pozytyvno stavlyatʹsya menshe 1/5 ukrayintsiv" До Сталіна позитивно ставляться менше 1/5 українців [Less Than 1/5 of Ukrainians Have a Positive Attitude Towards Stalin]. Ukrayinska Pravda (in Ukrainian). 4 March 2015. Archived from the original on 5 March 2016. Retrieved 5 March 2016.
- Bakradze, Lasha; Gudjov, Lev; Lipman, Maria; Wall, Thomas (1 March 2013). "The Stalin Puzzle: Deciphering Post-Soviet Public Opinion". Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Archived from the original on 2 April 2017. Retrieved 2 April 2017.
- Bell, Bethany (5 March 2013). "Georgia Divided Over Stalin 'Local Hero' Status in Gori". BBC. Archived from the original on 19 July 2018. Retrieved 21 June 2018.
- Lisova, Natasha (28 November 2006). "Ukraine Recognize Famine As Genocide". Associated Press. Archived from the original on 22 August 2007. Retrieved 4 August 2007 – via Ukemonde.
- Luhn, Alec (16 April 2019). "Record 70 Percent of Russians Say Stalin Played a Positive Role in Their Country's History". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 30 November 2020. Retrieved 23 November 2020.
- Masci, David (29 June 2017). "In Russia, Nostalgia for USSR and Positive Feelings about Stalin". Pew Research Center. Archived from the original on 29 November 2020. Retrieved 23 November 2020.
- Parfitt, Tom (29 December 2008). "Greatest Russian Poll". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 5 September 2013. Retrieved 2 June 2015.
- Pisch, Anita (December 2016). "The Personality Cult of Stalin in Soviet Posters, 1929–1953". Australian National University. Archived from the original on 26 January 2021. Retrieved 11 December 2020.
- "Poll Finds Stalin's Popularity High". The Moscow Times. 2 March 2013. Archived from the original on 20 March 2017. Retrieved 20 March 2017.
- "Siberian Pensioner Is Grandson of Josef Stalin, DNA Test Reveals". The Siberian Times. 6 April 2016. Archived from the original on 28 January 2021. Retrieved 4 January 2021.
- Snyder, Timothy D. (26 May 2010). "Springtime for Stalin". The New York Review of Books. Archived from the original on 24 October 2012. Retrieved 4 January 2021.
- Snyder, Timothy D. (27 January 2011). "Hitler vs. Stalin: Who Was Worse?". The New York Review of Books.
- Taylor, Adam (15 February 2017). "Positive Views of Stalin among Russian Reach 16-year High, Poll Shows". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 20 March 2017. Retrieved 30 April 2017.
- "Ukraine Court Finds Bolsheviks Guilty of Holodomor Genocide". RIA Novosti. 13 January 2010. Archived from the original on 16 January 2010. Retrieved 13 January 2010.
- "Ukraine Stands by Its View of Stalin as Villain – President (Update 1)". RIA Novosti. 25 February 2011. Archived from the original on 23 May 2013. Retrieved 23 May 2013.
- "Wall of Grief: Putin Opens First Soviet Victims Memorial". BBC. 5 June 2018. Archived from the original on 5 June 2018. Retrieved 30 October 2017.
- "Why So Many Russian like Dictator Stalin". BBC News. 18 April 2019. Archived from the original on 19 July 2019. Retrieved 11 June 2019.
- Yegorov, Oleg (15 December 2017). "Why did the USSR help to create Israel, but then became its foe". Russia Beyond. Retrieved 5 February 2022.
Revolution of 1905 and its aftermath: 1905–1912
In January 1905, government troops massacred protesters in Saint Petersburg. Unrest soon spread across the Russian Empire in what came to be known as the Revolution of 1905. Georgia was particularly affected. Stalin was in Baku in February when ethnic violence broke out between Armenians and Azeris; at least 2,000 were killed. He publicly lambasted the "pogroms against Jews and Armenians" as being part of Tsar Nicholas II's attempts to "buttress his despicable throne". Stalin formed a Bolshevik Battle Squad which he used to try to keep Baku's warring ethnic factions apart; he also used the unrest as a cover for stealing printing equipment. Amid the growing violence throughout Georgia he formed further Battle Squads, with the Mensheviks doing the same. Stalin's squads disarmed local police and troops, raided government arsenals, and raised funds through protection rackets on large local businesses and mines. They launched attacks on the government's Cossack troops and pro-Tsarist Black Hundreds, co-ordinating some of their operations with the Menshevik militia.
