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Joseph Stalin

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Political People

   Joseph Stalin
   ( Georgian: იოსებ ჯუღაშვილი)
   Joseph Stalin
     __________________________________________________________________

   General Secretary / First Secretary of the Central Committee of the
   Communist Party of the Soviet Union
   In office
   April 3, 1922 –  March 5, 1953
   Preceded by none (position created in 1922)
   Succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev
     __________________________________________________________________

   Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars
   In office
   May 6, 1941 –  March 5, 1953
   Preceded by Vyacheslav Molotov
   Succeeded by Georgy Malenkov
     __________________________________________________________________

   Born December 18, 1878
   Gori, Georgia, Russian Empire
   Died March 5, 1953
   Moscow, USSR
   Political party Communist Party of the Soviet Union

   Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili  ( Georgian: იოსებ ჯუღაშვილი;
   Russian: Ио́сиф Виссарио́нович Джугашвили, Iosif Vissarionovich
   Dzhugashvili; December 18, 1878 [ O.S. December 6] – March 5, 1953),
   better known by his adopted name, Joseph Stalin (alternatively
   transliterated Josef Stalin), was the de facto leader of the Soviet
   Union from about 1928 until his death in 1953.

   Stalin held the title of General Secretary of the Central Committee of
   the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922-1953) — a position
   originally without significant influence but which, through Stalin's
   ascendancy, became that of de facto party leader. Between 1934 and
   1953, this office was nominally but one of several Central Committee
   Secretaryships, but his leadership was universally acknowledged.

Introduction

   Born Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili ( Georgian: იოსებ ჯუღაშვილი;
   Russian: Иосиф Виссарионович Джугашвили [Iosif Vissarionovič
   Džugašvili]), Stalin became General Secretary of the Soviet Communist
   Party in 1922. Following the death of Vladimir Lenin, during the 1920s
   he prevailed in a power struggle over Leon Trotsky. In the 1930s Stalin
   initiated the Great Purge, a campaign of political repression,
   persecution and killings that reached its peak in 1937.

   Stalin's rule had long-lasting effects on the features that
   characterized the Soviet state from the era of his rule to its collapse
   in 1991—though Maoists, anti-revisionists and some others say he was
   actually the last legitimate Socialist leader in the Soviet Union's
   history. Stalin claimed his policies were based on Marxism-Leninism;
   they are now often considered to represent a political and economic
   system called Stalinism.

   Stalin replaced the New Economic Policy (NEP) of the 1920s with
   Five-Year Plans in 1928 and collective farming at roughly the same
   time. The Soviet Union was transformed from a predominantly peasant
   society to a major world industrial power by the end of the 1930s.

   Confiscations of grain and other food by the Soviet authorities under
   his orders contributed to a famine between 1932 and 1934, especially in
   the key agricultural regions of the Soviet Union, Ukraine (see
   Holodomor), Kazakhstan and North Caucasus that resulted in millions of
   deaths. Many peasants resisted collectivization and grain
   confiscations, but were repressed, most notably well-off peasants
   deemed " kulaks."

   Bearing the brunt of the Nazis' attacks (around 75% of the Wehrmacht's
   forces), the Soviet Union under Stalin made the largest and decisive
   contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany during World War II (known
   in the USSR as the Great Patriotic War, 1941–45). After the war, Stalin
   established the USSR as one of the two major superpowers in the world,
   a position it maintained for nearly four decades following his death in
   1953.

   Stalin's rule - reinforced by a cult of personality - fought real and
   alleged opponents mainly through the security apparatus, such as the
   NKVD. Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin's henchman and eventual successor,
   denounced Stalin's rule and the cult of personality in 1956, initiating
   the process of " de-Stalinization" which later became part of the
   Sino-Soviet Split.

Childhood and early years

   Class photo, Stalin is standing in the back, two boys beyond and his
   home town of Gori
   Enlarge
   Class photo, Stalin is standing in the back, two boys beyond and his
   home town of Gori

   Reliable sources about Stalin's youth are few; however those which were
   left were subject to censorship as was common during Stalin's reign.
   Some consider the writings of Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva to
   be the most reliable sources, since they were not censored.

   Joseph Stalin was born Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili in Gori,
   Georgia, Russian Empire to Vissarion Dzhugashvili and Ekaterina
   Geladze. In 1913, he adopted the name Stalin, which is derived from the
   Russian stal’ (Russian: сталь) for "steel". His mother was born a serf.
   The other three children died young; "Soso" (the Georgian pet name for
   Joseph), was effectively the only child. According to the official
   version, his father Vissarion was a cobbler. He opened his own shop,
   but quickly went bankrupt, forcing him to work in a shoe factory in
   Tiflis. (Archer 11)

   Rarely seeing his family and drinking heavily, Vissarion often beat his
   wife and small son. One of Stalin's friends from childhood wrote,
   "Those undeserved and fearful beatings made the boy as hard and
   heartless as his father." The same friend also wrote that he never saw
   him cry.
   A young Stalin, circa 1894.
   Enlarge
   A young Stalin, circa 1894.

   Another of his childhood friends, Iremashvili, felt that the beatings
   by Stalin's father gave him a hatred of authority. He also said that
   anyone with power over others reminded Stalin of his father's cruelty.
   Stalin had broken his arm several times over his life. There have been
   reports of Stalin having one arm shorter than the other.
   The information card on Joseph Stalin, from the files of the Tsarist
   secret police in St. Petersburg
   Enlarge
   The information card on Joseph Stalin, from the files of the Tsarist
   secret police in St. Petersburg

   One of the people for whom Ekaterina did laundry and house-cleaning was
   a Gori Jew, David Papismedov. Papismedov gave Joseph, who would help
   out his mother, money and books to read, and encouraged him. Decades
   later, Papismedov came to the Kremlin to learn what had become of
   little "Soso". Stalin surprised his colleagues by not only receiving
   the elderly man, but happily chatting with him in public places.

   In 1888, Stalin's father left to live in Tiflis, leaving the family
   without support. Rumors said he died in a drunken bar fight; however,
   others said they had seen him in Georgia as late as 1931. At the age of
   eight, "Soso" began his education at the Gori Church School.

   When attending school in Gori, "Soso" was among a very diverse group of
   students. Joseph and most of his classmates were Georgian and spoke
   mostly Georgian. However, at school they were forced to use Russian.
   Even when speaking in Russian, their Russian teachers mocked Joseph and
   his classmates because of their Georgian accents. His peers were mostly
   the sons of affluent priests, officials, and merchants.

   During his childhood, Joseph was fascinated by stories he read telling
   of Georgian mountaineers who valiantly fought for Georgian
   independence. His favorite hero in these stories was a legendary
   mountain ranger named Koba, which became Stalin's first alias as a
   revolutionary. He graduated first in his class and at the age of 14 he
   was awarded a scholarship to the Seminary of Tiflis ( Tbilisi,
   Georgia), a Jesuit institution (one of his classmates was Krikor Bedros
   Aghajanian, the future Grégoire-Pierre Cardinal Agagianian, see ) which
   he attended from 1894 and onward. Although his mother wanted him to be
   a priest (even after he had become leader of the Soviet Union), he
   attended seminary not because of any religious vocation, but because of
   the lack of locally available university education. In addition to the
   small stipend from the scholarship Stalin was paid for singing in the
   choir.
   Stalin in exile, 1915.
   Enlarge
   Stalin in exile, 1915.

   Stalin's involvement with the socialist movement (or, to be more exact,
   the branch of it that later became the communist movement) began at the
   seminary. During these school years, Stalin joined a Georgian
   Social-Democratic organization, and began propagating Marxism. Stalin
   quit the seminary in 1899 just before his final examinations; official
   biographies preferred to state that he was expelled. He then worked for
   a decade with the political underground in the Caucasus, experiencing
   repeated arrests and exile to Siberia between 1902 and 1917.

   Stalin adhered to Vladimir Lenin's doctrine of a strong centralist
   party of professional revolutionaries. Stalin and Lenin attended the
   Fifth Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in London
   in 1907 (see ). This congress consolidated the supremacy of Lenin's
   Bolshevik Party and debated strategy for communist revolution in
   Russia. Stalin never referred to his stay in London.

