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Joseph Vissarionovich StalinTemplate:Family name footnoteTemplate:Efn (born Dzhugashvili;Template:Efn Template:OldStyleDateTemplate:Snd5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1922 to 1952 and as the fourth premier from 1941 until his death. He initially governed as part of a collective leadership, but consolidated power to become an absolute dictator by the 1930s. Stalin codified the party's official interpretation of Marxism as Marxism–Leninism, while the totalitarian political system he created is known as Stalinism.
Born into a poor Georgian family in Gori, Russian Empire, Stalin attended the Tiflis Theological Seminary before joining the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction through bank robberies and other crimes, and edited the party's newspaper, Pravda. He was repeatedly arrested and underwent several exiles to Siberia. After the Bolsheviks seized power in the October Revolution of 1917, Stalin served as a member of the Politburo, and from 1922 used his position as General Secretary to gain control over the party bureaucracy. After Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin won the leadership struggle over rivals including Leon Trotsky. Stalin's doctrine of socialism in one country became central to the party's ideology, and his five-year plans from 1928 led to forced agricultural collectivisation, rapid industrialisation, and a centralised command economy. His policies contributed to a famine in 1932–1933 which killed millions, including in the Holodomor in Ukraine. Between 1936 and 1938, Stalin executed hundreds of thousands of his real and perceived political opponents in the Great Purge. Under his regime, an estimated 18 million people passed through the Gulag system of forced labour camps, and more than six million people, including kulaks and entire ethnic groups, were deported to remote areas of the country.
Stalin promoted Marxism–Leninism abroad through the Communist International and supported European anti-fascist movements. In 1939, his government signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany, enabling the Soviet invasion of Poland at the start of World War II. Germany broke the pact by invading the Soviet Union in 1941, leading Stalin to join the Allies. The Red Army, with Stalin as its commander-in-chief, repelled the German invasion and captured Berlin in 1945, ending the war in Europe. The Soviet Union established Soviet-aligned states in Eastern Europe, and with the United States emerged as a global superpower, with the two countries entering a period of rivalry known as the Cold War. Stalin presided over post-war reconstruction and the first Soviet atomic bomb test in 1949. During these years, the country experienced another famine and a state-sponsored antisemitic campaign culminating in the "doctors' plot". In 1953, Stalin died after a stroke. He was succeeded as leader by Georgy Malenkov and later Nikita Khrushchev, who in 1956 denounced Stalin's rule and began a campaign of "de-Stalinisation".
One of the 20th century's most significant figures, Stalin has a deeply contested legacy. During his rule, he was the subject of a pervasive personality cult within the international Marxist–Leninist movement, which revered him as a champion of socialism and the working class. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Stalin has retained a degree of popularity in some of the post-Soviet states, particularly Russia and Georgia, as an economic moderniser and victorious wartime leader who transformed the Soviet Union into an industrialised superpower. Conversely, his regime has been widely condemned for overseeing mass repression and man-made famine which resulted in the suffering and deaths of millions of Soviet citizens.
Early lifeEdit
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Early lifeEdit
Stalin was born on Template:OldStyleDateTemplate:Efn in Gori, Georgia,Template:Sfnm then part of the Tiflis Governorate of the Russian Empire.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfnm An ethnic Georgian, his birth name was Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili (Russified as Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili).Template:Efn His parents were Besarion Jughashvili and Ekaterine Geladze;Template:Sfnm Stalin was their third child and the only one to survive past infancy.Template:Sfnm After Besarion's shoemaking workshop went into decline, the family fell into poverty, and he became an alcoholic who beat his wife and son.Template:SfnmTemplate:Sfnm Ekaterine and her son left the home by 1883, moving through nine different rented rooms.Template:Sfnm In 1888, Stalin enrolled at the Gori Church SchoolTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfnm where he excelled.Template:Sfnm He faced health problems: an 1884 smallpox infection left him with facial scars,Template:Sfnm and at age 12 he was seriously injured when he was struck by a phaeton, causing a lifelong disability in his left arm.Template:Sfnm
In 1894, Stalin enrolled as a trainee Russian Orthodox priest at the Tiflis Theological Seminary, enabled by a scholarship.Template:Sfnm He initially achieved high grades,Template:Sfnm but lost interest in his studies.Template:SfnmTemplate:Sfnm Stalin became influenced by Nikolay Chernyshevsky's pro-revolutionary novel What Is To Be Done?,Template:Sfn and Alexander Kazbegi's The Patricide, with Stalin adopting the nickname "Koba" from its bandit protagonist.Template:Sfnm After reading Das Kapital, Stalin focused on Karl Marx's philosophy of Marxism,Template:Sfn which was on the rise as a variety of socialism opposed to the Tsarist authorities.Template:Sfnm He began attending secret workers' meetings,Template:Sfn and left the seminary in April 1899.Template:Sfnm
1899–1905: Russian Social Democratic Labour PartyEdit
During October 1899, he worked as a meteorologist at the Tiflis observatory.Template:Sfnm He attracted a group of socialist supporters,Template:Sfn and co-organised a secret workers' meetingTemplate:Sfnm where he convinced many to strike on May Day 1900.Template:Sfn The empire's secret police, the Okhrana, became aware of Stalin's activities and attempted to arrest him in March 1901, but he went into hidingTemplate:Sfnm during which he lived off donations from friends.Template:Sfn He helped plan a demonstration in Tiflis on May Day 1901 at which 3,000 marchers clashed with the authorities.Template:Sfnm Stalin was elected to the Tiflis Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) –a Marxist party founded in 1898– in November 1901.Template:Sfnm
That month, he travelled to Batumi.Template:Sfnm His militant rhetoric proved divisive among the city's Marxists, some of whom suspected that he was an agent provocateur.Template:Sfnm Stalin began working at the Rothschild refinery storehouse, where he co-organised two workers' strikes.Template:Sfnm After the strike leaders were arrested, he co-organised a mass demonstration which led to the storming of the prison.Template:Sfnm Stalin was arrested in April 1902Template:Sfnm and sentenced to three years exile in Siberia, arriving in Novaya Uda in November 1903.Template:Sfnm After one failed attempt, Stalin escaped from his exile in January 1904 and travelled to Tiflis,Template:Sfnm where he co-edited the Marxist newspaper Proletariatis Brdzola ("Proletarian Struggle") with Filipp Makharadze.Template:Sfnm During his exile, the RSDLP had become divided between Vladimir Lenin's "Bolshevik" faction and Julius Martov's "Mensheviks".Template:Sfnm Stalin, who detested many Mensheviks in Georgia, aligned himself with the Bolsheviks.Template:Sfnm
1905–1912: Revolution of 1905 and aftermathEdit
In January 1905, government troops massacred protesters in Saint Petersburg spreading across the Empire in the Revolution of 1905.Template:Sfnm Stalin was in Baku in February when ethnic violence broke out between Armenians and Azeris,Template:Sfnm and he formed Bolshevik "battle squads" which he used to keep the city's warring ethnic factions apart.Template:Sfn His armed squads attacked local police and troops,Template:Sfn raided arsenals,Template:Sfn and raised funds via protection rackets.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfnm In November 1905, the Georgian Bolsheviks elected Stalin as one of their delegates to a Bolshevik conference in Tampere, Finland,Template:Sfnm where he met Lenin.Template:Sfnm Although Stalin held Lenin in deep respect, he vocally disagreed with his view that the Bolsheviks should field candidates for the 1906 election to the State Duma; Stalin viewed parliamentary process as a waste of time.Template:Sfnm In April 1906, he attended the RSDLP's Fourth Congress in Stockholm, where the party—then led by a Menshevik majority—agreed that it would not raise funds using armed robbery.Template:Sfnm Lenin and Stalin disagreed with this,Template:Sfnm and privately discussed continuing the robberies for the Bolshevik cause.Template:Sfnm
Stalin married Kato Svanidze in July 1906,Template:Sfnm and in March 1907 she gave birth to their son Yakov.Template:Sfnm Stalin, who by now had established himself as "Georgia's leading Bolshevik",Template:Sfn organised the June 1907 robbery of a bank stagecoach in Tiflis to fund the Bolsheviks. His operatives ambushed the convoy in Erivansky Square with guns and homemade bombs; around 40 people were killed.Template:Sfnm Stalin settled in Baku with his wife and son,Template:Sfnm where Mensheviks confronted him about the robbery and voted to expel him from the RSDLP, but he ignored them.Template:Sfnm Stalin secured Bolshevik domination of Baku's RSDLP branchTemplate:Sfn and edited two Bolshevik newspapers.Template:Sfn In November 1907, his wife died of typhus,Template:Sfnm and he left his son with her family in Tiflis.Template:Sfnm In Baku he reassembled his gang,Template:Sfn which attacked Black Hundreds and raised money through racketeering, counterfeiting, robberiesTemplate:Sfnm and kidnapping the children of wealthy figures for ransom.Template:Sfnm
In March 1908, Stalin was arrested and imprisoned in Baku.Template:Sfnm He led the imprisoned Bolsheviks, organised discussion groups, and ordered the killing of suspected informants.Template:Sfnm He was sentenced to two years of exile in Solvychegodsk in northern Russia, arriving there in February 1909.Template:Sfnm In June, Stalin escaped to Saint Petersburg,Template:Sfnm but was arrested again in March 1910 and sent back to Solvychegodsk.Template:Sfnm In June 1911, Stalin was given permission to move to Vologda where he stayed for two months.Template:Sfnm He then escaped to Saint Petersburg,Template:Sfnm where he was arrested again in September 1911 and sentenced to a further three years of exile in Vologda.Template:Sfnm
1912–1917: Rise to the Central Committee and PravdaEdit
In January 1912, the first Bolshevik Central Committee was elected at the Prague Conference.Template:Sfnm Lenin and Grigory Zinoviev decided to co-opt Stalin to the committee, which Stalin (while still in exile in Vologda) agreed to.Template:SfnmTemplate:Sfnm Lenin believed that Stalin, as a Georgian, would help secure support from the empire's minority ethnicities.Template:Sfn In February 1912, Stalin again escaped to Saint Petersburg,Template:Sfn where he was tasked with converting the Bolshevik weekly newspaper, Zvezda ("Star") into a daily, Pravda ("Truth").Template:Sfnm The new newspaper was launched in April 1912 and Stalin's role as editor was kept secret.Template:Sfnm In May 1912, he was again arrested and sentenced to three years of exile in Siberia.Template:Sfnm In July, he arrived in Narym,Template:Sfnm where he shared a room with fellow Bolshevik Yakov Sverdlov.Template:Sfnm After two months, they escaped to Saint Petersburg,Template:Sfnm where Stalin continued work on Pravda.Template:Sfn
After the October 1912 Duma elections, Stalin wrote articles calling for reconciliation between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks; Lenin criticised himTemplate:Sfn and he relented.Template:Sfn In January 1913, Stalin travelled to Vienna,Template:Sfnm where he researched the "national question" of how the Bolsheviks should deal with the Empire's national and ethnic minorities.Template:Sfnm His article "Marxism and the National Question"Template:Sfnm was first published in the March, April, and May 1913 issues of the Bolshevik journal ProsveshcheniyeTemplate:Sfn under the pseudonym "K. Stalin". The alias, which he had used since 1912, is derived from the Russian for steel (stal), and has been translated as "Man of Steel".Template:Sfnm In February 1913, Stalin was again arrested in Saint PetersburgTemplate:Sfnm and sentenced to four years of exile in Turukhansk in Siberia, where he arrived in August.Template:Sfnm Still concerned over a potential escape, the authorities moved him to Kureika in March 1914.Template:Sfnm
1917: Russian RevolutionEdit
