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"Stalin" redirects here. For other uses, see Stalin (disambiguation).
| Joseph Stalin იოსებ სტალინი Иосиф Сталин | |
| |
| | |
|---|---|
| In office April 3 1922 – March 5 1953 | |
| Preceded by | None (position created in 1922) |
| Succeeded by | Nikita Khrushchev |
| | |
| In office May 6 1941 – March 5 1953 | |
| Preceded by | Vyacheslav Molotov |
| Succeeded by | Georgy Malenkov |
| Born | December 18 1878 Gori, Georgia, Russian Empire |
| Died | March 5 1953 (aged 74) Moscow, Russian SFSR, USSR |
| Nationality | Georgian |
| Political party | Communist Party of the Soviet Union |
Joseph Stalin (December 18, 1878 – March 5, 1953) (Russian: Иосиф Сталин; Georgian: იოსებ სტალინი) was General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union\'s Central Committee from 1922 until his death in 1953. During that time he established the regime now known as Stalinism. As one of several Central Committee Secretariats, Stalin\'s formal position was originally limited in scope, but he gradually consolidated power and became the de facto party leader and ruler of the Soviet Union
Bullock, p. 548, "both dictators".
Stalin launched a command economy in the Soviet Union, forced rapid industrialization of the largely rural country and collectivization of its agriculture. While the Soviet Union transformed from an agrarian economy to a major industrial powerhouse in a short span of time, millions of people died from hardships and famine that occurred as a result of the severe economic upheaval and party policies. At the end of 1930s, Stalin launched the Great Purges, a major campaign of repression against millions of people who were suspected of being a threat to the party were executed or exiled to Gulag labor camps in remote areas of Siberia or Central Asia. A number of ethnic groups in Russia were also forcibly resettled.
During Stalin\'s reign, the Soviet Union played a major role in the defeat of Nazi Germany in the Second World War (1939–1945) (more commonly known in Russia and post-Soviet republics as the Great Patriotic War). Under Stalin\'s leadership, the Soviet Union went on to achieve recognition as one of just two superpowers in the post-war era, a status that lasted for nearly four decades after his death until the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Born Ioseb Vissarionovich Jugashvili (Georgian: იოსებ ბესარიონის ძე ჯუღაშვილი, Ioseb Besarionis Dze Jughashvili; Russian: Ио́сиф Виссарио́нович Джугашви́ли (help·info), Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili) (December 18 [O.S. December 6] 1878 Although there is an inconsistency among published sources about Stalin\'s year and date of birth, Iosif Dzhugashvili is found in the records of the Uspensky Church in Gori, Georgia as born on December 18 (Old Style: December 6) 1878. This birth date is maintained in his School Leaving Certificate, his extensive tsarist Russia police file, a police arrest record from 18 April 1902 which gave his age as 23 years, and all other surviving pre-revolution documents. Stalin himself listed December 18 1878 in a curriculum vitae as late as 1921, in his own handwriting. However, after his coming to power in 1922, the date was changed to December 21 1879 (December 9, Old Style), and that was the day his birthday was celebrated in the Soviet Union. Russian playwright Edvard Radzinsky argues in his book Stalin that he changed the year to 1879 to have a nation-wide birthday celebration of his 50th birthday. He could not do it in 1928 because his rule was not absolute enough. [1] – March 5 1953), better known by his assumed name, Joseph Stalin (Иосиф Сталин, Iosif Stalin; stalin meaning "made of steel"Halfin, Igal. Terror in My Soul: Communist autobiographies on trial, p. 15.[2] ) Stalin became General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party in 1922. Following the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924, he prevailed in a power struggle over Leon Trotsky, who was expelled from the Communist Party and deported from the Soviet Union.
In the 1930s Stalin initiated a Purge of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which has become known as the Great Purge, an unprecedented campaign of political repression, persecution and executions that reached its peak in 1937.
Stalin\'s rule had long-lasting effects on the features that characterized the Soviet state from the era of his rule to its collapse in 1991. Stalin claimed his policies were based on Marxism-Leninism. Now his political and economic system is referred to as Stalinism. Maoists, anti-revisionists and some others say he was actually the last legitimate Socialist leader in the Soviet Union\'s history.
Nikolai Getman, Moving out. The Gulag Collection.The Jamestown Foundation, Nikolai Getman, The Gulag Collection: Paintings of Nikolai Getman.
Stalin replaced the New Economic Policy (NEP) of the 1920s with Five-Year Plans in 1928 and collective farming at roughly the same time. The Soviet Union was transformed from a predominantly peasant society to a major world industrial power by the end of the 1930s.Simon Sebag Montefiore. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, Knopf, 2004 (ISBN 1-4000-4230-5).Russia\'s War: A History of the Soviet Effort: 1941–1945, ISBN 0-14-027169-4.Richard Overy, The Dictators: Hitler\'s Germany, Stalin\'s Russia, ISBN 0-393-02030-4.
Confiscations of grain and other food by the Soviet authorities under his orders contributed to a famine between 1932 and 1934, especially in the key agricultural regions of the Soviet Union, Ukraine (see Holodomor), Kazakhstan and North Caucasus that resulted in millions of deaths. Many peasants resisted collectivization and grain confiscations, but were repressed, most notably well-off peasants deemed "kulaks".The Black Book of Communism
Bearing the brunt of the Nazis\' attacks (around 75% of the Wehrmacht\'s forces), the Soviet Union under Stalin made the largest and most decisive contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany during World War II (known in the USSR as the Great Patriotic War, 1941–1945). After the war, Stalin established the USSR as one of the two major superpowers in the world, a position it maintained for nearly four decades following his death in 1953.