   In the period after the Revolution of 1905 Stalin led "fighting squads"
   in bank robberies to raise funds for the Bolshevik Party. His practical
   experience made him useful to the party, and gained him a place on its
   Central Committee in January 1912.
   Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, and Mikhail Kalinin meeting in 1919. All
   three of them were "Old Bolsheviks"; members of the Bolshevik party
   before the Russian Revolution of 1917.
   Enlarge
   Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, and Mikhail Kalinin meeting in 1919. All
   three of them were " Old Bolsheviks"; members of the Bolshevik party
   before the Russian Revolution of 1917.

   His only significant contribution to the development of the Marxist
   theory at this time was a treatise, written while he was briefly in
   exile in Vienna, Marxism and the National Question. It presents an
   orthodox Marxist position (c.f. Lenin's On the Right of Nations to
   Self-Determination). This treatise may have contributed to his
   appointment as People's Commissar for Nationalities Affairs after the
   revolution .

   In 1901, the Georgian clergyman M. Kelendzheridze wrote an educational
   book on language arts, including one of Stalin’s poems, signed by
   'Soselo'. In 1907 the same editor published “A Georgian Chrestomathy,
   or collection of the best examples of Georgian literature” including a
   poem of Stalin’s dedicated to Rafael Eristavi. His poetry can still be
   seen in the Stalin Museum in Gori.

Marriages and family

   Stalin's first wife, Ekaterina Svanidze, died in 1907, only four years
   after their marriage. At her funeral, Stalin allegedly said that any
   warm feelings he had for people died with her, for only she could melt
   his 'stony heart'. To him, her life was the only thing that made him
   happy. They had a son together, Yakov Dzhugashvili, with whom Stalin
   did not get along in later years.
   Stalin with his children: Vassili and Svetlana.
   Enlarge
   Stalin with his children: Vassili and Svetlana.

   His son finally shot himself because of Stalin's harshness toward him,
   but survived. After this, Stalin said "He can't even shoot straight".
   Yakov served in the Red Army during World War II and was captured by
   the Germans. They offered to exchange him for Fieldmarshal Paulus, but
   Stalin turned the offer down, allegedly saying "A lieutenant is not
   worth a general"; others credit him with saying "I have no son," to
   this offer, and Yakov is said to have committed suicide, running into
   an electric fence in Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he was
   being held.
   Stalin and Nadezhda Alliluyeva.
   Enlarge
   Stalin and Nadezhda Alliluyeva.

   His second wife was Nadezhda Alliluyeva, who died in 1932; she may have
   committed suicide by shooting herself after a quarrel with Stalin,
   leaving a suicide note which according to their daughter was "partly
   personal, partly political".

   Officially, she died of an illness. With her, he had two children: a
   son, Vassili, and a daughter, Svetlana.

   Vassili rose through the ranks of the Soviet air force, officially
   dying of alcoholism in 1962; however, this is still in question. He
   distinguished himself in World War II as a capable airman. Svetlana
   emigrated to the United States in 1967.

   In his book The Wolf of the Kremlin, Stuart Kahan claimed that Stalin
   was secretly married to a third wife named Rosa Kaganovich. Rosa was
   the sister of Lazar Kaganovich, a Soviet politician. However, the claim
   is unproven and many have disputed this claim, including the Kaganovich
   family, who deny that Rosa and Stalin ever met.

   Stalin's mother died in 1937; he did not attend the funeral but instead
   sent a wreath.

   In March 2001, Russian Independent Television NTV discovered a
   previously unknown grandson living in Novokuznetsk. Yuri Davydov told
   NTV that his father had told him of his lineage, but, because the
   campaign against Stalin's cult of personality was in full swing at the
   time, he was told to keep quiet. The Soviet dissident writer, Alexander
   Solzhenitsyn, had mentioned a son being born to Stalin and his
   common-law wife, Lida, in 1918 during Stalin's exile in northern
   Siberia.

Rise to power

   Joseph Stalin.
   Enlarge
   Joseph Stalin.

   In 1912 Stalin was co-opted to the Bolshevik Central Committee at the
   Prague Party Conference. In 1917 Stalin was editor of Pravda, the
   official Communist newspaper, while Lenin and much of the Bolshevik
   leadership were in exile.

   Following the February Revolution, Stalin and the editorial board took
   a position in favour of supporting Kerensky's provisional government
   and, it is alleged, went to the extent of declining to publish Lenin's
   articles arguing for the provisional government to be overthrown.

   In April 1917, Stalin was elected to the Central Committee with the
   third highest vote total in the party and was subsequently elected to
   the Politburo of the Central Committee (May 1917); he held this
   position for the remainder of his life.

   According to many accounts, Stalin only played a minor role in the
   revolution of November 7. Other writers, such as Adam Ulam, have argued
   that each man in the Central Committee had a specific job to which he
   was assigned.

   The following summary of Trotsky's Role in 1917 was given by Stalin in
   Pravda, November 6 1918:


   Joseph Stalin

   All practical work in connection with the organisation of the uprising
       was done under the immediate direction of Comrade Trotsky, the
   President of the Petrograd Soviet. It can be stated with certainty that
   the Party is indebted primarily and principally to Comrade Trotsky for
   the rapid going over of the garrison to the side of the Soviet and the
      efficient manner in which the work of the Military Revolutionary
                          Committee was organised.


   Joseph Stalin

   Note: Although this passage was quoted in Stalin's book The October
   Revolution issued in 1934, it was expunged in Stalin's Works released
   in 1949.

   Later, in 1924, Stalin himself created a myth around a so-called "Party
   Centre" which "directed" all practical work pertaining to the uprising,
   consisting of himself, Sverdlov, Dzerzhinsky, Uritsky, and Bubnov.
   However, no evidence was ever shown for the activity of this "centre",
   which would, in any case, have been subordinate to the Military
   Revolutionary Council, headed by Trotsky.

   During the Russian Civil War and Polish-Soviet War, Stalin was a
   political commissar in the Red Army at various fronts. Stalin's first
   government position was as People's Commissar of Nationalities Affairs
   (1917–1923).

   He was also People's Commissar of the Workers and Peasants Inspection
   (1919–1922), a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the
   republic (1920–23) and a member of the Central Executive Committee of
   the Congress of Soviets (from 1917).

Campaign against the Left and Right Opposition

   On April 3, 1922, Stalin was made general secretary of the Central
   Committee of the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), a post that
   he subsequently built up into the most powerful in the country. It has
   been claimed that he initially attempted to decline accepting the post,
   but was refused. This position was seen to be a minor one within the
   party (Stalin was sometimes referred to as "Comrade Card-Index" by
   fellow party members) but, when coupled with leadership over the
   Orgburo, actually had potential as a power base as it allowed Stalin to
   fill the party with his allies.

   Due to Stalin's popularity within the Bolshevik party he gained plenty
   of political power. This took the dying Lenin by surprise, and in his
   last writings he famously called for the removal of the "rude" Stalin.
   However, this document was voted on as to its adoption by the Party in
   a Congress - and a unanimous vote to reject the document was taken by
   all members of the Congress as Lenin was at this time deemed very ill.

   After Lenin's death in January 1924, Stalin, Kamenev, and Zinoviev
   together governed the party, placing themselves ideologically between
   Trotsky (on the left wing of the party) and Bukharin (on the right).
   During this period, Stalin abandoned the traditional Bolshevik emphasis
   on international revolution in favour of a policy of building "
   Socialism in One Country", in contrast to Trotsky's theory of Permanent
   Revolution.

