Joseph Stalin (18 December 1878 - 5 March 1953) was the
General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet UnionThe General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the title synonymous with leader of the Soviet Union after Joseph Stalin's consolidation of power in the 1920s.- Background :In 1919 - 1922, the position of a Responsible Secretary was...
's
Central CommitteeThe Central Committee, abbreviated in Russian as ЦК, "Tse-ka", was the highest body of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . Its full name was Центральный комитет Коммунистической партии Советского Союза = ЦК КПСС; Tsentralnyy Komitet Kommunistitcheskoy Partii Sovetskogo Soyuza = TsK KPSS, or...
from 1922 until his death in 1953. In the years following
Lenin'sVladimir Ilyich Lenin , born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov , was the Bolshevik Leader of the 1917 October Revolution, and the first Head of State of the Soviet Union; in the course of his political career, he used the pseudonyms Lenin, V. I. Lenin, Nikolai Lenin, and N. Lenin...
death in 1924, he rose to become the leader of the
Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
.
Stalin launched a command economy, replacing the
New Economic PolicyThe New Economic Policy was an economic policy proposed by Vladimir Lenin to prevent the Russian economy from collapsing...
of the 1920s with Five-Year Plans and launching a period of rapid industrialization and economic collectivization. The upheaval in the agricultural sector disrupted food production, resulting in widespread famine, such as the catastrophic
Soviet famine of 1932-1933The Soviet famine of 1932–1933 affected major grain-producing areas of the Soviet Union which included Ukraine, Northern Caucasus, Volga Region and Kazakhstan, South Urals, West Siberia. The manifestation of this famine in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic is referred to as Holodomor...
, known in
UkraineUkraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east; Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south. The city of Kiev is both the capital and the largest city of...
as the
HolodomorThe Holodomor refers to the famine of 1932–1933 in the Ukrainian SSR during which millions of people were starved to death due to Soviet policies. There were no natural causes for starvation and in fact, Ukraine - unlike other Soviet Republics - enjoyed a bumper wheat crop in 1932...
.
During the late 1930s, Stalin launched the
Great PurgeGreat Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin in 1937–1938. It involved a large-scale purge of the Communist Party and Government officials, repression of peasants, Red Army leadership, and the persecution of...
(also known as the "Great Terror"), a campaign to purge
the Communist PartyThe first major purge of the Communist Party ranks was performed by Bolsheviks as early as 1921. About 220,000 members were purged or left the party in 1921. The purge was justified by the necessity to get rid of the members that joined the Party simply to be on the winning side...
of people accused of sabotage, terrorism, or treachery; he extended it to
the militaryThe Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization was a 1937 trial of high commanders of the Red Army, also known as "Case of Military" and "Tukhachevsky's Case"...
and other sectors of Soviet society. Targets were often executed, imprisoned in
Gulag labor campsThe Gulag or GULAG was the government agency that administered the penal labor camps of the Soviet Union. The term is infamous for its association with remote places where prisoners were kept and sometimes disappeared...
or exiled. In the years following, millions of ethnic minorities were also
deportedPopulation transfer in the Soviet Union may be classified into the following broad categories: deportations of "anti-Soviet" categories of population, often classified as "enemies of workers", deportations of nationalities, labor force transfer, and organized migrations in opposite directions to...
.
In 1939, the Soviet Union under Stalin signed a
non-aggression pact with Nazi GermanyThe Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, colloquially named after the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, was an agreement officially titled the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and signed in...
, followed by a
Soviet invasion of PolandSoviet invasion of Poland can refer to:* the second phase of the Polish-Soviet War of 1920 when Soviet armies marched on Warsaw, Poland* Soviet invasion of Poland of 1939 when Soviet Union allied with Nazi Germany attacked Second Polish Republic...
,
FinlandThe Winter War was a military conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland. It began with a Soviet offensive on 30 November 1939, three months after the German invasion of Poland and the start of World War II, and ended on 13 March 1940 with the Moscow Peace Treaty...
, the Baltics,
BessarabiaBessarabia is a historical term for the geographic entity in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west...
and northern
BukovinaBukovina is a historical region on the northern slopes of the northeastern Carpathian Mountains and the adjoining plains...
. After Germany
violated the pactOperation Barbarossa was the code name for Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a 2,900 km front...
in 1941, the Soviet Union
joined the Allies to play a large role in the Axis defeatThe Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of war between the European Axis powers, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Croatia and Finland , and the Soviet Union which encompassed central and eastern Europe from 22 June 1941 to 9...
, at the cost of the largest death toll for any country in the war. Thereafter, contradicting statements at
allied conferencesThe Yalta Conference, sometimes called the Crimea Conference and codenamed the Argonaut Conference, was the wartime meeting from 4 February 1945 to 11 February 1945 among the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union—President Franklin D...
, Stalin installed communist governments in most of Eastern Europe, forming the
Eastern blocThe terms Eastern Bloc, Communist Bloc or Soviet Bloc were used to refer to the former Communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, including the countries of the Warsaw Pact, along with Yugoslavia and Albania, which were not aligned with the Soviet Union after 1948 and 1960...
, behind what was referred to as an "
Iron CurtainThe concept of the Iron Curtain symbolized the ideological and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991...
" of Soviet rule. This launched the long period of antagonism known as the
Cold WarThe Cold War was the continuing state of political conflict, military tension, and economic competition existing after World War II , primarily between the USSR and its satellite states, and the powers of the Western world, including the United States...
.
Stalin made efforts to augment his public image and a
cult of personalityA cult of personality arises when a country's leader uses mass media to create an idealized and heroic public image, often through unquestioning flattery and praise. Cults of personality are often found in dictatorships and Stalinist governments....
developed around him; however, his successor,
Nikita KhrushchevNikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
, denounced his legacy and drove the process of
de-StalinizationDe-Stalinization refers to the process of eliminating the cult of personality and Stalinist political system created by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.Stalin was succeeded by a collective leadership after his death in 1953...
of the Soviet Union.
Early life
Stalin was born
Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili on 18 December 1878 to a cobbler in the town of
GoriGori is a city in eastern Georgia, which serves as the regional capital of Shida Kartli and the centre of the eponymous administrative district. The name is from Georgian gora, that is, "heap", or "hill"...
,
GeorgiaGeorgia Georgia Georgia is a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Situated at the juncture of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the south by Turkey and Armenia, and to the east by Azerbaijan...
. At seven, he contracted smallpox, which permanently scarred his face. At ten, he began attending church school where the Georgian children were forced to speak Russian. By age twelve, two horse-drawn carriage accidents left his left arm permanently damaged. At sixteen, he received a scholarship to a
Georgian OrthodoxThe Georgian Apostolic Autocephalous Orthodox Church traces its origins to the mission of Apostle Andrew in the 1st century. It is an autocephalous part of the Eastern Orthodox Church since 4th century A.D...
seminary, where he rebelled against the imperialist and religious order. Though he performed well, he was expelled in 1899 after missing his final exams. The seminary's records suggest he was unable to pay his tuition fees.
Shortly after leaving the seminary, Stalin discovered the writings of
Vladimir LeninVladimir Ilyich Lenin , born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov , was the Bolshevik Leader of the 1917 October Revolution, and the first Head of State of the Soviet Union; in the course of his political career, he used the pseudonyms Lenin, V. I. Lenin, Nikolai Lenin, and N. Lenin...
and decided to become a Marxist revolutionary, eventually joining Lenin's Bolsheviks in 1903. After being marked by the
OkhrankaThe Okhrana, or Department for Defense of Public Security and Order , usually called the Okhranka in Russia, was a secret police force of the Russian Empire and part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the late 1800s, aided by the Special Corps of Gendarmes...
(the Tsar's secret police) for his activities, he became a full-time revolutionary and outlaw. He became one of the Bolsheviks' chief operatives in the
CaucasusThe Caucasus or Caucas is a geopolitical region between at the border of Europe and Asia. It is home to the Caucasus Mountains, including Europe's highest mountain ....
, organizing paramilitaries, inciting strikes, spreading propaganda and raising money through bank robberies, ransom kidnappings and extortion. In the summer of 1906, Stalin married
Ekaterina SvanidzeKato Svanidze was the Georgian first wife of Joseph Stalin. They were married in 1906.Ekaterina, nicknamed Kato, was a tailor who worked for the ladies of the Russian army....
, who later gave birth to Stalin's first child,
YakovYakov Iosifovich Dzhugashvili was one of Joseph Stalin's four children . Yakov was the son of Stalin's first wife, Ekaterina Svanidze....
. Stalin temporarily resigned from the party over its ban on bank robberies, conducted a large raid on a bank shipment resulting in the death of 40 people and then fled to
BakuBaku , sometimes known as Baqy, Baky, Baki or Bakou, is the capital, the largest city, and the largest port of Azerbaijan and all the Caucasus. Located on the southern shore of the Absheron Peninsula, the city consists of two principal parts: the downtown and the old Inner City...
, where Ekaterina died of typhus. In Baku, Stalin organized Muslim
AzerisThe Azerbaijanis are an ethnic group mainly living in northwestern Iran and the Republic of Azerbaijan. Commonly referred to as Azeris/Āzarīs or Azeri Turks , they also live in a wider area from the Caucasus to the Iranian plateau...
and Persians in partisan activities, including the murders of many "Black Hundreds" right-wing supporters of the Tsar, and conducted protection rackets, ransom kidnappings, counterfeiting operations and robberies.
Stalin was captured and sent to
SiberiaSiberia , is the vast region constituting almost all of Northern Asia and for the most part currently serving as the massive central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, having served in the same capacity previously for the USSR from its beginning, and the Russian Empire beginning in the...
seven times, but escaped all but the last of these exiles. After release from once such capture, in April 1912 in
Saint PetersburgSaint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city's other names were Petrograd and Leningrad...
, Stalin created the newspaper
PravdaPravda was a leading newspaper of the Soviet Union and an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1912 and 1991....
from an existing party newspaper. He eventually adopted the name "Stalin", from the Russian word for steel, which he used as an alias and
nom de plume in his published works.
During his last exile, Stalin was conscripted by the Russian army to fight in World War I, but was deemed unfit for service due to his damaged left arm.
Role during the Russian Revolution of 1917
After returning to Saint Petersburg from exile, Stalin ousted
Vyacheslav MolotovVyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov was a Soviet politician and diplomat, a leading figure in the Soviet government from the 1920s, when he rose to power as a protégé of Joseph Stalin, to 1957, when he was dismissed from Presidium of the Central Committee by Nikita Khrushchev...
and
Alexander ShlyapnikovAlexander Gavrilovich Shliapnikov was a Russian communist, trade union leader and skilled metalworker....
as editors of
PravdaPravda was a leading newspaper of the Soviet Union and an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1912 and 1991....
, and took a position in favor of supporting
Alexander KerenskyAlexander Fyodorovich Kerensky was a Russian politician. He served as the second Prime Minister of the Russian Provisional Government until Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, known commonly as Lenin, was elected by the All-Russian Congress of Soviets following the October Revolution.- Early life and...
's
provisional governmentThe Russian Provisional Government was the short-lived administrative body which sought to govern Russia immediately following the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in February 1917. In September 14, the State Duma of the Russian Empire officially dissolved the newly created Directorate, and the...
. However, after Lenin prevailed at the April 1917 Party conference, Stalin and
Pravda supported overthrowing the provisional government. At this conference, Stalin was elected to the Bolshevik Central Committee. After Lenin participated in an attempted revolution, Stalin helped Lenin evade capture and, to avoid a bloodbath, ordered the besieged Bolsheviks to surrender. He smuggled Lenin to Finland and assumed leadership of the Bolsheviks. After the jailed Bolsheviks were freed to help defend Saint Petersburg, in October 1917, the Bolshevik Central Committee voted in favor of an insurrection. On 7 November, from the Smolny Institute, Stalin, Lenin and the rest of the Central Committee coordinated the coup against the Kerensky government - the so-called
October RevolutionTheOctober Revolution , also known as the Soviet Revolution or Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution. It began with an armed insurrection in Petrograd traditionally dated to 25 October 1917 Julian calendar...
. Kerensky left the capital to rally the Imperial troops at the German front. By 8 November, the Winter Palace had been stormed and Kerensky's Cabinet had been arrested.
Role in the Russian Civil War, 1917–1919
Upon seizing Petrograd, Stalin was appointed People's Commissar for Nationalities' Affairs. Thereafter, civil war broke out in Russia, pitting
Lenin'sVladimir Ilyich Lenin , born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov , was the Bolshevik Leader of the 1917 October Revolution, and the first Head of State of the Soviet Union; in the course of his political career, he used the pseudonyms Lenin, V. I. Lenin, Nikolai Lenin, and N. Lenin...
Red Army against the White Army, a loose alliance of anti-Bolshevik forces. Lenin formed a five-member
PolitburoThe Politburo , known as the Presidium from 1952 to 1966, functioned as the central policymaking and governing body of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union...
which included Stalin and
TrotskyLeon Trotsky , born Leyba Davidov Bronstein , was a Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxist theorist. He was one of the leaders of the Russian October Revolution, second only to Lenin...
. In May 1918, Lenin dispatched Stalin to the city of Tsaritsyn. Through his new allies,
Kliment Voroshilovor Klyment Voroshylov , popularly known as Klim Voroshilov was a Soviet military commander and politician.-Early life and Russian Revolution:...
and
Semyon BudyonnySemyon Mikhailovich Budyonny was a Soviet military commander and an ally of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.-Early life:...
, Stalin imposed his influence on the military. Stalin challenged many of the decisions of
TrotskyLeon Trotsky , born Leyba Davidov Bronstein , was a Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxist theorist. He was one of the leaders of the Russian October Revolution, second only to Lenin...
, ordered the killings of many former Tsarist officers in the Red Army and counter-revolutionaries and burned villages in order to intimidate the peasantry into submission and discourage bandit raids on food shipments.
In May 1919, in order to stem mass desertions on the Western front, Stalin had deserters and renegades publicly executed as traitors.
Role in the Polish-Soviet War, 1919-1921
After their
Russian Civil WarThe Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed and the Soviets under the domination of the Bolshevik party assumed power, first in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a multi-party war that...
victory, the Bolsheviks moved to establish a sphere of influence in Central Europe, starting with Poland. As commander of the southern front, Stalin was determined to take the Polish-held city of
LvivLviv is a major city in western Ukraine.It is regarded as one of the main cultural centres of today's Ukraine and historically also for Ukraine’s neighbour Poland. The historic centre of Lviv with its old buildings and cobblestone roads has survived the Second World War and the Soviet presence...
. This conflicted with general strategy set by Lenin and Trotsky, whose priority was the capture of
WarsawWarsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River roughly from both the Baltic Sea coast and the Carpathian Mountains. Its population as of 2009 was estimated at 1,709,781, and the Warsaw metropolitan area at approximately 2,785,000...
further north.
Trotsky engaged with Polish commander Władysław Sikorski at the
The Battle of WarsawThe Battle of Warsaw was the decisive battle of the Polish–Soviet War, which began soon after the end of World War I in 1918 and lasted until the Treaty of Riga .The battle was fought from August 12–25, 1920 as Red Army forces commanded by Mikhail Tukhachevsky approached the Polish...
, but Stalin refused to redirect his troops from Lviv to help. Consequently, the battles for both
LvivLviv is a major city in western Ukraine.It is regarded as one of the main cultural centres of today's Ukraine and historically also for Ukraine’s neighbour Poland. The historic centre of Lviv with its old buildings and cobblestone roads has survived the Second World War and the Soviet presence...
and
WarsawWarsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River roughly from both the Baltic Sea coast and the Carpathian Mountains. Its population as of 2009 was estimated at 1,709,781, and the Warsaw metropolitan area at approximately 2,785,000...
were lost, and Stalin was blamed. Stalin returned to Moscow in August 1920, where he defended himself and resigned his military commission. At the Ninth Party Conference on 22 September, Trotsky openly criticized Stalin's behavior.
Later in his career, Stalin was to compensate for the disaster of 1920. He would ensure the death of Trotsky, secure Lviv in the Nazi-Soviet pact, execute Polish veterans of the
Polish-Soviet WarThe Polish–Soviet War was an armed conflict between Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine against the Second Polish Republic and the Ukrainian People's Republic, four states in post-World War I Europe. The war was the result of the belligerents' desire to expand their territories and their influence...
in the
Katyn massacreThe Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest massacre , was a mass murder of thousands of Polish military officers, policemen, intellectuals and civilian prisoners of war by Soviet NKVD, based on a proposal from Lavrentiy Beria to execute all members of the Polish Officer Corps...
; ensure the failure of the
Warsaw UprisingThe Warsaw Uprising was a struggle by the Polish Home Army to liberate Warsaw from Nazi German occupation during World War II. The Uprising began on 1 August 1944, as part of a nationwide rebellion, Operation Tempest. It was intended to last for only a few days until the Soviet Army reached the...
with a loss of around 250,000 Polish lives; establish the
Soviet takeover of Eastern EuropeThe terms Eastern Bloc, Communist Bloc or Soviet Bloc were used to refer to the former Communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, including the countries of the Warsaw Pact, along with Yugoslavia and Albania, which were not aligned with the Soviet Union after 1948 and 1960...