While Stalin was in exile, Russia entered the First World War, and in October 1916 he and other exiled Bolsheviks were conscripted into the Russian Army.Template:Sfnm They arrived in Krasnoyarsk in February 1917,Template:Sfnm where a medical examiner ruled Stalin unfit for service due to his crippled arm.Template:Sfnm Stalin was required to serve four more months of his exile and successfully requested to serve it in Achinsk.Template:Sfnm Stalin was in the city when the February Revolution took place; the Tsar abdicated and the Empire became a de facto republic.Template:Sfnm In a celebratory mood, Stalin travelled by train to Petrograd (as Saint Petersburg had been renamed) in March.Template:Sfnm He assumed control of Pravda alongside Lev Kamenev,Template:Sfnm and was appointed as a Bolshevik delegate to the executive committee of the Petrograd Soviet, an influential workers' council.Template:Sfnm
Stalin helped organise the July Days uprising, an armed display of strength by supporters of the Bolsheviks.Template:Sfnm After the demonstration was suppressed, the Provisional Government initiated a crackdown on the party, raiding Pravda.Template:Sfn Stalin smuggled Lenin out of the paper's office and took charge of his safety, moving him between Petrograd safe houses before smuggling him to nearby Razliv.Template:Sfnm In Lenin's absence, Stalin continued editing Pravda and served as acting leader of the Bolsheviks, overseeing the party's Sixth Congress.Template:Sfnm Lenin began calling for the Bolsheviks to seize power by toppling the Provisional Government, a plan which was supported by Stalin and fellow senior Bolshevik Leon Trotsky, but opposed by Kamenev, Zinoviev, and other members.Template:Sfnm
On 24 October, police raided the Bolshevik newspaper offices, smashing machinery and presses; Stalin salvaged some of the equipment.Template:Sfnm In the early hours of 25 October, Stalin joined Lenin in a Central Committee meeting in Petrograd's Smolny Institute, from where the Bolshevik coup—the October Revolution—was directed.Template:Sfnm Bolshevik militia seized Petrograd's power station, main post office, state bank, telephone exchange, and several bridges.Template:Sfn A Bolshevik-controlled ship, the Aurora, opened fire on the Winter Palace; the Provisional Government's assembled delegates surrendered and were arrested.Template:Sfn Stalin, who had been tasked with briefing the Bolshevik delegates of the Second Congress of Soviets about the situation, had not played a publicly visible role.Template:Sfn Trotsky and other later opponents used this as evidence his role had been insignificant, although historians reject this,Template:Sfnm citing his role as a member of the Central Committee and as an editor of Pravda.Template:Sfn
In Lenin's governmentEdit
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1917–1918: People's Commissar for NationalitiesEdit
On 26 October 1917, Lenin declared himself chairman of the new government, the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom).Template:Sfnm Stalin supported Lenin's decision not to form a coalition with the Socialist Revolutionary Party.Template:Sfnm He became part of an informal leadership group alongside Lenin, Trotsky, and Sverdlov, and his importance within the Bolshevik ranks grew.Template:Sfn Stalin's office was near Lenin's in the Smolny Institute,Template:Sfnm and he and Trotsky had direct access to Lenin without an appointment.Template:Sfnm Stalin co-signed Lenin's decrees shutting down hostile newspapers,Template:Sfn and co-chaired the committee drafting a constitution for the newly-formed Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.Template:Sfn He supported Lenin's formation of the Cheka security service and the Red Terror, arguing that state violence was an effective tool for capitalist powers.Template:Sfn Unlike some Bolsheviks, Stalin never expressed concern about the Cheka's rapid expansion and the Red Terror.Template:Sfn
Having left his role as Pravda editor,Template:Sfn Stalin was appointed the People's Commissar for Nationalities.Template:Sfnm He appointed Nadezhda Alliluyeva as his secretary,Template:Sfnm and married her in early 1919.Template:Sfnm In November 1917, he signed the Decree on Nationality, granting ethnic minorities the right to secession and self-determination.Template:Sfn He travelled to Helsingfors to meet with the Finnish Social Democrats, and granted Finland's request for independence from Russia in December.Template:Sfnm Due to the threats posed by the First World War, in March 1918 the government relocated from Petrograd to the Moscow Kremlin.Template:Sfnm Stalin supported Lenin's desire to sign an armistice with the Central Powers;Template:Sfnm Stalin thought this necessary because he—unlike Lenin—was unconvinced that Europe was on the verge of proletarian revolution.Template:Sfnm The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed in March 1918,Template:Sfnm ceding vast territories and angering many; the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries withdrew from the coalition government.Template:Sfnm The Bolsheviks were renamed the Russian Communist Party.Template:Sfn
1918–1921: Military commandEdit
In May 1918, during the intensifying Russian Civil War, Sovnarkom sent Stalin to Tsaritsyn to take charge of food procurement in Southern Russia.Template:Sfnm Eager to prove himself as a commander,Template:Sfn he took control of regional military operations and befriended Kliment Voroshilov and Semyon Budyonny, who later formed the core of his military support base.Template:Sfnm Stalin sent large numbers of Red Army troops to battle the region's White armies, resulting in heavy losses and drawing Lenin's concern.Template:Sfnm In Tsaritsyn, Stalin commanded the local Cheka branch to execute suspected counter-revolutionaries, often without trial,Template:Sfnm and purged the military and food collection agencies of middle-class specialists, who were also executed.Template:Sfnm His use of state violence was at a greater scale than most Bolshevik leaders approved of,Template:Sfn for instance, he ordered several villages torched to ensure compliance with his food procurement program.Template:Sfn
In December 1918, Stalin was sent to Perm to lead an inquiry into how Alexander Kolchak's White forces had been able to decimate Red troops there.Template:Sfnm He returned to Moscow between January and March 1919,Template:Sfn before being assigned to the Western Front at Petrograd.Template:Sfnm When the Red Third Regiment defected, he ordered the public execution of captured defectors.Template:Sfn In September he returned to the Southern Front.Template:Sfn During the war, Stalin proved his worth to the Central Committee by displaying decisiveness and determination.Template:Sfn However, he also disregarded orders and repeatedly threatened to resign when affronted.Template:Sfn In November 1919, the government awarded him the Order of the Red Banner for his service.Template:Sfnm
The Bolsheviks won the main phase of the civil war by the end of 1919.Template:Sfn By that time, Sovnarkom had turned its attention to spreading proletarian revolution abroad, forming the Communist International in March 1919; Stalin attended its inaugural ceremony.Template:Sfnm Although Stalin did not share Lenin's belief that Europe's proletariat were on the verge of revolution, he acknowledged that Soviet Russia remained vulnerable.Template:Sfn In February 1920, he was appointed to head the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate (Rabkrin);Template:Sfn that same month he was also transferred to the Caucasian Front.Template:Sfn
The Polish–Soviet War broke out in early 1920, with the Poles invading Ukraine,Template:Sfnm and in May, Stalin was moved to the Southwest Front.Template:Sfnm Lenin believed that the Polish proletariat would rise up to support an invasion, but Stalin argued that nationalism would lead them to support their government's war effort.Template:Sfn Stalin lost the argument and accepted Lenin's decision.Template:Sfn On his front, Stalin became determined to conquer Lvov; in focusing on this goal, he disobeyed orders to transfer his troops to assist Mikhail Tukhachevsky's forces at the Battle of Warsaw in early August, which ended in a major defeat for the Red Army.Template:Sfnm Stalin then returned to Moscow,Template:Sfnm where Tukhachevsky blamed him for the loss.Template:Sfn Humiliated, he demanded demission from the military, which was granted on 1 September.Template:Sfnm At the 9th Party Congress in late September, Trotsky accused Stalin of "strategic mistakes"Template:Sfnm and claimed that he had sabotaged the campaign; Lenin joined in the criticism.Template:Sfnm Stalin felt disgraced and his antipathy toward Trotsky increased.Template:Sfn
1921–1924: Lenin's final yearsEdit
The Soviet government sought to bring neighbouring states under its domination; in February 1921 it invaded the Menshevik-governed Georgia,Template:Sfn and in April 1921, Stalin ordered the Red Army into Turkestan to reassert Soviet control.Template:Sfn As People's Commissar for Nationalities, Stalin believed that each ethnic group had the right to an "autonomous republic" within the Russian state in which it could oversee various regional affairs.Template:Sfnm In taking this view, some Marxists accused him of bending too much to bourgeois nationalism, while others accused him of remaining too Russo-centric.Template:Sfn In his diverse native Caucasus, however, Stalin opposed the idea of separate autonomous republics, arguing that these would oppress ethnic minorities within their territories; instead, he called for a Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic.Template:Sfnm The Georgian Communist Party opposed the idea, resulting in the Georgian affair.Template:Sfnm In mid-1921, Stalin returned to the South Caucasus, calling on Georgian communists to reject the chauvinistic nationalism which he argued had marginalised the Abkhazian, Ossetian, and Adjarian minorities.Template:Sfnm In March 1921, Nadezhda gave birth to another of Stalin's sons, Vasily.Template:Sfnm
After the civil war, workers' strikes and peasant uprisings broke out across Russia in opposition to Sovnarkom's food requisitioning project; in response, Lenin introduced market-oriented reforms in the New Economic Policy (NEP).Template:Sfnm There was also turmoil within the Communist Party, as Trotsky led a faction calling for abolition of trade unions; Lenin opposed this, and Stalin helped rally opposition to Trotsky's position.Template:Sfn At the 11th Party Congress in March and April 1922, Lenin nominated Stalin as the party's General Secretary, which was intended as a purely organisational role. Although concerns were expressed that adopting the new position would overstretch his workload and grant him too much power, Stalin was appointed to the post.Template:Sfnm
In May 1922, a massive stroke left Lenin partially paralysed.Template:Sfnm Residing at his Gorki dacha, his main connection to Sovnarkom was through Stalin.Template:Sfnm Despite their comradeship, Lenin disliked what he referred to as Stalin's "Asiatic" manner and told his sister Maria that Stalin was "not intelligent".Template:Sfnm The two men argued on the issue of foreign trade; Lenin believed that the Soviet state should have a monopoly on foreign trade, but Stalin supported Grigori Sokolnikov's view that doing so was impractical.Template:Sfnm Another disagreement came over the Georgian affair, with Lenin backing the Georgian Central Committee's desire for a Georgian Soviet Republic over Stalin's idea of a Transcaucasian one.Template:Sfnm They also disagreed on the nature of the Soviet state; Lenin called for establishment of a new federation named the "Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia",Template:Sfn while Stalin believed that this would encourage independence sentiment among non-Russians.Template:Sfnm Lenin accused Stalin of "Great Russian chauvinism", while Stalin accused Lenin of "national liberalism".Template:Sfnm A compromise was reached in which the federation would be named the "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" (USSR), whose formation was ratified in December 1922.Template:Sfn
Their differences also became personal; Lenin was angered when Stalin was rude to his wife Krupskaya during a telephone conversation.Template:Sfnm In the final years of his life, Krupskaya provided leading figures with Lenin's Testament, which criticised Stalin's rude manners and excessive power and suggested that he be removed as general secretary.Template:Sfnm Some historians have questioned whether Lenin wrote the document, suggesting that it was written by Krupskaya;Template:Sfn Stalin never publicly voiced concerns about its authenticity.Template:Sfn Most historians consider it an accurate reflection of Lenin's views.Template:Sfn
Consolidation of powerEdit
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1924–1928: Succeeding LeninEdit
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Upon Lenin's death in January 1924,Template:Sfnm Stalin took charge of the funeral and was a pallbearer.Template:Sfnm To bolster his image as a devoted Leninist amid his growing personality cult, Stalin gave nine lectures at Sverdlov University on the Foundations of Leninism, later published in book form.Template:Sfnm At the 13th Party Congress in May 1924, Lenin's Testament was read only to the leaders of the provincial delegations.Template:Sfnm Embarrassed by its contents, Stalin offered his resignation as General Secretary; this act of humility saved him, and he was retained in the post.Template:Sfnm