Stalin\'s rule, reinforced by a cult of personality, fought real and alleged opponents mainly through the security apparatus, such as the NKVD. Millions of people were killed through famines, executions, deportations, and in the Gulag. Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin\'s eventual successor, denounced Stalin\'s rule and the cult of personality in 1956, initiating the process of "de-Stalinization" which later became part of the Sino-Soviet Split.
Stalin\'s birth house in Gori, Georgia
Joseph Stalin was born Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili in Gori, Georgia to Vissarion "Beso" Dzhugashvili and Ekaterina "Keke" Geladze (he adopted the name Stalin, which is derived from the Russian stal’ (Russian: сталь) for "steel", in 1913). His mother was born a serf. Stalin\'s father Vissarion was a cobbler. He was their third child; their two previous sons died in infancy. The second and third toes of his left foot were webbed.
Initially, the Dzhugashvilis\' lives were prosperous and happy, but Stalin\'s father became an alcoholic, which gradually led to his business failing and him becoming violently abusive to his wife and child. As their financial situation grew worse, Stalin\'s family moved homes frequently; at least nine times in Stalin\'s first ten years of life.Simon Sebag Montefiore. Young Stalin. 2007. ISBN 978-0-297-85068-7
The town where Stalin grew up was a violent and lawless place. It had only a small police force and a culture of violence that included gang-warfare, organized street brawls and wrestling tournaments (some of these were traditions inherited from Georgia\'s war-torn past). Stalin took ample part in streetfighting as a child; he was not afraid to challenge opponents that were much stronger than him, getting severely beaten up on numerous occassions.
At the age of 7, Stalin fell ill with smallpox and his face was badly scarred by the disease. He later had photographs retouched to make his pockmarks less apparent.
At the age of 10, Stalin began his education at the Gori Church School. His peers were mostly the sons of affluent priests, officials, and merchants. He and most of his classmates at Gori were Georgians and spoke mostly Georgian. However, at school they were forced to speak Russian (this was the policy of Tsar Alexander III). Their Russian teachers mocked the accents of their Georgian students, and regarded their language and culture as inferior. Nevertheless, he earned the respect and admiration of his teachers by being the best student in the class, earning top marks across the board. He became a very good choir singer, and was often hired to sing at weddings. He also began to write poetry, something he would become very talented at in later years.
Stalin\'s father Beso, who had always wanted the boy to be trained as a cobbler rather than be educated, was infuriated when he was accepted into the school. In his anger he smashed the windows of the local tavern, and later attacked the town police chief. Out of compassion for Stalin\'s mother, the constable did not arrest Beso, but ordered him to leave town. Beso moved to Tbilisi where he found work in a shoe factory, leaving his family behind in Gori.
At around the time he started school, Stalin was struck by a horse-drawn carriage. The accident permanently damaged his left arm; this injury would later exempt him from military service in World War I.
At the age of 12, Stalin was struck yet again by a horse-drawn carriage, and much more badly this time. He was taken to hospital in Tbilisi where he spent months in care. After he recovered, his father seized the opportunity to kidnap the boy and enroll him as an apprentice cobbler at the shoe factory where he worked. When his mother, through the aid of contacts in the clergy and school staff, recovered him, his father cut off all financial support to his wife and son, leaving them to fend for themselves. Stalin returned to his school in Gori where he continued to excel.
Young Stalin, circa 1894 (age 16).
He graduated first in his class and in 1894, at the age of 16, he enrolled at the Georgian Orthodox Seminary of Tiflis (Tbilisi, Georgia), to which he had been awarded a scholarship. The teachers at Tiflis Seminary were even more determined to impose Russian language and culture on the Georgian students. Like many of his comrades, young Stalin reacted by being drawn to Georgian patriotism. During this time he gained fame as a poet; his poems were published in several local newspapers. However, his interest for poetry began to fade as he was drawn to rebellion and revolution.
During his time at the seminary, he would read forbidden literature that included Victor Hugo novels and revolutionary (including Marxist) literature. He became an atheist in his first year. He insisted his peers call him "Koba", after the Robin Hood-like protagonist of the novel The Patricide by Alexander Kazbegi; he would continue to use this pseudonym as a revolutionary. In August 1898, he joined the Russian Social-Democratic Workers Party (from which the Bolsheviks would later form).
Stalin quit the seminary in 1899 just before his final examinations. However, official biographies preferred to state that he was expelled.See Service\'s biography below According to the official biographies, this was done by Georgy Dolganev (hieromonk Hermogen), the seminary rector.Biography of Dolganev (Russian) Twenty of his fellow-classmates were expelled for revolutionary activities in 1899, and forty more would be expelled in 1901.Figes, Orlando (November 2007). "Rise of a Gangster". New York Review of Books LIV (17): pp. 36–38. ISSN 0028-7504. Retrieved on November 11, 2007.
Stalin (or "Koba", as he was then known), along with his sidekick "Kamo", organized the expelled seminarians into a Marxist street gang which soon ran a protection racket in the workers\' districts of Tiflis.Figes, Orlando (November 2007). "Rise of a Gangster". New York Review of Books LIV (17): pp. 36–38. ISSN 0028-7504. Retrieved on November 11, 2007.
The information card on Joseph Stalin, from the files of the Tsarist secret police in St. Petersburg, 1912.
A number of historians believe that Stalin was a double agent for the Okhrana during this period of his life. Edward Ellis Smith argues this by citing Stalin\'s suspicious ability to escape from Okhrana dragnets, travel unimpeded, and rabble-rouse full time with no apparent source of income. One such example was the raid that occurred on the night of March 21-22 1901, when most everyone of importance in the socialist-democratic movement in Tbilisi was arrested, except for Stalin, who was apparently "enjoying the balmy spring air, and in one of his to-hell-with-the-revolution moods, [which] is too impossible for serious consideration."Smith, Edward Ellis.The Young Stalin. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1967. pg 77.