; and at
YaltaThe Yalta Conference, sometimes called the Crimea Conference and codenamed the Argonaut Conference, was the wartime meeting from 4 February 1945 to 11 February 1945 among the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union—President Franklin D...
, demand that
LvivLviv is a major city in western Ukraine.It is regarded as one of the main cultural centres of today's Ukraine and historically also for Ukraine’s neighbour Poland. The historic centre of Lviv with its old buildings and cobblestone roads has survived the Second World War and the Soviet presence...
be ceded by Poland to the Soviet Union.
Rise to power
Stalin played a decisive role in engineering the 1921
Red Army invasion of GeorgiaThe Red Army invasion of Georgia also known as the Soviet—Georgian War or the Soviet invasion of Georgia was a military campaign by the Soviet Russian Red Army against the Democratic Republic of Georgia aimed at overthrowing the local Social-Democratic government and installing the Bolshevik...
following which he adopted particularly hardline, centralist policies towards
Soviet GeorgiaThe Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic , also known as the Georgian SSR for short, was one of the republics that made up the former Soviet Union.- History :- Preceding Events :On November 28 1917, after October Revolution in Russia, there was established...
, which included the
Georgian AffairThe Georgian Affair of 1922 was a political conflict within the Soviet leadership about the way in which social and political transformation was to be achieved in the Georgian SSR...
of 1922 and other repressions.
Lenin and
Lev KamenevLev Borisovich Kamenev was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a prominent Soviet politician. He was briefly the nominal head of the Soviet state in 1917 and a founding member and later chairman of the ruling Politburo.-Background:Kamenev was born in Moscow, the son of a Jewish railway worker...
helped to have Stalin appointed as
General SecretaryThe General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the title synonymous with leader of the Soviet Union after Joseph Stalin's consolidation of power in the 1920s.- Background :In 1919 - 1922, the position of a Responsible Secretary was...
in 1922 to help build a base against Trotsky, who moved to formally impose the Party dictatorship over the industrial sectors.
Lenin, who disliked Stalin's policy towards Georgia, suffered a stroke in 1922, forcing him into semi-retirement in
GorkiGorki Leninskiye is an urban-type settlement located in Leninsky District of Moscow Oblast, 10 km south of the Moscow, Russia, city limits and the MKAD...
. Stalin visited him often, acting as his intermediary with the outside world. The pair quarreled and their relationship deteriorated. Lenin dictated increasingly disparaging notes on Stalin in what would become
his testamentLenin's Testament is the name given to a document written by Vladimir Lenin in the last weeks of 1922 and the first week of 1923. In the testament, Lenin proposed changes to the structure of the Soviet governing bodies...
. He criticized Stalin's rude manners, excessive power, ambition and politics, and suggested that Stalin should be removed from the position of General Secretary. During Lenin's semi-retirement, Stalin forged an alliance with Kamenev and
Grigory ZinovievGrigory Yevseevich Zinoviev was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet Communist politician.-Before the 1917 Revolution :Gregory Zinoviev was born in Yelizavetgrad , Ukraine,...
against
TrotskyLeon Trotsky , born Leyba Davidov Bronstein , was a Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxist theorist. He was one of the leaders of the Russian October Revolution, second only to Lenin...
. These allies prevented
Lenin's TestamentLenin's Testament is the name given to a document written by Vladimir Lenin in the last weeks of 1922 and the first week of 1923. In the testament, Lenin proposed changes to the structure of the Soviet governing bodies...
from being revealed to the Twelfth Party Congress in April 1923.
Lenin died of a heart attack on 21 January 1924. Thereafter, Stalin's disputes with
KamenevLev Borisovich Kamenev was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a prominent Soviet politician. He was briefly the nominal head of the Soviet state in 1917 and a founding member and later chairman of the ruling Politburo.-Background:Kamenev was born in Moscow, the son of a Jewish railway worker...
and
ZinovievGrigory Yevseevich Zinoviev was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet Communist politician.-Before the 1917 Revolution :Gregory Zinoviev was born in Yelizavetgrad , Ukraine,...
intensified. Stalin allied himself now with
Nikolai BukharinNikolai Ivanovich Bukharin , was a Marxist theoretician, Bolshevik revolutionary, and Soviet politician. He was a member of the Politburo and Central Committee , chairman of Communist International , and the editor in chief of Pravda , journal Bolshevik , and Izvestia , and the...
. Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev were ejected from the Central Committee and then expelled from the Party. Kamenev and Zinoviev were readmitted, but Trotsky was exiled from the Soviet Union.
Stalin pushed for more rapid industrialization and central control of the economy, contravening Lenin's
New Economic PolicyThe New Economic Policy was an economic policy proposed by Vladimir Lenin to prevent the Russian economy from collapsing...
. At the end of 1927, a critical shortfall in grain supplies prompted Stalin to push for collectivisation of agriculture and order the seizures of grain hoards from
kulakKulaks were a category of relatively affluent peasants in the later Russian Empire, Soviet Russia, and early Soviet Union. The word kulak originally referred to independent farmers in the Russian Empire who emerged as a result of the Stolypin reform which began in 1906...
farmers.
BukharinNikolai Ivanovich Bukharin , was a Marxist theoretician, Bolshevik revolutionary, and Soviet politician. He was a member of the Politburo and Central Committee , chairman of Communist International , and the editor in chief of Pravda , journal Bolshevik , and Izvestia , and the...
attacked these policies and advocated a return to the NEP, but the rest of the Politburo sided with Stalin and kicked him out in November 1929.
Bolstering Soviet secret service and intelligence
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
NKVDThe People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including...
. Stalin made considerable use of the
Communist InternationalThe Comintern was an international Communist organization founded in Moscow in March 1919...
movement in order to infiltrate agents and to ensure that foreign Communist parties remained pro-Soviet and pro-Stalin.
One of the best 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 TrotskyLeon Trotsky , born Leyba Davidov Bronstein , was a Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxist theorist. He was one of the leaders of the Russian October Revolution, second only to Lenin...
assassinated in Mexico.
Cult of personality
Stalin created a
cult of personalityA cult of personality arises when a country's leader uses mass media to create an idealized and heroic public image, often through unquestioning flattery and praise. Cults of personality are often found in dictatorships and Stalinist governments....
in the Soviet Union around both himself and Lenin. Many personality cults in history have been frequently measured and compared to his. Numerous towns, villages and cities were renamed after the Soviet leader (see
List of places named after Stalin) and the Stalin Prize and Stalin Peace Prize were named in his honor. He accepted grandiloquent titles (e.g. "Coryphaeus of Science," "Father of Nations," "Brilliant Genius of Humanity," "Great Architect of Communism," "Gardener of Human Happiness," and others), and helped rewrite Soviet history to provide himself a more significant role in the revolution. At the same time, according to Khrushchev, he insisted that he be remembered for "the extraordinary modesty characteristic of truly great people." Statues of Stalin depict him at a height and build approximating
Alexander IIIAlexander III Alexandrovich reigned as Emperor of Russia from 13 March 1881 until his death in 1894.-Early life:...
, while photographic evidence suggests he was between 5 ft 5 in and 5 ft 6 in (165–168 cm).
Trotsky criticized the cult of personality built around Stalin. It reached new levels during the Great Patriotic War, with Stalin's name included in the new Soviet
national anthemA national anthem is a generally patriotic musical composition that evokes and eulogizes the history, traditions and struggles of its people, recognized either by a nation's government as the official national song, or by convention through use by the people.- History :Anthems rose to prominence...
. Stalin became the focus of literature, poetry, music, paintings and film, exhibiting fawning devotion, crediting Stalin with almost god-like qualities, and suggesting he single-handedly won the Second World War. It is debatable as to how much Stalin relished the cult surrounding him. The Finnish communist
TuominenArvo "Poika" Tuominen was a Finnish Communist revolutionary and later a social democratic journalist and politician. Tuominen was given his nickname Poika in 1920 because of his boyish looks—poika means "boy" in Finnish....
records a sarcastic toast proposed by Stalin at a New Year Party in 1935 in which he said "Comrades! I want to propose a toast to our patriarch, life and sun, liberator of nations, architect of socialism [he rattled off all the appellations applied to him in those days] Josef Vissarionovich Stalin, and I hope this is the first and last speech made to that genius this evening."
In a 1956 speech, Nikita Khrushchev gave a denunciation of Stalin's actions: "It is impermissible and foreign to the spirit of Marxism-Leninism to elevate one person, to transform him into a superman possessing supernatural characteristics akin to those of a god."
Purges
|
|
|
| Left: Beria's January 1940 letter to Stalin, asking permission to execute 346 "enemies of the CPSU and of the Soviet authorities The term enemy of the people is a fluid designation of political or class opponents of the group using the term. Its usage is derogatory, and meant to imply that the "enemies" are acting against society as a whole. It is similar to the notions of "public enemy" and "enemy of the state". The term...
" 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
PolitburoThe Politburo , known as the Presidium from 1952 to 1966, functioned as the central policymaking and governing body of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union...
consolidated near-absolute power in the 1930s with a
Great PurgeGreat Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin in 1937–1938. It involved a large-scale purge of the Communist Party and Government officials, repression of peasants, Red Army leadership, and the persecution of...
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
GulagThe Gulag or GULAG was the government agency that administered the penal labor camps of the Soviet Union. The term is infamous for its association with remote places where prisoners were kept and sometimes disappeared...
labor campA labor camp is a simplified detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons...
s, to execution after trials held by
NKVD troikaNKVD troika or Troika, in Soviet Union history, were commissions of three people employed as an additional instrument of extrajudicial punishment introduced to supplement the legal system with a means for quick punishment of anti-Soviet elements...
s.
In the 1930s, Stalin apparently became increasingly worried about the growing popularity of Sergei Kirov. 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 1,108 negative votes. After the assassination of Kirov, which may have been orchestrated by Stalin, Stalin invented a detailed scheme to implicate opposition leaders in the murder, including Trotsky, Kamenev and Zioviev. The investigations and trials expanded. Stalin passed a new law on "terrorist organizations and terrorist acts", which were to be investigated for no more than ten days, with no prosecution, defense attorneys or appeals, followed by a sentence to be executed "quickly."
Thereafter, several trials known as the
Moscow TrialsThe Moscow Trials were a series of trials of political opponents of Joseph Stalin during the Great Purge. Many of the defendants were executed. After Nikita Khrushchev's revelations in the 1950s, the Moscow Trials are today universally acknowledged as show trials in which the verdicts were...
were held, but the procedures were replicated throughout the country. Article 58 of the legal code, listing prohibited anti-Soviet activities as counterrevolutionary crime was applied in the broadest manner. The flimsiest pretexts were often enough to brand someone an "
enemy of the peopleThe term enemy of the people is a fluid designation of political or class opponents of the group using the term. Its usage is derogatory, and meant to imply that the "enemies" are acting against society as a whole. It is similar to the notions of "public enemy" and "enemy of the state". The term...
," starting the cycle of public persecution and abuse, often proceeding to interrogation, torture and deportation, if not death. The Russian word
troikaA general meaning of the Russian word troika is three of a kind, a collection of three. It may also mean:* A three-horse drawn sled or carriage* Troika , a folk dance* Troika of judges or political leaders...
gained a new meaning: a quick, simplified trial by a
committee of three subordinated to NKVDNKVD troika or Troika, in Soviet Union history, were commissions of three people employed as an additional instrument of extrajudicial punishment introduced to supplement the legal system with a means for quick punishment of anti-Soviet elements...
with sentencing carried out within 24 hours.
| |
| |
Nikolai YezhovNikolai Ivanovich Yezhov was a senior figure in the NKVD during the period of the Great Purge. His reign is sometimes known as the "Yezhovschina" .- Early life and career :Little reliable info is available about Yezhov's family and early years...
, the young man walking with Stalin in the top photo from the 1930s, was shot in 1940. Following his death, Yezhov was edited out by Soviet censors. Such retouching was a common occurrence during Stalin's rule. |
Many military leaders were convicted of treason, and a large scale purging of
Red ArmyThe Red Army The Red Army The Red Army was the Soviet government’s revolutionary militia beginning in the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the USSR. Since 1946, after the Second World War, it was called the Soviet Army.The 'Red...
officers followed. The repression of so many formerly high-ranking revolutionaries and party members led
Leon TrotskyLeon Trotsky , born Leyba Davidov Bronstein , was a Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxist theorist. He was one of the leaders of the Russian October Revolution, second only to Lenin...
to claim that a "river of blood" separated Stalin's regime from that of Lenin. In August 1940, Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico, where he had lived in exile since January 1937; this eliminated the last of Stalin's opponents among the former Party leadership. The only three "
Old BolshevikOld Bolshevik, old Bolshevik Guard of old Party guard is an unofficial designation for members of the Bolshevik party before the Russian Revolution of 1917, many of whom were either tried and executed by the NKVD during Stalin's purges or died under suspicious circumstances.In 1922 there were...
s" (Lenin's Politburo) that remained were Stalin,
Mikhail KalininMikhail Ivanovich Kalinin was a Bolshevik revolutionary and the titular head of state of the Soviet Union from 1919 to 1946. Though only four years older than Joseph Stalin, Kalinin was celebrated as Dedushka by the Young Pioneers...
, and
Chairman of SovnarkomPremier of the Soviet Union is the commonly used English term for the offices of Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR...
Vyacheslav MolotovVyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov was a Soviet politician and diplomat, a leading figure in the Soviet government from the 1920s, when he rose to power as a protégé of Joseph Stalin, to 1957, when he was dismissed from Presidium of the Central Committee by Nikita Khrushchev...
.
Mass operations of the NKVDMass operations of the NKVD were carried out during the Great Purge and targeted specific categories of people. As a rule, they were carried out according to the corresponding order of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Nikolai Yezhov....
also targeted "national contingents" (foreign ethnicities) such as Poles, ethnic Germans, Koreans, etc. A total of 350,000 (144,000 of them Poles) were arrested and 247,157 (110,000 Poles) were executed. Many Americans who had emigrated to the Soviet Union during the worst of the
Great DepressionThe Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
were executed; others were sent to prison camps or gulags. Concurrent with the purges, efforts were made to rewrite the history in Soviet textbooks and other propaganda materials. Notable people executed by
NKVDThe People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including...
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 (353,074 in 1937 and 328,612 in 1938) were executed in the course of the terror, with the great mass of victims being "ordinary" Soviet citizens: workers, peasants, homemakers, teachers, priests, musicians, soldiers, pensioners, ballerinas, beggars. Some experts believe the evidence released from the Soviet archives is understated, incomplete or unreliable. For example,
Robert ConquestGeorge Robert Ackworth Conquest is a British historian who became a well-known writer and researcher on the Soviet Union with the publication in 1968 of The Great Terror, an account of Stalin's purges of the 1930s.-Early career:...
suggests that the probable figure for executions during the years of the Great Purge is not 681,692, but some two and a half times as high. He believes that the KGB was covering its tracks by falsifying the dates and causes of death of rehabilitated victims.
At the time, while reviewing a list of people to be shot, Stalin reportedly muttered to no one in particular: "Who's going to remember all this riffraff in ten or twenty years time? No one." In addition, Stalin dispatched a contingent of
NKVDThe People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including...
operatives to Mongolia, established a Mongolian version of the
NKVD troikaNKVD troika or Troika, in Soviet Union history, were commissions of three people employed as an additional instrument of extrajudicial punishment introduced to supplement the legal system with a means for quick punishment of anti-Soviet elements...
and unleashed a
bloody purgeThe Stalinist repressions in Mongolia had their climax between 1937 and 1939 , under the leadership of Khorloogiin Choibalsan. The purges affected the whole country, although the main focus was on upper party and government ranks, the army, and especially the Buddhist clergy...
in which tens of thousands were executed as 'Japanese Spies.' Mongolian ruler Khorloogiin Choibalsan closely followed Stalin's lead.
Deportations
Shortly before, during and immediately after
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Stalin conducted a series of deportations on a huge scale which profoundly affected the ethnic map of the Soviet Union. It is estimated that between 1941 and 1949 nearly 3.3 million were deported to
SiberiaSiberia , is the vast region constituting almost all of Northern Asia and for the most part currently serving as the massive central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, having served in the same capacity previously for the USSR from its beginning, and the Russian Empire beginning in the...
and the Central Asian republics. By some estimates up to 43% of the resettled population died of diseases and
malnutritionMalnutrition is the insufficient, excessive or imbalanced consumption of nutrients.A number of different nutrition disorders may arise, depending on which nutrients are under or overabundant in the diet....
.
Separatism, resistance to Soviet rule and collaboration with the invading Germans were cited as the official reasons for the deportations, rightly or wrongly. Individual circumstances of those spending time in German-occupied territories were not examined. After the brief Nazi occupation of the Caucasus, the entire population of five of the small highland peoples and the Crimean Tatars more than a million people in total were deported without notice or any opportunity to take their possessions.
During Stalin's rule the following ethnic groups were deported completely or partially:
UkrainiansUkrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group primarily living in Ukraine, or more broadly—citizens of Ukraine...