In November 1905, the Georgian Bolsheviks elected Stalin as one of their delegates to a Bolshevik conference in Saint Petersburg. On arrival, he met Lenin's wife Nadezhda Krupskaya, who informed him that the venue had been moved to Tampere in the Grand Duchy of Finland. At the conference Stalin met Lenin for the first time. Although Stalin held Lenin in deep respect, he was vocal in his disagreement with Lenin's view that the Bolsheviks should field candidates for the forthcoming election to the State Duma; Stalin saw the parliamentary process as a waste of time. In April 1906, Stalin attended the RSDLP Fourth Congress in Stockholm; this was his first trip outside the Russian Empire. At the conference, the RSDLP — then led by its Menshevik majority — agreed that it would not raise funds using armed robbery. Lenin and Stalin disagreed with this decision and later privately discussed how they could continue the robberies for the Bolshevik cause.
Stalin married Kato Svanidze in a church ceremony at Senaki in July 1906. In March 1907 she bore a son, Yakov. By that year — according to the historian Robert Service — Stalin had established himself as "Georgia's leading Bolshevik". He attended the Fifth RSDLP Congress, held in London in May–June 1907. After returning to Tiflis, Stalin organised the robbing of a large delivery of money to the Imperial Bank in June 1907. His gang ambushed the armed convoy in Yerevan Square with gunfire and home-made bombs. Around 40 people were killed, but all of his gang escaped alive. After the heist, Stalin settled in Baku with his wife and son. There, Mensheviks confronted Stalin about the robbery and voted to expel him from the RSDLP, but he took no notice of them.
In Baku, Stalin secured Bolshevik domination of the local RSDLP branch and edited two Bolshevik newspapers, Bakinsky Proletary and Gudok ("Whistle"). In August 1907, he attended the Seventh Congress of the Second International — an international socialist organisation — in Stuttgart, Germany. In November 1907, his wife died of typhus, and he left his son with her family in Tiflis. In Baku he had reassembled his gang, the Outfit, which continued to attack Black Hundreds and raised finances by running protection rackets, counterfeiting currency, and carrying out robberies. They also kidnapped the children of several wealthy figures to extract ransom money. In early 1908, he travelled to the Swiss city of Geneva to meet with Lenin and the prominent Russian Marxist Georgi Plekhanov, although the latter exasperated him.
In March 1908, Stalin was arrested and interned in Bailov Prison in Baku. There he led the imprisoned Bolsheviks, organised discussion groups, and ordered the killing of suspected informants. He was eventually sentenced to two years exile in the village of Solvychegodsk, Vologda Province, arriving there in February 1909. In June, he escaped the village and made it to Kotlas disguised as a woman and from there to Saint Petersburg. In March 1910, he was arrested again and sent back to Solvychegodsk. There he had affairs with at least two women; his landlady, Maria Kuzakova, later gave birth to his second son, Konstantin. In June 1911, Stalin was given permission to move to Vologda, where he stayed for two months, having a relationship with Pelageya Onufrieva. He escaped to Saint Petersburg, where he was arrested in September 1911 and sentenced to a further three-year exile in Vologda.
Robert Daniels
DOI:10.12987/yale/9780300106497.003.0024
Given his reputation, one may ask whether Joseph Stalin was really a Communist. This question acquired direct practical significance after the revolution against Stalinism that culminated in 1991. Both anti-Communists of the left and the proponents of perestroika in the Soviet Union insisted that Stalinism was a criminal betrayal of the revolution and of Marxist ideals. Stalin's commitment to Marxism and even to socialism only served to camouflage the establishment of a new oriental despotism. A contrary argument claims that Vladimir Lenin and Leninism significantly contributed to the cruelty of the Russian Revolution, and that they helped the Communist Party organization and Communist ideology to remain in place through the succeeding phases of reaction and postrevolutionary dictatorship. The “Stalin Revolution” had two phases: a revolution from above followed by a counterrevolution from above. This perspective revives an old issue: whether there was any essential difference between Communism and fascism.