   In the struggle for leadership one thing was evident; whoever ended up
   ruling the party had to be considered very loyal to Lenin. Stalin
   organized Lenin's funeral and made a speech professing undying loyalty
   to Lenin, in almost religious terms. He undermined Trotsky, who was
   sick at the time, possibly by misleading him about the date of the
   funeral. Thus although Trotsky was Lenin’s associate throughout the
   early days of the Soviet regime, he lost ground to Stalin. Stalin made
   great play of the fact that Trotsky had joined the Bolsheviks just
   before the revolution, and publicized Trotsky's pre-revolutionary
   disagreements with Lenin. Another event that helped Stalin's rise was
   the fact that Trotsky came out against publication of Lenin's Testament
   in which he pointed out the strengths and weaknesses of Stalin and
   Trotsky and the other main players, and suggested that he be succeeded
   by a small group of people.

   An important feature of Stalin’s rise to power is the way that he
   manipulated his opponents and played them off against each other.
   Stalin formed a " troika" of himself, Zinoviev, and Kamenev against
   Trotsky. When Trotsky had been eliminated Stalin then joined Bukharin
   and Rykov against Zinoviev and Kamenev, emphasising their vote against
   the insurrection in 1917. Zinoviev and Kamenev then turned to Lenin's
   widow, Krupskaya; they formed the " United Opposition" in July 1926.

   In 1927 during the 15th Party Congress Trotsky and Zinoviev were
   expelled from the party and Kamenev lost his seat on the Central
   Committee. Stalin soon turned against the " Right Opposition",
   represented by his erstwhile allies, Bukharin and Rykov.

   Stalin gained popular appeal from his presentation as a 'man of the
   people' from the poorer classes. The Russian people were tired from the
   world war and the civil war, and Stalin's policy of concentrating in
   building "Socialism in One Country" was seen as an optimistic antidote
   to war.

   Stalin took great advantage of the ban on factionalism which meant that
   no group could openly go against the policies of the leader of the
   party because that meant creation of an opposition. By 1928 (the first
   year of the Five-Year Plans) Stalin was supreme among the leadership,
   and the following year Trotsky was exiled because of his opposition.
   Having also outmaneuvered Bukharin's Right Opposition and now
   advocating collectivization and industrialization, Stalin can be said
   to have exercised control over the party and the country.

   However, as the popularity of other leaders such as Sergei Kirov and
   the so-called Ryutin Affair were to demonstrate, Stalin did not achieve
   absolute power until the Great Purge of 1936–38.

Soviet secret service and intelligence

   No reference to Joseph Stalin can be made without reference to his
   unmatched ability at mastering the use of intelligence and the secret
   police. He turned the Soviet political police, the Cheka (later, the
   GPU and OGPU), into an arm of state-sanctioned murder. Stalin also
   vastly increased the foreign espionage activities of Soviet secret
   police and foreign intelligence. Under his guiding hand, Soviet
   intelligence forces began to set up intelligence networks in most of
   the major nations of the world, including Germany (the famous Rote
   Kappelle spy ring), Great Britain, France, Japan, and the United
   States. Stalin saw no difference between espionage, communist political
   propaganda actions, and state-sanctioned violence, and he began to
   integrate all of these activities within the NKVD. Stalin made
   considerable use of the Communist International movement in order to
   infiltrate agents and to ensure that foreign Communist parties remained
   pro-Soviet and pro-Stalin.

   One of the best early examples of Stalin's ability to integrate secret
   police and foreign espionage came in 1940, when he gave approval to the
   secret police to have Leon Trotsky assassinated in Mexico.

Stalin and changes in Soviet society

Industrialization

   The Russian Civil War and wartime communism had a devastating effect on
   the country's economy. Industrial output in 1922 was 13% of that in
   1914. A recovery followed under the New Economic Policy, which allowed
   a degree of market flexibility within the context of socialism.

   Under Stalin's direction, this was replaced by a system of centrally
   ordained "Five-Year Plans" in the late 1920s. These called for a highly
   ambitious program of state-guided crash industrialization and the
   collectivization of agriculture.

   With no seed capital, little international trade, and virtually no
   modern infrastructure, Stalin's government financed industrialization
   by both restraining consumption on the part of ordinary Soviet
   citizens, to ensure that capital went for re-investment into industry,
   and by ruthless extraction of wealth from the kulaks.

   In 1933, worker's real earnings sank to about one-tenth of the 1926
   level. There was also use of the unpaid labor of both common and
   political prisoners in labor camps and the frequent "mobilization" of
   communists and Komsomol members for various construction projects. The
   Soviet Union also made use of foreign experts, e.g. British engineer
   Stephen Adams, to instruct their workers and improve their
   manufacturing processes.

   In spite of early breakdowns and failures, the first two Five-Year
   Plans achieved rapid industrialization from a very low economic base.
   While there is general agreement among historians that the Soviet Union
   achieved significant levels of economic growth under Stalin, the
   precise rate of this growth is disputed.

   Official Soviet estimates placed it at 13.9%, Russian and Western
   estimates gave lower figures of 5.8% and even 2.9%. Indeed, one
   estimate is that Soviet growth temporarily was much higher after
   Stalin's death.

Collectivization

   Joseph Stalin.
   Joseph Stalin.

   Stalin's regime moved to force collectivization of agriculture. This
   was intended to increase agricultural output from large-scale
   mechanized farms, to bring the peasantry under more direct political
   control, and to make tax collection more efficient. Collectivization
   meant drastic social changes, on a scale not seen since the abolition
   of serfdom in 1861, and alienation from control of the land and its
   produce. Collectivization also meant a drastic drop in living standards
   for many peasants, and it faced violent reaction among the peasantry.

   In the first years of collectivization, it was estimated that
   industrial and agricultural production would rise by 200% and 50%,
   respectively; however, agricultural production actually dropped. Stalin
   blamed this unanticipated failure on kulaks (rich peasants), who
   resisted collectivization. (However, kulaks only made up 4% of the
   peasant population; the "kulaks" that Stalin targeted included the
   moderate middle peasants who took the brunt of violence from the OGPU
   and the Komsomol. The middle peasants were about 60% of the
   population). Therefore those defined as "kulaks," "kulak helpers," and
   later "ex-kulaks" were to be shot, placed into Gulag labor camps, or
   deported to remote areas of the country, depending on the charge.

   The two-stage progress of collectivization — interrupted for a year by
   Stalin's famous editorial, " Dizzy with success" ( Pravda, March 2,
   1930), and " Reply to Collective Farm Comrades" (Pravda, April 3, 1930)
   — is a prime example of his capacity for tactical political withdrawal
   followed by intensification of initial strategies.

   Many historians assert that the disruption caused by collectivization
   was largely responsible for major famines. (Chairman Mao Zedong of
   China would trigger a similar famine in 1959 to 1961 with his Great
   Leap Forward).

   During the 1932–1933 famine in Ukraine and the Kuban region, now often
   known in Ukraine as the Holodomor (Ukrainian: Голодомор), not only
   "kulaks" were killed or imprisoned. The controversial Black Book of
   Communism and other sources document that all grains were taken from
   areas that did not meet targets, including the next year's seed grain.
   It also claims that peasants were forced to remain in the starving
   areas, sales of train tickets were stopped, and the State Political
   Directorate set up barriers to prevent people from leaving the starving
   areas.

   However, famine also affected various other parts of the USSR. The
   death toll from famine in the Soviet Union at this time is estimated at
   between five and ten million people. (The worst crop failure of late
   tsarist Russia, in 1892, caused 375,000 to 400,000 deaths.)

   Soviet authorities and other historians have argued that tough measures
   and the rapid collectivization of agriculture were necessary in order
   to achieve an equally rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union and
   ultimately win World War II. This is disputed by other historians such
   as Alec Nove, who claim that the Soviet Union industrialized in spite
   of, rather than thanks to, its collectivized agriculture.

Science

   Science in the Soviet Union was under strict ideological control, along
   with art and literature. There was significant progress in
   "ideologically safe" domains, owing to the free Soviet education system
   and state-financed research. However, in several cases the consequences
   of ideological pressure were dramatic — the most notable examples being
   the " bourgeois pseudosciences" genetics and cybernetics.

   In the late 1940s there were also attempts to suppress special and
   general relativity, as well as quantum mechanics, on grounds of "
   idealism."; But the chief Soviet physicists made it clear that without
   using these theories, they would be unable to create a nuclear bomb.