As General Secretary, Stalin had a free hand in making appointments to his own staff, and implanted loyalists throughout the party.Template:Sfn Favouring new members from proletarian backgrounds to "Old Bolsheviks", who tended to be middle-class university graduates,Template:Sfn he ensured that he had loyalists dispersed across the regions.Template:Sfn Stalin had much contact with young party functionaries,Template:Sfn and the desire for promotion led many to seek his favour.Template:Sfn Stalin also developed close relations with key figures in the secret police: Felix Dzerzhinsky, Genrikh Yagoda, and Vyacheslav Menzhinsky.Template:Sfn His wife gave birth to a daughter, Svetlana, in February 1926.Template:Sfnm
In the wake of Lenin's death, a power struggle emerged to become his successor: alongside Stalin was Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Nikolai Bukharin, Alexei Rykov, and Mikhail Tomsky.Template:Sfn Stalin saw Trotsky—whom he personally despisedTemplate:Sfn—as the main obstacle to his dominance,Template:Sfn and during Lenin's illness had formed an unofficial triumvirate (troika) with Kamenev and Zinoviev against him.Template:Sfnm Although Zinoviev was concerned about Stalin's growing power, he rallied behind him at the 13th Congress as a counterweight to Trotsky, who now led a faction known as the Left Opposition.Template:Sfn Trotsky's supporters believed that the NEP conceded too much to capitalism, and they called Stalin a "rightist" for his support of the policy.Template:Sfn Stalin built up a retinue of his supporters within the Central CommitteeTemplate:Sfn as the Left Opposition were marginalised.Template:Sfn
In late 1924, Stalin moved against Kamenev and Zinoviev, removing their supporters from key positions.Template:Sfnm In 1925, the two moved into open opposition to Stalin and BukharinTemplate:Sfn and launched an unsuccessful attack on their faction at the 14th Party Congress in December.Template:Sfnm Stalin accused Kamenev and Zinoviev of reintroducing factionalism, and thus instability.Template:Sfnm In mid-1926, Kamenev and Zinoviev joined with Trotsky to form the United Opposition against Stalin;Template:Sfnm in October the two agreed to stop factional activity under threat of expulsion, and later publicly recanted their views.Template:Sfnm The factionalist arguments continued, with Stalin threatening to resign in October and December 1926, and again in December 1927.Template:Sfnm In October 1927, Trotsky was removed from the Central Committee;Template:Sfn he was later exiled to Kazakhstan in 1928 and deported from the country in 1929.Template:Sfnm
Stalin was now the supreme leader of the party and state.Template:Sfn He entrusted the position of head of government to Vyacheslav Molotov; other important supporters on the Politburo were Voroshilov, Lazar Kaganovich, and Sergo Ordzhonikidze,Template:Sfnm with Stalin ensuring his allies ran state institutions.Template:Sfn His growing influence was reflected in naming of locations after him; in June 1924 the Ukrainian city of Yuzovka became Stalino,Template:Sfn and in April 1925, Tsaritsyn was renamed Stalingrad.Template:Sfnm In 1926, Stalin published On Questions of Leninism,Template:Sfn in which he argued for the concept of "socialism in one country", which was presented as an orthodox Leninist perspective despite clashing with established Bolshevik views that socialism could only be achieved globally through the process of world revolution.Template:Sfn In 1927, there was some argument in the party over Soviet policy regarding China. Stalin had called for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), led by Mao Zedong, to ally itself with Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang (KMT) nationalists, viewing a CCP-KMT alliance as the best bulwark against Japanese imperial expansionism. Instead, the KMT repressed the CCP and a civil war broke out between the two sides.Template:Sfnm
1928–1932: First five-year planEdit
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Economic policyEdit
The Soviet Union lagged far behind the industrial and agricultural development of the Western powers.Template:Sfn Stalin's government feared attack from capitalist countries,Template:Sfnm and many communists, including in Komsomol, OGPU, and the Red Army, were eager to be rid of the NEP and its market-oriented approach.Template:Sfnm They had concerns about those who profited from the policy: affluent peasants known as "kulaks" and small business owners, or "NEPmen".Template:Sfnm At this point, Stalin turned against the NEP, which put him on a course to the "left" even of Trotsky or Zinoviev.Template:Sfnm
In early 1928, Stalin travelled to Novosibirsk, where he alleged that kulaks were hoarding grain and ordered them be arrested and their grain confiscated, with Stalin bringing much of the grain back to Moscow with him in February.Template:Sfnm At his command, grain procurement squads surfaced across West Siberia and the Urals, with violence breaking out between the squads and the peasantry.Template:Sfnm Stalin announced that kulaks and the "middle peasants" must be coerced into releasing their harvest.Template:Sfn Bukharin and other Central Committee members were angered that they had not been consulted about the measure.Template:Sfnm In January 1930, the Politburo approved the "liquidation" of the kulak class, which was exiled to other parts of the country or concentration camps.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfnm By July 1930, over 320,000 households had been affected.Template:Sfn According to Dmitri Volkogonov, dekulakisation was "the first mass terror applied by Stalin in his own country."Template:Sfn
In 1929, the Politburo announced the mass collectivisation of agriculture,Template:Sfnm establishing both kolkhoz collective farms and sovkhoz state farms.Template:Sfn Although officially voluntary, many peasants joined the collectives out of fear they would face the fate of the kulaks.Template:Sfn By 1932, about 62% of households involved in agriculture were part of collectives, and by 1936 this had risen to 90%.Template:Sfn Many collectivised peasants resented the loss of their private farmland,Template:Sfn and productivity slumped.Template:Sfnm Famine broke out in many areas,Template:Sfnm with the Politburo frequently being forced to dispatch emergency food relief.Template:Sfn Armed peasant uprisings broke out in Ukraine, the North Caucasus, Southern Russia, and Central Asia, reaching their apex in March 1930; these were suppressed by the army.Template:Sfnm Stalin responded with an article insisting that collectivisation was voluntary and blaming violence on local officials.Template:Sfnm Although he and Stalin had been close for many years,Template:Sfn Bukharin expressed concerns and regarded them as a return to Lenin's old "war communism" policy. By mid-1928, he was unable to rally sufficient support in the party to oppose the reforms;Template:Sfnm in November 1929, Stalin removed him from the Politburo.Template:Sfnm
Officially, the Soviet Union had replaced the "irrationality" and "wastefulness" of a market economy with a planned economy organised along a long-term and scientific framework; in reality, Soviet economics were based on ad hoc commandments issued often to make short-term targets.Template:Sfn In 1928, the first five-year plan was launched by Stalin with a main focus on boosting Soviet heavy industry;Template:Sfn it was finished a year ahead of schedule, in 1932.Template:Sfn The country underwent a massive economic transformation:Template:Sfn new mines were opened, new cities like Magnitogorsk constructed, and work on the White Sea–Baltic Canal began.Template:Sfn Millions of peasants moved to the cities, and large debts were accrued purchasing foreign-made machinery.Template:Sfn
Many major construction projects, including the White Sea–Baltic Canal and the Moscow Metro, were constructed largely through forced labour.Template:Sfn The last elements of workers' control over industry were removed, with factory managers receiving privileges;Template:Sfn Stalin defended wage disparity by pointing to Marx's argument that it was necessary during the lower stages of socialism.Template:Sfn To promote intensification of labour, medals and awards as well as the Stakhanovite movement were introduced.Template:Sfn Stalin argued that socialism was being established in the USSR while capitalism was crumbling during the Great Depression.Template:Sfn His rhetoric reflected his utopian vision of the "new Soviet person" rising to unparallelled heights of human development.Template:Sfn
Cultural and foreign policyEdit
In 1928, Stalin declared that class war between the proletariat and their enemies would intensify as socialism developed.Template:Sfnm He warned of a "danger from the right", including from within the Communist Party.Template:Sfn The first major show trial in the USSR was the Shakhty Trial of 1928, in which middle-class "industrial specialists" were convicted of sabotage.Template:Sfnm From 1929 to 1930, show trials were held to intimidate opposition;Template:Sfn these included the Industrial Party Trial, Menshevik Trial, and Metro-Vickers Trial.Template:Sfn Aware that the ethnic Russian majority may have concerns about being ruled by a Georgian,Template:Sfn he promoted ethnic Russians throughout the state bureaucracy and made Russian compulsory in schools, albeit in tandem with local languages.Template:Sfn Nationalist sentiment was suppressed.Template:Sfn Conservative social policies were promoted to boost population growth; this included a focus on strong family units, re-criminalisation of homosexuality, restrictions on abortion and divorce, and abolition of the Zhenotdel women's department.Template:Sfn
Stalin desired a "cultural revolution",Template:Sfn entailing both the creation of a culture for the "masses" and the wider dissemination of previously elite culture.Template:Sfn He oversaw a proliferation of schools, newspapers, and libraries, as well as advancement of literacy and numeracy.Template:Sfnm Socialist realism was promoted throughout the arts,Template:Sfnm while Stalin wooed prominent writers, namely Maxim Gorky, Mikhail Sholokhov, and Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy.Template:Sfn He expressed patronage for scientists whose research fit within his preconceived interpretation of Marxism; for instance, he endorsed the research of agrobiologist Trofim Lysenko despite the fact that it was rejected by the majority of Lysenko's scientific peers as pseudo-scientific.Template:Sfnm The government's anti-religious campaign was re-intensified,Template:Sfn with increased funding given to the League of Militant Atheists.Template:Sfn Priests, imams, and Buddhist monks faced persecution.Template:Sfn Religious buildings were demolished, most notably Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, destroyed in 1931 to make way for the Palace of the Soviets.Template:Sfn Religion retained an influence over the population; in the 1937 census, 57% of respondents were willing to admit to being religious.Template:Sfn
Throughout the 1920s, Stalin placed a priority on foreign policy.Template:Sfn He personally met with a range of Western visitors, including George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells, both of whom were impressed with him.Template:Sfn Through the Communist International, Stalin's government exerted a strong influence over Marxist parties elsewhere;Template:Sfn he left the running of the organisation to Bukharin before his ousting.Template:Sfn At its 6th Congress in July 1928, Stalin informed delegates that the main threat to socialism came from non-Marxist socialists and social democrats, whom he called "social fascists";Template:Sfnm Stalin recognised that in many countries, these groups were Marxist–Leninists' main rivals for working-class support.Template:Sfn This focus on opposing rival leftists concerned Bukharin, who regarded the growth of fascism and the far right across Europe as a greater threat.Template:Sfn
In 1929, Stalin's son Yakov unsuccessfully attempted suicide, shooting himself in the chest and narrowly missing his heart; his failure earned the contempt of Stalin, who is reported to have brushed off the attempt by saying "He can't even shoot straight."<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>Template:Sfnm His relationship with Nadezhda was strained amid their arguments and her mental health problems.Template:Sfn In November 1932, after a group dinner in the Kremlin in which Stalin flirted with other women, Nadezhda shot herself in the heart.Template:Sfnm Publicly, the cause of death was given as appendicitis; Stalin also concealed the real cause of death from his children.Template:Sfnm Stalin's friends noted that he underwent a significant change following her suicide, becoming emotionally harder.Template:Sfn
1932–1939: Major crisesEdit
