Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin (1878-1953) was the dictator of
the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) from 1929 to 1953. Under Stalin,
the Soviet Union was transformed from a peasant society into an industrial and
military superpower. However, he ruled by terror, and millions of his own
citizens died during his brutal reign. Born into poverty, Stalin became
involved in revolutionary politics, as well as criminal activities, as a young
man. After Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924) died, Stalin
outmaneuvered his rivals for control of the party. Once in power, he
collectivized farming and had potential enemies executed or sent to forced
labor camps. Stalin aligned with the United States and Britain in World War II
(1939-1945) but afterward engaged in an increasingly tense relationship with
the West known as the Cold War (1946-1991). After his death, the Soviets
initiated a de-Stalinization process.
Joseph
Stalin’s Early Years and Family
Joseph Stalin was born Josef Vissarionovich
Djugashvili on December 18th, 1878, or December 6th, 1878, according to the Old
Style Julian calendar (although he later invented a new birth date for himself:
December 21st, 1879), in the small town of Gori, Georgia, then part of the Russian empire. When he was in his 30s, he took the name
Stalin, from the Russian for “man of steel.”
Did you know? In 1925, the Russian city of
Tsaritsyn was renamed Stalingrad. In 1961, as part of the de-Stalinization
process, the city, located along Europe's longest river, the Volga, became
known as Volgograd. Today, it is one of Russia's largest cities and a key
industrial center.
Stalin grew up poor and an only child. His
father was a shoemaker and alcoholic who beat his son, and his mother was a
laundress. As a boy, Stalin contracted smallpox, which left him with lifelong
facial scars. As a teen, he earned a scholarship to attend a seminary in the
nearby city of Tblisi and study for the priesthood in the Georgian Orthodox
Church. While there he began secretly reading the work of German social
philosopher and “Communist Manifesto” author Karl Marx, becoming interested in the revolutionary movement against the Russian monarchy.
In 1899, Stalin was expelled from the seminary for missing exams, although he
claimed it was for Marxist propaganda.
After leaving school, Stalin became an
underground political agitator, taking part in labor demonstrations and
strikes. He adopted the name Koba, after a fictional Georgian outlaw-hero, and
joined the more militant wing of the Marxist Social Democratic movement, the
Bolsheviks, led by Vladmir Lenin. Stalin also became involved in various
criminal activities, including bank heists, the proceeds from which were used
to help fund the Bolshevik Party. He was arrested multiple times between 1902
and 1913, and subjected to imprisonment and exile in Siberia.
In 1906, Stalin married Ekaterina “Kato”
Svanidze (1885-1907), a seamstress. The couple had one son, Yakov (1907-1943),
who died as a prisoner in Germany during World War. Ekaterina perished from typhus when her son was an infant. In 1918 (some
sources cite 1919), Stalin married his second wife, Nadezhda “Nadya” Alliluyeva
(1901-1932), the daughter of a Russian revolutionary. They had two children, a
boy and a girl. Nadezhda committed suicide in her early 30s. Stalin also
fathered several children out of wedlock.
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 1917th, 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.
The
Soviet Union Under Joseph Stalin
Starting in the late 1920's, Joseph Stalin
launched a series of five-year plans intended to transform the Soviet Union
from a peasant society into an industrial superpower. His development plan was
centered on government control of the economy and included the forced
collectivization of Soviet agriculture, in which the government took control of
farms. Millions of farmers refused to cooperate with Stalin’s orders and were
shot or exiled as punishment. The forced collectivization also led to widespread
famine across the Soviet Union that killed millions.
Stalin ruled by terror and with a
totalitarian grip in order to eliminate anyone who might oppose him. He
expanded the powers of the secret police, encouraged citizens to spy on one
another and had millions of people killed or sent to the Gulag system of forced
labor camps. During the second half of the 1930's, Stalin instituted the Great
Purge, a series of campaigns designed to rid the Communist Party, the military
and other parts of Soviet society from those he considered a threat.
Additionally, Stalin built a cult of
personality around himself in the Soviet Union. Cities were renamed in his
honor. Soviet history books were rewritten to give him a more prominent role in
the revolution and mythologize other aspects of his life. He was the subject of
flattering artwork, literature and music, and his name became part of the
Soviet national anthem. His government also controlled the Soviet media.
Joseph Stalin and World War II
In 1939, on the eve of World War II, Joseph
Stalin and German dictator Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) signed a nonaggression pact.
Stalin then proceeded to annex parts of Poland and Romania, as well as the
Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. He also launched an invasion of
Finland. Then, in June 1941, Germany broke the Nazi-Soviet pact and invaded the
USSR, making significant early inroads. (Stalin had ignored warnings from the
Americans and the British, as well as his own intelligence agents, about a
potential invasion, and the Soviets were not prepared for war.) As German
troops approached the Soviet capital of Moscow, Stalin remained there and
directed a scorched earth defensive policy, destroying any supplies or
infrastructure that might benefit the enemy. The tide turned for the Soviets
with the Battle of Stalingrad, from August 1942 to February 1943,
during which the Red Army defeated the Germans and eventually drove them from
Russia.
As the war progressed, Stalin participated in
the major Allied conferences, including those in Tehran (1943) and Yalta
(1945). His iron will and deft political skills enabled him to play the loyal
ally while never abandoning his vision of an expanded postwar Soviet empire.
Joseph
Stalin’s Later Years
Joseph Stalin did not mellow with age: He prosecuted a reign of
terror, purges, executions, exiles to labor camps and persecution in the
postwar USSR, suppressing all dissent and anything that smacked of
foreign - especially Western - influence. He established communist governments
throughout Eastern Europe, and in 1949 led the Soviets into the nuclear age by
exploding an atomic bomb. In 1950, he gave North Korea’s communist leader Kim
Il Sung (1912-1994) permission to invade United States-supported South Korea, an
event that triggered the Korean War.
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 Nakita Khrushchev (1894-1971).
By some estimates, he was responsible for the deaths of 20 million
people during his brutal rule.
Joseph Stalin did not mellow with age: He
prosecuted a reign of terror, purges, executions, exiles to labor camps and
persecution in the postwar USSR, suppressing all dissent and anything that
smacked of foreign–especially Western - influence. He established communist
governments throughout Eastern Europe, and in 1949 led the Soviets into the
nuclear age by exploding an atomic bomb. In 1950, he gave North Korea’s
communist leader Kim Il Sung (1912-1994) permission to invade United
States-supported South Korea, an event that triggered the Korean War.
Stalin, who grew increasingly paranoid in his
later years, died on March 5th, 1953, at age 74, after suffering a stroke. His
body was embalmed and preserved in Lenin’s mausoleum in Moscow’sRed 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 Nakita Khrushchev (1894-1971).
By some estimates, he was responsible for the
deaths of 20 million people during his brutal rule.
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