Joseph Stalin

Born December 21, 1879
Gori, Georgia, Russia
Died March 5, 1953 Kuntsevo, Russia, Soviet Union

Premier of the Soviet Union

J oseph Stalin was the brutal and absolute leader of the communist Soviet Union from 1929 until his death in 1953. By the late 1930s, Stalin staunchly opposed the growth across Europe of the Nazi Party of Germany's Adolf Hitler (1889–1945). When cutting deals with Hitler failed to halt the Nazi army, Stalin allied with the United States, Great Britain, and France during World War II (1939–45).

At the end of the war, Stalin immediately imposed communist rule over the countries of Eastern Europe, giving government positions to men who adhered to the strict Communist Party line and answered directly to him. Yet soon the Soviets became locked in the Cold War (1945–91). The Cold War was an intense political and economic rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, falling just short of military conflict. Stalin was the dominant figure in the Soviet Union for twenty-four years, a larger-than-life personality, a hero to many, and yet a ruthless and feared ruler.

Early years

Stalin was born Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili in Gori, Georgia, in the Tiflis province of southwestern Russia, to an alcoholic shoemaker and a devoutly religious peasant woman of the Orthodox church. As a young adult, Iosif changed his name to Stalin, which meant "man of steel." Stalin owed his education to his mother, who planned for him to become a priest. His father died when he was about ten years old, but his industrious mother saw that he attended Orthodox elementary school in Gori. Although small in stature, Stalin excelled in school and was generally the brightest student in his classes.

In 1894, he entered the Tbilisi Orthodox Seminary in the Georgian city of Tbilisi. There he was introduced to a wide range of literature and exposed to new philosophical and social ideas. He studied the teachings of English scientist Charles Darwin (1809–1892); the revolutionary social ideology of German philosopher Karl Marx (1818–1883), considered the "father" of communism; and Russian Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924).

Marxism had just reached Georgia and its ideas captivated young Stalin, who had come from the poorest of peasant backgrounds. The communist movement opposed the longtime rule of the Russian tsarist, or royal, government, whose members lived lavishly while all other Russians lived in poverty. Communism represented a new ideal, one where government consisted of a single party, the Communist Party, which controlled all aspects of people's lives. In economics, communism prohibited private ownership of property and business so all goods produced and wealth accumulated were supposed to be shared equally by all. In contrast, a democratic system of government, such as that of the United States, allowed multiple political parties whose members were elected to various government offices by popular vote of the people. Private property is allowed and encouraged, while prices of goods are determined by competition in the marketplace.

Communist revolutionary

By the late 1890s, Stalin dedicated his life to communist revolutionary ideas and joined the Social Democratic Party in 1898. He was expelled from the seminary in 1899 for revolutionary activities, including spreading communist propaganda to Georgian railroad workers. Between 1900 and 1917, Stalin, by then a communist underground organizer and agitator, was arrested, released, arrested, exiled, and released over twelve times. The early Social Democratic movement split in the early 1900s into the Bolshevik (communist) faction and the Mensheviks (the more democratic minority party). Stalin sided with the Bolsheviks as the party organized in about 1903. Stalin's activities in Georgia actually caught Lenin's attention, but the two had little contact before 1912.

Stalin, as a Bolshevik and a disciple of Lenin, was in conflict with many of the Social Democrats in Georgia who were Mensheviks. He moved to Saint Petersburg in 1912, where he first adopted the name Stalin, and became a member of the Bolshevik Party's Central Committee, its primary leadership committee. For a time, he served as editor of Pravda, the Bolshevik or communist (the terms came to be used interchangeably) newspaper.

Life as an underground revolutionary was not stable and Stalin was in exile in Siberia by early February 1917. He managed to return to Petrograd (later called Leningrad during the Cold War and then Saint Petersburg after the Cold War) in March 1917. The Bolshevik Revolution toppled the tsarist government in October 1917. In the new Soviet government, Stalin relocated to Moscow and served as the people's commissar of Nationality Affairs between 1917 and 1922. He held on to the position during this period of instability and civil war, which ended with the communists firmly in power. As people's commissar, Stalin took the responsibility of holding together the vast ethnic minorities within the Russian Empire.

Stalin gained a reputation as an efficient organizer for the communists fighting during the civil war. He also served

on various defense commissions and as political advisor to fighters and to local communities. For the first time, Stalin condoned brutal killings and torture to advance communist political ideas. It was at this time that Stalin developed a hatred of the Western powers such as the United States, Great Britain, and France, who were helping supply those opposed to communism. Years later, after World War II, this hatred played a part in Stalin's foreign policy during the Cold War.