Following a suppressed workers\' demonstration in 1901, Stalin fled to Batumi and got work at an oil refinery owned by the Rothschild family. Organizing the workers there, Stalin was almost certainly involved in a 1901 fire at the refinery designed to intimidate the Rothschilds into giving the workers a pay raise. In 1902, after he organized a demonstration in which 7000 workers clashed with imperial troops, Stalin was sent to the city jail — while there, he organized the criminals and was soon the boss of the jail. Following his trial, Stalin was transported to the katorga in Siberia. He soon escaped, however, and was back in Tiflis by the time of the Russian Revolution (1905). During this period, Stalin and Kamo engaged in a series of illegal fundraising activities, including kidnappings and bank robberies. Stalin was sent into penal exile a second time in 1908, and again quickly escaped.Figes, Orlando (November 2007). "Rise of a Gangster". New York Review of Books LIV (17): pp. 36–38. ISSN 0028-7504. Retrieved on November 11, 2007.
In 1905, Stalin was still a supporter of the separate Georgian Social Democratic Party. By 1907, however, he had come to support the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, abandoning his Georgian nationalism for the more explicitly Marxist position of proletarian internationalism. Stalin sided with Vladimir Lenin\'s Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party and came to adhere to Lenin\'s doctrine of democratic centralism. Stalin and Lenin both attended the Fifth Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in London in 1907.Luxury beckons for East End\'s house of history This congress consolidated the supremacy of Lenin\'s Bolshevik faction and debated strategy for communist revolution in Russia. Stalin never referred to his stay in London.
In January 1912, at the Prague Party Conference, Lenin led his Bolshevik faction out of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, founding the separate Bolshevik Party. Stalin was coopted as a member of the new Bolshevik Central Committee.
In 1913, Stalin published Marxism and the National Question, the first time he used the pseudonym "Stalin" (meaning "man of steel"). This treatise was written while he was briefly in exile in Vienna and presents an orthodox, if somewhat unoriginal, Marxist position (c.f. Lenin\'s On the Right of Nations to Self-Determination (1914)).
Later in 1913, Stalin was sent into penal exile for a third time. This time he did not escape so quickly, and lived for the next four years in a small hamlet on the Yenisei River. While there he began a 2-year affair with Lidia Pereprygina, then aged 13, with whom he fathered two children.Montefiore, Simon Sebag (2007-05-11), "Stalin and his lover aged 13", The Daily Mail, <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=454291>. Retrieved on 2008-01-03
In the wake of the February Revolution in February 1917 (the first phase of the Russian Revolution of 1917), Stalin was released from prison in March 1917. He moved to Saint Petersburg (which the revolutionaries renamed "Petrograd") and, together with Lev Kamenev and Matvei Muranov, ousted Vyacheslav Molotov and Alexander Shlyapnikov as editors of Pravda, the official Bolshevik newspaper, while Lenin and much of the Bolshevik leadership were still in exile. Stalin and the new editorial board took a position in favor of supporting Alexander Kerensky\'s provisional government (Molotov and Shlyapnikov had wanted to overthrow it) and went to the extent of declining to publish Lenin\'s articles arguing for the provisional government to be overthrown. However, after Lenin prevailed at the April Party conference, Stalin and the rest of the Pravda staff came on board with Lenin\'s view and called for overthrowing the provisional government. At this April 1917 Party conference, Stalin was elected to the Central Committee with the third highest vote total in the party and was subsequently elected to the Politburo of the Central Committee (May 1917); he held this position for the remainder of his life.
According to many accounts, Stalin only played a minor role in the October Revolution of November 7, 1917. Adam Ulam and others have argued that each man in the Central Committee had a specific job to which he was assigned.
The following summary of Trotsky\'s Role in 1917 was given by Stalin in Pravda, November 6, 1918:
All practical work in connection with the organisation of the uprising was done under the immediate direction of Comrade Trotsky, the President of the Petrograd Soviet. It can be stated with certainty that the Party is indebted primarily and principally to Comrade Trotsky for the rapid going over of the garrison to the side of the Soviet and the efficient manner in which the work of the Military Revolutionary Committee was organised.
Note: Although this passage was quoted in Stalin\'s book The October Revolution issued in 1934, it was not included in Stalin\'s Works released in 1949.
Later, in 1924, Stalin himself created a myth around a so-called "Party Centre" which "directed" all practical work pertaining to the uprising, consisting of himself, Sverdlov, Dzerzhinsky, Uritsky, and Bubnov. No evidence was ever shown for the activity of this "centre", which would, in any case, have been subordinate to the Military Revolutionary Council, headed by Trotsky.
Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, and Mikhail Kalinin meeting in 1919. All three of them were "Old Bolsheviks"; members of the Bolshevik party before the Russian Revolution of 1917.
During the Russian Civil War and Polish-Soviet War Stalin was a political commissar in the Red Army at various fronts. Stalin\'s first government position was as People\'s Commissar of Nationalities Affairs (1917–1923). In that position he traveled to Finland in late 1917, and promised the socialists there that the Soviet Union would aid their revolution. However, this aid was never given and the revolution in Finland was defeated.
He was also People\'s Commissar of the Workers and Peasants Inspection (1919–1922), a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the republic (1920–1923) and a member of the Central Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets (from 1917).