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Bibliography
Eastern Bloc
After the war, Stalin sought to retain Soviet dominance across Eastern Europe while expanding its influence in Asia. Cautiously regarding the responses from the Western Allies, Stalin avoided immediately installing Communist Party governments across Eastern Europe, instead initially ensuring that Marxist-Leninists were placed in coalition ministries. In contrast to his approach to the Baltic states, he rejected the proposal of merging the new communist states into the Soviet Union, rather recognising them as independent nation-states. He was faced with the problem that there were few Marxists left in Eastern Europe, with most having been killed by the Nazis. He demanded that war reparations be paid by Germany and its Axis allies Hungary, Romania, and the Slovak Republic. Aware that these countries had been pushed toward socialism through invasion rather than by proletarian revolution, Stalin referred to them not as "dictatorships of the proletariat" but as "people's democracies", suggesting that in these countries there was a pro-socialist alliance combining the proletariat, peasantry, and lower middle-class.
Churchill observed that an "Iron Curtain" had been drawn across Europe, separating the east from the west. In September 1947, a meeting of East European communist leaders was held in Szklarska Poręba, Poland, from which was formed Cominform to co-ordinate the Communist Parties across Eastern Europe and also in France and Italy. Stalin did not personally attend the meeting, sending Zhdanov in his place. Various East European communists also visited Stalin in Moscow. There, he offered advice on their ideas; for instance he cautioned against the Yugoslav idea for a Balkan federation incorporating Bulgaria and Albania. Stalin had a particularly strained relationship with Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito due to the latter's continued calls for Balkan federation and for Soviet aid for the communist forces in the ongoing Greek Civil War. In March 1948, Stalin launched an anti-Tito campaign, accusing the Yugoslav communists of adventurism and deviating from Marxist–Leninist doctrine. At the second Cominform conference, held in Bucharest in June 1948, East European communist leaders all denounced Tito's government, accusing them of being fascists and agents of Western capitalism. Stalin ordered several assassination attempts on Tito's life and contemplated invading Yugoslavia.
Stalin suggested that a unified, but demilitarised, German state be established, hoping that it would either come under Soviet influence or remain neutral. When the US and UK remained opposed to this, Stalin sought to force their hand by blockading Berlin in June 1948. He gambled that the others would not risk war, but they airlifted supplies into West Berlin until May 1949, when Stalin relented and ended the blockade. In September 1949 the Western powers transformed Western Germany into an independent Federal Republic of Germany; in response the Soviets formed East Germany into the German Democratic Republic in October. In accordance with their earlier agreements, the Western powers expected Poland to become an independent state with free democratic elections. In Poland, the Soviets merged various socialist parties into the Polish United Workers' Party, and vote rigging was used to ensure that it secured office. The 1947 Hungarian elections were also rigged, with the Hungarian Working People's Party taking control. In Czechoslovakia, where the communists did have a level of popular support, they were elected the largest party in 1946. Monarchy was abolished in Bulgaria and Romania. Across Eastern Europe, the Soviet model was enforced, with a termination of political pluralism, agricultural collectivisation, and investment in heavy industry. It was aimed for economic autarky within the Eastern Bloc.
