Joseph Stalin

Born December 21, 1879
Gori, Georgia, Russia
Died March 5, 1953
Moscow, Russia
Dictator of the Soviet Union from 1928 to 1953

Joseph Stalin became the leader of the Soviet Union after the death of Vladimir Lenin, who had led the revolution that removed the Russian czar (an all-powerful, hereditary ruler like a king) from power and put the Communist Party in charge of the country in 1917. Under Stalin, the Soviet Union became one of the world's major powers, but his was a reign of terror as millions of people who displeased Stalin in various ways were executed or sent to labor camps called "gulags." During World War II, Stalin rallied the Russian people to defeat the Germans and they did so, but at a terrible cost—about twenty-five million Russians lost their lives in the war.

A boy called "Soso"

Stalin was born Iosef (Joseph) Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili in Gori, in the country of Georgia, which was then part of Russia's empire in western Asia. He was the only one of four children in his family who did not die as a baby. Stalin's father, Vissarion, was a shoemaker and an alcoholic who died from wounds he received in a fight. His mother, Yekaterina, took in washing and sewing and hired out as a housekeeper to support her son, whom she nursed through several serious childhood illnesses, including smallpox.

Called "Soso" as a boy, Stalin spoke only the Georgian language until he was eight. At that age he started school, where he learned Russian (the common language of the Russian empire) and studied religion, geography, and other subjects. Although she could not read or write herself, Stalin's very religious mother had grand ambitions for her son; in particular, she wanted him to become a priest, and perhaps eventually a bishop.

Learning about Marxism

In 1894 Stalin won a scholarship to the theological seminary in Tbilisi (the largest city in Georgia). He earned good grades the first year, but during the second year he rebelled against the school's strict rules. He smuggled banned books into the school, and once refused to bow to a school official. It was during these years that Stalin learned about Marxism (the theory of Karl Marx that calls for the working class to revolt and create a classless society). Stalin began reading works by Marxist writers, especially Vladimir Lenin, who would later lead Russia's revolution.

In 1899 Stalin was expelled from the seminary (even after her son became the leader of the Soviet Union, his mother considered him a failure for not entering the priesthood). He continued to dream of revolution, and began calling himself "Koba" (which means "The Indomitable") after a hero from Georgian folk tales.

Stalin got a job as a bookkeeper at the Tbilisi observatory, and there he met members of a group called the Social Democrats, who used the observatory as a meeting place. These people were communists (believers in a political system in which all citizens own property as a group rather than individually), which was illegal in Russia at the time. Stalin joined the group, and when his employers discovered this he lost his job.

A full-time revolutionary

Unemployed, Stalin became an active member of the Social Democratic Party's militant wing and devoted all of his time to revolutionary activities, which mostly involved trying to convince industrial workers to support the group. In 1894 he married a peasant girl, Yekaterina Svanidze, but after only three happy years—and the birth of a son, Jacob—she died. Arrested in 1902 for his revolutionary activities, Stalin was sent to Siberia (a huge, desolate part of northern Russia where people were often sent as punishment for crimes) but escaped two years later and returned to Georgia.

In 1905 Stalin attended a political meeting in Finland, and there he met Vladimir Lenin for the first time. The Social Democratic Party had split into two parts: the Mensheviks, who believed in gradual change and compromise; and the extremist Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, who called for immediate revolution. Lenin could see that Stalin was a loyal party member who was good at organizing and at solving practical problems, and he put Stalin to work raising money for the Bolsheviks by robbing banks and government money transports—Lenin did so quietly, however, since this was an activity of which some Bolsheviks might not have approved.

After performing such tasks for some time Stalin was in danger of arrest, so he was expelled from his local party, and he disappeared. He soon resurfaced in Baku, Azerbaijan (located near the Caspian Sea), where he tried to convince the area's oil workers to join the Bolsheviks. Constantly in and out of trouble with the police, Stalin spent several periods of exile in Siberia.

Trusted by Lenin

In 1912 Lenin cut his ties with the Social Democrats and formed his own party. Knowing how invaluable Stalin's ruthlessness and intelligence were, Lenin nominated him to his party's central committee. But Stalin was soon arrested again, and this time he stayed in Siberia for a longer period. He did not return, in fact, until March 1917, when the Russian revolution toppled the czar's (all-powerful ruler) regime. By this time he was calling himself Stalin, which comes from the Russian word "stal" which means steel.