   Linguistics was the only area of Soviet academic thought to which
   Stalin personally and directly contributed. At the beginning of
   Stalin's rule, the dominant figure in Soviet linguistics was Nikolai
   Yakovlevich Marr, who argued that language is a class construction and
   that language structure is determined by the economic structure of
   society. Stalin, who had previously written about language policy as
   People's Commissar for Nationalities, felt he grasped enough of the
   underlying issues to coherently oppose this simplistic Marxist
   formalism, ending Marr's ideological dominance over Soviet linguistics.
   Stalin's principal work discussing linguistics is a small essay,
   "Marxism and Linguistic Questions."

   Although no great theoretical contributions or insights came from it,
   neither were there any apparent errors in Stalin's understanding of
   linguistics; his influence arguably relieved Soviet linguistics from
   the sort of ideologically driven theory that dominated genetics.

   Scientific research was hindered by the fact that many scientists were
   sent to labor camps (including Lev Landau, later a Nobel Prize winner,
   who spent a year in prison in 1938–1939) or executed (e.g. Lev
   Shubnikov, shot in 1937). They were persecuted for their dissident
   views, not for their research. Nevertheless, much progress was made
   under Stalin in some areas of science and technology. It laid the
   ground for the famous achievements of Soviet science in the 1950s, such
   as the development of the BESM-1 computer in 1953 and the launching of
   Sputnik in 1957.

   Indeed, many politicians in the United States expressed a fear, after
   the " Sputnik crisis," that their country had been eclipsed by the
   Soviet Union in science and in public education.

Social services

   The Soviet people also benefited from a degree of social
   liberalization. Females were given an adequate, equal education and
   women had equal rights in employment, precipitating improving lives for
   women and families. Stalinist development also contributed to advances
   in health care, which vastly increased the lifespan for the typical
   Soviet citizen and the quality of life. Stalin's policies granted the
   Soviet people universal access to health care and education,
   effectively creating the first generation free from the fear of typhus,
   cholera, and malaria. The occurrences of these diseases dropped to
   record-low numbers, increasing life spans by decades.

   Soviet women under Stalin were also the first generation of women able
   to give birth in the safety of a hospital, with access to prenatal
   care. Education was also an example of an increase in standard of
   living after economic development. The generation born during Stalin's
   rule was the first near-universally literate generation. Engineers were
   sent abroad to learn industrial technology, and hundreds of foreign
   engineers were brought to Russia on contract. Transport links were also
   improved, as many new railways were built. Workers who exceeded their
   quotas, Stakhanovites, received many incentives for their work. They
   could thus afford to buy the goods that were mass-produced by the
   rapidly expanding Soviet economy.

   With the industrialization and heavy human losses due to World War II
   and repressions the generation that survived under Stalin saw a major
   expansion in job opportunities, especially for women.

Culture

   Stalin propaganda poster, reading: "Beloved Stalin—good fortune of the
   people!"
   Enlarge
   Stalin propaganda poster, reading: "Beloved Stalin—good fortune of the
   people!"

   During Stalin's reign the official and long-lived style of Socialist
   Realism was established for painting, sculpture, music, drama and
   literature. Previously fashionable "revolutionary" expressionism,
   abstract art, and avant-garde experimentation were discouraged or
   denounced as " formalism". Careers were made and broken, some more than
   once. Famous figures were not only repressed, but often persecuted,
   tortured and executed, both "revolutionaries" (among them Isaac Babel,
   Vsevolod Meyerhold) and "non-conformists" (for example, Osip
   Mandelstam).

   A minority, both representing the "Soviet man" ( Arkady Gaidar) and
   remnants of the older pre-revolutionary Russia ( Konstantin
   Stanislavski), thrived. A number of émigrés returned to the Soviet
   Union, among them Alexei Tolstoi in 1925, Alexander Kuprin in 1936, and
   Alexander Vertinsky in 1943.

   Poet Anna Akhmatova was subjected to several cycles of suppression and
   rehabilitation, but was never herself arrested. Her first husband, poet
   Nikolai Gumilev, had been shot in 1921, and her son, historian Lev
   Gumilev, spent two decades in a gulag.

   The degree of Stalin's personal involvement in general and specific
   developments has been assessed variously. His name, however, was
   constantly invoked during his reign in discussions of culture as in
   just about everything else; and in several famous cases, his opinion
   was final.

   Stalin's occasional beneficence showed itself in strange ways. For
   example, Mikhail Bulgakov was driven to poverty and despair; yet, after
   a personal appeal to Stalin, he was allowed to continue working. His
   play, The Days of the Turbines, with its sympathetic treatment of an
   anti-Bolshevik family caught up in the Civil War, was finally staged,
   apparently also on Stalin's intervention, and began a decades-long
   uninterrupted run at the Moscow Arts Theatre.

   Some insights into Stalin's political and esthetic thinking might
   perhaps be gleaned by reading his favorite novel, Pharaoh, by the
   Polish writer Bolesław Prus, a historical novel on mechanisms of
   political power. Similarities have been pointed out between this novel
   and Sergei Eisenstein's film, Ivan the Terrible, produced under
   Stalin's tutelage.

   In architecture, a Stalinist Empire Style (basically, updated
   neoclassicism on a very large scale, exemplified by the seven
   skyscrapers of Moscow) replaced the constructivism of the 1920s.

   Stalin's rule had a largely disruptive effect on the numerous
   indigenous cultures that made up the Soviet Union. The politics of the
   Korenization and forced development of "Cultures National by Form,
   Socialist by their substance" was arguably beneficial to later
   generations of indigenous cultures in allowing them to integrate more
   easily into Russian society.

   The attempted unification of cultures in Stalin's later period was very
   harmful. Political repressions and purges had even more devastating
   repercussions on the indigenous cultures than on urban ones, since the
   cultural elite of the indigenous culture was often not very numerous.
   The traditional lives of many peoples in the Siberian, Central Asian
   and Caucasian provinces was upset and large populations were displaced
   and scattered in order to prevent nationalist uprisings.

   An amusing anecdote has it that the Moskva Hotel in Moscow was built
   with mismatched side wings because Stalin had mistakenly signed off on
   both of the two proposals submitted, and the architects had been too
   afraid to clarify the matter. In actuality the hotel had been built by
   two independent teams of architects that had differing visions of how
   the hotel should look.

Religion

   Stalin's role in the fortunes of the Russian Orthodox Church is
   complex. Continuous persecution in the 1930s resulted in its
   near-extinction: by 1939, active parishes numbered in the low hundreds
   (down from 54,000 in 1917), many churches had been levelled, and tens
   of thousands of priests, monks and nuns were persecuted. During World
   War II, however, the Church was allowed a revival as a patriotic
   organization, after the NKVD had recruited the new metropolitan, the
   first after the revolution, as a secret agent. Thousands of parishes
   were reactivated, until a further round of suppression in Khrushchev's
   time.

   The Russian Orthodox Church Synod's recognition of the Soviet
   government and of Stalin personally led to a schism with the Russian
   Orthodox Church Outside Russia that remains not fully healed to the
   present day.

   Just days before Stalin's death, certain religious sects were outlawed
   and persecuted.

   Many religions popular in the ethnic regions of the Soviet Union
   including the Roman Catholic Church, Uniats, Baptists, Islam, Buddhism,
   Judaism, etc. underwent ordeals similar to the Orthodox churches in
   other parts: thousands of monks were persecuted, and hundreds of
   churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, sacred monuments, monasteries
   and other religious buildings were razed.

Purges and deportations

The purges

    Beria's letter to Politburo Stalin's resolution       The Politburo's
                                                                decision
         Left: Beria's January 1940 letter to Stalin, asking permission to
      execute 346 " enemies of the CPSU and of the Soviet authorities" who
    conducted "counter-revolutionary, right-Trotskyite plotting and spying
                                                              activities."
                           Middle: Stalin's handwriting: "за" (support).
           Right: The Politburo's decision is signed by Secretary Stalin.