Stalin played a decisive role in engineering the 1921 Red Army invasion of Georgia following which he adopted particularly hardline, centralist policies towards Soviet Georgia, which included severe repression of all opposition within the local Communist party (e.g., Georgian Affair of 1922), not to mention any manifestations of anti-Sovietism (August Uprising of 1924).Knight, Ami W. (1991), Beria and the Cult of Stalin: Rewriting Transcaucasian Party History. Soviet Studies, Vol. 43, No. 4, pp. 749–763. It was in the Georgian affairs that Stalin first began to play his own hand.Shanin, Teodor (July 1989), Ethnicity in the Soviet Union: Analytical Perceptions and Political Strategies. Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 409–424.
On April 3, 1922, Stalin was made general secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), a post that he subsequently built up into the most powerful in the country. It has been claimed that he initially attempted to decline accepting the post, but was refused. This position was seen to be a minor one within the party (Stalin was sometimes referred to as "Comrade Card-Index" by fellow party members) but, when combined with personal leadership over the Orgburo and with an ally (Kaganovich) heading the organizational Registration and Distribution Department of the Central Committee, actually had potential as a power base as it allowed Stalin to fill the party with his allies. After Lenin\'s death in January 1924, Stalin, Kamenev, and Zinoviev together governed the party, placing themselves ideologically between Trotsky (on the left wing of the party) and Bukharin (on the right). During this period, Stalin abandoned the traditional Bolshevik emphasis on international revolution in favor of a policy of building "Socialism in One Country", in contrast to Trotsky\'s theory of Permanent Revolution.
In the struggle for leadership after Lenin\'s death one thing was evident; whoever ended up ruling the party had to demonstrate fealty to the memory of Lenin. Stalin did so by organizing the late leader\'s funeral, after which he made a speech professing an undying loyalty to Lenin that was almost religious in nature.
Stalin\'s actual relationship with Lenin, which was far more complex than Stalin\'s speeches alluded, has been illuminated by a number of sources that were made available after the fall of the Soviet Union, including some from Lenin\'s sister.Stalin\'s relationship with Lenin.Joseph Stalin (January 30 1924). On The Death Of Lenin. Pravda magazine. Retrieved on May 9, 2007.
Stalin first worked to undermine Trotsky, who was sick at the time, possibly by misleading him about the date of the funeral. Consequently, Trotsky, who was Lenin’s associate throughout the early days of the Soviet regime, lost considerable political support. Stalin made great deal of the fact that Trotsky had joined the Bolsheviks just before the revolution, and publicized Trotsky\'s pre-revolutionary disagreements with Lenin. Another event that helped Stalin\'s rise was the fact that Trotsky came out against publication of Lenin\'s Testament in which he pointed out the strengths and weaknesses of Stalin and Trotsky and the other main players, and suggested that he be succeeded by a small group of people.
Joseph Stalin, cartoon by Nikolai Bukharin
An important feature of Stalin’s rise to power is the way that he manipulated his opponents and played them off against each other. Stalin formed a "troika" of himself, Zinoviev, and Kamenev against Trotsky. When Trotsky had been eliminated, Stalin then joined Bukharin and Rykov against Zinoviev and Kamenev, emphasising their vote against the insurrection in 1917. Zinoviev and Kamenev then turned to Lenin\'s widow, Krupskaya; they formed the "United Opposition" in July 1926.
In 1927 during the 15th Party Congress Trotsky and Zinoviev were expelled from the party and Kamenev lost his seat on the Central Committee. Stalin soon turned against the "Right Opposition", represented by his erstwhile allies, Bukharin and Rykov.
Stalin gained popular appeal from his presentation as a \'man of the people\' from the poorer classes. The Russian people were tired from the world war and the civil war, and Stalin\'s policy of concentrating in building "Socialism in One Country" was seen as an optimistic antidote to war.
Stalin took great advantage of the ban on factionalism which meant that no group could openly go against the policies of the leader of the party because that meant creation of an opposition. By 1928 (the first year of the Five-Year Plans) Stalin was supreme among the leadership, and the following year Trotsky was exiled because of his opposition. Having also outmaneuvered Bukharin\'s Right Opposition and now advocating collectivization and industrialization, Stalin can be said to have exercised control over the party and the country.
However, as the popularity of other leaders such as Sergei Kirov and the so-called Ryutin Affair were to demonstrate, Stalin did not achieve absolute power until the Great Purge of 1936–1938.
Stalin vastly increased the scope and power of the state\'s secret police and intelligence agencies. Under his guiding hand, Soviet intelligence forces began to set up intelligence networks in most of the major nations of the world, including Germany (the famous Rote Kappelle spy ring), Great Britain, France, Japan, and the United States. Stalin saw no difference between espionage, communist political propaganda actions, and state-sanctioned violence, and he began to integrate all of these activities within the NKVD. Stalin made considerable use of the Communist International movement in order to infiltrate agents and to ensure that foreign Communist parties remained pro-Soviet and pro-Stalin.
One of the best early examples of Stalin\'s ability to integrate secret police and foreign espionage came in 1940, when he gave approval to the secret police to have Leon Trotsky assassinated in Mexico.Soviet Readers Finally Told Moscow Had Trotsky Slain. Published in the New York Times on January 5, 1989. Accessed October 4 2007.
Stalin
The Russian Civil War and wartime communism had a devastating effect on the country\'s economy. Industrial output in 1922 was 13% of that in 1914. A recovery followed under the New Economic Policy, which allowed a degree of market flexibility within the context of socialism.
Under Stalin\'s direction, this was replaced by a system of centrally ordained "Five-Year Plans" in the late 1920s. These called for a highly ambitious program of state-guided crash industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture.