General secretary

From 1921 onward, Lenin's and Stalin's ideas began to conflict. Lenin did not entirely approve of Stalin's fiercely nationalist approach. Nationalism refers to the strong loyalty of a person or group to its own country. Stalin increasingly expected all factions and parts of the Russian Empire to march in unison with him and his ideals. Lenin was crippled by a stroke in late 1922, and before his death in 1924 he all but called for Stalin's removal, saying Stalin employed crude tactics and would not properly use caution. Lenin's concerns and subsequent warnings, however, came too late.

In 1922, Stalin was appointed general secretary of the Communist Party's Central Committee. At the time, the position was an unheralded administrative post. However, Stalin, with his crafty political instinct, managed in a short time to turn the post into the dominant authority of the Soviet Union. In doing so, he pulled all control into his camp and away from his chief rival, Leon Trotsky (1879–1940). Stalin held the general secretary post until his death in 1953. For decades after Stalin's death, it remained the key position of central leadership in the Soviet Union. Stalin used the office to brilliantly outmaneuver various political alliances that might have drained power from him. Outwitting and defaming all rivals, he was firmly in control of the Communist Party and country by 1927.

Collectivization and industrialization

In 1928 and 1929, Stalin tossed out Lenin's economic policies and launched into a government campaign to reform Soviet agriculture and focus industry on building large industrial complexes for heavy construction. In agriculture, Stalin destroyed the prosperous peasant farmers and ordered rapid collectivization of all agriculture. Private ownership of land was banned, and farmers were collected, or grouped together, to work the land. Much of what they produced was turned over to the government, with approximately twenty-five million farmers being regrouped on state farms.

Although many farmers resisted and tried to hold on to their land, most resisters were shot or sent to a system of labor camps known as the Gulag. Because of the displacement and disruption of farming, approximately ten million people died from famine. Those sent to the Gulag became the slave labor for Stalin's heavy industry construction programs. By the late 1930s, Soviet agriculture patterns under collectivization were set and would last for most of the twentieth century. The Soviet Union soon became second only to the United States in heavy industrial output. Light industry, however, such as the production of consumer goods, was ignored.

Personality cult and purges of terror

By the early 1930s, Stalin ruled over the Communist Party in such totality that all party members and military elite answered only to him. Reaching into all aspects of Soviet culture, Stalin even fancied himself the ultimate expert and judge of the arts, such as literature, poetry, theater, and music. He controlled the education of Soviet youth and the daily press. Many Soviets followed Stalin in a cult-like fashion. The term "adulation," meaning excessive flattering or admiration, was often used in praise of Stalin.

In 1934, Stalin decided to rid any lingering opposition to his rule by the use of terror, torture, and execution. Stalin began a ferocious campaign that by 1939 successfully eliminated almost all individuals of the old Bolshevik party, and upwards of 70 percent of leaders in the Communist Party and military. Many of the best-known persons in the country unexplainably disappeared.

Stalin also ordered showy trials of many leaders to make a public example of them and encourage them to confess to false charges. Stalin's purges struck not only the top party leadership, but the local levels and even the arts community. He introduced the phrase "enemy of the people," which automatically made proof of any guilt unnecessary. Brutal acts were carried out against "enemies," frequently without any grounds, and millions of Soviets were murdered. During this period, however, most Soviets thought of the hostilities as what must happen in a class struggle or during class warfare. Stalin hid his ruthlessness behind the idea that many must die before the common people could rise up.

World War II

Although Stalin's domestic agendas had occupied most of his time in the 1930s, on the foreign front he was a practical politician. He strengthened the Soviet economy and his own lock on power by broadening trade and diplomatic relationships through Europe and even with the United States. While praising U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945; served 1933–45), Stalin at the same time kept his distance, saying Roosevelt was "captain of the modern bourgeois [middle or upper class] world." Stalin also impressed upon Western nations that the Soviet Union was an enemy of the menacing Nazi German leader Hitler. Stalin tried to make alliances with France and Great Britain against the growing threat of Hitler's Nazi army. Unsuccessful, Stalin decided to try and deal with Hitler himself. In August 1939, to the surprise and shock of Western leaders, Stalin signed a treaty with Hitler that in turn led to the Nazi invasion of Poland and the start of World War II.

When the Nazi army later invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, Stalin was stunned. Quickly regaining his composure, Stalin stayed in Moscow, assumed the chairmanship of the State Committee of Defense, and declared himself the Supreme Commander of the armed forces. Although never visiting front lines, he gathered a highly competent group of generals and was able to understand complex military strategies. By 1942, Stalin directed successful counterattacks at the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk.