Famine of 1932–1933Edit
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Within the Soviet Union, civic disgruntlement against Stalin's government was widespread.Template:Sfn Social unrest in urban areas led Stalin to ease some economic policies in 1932.Template:Sfn In May 1932, he introduced kolkhoz markets where peasants could trade surplus produce.Template:Sfnm However, penal sanctions became harsher; a decree in August 1932 made the theft of a handful of grain a capital offence.Template:Sfn The second five-year plan reduced production quotas from the first, focusing more on improving living conditionsTemplate:Sfn through housing and consumer goods.Template:Sfn Emphasis on armament production increased after Adolf Hitler became German chancellor in 1933.Template:Sfn
The Soviet Union experienced a major famine which peaked in the winter of 1932–1933,Template:Sfnm with 5–7 million deaths.Template:Sfn The worst affected areas were Ukraine (where the famine was called the Holodomor), Southern Russia, Kazakhstan and the North Caucasus.Template:Sfn In the case of Ukraine, historians debate whether the famine was intentional, with the purpose of eliminating a potential independence movement;Template:Sfn no documents show Stalin explicitly ordered starvation.Template:Sfnm Poor weather led to bad harvests in 1931 and 1932,Template:Sfnm compounded by years of declining productivity.Template:Sfn Rapid industrialisation policies, neglect of crop rotation, and failure to build reserve grain stocks exacerbated the crisis.Template:Sfn Stalin blamed hostile elements and saboteurs among the peasants.Template:Sfnm The government provided limited food aid to famine-stricken areas, prioritising urban workers;Template:Sfnm for Stalin, Soviet industrialisation was more valuable than peasant lives.Template:Sfnm Grain exports declined heavily.Template:Sfn Stalin did not acknowledge his policies' role in the famine,Template:Sfn which was concealed from foreign observers.Template:Sfnm
Ideological and foreign affairsEdit
In 1936, Stalin oversaw the adoption of a new constitution with expansive democratic features; it was designed as propaganda, as all power rested in his hands.Template:Sfn He declared that "socialism, the first phase of communism, has been achieved".Template:Sfn In 1938, the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) was released;Template:Sfnm commonly known as the "Short Course", it became the central text of Stalinism.Template:Sfn Authorised Stalin biographies were also published,Template:Sfn though Stalin preferred to be viewed as the embodiment of the Communist Party, rather than have his life story explored.Template:Sfn
Seeking better international relations, in 1934 the Soviet Union joined the League of Nations, from which it had previously been excluded.Template:Sfn Stalin initiated confidential communications with Hitler in October 1933, shortly after the latter came to power.Template:Sfn Stalin admired Hitler, particularly his manoeuvres to remove rivals within the Nazi Party in the Night of the Long Knives.Template:Sfnm Stalin nevertheless recognised the threat posed by fascism and sought to establish better links with the liberal democracies of Western Europe;Template:Sfnm in May 1935, the Soviets signed treaties of mutual assistance with France and Czechoslovakia.Template:Sfn At the Communist International's 7th Congress in July–August 1935, the Soviet Union encouraged Marxist–Leninists to unite with other leftists as part of a popular front against fascism.Template:Sfnm In response, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact.Template:Sfnm
When the Spanish Civil War broke out in July 1936, the Soviets sent military aid to the Republican faction, including 648 aircraft and 407 tanks, along with 3,000 Soviet troops and 42,000 members of the International Brigades.Template:Sfnm Stalin took a personal involvement in the Spanish situation.Template:Sfn Germany and Italy backed the Nationalist faction, which was ultimately victorious in March 1939.Template:Sfn With the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in July 1937, the Soviet Union and China signed a non-aggression pact.Template:Sfn Stalin aided the Chinese as the KMT and the Communists suspended their civil war and formed his desired United Front against Japan.Template:Sfn
Great PurgeEdit
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Stalin's approach to state repression was often contradictory.Template:Sfn In May 1933, he released many convicted of minor offences, ordering the security services not to enact further mass arrests and deportations,Template:Sfn and in September 1934, he launched a commission to investigate false imprisonments. That same month, he called for the execution of workers at the Stalin Metallurgical Factory accused of spying for Japan.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn After Sergei Kirov was murdered in December 1934, Stalin became increasingly concerned about assassination threats,Template:Sfnm and state repression intensified.Template:Sfn Stalin issued a decree establishing NKVD troikas which could issue rapid and severe sentences without involving the courts.Template:Sfn In 1935, he ordered the NKVD to expel suspected counterrevolutionaries from urban areas;Template:Sfn over 11,000 were expelled from Leningrad alone in early 1935.Template:Sfn
In 1936, Nikolai Yezhov became head of the NKVD,Template:Sfn after which Stalin move to orchestrate the arrest and execution of his remaining opponents in the Communist Party in the Great Purge.Template:Sfn The first Moscow Trial in August 1936 saw Kamenev and Zinoviev executed.Template:Sfnm The second trial took place in January 1937,Template:Sfn and the third in March 1938, with Bukharin and Rykov executed.Template:Sfnm By late 1937, all remnants of collective leadership were gone from the Politburo, which was now effectively under Stalin's control.Template:Sfn There were mass expulsions from the party,Template:Sfn with Stalin also ordering foreign communist parties to purge anti-Stalinist elements.Template:Sfn These purges replaced most of the party's old guard with younger officials loyal to Stalin.Template:Sfn Party functionaries readily carried out their commands and sought to ingratiate themselves with Stalin, to avoid becoming victims.Template:Sfn Such functionaries often carried out more arrests and executions than their quotas set by government.Template:Sfn
Repressions intensified further from December 1936 until November 1938.Template:Sfn In May 1937, Stalin ordered the arrest of much of the army's high command, and mass arrests in the military followed.Template:Sfnm By late 1937, purges extended beyond the party to the wider population.Template:Sfn In July 1937, the Politburo ordered a purge of "anti-Soviet elements", targeting anti-Stalin Bolsheviks, former Mensheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries, priests, ex–White Army soldiers, and common criminals.Template:Sfnm Stalin initiated "national operations", the ethnic cleansing of non-Soviet ethnic groups — among them Poles, Germans, Latvians, Finns, Greeks, Koreans, and Chinese — through internal or external exile.Template:Sfnm More than 1.6 million people were arrested, 700,000 shot, and an unknown number died under torture.Template:Sfn The NKVD also assassinated defectors and opponents abroad;Template:Sfn in August 1940, Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico, eliminating Stalin's last major opponent.Template:Sfnm
Stalin initiated all key decisions during the purge, and personally directed many operations.Template:Sfn Historians debate his motives,Template:Sfn noting his personal writings from the period were "unusually convoluted and incoherent", filled with claims about enemies encircling him.Template:Sfn He feared a domestic fifth column in the event of war with Japan and Germany,Template:Sfn particularly after right-wing forces overthrew the leftist Spanish government.Template:Sfnm The Great Purge ended when Yezhov was replaced by Lavrentiy Beria,Template:Sfn a fellow Georgian completely loyal to Stalin.Template:Sfn Yezhov himself was arrested in April 1939 and executed in 1940.Template:Sfnm The purge damaged the Soviet Union's reputation abroad, particularly among leftist sympathisers.Template:Sfn As it wound down, Stalin sought to deflect his responsibility,Template:Sfn blaming its "excesses" and "violations of law" on Yezhov.Template:Sfn
World War IIEdit
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1939–1941: Pact with Nazi GermanyEdit
As a Marxist–Leninist, Stalin considered conflict between competing capitalist powers inevitable; after Nazi Germany annexed Austria and then part of Czechoslovakia in 1938, he recognised a major war was looming.Template:Sfn He sought to maintain Soviet neutrality, hoping that a German war against France and the United Kingdom would lead to Soviet dominance in Europe.Template:Sfnm The Soviets faced a threat from the east, with Soviet troops clashing with the expansionist Japanese in the latter part of the 1930s, culminating in the Battles of Khalkhin Gol in 1939.Template:Sfnm Stalin initiated a military build-up, with the Red Army more than doubling between January 1939 and June 1941, although in haste many of its officers were poorly trained.Template:Sfn Between 1940 and 1941 Stalin purged the military, leaving it with a severe shortage of trained officers when war eventually broke out.Template:Sfn
As Britain and France seemed unwilling to commit to an alliance with the Soviet Union, Stalin saw a better deal with the Germans.Template:Sfn On 3 May 1939, he replaced his Western-oriented foreign minister Maxim Litvinov with Vyacheslav Molotov.Template:Sfn Germany began negotiations with the Soviets, proposing that Eastern Europe be divided between the two powers.Template:Sfnm In August 1939, the Soviet Union signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Germany, a non-aggression pact negotiated by Molotov and German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop with a secret protocol dividing Eastern Europe.Template:Sfnm On 1 September, Germany invaded Poland, leading the UK and France to declare war on Germany.Template:Sfnm On 17 September, the Red Army entered eastern Poland, officially to restore order.Template:Sfnm On 28 September, Germany and the Soviet Union exchanged some of their conquered territories,Template:Sfnm and a German–Soviet Frontier Treaty was signed shortly after in Stalin's presence.Template:Sfn The two states continued trading, undermining the British blockade of Germany.Template:Sfnm
The Soviets further demanded parts of eastern Finland, but the Finnish government refused. The Soviets invaded Finland in November 1939, starting the Winter War; despite numerical inferiority, the Finns kept the Red Army at bay.Template:Sfnm International opinion backed Finland, with the Soviet Union being expelled from the League of Nations.Template:Sfnm Embarrassed by their inability to defeat the Finns, the Soviets signed an interim peace treaty, in which they received territorial concessions.Template:Sfnm In June 1940, the Red Army occupied the Baltic states, which were forcibly merged into the Soviet Union in August;Template:Sfnm they also invaded and annexed Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, parts of Romania.Template:Sfnm The Soviets sought to forestall dissent in the new territories with mass repressions.Template:Sfn A noted instance was the Katyn massacre of April and May 1940, in which around 22,000 members of the Polish armed forces, police, and intelligentsia were executed by the NKVD.Template:Sfnm
The speed of the German victory over and occupation of France in mid-1940 took Stalin by surprise.Template:Sfnm He seemingly focused on appeasement in order to delay conflict.Template:Sfnm After the Tripartite Pact was signed by the Axis Powers of Germany, Japan, and Italy in October 1940, Stalin proposed that the USSR also join the Axis alliance.Template:Sfnm To demonstrate peaceful intentions, in April 1941 the Soviets signed a neutrality pact with Japan.Template:Sfnm Stalin, who had been the country's de facto head of government for almost 15 years, concluded that relations with Germany had deteriorated to such an extent that he needed to become de jure head of government as well, and on 6 May, replaced Molotov as Premier of the Soviet Union.Template:Sfnm
1941–1942: German invasionEdit
In June 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union, initiating the war on the Eastern Front.Template:Sfnm Despite intelligence agencies repeatedly warning him of Germany's intentions, Stalin was taken by surprise.Template:Sfnm He formed a State Defence Committee, which he headed as Supreme Commander,Template:Sfnm as well as a military Supreme Command (Stavka),Template:Sfn with Georgy Zhukov as its chief of staff.Template:Sfn The German tactic of blitzkrieg was initially highly effective; the Soviet air force in the western borderlands was destroyed within two days.Template:Sfnm The German Wehrmacht pushed deep into Soviet territory;Template:Sfnm soon, Ukraine, Byelorussia, and the Baltic states were under German occupation, and Leningrad was under siege;Template:Sfn and Soviet refugees were flooding into Moscow and surrounding cities.Template:Sfn By July, Germany's Luftwaffe was bombing Moscow,Template:Sfn and by October the Wehrmacht was amassing for a full assault on the capital. Plans were made for the Soviet government to evacuate to Kuibyshev, although Stalin decided to remain in Moscow, believing his flight would damage troop morale.Template:Sfnm The German advance on Moscow was halted after two months of battle in increasingly harsh weather conditions.Template:Sfn