With seed capital unavailable because of international reaction to Communist policies, little international trade, and virtually no modern infrastructure, Stalin\'s government financed industrialization both by restraining consumption on the part of ordinary Soviet citizens to ensure that capital went for re-investment into industry, and by ruthless extraction of wealth from the kulaks.
In 1933 workers\' real earnings sank to about one-tenth of the 1926 level. Common and political prisoners in labor camps were forced to do unpaid labor, and communists and Komsomol members were frequently "mobilized" for various construction projects. The Soviet Union used foreign experts, e.g. British engineer Stephen Adams, to instruct their workers and improve their manufacturing processes.
In spite of early breakdowns and failures, the first two Five-Year Plans achieved rapid industrialization from a very low economic base. While it is generally agreed that the Soviet Union achieved significant levels of economic growth under Stalin, the precise rate of growth is disputed. It is not disputed, however, that these gains were accomplished at the cost of millions of lives.
Official Soviet estimates stated the annual rate of growth at 13.9%; Russian and Western estimates gave lower figures of 5.8% and even 2.9%. Indeed, one estimate is that Soviet growth became temporarily much higher after Stalin\'s death.[3] [4]
According to Robert Lewis the Five-Year Plan substantially helped to modernize the previously backward Soviet economy. New products were developed, and the scale and efficiency of existing production greatly increased. Some innovations were based on indigenous technical developments, others on imported foreign technology.Robert Lewis. The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, ed. Mark Harrison, RW Davies, S.G Wheatcroft, p. 188
Stalin\'s regime moved to force collectivization of agriculture. This was intended to increase agricultural output from large-scale mechanized farms, to bring the peasantry under more direct political control, and to make tax collection more efficient. Collectivization meant drastic social changes, on a scale not seen since the abolition of serfdom in 1861, and alienation from control of the land and its produce. Collectivization also meant a drastic drop in living standards for many peasants, and it faced violent reaction among the peasantry.
In the first years of collectivization it was estimated that industrial production would rise by 200% and agricultural production by 50%The rise of Stalin: AD1921–1924. History of Russia. HistoryWorld. Retrieved on 2006-04-03., but these estimates were not met. Stalin blamed this unanticipated failure on kulaks (rich peasants), who resisted collectivization. (However, kulaks proper made up only 4% of the peasant population; the "kulaks" that Stalin targeted included the slightly better-off peasants who took the brunt of violence from the OGPU and the Komsomol. These peasants were about 60% of the population). Those officially defined as "kulaks," "kulak helpers," and later "ex-kulaks" were to be shot, placed into Gulag labor camps, or deported to remote areas of the country, depending on the charge.
The two-stage progress of collectivization—interrupted for a year by Stalin\'s famous editorial, "Dizzy with success" (Pravda, March 2, 1930), and "Reply to Collective Farm Comrades" (Pravda, April 3, 1930)—is a prime example of his capacity for tactical political withdrawal followed by intensification of initial strategies.
Many historians assert that the disruption caused by collectivization was largely responsible for major famines.
The 1932–1933 famine in Ukraine and the Kuban regions has been termed the Holodomor (Ukrainian: Голодомор).
Entering Gulag (a leaf from Eufrosinia Kersnovskaya\'s notebook)
According to Alan Bullock, "the total Soviet grain crop was no worse than that of 1931 … it was not a crop failure but the excessive demands of the state, ruthlessly enforced, that cost the lives of as many as five million Ukrainian peasants." Stalin refused to release large grain reserves that could have alleviated the famine, while continuing to export grain; he was convinced that the Ukrainian peasants had hidden grain away, and strictly enforced draconian new collective-farm theft laws in response.Alan Bullock, p. 269http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/faculty/harrison/reviews/davies-wheatcroft2004.pdfOther historians hold that it was largely the insufficient harvests of 1931 and 1932 caused by a variety of natural disasters that resulted in famine, with the successful harvest of 1933 ending the famine.http://www.as.wvu.edu/history/Faculty/Tauger/Tauger,%20Natural%20Disaster%20and%20Human%20Actions.pdf
Famine affected other parts of the USSR. The death toll from famine in the Soviet Union at this time is estimated at between five and ten million people. The worst crop failure of late tsarist Russia, in 1892, had caused 375,000 to 400,000 deaths.)Overpopulation.Com » The Soviet Famines of 1921 and 1932-3
Soviet and other historians have argued that the rapid collectivization of agriculture was necessary in order to achieve an equally rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union and ultimately win World War II. This is disputed by other historians; Alec Nove claims that the Soviet Union industrialized in spite of, rather than because of, its collectivized agriculture.
Science in the Soviet Union was under strict ideological control by Stalin and his government, along with art and literature. There was significant progress in "ideologically safe" domains, owing to the free Soviet education system and state-financed research. However, in several cases the consequences of ideological pressure were dramatic—the most notable examples being the "bourgeois pseudosciences" genetics and cybernetics.
In the late 40\'s, some areas of physics, especially quantum mechanics but also special and general relativity, were also criticized on grounds of "idealism". Soviet physicists, such as K. V. Nikolskij and D. Blokhintzev, developed a version of the statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics, which was seen as more adhering to the principles of dialectical materialism.Oliver Freire Jr. \'Marxism and the Quantum Controversy: Responding to Max Jammer\'s Question\'Péter Szegedi \'Cold War and Interpretations in Quantum Mechanics\' However, although initially planned,Ethan Pollock, Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars, Princeton University Press, 2006; introduction available online at [5] this process did not go as far as defining an "ideologically correct" version of physics and purging those scientists who refused to conform to it, because this was recognized as potentially too harmful to the Soviet nuclear program.