, Poles,
KoreansThe Korean people are an ethnic group originating in East Asia. Most Koreans speak the Korean language.-Names:South Koreans call Koreans Han-guk-in —or simply 한인/Han-in for South Koreans living abroad—or informally Hanguk saram , while North Koreans call Koreans Chosŏn-in or Chosŏn saram...
, Volga Germans,
Crimean TatarsCrimean Tatars or Crimeans are a Turkic ethnic group originally residing in Crimea. They speak the Crimean Tatar language...
,
KalmyksThe Republic of Kalmykia is a federal subject of the Russian Federation . The direct romanization of the republic's Russian name is Respublika Kalmykiya, and that of the Kalmyk name is Xal'mg Tanghch. It is the only state in Europe where the dominant religion is Buddhism...
,
ChechensThe Chechen Republic , or, informally, Chechnya , sometimes referred to as Ichkeria, Chechnia, Chechenia or Noxçiyn, is a federal subject of Russia...
,
IngushThe Republic of Ingushetia is a federal subject of Russia , located in the North Caucasus region with its capital at Magas. The republic is the smallest of Russia's federal subjects except two federal cities, Moscow and Saint Petersburg...
,
BalkarsThe Balkars are a Turkic people of the Caucasus region, the titular population of Kabardino-Balkaria. Their Karachay-Balkar language is of the Ponto-Caspian subgroup of the Northwestern group of Turkic languages. Related to Crimean Tatar and Kumyk...
,
KarachaysKarachay-Cherkess Republic , or Karachay-Cherkessia is a federal subject of Russia...
, Meskhetian Turks,
FinnsFinland , officially the Republic of Finland
, is a Nordic country and democracy situated in the Fennoscandian region of northern Europe. It borders Sweden on the west, Russia on the east, and Norway on the north, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland...
,
BulgariaBulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a country in the Balkans in south-eastern Europe. Bulgaria borders five other countries: Romania to the north , Serbia and the Republic of Macedonia to the west, and Greece and Turkey to the south...
ns,
GreeksGreece , officially the Hellenic Republic , is a country in southeastern Europe, situated on the southern end of the Balkan Peninsula....
,
LatviaLatvia , officially the Republic of Latvia is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , and to the southeast by Belarus . Across the Baltic Sea to the west lies Sweden...
ns,
LithuaniaLithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the southernmost of the three Baltic states. Situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, it shares borders with Latvia to the north, Belarus to the southeast, Poland, and the Russian exclave of...
ns,
EstoniaEstonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by the Russian Federation...
ns, and
JewThe Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
s. Large numbers of
KulakKulaks were a category of relatively affluent peasants in the later Russian Empire, Soviet Russia, and early Soviet Union. The word kulak originally referred to independent farmers in the Russian Empire who emerged as a result of the Stolypin reform which began in 1906...
s, regardless of their nationality, were resettled to
SiberiaSiberia , is the vast region constituting almost all of Northern Asia and for the most part currently serving as the massive central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, having served in the same capacity previously for the USSR from its beginning, and the Russian Empire beginning in the...
and
Central AsiaAsia is a region of Asia from the Caspian Sea in the west to central China in the east, and from southern Russia in the north to northern India in the south. It is also sometimes known as Middle Asia or Inner Asia, and is within the scope of the wider Eurasian continent.Various definitions of its...
. Deportations took place in appalling conditions, often by cattle truck, and hundreds of thousands of deportees died en route. Those who survived were forced to work without pay in the labour camps. Many of the deportees died of hunger or other conditions.
In February 1956,
Nikita KhrushchevNikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
condemned the deportations as a violation of
LeninismLeninism is the theory and practice of the dictatorship of the proletariat, led by a revolutionary vanguard party. Theoretically, Leninism comprises the political and economic communist theories of Vladimir Lenin, developed from Marxism, that were the establishing ideology of Soviet communism — in...
, and reversed most of them, although it was not until 1991 that the Tatars,
MeskhetiMeskheti is in a mountainous area of Moschia and is a former province in southwestern Georgia. The ancient Georgian tribes of Meskhi and Mosiniks were the indigenous population of this region, identified by some authors with the Mushki known from 12th century BC Assyrian sources...
ans and Volga Germans were allowed to return
en masse to their homelands. The deportations had a profound effect on the peoples of the Soviet Union. The memory of the deportations played a major part in the separatist movements in the Baltic States,
TatarstanRepublic of Tatarstan is a federal subject of the Russian Federation . Its size is 68,000 km² with a population of 3,800,000. Its capital is Kazan...
and
ChechnyaThe Chechen Republic , or, informally, Chechnya , sometimes referred to as Ichkeria, Chechnia, Chechenia or Noxçiyn, is a federal subject of Russia...
, even today.
Collectivization
Stalin's regime moved to force
collectivizationCollective farming is an organization of agricultural production in which the holdings of several farmers are run as a joint enterprise. A collective farm is essentially an agricultural production cooperative in which members-owners engage jointly in farming activities...
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%, 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
OGPUThe State Political Directorate was the secret police of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and the Soviet Union from 1922 until 1934...
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
GulagThe Gulag or GULAG was the government agency that administered the penal labor camps of the Soviet Union. The term is infamous for its association with remote places where prisoners were kept and sometimes disappeared...
labor campA labor camp is a simplified detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons...
s, or deported to remote areas of the country, depending on the charge. Archival data indicates that 20,201 people were executed during 1930, the year of
DekulakizationDekulakization was the Soviet campaign of political repressions, including arrests, deportations, and executions of millions of the better-off peasants and their families in 1929-1932. The richer peasants were labeled kulaks and considered class enemies...
.
The two-stage progress of collectivization — interrupted for a year by Stalin's famous editorials, "Dizzy with success" and "Reply to Collective Farm Comrades" — is a prime example of his capacity for tactical political withdrawal followed by intensification of initial strategies.
Famines
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. Most modern scholars agree that the famine was caused by the policies of the government of the
Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
under Stalin, rather than by natural reasons.
According to
Alan BullockAlan Louis Charles Bullock, Baron Bullock , was a British historian, who wrote an influential biography of Adolf Hitler and many other works.-Biography:...
, "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. Other historians hold 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. 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.
The USSR also experienced a
major famine in 1947The last major famine to hit the USSR occurred mainly in 1947, which was triggered by a drought. However, the surplus stocks in the hands of the state could have fed all those who died of starvation. Had the policies of the Soviet regime been different, there might have been no famine at all or a...
as a result of war damage and severe droughts, but economist Michael Ellman argues that it could have been prevented if the government did not mismanage its grain reserves. The famine cost an estimated 1 to 1.5 million lives as well as secondary population losses due to reduced fertility.
Ukrainian famine
The Holodomor famine is sometimes referred to as the Ukrainian
GenocideGenocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group.While precise definition varies among genocide scholars, a legal definition is found in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of...
, implying it was engineered by the Soviet government, specifically targeting the Ukrainian people to destroy the Ukrainian nation as a political factor and social entity. While historians continue to disagree whether the policies that led to Holodomor fall under the
legal definition of genocideThe Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1948 as General Assembly Resolution 260. The Convention came into effect in January 1951...
, twenty six countries have officially recognized the Holodomor as such. On 28 November 2006 the Ukrainian Parliament approved a bill, according to which the Soviet-era forced famine was an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people. Professor Michael Ellman concludes that Ukrainians were victims of genocide in 1932-33, according to a more
relaxed definitionThis is a list of scholarly and international legal definitions of genocide, a word coined by Raphael Lemkin in 1944. While there are various definitions of the term, almost all international bodies of law officially adjudicate the crime of genocide pursuant to the Convention on the Prevention and...
, which is favored by some specialists in the field of genocide studies. He asserts that Soviet policies greatly exacerbated the famine's death toll (such as the use of torture and execution to extract grain (see
Law of SpikeletsLaw of Spikelets was a common name of the law based on the decree of Central Executive Committee and Sovnarkom of the USSR "About protection of the property of state enterprises, kolkhozes and cooperatives, and strengthening of the public property" Law of Spikelets was a...
), with 1.8 million tonnes of it being exported during the height of the starvation - enough to feed 5 million people for one year, the use of force to prevent starving peasants from fleeing the worst affected areas, and the refusal to import grain or secure international humanitarian aid to alleviate the suffering) and that Stalin intended to use the starvation as a cheap and efficient means (as opposed to deportations and shootings) to kill off those deemed to be "counterrevolutionaries," "idlers," and "thieves," but not to annihilate the Ukrainian peasantry as a whole. He also claims that, while this is not the only Soviet genocide (e.g. The
Polish operation of the NKVDPolish operation of the NKVD refers to the coordinated actions of the NKVD in 1937-1938, done according to NKVD Order № 00485 "О ликвидации польских диверсионно-шпионских групп и организаций ПОВ" .The order was approved on August 9, 1937 by the VKP Central Committee Politburo, and was signed by...
), it is the worst in terms of mass casualties.
Current estimates on the total number of casualties within Soviet Ukraine range mostly from 2.2 million
to 4 to 5 million.
Industrialization
See also: Industrialisation of the Soviet Union
The
Russian Civil WarThe Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed and the Soviets under the domination of the Bolshevik party assumed power, first in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a multi-party war that...
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 PolicyThe New Economic Policy was an economic policy proposed by Vladimir Lenin to prevent the Russian economy from collapsing...
, 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 tradeInternational trade is exchange of capital, goods, and services across international borders or territories. In most countries, it represents a significant share of gross domestic product . While international trade has been present throughout much of history , its economic, social, and political...
, 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 campA labor camp is a simplified detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons...
s were forced to do unpaid labor, and communists and
KomsomolThe Communist Union of Youth , usually called Komsomol ) , was the youth wing of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Its full name since 1922 was Vsesoyuzny Leninskiy Kommunisticheskiy Soyuz Molodyozhi...
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.
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.
Science
- Main articles: Science and technology in the Soviet Union
In the Soviet Union, science and technology served as an important part of national politics, practices, and identity. From the time of Lenin until the dissolution of the USSR in the early 1990s, both science and technology were intimately linked to the ideology and practical functioning of the...
, Suppressed research in the Soviet UnionResearch in the Soviet Union in science and humanities was placed from the very beginning under a strict ideological scrutiny. All research had to be founded on the philosophical base of dialectical materialism...
, LysenkoismLysenkoism was a set of repressive political and social campaigns in science and agriculture by the powerful Stalinist director of the Soviet Lenin All-Union Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Trofim Denisovich Lysenko and his followers, which began in the late 1920s and formally ended in...
Science in the
Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
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 pseudoscienceBourgeois pseudoscience was a term of condemnation in the Soviet Union for certain scientific disciplines that were deemed unacceptable from an ideological point of view....
s"
geneticsGenetics, , a discipline of biology, is the science of heredity and variation in living organisms. The fact that living things inherit traits from their parents has been used since prehistoric times to improve crop plants and animals through selective breeding...
and
cyberneticsCybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to control theory and systems theory...
. Some areas of physics were criticized, However, although initially planned, while Stalin personally and directly contributed to study in
LinguisticsLinguistics is the scientific study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of meaning...
, the principle work of which is a small essay, "
Marxism and Linguistic Questions." Scientific research was hindered by the fact that many scientists were sent to
labor campA labor camp is a simplified detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons...
s (including Lev Landau, later a
Nobel PrizeThe Nobel Prize is a Sweden-based international monetary prize. The award was established by the 1895 will and estate of Swedish chemist and inventor Alfred Nobel. It was first awarded in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace in 1901...
winner, who spent a year in prison in 1938–1939) or executed (e.g.
Lev ShubnikovLev Vasilyevich Shubnikov was a Russian experimental physicist who worked in Russia, the Netherlands and Ukraine....
, shot in 1937).
Social services
Under the Soviet government people benefited from some social liberalization. Girls were given an adequate, equal education and women had equal rights in employment, 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 citizen. Stalin's policies granted the Soviet people universal access to healthcare and education, effectively creating the first generation free from the fear of
typhusEpidemic typhus is a form of typhus so named because the disease often causes epidemics following wars and natural disasters...
,
choleraCholera, sometimes known as Asiatic or epidemic cholera, is an infectious gastroenteritis caused by enterotoxin-producing strains of the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. Transmission to humans occurs through eating food or drinking water contaminated with Vibrio cholerae from other cholera patients...
, and
malariaMalaria is a vector-borne infectious disease caused by a eukaryotic protist of the genus Plasmodium. It is widespread in tropical and subtropical regions, including parts of the Americas, Asia, and Africa. Each year, there are approximately 350–500 million cases of malaria, killing between one and...
. The occurrences of these diseases dropped to record low numbers, increasing life spans by decades.
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. 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 schemes. Engineers were sent abroad to learn industrial technology, and hundreds of foreign engineers were brought to Russia on contract.
TransportTransport or transportation is the movement of people and goods from one location to another. Transport is performed by modes, such as air, rail, road, water, cable, pipeline and space...
links were improved and many new railways built. Workers who exceeded their quotas,
StakhanoviteIn Soviet history and iconography, a Stakhanovite follows the example of Aleksei Grigorievich Stakhanov, employing hard work or Taylorist efficiencies to over-achieve on the job....
s, received many incentives for their work; 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 IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and repressions generated a major expansion in job opportunities for the survivors, especially for women.
Culture
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.
During Stalin's reign the official and long-lived style of
Socialist RealismSocialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style of realistic art which has as its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...
was established for painting, sculpture, music, drama and literature. Previously fashionable "revolutionary"
expressionismExpressionism was a cultural movement originating in Germany at the start of the 20th-century as a reaction to positivism and other artistic movements such as naturalism and impressionism. It sought to express the meaning of "being alive" and emotional experience rather than physical reality...
,
abstract artAbstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an...
, and
avant-gardeThe Russian avant-garde is an umbrella term used to define the large, influential wave of modern art that flourished in Russia approximately 1890 to 1930 - although some place its beginning as early as 1850 and its end as late as 1960...
experimentation were discouraged or denounced as "
formalismIn art theory, formalism is the concept that a work's artistic value is entirely determined by its form--the way it is made, its purely visual aspects, and its medium. Formalism emphasizes compositional elements such as color, line, shape and texture rather than realism, context, and content...
".
Famous figures were repressed, and many persecuted, tortured and executed, both "revolutionaries" (among them
Isaac BabelIsaac Emmanuilovich Babel was a Soviet journalist, playwright, and short story writer who was acclaimed by some as "the greatest prose writer of Russian Jewry."-Early years:...
,
Vsevolod MeyerholdVsevolod Emilevich Meyerhold was a Russian and Soviet director, actor and producer whose provocative experiments dealing with physical being and symbolism in an unconventional theatre setting made him one of the seminal forces in modern theatre.-Life and work:Vsevolod Meyerhold was born Karl...
,
Anna AkhmatovaAnna Akhmatova was the pen name of Anna Andreëvna Gorenko , a Russian/Soviet poet credited with a large influence on Russian poetry....
, Nikolai Gumilev,
Lev GumilevLev Nikolayevich Gumilyov , also known as Lev Gumilev, was a Russian historian, ethnologist and anthropologist...
) and "non-conformists" (for example,
Osip MandelstamOsip Emilyevich Mandelstam was a Russian poet and essayist, one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school of poets.-Life and work:...
). Small amounts of remnant of pre-revolutionary Russia survived. The degree of Stalin's personal involvement in general, and in specific instances, has been the subject of discussion. Stalin's favorite novel
PharaohPharaoh is the fourth and last major novel by the Polish writer Bolesław Prus . Composed over a year's time in 1894–95, it was the sole historical novel by an author who had disapproved of historical novels for inevitably distorting history.Pharaoh has been described by Czesław Miłosz as a...
, shared similarities with
Sergei EisensteinSergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein was a revolutionary Soviet Russian film director and film theorist noted in particular for his silent films Strike, Battleship Potemkin and October, as well as historical epics Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible...
's film,
Ivan the TerribleIvan The Terrible is a two-part historical epic film about Ivan IV of Russia made by Russian director Sergei Eisenstein. Part 1 was released in 1944 but Part 2 was not released until 1958 due to political censorship...
, produced under Stalin's tutelage.
In
architectureFor a topical guide to this subject, see Outline of architecture. Architecture is the art and science of designing and constructing buildings and other physical structures for human shelter or use....
, a
Stalinist Empire StyleStalinist architecture , also referred to as the Stalinist Gothic, or Socialist Classicism, is a term given to architecture of the Soviet Union between 1933, when Boris Iofan's draft for Palace of Soviets was officially approved, and 1955, when Nikita Khruschev condemned "excesses" of the past...
(basically, updated
neoclassicismNeoclassicism is the name given to quite distinct movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw upon Western classical art and culture...
on a very large scale, exemplified by the
Seven SistersThe "Seven Sisters" is the English name given to a group of Moscow skyscrapers designed in the Stalinist style. Muscovites call them Vysotki or Stalinskie Vysotki , " tall buildings"...
of Moscow) replaced the
constructivismConstructivist architecture was a form of modern architecture that flourished in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and early 1930s. It combined advanced technology and engineering with an avowedly Communist social purpose. Although it was divided into several competing factions, the movement produced...
of the 1920s. Stalin's rule had a largely disruptive effect on indigenous cultures within the Soviet Union, though the politics of
KorenizatsiyaKorenizatsiya sometimes also called korenization, meaning "nativization" or "indigenization", literally "putting down roots", was the early Soviet nationalities policy promoted mostly in the 1920s but with a continuing legacy in later years...
and forced development were possibly beneficial to the integration of later generations of indigenous cultures.