   Stalin, as head of the Politburo, consolidated near-absolute power in
   the 1930s with a Great Purge of the party, justified as an attempt to
   expel 'opportunists' and 'counter-revolutionary infiltrators'. Those
   targeted by the purge were often expelled from the party, however more
   severe measures ranged from banishment to the Gulag labor camps, to
   execution after trials held by NKVD troikas.

   The Purges commenced after the assassination of Sergei Kirov, the
   popular leader of the party in Leningrad. Kirov was very close to
   Stalin and his assassination sent chills through the Bolshevik party.
   Stalin, fearing that he might be next, began tightening security, (and
   in effect to remove those who might have threatened Stalin's
   leadership) by seeking out alleged spies and counter-revolutionaries.

   Several trials known as the Moscow Trials were held, but the procedures
   were replicated throughout the country. There were four key trials
   during this period: the Trial of the Sixteen (August 1936); Trial of
   the Seventeen (January 1937); the trial of Red Army generals, including
   Marshal Tukhachevsky (June 1937); and finally the Trial of the Twenty
   One (including Bukharin) in March 1938.

   Most notably in the case of alleged Nazi collaborator Tukhachevsky,
   many military leaders were convicted of treason. The shakeup in command
   may have cost the Soviet Union dearly during the German invasion of 22
   June 1941, and its aftermath.

   The repression of so many formerly high-ranking revolutionaries and
   party members led Leon Trotsky to claim that a "river of blood"
   separated Stalin's regime from that of Lenin. Solzhenitsyn alleges that
   Stalin drew inspiration from Lenin's regime with the presence of labor
   camps and the executions of political opponents that occurred during
   the Russian Civil War. Trotsky's August 1940 assassination in Mexico,
   where he had lived in exile since January 1937, eliminated the last of
   Stalin's opponents among the former Party leadership. Only three
   members of the " Old Bolsheviks" (Lenin's Politburo) now remained —
   Stalin himself, "the all-Union Chieftain" (всесоюзный староста) Mikhail
   Kalinin, and Chairman of Sovnarkom Vyacheslav Molotov.
   Before
   After
   Nikolai Yezhov, the young man strolling with Stalin to his left, was
   shot in 1940. He was edited out from a photo by Soviet censors . Such
   retouching was a common occurrence during Stalin's reign.

   No segment of society was left untouched during the purges. Article 58
   of the legal code, listing prohibited "anti-Soviet activities", was
   applied in the broadest manner. Initially, the execution lists for the
   enemies of the people were confirmed by the Politburo.

   Over time the procedure was greatly simplified and delegated down the
   line of command. People would inform on others arbitrarily, to attempt
   to redeem themselves, or to gain small retributions. The flimsiest
   pretexts were often enough to brand someone an " Enemy of the People,"
   starting the cycle of public persecution and abuse, often proceeding to
   interrogation, torture and deportation, if not death. Nadezhda
   Mandelstam, the widow of the poet Osip Mandelstam and one of the key
   memoirists of the Purges, recalls being shouted at by Akhmatova: "Don't
   you understand? They are arresting people for nothing now?" The Russian
   word troika gained a new meaning: a quick, simplified trial by a
   committee of three subordinated to NKVD.

   Towards the end of the purge, the Politburo relieved NKVD head Nikolai
   Yezhov, from his position for overzealousness. He was subsequently
   executed. Some historians such as Amy Knight and Robert Conquest
   postulate that Stalin had Yezhov and his predecessor, Genrikh Yagoda,
   removed in order to deflect blame from himself.

   In parallel with the purges, efforts were made to rewrite the history
   in Soviet textbooks and other propaganda materials. Notable people
   executed by NKVD were removed from the texts and photographs as though
   they never existed. Gradually, the history of revolution was
   transformed to a story about just two key characters: Lenin and Stalin.

Deportations

   Shortly before, during and immediately after World War II, Stalin
   conducted a series of deportations on a huge scale which profoundly
   affected the ethnic map of the Soviet Union. It is estimated that
   between 1941 and 1949 nearly 3.3 million were deported to Siberia and
   the Central Asian republics. Separatism, resistance to Soviet rule and
   collaboration with the invading Germans were cited as the official
   reasons for the deportations.

   Declassified Soviet documents appear to state that the property of the
   deported Crimean Tatars and other minorities from Crimea during the
   World War II should be shipped to the new place and each deported
   family should be given a loan of about 5000 roubles for 7 years without
   charge for interest to start up in the new place . J. Otto Pohl found
   that deportees were actually forced to leave their belongings behind,
   their property was confiscated and they have never received any
   compensation for it and that the loans did not exist. Along with the
   deportation of Crimea Tatars, the Soviet government issued an order to
   deport Crimean Greeks, Armenians and Bulgarians . Crimean Greeks were
   rounded up by the NKVD and put on overcrowded unhygienic trains for
   deportation; they lost their homes, their livestock, and most of their
   moveable property. Deportees were exiled to special settlements, where
   conditions weren't significantly different from the Gulag.

   During Stalin's rule the following ethnic groups were deported
   completely or partially: Ukrainians, Poles, Koreans, Volga Germans,
   Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Karachays,
   Meskhetian Turks, Finns, Bulgarians, Greeks, Armenians, Latvians,
   Lithuanians, Estonians, and Jews. Large numbers of Kulaks, regardless
   of their nationality, were resettled to Siberia and Central Asia.
   Deportations took place in appalling conditions, often by cattle truck,
   and hundreds of thousands of deportees died en route . Those who
   survived were forced to work without pay in the labour camps. Many of
   the deportees died of hunger or other conditions.

   In February 1956, Nikita Khrushchev condemned the deportations as a
   violation of Leninist principles, and reversed most of them, although
   it was not until as late as 1991 that the Tatars, Meskhs and Volga
   Germans were allowed to return en masse to their homelands. The
   deportations had a profound effect on the peoples of the Soviet Union.
   The memory of the deportations played a major part in the separatist
   movements in the Baltic States, Tatarstan and Chechnya, even today.

Number of victims

   Early researchers of the number killed by Stalin's regime were forced
   to rely largely upon anecdotal evidence, and their estimates range as
   high as 60 million. But with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991,
   hard evidence from the Soviet archives finally became available, and
   such estimates became more difficult to sustain. For example, the
   archives record that about 800,000 prisoners were executed (for either
   political or criminal offences) under Stalin, while another 1.7 million
   died of privation or other causes in the Gulags and some 389,000
   perished during kulak resettlement - a total of about 3 million
   victims.

   Debate continues however , since some historians believe the archival
   figures to be unreliable. Also, it is generally agreed that the data
   are incomplete, since some categories of victim were carelessly
   recorded by the Soviets - such as the victims of ethnic deportations,
   or of German population transfer in the aftermath of WWII.

   Thus, while some archival researchers have posited the number of
   victims of Stalin's repressions to be no more than about 4 million in
   total , others believe the number to be considerably higher. Russian
   writer Vadim Erlikman, for example, has made the following estimations:
   Executions 1.5 million, Gulag 5 million, Deportations 1.7 million (out
   of 7.5 million deported), and POW's and German civilians 1 million, for
   a total of about 9 million victims of repression.

   Some have also included the 6 to 8 million victims of the 1932-33
   famine . But again historians differ, this time as to whether or not
   the famine victims were purposive killings - as part of the campaign of
   repression against kulaks - or whether they were simply unintended
   victims of the struggle over forced collectivization.

   Regardless, it appears that a minimum of around 10 million surplus
   deaths (4 million by repression and 6 million from famine) are
   attributable to the regime, with a number of recent books suggesting a
   probable figure of somewhere between 15 to 20 million. Adding 6-8
   million famine victims to Erlikman's estimates above, for example,
   would yield a figure of between 15 and 17 million victims. Pioneering
   researcher Robert Conquest, meanwhile, has revised his original
   estimate of up to 30 million victims down to 20 million. Others,
   however, continue to maintain that their earlier much higher estimates
   are correct.

World War II

   Molotov and Stalin.
   Enlarge
   Molotov and Stalin.