Linguistics was the only area of Soviet academic thought to which Stalin personally and directly contributed. At the beginning of Stalin\'s rule, the dominant figure in Soviet linguistics was Nikolai Yakovlevich Marr, who argued that language is a class construction and that language structure is determined by the economic structure of society. Stalin, who had previously written about language policy as People\'s Commissar for Nationalities, read a letter by Arnold Chikobava criticizing the theory. He "summoned Chikobava to a dinner that lasted from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. taking notes diligently."Montefiore. p.638, Phoenix, Reprinted paperback. In this way he grasped enough of the underlying issues to coherently oppose this simplistic Marxist formalism, ending Marr\'s ideological dominance over Soviet linguistics. Stalin\'s principal work discussing linguistics is a small essay, "Marxism and Linguistic Questions."Joseph V. Stalin (1950-06-20). "Concerning Marxism in Linguistics", Pravda. Available online as Marxism and Problems of Linguistics including other articles and letters published (also in Pravda) soon after February 8 and July 4, 1950.
Although no great theoretical contributions or insights came from it, neither were there any apparent errors in Stalin\'s understanding of linguistics; his influence arguably relieved Soviet linguistics from the sort of ideologically driven theory that dominated genetics.
Scientific research was hindered by the fact that many scientists were sent to labor camps (including Lev Landau, later a Nobel Prize winner, who spent a year in prison in 1938–1939) or executed (e.g. Lev Shubnikov, shot in 1937). They were persecuted for their dissident views, not for their research. Nevertheless, much progress was made under Stalin in some areas of science and technology. It laid the ground for the famous achievements of Soviet science in the 1950s, such as the development of the BESM-1 computer in 1953 and the launching of Sputnik in 1957.
Indeed, many politicians in the United States expressed a fear, after the "Sputnik crisis," that their country had been eclipsed by the Soviet Union in science and in public education.
Under the Soviet government people benefited from some social liberalization. Girls were given an adequate, equal education and women had equal rights in employmentSimon Sebag Montefiore. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, Knopf, 2004 (ISBN 1-4000-4230-5), improving lives for women and families. Stalinist development also contributed to advances in health care, which significantly increased the lifespan and quality of life of the typical Soviet citizenSimon Sebag Montefiore. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, Knopf, 2004 (ISBN 1-4000-4230-5). Stalin\'s policies granted the Soviet people universal access to healthcare and education, effectively creating the first generation free from the fear of typhus, cholera, and malaria Simon Sebag Montefiore. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, Knopf, 2004 (ISBN 1-4000-4230-5). The occurrences of these diseases dropped to record low numbers, increasing life spans by decades Simon Sebag Montefiore. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, Knopf, 2004 (ISBN 1-4000-4230-5).
Soviet women under Stalin were the first generation of women able to give birth in the safety of a hospital, with access to prenatal care Simon Sebag Montefiore. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, Knopf, 2004 (ISBN 1-4000-4230-5). Education was also an example of an increase in standard of living after economic development. The generation born during Stalin\'s rule was the first near-universally literate generation. Millions benefitted from mass literacy campaigns in the 1930s, and from workers training schemesActon, Edward, Russia, The Tsarist and Soviet Legacy, Longmann Group Ltd (1995) ISBN 0-582-08922-0. Engineers were sent abroad to learn industrial technology, and hundreds of foreign engineers were brought to Russia on contract Simon Sebag Montefiore. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, Knopf, 2004 (ISBN 1-4000-4230-5). Transport links were improved and many new railways built. Workers who exceeded their quotas, Stakhanovites, received many incentives for their work Acton, Edward, Russia, The Tsarist and Soviet Legacy, Longmann Group Ltd (1995) ISBN 0-582-08922-0; they could afford to buy the goods that were mass-produced by the rapidly expanding Soviet economy.
The increase in demand due to industrialization and the decrease in the workforce due to World War II and repressions generated a major expansion in job opportunities for the survivors, especially for women Acton, Edward, Russia, The Tsarist and Soviet Legacy, Longmann Group Ltd (1995) ISBN 0-582-08922-0.
Stalin propaganda poster, reading: "Beloved Stalin—a fortune of the nation!"
Although born in Georgia, Stalin became a Russian nationalist and significantly promoted Russian history, language, and Russian national heroes, particularly during the 1930s and 1940s. He held the Russians up as the elder brothers of the non-Russian minorities.Russia. (2007). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved July 14, 2007, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online: [6].
During Stalin\'s reign the official and long-lived style of Socialist Realism was established for painting, sculpture, music, drama and literature. Previously fashionable "revolutionary" expressionism, abstract art, and avant-garde experimentation were discouraged or denounced as "formalism". Careers were made and broken, some more than once. Famous figures were repressed, and many persecuted, tortured and executed, both "revolutionaries" (among them Isaac Babel, Vsevolod Meyerhold) and "non-conformists" (for example, Osip Mandelstam).
A minority, both representing the "Soviet man" (e.g. Arkady Gaidar) and remnants of the older pre-revolutionary Russia (e.g. Konstantin Stanislavski), thrived. A number of émigrés returned to the Soviet Union, among them Alexei Tolstoi in 1925, Alexander Kuprin in 1936, and Alexander Vertinsky in 1943.
Poet Anna Akhmatova was subjected to several cycles of suppression and rehabilitation, but was never herself arrested. Her first husband, poet Nikolai Gumilev, was shot in 1921, and her son, historian Lev Gumilev, spent two decades in a gulag.
The degree of Stalin\'s personal involvement in general, and in specific instances, has been the subject of discussion. His name was as constantly invoked during his reign in discussions of culture as in just about everything else; in several famous cases his opinion was final.