Religion
Stalin's role in the fortunes of the
Russian Orthodox ChurchThe Russian Orthodox Church ; or The Moscow Patriarchate , also known...
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. During
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, the Church was allowed a revival as a patriotic organization, after the
NKVDThe People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including...
had recruited the new
metropolitanIn Christian churches with episcopal polity, the rank of metropolitan bishop, or simply metropolitan, pertains to the diocesan bishop or archbishop of a metropolis; that is, the chief city of a historical Roman province, ecclesiastical province, or regional capital...
, the first after the revolution, as a secret agent. Thousands of parishes were reactivated until a further round of suppression in
Khrushchev'sNikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
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 RussiaThe Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia , also called the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, ROCA, or ROCOR) is a semi-autonomous part of the Russian Orthodox Church....
.
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.
Theorist
Stalin and his supporters have highlighted the notion that
socialism can be built and consolidated by a country as underdeveloped as RussiaSocialism in One Country was a thesis put forth by Joseph Stalin in 1924, elaborated by Nikolai Bukharin in 1925 and finally adopted as state policy by Stalin. The thesis held that given the defeat of all communist revolutions in Europe from 1917–1921 except in Russia, the Soviet Union should begin...
during the 1920s. Indeed this might be the only means in which it could be built in a hostile environment. In 1933, Stalin put forward the theory of
aggravation of the class struggle along with the development of socialismThe theory of aggravation of the class struggle along with the development of socialism was one of the cornerstones of Stalinism in the internal politics of the Soviet Union...
, arguing that the further the country would move forward, the more acute forms of struggle will be used by the doomed remnants of exploiter classes in their last desperate efforts and that, therefore, political repression was necessary.
In 1936, Stalin announced that the society of the Soviet Union consisted of two non-antagonistic classes: workers and
kolkhozA kolkhoz , plural kolkhozy, was a form of collective farming in the Soviet Union that existed along with state farms . The word is a contraction of коллекти́вное хозя́йство, or "collective farm", while sovkhoz is a contraction of советское хозяйство...
peasantry. These corresponded to the two different forms of property over the
means of productionMeans of production , are things used byhuman labourers to create products. They include two broad categories of objects: instruments of labour and subjects of labour...
that existed in the Soviet Union: state property (for the workers) and collective property (for the peasantry). In addition to these, Stalin distinguished the stratum of
intelligentsiaThe intelligentsia is a social class of people engaged in complex mental and creative labor directed to the development and dissemination of culture, encompassing intellectuals and social groups close to them...
. The concept of "non-antagonistic classes" was entirely new to Leninist theory. Among Stalin's contributions to Communist theoretical literature were "Marxism and the National Question", "Trotskyism or Leninism", and
Stalin's Collected Works.
Calculating the number of victims
Researchers before the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union attempting to count the number of people killed under Stalin's regime produced estimates ranging from 3 to 60 million. After the Soviet Union dissolved, evidence from the Soviet archives also became available, containing official records of the execution of approximately 800,000 prisoners under Stalin for either political or criminal offenses, around 1.7 million deaths in the
GulagThe Gulag or GULAG was the government agency that administered the penal labor camps of the Soviet Union. The term is infamous for its association with remote places where prisoners were kept and sometimes disappeared...
s and some 390,000 deaths during kulak forced resettlement for a total of about 3 million officially recorded victims in these categories.
The official Soviet archival records do not contain comprehensive figures for some categories of victims, such as the those of ethnic deportations or of German population transfers in the aftermath of WWII. Other notable exclusions from
NKVDThe People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including...
data on repression deaths include the
Katyn massacreThe Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest massacre , was a mass murder of thousands of Polish military officers, policemen, intellectuals and civilian prisoners of war by Soviet NKVD, based on a proposal from Lavrentiy Beria to execute all members of the Polish Officer Corps...
, other killings in the newly occupied areas, and the mass shootings of
Red ArmyThe Red Army The Red Army The Red Army was the Soviet government’s revolutionary militia beginning in the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the USSR. Since 1946, after the Second World War, it was called the Soviet Army.The 'Red...
personnel (deserters and so-called deserters) in 1941. Also, the official statistics on Gulag mortality exclude deaths of prisoners taking place shortly after their release but which resulted from the harsh treatment in the camps. Some historians also believe the official archival figures of the categories that were recorded by Soviet authorities to be unreliable and incomplete. In addition to failures regarding comprehensive recordings, as one additional example,
Robert GellatelyRobert Gellately is a Newfoundland born Canadian academic who is one of the leading historians of modern Europe, particularly during World War II and the Cold War era. He is presently Earl Ray Beck Professor of History at Florida State University....
and Simon Sebag-Montefiore argue the many suspects beaten and tortured to death while in "investigative custody" were likely not to have been counted amongst the executed.
Historians working after the Soviet Union's dissolution have estimated victim totals ranging from approximately 4 million to nearly 10 million, not including those who died in famines. Russian writer Vadim Erlikman, for example, makes the following estimates: executions, 1.5 million; gulags, 5 million; deportations, 1.7 million out of 7.5 million deported; and POWs and German civilians, 1 million a total of about 9 million victims of repression.
Some have also included deaths of 6 to 8 million people in the 1932–1933 famine as victims of Stalin's repression. This categorization is controversial however, as historians differ as to whether the famine was a deliberate part of the campaign of repression against kulaks and others, or simply an
unintended consequenceUnintended consequences are outcomes that are not the results originally intended by a particular action. The unintended results may be foreseen or unforeseen, but they should be the logical or likely results of the action...
of the struggle over forced collectivization.
Accordingly, if famine victims are included, a minimum of around 10 million deaths — 6 million minimum from famine and 4 million minimum from other causes — are attributable to the regime, with a number of recent historians suggesting a likely total of around 20 million, citing much higher victim totals from executions, gulags, deportations and other causes. Adding 6–8 million famine victims to Erlikman's estimates above, for example, would yield a total of between 15 and 17 million victims. Researcher
Robert ConquestGeorge Robert Ackworth Conquest is a British historian who became a well-known writer and researcher on the Soviet Union with the publication in 1968 of The Great Terror, an account of Stalin's purges of the 1930s.-Early career:...
, meanwhile, has revised his original estimate of up to 30 million victims down to 20 million. Others maintain that their earlier higher victim total estimates are correct.
World War II, 1939–1945
Pact with Hitler
After a failed attempt to sign an anti-German political alliance with France and Britain and talks with Germany regarding a potential political deal, on 23 August 1939, the Soviet Union entered into a non-aggression pact with
Nazi GermanyNazi Germany and the Third Reich are the common English names for Germany between 1933 and 1945, while it was led by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Worker's Party . The name Third Reich refers to the state as the successor to the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages and the German...
, negotiated by Soviet foreign minister
Vyacheslav MolotovVyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov was a Soviet politician and diplomat, a leading figure in the Soviet government from the 1920s, when he rose to power as a protégé of Joseph Stalin, to 1957, when he was dismissed from Presidium of the Central Committee by Nikita Khrushchev...
and German foreign minister
Joachim von RibbentropUlrich Friedrich Wilhelm Joachim von Ribbentrop was Foreign Minister of Germany from 1938 until 1945. He was later hanged for war crimes after the Nuremberg Trials.- Early life :...
. Officially a non-aggression treaty only, an appended secret protocol, also reached on 23 August 1939, divided the whole of eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence. The eastern part of Poland,
LatviaLatvia , officially the Republic of Latvia is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , and to the southeast by Belarus . Across the Baltic Sea to the west lies Sweden...
,
EstoniaEstonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by the Russian Federation...
, Finland and part of
RomaniaRomania is a country located in Southeastern and Central Europe, North of the Balkan Peninsula, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea. Almost all of the Danube Delta is located within its territory...
were recognized as parts of the Soviet sphere of influence, with
LithuaniaLithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the southernmost of the three Baltic states. Situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, it shares borders with Latvia to the north, Belarus to the southeast, Poland, and the Russian exclave of...
added in a second secret protocol in September 1939. Stalin and Ribbentrop traded toasts on the night of the signing discussing past hostilities between the countries.
Implementing the division of Eastern Europe and other invasions
On 1 September 1939, the German invasion of its agreed upon portion of Poland started
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. On 17 September the
Red ArmyThe Red Army The Red Army The Red Army was the Soviet government’s revolutionary militia beginning in the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the USSR. Since 1946, after the Second World War, it was called the Soviet Army.The 'Red...
invaded eastern Poland and occupied the Polish territory assigned to itSoviet invasion of Poland can refer to:* the second phase of the Polish-Soviet War of 1920 when Soviet armies marched on Warsaw, Poland* Soviet invasion of Poland of 1939 when Soviet Union allied with Nazi Germany attacked Second Polish Republic...
by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, followed by co-ordination with German forces in Poland. Eleven days later, the secret protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was modified, allotting Germany a larger part of Poland, while ceding most of
LithuaniaLithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the southernmost of the three Baltic states. Situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, it shares borders with Latvia to the north, Belarus to the southeast, Poland, and the Russian exclave of...
to the Soviet Union.
After Stalin declared that he was going to "solve the Baltic problem", by June 1940,
LithuaniaLithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the southernmost of the three Baltic states. Situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, it shares borders with Latvia to the north, Belarus to the southeast, Poland, and the Russian exclave of...
,
LatviaLatvia , officially the Republic of Latvia is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , and to the southeast by Belarus . Across the Baltic Sea to the west lies Sweden...
and
EstoniaEstonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by the Russian Federation...
were merged into the Soviet Union, after repressions and actions therein brought about the deaths of over 160,000 citizens of these states. After facing stiff resistance in an
invasion of FinlandThe Winter War was a military conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland. It began with a Soviet offensive on 30 November 1939, three months after the German invasion of Poland and the start of World War II, and ended on 13 March 1940 with the Moscow Peace Treaty...
, an interim peace was entered, granting the Soviet Union the eastern region of Karelia (10% of Finnish territory). After this campaign, Stalin took actions to bolster the Soviet military, modify training and improve propaganda efforts in the Soviet military. In June 1940, Stalin directed the Soviet annexation of
BessarabiaBessarabia is a historical term for the geographic entity in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west...
and northern
BukovinaBukovina is a historical region on the northern slopes of the northeastern Carpathian Mountains and the adjoining plains...
, proclaiming this formerly Romanian territory part of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. But in annexing northern Bukovina, Stalin had gone beyond the agreed limits of the secret protocol.
After the
Tripartite PactThe Tripartite Pact, also called the Three-Power Pact, Axis Pact, Three-way Pact or Tripartite Treaty was a pact signed in Berlin, Germany on September 27, 1940, which established the Axis Powers of World War II...
was signed by
Axis PowersThe Axis powers comprised the countries that were opposed to the Allies during World War II. The three major Axis powers—Germany, Italy, and Japan—were part of a military alliance on the signing of the Tripartite Pact in September 1940, which officially founded the Axis powers...
Germany, Japan and Italy, in October 1940, Stalin traded letters with Ribbentrop, with Stalin writing
about entering an agreement regarding a "permanent basis" for their "mutual interests."In August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union entered into the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression treaty that contained secret protocols effectively dividing eastern Europe between the parties. Thereafter, the countries invaded and annexed the eastern European countries within their "spheres...
After a conference in Berlin between Hitler, Molotov and Ribbentrop, Germany presented the Molotov with a proposed written agreement for Axis entry. On 25 November, Stalin responded with a proposed written agreement for Axis entry which was never answered by Germany. Shortly thereafter, Hitler issued a secret directive on the eventual attempts to invade the Soviet Union. In an effort to demonstrate peaceful intentions toward Germany, on 13 April 1941, Stalin oversaw the signing of a neutrality pact with Axis power Japan.
Hitler breaks the pact
During the early morning of 22 June 1941,
HitlerAdolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , popularly known as the Nazi Party...
broke the pact by implementing
Operation BarbarossaOperation Barbarossa was the code name for Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a 2,900 km front...
, the German invasion of Soviet held territories and the Soviet Union that began the war on the
Eastern FrontThe Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of war between the European Axis powers, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Croatia and Finland , and the Soviet Union which encompassed central and eastern Europe from 22 June 1941 to 9...
. Although Stalin had received warnings from spies and his generals, he felt that Germany would not attack the Soviet Union until Germany had defeated Britain. In the initial hours after the German attack commenced, Stalin hesitated, wanting to ensure that the German attack was sanctioned by Hitler, rather than the unauthorized action of a rogue general. Accounts by
Nikita KhrushchevNikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
and
Anastas MikoyanAnastas Hovhannesi Mikoyan was an Armenian Old Bolshevik and Soviet statesman during the Stalin and Khrushchev years. In the Soviet Union he is primarily known as Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan ....
claim that, after the invasion, Stalin retreated to his dacha in despair for several days and did not participate in leadership decisions. However, some documentary evidence of orders given by Stalin contradicts these accounts, leading some historians to speculate that Kruschev's account is inaccurate. By the end of 1941, the Soviet military had suffered 4.3 million casualties and German forces had advanced 1,050 miles (1,690 kilometers).
Soviets stop the Germans
While the Germans pressed forward, Stalin was confident of an eventual Allied victory over Germany. In September 1941, Stalin told British diplomats that he wanted two agreements: (1) a mutual assistance/aid pact and (2) a recognition that, after the war, the Soviet Union would gain the territories in countries that it had taken pursuant to its division of Eastern Europe with Hitler in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. The British agreed to assistance but refused to agree upon the territorial gains, which Stalin accepted months later as the military situation deteriorated somewhat in mid-1942. By December, Hitler's troops had advanced to within 20 miles of the
KremlinKremlin is the Russian word for "fortress", "citadel" or "castle" and refers to any major fortified central complex found in historic Russian cities. This word is often used to refer to the best-known one, the Moscow Kremlin, or metonymically to the government that is based there...
in Moscow. On 5 December, the Soviets launched a counteroffensive, pushing German troops back 40–50 miles from Moscow, the Wermacht's first significant defeat of the war.
In 1942, Hitler shifted his primary goal from an immediate victory in the East, to the more long-term goal of securing the southern Soviet Union to protect oil fields vital to a long-term German war effort. While Red Army generals saw evidence that Hitler would shift efforts south, Stalin considered this to be a flanking campaign in efforts to take Moscow.
Soviet push to Germany
The Soviets repulsed the important German strategic southern campaign and, although 2.5 million Soviet casualties were suffered in that effort, it permitted the Soviets to take the offensive for most of the rest of the war on the
Eastern FrontThe Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of war between the European Axis powers, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Croatia and Finland , and the Soviet Union which encompassed central and eastern Europe from 22 June 1941 to 9...
.
Germany
attempted an encirclement attack at KurskThe Battle of Kursk refers to German and Soviet operations on the Eastern Front of World War II in the vicinity of the city of Kursk in July and August 1943. It remains both the largest series of armoured clashes, including the Battle of Prokhorovka, and the costliest single day of aerial warfare...
, which was successfully repulsed by the Soviets. Kursk marked the beginning of a period where Stalin became more willing to listen to the advice of his generals. By the end of 1943, the Soviets occupied half of the territory taken by the Germans from 1941-1942. 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 German invasion and air attack. In November 1943, Stalin met with Churchill and Roosevelt in
TehranThe Tehran Conference was the meeting of Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill between November 28 and December 1, 1943, most of which was held at the Soviet Embassy in Tehran, Iran. It was the first World War II conference among the Big Three in which Stalin was present...
. The parties later agreed that Britain and America would launch a cross-channel invasion of France in May 1944, along with a separate invasion of southern France. Stalin insisted that, after the war, the Soviet Union should incorporate the portions of Poland it occupied pursuant to the
Molotov-Ribbentrop PactThe Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, colloquially named after the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, was an agreement officially titled the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and signed in...
with Germany, which Churchill tabled.
In 1944, the Soviet Union made significant advances across Eastern Europe toward Germany, including Operation Bagration, a massive offensive in Belorussia against the German Army Group Centre.
Final victory
By April 1945, Germany faced its last days with 1.9 million German soldiers in the East fighting 6.4 million Red Army soldiers while 1 million German soldiers in the West battled 4 million Western Allied soldiers. While initial talk existed of a
race to BerlinThe Race to Berlin refers mainly to the competition between two Soviet Marshals to be the first to enter Berlin during the final months of World War II....
by the Allies, after Stalin successfully lobbied for Eastern Germany to fall within the Soviet "sphere of influence" at
YaltaThe Yalta Conference, sometimes called the Crimea Conference and codenamed the Argonaut Conference, was the wartime meeting from 4 February 1945 to 11 February 1945 among the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union—President Franklin D...