Cultural and foreign policy
In 1928, Stalin declared that class war between the proletariat and their enemies would intensify as socialism developed.[348] He warned of a "danger from the right", including in the Communist Party itself. The first major show trial in the USSR was the Shakhty Trial of 1928, in which several middle-class "industrial specialists" were convicted of sabotage. From 1929 to 1930, further show trials were held to intimidate opposition: these included the Industrial Party Trial, Menshevik Trial, and Metro-Vickers Trial. Aware that the ethnic Russian majority may have concerns about being ruled by a Georgian, he promoted ethnic Russians throughout the state hierarchy and made the Russian language compulsory throughout schools and offices, albeit to be used in tandem with local languages in areas with non-Russian majorities. Nationalist sentiment among ethnic minorities was suppressed. Conservative social policies were promoted to enhance social discipline and boost population growth; this included a focus on strong family units and motherhood, re-criminalisation of homosexuality, restrictions placed on abortion and divorce, and abolition of the Zhenotdel women's department.[356]
Stalin desired a "cultural revolution", entailing both creation of a culture for the "masses" and wider dissemination of previously elite culture. He oversaw proliferation of schools, newspapers, and libraries, as well as advancement of literacy and numeracy. Socialist realism was promoted throughout arts,[360] while Stalin personally wooed prominent writers, namely Maxim Gorky, Mikhail Sholokhov, and Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy. He also expressed patronage for scientists whose research fitted within his preconceived interpretation of Marxism; for instance, he endorsed research of an agrobiologist Trofim Lysenko despite the fact that it was rejected by the majority of Lysenko's scientific peers as pseudo-scientific. The government's anti-religious campaign was re-intensified, with increased funding given to the League of Militant Atheists. Christian, Muslim, and Buddhist clergy faced persecution. Many religious buildings were demolished, most notably Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, destroyed in 1931 to make way for the (never completed) Palace of the Soviets. Religion retained an influence over much of the population; in the 1937 census, 57% of respondents identified as religious.
Throughout the 1920s and beyond, Stalin placed a high priority on foreign policy. He personally met with a range of Western visitors, including George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells, both of whom were impressed with him. Through the Communist International, Stalin's government exerted a strong influence over Marxist parties elsewhere in the world; initially, Stalin left the running of the organisation largely to Bukharin. At its 6th Congress in July 1928, Stalin informed delegates that the main threat to socialism came not from the right but from non-Marxist socialists and social democrats, whom he called "social fascists"; Stalin recognised that in many countries, the social democrats were the Marxist-Leninists' main rivals for working-class support. This preoccupation with opposing rival leftists concerned Bukharin, who regarded the growth of fascism and the far right across Europe as a far greater threat. After Bukharin's departure, Stalin placed the Communist International under the administration of Dmitry Manuilsky and Osip Piatnitsky.
Stalin faced problems in his family life. In 1929, his son Yakov unsuccessfully attempted suicide; his failure earned Stalin's contempt. His relationship with Nadezhda was also strained amid their arguments and her mental health problems. In November 1932, after a group dinner in the Kremlin in which Stalin flirted with other women, Nadezhda shot herself. Publicly, the cause of death was given as appendicitis; Stalin also concealed the real cause of death from his children. Stalin's friends noted that he underwent a significant change following her suicide, becoming emotionally harder.
Cold War policy: 1947–1950
In the aftermath of the Second World War, the British Empire declined, leaving the U.S. and USSR as the dominant world powers. Tensions among these former Allies grew, resulting in the Cold War. Although Stalin publicly described the British and U.S. governments as aggressive, he thought it unlikely that a war with them would be imminent, believing that several decades of peace was likely. He nevertheless secretly intensified Soviet research into nuclear weaponry, intent on creating an atom bomb. Still, Stalin foresaw the undesirability of a nuclear conflict, saying in 1949 that "atomic weapons can hardly be used without spelling the end of the world." He personally took a keen interest in the development of the weapon. In August 1949, the bomb was successfully tested in the deserts outside Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan. Stalin also initiated a new military build-up; the Soviet army was expanded from 2.9 million soldiers, as it stood in 1949, to 5.8 million by 1953.
The US began pushing its interests on every continent, acquiring air force bases in Africa and Asia and ensuring pro-U.S. regimes took power across Latin America. It launched the Marshall Plan in June 1947, with which it sought to undermine Soviet hegemony in eastern Europe. The US also offered financial assistance as part of the Marshall Plan on the condition that they opened their markets to trade, aware that the Soviets would never agree. The Allies demanded that Stalin withdraw the Red Army from northern Iran. He initially refused, leading to an international crisis in 1946, but one year later Stalin finally relented and moved the Soviet troops out. Stalin also tried to maximise Soviet influence on the world stage, unsuccessfully pushing for Libya—recently liberated from Italian occupation—to become a Soviet protectorate. He sent Molotov as his representative to San Francisco to take part in negotiations to form the United Nations, insisting that the Soviets have a place on the Security Council. In April 1949, the Western powers established the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), an international military alliance of capitalist countries. Within Western countries, Stalin was increasingly portrayed as the "most evil dictator alive" and compared to Hitler.