   After the failure of Soviet and Franco-British talks on a mutual
   defense pact in Moscow, Stalin began to negotiate a non-aggression pact
   with Hitler's Germany. In his speech on August 19, 1939, Stalin
   prepared his comrades for the great turn in Soviet policy, the
   Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany. According to a controversial
   Russian author living in the UK, Viktor Suvorov, Stalin expressed in
   the speech an expectation that the war would be the best opportunity to
   weaken both the Western nations and Nazi Germany, and make Germany
   suitable for "Sovietization". Whether this speech was ever delivered to
   the public and what its content was is still debated. (see Stalin's
   speech on August 19, 1939).
   Stalin (in background to the right) looks on as Molotov signs the
   Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
   Enlarge
   Stalin (in background to the right) looks on as Molotov signs the
   Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

   Officially a non-aggression treaty only, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
   had a "secret" annex according to which Central Europe was divided into
   the two powers' respective spheres of influence. The USSR was promised
   an eastern part of Poland, primarily populated with Ukrainians and
   Belorussians in case of its dissolution, as long as Lithuania, Latvia,
   Estonia and Finland were recognized as parts of the Soviet sphere of
   influence. Another clause of the treaty was that Bessarabia, then part
   of Romania, was to be joined to the Moldovan ASSR, and become the
   Moldovan SSR under control of Moscow.

   On September 1, 1939, the German invasion of Poland started World War
   II. Stalin decided to intervene, and on September 17 the Red Army
   entered eastern Poland and the Baltic states and annexed these
   territories.

   In November 1939, Stalin sent troops over the Finnish border provoking
   war. The Winter War between the Soviet Union and Finland proved to be
   more difficult than Stalin and the Red Army were prepared for, and the
   Soviets sustained high casualties. The Soviets prevailed in March,
   1940, but the problems of the Soviet army had been revealed to the rest
   of the world, including Germany.

   On March 5, 1940, the Soviet leadership approved an order of execution
   for more than 25,700 Polish "nationalist, educators and
   counterrevolutionary" activists in the parts of the Ukraine and Belarus
   republics that had been annexed from Poland. This event has become
   known as the Katyn Massacre.

   In June 1941, Hitler broke the pact and invaded the Soviet Union in
   Operation Barbarossa. Although expecting war with Germany, Stalin may
   not have expected an invasion to come so soon — and the Soviet Union
   was relatively unprepared for this invasion. An alternative theory
   suggested by Viktor Suvorov claims that Stalin had made aggressive
   preparations from the late 1930s on and was about to invade Germany in
   summer 1941. Thus, he believes Hitler only managed to forestall Stalin
   and the German invasion was in essence a pre-emptive strike. This
   theory was supported by Igor Bunich, Mikhail Meltyukhov (see Stalin's
   Missed Chance) and Edvard Radzinsky (see Stalin: The First In-Depth
   Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia's Secret
   Archives). Most Western historians reject this thesis, though.

   In the diary of General Fedor von Boch, it is also mentioned that the
   Abwehr fully expected a Soviet attack against German forces in Poland
   no later than 1942. Such speculations are difficult to substantiate,
   however, as information on the Soviet Army from 1939 to 1941 remains
   classified, but it is known that the Soviets had received some warnings
   of the German invasion through their foreign intelligence agents, such
   as Richard Sorge.

   Even though Stalin received intelligence warnings of a German attack ,
   he sought to avoid any obvious defensive preparation which might
   further provoke the Germans, in the hope of buying time to modernize
   and strengthen his military forces. In the initial hours after the
   German attack commenced, Stalin hesitated, wanting to ensure that the
   German attack was sanctioned by Hitler, rather than the unauthorized
   action of a rogue general.

   The Germans initially made huge advances, capturing and killing
   millions of Soviet troops. The Soviet Red Army put up fierce resistance
   during the war's early stages, but they were plagued by an ineffective
   defense doctrine against the better-equipped, well-trained and
   experienced German forces.

   Stalin feared that Hitler would use disgruntled Soviet citizens to
   fight his regime, particularly people imprisoned in the Gulags. He thus
   ordered the NKVD to take care of the situation. They responded by
   executing hundreds of thousands (perhaps more) of prisoners throughout
   the Western parts of the Soviet Union. Many others were simply
   deported.

   Hitler's experts had expected eight weeks of war, and early indications
   appeared to support their predictions. However, the invading German
   forces were eventually driven back in December 1941 near Moscow.
   The Big Three: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, U.S. President
   Franklin D. Roosevelt and Stalin at the Yalta Conference.
   Enlarge
   The Big Three: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, U.S. President
   Franklin D. Roosevelt and Stalin at the Yalta Conference.

   Stalin met in several conferences with Churchill and/or Roosevelt in
   Moscow, Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam to plan military strategy (Truman
   taking the place of the deceased Roosevelt).

   In these conferences, his first appearances on the world stage, Stalin
   proved to be a formidable negotiator. Anthony Eden, the British Foreign
   Secretary noted:

   "Marshal Stalin as a negotiator was the toughest proposition of all.
   Indeed, after something like thirty years' experience of international
   conferences of one kind and another, if I had to pick a team for going
   into a conference room, Stalin would be my first choice. Of course the
   man was ruthless and of course he knew his purpose. He never wasted a
   word. He never stormed, he was seldom even irritated."

   His shortcomings as strategist are frequently noted regarding massive
   Soviet loss of life and early Soviet defeats. An example of it is the
   summer offensive of 1942, which led to even more losses by the Red Army
   and recapture of initiative by the Germans. Stalin eventually
   recognized his lack of know-how and relied on his professional generals
   to conduct the war.

   Yet Stalin did rapidly move Soviet industrial production east of the
   Volga River, far from Luftwaffe-reach, to sustain the Red Army's war
   machine with astonishing success. Additionally, Stalin was well aware
   that other European armies had utterly disintegrated when faced with
   Nazi military efficacy and responded effectively by subjecting his army
   to galvanizing terror and unrevolutionary, nationalist appeals to
   patriotism. He even appealed to the Russian Orthodox church and images
   of national Russian heroes for that matter. On November 6, 1941, Stalin
   addressed the whole nation of the Soviet Union for the second time (the
   first time was earlier that year on July 2).

   According to Stalin's Order No. 227 of July 27, 1942, any commander or
   commissar of a regiment, battalion or army, who allowed retreat without
   permission from above was subject to military tribunal. The Soviet
   soldiers who surrendered were declared traitors; however most of those
   who survived the brutality of German captivity were mobilized again as
   they were freed. Between 5% and 10% of them were sent to gulags.

   In the war's opening stages, the retreating Red Army also sought to
   deny resources to the enemy through a scorched earth policy of
   destroying the infrastructure and food supplies of areas before the
   Germans could seize them. Unfortunately, this, along with abuse by
   German troops, caused inconceivable starvation and suffering among the
   civilian population that were left behind.

   According to recent figures, of an estimated four millions POW's taken
   by the Russians, including Germans, Japanese, Hungarians, Romanians and
   others, some 580,000 never returned, presumably victims of privation or
   the Gulags, compared with 3.5 million Soviet POW that died in German
   camps out of the 5.6 million taken. Returning Soviet soldiers who had
   surrendered were viewed with suspicion and some were killed

   The Soviet Union suffered the second highest number of civilian losses
   (20 million) yet the highest number of military losses (at least
   8,668,400 Red Army personnel) in World War II. The Nazis considered
   Slavs to be "sub-human", and many people believe the Nazis killed Slavs
   as an ethnically targeted genocide. This concept of Slavic inferiority
   was also the reason why Hitler did not accept into his army many Soviet
   citizens who wanted to fight the regime until 1944, when the war was
   lost for Germany.

   In the Soviet Union, World War II left a huge deficit of men of the
   wartime fighting-age generation. To this day the war is remembered very
   vividly in Russia, Belarus, and other parts of the former Soviet Union
   as the Great Patriotic War, and May 9, "Victory Day", is one of
   Russia's biggest national holidays.

Post-war era

   Stalin and Zhukov on the tribune of Lenin's Mausoleum.
   Enlarge
   Stalin and Zhukov on the tribune of Lenin's Mausoleum.