At this period, Russia was made up of a collection of individual republics that would, in 1924, together become the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, however, the country was ruled by a provisional (temporary) government made up of several different political parties that had worked together to overthrow the czar. In April, Lenin returned to Russia from Switzerland, where he had been living in exile, and announced his dissatisfaction with the new government. After issuing a demand for peace, bread (meaning adequate food), and land for the Russian people, Lenin and his followers organized a revolutionary committee and began urging urban workers, rural people, and members of the military to back them.

Over the next few months, the members of the revolutionary committee—who were now calling themselves Communists as well as Bolsheviks—gradually gained influence, so that by October they were able to stage a bloodless takeover of the provisional government. The Communist Party now ruled Russia, with Lenin as its top leader.

Lenin now named Stalin Commissar of Nationalities, putting him in charge of placing Communists among all the many ethnic groups in Russia so that the party's power would increase. Meanwhile, Stalin also attracted his own supporters among the most powerful Communist leaders. During these years Stalin was proving himself to be a strong leader who could make tough decisions and stick with them; he was not considered an intellectual leader, but was determined to get what he wanted.

Between 1918 and 1921, the Communists and their "Red Army" fought a civil war with those who still resisted their dominance: called the "Whites," these opponents included some who fought for a return to a czarist regime and some who wanted a more democratic government. Stalin served as a military commander during this conflict. In 1919, when Lenin set up agencies to perform various government tasks, Stalin was made Commissar of the Workers and Peasants Inspectorate. He became a member of the party secretariat or "Politboro." Stalin also took a second wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, the sixteen-year-old daughter of an old friend. The couple had two children, Vasili and Svetlana, born in 1919 and 1925. In 1932, Nadezhda would kill herself, leaving a note that expressed disapproval of Stalin as a man and leader.

Building his own power

Lenin made it clear that he continued to value Stalin when, in 1922, he made him the general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. This was an important position, because Stalin had the power to give key party jobs to people who were loyal to him. In that way, he was able to staff the party's higher levels with many of his supporters.

In May 1922 Lenin had a stroke and his health grew worse and worse. At the same time, he began to express fear about the amount of power that Stalin and others had built for themselves. But Lenin was losing influence in the party, as some members accused him of forgetting some of the ideals around which the Communist Party had been founded.

After Lenin's death in January 1924, the country was at first led jointly by five men: Stalin, Leon Trotsky (the head of the Red Army), Lev Kamenev and Grigori Zinoviev (Moscow and Leningrad party chiefs), and Nikolai Bukharin (the party's theorist). Each of these men would have liked to be Russia's top ruler, but it was Stalin who emerged on top. He did so by carefully building an image of himself as humble, calm, efficient, and fatherly and by pitting his opponents against each other.

A plan to advance the Soviet Union

First Stalin plotted with Kamenev and Zinoviev to remove Trotsky from power (he went into exile in Mexico, where he was eventually killed by Stalin's agents). Then Stalin and Bukharin worked together to get rid of Kamenev and Zinoviev. Finally Stalin turned against Bukharin. In less than ten years, Stalin was the only one of these original five leaders left alive, thanks to his own ruthless pursuit of power.

Stalin now had complete control of the Soviet Union, which he ran with the help of a strong, brutal police force. His main objective was to develop his country's industry and agriculture, and in 1928 he proposed the "Five-Year Plan" (which was followed by other five-year plans) to quickly reach the goals he had set. "We are 50 to 100 years behind the advanced countries," Stalin told his people. "We must cover this distance in ten years. Either we do this or they will crush us."

Across the Soviet Union, construction began on factories, dams, and other major projects, and within five years the country was producing steel, machine tools, tractors, and other industrial products. Meanwhile, farmers were forced to give up their small family farms and move onto state-owned, collective farms; Stalin did not believe that the government could effectively control smaller farms.

Change brings suffering to the Russian people

These changes were hard on the Russian people. Factory workers made only enough money for basic necessities, and food and goods were sometimes hard to find. People had to get special permission to change jobs, and special passports to travel. Some farmers did not want to give up their farms, and they were labeled "kulaks" (tightwads) and killed or sent to the "gulags"—the network of labor camps set up for those accused of crimes against the state. Other farmers starved when the government punished them by taking their grain. People were afraid to express themselves freely (especially if they disagreed with the government), because they knew the penalty would be swift and harsh.