Stalin\'s occasional beneficence showed itself in strange ways. For example, Mikhail Bulgakov was driven to poverty and despair; yet, after a personal appeal to Stalin, he was allowed to continue working. His play, The Days of the Turbines, with its sympathetic treatment of an anti-Bolshevik family caught up in the Civil War, was finally staged, apparently also on Stalin\'s intervention, and began a decades-long uninterrupted run at the Moscow Arts Theater.
Some insights into Stalin\'s political and esthetic thinking might perhaps be gleaned by reading his favorite novel, Pharaoh, by the Polish writer Bolesław Prus, a historical novel on mechanisms of political power. Similarities have been pointed out between this novel and Sergei Eisenstein\'s film, Ivan the Terrible, produced under Stalin\'s tutelage.
In architecture, a Stalinist Empire Style (basically, updated neoclassicism on a very large scale, exemplified by the Seven Sisters of Moscow) replaced the constructivism of the 1920s.
Stalin\'s rule had a largely disruptive effect on the many indigenous cultures within the Soviet Union. The politics of the Korenization and forced development of "Cultures National by Form, Socialist by their substance" was arguably beneficial to later generations of indigenous cultures in allowing them to integrate more easily into Russian society.
The attempted unification of cultures in Stalin\'s later period was very harmful. Political repressions and purges were even more devastating to indigenous cultures than on urban ones as the cultural elites were smaller. The traditional lives of many peoples in the Siberian, Central Asian and Caucasian provinces was upset and large populations were displaced and scattered in order to prevent nationalist uprisings.
The Moskva Hotel in Moscow was said to have been built with mismatched side wings because Stalin had mistakenly signed off both of the proposals submitted, and the architects had been too afraid to clarify the matter. (The hotel had actually been built by two independent teams of architects with differing ideas.)
Stalin\'s role in the fortunes of the Russian Orthodox Church is complex. Continuous persecution in the 1930s resulted in its near-extinction: by 1939, active parishes numbered in the low hundreds (down from 54,000 in 1917), many churches had been leveled, and tens of thousands of priests, monks and nuns were persecuted and killed. Over 100,000 were shot during the purges of 1937–1938.Alexander N. Yakovlev: A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia (Yale University Press, 2002), pg 165Richard Pipes: Communism: A History (Modern Library Chronicles, 2001), pg. 66 During World War II, the Church was allowed a revival as a patriotic organization, after the NKVD had recruited the new metropolitan, the first after the revolution, as a secret agent. Thousands of parishes were reactivated until a further round of suppression in Khrushchev\'s time.
The Russian Orthodox Church Synod\'s recognition of the Soviet government and of Stalin personally led to a schism with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. An Act of Canonical Communion was signed on the May 17, 2007, followed immediately by a full restoration of communion with the Moscow Patriarchate; there remain some issues not fully healed to the present day.
Just days before Stalin\'s death, certain religious sects were outlawed and persecuted.
Many religions popular in the ethnic regions of the Soviet Union including the Roman Catholic Church, Uniats, Baptists, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, etc. underwent ordeals similar to the Orthodox churches in other parts: thousands of monks were persecuted, and hundreds of churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, sacred monuments, monasteries and other religious buildings were razed.
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| Left: Beria\'s January 1940 letter to Stalin, asking permission to execute 346 "enemies of the CPSU and of the Soviet authorities" who conducted "counter-revolutionary, right-Trotskyite plotting and spying activities." Middle: Stalin\'s handwriting: "за" (support). Right: The Politburo\'s decision is signed by Secretary Stalin. | ||
Stalin, as head of the Politburo, consolidated near-absolute power in the 1930s with a Great Purge of the party, justified as an attempt to expel \'opportunists\' and \'counter-revolutionary infiltrators\'. Those targeted by the purge were often expelled from the party, however more severe measures ranged from banishment to the Gulag labor camps, to execution after trials held by NKVD troikas.
The Purges commenced after the assassination of Sergei Kirov, the popular leader of the party in Leningrad. Kirov was very close to Stalin and his assassination sent chills through the Bolshevik party. Publicly Stalin merely reacted to this assassination by tightening security by seeking out alleged spies and counter-revolutionaries, but in effect he was removing those who might have threatened Stalin\'s leadership. This process then transformed itself into extensive purges.
There are two different versions for the background of Kirov\'s murder. According to the first, Stalin, fearing that he might be next in line to be assassinated, decided to initiate purges instead of passively wait. According to the second version, Stalin saw Kirov as a dangerous competitor for top-spot in the Soviet Union and decided to kill Kirov himself.
In the 1930s, Stalin apparently became increasingly worried about Kirov\'s growing popularity. At the 1934 Party Congress where the vote for the new Central Committee was held, Kirov received only three negative votes, the fewest of any candidate, while Stalin received 292 negative votes, the highest of any candidate. Kirov was a close friend with Sergo Ordzhonikidze, and together they formed a moderate bloc to Stalin in the Politburo. Later in 1934, Stalin asked Kirov to work for him in Moscow. One theory suggests that Stalin did this in order to keep a closer eye on Kirov, this despite of the supposed fact that Stalin entirely controlled the NKVD. Kirov refused, however, and according to the same theory he became a competitor in Stalin\'s eyes.