Going against the advice of Zhukov and other generals, Stalin emphasised attack over defence.Template:Sfnm In June 1941, he ordered a scorched earth policy of destroying infrastructure and food supplies before the Germans could seize them,Template:Sfnm also commanding the NKVD to kill around 100,000 political prisoners in areas the Wehrmacht approached.Template:Sfn He purged the military command; several high-ranking figures were demoted or reassigned and others were arrested and executed.Template:Sfnm With Order No. 270, Stalin commanded soldiers risking capture to fight to the death, describing the captured as traitors;Template:Sfnm among those taken as a prisoner of war was Stalin's son Yakov, who died in German custody.Template:Sfnm Stalin issued Order No. 227 in July 1942, which directed that those retreating unauthorised would be placed in "penal battalions" and used as cannon fodder.Template:Sfnm Both the German and Soviet armies disregarded the laws of war in the Geneva Conventions;Template:Sfn the Soviets heavily publicised Nazi massacres of communists, Jews, and Romani.Template:Sfn In April 1942, Stalin sponsored the formation of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) to garner global Jewish support for the war effort.Template:Sfn
The Soviets allied with the UK and U.S.;Template:Sfn although the U.S. joined the war against Germany in 1941, little direct American assistance reached the Soviets until late 1942.Template:Sfn Responding to the invasion, the Soviets expanded their industry in central Russia, focusing almost entirely on military production.Template:Sfn They achieved high levels of productivity, outstripping Germany.Template:Sfn During the war, Stalin was more tolerant of the Russian Orthodox Church and allowed it to resume some of its activities.Template:Sfnm He also permitted a wider range of cultural expression, notably permitting formerly suppressed writers and artists like Anna Akhmatova and Dmitri Shostakovich to disperse their work more widely.Template:Sfn "The Internationale" was dropped as the country's national anthem, to be replaced with a more patriotic song.Template:Sfn The government increasingly promoted Pan-Slavist sentiment,Template:Sfn while encouraging increased criticism of cosmopolitanism, particularly "rootless cosmopolitanism", an approach with particular repercussions for Soviet Jews.Template:Sfn The Communist International was dissolved in 1943,Template:Sfnm and Stalin began encouraging foreign Marxist–Leninist parties to emphasise nationalism over internationalism in order to broaden their domestic appeal.Template:Sfn
In April 1942, Stalin overrode Stavka by ordering the Soviets' first serious counter-attack, an attempt to seize German-held Kharkov in eastern Ukraine. This attack proved unsuccessful.Template:Sfnm That year, Hitler shifted his primary goal from an overall victory on the Eastern Front to the goal of securing the oil fields in the southern Soviet Union crucial to a long-term German war effort.Template:Sfn While Red Army generals saw evidence that Hitler would shift efforts south, Stalin considered this to be a flanking move in a renewed effort to take Moscow.Template:Sfn In June 1942, the German Army began a major offensive in Southern Russia, threatening Stalingrad; Stalin ordered the Red Army to hold the city at all costs,Template:Sfn resulting in the protracted Battle of Stalingrad, which became the bloodiest and fiercest battle of the entire war.Template:Sfn In February 1943, the German forces attacking Stalingrad surrendered.Template:Sfnm The Soviet victory there marked a major turning point in the war;Template:Sfn in commemoration, Stalin declared himself Marshal of the Soviet Union in March.Template:Sfnm
1942–1945: Soviet counter-attackEdit
By November 1942, the Soviets had begun to repulse the German southern campaign and, although there were 2.5 million Soviet casualties in that effort, it permitted the Soviets to take the offensive for most of the rest of the war on the Eastern Front.Template:Sfn In summer 1943, Germany attempted an encirclement attack at Kursk, which was successfully repulsed by the Soviets.Template:Sfnm By the end of the year, the Soviets occupied half of the territory taken by the Germans to that point.Template:Sfn Soviet military industrial output also had increased substantially from late 1941 to early 1943 after Stalin had moved factories well to the east of the front, safe from invasion and aerial assault.Template:Sfn
In Allied countries, Stalin was increasingly depicted in a positive light over the course of the war.Template:Sfn In 1941, the London Philharmonic Orchestra performed a concert to celebrate his birthday,Template:Sfn and in 1942, Time magazine named him "Man of the Year".Template:Sfn When Stalin learnt that people in Western countries affectionately called him "Uncle Joe" he was initially offended, regarding it as undignified.Template:Sfnm There remained mutual suspicions between Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, together known as the "Big Three".Template:Sfn Churchill flew to Moscow to visit Stalin in August 1942 and again in October 1944.Template:Sfnm Stalin scarcely left Moscow during the war,Template:Sfn frustrating Roosevelt and Churchill with his reluctance to meet them.Template:Sfn
In November 1943, Stalin met with Churchill and Roosevelt in Tehran, a location of Stalin's choosing.Template:Sfnm There, Stalin and Roosevelt got on well, with both desiring the post-war dismantling of the British Empire.Template:Sfn At Tehran, the trio agreed that to prevent Germany rising to military prowess yet again, the German state should be broken up.Template:Sfn Roosevelt and Churchill also agreed to Stalin's demand that the German city of Königsberg be declared Soviet territory.Template:Sfn Stalin was impatient for the UK and U.S. to open up a Western Front to take the pressure off the East; they eventually did so in mid-1944.Template:Sfnm Stalin insisted that, after the war, the Soviet Union should incorporate the portions of Poland it had occupied in 1939, which Churchill opposed.Template:Sfn Discussing the fate of the Balkans, later in 1944 Churchill agreed to Stalin's suggestion that after the war, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and Yugoslavia would come under the Soviet sphere of influence while Greece would come under that of the Western powers.Template:Sfnm
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In 1944, the Soviet Union made significant advances across Eastern Europe toward Germany,Template:Sfn including Operation Bagration, a massive offensive in the Byelorussian SSR against the German Army Group Centre.Template:Sfnm In 1944, the German armies were pushed out of the Baltic states, which were then re-annexed into the Soviet Union.Template:Sfn As the Red Army reconquered the Caucasus and Crimea, various ethnic groups living in the region—the Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingushi, Karachai, Balkars, and Crimean Tatars—were accused of having collaborated with the Germans. Using the idea of collective responsibility as a basis, Stalin's government abolished their autonomous republics and between late 1943 and 1944 deported the majority of their populations to Central Asia and Siberia.Template:Sfnm Over one million people were deported as a result of the policy, with high rates of mortality.Template:Sfn
In February 1945, the three leaders met at the Yalta Conference.Template:Sfnm Roosevelt and Churchill conceded to Stalin's demand that Germany pay the Soviet Union 20 billion dollars in reparations, and that his country be permitted to annex Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands in exchange for entering the war against Japan.Template:Sfn An agreement was also made that a post-war Polish government should be a coalition consisting of both communist and conservative elements.Template:Sfnm Privately, Stalin sought to ensure that Poland would come fully under Soviet influence.Template:Sfnm The Red Army withheld assistance to Polish resistance fighters battling the Germans in the Warsaw Uprising, with Stalin believing that any victorious Polish militants could interfere with his future aspirations to dominate Poland.Template:Sfnm Stalin placed great emphasis on capturing Berlin before the Western Allies, believing that this would enable him to bring more of Europe under long-term Soviet control. Churchill, concerned by this, unsuccessfully tried to convince the U.S. that they should pursue the same goal.Template:Sfn
1945: VictoryEdit
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In April 1945, the Red Army seized Berlin, Hitler killed himself, and Germany surrendered in May.Template:Sfnm Stalin had wanted Hitler captured alive; he had his remains brought to Moscow in order to prevent them becoming a relic for Nazi sympathisers.Template:Sfn Many Soviet soldiers engaged in looting, pillaging, and rape, both in Germany and parts of Eastern Europe.Template:Sfnm Stalin refused to punish the offenders.Template:Sfn With Germany defeated, Stalin switched focus to the war with Japan, transferring half a million troops to the Far East.Template:Sfn Stalin was pressed by his allies to enter the war and wanted to cement the Soviet Union's strategic position in Asia.Template:Sfnm On 8 August, in between the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet army invaded Japanese-occupied Manchuria and northern Korea, defeating the Kwantung Army.Template:Sfnm These events led to the Japanese surrender and the war's end.Template:Sfnm The U.S. rebuffed Stalin's desire for the Red Army to take a role in the Allied occupation of Japan.Template:Sfnm
At the Potsdam Conference in July–August 1945, Stalin repeated previous promises that he would refrain from a "Sovietisation" of Eastern Europe.Template:Sfn Stalin pushed for reparations from Germany without regard to the base minimum supply for German citizens' survival, which worried Harry Truman and Churchill, who thought that Germany would become a financial burden for the Western powers.Template:Sfn Stalin also pushed for "war booty", which would permit the Soviet Union to directly seize property from conquered nations without quantitative or qualitative limitation, and a clause was added permitting this to occur with some limitations.Template:Sfn Germany was divided into four zones: Soviet, U.S., British, and French, with Berlin—located in the Soviet area—also divided thusly.Template:Sfn
Post-war eraEdit
1945–1947: Post-war reconstructionEdit
After the war, Stalin was at the apex of his career.Template:Sfn Within the Soviet Union he was widely regarded as the embodiment of victory and patriotism,Template:Sfn and his armies controlled Central and Eastern Europe up to the River Elbe.Template:Sfn In June 1945, Stalin adopted the title of GeneralissimoTemplate:Sfnm and stood atop Lenin's Mausoleum to watch a celebratory parade led by Zhukov through Red Square.Template:Sfn At a banquet held for army commanders, he described the Russian people as "the outstanding nation" and "leading force" within the Soviet Union, the first time that he had unequivocally endorsed Russians over the other Soviet nationalities.Template:Sfn In 1946, the state published Stalin's Collected Works.Template:Sfn In 1947, it brought out a second edition of his official biography, which glorified him to a greater extent than its predecessor.Template:Sfn He was quoted in Pravda on a daily basis and pictures of him remained pervasive on the walls of workplaces and homes.Template:Sfn
Despite his strengthened international position, Stalin was cautious about internal dissent and desire for change among the population.Template:Sfnm He was also concerned about his returning armies, who had been exposed to a wide range of consumer goods in Germany, much of which they had looted and brought back with them. In this he recalled the 1825 Decembrist Revolt by Russian soldiers returning from having defeated France in the Napoleonic Wars.Template:Sfn He ensured that returning Soviet prisoners of war went through "filtration" camps as they arrived in the Soviet Union, in which 2,775,700 were interrogated to determine if they were traitors. About half were then imprisoned in labour camps.Template:Sfnm In the Baltic states, where there was much opposition to Soviet rule, dekulakisation and de-clericalisation programmes were initiated, resulting in 142,000 deportations between 1945 and 1949.Template:Sfn The Gulag system of forced labour camps was expanded further. By January 1953, three percent of the Soviet population was imprisoned or in internal exile, with 2.8 million in "special settlements" in isolated areas and another 2.5 million in camps, penal colonies, and prisons.Template:Sfn