By the late 1930s, most of Soviet agriculture had been collectivized, but some of the rules were changed so that people were allowed to keep their own houses and tools and grow private gardens for their own use.

A time of terror

Meanwhile, Stalin was creating a public image of himself as a great hero. Cities, towns, villages, and even the tallest mountain in Russia were named after him, and he was mentioned in the national anthem. Yet he was more and more fearful of enemies and suspicious of everyone around him. In the mid-1930s he began a series of purges (a practice of getting rid of people by killing them or sending them to prison). It is estimated that from seventeen to twenty-five million people were sent to the gulags during Stalin's reign; about a million were executed, while about seven million died in the gulags.

One purge that Stalin would later have a reason to regret was that of the Soviet armed forces, when most of the country's marshals, generals, and admirals were killed. These officers would be sorely missed in only a few years, when Russia entered World War II.

Surprised by German invasion

During the 1930s, Adolf Hitler had cemented his place as dictator (a ruler with absolute power) of Germany and was leading his army in conquests of various nearby countries such as Czechoslovakia and Poland. The Soviet Union was also interested in expanding its territories. In August 1939 Stalin signed an agreement with Hitler in which Russia and Germany divided the countries of Eastern Europe between them and promised not to attack each other. Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia were forced to join the Soviet Union and, after a short war of resistance, so was Finland.

Although he had been warned by some of his advisors that Hitler would not honor his agreement with the Soviet Union, Stalin was shocked when, in June 1941, the German army invaded Russia. For about two weeks he seemed stunned and unable to do anything; he said, "Everything which Lenin created we have lost forever!" But then Stalin recovered, taking personal command of the Soviet armed forces.

On July 3, 1941, he addressed the Soviet people in a radio broadcast (the first time most of them had heard their leader's voice) and called on them to resist the enemy with all their might. The Soviet Union had entered World War II on the side of the Allies (the United States, Great Britain, and other countries fighting against Germany, Italy, and Japan.)

Fighting back and winning

The Germans quickly moved through the country until they reached the outskirts of two of its biggest cities, Moscow and Leningrad. They had confiscated about half of Russia's industry and agriculture, and about 40 percent of the population was under German control. In response, Stalin shifted many Soviet industries to the eastern part of the country where they would be safer from the Germans, arranged to borrow supplies and equipment from the other Allied countries, and built morale by stirring up the religious and patriotic feelings of the Soviet citizens. He even relaxed some of the restrictions he had imposed, letting people practice their traditional religion more openly and allowing more artistic expression.

Stalin believed in a "scorched earth" policy (which meant that it was better to destroy crops and property than to let the Germans take them) and refused to surrender any ground. With the Germans dug in for the winter around Moscow, Stalin ignored the brutally cold weather and called for a counterattack. The Red Army did gain some ground, but at a great cost in casualties (people dead or wounded).

More evidence of Stalin's extremism—and, some would say, his deep cruelty—was offered when, in July of 1942, he issued a rule that any Soviet soldier taken prisoner would be considered a traitor to Russia. In fact, Stalin's own son Vasili was captured by the Germans; Stalin responded by disowning him, later refusing an offer by the Germans to exchange Vasili for a captured German officer.

Stalin used the threat of severe punishment to intimidate not only ordinary citizens and foot soldiers but also higher officers and government officials. Nevertheless, most agreed that he ran the war effort well, planning strategies that worked, promoting good commanders, and representing his country at several important war conferences attended by the leaders of the Allied countries.

Victory brings admiration

In January 1943, the Red Army won another long, bloody, and important battle, this time to regain the city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd). That summer, they beat the Germans at Kursk, and from then on the Germans were constantly in retreat, pursued by Russian troops back toward the German border.

These victories boosted Stalin's image both at home and abroad. Allied troops referred to him as "Uncle Joe" and considered him a passionate enemy of Nazism, even though he had made agreements with the Nazis just before the war. In only a few years, the rest of the world would realize that Stalin was, in fact, an isolationist (someone who does not believe in becoming involved in other nation's affairs) with a deep distrust of the non-Communist countries.

Russia is rewarded with new territory

In April 1945 Russian troops were the first to enter the German capital, Berlin, where Hitler was hiding in an underground bunker. He killed himself on April 30, and the Germans quickly surrendered to the Allies. As the war drew to a close, Stalin used his newfound popularity—and the undeniable contribution the Russian people had made to the Allied victory—to gain rewards for Russia. In the end, the Soviet Union had control over most of Eastern Europe.