   Domestically, Stalin was seen as a great wartime leader who had led the
   Soviets to victory against the Nazis. By the end of the 1940s, Russian
   patriotism increased. For instance, some inventions and scientific
   discoveries were reclaimed by Russian researchers.

   Examples include the boiler, reclaimed by father and son Cherepanovs;
   the electric bulb, by Yablochkov and Lodygin; the radio, by Popov; and
   the airplane, by Mozhaysky. Stalin's internal repressive policies
   continued (including in newly acquired territories), but never reached
   the extremes of the 1930s.

   Internationally, Stalin viewed Soviet consolidation of power as a
   necessary step to protect the USSR by surrounding it with countries
   with friendly governments like the variety seen in Finland, to act as a
   cordon sanitaire (buffer) against possible invaders (while the West
   sought a similar buffer against alleged "communist expansion").

   He had hoped that American withdrawal and demobilization would lead to
   increased communist influence, especially in Europe. Each side might
   view the other's defensive actions as destabilizing provocations and
   these security dilemmas frayed relations between the Soviet Union and
   its former World War II western allies and led to a prolonged period of
   tension and distrust between East and West known as the Cold War (see
   also Iron curtain).

   The Red Army ended World War II occupying much of the territory that
   had been formerly held by the Axis countries:

   In Asia, the Red Army had overrun Manchuria in the last month of the
   war and then also occupied Korea above the 38th parallel north. Mao
   Zedong's Communist Party of China, though receptive to minimal Soviet
   support, defeated the pro-Western and heavily American-assisted Chinese
   Nationalist Party in the Chinese Civil War.

   The Communists controlled mainland China while the Nationalists held a
   rump state on the island of Formosa (now Taiwan). The Soviet Union soon
   after recognized Mao's People's Republic of China, which it regarded as
   a new ally.

   Diplomatic relations reached a high point with the signing of the 1950
   Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance. Both countries provided
   military support to a new friendly state in North Korea. After various
   border conflicts, war broke out with U.S.-allied South Korea in 1950,
   starting the Korean War.
   A meeting between Stalin and Mao Zedong after the CPC's 1949 victory
   over the KMT in the Chinese Civil War.
   Enlarge
   A meeting between Stalin and Mao Zedong after the CPC's 1949 victory
   over the KMT in the Chinese Civil War.

   In Europe, there were Soviet occupation zones in Germany and Austria.
   Hungary and Poland were under practical military occupation. From
   1946-1948 coalition governments comprising communists were elected in
   Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria and homegrown
   communist movements rose to power in Yugoslavia and Albania.

   These nations became known as the "Communist Bloc." Britain and the
   United States supported the anti-communists in the Greek Civil War and
   suspected the Soviets of supporting the Greek communists although
   Stalin ended refrained from getting involved in Greece, dismissing the
   movement as premature. Albania remained an ally of the Soviet Union,
   but Yugoslavia broke with the USSR in 1948. Greece, Italy and France
   received enormous support from the population, which were at the very
   least friendly towards Moscow.

   Both Superpowers viewed Germany as key. In retaliation to the Western
   formation of Trizonia, Stalin determined to take action.

   Armed with intelligence from the British agent Donald Duart Maclean and
   other British and American espionage agents, Stalin was well aware that
   the United States possessed neither a sufficient atomic bomb arsenal
   nor the production capacity needed to produce atomic weapons to destroy
   Soviet or Communist land forces either in Europe or the Far East. He
   therefore ordered a blockade of West Berlin, which was under British,
   French, and U.S. occupation, to force these powers in retaliation for
   the planned militarisation of the western-occupied of Germany. Similar
   to what America did with South Korea, Stalin also extensively armed Kim
   Il Sung's North Korean army and air forces (with military equipment and
   advisors far in excess of that required for defensive purposes) in
   order to facilitate Kim's aim to unify the Korean peninsula.

   The Berlin Blockade failed due to the unexpected massive aerial
   resupply campaign carried out by the Western powers known as the Berlin
   Airlift. In 1949, Stalin conceded defeat and ended the blockade. After
   West Germany was formed by the union of the three Western occupation
   zones, the Soviets declared East Germany a separate country in 1949,
   ruled by the communists.

   Stalin originally supported the creation of Israel in 1948. The USSR
   was one of the first nations to recognize the new country. Golda Meir
   came to Moscow as the first Israeli Ambassador to the USSR that year.
   But he later changed his mind and came out against Israel.

   In Stalin's last year of life, one of his last major foreign policy
   initiatives was the 1952 Stalin Note for German reunification and
   Superpower disengagement from Central Europe, but Britain, France, and
   the United States viewed this with suspicion and rejected the offer.

Stalin as theorist

   Stalin made few contributions to Communist (or, more specifically,
   Marxist-Leninist) theory, but the contributions he did make were
   accepted and upheld by all Soviet political scientists during his rule.

   Among Stalin's contributions were his "Marxism and the National
   Question", a work praised by Lenin; his "Trotskyism or Leninism", which
   was a factor in the "liquidation of Trotskyism as an ideological trend"
   within the CPSU(B).

   Stalin's Collected Works (in 13 volumes) was released in 1949. A
   subsequent 16 volume American Edition appeared, in which one volume
   consisted of the book "History of the CPSU(B) Short Course", although
   when released in 1938 this book was credited to a commission of the
   Central Committee.

   In 1936, Stalin announced that the society of the Soviet Union
   consisted of two non-antagonistic classes: workers and kolkhoz
   peasantry. These corresponded to the two different forms of property
   over the means of production that existed in the Soviet Union: state
   property (for the workers) and collective property (for the peasantry).
   In addition to these, Stalin distinguished the stratum of
   intelligentsia. The concept of "non-antagonistic classes" was entirely
   new to Leninist theory.

   Stalin and his supporters, in his own time and since, have highlighted
   the notion that socialism can be built and consolidated in just one
   country, even one as underdeveloped as Russia was during the 1920s, and
   indeed that this might be the only means in which it could be built in
   a hostile environment.

Death

   Stalin's body in Lenin's Mausoleum.
   Enlarge
   Stalin's body in Lenin's Mausoleum.

   On March 1, 1953, after an all-night dinner with interior minister
   Lavrenty Beria and future premiers Georgi Malenkov, Nikolai Bulganin
   and Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin collapsed in his room, having probably
   suffered a stroke that paralyzed the right side of his body.

   Although his guards thought it odd that he did not rise at his usual
   time, the next day they were under orders not to disturb him and he was
   not discovered until that evening. He died four days later, on March 5,
   1953, at the age of 74, and was buried on March 9. His daughter
   Svetlana recalls the scene as she stood by his death bed "He suddenly
   opened his eyes and cast a glance over everyone in the room. It was a
   terrible glance. Then something incomprehensible and awesome happened.
   He suddenly lifted his left hand as though he were pointing to
   something above and bringing down a curse upon all of us. The next
   moment after a final effort the spirit wrenched its self free of the
   flesh." Officially, the cause of death was listed as a cerebral
   hemorrhage. His body was preserved in Lenin's Mausoleum until October
   31, 1961, when his body was removed from the Mausoleum and buried next
   to the Kremlin walls as part of the process of de-Stalinization.

   It has been suggested that Stalin was assassinated. The ex-Communist
   exile Avtorkhanov argued this point as early as 1975. The political
   memoirs of Vyacheslav Molotov, published in 1993, claimed that Beria
   had boasted to Molotov that he poisoned Stalin: "I took him out."

   Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs that Beria had, immediately after the
   stroke, gone about "spewing hatred against [Stalin] and mocking him",
   and then, when Stalin showed signs of consciousness, dropped to his
   knees and kissed his hand. When Stalin fell unconscious again, Beria
   immediately stood and spat.

   In 2003, a joint group of Russian and American historians announced
   their view that Stalin ingested warfarin, a powerful rat poison that
   inhibits coagulation of the blood and so predisposes the victim to
   hemorrhagic stroke (cerebral hemorrhage). Since it is flavorless,
   warfarin is a plausible weapon of murder. The facts surrounding
   Stalin's death will probably never be known with certainty.