, no plans were made by the
Western AlliesThe term Western Allies refers to a certain political and geographic grouping among the Allied Powers of the Second World War. It generally includes the United Kingdom and British Commonwealth, the United States, France and various other European and Latin American countries, but excludes China,...
to seize the city by a ground operation.
On 30 April, Hitler and
Eva BraunEva Anna Paula Braun, died Eva Anna Paula Hitler was the longtime companion and, for a brief time, wife of Adolf Hitler. Braun met Hitler in Munich when she was 17 years old while working as an assistant and model for his personal photographer and began seeing him often about two years later...
committed suicide, after which Soviet forces found their remains, which had been burned at Hitler's directive. German forces surrendered a few days later. Despite the Soviets' possession of Hitler's remains, Stalin did not believe that his old nemesis was actually dead, a belief that remained for years after the war.
Fending off the German invasion and pressing to victory in the East required a tremendous sacrifice by the Soviet Union. Soviet military casualties totaled approximately 35 million (official figures 28.2 million) with approximately 14.7 million killed, missing or captured (official figures 11.285 million). Although figures vary, the Soviet civilian death toll probably reached 20 million.
Questionable tactics
After taking around 300,000 Polish prisoners in 1939 and early 1940, 25,700 Polish POWs were executed on 5 March 1940, pursuant to a note from to Stalin from Lavrenty Beria, the members of the Soviet
PolitburoPolitburo, from German Politbüro, short for Political Bureau, , is the executive committee for a number of communist political parties.- Marxist-Leninist states :...
, in what became known as the
Katyn massacreThe Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest massacre , was a mass murder of thousands of Polish military officers, policemen, intellectuals and civilian prisoners of war by Soviet NKVD, based on a proposal from Lavrentiy Beria to execute all members of the Polish Officer Corps...
. While Stalin personally told a Polish general they'd "lost track" of the officers in
ManchuriaManchuria is a historical name given to a vast geographic region in northeast Asia. Depending on the definition of its extent, Manchuria either falls entirely within China, or is divided between China and Russia...
, Polish railroad workers found the mass grave after the 1941 Nazi invasion. The massacre became a source of political controversy, with the Soviets eventually claiming that Germany committed the executions when the Soviet Union retook Poland in 1944. The Soviets did not admit responsibility until 1990.
Stalin introduced controversial military orders, such as Order No. 270, requiring superiors to shoot deserters on the spot while their family members were subject to arrest. Thereafter, Stalin also conducted a purge of several military commanders that were shot for "cowardice" without a trial. Stalin issued Order No. 227, directing that commanders permitting retreat without permission to be subject to a military tribunal, and soldiers guilty of disciplinary procedures to be forced into "penal battalions", which were sent to the most dangerous sections of the front lines. From 1942 to 1945, 427,910 soldiers were assigned to penal battalions. The order also directed "blocking detachments" to shoot fleeing panicked troops at the rear. In June 1941, weeks after the German invasion began, Stalin also directed employing a scorched earth policy of destroying the infrastructure and food supplies of areas before the Germans could seize them, and that partisans were to be set up in evacuated areas. He also ordered the NKVD to murder around one hundred thousand political prisoners in areas where the Wermacht approached, while others were deported east.
After the capture of Berlin, Soviet troops reportedly raped from tens of thousands to two million women, and 50,000 during and after the
occupationThe Siege of Budapest was a siege of the Hungarian capital city of Budapest, fought towards the end of World War II in Europe, during the Soviet Budapest Offensive. The siege started when Budapest, defended by Hungarian and German troops, was first encircled on 29 December 1944 by the Red Army and...
of
BudapestBudapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it serves as the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation center and is considered an important hub in Central Europe. In 2009, Budapest had 1,712,210 inhabitants, down from a mid-1980s...
. In former Axis countries, such as Germany, Romania and Hungary, Red Army officers generally viewed cities, villages and farms as being open to pillaging and looting.
According to recent figures, of an estimated four million POWs taken by the Russians, including Germans, Japanese,
HungariansHungary , in English officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in the Carpathian Basin of Central Europe, bordered by Austria, Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia. Its capital is Budapest. Hungary is a member of OECD, NATO, EU, V4 and is a Schengen state...
,
RomaniaRomania is a country located in Southeastern and Central Europe, North of the Balkan Peninsula, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea. Almost all of the Danube Delta is located within its territory...
ns and others, some 580,000 never returned, presumably victims of privation or the Gulags. Soviet POWs and forced laborers who survived German captivity were sent to special "transit" or "filtration" camps meant determine which were potential traitors. Of the approximately 4 million to be repatriated 2,660,013 were civilians and 1,539,475 were former POWs. Of the total, 2,427,906 were sent home and 801,152 were reconscripted into the armed forces. 608,095 were enrolled in the work battalions of the defense ministry. 272,867 were transferred to the authority of the NKVD for punishment, which meant a transfer to the Gulag system. 89,468 remained in the transit camps as reception personnel until the repatriation process was finally wound up in the early 1950s.
Allied conferences on post-war Europe
Stalin met in several
conferences with British Prime Minister
Winston ChurchillSir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill KG, OM, CH, TD, FRS, PC was a British politician known chiefly for his leadership of the United Kingdom during World War II. He served as Prime Minister from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. A noted statesman and orator, Churchill was also an officer...
(and later Clement Atlee) and/or American President
Franklin D. RooseveltFranklin Delano Roosevelt , the only U.S. President elected to more than two terms, was a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
(and later Harry Truman) to plan
military strategyMilitary strategy is a policy implemented by military organizations to pursue desired strategic goals.Derived from the Greek strategos, strategy when it appeared in use during the 18th century, was seen in its narrow sense as the "art of the general", 'the art of arrangement' of troops...
and, later, to discuss Europe's postwar reorganization. Very early conferences, such as that with British diplomats in
Moscow in 1941The First Moscow Conference of World War II took place from September 29, 1941 to October 1, 1941.Averell Harriman representing the United States of America and Lord Beaverbrook representing the United Kingdom met with Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union to give assurances that those two leading...
and with Churchill and American diplomats in
in Moscow in 1942The Second Moscow Conference between the major Allies of World War II took place from August 12, 1942 to August 17, 1942.Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Averell Harriman...
, focused mostly upon war planning and supply, though some preliminary postwar reorganization discussion also occurred. In 1943, Stalin met with Churchill and Roosevelt in the
Tehran ConferenceThe Tehran Conference was the meeting of Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill between November 28 and December 1, 1943, most of which was held at the Soviet Embassy in Tehran, Iran. It was the first World War II conference among the Big Three in which Stalin was present...
. In 1944, Stalin met with Churchill in the
Moscow ConferenceThe Fourth Moscow Conference, also Tolstoy Conference for its code name Tolstoy, between the major Allies of World War II took place from October 9 to October 19 1944....
. Beginning in late 1944, the
Red ArmyThe Red Army The Red Army The Red Army was the Soviet government’s revolutionary militia beginning in the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the USSR. Since 1946, after the Second World War, it was called the Soviet Army.The 'Red...
occupied much of Eastern Europe during these conferences and the discussions shifted to a more intense focus on the reorganization of postwar Europe.
In February 1945, at the
conference at YaltaThe Yalta Conference, sometimes called the Crimea Conference and codenamed the Argonaut Conference, was the wartime meeting from 4 February 1945 to 11 February 1945 among the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union—President Franklin D...
, Stalin demanded a Soviet sphere of political influence in Eastern Europe. Stalin eventually was convinced by Churchill and Roosevelt not to dismember Germany. Stalin also stated that the Polish government-in-exile demands for self-rule were not negotiable, such that the Soviet Union would keep the territory of eastern Poland they had already
taken by invasion with German consent in 1939Soviet invasion of Poland can refer to:* the second phase of the Polish-Soviet War of 1920 when Soviet armies marched on Warsaw, Poland* Soviet invasion of Poland of 1939 when Soviet Union allied with Nazi Germany attacked Second Polish Republic...
, and wanted the pro-Soviet Polish government installed. After resistance by Churchill and Roosevelt, Stalin promised a re-organization of the current
Communist puppet governmentThe Polish Committee of National Liberation , also known as the Lublin Committee, was a provisional government of Poland, officially proclaimed 21 July 1944 in Chełm under the direction of State National Council in opposition to the Polish government in exile...
on a broader democratic basis in Poland. He stated the new government's primary task would be to prepare elections.
The parties at Yalta further agreed that the countries of liberated Europe and former Axis satellites would be allowed to "create democratic institutions of their own choice", pursuant to the "the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live." The parties also agreed to help those countries form interim governments "pledged to the earliest possible establishment through free elections" and "facilitate where necessary the holding of such elections." After the re-organization of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Poland, the parties agreed that the new party shall "be pledged to the holding of free and unfettered elections as soon as possible on the basis of universal suffrage and secret ballot." One month after Yalta, the Soviet NKVD arrested 16 Polish leaders wishing to participate in provisional government negotiations, for alleged "crimes" and "diversions", which drew protest from the West. The
fraudulent Polish electionsThe Polish legislative election, 1947 was held on January 19, 1947 in the People's Republic of Poland. The anti-communist opposition candidates and activists were persecuted and the eventual results were falsified...
, held in January 1947 resulted in Poland's official transformation to undemocratic
communistThe Polish People's Republic was the official name of Poland from 1952 to 1990.Although the Polish People's Republic was a sovereign state as defined by international law, its leaders were at the very least approved by the Kremlin...
state by 1949.
At the
Potsdam ConferenceThe Potsdam Conference was held at Cecilienhof, the home of Crown Prince Wilhelm Hohenzollern, in Potsdam, occupied Germany, from 16 July to 2 August 1945. Participants were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States...
from July to August 1945, though Germany had surrendered months earlier, instead of withdrawing Soviet forces from Eastern European countries, Stalin had not moved those forces. At the beginning of the conference, Stalin repeated previous promises to Churchill that he would refrain from a "Sovietization" of Eastern Europe. Stalin pushed for reparations from Germany without regard to the base minimum supply for German citizens' survival, which worried Truman and Churchill who thought that Germany would become a financial burden for Western powers. In addition to reparations, Stalin 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. By July 1945, Stalin's troops effectively controlled the Baltic States, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, and refugees were fleeing out of these countries fearing a Communist take-over. The western allies, and especially Churchill, were suspicious of the motives of Stalin, who had already installed communist governments in the central European countries under his influence.
In these conferences, his first appearances on the world stage, Stalin proved to be a formidable negotiator.
Anthony EdenRobert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon, KG, MC, PC was a British Conservative politician, who was Foreign Secretary for three periods between 1935 and 1955, including during World War II...
, the British Foreign Secretary noted: "Marshal Stalin as a negotiator was the toughest proposition of all. Indeed, after something like thirty years' experience of international conferences of one kind and another, if I had to pick a team for going into a conference room, Stalin would be my first choice. Of course the man was ruthless and of course he knew his purpose. He never wasted a word. He never stormed, he was seldom even irritated."
The Iron Curtain and the Eastern Bloc
After Soviet forces remained in Eastern and Central European countries, with the beginnings of communist puppet regimes in those countries, Churchill referred to the region as being behind an "
Iron CurtainThe concept of the Iron Curtain symbolized the ideological and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991...
" of control from Moscow. The countries under Soviet control in Eastern and Central Europe were called the "
Eastern blocThe terms Eastern Bloc, Communist Bloc or Soviet Bloc were used to refer to the former Communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, including the countries of the Warsaw Pact, along with Yugoslavia and Albania, which were not aligned with the Soviet Union after 1948 and 1960...
."
In Soviet-controlled East Germany, the major task of the ruling communist party in Germany was to channel Soviet orders down to both the administrative apparatus and the other bloc parties pretending that these were initiatives of its own, with deviations potentially leading to reprimands, imprisonment, torture and even death. Property and industry were nationalized under their government. The
German Democratic RepublicThe German Democratic Republic was a Communist state that originated from the Soviet Zone of occupied Germany and the Soviet sector of occupied Berlin...
was declared on 7 October 1949, with a new constitution which enshrined socialism and gave the Soviet-controlled
Socialist Unity Party ("SED")The Socialist Unity Party of Germany was the governing party of the German Democratic Republic from its formation on 7 October 1949 until the elections of March 1990. The SED was a Communist political party with a Marxist-Leninist ideology...
control. In Berlin, after citizens strongly rejected communist candidates in an election, in June 1948, the Soviet Union
blockaded West Berlin||-|}The Berlin Blockade was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War and the first such crisis that resulted in casualties. During the multinational occupation of post-World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway and road access to the sectors of...
, the portion of Berlin not under Soviet control, cutting off all supply of food and other items. The blockade failed due to the unexpected massive aerial resupply campaign carried out by the Western powers known as the Berlin Airlift. In 1949, Stalin conceded defeat and ended the blockade.
While Stalin had promised at the
Yalta ConferenceThe Yalta Conference, sometimes called the Crimea Conference and codenamed the Argonaut Conference, was the wartime meeting from 4 February 1945 to 11 February 1945 among the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union—President Franklin D...
that free elections would be held in Poland, after an election failure in "
3 times YESThe People's Referendum of 1946, also known as the "Three Times Yes" referendum, was a referendum held in Poland on 30 June 1946 on the authority of the State National Council...
" elections,
vote riggingElectoral fraud is illegal interference with the process of an election. Acts of fraud affect vote counts to bring about a election result, whether by increasing the vote share of the favored candidate, depressing the vote share of the rival candidates or both...
was employed to win a majority in the carefully controlled poll. Following the forged referendum, the Polish economy started to become
nationalizedNationalization, also spelled nationalisation, is the act of taking an industry or assets into the public ownership of a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to private assets, but may also mean assets owned by lower levels of government, such as municipalities, being state...
.
In Hungary, when the Soviets installed a communist government,
Mátyás RákosiMátyás Rákosi was a Hungarian communist politician, born in present-day Serbia...
, who described himself as "Stalin's best Hungarian disciple" and "Stalin's best pupil", took power. Rákosi employed "
salami tacticsSalami tactics, also known as the salami-slice strategy, is a divide and conquer process of threats and alliances used to overcome opposition. With it, an aggressor can influence and eventually dominate a landscape, typically political, piece by piece. In this fashion, the "salami" is taken in...
", slicing up these enemies like pieces of salami, to battle the initial postwar political majority ready to establish a democracy. Rákosi, employed Stalinist political and economic programs, and was dubbed the “bald murderer” for establishing one of the harshest dictatorships in Europe. Approximately 350,000 Hungarian officials and intellectuals were purged from 1948 to 1956.
During World War II, in
BulgariaBulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a country in the Balkans in south-eastern Europe. Bulgaria borders five other countries: Romania to the north , Serbia and the Republic of Macedonia to the west, and Greece and Turkey to the south...
, the Red Army crossed the border and created the conditions for a communist
coup detatThe Bulgarian coup d'état of 1944, also known as the 9 September coup d'état and called in pre-1989 Bulgaria the National Uprising of 9 September or the Revolution of 9 September, was a forceful shuffle in the Kingdom of Bulgaria's state authority carried out on the eve of 9 September 1944...
on the following night. The Soviet military commander in Sofia assumed supreme authority, and the communists whom he instructed, including
Kimon GeorgievKimon Georgiev Stoyanov was a Bulgarian general and prime minister.In the 1930s he was a member of the right-wing military Zveno movement. Together with fellow officers he committed a coup d'état in June 1934 and became prime minister. He abolished all political parties and trade unions...
, took full control of domestic politics.
In 1949, the
Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
,
BulgariaThe People's Republic of Bulgaria was the official name of the Bulgarian state from 1946 to 1990, when it was under the rule of the Bulgarian Communist Party . Bulgaria was an Eastern Bloc country and a Soviet ally during the Cold War, a member of the Warsaw Pact and the Comecon...
,
CzechoslovakiaCzechoslovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
,
HungaryThe People's Republic of Hungary or Hungarian People's Republic was the official state name of Hungary from 1949 to 1989 during its Communist period under the guidance of the Soviet Union. The state remained in existence until 1989 when opposition forces consolidated in forcing the regime to...
,
PolandThe Polish People's Republic was the official name of Poland from 1952 to 1990.Although the Polish People's Republic was a sovereign state as defined by international law, its leaders were at the very least approved by the Kremlin...
, and
RomaniaCommunist Romania was the period in Romanian history when that country was a Soviet-aligned communist state in the Eastern Bloc, with the leading role of Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its successive constitutions...
founded the
ComeconThe Council for Mutual Economic Assistance , 1949–1991, was an economic organization of communist states and a kind of Eastern Bloc equivalent to—but less geographically inclusive than—the European Economic Community...
in accordance with Stalin's desire to enforce Soviet domination of the lesser states of Central Europe and to mollify some states that had expressed interest in the
Marshall PlanThe Marshall Plan was the primary plan of the United States for rebuilding and creating a stronger foundation for the countries of Western Europe, and repelling communism after World War II...
, and which were now, increasingly, cut off from their traditional markets and suppliers in Western Europe. Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland had remained interested in Marshall aid despite the requirements for a convertible currency and
market economiesA market economy is economy based on the division of labor in which the prices of goods and services are determined in a free price system set by supply and demand....