The same old brutality and paranoia

Despite hopes that the war's end would change the way Stalin governed, he soon went back to the same harsh measures. This marked the beginning of the "Cold War" between the Soviet Union and western countries (especially the United States), a conflict fought not with guns and bombs but with words, suspicion, and threats of aggression and which lasted until the 1980s.

Meanwhile, Stalin's paranoia continued, and he seemed to trust no one, not even his closest friends and family members. He had just started a new series of purges when, in March of 1953, he suffered a stroke and died of internal bleeding. Over the next few decades, the Soviet Union would face a long, slow recovery from the brutal, damaging years of Stalin's reign.

Where to Learn More

Books

Caulkins, Janet. Joseph Stalin. New York: Franklin Watts, 1990.

Conquest, Robert. Stalin: Breaker of Nations. New York: Viking Penguin,1991.

Hoobler, Dorothy, and Thomas Hoobler. Joseph Stalin. New York: Chelsea House, 1985.

Kallen, Stuart A. The Stalin Era: 1925-1953. Edina, MN: Abdo & Daughters, 1992.

Marrin, Albert. Stalin. New York: Viking Kestrel, 1988.

Whitelaw, Nancy. Joseph Stalin: From Peasant to Premier. New York: Dillon Press, 1992.

Web sites

Simmonds, George W. "Joseph Stalin." [Online] Available http://www.grolier.com/wwii/wwii_stalin.html (February 24, 1999).

Joseph Stalin led his country to repel a German invasion and join Allied forces during World War II.

A Great Russian General

The general in charge of the Soviet Union's important victories against the Germans at Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad, and Kursk was Goergi Zhukov, who is considered one of World War II's greatest generals.

Zhukov was born into a poor family in 1896 in Strelkovka, a small village located about 60 miles from Moscow. As a young boy he worked as a furrier's apprentice, but in 1915 he joined the Russian army. During the revolution and civil war that established Russia as a Communist country, Zhukov joined the new Red Army, serving as a squadron commander until 1920. During the 1920s he attended schools for military commanders while rising through the ranks.

Over the course of the 1930s, Zhukov somehow managed to avoid being killed in Stalin's purge of the Soviet military leadership. He made his mark in 1939 when he went to Upper Mongolia (now part of China) where the Japanese were conducting an undeclared war along their border with that region. He commanded the Soviet First Army Group in its victory against the Japanese Sixth Army at the Khalkhin-Gol River, and was promoted to the rank of general in May 1940.

In February 1941 Zhukov was made chief of the Soviet General Staff and deputy commissioner for defense. After the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, Zhukov began to show the leadership qualities that would make him one of the best of all World War II generals. He led the defense of Leningrad in the summer and fall of 1941, then returned to Moscow in December to defend the city against German attack. Successful in that effort, he went on to coordinate the Soviet victories at Stalingrad in 1942 and 1943 and Kursk in July and August 1943. In August 1942 Zhukov was made deputy supremecommander in chief of the Red Army and Navy, which meant that he was second in command only to Stalin in terms of military authority.

With the end of the war in Europe in sight, Zhukov led his troops across Eastern Europe toward Germany, and in May 1945 they captured Berlin. Zhukov was at the head of the delegation that accepted Germany's unconditional surrender on May 8, 1945. Immediately after the war, Zhukov was in charge of the Soviet occupation of Germany, but he was removed from that job a year later by leader Joseph Stalin, who resented Zhukov's great popularity. Zhukov had won three Gold Medals as a "Hero of the Soviet Union" during the war and was probably the Soviet people's second-most respected figure after Stalin.

Stalin now pushed Zhukov off into positions commanding the Odessa and Ural military districts, far from the center of Soviet political life. But when Stalin died in 1953 Zhukov became deputy defense minister, and he was defense minister from 1955 to 1957. His close relationship with Communist Party leader Nikita Khruschev resulted in Zhukov's being made a member of the party's Central Committee. Only a few months later, however, Khruschev too began to fear Zhukov's popularity, and he was removed from public office.

Zhukov retired to his country home and began working on his memoirs, which were initially published only in censored form because Soviet leaders did not want his important role in the war to be publicized. The full version of Zhukov's memoirs appeared in 1989, 15 years after his death, and in 1995 a statue was built to honor his memory.