   His demise arrived at a convenient time for Beria and others, who
   feared being swept away in yet another purge. It is believed that
   Stalin felt Beria's power was too great and threatened his own. Whether
   or not Beria or another usurper was directly responsible for his death,
   it is true that the politburo did not summon medical attention for
   Stalin for more than a day after he was found.

Cult of personality

   Roses for Stalin (1949), painting by Boris Vladimirski.
   Enlarge
   Roses for Stalin (1949), painting by Boris Vladimirski.

   Stalin created a cult of personality in the Soviet Union around both
   himself and Lenin. The embalming of the Soviet founder in Lenin's
   Mausoleum was performed over the objection of Lenin's widow, Nadezhda
   Krupskaya. Stalin became the focus of massive adoration and even
   worship.

   Numerous towns, villages and cities were renamed after the Soviet
   leader (see List of places named after Stalin) and the Stalin Prize and
   Stalin Peace Prize were named in his honour. He accepted grandiloquent
   titles (e.g. "Coryphaeus of Science," "Father of Nations," "Brilliant
   Genius of Humanity," "Great Architect of Communism," "Gardener of Human
   Happiness," and others), and helped rewrite Soviet history to provide
   himself a more significant role in the revolution. At the same time,
   according to Khrushchev, he insisted that he be remembered for "the
   extraordinary modesty characteristic of truly great people."

   Many statues and monuments were erected to glorify Stalin but all of
   them distorted Stalin's true build. Going by these monuments and
   statues it would be easy to assume that Stalin was a tall and well
   built man not unlike Tsar Alexander III. This was not the case however;
   photographic evidence suggests he was between 5'5" and 5'6" , hardly
   tall or imposing. His physical stature was exaggerated in all portraits
   and statues to avoid any image of weakness that could harm his cult of
   personality.

   Trotsky criticized the cult of personality built around Stalin as being
   against the values of socialism and Bolshevism, in that it exalted the
   individual above the party and class and it disallowed criticism of
   Stalin. The personality cult reached new levels during the Great
   Patriotic War, with Stalin's name even being included in the new Soviet
   national anthem.

   Stalin became the focus of a body of literature encompassing poetry as
   well as music, paintings and film. Artists and writers vied with each
   other in fawning devotion, crediting Stalin with almost god-like
   qualities, and suggesting he single-handedly won the Second World War.

   It is debatable as to how much Stalin relished the cult surrounding
   him. The Finnish communist Tuominen records a sarcastic toast proposed
   by Stalin at a New Year Party in 1935:


   Joseph Stalin

     Comrades! I want to propose a toast to our patriarch, life and sun,
    liberator of nations, architect of socialism [he rattled off all the
    appellations applied to him in those days] – Joseph Vissarionovich
      Stalin, and I hope this is the first and last speech made to that
                            genius this evening.


   Joseph Stalin

   In recent years, support of Stalin has resurged. Millions of Russians,
   exasperated with the downfall of the economy and political instability
   after the breakup of the Soviet Union, want Stalin back. A recent
   controversial poll revealed that over thirty-five percent of Russians
   would vote for Stalin if he were still alive. This is seen by some as a
   return of Stalin's cult.

Policies and accomplishments

   Grutas Park is home to only one monument of Stalin, originally set up
   in Vilnius.
   Enlarge
   Grutas Park is home to only one monument of Stalin, originally set up
   in Vilnius.

   Under Stalin's rule the Soviet Union was transformed from an
   agricultural nation into a global superpower at the cost of millions of
   lives. The USSR's industrialization was successful in that the country
   was able to defend against and eventually defeat the Axis invasion in
   World War II, though at an enormous cost in human life.

   However, historian Robert Conquest and other Westerners claim that the
   USSR was bound for industrialization, and that its speed along this
   course was not necessarily improved by Bolshevik influence. It has also
   been argued that Stalin was partially responsible for the initial
   military disasters and enormous human causalities during WWII, because
   Stalin eliminated many military officers during the purges, and
   especially the most senior ones, and rejected the massive amounts of
   intelligence warning of the German attack.

   While Stalin's social and economic policies laid the foundations for
   the USSR's emergence as a superpower, the harshness with which he
   conducted Soviet affairs was subsequently repudiated by his successors
   in the Communist Party leadership, notably in the denunciation of
   Stalinism by Nikita Khrushchev in February 1956. In his "Secret
   Speech", On the Personality Cult and its Consequences, delivered to a
   closed session of the 20th Party Congress of the Communist Party of the
   Soviet Union, Khrushchev denounced Stalin for his cult of personality,
   and his regime for "violation of Leninist norms of legality".

   However, his immediate successors continued to follow the basic
   principles of Stalin's rule -- the political monopoly of the Communist
   Party presiding over a command economy and a security service able to
   suppress dissent. The large-scale purges of Stalin's era were never
   repeated, but the political repression continued.

Other names

   His first name is also transliterated as Iosif. His original surname,
   ჯუღაშვილი, is also transliterated as Jugashvili. The Russian
   transliteration is Джугашвили, which is in turn transliterated into
   English as Dzhugashvili and Djugashvili; – შვილი – shvili is a Georgian
   suffix meaning "child" or "son".

   There are several etymologies of the ჯუღა (jugha) root. In one version,
   it is the Ossetian for "rubbish"; the surname Jugayev is common among
   Ossetians, and before the revolution the names in South Ossetia were
   traditionally written with the Georgian suffix, especially among
   Christianized Ossetians. In a second version, the name derives from the
   village of Jugaani in Kakhetia, eastern Georgia.

   An article in the newspaper Pravda in 1988 claimed that the word
   derives from the Old Georgian for "steel" which might be the reason for
   his adoption of the name Stalin. Сталин (Stalin) is derived from
   combining the Russian сталь (stal), "steel", with the possessive suffix
   –ин (–in), a formula used by many other Bolsheviks, including Lenin.

   It has also been said that, originally, "Stalin" was a conspiratorial
   nickname which stuck with him.

   Like other Bolsheviks, he became commonly known by one of his
   revolutionary noms de guerre, of which Stalin was only the most
   prominent. He was also known as Koba (after a Georgian folk hero, a
   Robin Hood-like brigand); and he is reported to have used at least a
   dozen other names for the purpose of secret communications. Most of
   them remain unknown.

   Directly following World War II, as the Soviets were negotiating with
   the Allies, Stalin often sent directions to Molotov as Druzhkov. Among
   his other nicknames and aliases were Ivanovich, Soso or Sosso (mainly
   his boyhood name), David, Nizharadze or Nijeradze, and Chizhikov.

   Stalin was nicknamed "Uncle Joe" by the Western media. When told of
   this nickname by Franklin D. Roosevelt, he almost walked out of the
   Yalta Conference .

Stalin in the arts

     * Robert Steadman — Symphony No. 2: The Death of Stalin tells of the
       astonishing events surrounding the death and funeral of Joseph
       Stalin. The piece was commissioned by Nottingham Youth Orchestra
       and was premiered by them, conducted by Derek Williams, at the
       Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham, in March 2003 — the 50th
       anniversary of his death.
     * Stalin — A 1992 Hollywood TV movie.
     * The Inner Circle — A 1991 Hollywood movie.
     * We Didn't Start the Fire - Billy Joel's history themed song;
       Stalin's mentioned as the first figure of the 5th stanza (after the
       first chorus).
     * Animal Farm — George Orwell's novel, a history of the Soviet Union
       from the revolution to the Tehran Conference told through allegory;
       Stalin served as the direct basis for the character Napoleon.
     * The First Circle - Alexander Solzhenitsyn's novel where Stalin is
       depicted as vain and vengeful, remembering with pleasure the
       torture of a rival, and dreaming of one day becoming emperor of the
       world.
     * Histeria! episode "The Russian Revolution" - Stalin is featured in
       a sitcom parody sketch where he sends the KGB to arrest anyone who
       upsets "his little buddy", Froggo.

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