In 1943, Stalin met with British prime minister Winston Churchill (1874–1965; see entry) and U.S. president Roosevelt in Tehran, Iran. The three became known as the "Big Three." The first postwar planning took place with Stalin largely having his way. Stalin successfully argued that the Soviet army and people were bearing the brunt of the ground fighting. By war's end, millions would have died. He stressed that the Soviet Union must protect itself by ensuring a strong influence in Eastern European countries such as Poland, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Albania, and Bulgaria. These countries would then serve as a barrier between the Soviets and Western Europe.

Throughout its history, Russia had periodically been invaded by groups from Western Europe, and Stalin felt he must protect his country from future attacks. Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt met again in the Soviet town of Yalta in 1945, and later that year Stalin met in Potsdam, Germany, with U.S. president Harry S. Truman (1884–1972; served 1945–53; see entry), who had replaced Roosevelt upon his death; Churchill; and Clement R. Attlee (1883–1967; see entry), who would replace Churchill. At that time, the "Red" (Soviet) Army occupied all of Eastern Europe and half of Germany. Poland was a major point of contention, but Stalin was able to satisfy Western leaders by promising to quickly hold open elections in Poland. In actuality, those elections would never be held.

Also during the Yalta meeting, Roosevelt and Stalin negotiated that the Soviets would enter the Pacific front in the war against Japan for Roosevelt, allowing the Soviets to occupy northern Korea and the islands north of Japan. These agreements assured Stalin a "sphere of influence," or leadership, over vast regions, including Eastern Europe and Asia. When the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in August 1945, the war with Japan ended before the Soviets became highly involved. The United States was, at the time, the only nation possessing atomic weapons.

Cold War begins

At the end of World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as the two superpowers of the world. Stalin established communist leaders at the head of governments of Eastern Europe. Wary of future East-West relations, Stalin realized the United States must not be allowed to maintain an atomic weapon monopoly. In mid-1945, Stalin placed Lavrenty Beria (1899–1953; see box) in charge of organizing the Soviet atomic bomb project. The arms race soon became the primary way America and the Soviets kept score as to who was winning the Cold War.

Stalin worked to control gains made by the Soviets. Western leaders soon realized that any negotiations with Stalin had to be resolved under his terms or not at all. At first, knowing the tremendous sacrifices the Soviet people had made during the war, sentiment among Western leaders was, in general, to back off from demands conflicting with those of Stalin. What to do with postwar Germany was the first challenge; it had been divided into four occupied sectors—Soviet, American, British, and French. Stalin was intent on dismantling German industrial equipment and carting it off to the Soviet Union to be reassembled. He was determined to so weaken Germany that it could never be a threat to the Soviet Union again. Conversely, the three Western powers began to view a rebuilt, revitalized, and reunified Germany as a block to the spread of communism to the West. Eventually, these basic differences resulted in a permanently divided Germany—the closed Soviet-supported German Democratic Republic, or East Germany, and the open democratic U.S.- and British-supported Federal Republic of Germany, or West Germany.

Stalin not only strengthened his hold on Eastern European countries but also supported communist uprisings in Greece, Turkey, and Iran. At Britain's urging, the United States intervened to stop communist takeovers in those countries. The Cold War rivalry was becoming increasingly defined. Stalin was convinced communism would eventually spread to a worldwide movement and overcome the democratic, capitalist countries of the West. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was established in 1949 for mutual protection of Western countries, and Stalin formed Cominform to direct communist activities around the world.

In September 1949, the Soviets successfully detonated an atomic bomb, eliminating the U.S. monopoly on atomic weapons. About the same time, Chinese communists successfully took power in China. Then in 1950, the Korean War (1950–53) started between the communist North Korea and the democratic U.S.-supported South Korea. At this point, Stalin and the spread of communism were greatly feared in the United States and Western Europe, still trying to recover from World War II. Yet unknown to Western leaders, by the early 1950s, Stalin would slip into a paranoia so severe his mind would become completely occupied by internal matters.

Great terror continued

In Eastern European countries after World War II, tensions were high at the local levels between Stalin's communists, the local communists, and anticommunists. One of the countries, Yugoslavia, under leader Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980; see entry) was able to maintain some independence apart from Stalin's influence. Partly due to Tito's rebellion, Stalin began an intense Sovietization of Eastern Europe in 1948. The central Communist Party in Moscow had men in place in Eastern Europe, who ruled the countries with absolute iron control. Repression of any independent thought and total conformity to party line were demanded. Any dissent was punished brutally. The countries were forced, between 1948 and 1953, to adhere to Stalin's Soviet plan of agricultural collectivization and to turn all manufacturing into heavy industry. Stalin demanded that his instructions be carried out without question throughout Eastern Europe.