In 1948, Stalin edited and rewrote sections of Falsifiers of History, published as a series of Pravda articles in February 1948 and then in book form. Written in response to public revelations of the 1939 Soviet alliance with Germany, it focused on blaming Western powers for the war. He erroneously claimed that the initial German advance in the early part of the war was not a result of Soviet military weakness, but rather a deliberate Soviet strategic retreat. In 1949, celebrations took place to mark Stalin's seventieth birthday (although he was 71 at the time,) at which Stalin attended an event in the Bolshoi Theatre alongside Marxist–Leninist leaders from across Europe and Asia.
Stalin’s rise to power
Dzhugashvili made slow progress in the party hierarchy. He attended three policy-making conclaves of the Russian Social Democrats—in Tammerfors (now Tampere, Finland; 1905), Stockholm (1906), and London (1907)—without making much impression. But he was active behind the scenes, helping to plot a spectacular holdup in Tiflis (now Tbilisi) on June 25 (June 12, Old Style), 1907, in order to “expropriate” funds for the party. His first big political promotion came in February (January, Old Style) 1912, when Lenin—now in emigration—co-opted him to serve on the first Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, which had finally broken with the other Social Democrats. In the following year, Dzhugashvili published, at Lenin’s behest, an important article on Marxism and the national question. By now he had adopted the name Stalin, deriving from Russian stal (“steel”); he also briefly edited the newly founded Bolshevik newspaper Pravda before undergoing his longest period of exile: in Siberia from July 1913 to March 1917.In about 1904 Stalin had married a pious Georgian girl, Ekaterina Svanidze. She died some three years later and left a son, Jacob, whom his father treated with , calling him a weakling after an unsuccessful suicide attempt in the late 1920s; when Jacob was taken prisoner by the Germans during , Stalin refused a German offer to exchange his son.Reaching from on March 25 (March 12, Old Style), 1917, Stalin resumed editorship of . He briefly advocated Bolshevik cooperation with the provisional government of middle-class liberals that had succeeded to uneasy power on the last ’s abdication during the . But under Lenin’s influence, Stalin soon switched to the more-militant policy of armed seizure of power by the Bolsheviks. When their coup d’état.Active as a politico-military leader on various fronts during the , Stalin also held two ministerial posts in the new Bolshevik government, being commissar for nationalities (1917–23) and for state control (or workers’ and peasants’ inspection; 1919–23). But it was his position as secretary general of the party’s , from 1922 until his death, that provided the power base for his dictatorship. Besides heading the secretariat, he was also member of the powerful and of many other interlocking and overlapping committees—an arch-bureaucrat engaged in quietly outmaneuvering brilliant rivals, including Trotsky and Grigory ZinovyevmundaneFrom 1921 onward Stalin flouted the ailing Lenin’s wishes, until, a year before his death, Lenin wrote a political “testament,” since widely publicized, calling for Stalin’s removal from the secretary generalship; coming from Lenin, this document was potentially ruinous to Stalin’s career, but his usual luck and skill enabled him to have it discounted during his lifetime.
Joseph Stalin’s Rise to Power
In 1912, Lenin, then in exile in Switzerland, appointed Joseph Stalin to serve on the first Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party. Three years later, in November 1917, the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia. The Soviet Union was founded in 1922, with Lenin as its first leader. During these years, Stalin had continued to move up the party ladder, and in 1922 he became secretary general of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, a role that enabled him to appoint his allies to government jobs and grow a base of political support.
After Lenin died in 1924, Stalin eventually outmaneuvered his rivals and won the power struggle for control of the Communist Party. By the late 1920s, he had become dictator of the Soviet Union.
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