. In July 1947, Stalin ordered these communist-dominated governments to pull out of the Paris Conference on the European Recovery Programme. This has been described as "the moment of truth" in the post-
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
division of Europe.
In Greece, Britain and the United States supported the anti-communists in the
Greek Civil WarThe Greek Civil War was fought from 1946 to 1949 between the Greek governmental army, backed by the United Kingdom, United States, and the Democratic Army of Greece , the military branch of the Greek Communist Party , backed by Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Albania...
and suspected the Soviets of supporting the Greek communists, although Stalin refrained from getting involved in Greece, dismissing the movement as premature.
AlbaniaAlbania , officially the Republic of Albania , is a Mediterranean country in South Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Montenegro to the north, Kosovo to the northeast, Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south-east...
remained an ally of the Soviet Union, but
YugoslaviaYugoslavia is a term that describes three political entities that existed successively on the Balkan Peninsula in Europe, during most of the 20th century.The first country to be known by this...
broke with the USSR in 1948.
In Stalin's last year of life, one of his last major foreign policy initiatives was the 1952
Stalin NoteThe Stalin Note, also known as the March Note, was a document delivered to the representatives of the Western allied powers from the Soviet Occupation in Germany on March 10, 1952...
for
German reunificationGerman reunification is the process in which the German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic of Germany , and Berlin was united into a single city-state. The start of this process is commonly referred to by former citizens of the GDR as die Wende...
and
Superpower disengagementSuperpower disengagement is a foreign policy option whereby the most powerful nations, the superpowers, reduce their interventions in an area. Such disengagement could be multilateral among superpowers or lesser powers, or bilateral between two superpowers, or unilateral. It could mean an end to...
from
Central EuropeCentral Europe is the region lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe. The term and widespread interest in the region itself came back into fashion after the end of the Cold War, which, along with the Iron Curtain, had divided Europe politically into East and West,...
, but Britain, France, and the United States viewed this with suspicion and rejected the offer.
Sino-Soviet Relations
In Asia, the Red Army had overrun
ManchuriaManchuria is a historical name given to a vast geographic region in northeast Asia. Depending on the definition of its extent, Manchuria either falls entirely within China, or is divided between China and Russia...
in the last month of the war and then also occupied Korea above the
38th parallel northThe 38th parallel north is a circle of latitude that is 38 degrees north of the Earth's equatorial plane. The 38th parallel north has been especially important in the recent history of Korea.-Geography:...
.
Mao ZedongMao Zedong was a Chinese revolutionary, political theorist and Communist leader. He led the People's Republic of China from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976...
's
Communist Party of ChinaThe Communist Party of China , also known as the Chinese Communist Party , is the founding and the ruling political party of the People's Republic of China and the world's largest political party...
, though receptive to minimal Soviet support, defeated the pro-Western and heavily American-assisted Chinese Nationalist Party in the
Chinese Civil WarThe Chinese Civil War was fought between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China . The war began in April 1927, amidst the Northern Expedition,. The war represented an ideological split between the Western-supported Nationalist KMT and the Soviet-supported Communist CPC...
.
There was friction between Stalin and Mao from the beginning. During World War II Stalin had supported the conservative dictator of China, Chiang Kai-Shek, as a bulwark against Japan and had turned a blind eye to Chiang's mass killings of communists. He generally put his alliance with Chiang against Japan ahead of helping his ideological allies in China in his priorities. Even after the war Stalin concluded a non-aggression pact between the USSR and Chiang's Kuomintang (KMT) regime in China and instructed Mao and the Chinese communists to cooperate with Chiang and the KMT after the war. Mao did not follow Stalin's instructions though and started a communist revolution against Chiang. Stalin did not believe Mao would be successful so he was less than enthusiastic in helping Mao. The USSR continued to maintain diplomatic relations with Chiang's KMT regime until 1949 when it became clear Mao would win.
Stalin did conclude a new friendship and alliance treaty with Mao after he defeated Chiang. But there was still a lot of tension between the two leaders and resentment by Mao for Stalin's less than enthusiastic help during the civil war in China.
The Communists controlled mainland China while the Nationalists held a
rump stateA rump state is the remnant of a once-larger government, left with limited powers or authority after a disaster, invasion, military occupation, secession or partial overthrowing of a government. In the last case, a government stops short of going in exile because it still controls part of its...
on the island of
TaiwanTaiwan , also known as Formosa , is the largest island of the Republic of China in East Asia. Taiwan is located east of the Taiwan Strait, off the southeastern coast of mainland China...
. The Soviet Union soon after recognized Mao's People's Republic of China, which it regarded as a new ally. The People's Republic claimed Taiwan, though it had never held authority there.
Diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and China reached a high point with the signing of the 1950 Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance. Both countries provided military support to a new friendly state in
North KoreaNorth Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea , is a state in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer area between North Korea and South Korea...
. After various Korean border conflicts, war broke out with U.S.-allied South Korea in 1950, starting the
Korean WarThe Korean War is a war that started between North Korea and South Korea on 25 June 1950 and paused with an armistice signed 27 July, 1953...
.
North Korea
Contrary to America's policy which restrained armament (limited equipment was provided for infantry and police forces) to South Korea, Stalin extensively armed Kim Il Sung's North Korean army and air forces with military equipment (to include T-34/85 tanks) and "advisors" far in excess of those required for defensive purposes) in order to facilitate Kim's (a former Soviet Officer) aim of conquering the rest of the Korean peninsula.
The
North Korean ArmyThe Korean People's Army comprises the military forces of North Korea. Kim Jung-il is the Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army and Chairman of the National Defence Commission...
struck in the pre-dawn hours of Sunday, 25 June 1950, crossing the 38th parallel behind a firestorm of artillery, beginning their invasion of South Korea. During the
Korean WarThe Korean War is a war that started between North Korea and South Korea on 25 June 1950 and paused with an armistice signed 27 July, 1953...
, Soviet pilots flew Soviet aircraft from Chinese bases against United Nations aircraft defending South Korea. Post cold war research in Soviet Archives has revealed that the Korean War was begun by Kim Il-sung with the express permission of Stalin, though this is disputed by North Korea.
Israel
Stalin originally supported the creation of Israel in 1948. The USSR was one of the first nations to recognize the new country.
Golda MeirGolda Meir was the fourth prime minister of the State of Israel....
came to Moscow as the first Israeli Ambassador to the USSR that year. However, after providing war materiel for Israel through Czechoslovakia, he later changed his mind and came out against Israel.
Falsifiers of History
In 1948, Stalin personally edited and rewrote by hand sections of the cold war book
Falsifiers of HistoryFalsifiers of History is a book published by the Soviet Information Bureau, edited and partially re-written by Joseph Stalin, in response to documents made public in January 1948 regarding German–Soviet relations before and after the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.-Background on Nazi–Soviet Relations...
.
Falsifiers was published in response to the documents made public in
Nazi-Soviet Relations, 1939–1941: Documents from the Archives of The German Foreign Office, which included the secret protocols of the
Molotov-Ribbentrop PactThe Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, colloquially named after the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, was an agreement officially titled the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and signed in...
and other secret German-Soviet relations documents.
Falsifiers originally appeared as a series of articles in
PravdaPravda was a leading newspaper of the Soviet Union and an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1912 and 1991....
in February 1948, and was subsequently published in numerous language and distributed worldwide.
The book did not attempt to directly counter or deal with the documents published in
Nazi-Soviet Relations and rather, focused upon Western culpability for the outbreak of war in 1939. It argues that "Western powers" aided Nazi rearmament and aggression, including that American bankers and industrialists provided capital for the growth of German war industries, while deliberately encouraging Hitler to expand eastward. It depicted the Soviet Union as striving to negotiate a collective security against Hitler, while being thwarted by double-dealing Anglo-French appeasers who, despite appearances, had no intention of a Soviet alliance and were secretly negotiating with Berlin. It casts the
Munich agreementThe Munich Agreement was an agreement permitting German annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland. The Sudetenland were areas along borders of Czechoslovakia, mainly inhabited by Czech Germans. The agreement was negotiated at a conference held in Munich, Germany, among the major powers of Europe...
, not just as Anglo-French short-sightedness or cowardice, but as a "secret" agreement that was a "a highly important phase in their policy aimed at goading the Hitlerite aggressors against the Soviet Union." The book also included the claim that, during the Pact's operation, Stalin rejected Hitler's offer to share in a division of the world, without mentioning the Soviet offers to join the Axis. Historical studies, official accounts, memoirs and textbooks published in the Soviet Union used that depiction of events until the Soviet Union's dissolution.
Domestic Support
Domestically, Stalin was seen as a great wartime leader who had led the Soviets to victory against the Nazis. His early cooperation with Hitler was forgotten. That cooperation included helping the German Army violate the
Treaty of VersaillesThe Treaty of Versailles was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of...
limitations, with training in the Soviet Union, the notorious Molotov-von Ribbentrop treaty which partitioned Poland giving the Soviet Union what is now
BelarusBelarus is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered by Russia to the north and east, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the north. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel , Mahilyow and Vitebsk...
and granted the Soviet Union a free hand in Finland, Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia, and Soviet trade with Hitler to counteract the expected French and British trade blockades.
By the end of the 1940s, Russian patriotism increased due to successful propaganda efforts. For instance, some inventions and scientific discoveries were claimed by Soviet propaganda. Examples include the
boilerA boiler is a closed vessel in which water or other fluid is heated. The heated or vaporized fluid exits the boiler for use in various processes or heating applications.-Overview:-Materials:...
, reclaimed by father and son
CherepanovCherepanov, Yefim Alekseyevich and Miron Yefimovich , Russian inventors and industrial engineers, father and son. They were serfs of the Demidovs – a famous family of factory owners...
s; the
electric lightMost of the industrialized world is lit by electric lights, which are used both at night and to provide additional light during the daytime. These lights are normally powered by the electric grid, but some run on local generators, and emergency generators serve as backups in hospitals and other...
, by
YablochkovPavel Nikolayevich Yablochkov Pavel Nikolayevich Yablochkov (also mistransliterated as Jablochkoff) (Павел Николаевич Яблочков in Russian) Pavel Nikolayevich Yablochkov (also mistransliterated as Jablochkoff) (Павел Николаевич Яблочков in Russian) (( – ) was a Russian electrical engineer,...
and Lodygin; the
radioRadio is the transmission of signals by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
, by Popov; and the airplane, by Mozhaysky. Stalin's internal repressive policies continued (including in newly acquired territories), but never reached the extremes of the 1930s, in part because the smarter party functionaries had learned caution.
The "Doctors' plot"
The "
Doctors' plotThe Doctors' plot was an alleged conspiracy to eliminate the leadership of the Soviet Union by means of a number of identified doctors poisoning top leadership...
" was a plot outlined by Stalin and Soviet officials in 1952 and 1953 whereby several doctors (over half of which were Jewish) allegedly attempted to kill Soviet officials. The prevailing opinion of many scholars outside the Soviet Union is that Stalin intended to use the resulting doctors’ trial to launch a massive party purge. The plot is also viewed by many historians as an anti-Semitic provocation. It followed on the heels of the 1952 show trials of the
Jewish Anti-Fascist CommitteeThe Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was formed in Kuibyshev in April 1942 with the official support of the Soviet authorities...
and the secret execution of thirteen members on Stalin's orders in the
Night of the Murdered PoetsThe Night of the Murdered Poets refers to the night of 12 to 13 August 1952, when thirteen of the most prominent Yiddish writers, poets, artists, musicians and actors of the Soviet Union were secretly executed on the orders from Joseph Stalin in the basement of the Lubyanka prison in Moscow...
.
Thereafter, in a December
PolitburoPolitburo, from German Politbüro, short for Political Bureau, , is the executive committee for a number of communist political parties.- Marxist-Leninist states :...
session, Stalin announced that "Every Jewish nationalist is the agent of the American intelligence service. Jewish nationalists think that their nation was saved by the USA (there you can become rich, bourgeois, etc.). They think they're indebted to the Americans. Among doctors, there are many Jewish nationalists." To mobilize the Soviet people for his campaign, Stalin ordered
TASS and
Pravda to issue stories along with Stalin's alleged uncovering of a "Doctors Plot" to assassinate top Soviet leaders, including Stalin, in order to set the stage for show trials. The next month, Pravda published stories with text regarding the purported "Jewish
bourgeois-nationalistBourgeois nationalism is a term from Marxist phraseology. It refers to the practice of dividing people by nationality, race, ethnicity, or religion, which were alleged to deflect them from class warfare...
" plotters. Kruschev wrote that Stalin hinted him to incite anti-Semitism in the Ukraine, telling him that "the good workers at the factory should be given clubs so they can beat the hell out of those Jews." Stalin also ordered falsely accused physicians to be tortured "to death". Regarding the origins of the plot, people who knew Stalin, such as Kruschev, suggest that
Stalin had long harbored negative sentiments toward JewsWhile communism officially has no place for antisemitism, interpretations suggesting that Joseph Stalin exhibited antisemitism have been put forth by different historians and other sources. British historian Nikolai Tolstoy writes that Stalin, not trusting anybody, felt threatened by a vast Jewish...
, and anti-Semitic trends in the Kremlin's policies were further fueled by the exile of
Leon TrotskyLeon Trotsky , born Leyba Davidov Bronstein , was a Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxist theorist. He was one of the leaders of the Russian October Revolution, second only to Lenin...
. In 1946, Stalin allegedly said privately that "every Jew is a potential spy."
Some historians have argued that Stalin was also planning to send millions of Jews to four large newly built labor camps in Western Russia using a "Deportation Commission" that would purportedly act to save Soviet Jews from an engraged Soviet population after the Doctors Plot trials. Others argue that any charge of an alleged mass deportation lacks specific documentary evidence. Regardless of whether a plot to deport Jews was planned, in his "
Secret SpeechThe Personality Cult and its Consequences , commonly known as the Secret Speech or the Khrushchev Report, was a report to the 20th Party Congress on February 25 1956 by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev...
" in 1956, Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev stated that the Doctors Plot was "fabricated ... set up by Stalin", that Stalin told the judge to beat confessions from the defendants and had told Politburo members "You are blind like young kittens. What will happen without me? The country will perish because you do not know how to recognize enemies."
Death and aftermath
At the end of January 1953 Stalin's personal physician Miron Vovsi (cousin of
Solomon MikhoelsSolomon Mikhoels ; was a Soviet Jewish actor and the artistic director of the Moscow State Jewish Theater. Mikhoels served as the chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee during the Second World War...
who was assassinated in 1948 at the orders of Stalin) was arrested within the frame of the so-named
Doctors' PlotThe Doctors' plot was an alleged conspiracy to eliminate the leadership of the Soviet Union by means of a number of identified doctors poisoning top leadership...
.
On 1 March 1953, after an all-night dinner in his Kuntsevo residence some 15 km west of Moscow centre with interior minister
Lavrentiy BeriaLavrentiy Pavlovich Beria was a Soviet politician, and chief of the Soviet security and secret police apparatus under Stalin. He was top deputy of the NKVD during the Great Purge, responsible for many of the millions of imprisonments and killings...
and future premiers
Georgy MalenkovGeorgy Maximilianovich Malenkov was a Soviet politician, Communist Party leader and close collaborator of Joseph Stalin. He briefly became leader of the Soviet Union after Stalin's death and was Premier of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1955...
,
Nikolai BulganinNikolai Alexandrovich Bulganin was a prominent Soviet politician, who served as Minister of Defense and Prime Minister ....
and
Nikita KhrushchevNikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
, Stalin did not emerge from his room, having probably suffered a stroke that paralyzed the right side of his body.
Although his guards thought that it was odd for him not to rise at his usual time, they were under orders not to disturb him. He was discovered lying on the floor of his room only at about 10 p.m. in the evening. Lavrentiy Beria was informed and arrived a few hours afterwards, and the doctors only arrived in the early morning of 2 March. Stalin died four days later, on 5 March 1953, at the age of 74, and was embalmed on 9 March. Officially, the cause of death was listed as a cerebral hemorrhage. His body was preserved in
Lenin's MausoleumLenin's Mausoleum also known as Lenin's Tomb, situated in Red Square in Moscow, is the mausoleum that serves as the current resting place of Vladimir Lenin. His embalmed body has been on public display there since the year he died in 1924...
until 31 October 1961, when his body was removed from the Mausoleum and buried next to the Kremlin walls as part of the process of de-Stalinization.
It has been suggested that Stalin was assassinated. The ex-Communist exile
AvtorkhanovAbdurakhman Avtorkhanov was an acclaimed Soviet historian, writer, and political scientist. He worked primarily in the fields of Soviet history and History of the CPSU.-Biography:...
argued this point as early as 1975. The political memoirs of
Vyacheslav MolotovVyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov was a Soviet politician and diplomat, a leading figure in the Soviet government from the 1920s, when he rose to power as a protégé of Joseph Stalin, to 1957, when he was dismissed from Presidium of the Central Committee by Nikita Khrushchev...
, published in 1993, claimed that Beria had boasted to Molotov that he poisoned Stalin: "I took him out."
Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs that Beria had, immediately after the stroke, gone about "spewing hatred against [Stalin] and mocking him", and then, when Stalin showed signs of consciousness, dropped to his knees and kissed his hand. When Stalin fell unconscious again, Beria immediately stood and spat.
Later analyses of death
In 2003, a joint group of Russian and American historians announced their view that Stalin ingested
warfarinWarfarin is an anticoagulant. It was initially marketed as a pesticide against rats and mice and is still popular for this purpose, although more potent poisons such as brodifacoum have since been developed...
, a powerful rat poison that inhibits coagulation of the blood and so predisposes the victim to hemorrhagic stroke (cerebral hemorrhage). Since it is flavorless, warfarin is a plausible weapon of murder. The facts surrounding Stalin's death will probably never be known with certainty.
His demise arrived at a convenient time for Lavrenty Beria and others, who feared being swept away in yet another purge. It is believed that Stalin felt Beria's power was too great and threatened his own. According to Molotov's memoirs, Beria claimed to have poisoned Stalin, saying, "I took him out." Whether Beria or anyone else was directly responsible for Stalin's death, it is true that the
PolitburoPolitburo, from German Politbüro, short for Political Bureau, , is the executive committee for a number of communist political parties.- Marxist-Leninist states :...
did not summon medical attention for Stalin for more than a day after he was found.
Reaction by successors
The harshness with which Soviet affairs were conducted during Stalin's rule was subsequently repudiated by his successors in the Communist Party leadership, most notably by
Nikita KhrushchevNikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
's repudiation of Stalinism in February 1956. In his "Secret Speech",
On the Personality Cult and its ConsequencesThe Personality Cult and its Consequences , commonly known as the Secret Speech or the Khrushchev Report, was a report to the 20th Party Congress on February 25 1956 by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev...
, delivered to a closed session of the 20th Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev denounced Stalin for his cult of personality, and his regime for "violation of Leninist norms of legality". The
embalmingEmbalming, in most modern cultures, is the art and science of temporarily preserving human remains to forestall decomposition and to make them suitable for display at a funeral. The three goals of embalming are thus sanitization, presentation and preservation of a dead body to achieve this effect...
of the Soviet founder in
Lenin's MausoleumLenin's Mausoleum also known as Lenin's Tomb, situated in Red Square in Moscow, is the mausoleum that serves as the current resting place of Vladimir Lenin. His embalmed body has been on public display there since the year he died in 1924...
was performed over the objection of Lenin's widow, Nadezhda Krupskaya.
Views on Stalin in Russian Federation
Results of a controversial poll taken in 2006 stated that over thirty-five percent of Russians would vote for Stalin if he were still alive. Fewer than a third of all Russians regarded Stalin as a murderous tyrant; however, a Russian court in 2009, ruling on a suit by Stalin's grandson,
Yevgeny DzhugashviliYevgeny Dzhugashvili is a Russian historical revisionist and active in the Neo-Stalinist political fringe, known as an apologist for his grandfather Joseph Stalin...
, against the newspaper,
Novaya GazetaNovaya Gazeta is a Russian newspaper well-known in the country for its critical and investigative coverage of Russian political and social affairs....
, ruled that referring to Stalin as a "bloodthirsty cannibal" was not libel. In a July 2007 poll 54 percent of the Russian youth agreed that Stalin did more good than bad while 46 percent (of them) disagreed that Stalin was a cruel tyrant. Half of the respondents, aged from 16 to 19, agreed Stalin was a wise leader. In December 2008 Stalin was voted third in the nationwide television project Name of Russia (narrowly behind 13th century prince
Alexander NevskySaint Alexander Nevsky was the Grand Prince of Novgorod and Vladimir during some of the most trying times in the city's history...
and
Pyotr StolypinPyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin served as Nicholas II's Chairman of the Council of Ministers—the Prime Minister of Russia—from 1906 to 1911. His tenure was marked by efforts to repress revolutionary groups, as well as for the institution of noteworthy agrarian reforms...
, one of Nicholas II's prime ministers), leading to accusations from
Communist Party of the Russian FederationThe Communist Party of the Russian Federation is a Russian political party. It is the second major political party in the Russian Federation. It is sometimes seen as a successor to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Bolshevik Party...
that the poll had been rigged in order to prevent him or Lenin being given first place.
On 3 July 2009, Russia's delegates walked out of an
Organization for Security and Co-operation in EuropeThe Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe is the world's largest security-oriented intergovernmental organization. Its mandate includes issues such as arms control, human rights, freedom of the press and fair elections...
session to demonstrate their objections to a resolution for a remembrance day for the victims of both Nazism and Stalinism. Only eight out of 385 assembly members voted against the resolution.
Origin of name, nicknames and pseudonyms
Stalin's original name and surname are transliterated as "
" (
Georgian:Georgian is the native language of the Georgians and the official language of Georgia, a country in the Caucasus.Georgian is the primary language of about 3.9 million people in Georgia itself, and of another 500,000 abroad...
იოსებ ბესრიონის ძე ჯუღაშვილი
Russian:Russian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe...
Иосиф Виссарионович Джугашвили). Like other Bolsheviks, he became commonly known by one of his revolutionary
noms de guerre, of which "
Stalin" was only the last. Prior nicknames included "
Koba", "
Ivanov" and many others.
During Stalin's reign his nicknames included:
- "Uncle Joe", by western media, during and after the World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
- "Kremlin Highlander" , in reference his Caucasus Mountains
The Caucasus Mountains is a mountain system in Eurasia between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea in the Caucasus region.The Caucasus Mountains are made up of two separate mountain systems:* the Greater Caucasus Mountain Range and...
origin, notably by Osip MandelstamOsip Emilyevich Mandelstam was a Russian poet and essayist, one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school of poets.-Life and work:...
in his Stalin EpigramThe Stalin epigram, also known as The Kremlin Highlander is a satirical poem by the Russian Acmeist poet Osip Mandelstam, dated as being written in November 1933...
.
Appearance
While photographs and portraits portray Stalin as physically massive and majestic (he had several painters shot who did not depict him "right"), he was only five feet four inches high (160 cm). His mustached face was fleshy and pock-marked, and his black hair later turned grey and thinned out. After a carriage accident in his youth, his left arm was shortened and stiffened at the elbow, while his right hand was thinner than his left and frequently hidden. His dental health also deteriorated as he got older - when he died, he only had three of his own teeth remaining. He could be charming and polite, mainly towards visiting statesmen, but was generally coarse, rude, and abusive. In movies, Stalin was often played by
Mikheil GelovaniPrince Mikheil Georgievich Gelovani - of the princely House of Gelovani - was a Georgian actor born in the dynastic family seat in Letchkhumi , who played Joseph Stalin in several Soviet films in the 1930s and 1940s.Gelovani was picked by Stalin in 1938 after he was impressed with his performance...
and, less frequently, by
Aleksei DikiyAleksei Dikiy Aleksei Dikiy Aleksei Dikiy ' onMouseout='HidePop("32728")' href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Yakov_Dzhugashvili">Yakov
Yakov Iosifovich Dzhugashvili was one of Joseph Stalin's four children . Yakov was the son of Stalin's first wife, Ekaterina Svanidze....
, whom he had with his first wife
Ekaterina SvanidzeKato Svanidze was the Georgian first wife of Joseph Stalin. They were married in 1906.Ekaterina, nicknamed Kato, was a tailor who worked for the ladies of the Russian army....
, shot himself because of Stalin's harshness toward him, but survived. After this, Stalin said "He can't even shoot straight". Yakov served in the Red Army during World War II and was captured by the Germans. They offered to exchange him for Field Marshal
Friedrich PaulusFriedrich Wilhelm Ernst Paulus was an officer in the German military from 1910 to 1943, attaining the rank of Generalfeldmarschall during World War II. He is most known for commanding the Sixth Army's assault on Stalingrad during Operation Blue in 1942...
, who had surrendered after Stalingrad, but Stalin turned the offer down, stating "You have in your hands not only my son Yakov but millions of my sons. Either you free them all or my son will share their fate." Afterwards, Yakov is said to have committed suicide, running into an electric fence in
Sachsenhausen concentration campSachsenhausen or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used primarily for political prisoners from 1936 to the end of the Third Reich in May, 1945. After World War II, when Oranienburg was in the Soviet Occupation Zone, the structure was used as an NKVD...
, where he was being held.
Stalin had a son,
VasiliyVasily Iosifovich Dzhugashvili , known also as Vasily Stalin , , was the son of Joseph Stalin and his second wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva....
, and a daughter,
SvetlanaSvetlana Iosifovna Alliluyeva is the youngest child and only daughter of Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin and Nadezhda Alliluyeva...
, with his second wife
Nadezhda AlliluyevaNadezhda Sergeevna Alliluyeva was the second wife of Joseph Stalin.Nadezhda was the youngest child of Russian revolutionary Sergei Alliluyev and his wife Olga, a woman of German and Georgian ancestry. She first met Stalin as a child when her father, Sergei Alliluyev, sheltered him after one of...
. She died in 1932, officially of illness. She may have committed suicide by shooting herself after a quarrel with Stalin, leaving a suicide note which according to their daughter was "partly personal, partly political". According to
A&EA&E is a cable and satellite television network with headquarters in Manhattan and offices in Stamford, Atlanta, Detroit, Los Angeles, Chicago, and London. A&E stands for Arts & Entertainment, which, for many years, was in the channel's full title...
Biography, there is also a belief among some Russians that Stalin himself murdered his wife after the quarrel, which apparently took place at a dinner in which Stalin tauntingly flicked cigarettes across the table at her. Historians also claim her death ultimately "severed his link from reality."
Vasiliy rose through the ranks of the Soviet
air forceAn air force, also known in some countries as an air army or historically an army air corps, is in the broadest sense, the national military that primarily conducts aerial warfare...
, officially dying of
alcoholismAlcoholism is a term with multiple and sometimes conflicting definitions. In common and historic usage, alcoholism is any condition that results in the continued consumption of alcoholic beverages, despite health problems and negative social consequences...
in 1962; however, this is still in question. He distinguished himself in World War II as a capable airman. Svetlana emigrated to the United States in 1967. Stalin may have married a third wife, Rosa Kaganovich, the sister of
Lazar KaganovichLazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich was a Soviet politician and administrator and a close associate of Joseph Stalin.-Beginning:...
. In March 2001 Russian Independent Television NTV interviewed a previously unknown grandson living in
NovokuznetskNovokuznetsk is a city in Kemerovo Oblast, Russia with a population of 549,870 . It is located c. 3,000 km east of Moscow...
, Yuri Davydov, who stated that his father had told him of his lineage, but, was told to keep quiet because the campaign against Stalin's cult of personality.
Beside his suite in the
KremlinKremlin is the Russian word for "fortress", "citadel" or "castle" and refers to any major fortified central complex found in historic Russian cities. This word is often used to refer to the best-known one, the Moscow Kremlin, or metonymically to the government that is based there...
, Stalin had numerous domiciles. In 1919 he started with a country house near Usovo, he added
dachaDacha is a Russian word for seasonal or year-round second homes often located in the exurbs of Soviet and Russian cities. In some cases, they are occupied for part of the year by their owners and rented out to urban residents as summer retreats...
s at Zuvalova and Kuntsevo (
Blizhny dacha built by
Miron MerzhanovMiron Ivanovich Merzhanov, born Meran Merzhanyantz , was a Soviet architect of Armenian descent, notable for being the de-facto personal architect of Joseph Stalin in 1933–1941...
). Before WWII he added the
LipkiLipki is a town in Kireyevsky District of Tula Oblast, Russia, located south of Tula. Population: 9,700 ; 9,843 ; 10,355 ....
estate and
SemyonovskayaSemenovskaya is a station on the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line of the Moscow Metro. Opened concurrently with Partizanskaya in 1944, it too is war-themed, sporting plaques along the outer walls depicting a variety of Soviet weapons used in the war, including swords, sniper rifles, and machine guns...
, and had at least four dachas in the south by 1937, including one near
SochiSochi is a Russian resort city, situated in Krasnodar Krai just north of the southern Russian border. It sprawls along the shores of the Black Sea and against the background of the snow-capped peaks of the Caucasus Mountains. At , Greater Sochi claims to be the longest city in Europe. As of the...
. A luxury villa near Gagri was given to him by Beria. In Abkhasia he maintained a mountain retreat. After the war he added dachas at Novy Alon, near
SukhumiSukhumi is the capital of Abkhazia, a disputed region on the Black Sea coast, which has been recognized as an independent state by Russia, Venezuela and Nicaragua, and is regarded by all other UN member states as an autonomous republic within Georgia...
, in the Valdai Hills, and at Lake Mitsa. Another estate was near Zelyony Myss on the
Black Seaur a loser!The Black Sea is an inland sea bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas and various straits. The Bosporus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects it to...
. All these dachas, estates, and palaces were staffed, well furnished and equipped, kept safe by security forces, and were mainly used privately, rarely for diplomatic purposes. Between places Stalin would travel by car or train, never by air; he flew only once when attending the 1943
Tehran conferenceThe Tehran Conference was the meeting of Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill between November 28 and December 1, 1943, most of which was held at the Soviet Embassy in Tehran, Iran. It was the first World War II conference among the Big Three in which Stalin was present...
.
Religious beliefs and policies
Stalin had a complex relationship with religious institutions in the Soviet Union. One story reports that while he studied at a seminary, he became a closet atheist. However, this story fails on several obvious accounts, including Stalin's remaining religious, even pious, for some years longer. One account states that Stalin's
reversal on bans against the church during World War IIJoseph Stalin was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee from 1922 until his death in 1953. In the years following Lenin's death in 1924, he rose to become the authoritarian leader of the Soviet Union....
followed a sign that he believed he received from heaven.
Historian
Edvard RadzinskyEdvard Radzinsky is a Russian writer, historian, TV personality, and author of numerous plays and film screenplays.-His publications:Since the 1990s, Radzinsky has written books for the series Mysteries of History...
used recently discovered secret archives and noted a story that changed Stalin's attitude toward religion. The story in which Ilya, Metropolitan of the Lebanon Mountains, claimed to receive a sign from heaven that "The churches and monasteries must be reopened throughout the country. Priests must be brought back from imprisonment, Leningrad must not be surrendered, but the sacred
iconAn icon is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, from Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Catholicism...
of
Our Lady of KazanOur Lady of Kazan, also called Theotokos of Kazan , is a holy icon of the highest stature within the Russian Orthodox Church, representing the Virgin Mary as the protector and patron of the city of Kazan. The image is also venerated in the Catholic Church. It has been considered a palladium of...
should be carried around the city boundary, taken on to Moscow, where a service should be held, and thence to Stalingrad Tsaritsyn." Shortly thereafter, Stalin's attitude changed and "Whatever the reason, after his mysterious retreat, he began making his peace with God. Something happened which no historian has yet written about. On his orders many priests were brought back to the camps. In Leningrad, besieged by the Germans and gradually dying of hunger, the inhabitants were astounded, and uplifted, to see wonder-working icon Our Lady of Kazan brought out into the streets and borne in procession." Radzinsky asked, "Had he seen the light? Had fear made him run to his Father? Had the Marxist God-Man simply decided to exploit belief in God? Or was it all of these things at once?."
During the Second World War Stalin reopened the Churches. One reason could have been to motivate the majority of the population who had Christian beliefs. The reasoning behind this is that by changing the official policy of the party and the state towards religion, the Church and its clergymen could be to his disposal in mobilizing the war effort. On 4 September 1943, Stalin invited
Metropolitan SergiusPatriarch Sergius I was the 12th Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, from September 8,1943 until his death...
, Metropolitan Alexy and
Metropolitan NikolayMetropolitan Nikolay , born as Boris Yarushevich , was a bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church....
to the Kremlin and proposed to reestablish the Moscow Patriarchate, which had been suspended since 1925, and elect the Patriarch. On 8 September 1943, Metropolitan Sergius was elected Patriarch.
Hypotheses, rumors and misconceptions about Stalin
Conflicting
evidence exist about the birth of StalinJoseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union in the mid-20th century, was born on December 18, 1878 to a Georgian cobbler in Gori, Georgia. After finishing his church-sponsored education, he embraced Marxism and became an avid follower of Vladimir Lenin. After being marked by Russian secret police...
, who listed his birth year in various documents as being in 1878 before coming to power in 1922. The phrase "death of one man is a tragedy, death of a million is a statistic", sometimes attributed to Stalin, was made by a German writer,
Erich Maria RemarqueErich Maria Remarque was a German author, most famous today for his anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front.-Life:...
.
In addition, hypotheses and popular rumors exist about Stalin's real father. Some Bolsheviks and others have accused Stalin of being an agent for the Okhrana.
Works
- J. Stalin: Works. Volume 1-13: Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1950s/"Volume 14": Red Star Press, London 1978
See also
- Western betrayal
Western betrayal or Yalta betrayal are terms often used in some Eastern and Central European countries, which refer to the foreign policy of several Western countries between 1919-1968, which violated allied pacts and agreements made during the period from the Treaty of Versailles through World...