The NKVD were ordered to catalogue the scale of destruction during the war.Template:Sfn It was established that 1,710 Soviet towns and 70,000 villages had been destroyed.Template:Sfn The NKVD recorded that between 26 and 27 million Soviet citizens had been killed, with millions more being wounded, malnourished, or orphaned.Template:Sfnm In the war's aftermath, some of Stalin's associates suggested modifications to government policy.Template:Sfn Post-war Soviet society was more tolerant than its pre-war phase in various respects. Stalin allowed the Russian Orthodox Church to retain the churches it had opened during the war,Template:Sfn and academia and the arts were also allowed greater freedom.Template:Sfn Recognising the need for drastic steps to be taken to combat inflation and promote economic recovery, in December 1947 Stalin's government devalued the rouble and abolished the food rationing system.Template:Sfnm Capital punishment was abolished in 1947 but re-instituted in 1950.Template:Sfn Stalin's health deteriorated,Template:Sfnm and he grew increasingly concerned that senior figures might try to oust him.Template:Sfnm He demoted Molotov,Template:Sfnm and increasingly favoured Beria and Malenkov for key positions.Template:Sfn In the Leningrad affair, the city's leadership was purged amid accusations of treachery; executions of many of the accused took place in 1950.Template:Sfnm
In the post-war period there were often food shortages in Soviet cities,Template:Sfn and the USSR experienced a major famine from 1946 to 1947.Template:Sfnm Sparked by a drought and ensuing bad harvest in 1946, it was exacerbated by government policy towards food procurement, including the state's decision to build up stocks and export food rather than distributing it to famine-hit areas.Template:Sfn Estimates indicate that between one million and 1.5 million people died from malnutrition or disease as a result.Template:Sfnm While agricultural production stagnated, Stalin focused on a series of major infrastructure projects, including the construction of hydroelectric plants, canals, and railway lines running to the polar north.Template:Sfn Many of these were constructed through prison labour.Template:Sfn
1947–1950: Cold War policyEdit
In the aftermath of the war, the British Empire declined, leaving the U.S. and USSR as the dominant world powers.Template:Sfn Tensions among these former Allies grew,Template:Sfn resulting in the Cold War.Template:Sfn Although Stalin publicly described the British and U.S. governments as aggressive, he thought it unlikely that a war with them would be imminent, believing that several decades of peace was likely.Template:Sfn He nevertheless secretly intensified Soviet research into nuclear weaponry, intent on creating an atom bomb.Template:Sfn Still, Stalin foresaw the undesirability of a nuclear conflict, stating that "atomic weapons can hardly be used without spelling the end of the world."Template:Sfn He personally took a keen interest in the development of the weapon.Template:Sfn In August 1949, the bomb was successfully tested in the deserts outside Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan.Template:Sfnm Stalin also initiated a new military build-up; the Soviet army was expanded from 2.9 million soldiers, as it stood in 1949, to 5.8 million by 1953.Template:Sfn
The U.S. began pushing its interests on every continent, acquiring air force bases in Africa and Asia and ensuring pro-U.S. regimes took power across Latin America.Template:Sfn It launched the Marshall Plan in June 1947, with which it sought to undermine Soviet hegemony throughout Eastern Europe. The U.S. offered financial assistance to countries on the condition that they opened their markets to trade, aware that the Soviets would never agree.Template:Sfnm The Allies demanded that Stalin withdraw the Red Army from northern Iran. He initially refused, leading to an international crisis in 1946, but relented one year later.Template:Sfn Stalin also tried to maximise Soviet influence on the world stage, unsuccessfully pushing for Libya—recently liberated from Italian occupation—to become a Soviet protectorate.<ref name="SergeiMazovTheSovietUnionTheItalianColoniesColdWarHistory2006">Template:Cite journal</ref>Template:Sfn He sent Molotov as his representative to San Francisco to take part in negotiations to form the United Nations, insisting that the Soviets have a place on its Security Council.Template:Sfn In April 1949, the Western powers established the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), an anti-Soviet military alliance led by the U.S.Template:Sfnm In the West, Stalin was increasingly portrayed as the "most evil dictator alive" and compared to Hitler.Template:Sfn
In 1948, Stalin edited and rewrote sections of Falsifiers of History, published as a series of Pravda articles in February 1948 and then in book form. Written in response to public revelations of the 1939 Soviet alliance with Germany, it focused on blaming the Western powers for the war.Template:Sfn He also erroneously claimed that the initial German advance in the early part of the war, during Operation Barbarossa, was not a result of Soviet military weakness, but rather a deliberate Soviet strategic retreat.Template:Sfn In 1949, celebrations took place to mark Stalin's 70th birthday (although he actually was turning 71 at the time) at which Stalin attended an event at the Bolshoi Theatre alongside Marxist–Leninist leaders from across Europe and Asia.Template:Sfnm
Eastern BlocEdit
After the war, Stalin sought to retain Soviet dominance across Eastern Europe while expanding its influence in Asia.Template:Sfn Cautiously regarding the responses from the Western Allies, Stalin avoided immediately installing Communist Party governments in Eastern Europe, instead initially ensuring that Marxist-Leninists were placed in coalition ministries.Template:Sfn In contrast to his approach to the Baltic states, he rejected the proposal of merging the new communist states into the Soviet Union, rather recognising them as independent nation-states.Template:Sfn He was faced with the problem that there were few Marxists left in Eastern Europe, with most having been killed by the Nazis.Template:Sfn He demanded that war reparations be paid by Germany and its Axis allies Hungary, Romania, and the Slovak Republic.Template:Sfn Aware that the countries of Eastern Europe had been pushed to socialism through invasion rather than revolution, Stalin called them "people's democracies" instead of "dictatorships of the proletariat".Template:Sfn
Churchill observed that an "Iron Curtain" had been drawn across Europe, separating the east from the west.Template:Sfnm In September 1947, a meeting of East European communist leaders established Cominform to coordinate the Communist Parties across Eastern Europe and also in France and Italy.Template:Sfnm Stalin did not personally attend the meeting, sending Andrei Zhdanov in his place.Template:Sfn Various East European communists also visited Stalin in Moscow.Template:Sfn There, he offered advice on their ideas; for instance, he cautioned against the Yugoslav idea for a Balkan Federation incorporating Bulgaria and Albania.Template:Sfn Stalin had a particularly strained relationship with Yugoslavian leader Josip Broz Tito due to the latter's continued calls for a Balkan federation and for Soviet aid for the communist forces in the ongoing Greek Civil War.Template:Sfnm In March 1948, Stalin launched an anti-Tito campaign, accusing the Yugoslav communists of adventurism and deviating from Marxist–Leninist doctrine.Template:Sfn At the second Cominform conference, held in Bucharest in June 1948, East European communist leaders all denounced Tito's government, accusing them of being fascists and agents of Western capitalism.Template:Sfn Stalin ordered several assassination attempts on Tito's life and even contemplated an invasion of Yugoslavia itself.Template:Sfn
Stalin suggested that a unified, but demilitarised, German state be established, hoping that it would either come under Soviet influence or remain neutral.Template:Sfn When the U.S. and UK opposed this, Stalin sought to force their hand by blockading Berlin in June 1948.Template:Sfnm He gambled that the Western powers would not risk war, but they airlifted supplies into West Berlin until May 1949, when Stalin relented and ended the blockade.Template:Sfnm In September 1949 the Western powers transformed their zones into an independent Federal Republic of Germany; in response the Soviets formed theirs into the German Democratic Republic in October.Template:Sfn In accordance with earlier agreements, the Western powers expected Poland to become an independent state with free democratic elections.Template:Sfn In Poland, the Soviets merged various socialist parties into the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR), and vote rigging was used to ensure that the PZPR secured office.Template:Sfn The 1947 Hungarian elections were also rigged by Stalin, with the Hungarian Working People's Party taking control.Template:Sfn In Czechoslovakia, where the communists did have a level of popular support, they were elected the largest party in 1946.Template:Sfn Monarchy was abolished in Bulgaria and Romania.Template:Sfn Across Eastern Europe, the Soviet model was enforced, with a termination of political pluralism, agricultural collectivisation, and investment in heavy industry.Template:Sfn It was aimed at establishing economic autarky within the Eastern Bloc.Template:Sfn
AsiaEdit
In October 1949, Chinese Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong took power in China and proclaimed the People's Republic of China.Template:Sfnm Marxist governments now controlled a third of the world's land mass.Template:Sfn Privately, Stalin revealed that he had underestimated the Chinese Communists and their ability to win the civil war, instead encouraging them to make another peace with the KMT.Template:Sfn In December 1949, Mao visited Stalin. Initially Stalin refused to repeal the Sino-Soviet Treaty of 1945, which significantly benefited the Soviet Union over China, although in January 1950 he relented and agreed to sign a new treaty.Template:Sfnm Stalin was concerned that Mao might follow Tito's example by pursuing a course independent of Soviet influence, and made it known that if displeased he would withdraw assistance; the Chinese desperately needed said assistance after decades of civil war.Template:Sfnm
At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union and the United States divided up the Korean Peninsula, formerly a Japanese colonial possession, along the 38th parallel, setting up a communist government in the north and a pro-Western, anti-communist government in the south.Template:Sfnm North Korean leader Kim Il Sung visited Stalin in March 1949 and again in March 1950; he wanted to invade the south, and although Stalin was initially reluctant to provide support, he eventually agreed by May 1950.Template:Sfnm The North Korean Army launched the Korean War by invading South Korea in June 1950, making swift gains and capturing Seoul.Template:Sfn Both Stalin and Mao believed that a swift victory would ensue.Template:Sfn The U.S. went to the UN Security Council—which the Soviets were boycotting over its refusal to recognise Mao's government—and secured international military support for the South Koreans. U.S. led forces pushed the North Koreans back.Template:Sfnm Stalin wanted to avoid direct Soviet conflict with the U.S., and convinced the Chinese to enter the war to aid the North in October 1950.Template:Sfnm
The Soviet Union was one of the first nations to extend diplomatic recognition to the newly created state of Israel in 1948, in hopes of obtaining an ally in the Middle East.Template:Sfn When the Israeli ambassador Golda Meir arrived in the USSR, Stalin was angered by the Jewish crowds who gathered to greet her.Template:Sfn He was further angered by Israel's growing alliance with the U.S.Template:Sfn After Stalin fell out with Israel, he launched an anti-Jewish campaign within the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc.Template:Sfn In November 1948, he abolished the JAC,Template:Sfnm and show trials took place for some of its members.Template:Sfnm The Soviet press engaged in vituperative attacks on Zionism, Jewish culture, and "rootless cosmopolitanism",Template:Sfnm with growing levels of antisemitism being expressed across Soviet society.Template:Sfn Stalin's increasing tolerance of antisemitism may have stemmed from his increasing Russian nationalism or from the recognition that antisemitism had proved a useful tool for Hitler;Template:Sfn he may have increasingly viewed the Jewish people as a "counter-revolutionary" nation.Template:Sfn There were rumours that Stalin was planning on deporting all Soviet Jews to the Jewish Autonomous Region in Birobidzhan in Siberia.Template:Sfnm
1950–1953: Final yearsEdit