To be sure both local Communist Party officials and the general public adhered to his rule, Stalin used his "show trials." False accusations were made against various leaders. Under torture, they would usually confess and then be executed. Two of the most famous show trials involved Foreign Minister Laszlo Rajk (1909–1949) in Hungary and Rudolf Slansky (1901–1952), general secretary of the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia. Eventually, one in four Czech party members disappeared during Stalin's reign of terror.

Inside the Soviet Union, Stalin obsessed over total party loyalty. He saw an enemy or conspiracy around every corner. Just as in the 1930s when he called on the Soviets to uncover "enemies of the people," Stalin now ordered the addition of more and more labor camps for the Gulag system. One of the most concentrated, brutal purges occurred against the citizens of Leningrad in 1949. Upwards of one thousand party leaders from Leningrad were executed. Stalin's top "henchman" or ally was chief of the KGB (the secret police) Lavrenty Beria, who was also in charge of the Soviet atomic bomb project.

Paranoid end

According to Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, her father increasingly and steadily lost touch with reality the last three years of his life. He completely isolated himself at the Kremlin in Moscow or at his nearby country home in Kuntsevo. Stalin was suspicious of everyone, and at the Nineteenth Party Congress in October 1952, he so feared everyone in the room that he sat alone at the end of a long table. At this time, he was also conjuring up an anti-Semitic (Jewish) campaign.

Those around Stalin continued to be terrorized by him and KGB chief Beria. Stalin constantly made up stories that his closest staff and even his family were in conspiracies against him. In his last months in early 1953, he was preparing to possibly purge the people, including the doctors, of whom he was suspicious. Stalin suffered a stroke sometime during the night of February 28, 1953. He was not discovered until late the next afternoon, for his staff had feared entering his room without his permission. Stalin died on March 5, 1953.

Stalin left behind a Soviet Union ruled by a huge government bureaucracy of ministries, party-ruled legislative bodies, and secret police. For many common Soviet citizens, Stalin had been the extremely popular "father" of the Soviet Union. Thousands paid their respects in Moscow, and his body was put on display in the Lenin Mausoleum. His ultimate successor, however, Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971; see entry), was bold enough to reveal the "crimes of Stalin" in a secret speech to the Twentieth Party Congress in October 1956. Partly as a result of this speech, Stalin's body was removed from the mausoleum and buried at the Kremlin Wall.

For More Information

Books

Antonov-Ovseyenko, Anton. The Time of Stalin: Portrait of a Tyranny. New York: Harper and Row, 1980.

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

Isaacs, Jeremy, and Taylor Downing. Cold War: An Illustrated History, 1945–1991. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1998.

Lewis, Jonathan, and Phillip Whitehead. Stalin: A Time for Judgement. New York: Pantheon Books, 1990.

Tucker, Robert C. Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928–1941. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1990.

Ulam, Adam B. Stalin: The Man and His Era. New York: Viking Press, 1973.

Lavrenty Beria

Born in southern Russia in Georgia on March 29, 1899, Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria would become head of the KGB, the dreaded Soviet secret police, and the organizational chief of the Soviet atomic bomb project. Svetlana Alliluyeva, Stalin's daughter, often referred to Beria as "my father's evil genius."

Young Beria, much as Stalin had been, was caught up in the communist movement sweeping over Russia and joined the Communist Party in 1917, the same year the revolutionary Bolsheviks triumphed over Russia's tsarist government. Committed to the cause and not averse to brutal tactics, Beria quickly rose by 1921 to the leadership of Cheka, the forerunner of the KGB. Between 1921 and 1931, he "eliminated" anyone who deviated from communist ideals or orders. Stalin appointed Beria head of the Soviet People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD). NKVD was another early name for the KGB. Beria specialized in terror, torture, executions, and for the lucky ones, facilitating banishment to the Gulag, the harsh Soviet prison system. Beria destroyed tens of thousands of lives.

Beria was also put in charge of efforts to build a Soviet bomb, with Igor

Kurchatov (1903–1960; see entry) as the organization's top scientist. Beria constantly bellowed to Kurchatov, "You will be camp dust," if the scientist was unsuccessful in developing the bomb. Upon Stalin's death in March 1953, Beria was one of a handful of leaders assuming they might take over from Stalin. Yet others, including Nikita Khrushchev, saw to it that Beria was falsely accused of being an agent for the West and was shot in late 1953. The announcement of his death was made in December 1953.