On December 1, 1934, Kirov was killed by Leonid Nikolaev (also seen spelled as Nikolayev) in the Smolny Institute Leningrad. Kirov had arrived at the Smolny to work in his office, and, apparently leaving his bodyguard downstairs, headed to the upper floors, where the officials had their rooms. Nikolayev emerged from a bathroom and followed Kirov towards his office, shooting him in the back of the neck. Officially Stalin claimed that Nikolayev was part of a larger conspiracy led by Leon Trotsky against the Soviet government. This resulted in the arrest and execution of Lev Kamenev, Grigory Zinoviev, and fourteen others in 1936. The death of Kirov ignited the great purge where supporters of Trotsky and other suspected enemies of the state were arrested. It has been speculated that Stalin was the man who ordered the murder of Kirov, and that the shooting was carried out with the help of the NKVD. However, although most historians believe that this second version of why and how Kirov was killed is more likely, it has so far not been unambiguously proven as right and it is still disputed by some.
Several trials known as the Moscow Trials were held, but the procedures were replicated throughout the country. There were four key trials during this period: the Trial of the Sixteen (August 1936); Trial of the Seventeen (January 1937); the trial of Red Army generals, including Marshal Tukhachevsky (June 1937); and finally the Trial of the Twenty One (including Bukharin) in March 1938.
Most notably in the case of alleged Nazi collaborator Tukhachevsky, many military leaders were convicted of treason. The shakeup in command may have cost the Soviet Union dearly during the German invasion of 22 June, 1941, and its aftermath.
The repression of so many formerly high-ranking revolutionaries and party members led Leon Trotsky to claim that a "river of blood" separated Stalin\'s regime from that of Lenin. Solzhenitsyn alleges that Stalin drew inspiration from Lenin\'s regime with the presence of labor camps and the executions of political opponents that occurred during the Russian Civil War. Trotsky\'s August 1940 assassination in Mexico, where he had lived in exile since January 1937, eliminated the last of Stalin\'s opponents among the former Party leadership. Only three members of the "Old Bolsheviks" (Lenin\'s Politburo) now remained—Stalin himself, "the all-Union Chieftain" (всесоюзный староста) Mikhail Kalinin, and Chairman of Sovnarkom Vyacheslav Molotov.
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| Nikolai Yezhov, the young man strolling with Stalin to his right in this photo from the 1930s, was shot in 1940. Following his death, he was edited out of the photo by Soviet censors [7]. Such retouching was a common occurrence during Stalin\'s reign. |
No segment of society was left untouched during the purges. Article 58 of the legal code, listing prohibited "anti-Soviet activities", was applied in the broadest manner. Initially, the execution lists for the enemies of the people were confirmed by the Politburo.
Over time the procedure was greatly simplified and delegated down the line of command. People would inform on others arbitrarily, to attempt to redeem themselves, or to gain small retributions. The flimsiest pretexts were often enough to brand someone an "Enemy of the People," starting the cycle of public persecution and abuse, often proceeding to interrogation, torture and deportation, if not death. Nadezhda Mandelstam, the widow of the poet Osip Mandelstam and one of the key memoirists of the Purges, recalls being shouted at by Akhmatova: "Don\'t you understand? They are arresting people for nothing now?" The Russian word troika gained a new meaning: a quick, simplified trial by a committee of three subordinated to NKVD.
Towards the end of the purge, the Politburo relieved NKVD head Nikolai Yezhov, from his position for overzealousness. He was subsequently executed. Some historians such as Amy Knight and Robert Conquest postulate that Stalin had Yezhov and his predecessor, Genrikh Yagoda, removed in order to deflect blame from himself.
In parallel with the purges, efforts were made to rewrite the history in Soviet textbooks and other propaganda materials. Notable people executed by NKVD were removed from the texts and photographs as though they never existed. Gradually, the history of revolution was transformed to a story about just two key characters: Lenin and Stalin.
In light of revelations from the Soviet archives, historians now estimate that nearly 700,000 people were executed in the course of the terror,Barry McLoughlin and Kevin McDermott (eds).Stalin\'s Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union. Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. ISBN 1403901198 p. 141 with the great mass of victims being ordinary peasants and workers.Barry McLoughlin and Kevin McDermott (eds).Stalin\'s Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union. Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. ISBN 1403901198 p. 6
It is worth noting that 2007 tours of Stalin\'s Museum in Gori, Georgia reference the purges only in passing. "Sure, during the process of collectivization, some mistakes were made" is the official line at the museum. No other references to mortalities are made during the tour, and when asked about actual fatalities, the estimate of 25,000 is given.
KGB documents located in Kiev purportedly demonstrate how the Ukrainian famine (Holodomor) (1932–1933) was artificially engineered,Legacy of famine divides Ukraine BBC, 24 November 2006 and that while some areas of the Soviet Union affected by the famine were sent humanitarian aid, Ukraine was systematically denied such assistance.SBU documents show that Moscow singled out Ukraine in famine5 Kanal: First News Channel of Ukraine, 22.11.2006 Also, the famine was accompanied by a devastating purge of the Ukrainian intelligentsia and the Ukrainian Communist party itself.Revelations from the Russian Archives: UKRAINIAN FAMINE Library of Congress One document is an order from Moscow to shoot people who steal food. It is signed by Stalin in red ink.Legacy of famine divides Ukraine BBC, 24 November 2006 According to Professor Donald Rayfield, within a year 6,000 had been executed and tens of thousands imprisoned.Donald Rayfield. Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him. Random House, 2004. p. 193
Most modern scholars agree that the famine was caused by the policies of the government of the Soviet Union under Stalin, rather than by natural reasons. The Holodomor is sometimes referred to as the Ukrainian Genocide,U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine, "Findings of the Commission on the Ukraine Famine" [8], Report to Congress, Washington, D.C., April 19 1988US House of Representatives Authorizes Construction of Ukrainian Genocide MonumentStatement by Pope John Paul II on the 70th anniversary of the FamineHR356 "Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives regarding the man-made famine that occurred in Ukraine in 1932–1933", U.S. House of Representatives,