In his later years, Stalin was in poor health.Template:Sfn He took increasingly long holidays; in 1950 and again in 1951 he spent almost five months on holiday at his Abkhazian dacha.Template:Sfnm Stalin nevertheless mistrusted his doctors; in January 1952 he had one imprisoned after they suggested that he should retire to improve his health.Template:Sfn In September 1952, several Kremlin doctors were arrested for allegedly plotting to kill senior politicians in what came to be known as the doctors' plot; the majority of the accused were Jewish.Template:Sfnm Stalin ordered that the doctors be tortured to ensure confessions.Template:Sfnm In November, the Slánský trial took place in Czechoslovakia, in which 13 senior Communist Party figures, 11 of them Jewish, were accused and convicted of being part of a vast Zionist-American conspiracy to subvert the Eastern Bloc.Template:Sfnm The same month, a much publicised trial of accused Jewish industrial wreckers took place in Ukraine.Template:Sfn In 1951, Stalin initiated the Mingrelian affair, a purge of the Georgian Communist Party which resulted in over 11,000 deportations.Template:Sfn
From 1946 until his death, Stalin only gave three public speeches, two of which lasted only a few minutes.Template:Sfn The amount of written material that he produced also declined.Template:Sfn In 1950, Stalin issued the article "Marxism and Problems of Linguistics", which reflected his interest in questions of Russian nationhood.Template:Sfn In 1952, Stalin's last book, Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, was published. It sought to provide a guide to leading the country after his death.Template:Sfnm In October 1952, he gave an hour and a half speech at the Central Committee plenum.Template:Sfn There, he emphasised what he regarded as necessary leadership qualities, and highlighted the weaknesses of potential successors, notably Molotov and Mikoyan.Template:Sfnm In 1952, he eliminated the Politburo and replaced it with a larger version he named the Presidium.Template:Sfn
Death, funeral and aftermathEdit
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On 1 March 1953, Stalin's staff found him semi-conscious on the bedroom floor of his Kuntsevo Dacha.Template:Sfnm He was moved onto a couch and remained there for three days,Template:Sfnm during which he was hand-fed using a spoon and given various medicines and injections.Template:Sfn Stalin's condition continued to deteriorate, and he died on 5 March.Template:Sfnm An autopsy revealed that he had died of a cerebral haemorrhage, and that his cerebral arteries had been severely damaged by atherosclerosis.Template:Sfn Stalin's death was announced on 6 March;Template:Sfn his body was embalmed,Template:Sfnm and then displayed in Moscow's House of Unions for three days.Template:Sfn The crowds coming to view the body were so large and disorganised that many people were killed in a crowd crush.Template:Sfnm At the funeral on 9 March, attended by hundreds of thousands, Stalin was laid to rest in Lenin's Mausoleum in Red Square.Template:Sfnm
Stalin left neither a designated successor nor a framework within which a peaceful transfer of power could take place.Template:Sfn The Central Committee met on the day of his death, after which Malenkov, Beria, and Khrushchev emerged as the party's dominant figures.Template:Sfn The system of collective leadership was restored, and measures introduced to prevent any one member from attaining autocratic domination.Template:Sfn The collective leadership included Georgy Malenkov, Lavrentiy Beria, Vyacheslav Molotov, Kliment Voroshilov, Nikita Khrushchev, Nikolai Bulganin, Lazar Kaganovich and Anastas Mikoyan.Template:Sfn Reforms to the Soviet system were immediately implemented.Template:Sfn Economic reform scaled back mass construction projects, placed a new emphasis on house building, and eased the levels of taxation on the peasantry to stimulate production.Template:Sfn The new leaders sought rapprochement with Yugoslavia and a less hostile relationship with the U.S.,Template:Sfn and they pursued a negotiated end to the Korean War in July 1953.Template:Sfn<ref name="cohen13">Template:Cite book</ref> The imprisoned doctors were released and the antisemitic purges ceased.Template:Sfnm A mass amnesty for certain convicts was issued, halving the country's inmate population, and the state security and Gulag systems were reformed.Template:Sfn
Political ideologyEdit
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Stalin claimed to have embraced Marxism at the age of 15,Template:Sfn and it served as the guiding philosophy throughout his adult life;Template:Sfn according to Kotkin, Stalin held "zealous Marxist convictions",Template:Sfn while Montefiore suggested that Marxism held a "quasi-religious" value for Stalin.Template:Sfn Although he never became a Georgian nationalist,Template:Sfn during his early life elements from Georgian nationalist thought blended with Marxism in his outlook.Template:Sfn Stalin believed in the need to adapt Marxism to changing circumstances; in 1917, he declared that "there is dogmatic Marxism and there is creative Marxism. I stand on the ground of the latter".Template:Sfnm According to scholar Robert Service, Stalin's "few innovations in ideology were crude, dubious developments of Marxism".Template:Sfn
Stalin believed in an inevitable "class war" between the world's proletariat and bourgeoisieTemplate:Sfnm in which the working classes would prove victorious and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat,Template:Sfn regarding the Soviet Union as an example of such a state.Template:Sfn He also believed that this proletarian state would need to introduce repressive measures against foreign and domestic "enemies" to ensure the full crushing of the propertied classes,Template:Sfn and thus the class war would intensify with the advance of socialism.Template:Sfnm As a propaganda tool, the shaming of "enemies" explained all inadequate economic and political outcomes, the hardships endured by the populace, and military failures.Template:Sfn
Stalin adhered to the Leninist variant of Marxism.Template:Sfnm In his book, Foundations of Leninism, he stated that "Leninism is the Marxism of the epoch of imperialism and of the proletarian revolution".Template:Sfn He claimed to be a loyal Leninist,Template:Sfn although was—according to Service—"not a blindly obedient Leninist".Template:Sfn Stalin respected Lenin, but not uncritically,Template:Sfn and spoke out when he believed that Lenin was wrong.Template:Sfn During the period of his revolutionary activity, Stalin regarded some of Lenin's views and actions as being the self-indulgent activities of a spoilt émigré, deeming them counterproductive for those Bolshevik activists based within the Russian Empire itself.Template:Sfnm After the October Revolution, they continued to have differences,Template:Sfn although Kotkin suggested that Stalin's friendship with Lenin was "the single most important relationship in Stalin's life".Template:Sfn
Stalin viewed nations as contingent entities which were formed by capitalism and could merge into others.Template:Sfn Ultimately, he believed that all nations would merge into a single, global community,Template:Sfn and regarded all nations as inherently equal.Template:Sfn In his work, he stated that "the right of secession" should be offered to the ethnic minorities of the Russian Empire, but that they should not be encouraged to take that option.Template:Sfn He was of the view that if they became fully autonomous, then they would end up being controlled by the most reactionary elements of their community.Template:Sfn Stalin's push for Soviet westward expansion into Eastern Europe resulted in accusations of Russian imperialism.Template:Sfn
Personal life and characteristicsEdit
Ethnically Georgian,Template:Sfn Stalin grew up speaking the Georgian language,Template:Sfnm and did not begin learning Russian until age eight or nine.Template:Sfn It has been argued that his ancestry was genetically Ossetian, but he never acknowledged an Ossetian identity.Template:Sfn He remained proud of his Georgian identity,Template:Sfn and throughout his life retained a heavy Georgian accent when speaking Russian.Template:SfnmTemplate:Sfn Some colleagues described him as "Asiatic", and he supposedly said that "I am not a European man, but an Asian, a Russified Georgian".Template:Sfn
Described as soft-spokenTemplate:Sfnm and a poor orator,Template:Sfnm Stalin's style was "simple and clear, without flights of fancy, catchy phrases or platform histrionics".Template:Sfn He rarely spoke before large audiences and preferred to express himself in writing.Template:Sfn In adulthood, Stalin measured Template:Convert.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn His moustached face was pock-marked from smallpox during childhood; this was airbrushed from published photographs.Template:Sfn His left arm had been injured in childhood which left it shorter than his right and lacking in flexibility.Template:Sfnm Stalin was a lifelong smoker, who smoked both a pipe and cigarettes.Template:Sfnm Publicly, he lived relatively plainly, with simple and inexpensive clothing and furniture.Template:Sfnm As leader, Stalin rarely left Moscow unless for holiday;Template:Sfn he disliked travel,Template:Sfn and refused to travel by plane.Template:Sfnm In 1934, his Kuntsevo Dacha was built Template:Convert from the Kremlin and became his primary residence.Template:Sfnm He holidayed in the south USSR every year from 1925 to 1936 and 1945 to 1951,Template:Sfn often in Abkhazia, being a friend of its leader, Nestor Lakoba.Template:Sfnm
PersonalityEdit
Trotsky and several other Soviet figures promoted the idea that Stalin was a mediocrity,Template:Sfnm a characterisation which gained widespread acceptance outside of the Soviet Union during his lifetime.Template:Sfn However, historians note that he possessed a complex mind,Template:Sfn remarkable self-control,Template:Sfnm and excellent memory.Template:Sfnm Stalin was a diligent workerTemplate:Sfnm and an effective and strategic organiser,Template:Sfnm with a keen interest in learning.Template:Sfn As a leader, he meticulously scrutinised details, from film scripts to military plans,Template:Sfn and judged others by their inner strength and cleverness.Template:Sfn He was skilled at playing different roles depending on the audience,Template:Sfnm as well as in deception.Template:Sfnm Although he could be rude,Template:Sfnm Stalin rarely raised his voice;Template:Sfn however, as his health deteriorated, he became unpredictable and bad-tempered.Template:Sfn He could be charming and enjoyed cracking jokes when relaxed.Template:Sfn At social events, Stalin encouraged singing and drinking, hoping others would drunkenly reveal secrets to him.Template:Sfnm
Stalin lacked compassion,Template:Sfnm possibly exacerbated by his repeated imprisonments and exiles,Template:Sfn though he occasionally showed kindness to strangers, even during the Great Purge.Template:Sfn He could be self-righteous,Template:Sfnm resentful,Template:Sfn and vindictive,Template:Sfnm often holding grudges for years.Template:Sfnm By the 1920s, he had become suspicious and conspiratorial, prone to believing in plots against him and international conspiracies.Template:Sfnm While he never attended torture sessions or executions,Template:Sfn Stalin took pleasure in degrading and humiliating people and kept even close associates in a state of "unrelieved fear".Template:Sfn Service suggested he had tendencies toward a paranoid and sociopathic personality disorder.Template:Sfn Historian E.A. Rees believed it was psychopathy that bred Stalin's tyranny, citing a 1927 diagnosis by neuropathologist Vladimir Bekhterev that described him as a "typical case of severe paranoia".Template:Sfn Others have linked Stalin's brutality to his commitment to the survival of the Soviet Union and Marxist–Leninist ideology.Template:Sfn
Stalin had a keen interest in the arts.Template:Sfn He protected certain Soviet writers, such as Mikhail Bulgakov, even when their work was criticised as harmful to his regime.Template:Sfn Stalin enjoyed classical music,Template:Sfnm owned around 2,700 records,Template:Sfn and often attended the Bolshoi Theatre in the 1930s and 40s.Template:Sfn His taste was conservative, favouring classical drama, opera, and ballet over what he dismissed as experimental "formalism",Template:Sfn and disliked avant-garde in the visual arts.Template:Sfn An autodidact,Template:Sfnm Stalin was a voracious reader who kept over 20,000 books,Template:Sfnm with little fiction.Template:Sfn His favourite subject was history, and he was especially interested in the reigns of Russian leaders Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, and Catherine the Great.Template:Sfn Lenin was his favourite author, but he read and appreciated works by Trotsky and other adversaries.Template:Sfn
Relationships and familyEdit
Stalin married his first wife, Ekaterina Svanidze, in 1906. Volkogonov suggested that she was "probably the one human being he had really loved".Template:Sfn When she died, Stalin allegedly said: "This creature softened my heart of stone. She died and with her died my last warm feelings for humanity."Template:Sfn They had a son, Yakov, who frequently frustrated and annoyed Stalin.Template:Sfnm After Yakov was captured by the German Army during World War II, Stalin refused to agree to a prisoner exchange between him and German field marshal Friedrich Paulus, and Yakov died at a Nazi concentration camp in 1943.Template:Sfnm
In exile in Solvychegodsk in 1910, Stalin had an affair with his landlady, Maria Kuzakova, who in 1911 gave birth to his alleged second son, Konstantin Kuzakov,Template:Sfnm who later taught philosophy at the Leningrad Military Mechanical Institute, but never met Stalin.Template:Sfn In 1914 in Kureika, Stalin, aged 35, had a relationship with Lidia Pereprygina, aged 14 (considered a minor at the time), who allegedly became pregnant with Stalin's child.Template:Sfnm<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In December 1914, Pereprygina gave birth to the child, although the infant died soon after.Template:Sfn In 1916, Pereprygina was pregnant again. She gave birth to their alleged son, Alexander Davydov, in around April 1917. He was raised as the son of a peasant fisherman;Template:Sfn Stalin later came to know of the child's existence but showed no interest in him.Template:Sfn
Stalin's second wife was Nadezhda Alliluyeva, whom he married in 1919; theirs was not an easy relationship, they often fought.Template:Sfn They had two biological children—a son, Vasily, and daughter, Svetlana—and adopted another son, Artyom Sergeev, in 1921.Template:Sfn It is unclear if Stalin had a mistress during or after this marriage.Template:Sfnm She suspected he was unfaithful,Template:Sfn and committed suicide in 1932.Template:Sfnm Stalin regarded Vasily as spoilt and often chastised his behaviour; as Stalin's son, he was swiftly promoted through the Red Army and allowed a lavish lifestyle.Template:Sfn Conversely, Stalin had an affectionate relationship with Svetlana during her childhood,Template:Sfnm and was very fond of Artyom.Template:Sfn He disapproved of Svetlana's suitors and husbands, which put strain on their relationship.Template:Sfnm After World War II, he made little time for his children, and his family played a diminishing role in his life.Template:Sfn After Stalin's death, Svetlana changed her surname to Alliluyeva,Template:Sfn and defected to the U.S.Template:Sfn
LegacyEdit
The historian Robert Conquest stated that Stalin perhaps "determined the course of the twentieth century" more than any other individual.Template:Sfn Leninists remain divided in their views on Stalin; some view him as Lenin's authentic successor, while others believe he betrayed Lenin's ideas by deviating from them.Template:Sfn For most Westerners and anti-communist Russians, he is viewed overwhelmingly negatively as a mass murderer;Template:Sfn for significant numbers of Russians and Georgians, he is regarded as a great statesman and state-builder.Template:Sfn The historian Dmitri Volkogonov characterised him as "one of the most powerful figures in human history."Template:Sfn
According to Service, Stalin strengthened and stabilised the Soviet Union.Template:Sfn In under three decades, Stalin transformed the country into a major industrial world power,Template:Sfnm one which could "claim impressive achievements" in terms of urbanisation, military strength, education and Soviet pride.Template:Sfn Under his rule, the average Soviet life expectancy grew due to improved living conditions, nutrition and medical careTemplate:Sfn as mortality rates declined.Template:Sfn Although millions of Soviet citizens despised him, support for Stalin was nevertheless widespread throughout Soviet society.Template:Sfn Conversely, the historian Vadim Rogovin argued that Stalin's purges "caused losses to the communist movement both in the USSR and throughout the world from which the movement has not recovered to this very day".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Similarly, Nikita Khrushchev believed his purges of the Old Bolsheviks and leading figures in the military and academia had "undoubtedly" weakened the nation.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Stalin's necessity for the Soviet Union's economic development has been questioned, and it has been argued that his policies from 1928 onwards may have been a limiting factor.Template:Sfnm Stalin's Soviet Union has been characterised as a totalitarian state,Template:Sfnm with Stalin its authoritarian leader.Template:Sfn Various biographers have described him as a dictator,Template:Sfnm an autocrat,Template:Sfnm or accused him of practising Caesarism.Template:Sfn Montefiore argued that while Stalin initially ruled as part of a Communist Party oligarchy, the government transformed into a personal dictatorship in 1934,Template:Sfn with Stalin only becoming "absolute dictator" after March–June 1937, when senior military and NKVD figures were eliminated.Template:Sfn In both the Soviet Union and elsewhere he came to be portrayed as an "Oriental despot".Template:Sfnm McDermott nevertheless cautioned against "over-simplistic stereotypes"—promoted in the fiction of writers like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn—which portrayed Stalin as an omnipotent and omnipresent tyrant who controlled every aspect of Soviet life.Template:Sfn
A vast literature devoted to Stalin has been produced.Template:Sfn During Stalin's lifetime, his approved biographies were largely hagiographic in content.Template:Sfn Stalin ensured that these works gave very little attention to his early life, particularly because he did not wish to emphasise his Georgian origins in a state numerically dominated by Russians.Template:Sfn Since his death many more biographies have been written,Template:Sfn although until the 1980s these relied largely on the same sources of information.Template:Sfn Under Mikhail Gorbachev's Soviet administration various previously classified files on Stalin's life were made available to historians,Template:Sfn at which point he became "one of the most urgent and vital issues on the public agenda" in the Soviet Union.Template:Sfn After the dissolution of the Union in 1991, the rest of the archives were opened to historians, resulting in much new information about Stalin coming to light,Template:Sfnm and producing a flood of new research.Template:Sfn
Death tollEdit
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Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the archival revelations, some Western historians estimated that the numbers killed by Stalin's regime were 20 million or higher.<ref>Robert Conquest. The Great Terror. NY Macmillan, 1968 p. 533 (20 million)</ref><ref>Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko, The Time of Stalin, NY Harper & Row 1981. p. 126 (30–40 million)</ref><ref>Elliot, Gill. Twentieth Century Book of the Dead. Penguin Press 1972. pp. 223–24 (20 million)</ref> The scholarly consensus affirms that Soviet archival materials declassified in 1991 contain irrefutable data much lower than Western sources used prior to 1991, such as statements from emigres and other informants.<ref>Template:Harvnb: "New studies using declassified Gulag archives have provisionally established a consensus on mortality and "inhumanity.""</ref> Based on these records, scholars have estimated that 1.8 million people were deported to remote regions of the country during Stalin's dekulakisation campaign, in addition to 1 million peasants and ethnic minorities deported in the 1930s, and 3.5 million people (mainly ethnic minorities) deported in the 1940s and 1950s, for a total of 6.3 million.Template:Sfn The Soviet archives also contain official records of 799,455 executions from 1921 to 1953,Template:Sfn<ref>Seumas Milne: "The battle for history" Template:Webarchive, The Guardian. (12 September 2002). Retrieved 14 July 2013.</ref> around 1.5 to 1.7 million deaths in Gulag camps (out of an estimated 18 million people who passed through),Template:Sfn<ref name="Pluto Press">Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Applebaum, Anne (2003) Gulag: A History. Doubleday. Template:ISBN pp. 582–583.</ref> some 390,000<ref name="The Stalinist Penal System">Template:Cite book</ref> deaths during the dekulakisation forced resettlement, and up to 400,000 deaths of persons deported during the 1940s,<ref>Template:Cite book Pohl cites Russian archival sources for the death toll in the special settlements from 1941–49</ref> with a total of about 3.3 million officially recorded victims in these categories.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> According to historian Stephen Wheatcroft, approximately 1 million of these deaths were "purposive" while the rest happened through neglect and irresponsibility.<ref name="Wheatcroft1996">Template:Cite journal</ref>
The deaths of at least 3.5 to 6.5 million<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> persons in the Soviet famine of 1932–1933 are sometimes, though not always, included with the victims of the Stalin era.<ref name="Wheatcroft1996"/> Stalin has also been accused of genocide in the cases of forced population transfer of ethnic minorities across the Soviet Union and the Holodomor famine.Template:Sfnm However, British historian Michael Ellman argues that mass deaths from famines should be placed in a different category than the repression victims, mentioning that throughout Russian history famines and droughts have been a common occurrence.<ref>Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref> Famines were widespread throughout the world in the 19th and 20th centuries in countries such as China, India, Ireland, and Russia.Template:Sfn Ellman compared the behaviour of the Stalinist regime to that of the British government (towards Ireland and India) and the G8 in contemporary times, and Stalin's "behaviour was no worse than that of many rulers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries".Template:Sfn
In the Soviet Union and post-Soviet statesEdit
Shortly after his death, the Soviet Union went through a period of de-Stalinisation. Malenkov denounced the Stalin personality cult,Template:Sfn and the cult was subsequently criticised in Pravda.Template:Sfn In 1956, Khrushchev gave his "Secret Speech", titled "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences", to a closed session of the Party's 20th Congress. There, Khrushchev denounced Stalin for both his mass repression and his personality cult.Template:Sfnm He repeated these denunciations at the 22nd Party Congress in October 1962.Template:Sfn In October 1961, Stalin's body was removed from the mausoleum and buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, the location marked by a bust.Template:Sfnm Stalingrad was renamed Volgograd that year.Template:Sfn
Khrushchev's de-Stalinisation process ended when he was replaced as leader by Leonid Brezhnev in 1964; the latter introduced a level of re-Stalinisation within the Soviet Union.Template:Sfnm In 1969 and again in 1979, plans were proposed for a full rehabilitation of Stalin's legacy but on both occasions were halted due to fears of damaging the USSR's public image.Template:Sfn Mikhail Gorbachev saw the total denunciation of Stalin as necessary for the regeneration of Soviet society.Template:Sfn
After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Boris Yeltsin continued Gorbachev's denunciation of Stalin but added to it a denunciation of Lenin.Template:Sfn His successor Vladimir Putin did not seek to rehabilitate Stalin but emphasised the celebration of Soviet achievements under Stalin's leadership rather than the Stalinist repressions.Template:Sfn In October 2017, Putin opened the Wall of Grief memorial in Moscow.Template:Sfn In recent years, the government and general public of Russia has been accused of rehabilitating Stalin.Template:Sfnm In May 2025 Russian authorities re-added a statue of Stalin at the Taganskaya metro station after the original was removed in 1966 as part of the 90th anniversary of the opening of the metro.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Admiration for Stalin has remained consistently widespread in Georgia, although Georgian attitudes have been very divided.Template:Sfn A number of Georgians resent criticism of Stalin, the most famous figure from their nation's modern history.Template:Sfn
See alsoEdit
- European interwar dictatorships
- List of places named after Joseph Stalin
- List of statues of Joseph Stalin
Explanatory notesEdit
ReferencesEdit
CitationsEdit
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Academic books and journalsEdit
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External linksEdit
- Stalin Library (with all 13 volumes of Stalin's works and "volume 14")
- Library of Congress: Revelations from the Russian Archives
- Electronic archive of Stalin's letters and presentations
- Stalin digital archive
- Joseph Stalin Newsreels // Net-Film Newsreels and Documentary Films Archive
- Stalin Biography from Spartacus Educational
- A List of Key Documentary Material on Stalin
- Stalinka: The Digital Library of Staliniana
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