- World War II Behind Closed Doors: Stalin, the Nazis and the West
WWII Behind Closed Doors: Stalin, the Nazis and the West is a BBC-produced documentary film on the role of Josef Stalin during World War II. The 2008 film combines narrative-led documentary segments, interwoven by dramatic re-enactments, with actors representing main political figures of the...
- Anti-Stalinist left
The term anti-Stalinist left refers to elements of the political left which have been critical of the policies of Joseph Stalin and of the political system that developed in the Soviet Union under his rule.- Anti-Stalinist left groups :...
- Cominform
Cominform is the common name for what was officially referred to as the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers' Parties...
- Engineers of the human soul
Engineers of the human soul was a term applied to writers and other cultural workers by Joseph Stalin.The phrase was originally coined by Yury Olesha and then used by Joseph Stalin, firstly during his meeting with the Soviet writers in preparation for the first Congress of the Union of Soviet...
- Grigory Mairanovsky
Grigory Mairanovsky was a Soviet biochemist and poison developer.He was head of secret laboratories in the Bach Institute of Biochemistry in Moscow . As the head of Laboratory No. 1 of the NKVD , he initiated the secret "scientific" poison program conducted by the Soviet secret police services...
- Involuntary settlements in the Soviet Union
Forced settlements in the Soviet Union took several forms. Though the most notorious was the Gulag labor camp system of penal labor, resettling of entire categories of population was another method of political repression implemented by the Soviet Union. At the same time, involuntary settlement...
- Joseph Stalin Museum, Gori
thumb|right|The Joseph Stalin Museum in Gori- in the foreground, the house where Stalin was bornThe Joseph Stalin Museum is a museum in Gori, Georgia dedicated to the life of Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, who was born in Gori.-Organization:...
- Klement Gottwald
Klement Gottwald was a Czechoslovakian Communist politician, longtime leader of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia , prime minister and president of Czechoslovakia.- Biography :His first career was as a cabinet maker...
- Marshal of the Soviet Union
Marshal of the Soviet Union was the de facto highest military rank of the Soviet Union. ....
- Mass graves in the Soviet Union
-Soviet repression and terror:The government of the USSR under Stalin murdered many of its own citizens and foreigners. These mass killings were carried out by the security organs, such as the NKVD, and reached their peak in the Great Purge of 1937-38, when nearly 700,000 were executed by a shot to...
- Neo-Stalinism
Neo-Stalinism is a political term referring to attempts at rehabilitating the role of Joseph Stalin in history and re-establishing the political course of Stalin, at least partially. The term is also used to designate the modern political regimes in some states, political and social life of which...
- Night of the Murdered Poets
The Night of the Murdered Poets refers to the night of 12 to 13 August 1952, when thirteen of the most prominent Yiddish writers, poets, artists, musicians and actors of the Soviet Union were secretly executed on the orders from Joseph Stalin in the basement of the Lubyanka prison in Moscow...
- Stalin's antisemitism
While communism officially has no place for antisemitism, interpretations suggesting that Joseph Stalin exhibited antisemitism have been put forth by different historians and other sources. British historian Nikolai Tolstoy writes that Stalin, not trusting anybody, felt threatened by a vast Jewish...
- Stalin Monument in Budapest
The Stalin Monument in Budapest was completed in December 1951 as a gift for Joseph Stalin from the Hungarian People on his seventieth birthday . It was torn down on October 23, 1956 during Hungary's October Revolution.-Monument:...
- Stalin's Monument (Prague)
Stalin's Monument was a massive granite statue honoring Joseph Stalin that was unveiled in 1955 after more than 5½ years of work in Prague, Czech Republic. It was the world's largest representation of Stalin, and was destroyed in 1962....
- Stalin Society
The Stalin Society is a British and Swedish discussion group for individuals who see Joseph Stalin as a great Marxist-Leninist and wish to preserve what they believe is his positive legacy...
- The Soviet Story
The Soviet Story is a 2008 documentary film about Soviet Communism and Soviet-German collaboration before 1941 written and directed by Edvīns Šnore and sponsored by the UEN Group in the European Parliament....
- Vasili Blokhin
Vasili Mikhailovich Blokhin was a Soviet Major-General who served as the chief executioner of the Stalinist NKVD under the administrations of Genrikh Yagoda, Nikolai Yezhov and Lavrenty Beria...
Further reading
- Antonov-Ovseyenko, Anton
Anton Vladimirovich Antonov-Ovseyenko is a Russian historian and writer.He is the son of a Bolshevik military leader Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko...
. The Time of Stalin: Portrait of a Tyranny. HarpercollinsHarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company. The worldwide CEO of HarperCollins is Brian Murray...
, 1983 (ISBN 0060390271)
- Brent, Jonathan. Inside the Stalin Archives: Discovering the New Russia. Atlas & Co., 2008 (ISBN 0977743330) Introduction online (PDF file)
- Brent, Jonathan; Naumov, Vladimir Pavlovich. Stalin's Last Crime: The Plot Against the Jewish Doctors, 1948–1953. New York: HarperCollins, 2003 (hardcover, ISBN 0-06-019524-X; paperback, ISBN 0-06-093310-0); as Stalin's Last Crime: The Doctor's Plot. London: John Murray, 2004 (paperback, ISBN 0-7195-6508-1).
- Broekmeyer, Marius. Stalin, the Russians, and Their War, 1941–1945. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004 (hardcover, ISBN 0-299-19594-2; paperback, ISBN 0-299-19594-5).
- Bullock, Alan
Alan Louis Charles Bullock, Baron Bullock , was a British historian, who wrote an influential biography of Adolf Hitler and many other works.-Biography:...
. Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives. London: HarperCollins, 1991 (hardcover, ISBN 0002154943); New York: Vintage Books, 1993 (paperback, ISBN 0679729941).
- Boterbloem, Kees. Life and Death under Stalin: Kalinin Province, 1945–1953. Montreal, Quebec; Kingston, ON: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1999 (hardcover, ISBN 0-7735-1811-8).
- Conquest, Robert
George Robert Ackworth Conquest is a British historian who became a well-known writer and researcher on the Soviet Union with the publication in 1968 of The Great Terror, an account of Stalin's purges of the 1930s.-Early career:...
. The Great Terror: A Reassessment. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990 (hardcover, ISBN 0-19-507132-8).
- Conquest, Robert
George Robert Ackworth Conquest is a British historian who became a well-known writer and researcher on the Soviet Union with the publication in 1968 of The Great Terror, an account of Stalin's purges of the 1930s.-Early career:...
. The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986 (hardcover, ISBN 0-19-505180-7); London: Pimlico, 2002 (paperback, ISBN 0712697500).
- Davies, Sarah; Harris, James R. Stalin: A New History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005 (paperback, ISBN 0-521-85104-1).
- Deutscher, Isaac
Isaac Deutscher was a British Marxist historian, journalist and political activist of Polish-Jewish birth. He is best known as a biographer of Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin and as a commentator on Soviet affairs...
. Stalin: A Political Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967 (paperback, ISBN 0-19-500273-3); London: Penguin Books, 1990 (paperback, ISBN 0140135049).
- Djilas, Milovan. Conversations With Stalin. Harcourt Trade Publishers New York, 1962 (Hardcover, ISBN 0151225907); Harvest Books, 1963 (Paperback, ISBN 0156225913)
- Figes, Orlando
Orlando Figes is a multiple-award-winning British historian of Russia, and Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London.-Overview:...
. The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia. Metropolitan Books, 2007 (Hardcover, ISBN 0805074619); PicadorA picador is one of the pair of horsemen in a Spanish bullfight that jab the bull with a lance. They perform in the tercio de varas which is the first of the three stages in a Spanish bullfight....
, 2008 (Paperback, ISBN 0312428030)
- Gellately, Robert. Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe. Knopf, August 2007 (hardcover, ISBN 1400040051).
- Gill, Graeme. Stalinism (2nd ed.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998 (paperback, ISBN 0-312-17764-X).
- Jonge, Alex de. Stalin and the Shaping of the Soviet Union. New York: William Morrow, 1986 (hardcover, ISBN 0-688-04730-0); 1987 (paperback, ISBN 0688072917).
- Keep, John L.H.; Litvin, Alter L. Stalinism: Russian and Western Views at the Turn of the Millennium (Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions). New York: Routledge, 2004 (hardcover, ISBN 0-415-35108-1); 2005 (paperback, ISBN 0-415-35109-X).
- Kuromiya, Hiroaki. Stalin. Harlow, UK: Longman, 2006 (paperback, ISBN 0-582-78479-4).
- Kuromiya, Hiroaki. The Voices of the Dead: Stalin's Great Terror in the 1930s. Yale University Press
Yale University Press is a book publisher founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day. It became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but remains financially and operationally autonomous....
, 24 December 2007. ISBN 0300123892
- The Leader Cult in Communist Dictatorships: Stalin and the Eastern Bloc, edited by Apor, Balázs; Jan C. Behrends, Polly Jones and E.A. Rees. Houndmills, UK; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004 (ISBN 1-4039-3443-6).
- The Lesser Evil: Moral Approaches to Genocide Practices (Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions), edited by Helmut Dubiel and Gabriel Motzkin. New York: Routledge, 2004 (hardcover, ISBN 0-7146-5493-0; paperback, ISBN 0-7146-8395-7).
- Laqueur, Walter. Stalin: The Glasnost Revelations. New York: Scribner, 1990 (hardcover, ISBN 0684192039).
- Mace, James E. "The Man-Made Famine of 1933 in Soviet Ukraine", Famine in Ukraine 1932–1933: A Memorial Exhibition, edited by Roman Serbyn and Bohdan Krawchenko. Edmonton, Alberta: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1986 (hardcover, ISBN 0-920862-43-8), pp. 1–14.
- Mawdsley, Evan. The Stalin Years: The Soviet Union, 1929–53. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003 (paperback, ISBN 0-7190-6377-9).
- McDermott, Kevin. Stalin: Revolutionary in an Era of War (European History in Perspective). New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006 (hardcover, ISBN 0-333-71121-1; paperback, ISBN 0-333-71122-X).
- McLoughlin, Barry and McDermott, Kevin (eds). Stalin's Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union. Palgrave Macmillan
Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. is an international academic publishing company, headquartered in Basingstoke, Hampshire, England, United Kingdom. It was created in 2000 when the American St. Martin's Press Scholarly and Reference and the British Macmillan Publishers united their worldwide academic...
, 2002. ISBN 1403901198
- Medvedev, Roy A.
Roy Aleksandrovich Medvedev is a Russian historian renowned as the author of the dissident history of Stalinism, Let History Judge, first published in English in 1972...
; Medvedev, Zhores A.Zhores Aleksandrovich Medvedev is a Russian biologist, historian and dissident. His twin brother is the historian Roy Medvedev.-Youth and education:...
The Unknown Stalin: His Life, Death, and Legacy. London: I.B. Tauris, 2003 (hardcover, ISBN 1-86064-768-5); Woodstock, NY; New York: The Overlook Press, 2005 (paperback, ISBN 1585676446).
- Montefiore, Simon Sebag
Simon Sebag-Montefiore is a British historian and writer. He was educated at Ludgrove School, Harrow, and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he read history....
. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004 (ISBN 1-4000-4230-5); New York: Vintage, 2005 (paperback, ISBN 1400076781).
- Montefiore, Simon Sebag
Simon Sebag-Montefiore is a British historian and writer. He was educated at Ludgrove School, Harrow, and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he read history....
. Young Stalin. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007 (hardcover, ISBN 9780297850687). An excerpt is available online.
- Murphy, David E. What Stalin Knew: The Enigma of Barbarossa. Yale University Press, 2005 (hardcover ISBN 0300107803); (2006 paperback ISBN 030011981X).
- Overy, Richard
Richard Overy is a British historian who has published extensively on the history of World War II and the Third Reich. In 2007 as The Times editor of Complete History of the World he chose the 50 key dates of world history....
. Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia. Allen Lane, 2004 (hardcover, ISBN 0-7139-9309-X); Penguin Books, 2005 (paperback, ISBN 0-14-028149-5); New York: W.W. Norton, 2004 (hardcover, ISBN 0-393-02030-4); 2006 (paperback reprint, ISBN 0-393-32797-3).
- Parrish, Michael. The Lesser Terror: Soviet state security, 1939–1953. Praeger Press, 1996 (ISBN 0275951138)
- Pipes, Richard
Richard Edgar Pipes is an American historian who specializes in Russian history, particularly with respect to the history of the Soviet Union...
. Communism: A History. Modern Library ChroniclesThe Modern Library Chronicles are a series of short books, between 170-210 pages, intended to introduce readers to a period of history.A partial list includes:*The Renaissance, by Paul Johnson*Islam, by Karen Armstrong...
, 2001 (hardcover, ISBN 0679640509); (2003 paperback reprint, ISBN 0812968646)
- Priestland, David. Stalin and the Politics of Mobilization: Ideas, Power, and Terror in Inter-war Russia. New York: Oxford University Press (USA), 2006 (hardcover, ISBN 0-19-924513-4).
- Radzinsky, Edvard
Edvard Radzinsky is a Russian writer, historian, TV personality, and author of numerous plays and film screenplays.-His publications:Since the 1990s, Radzinsky has written books for the series Mysteries of History...
. Stalin: The First In-Depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia's Secret Archives. Doubleday, 1996 (hardcover, ISBN 0-385-47397-4); Anchor, 1997 (paperback, ISBN 0-385-47954-9). Chapter 1 is available online.
- Rayfield, Donald
Donald Rayfield is professor of Russian and Georgian at the University of London. He is an author of books about Russian and Georgian literature, and about Joseph Stalin and his secret police...
. Stalin and His HangmenStalin and His Hangmen: An Authoritative Portrait of a Tyrant and Those Who Served Him by Donald Rayfield, and the imprinted with another subtitle: Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him, is a political biography by Donald Rayfield, of Joseph Stalin and his subordinates who...
: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him. New York: Random House, 2004 (hardcover, ISBN 0-375-50632-2); 2005 (paperback, ISBN 0375757716).
- Redefining Stalinism (Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions), edited by Harold Shukman. New York: Routledge, 2003 (hardcover, ISBN 0-7146-5415-9; paperback, ISBN 0-7146-8342-6).
- Ree, Erik van. The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin: A Study in Twentieth-Century Revolutionary Patriotism. London; New York: Routledge Courzon, 2002 (hardcover, ISBN 0-7007-1749-8).
- Roberts, Geoffrey. Stalin's Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939–1953. New Heaven, CT; London: Yale University Press, 2006 (hardcover, ISBN 0300112041).
- Rummel, R.J. Death By Government. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1994 (hardcover, ISBN 1560001453); 1997 (paperback, ISBN 1-56000-927-6).
- Rummel, R.J. Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1990 (hardcover, ISBN 0887383335); (paperback, ISBN 1560008873)
- Sandag, Shagdariin; Kendall, Harry H.; Wakeman, Frederic E. Poisoned Arrows: The Stalin-Choibalsan Mongolian Massacres, 1921–1941. Westview Press (October 1999). ISBN 0813337100
- Service, Robert
Professor Robert John Service is a British historian of Russia. He is a Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford.Service spent his undergraduate years at Cambridge, where he studied Russian and classical Greek...
. Stalin: A Biography. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2005 (hardcover, ISBN 0-674-01697-1); 2006 (paperback, ISBN 0674022580).
- Souvarine, Boris
Boris Souvarine was an Imperial Russian-born French socialist, communist activist, essayist, and journalist.-Biography:...
. Stalin: A Critical Survey of Bolshevism. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2005 (paperback, ISBN 1-4191-1307-0)Online.
- Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was a Soviet and Russian novelist, dramatist, and historian. Through his writings he made the world aware of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system — particularly The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, his two...
"The Gulag Archipelago: 1918–1956" A first hand account of the Soviet slave labor camp by a survivor dissonant author.
- Stalin's Terror Revisited. Edited by Melanie Ilic and Stephen G. Wheatcroft. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006 (hardcover, ISBN 1-4039-4705-8).
- Tucker, Robert C.
Robert C. Tucker is an American historian.Born in Kansas City, Missouri, he was a prominent Sovietologist at Princeton University. He served as an attaché at the American Embassy in Moscow from 1944–1953...
Stalin as Revolutionary, 1879–1929: A Study in History and Personality. New York: W.W. Norton, 1973 (ISBN 0-393-05487-X); 1992 (paperback, ISBN 0393007383).
- Tucker, Robert C.
Robert C. Tucker is an American historian.Born in Kansas City, Missouri, he was a prominent Sovietologist at Princeton University. He served as an attaché at the American Embassy in Moscow from 1944–1953...
Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928–1941. New York: W.W. Norton, 1990 (hardcover, ISBN 0-393-02881-X); 1992 (paperback, ISBN 0393308693).
- Tzouliadis, Tim. The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia. The Penguin Press, 2008 (Hardcover, ISBN 1594201684)
- Ulam, Adam Bruno. Stalin: The Man and His Era. Boston: Beacon Press, 1989 (paperback, ISBN 0-8070-7005-X); London: I.B. Tauris, 1989 (ISBN 1850431744).
- Vaksberg, Arkady. The Murder of Maxim Gorky. A Secret Execution. (Enigma Books: New York, 2007. ISBN 978-1-929631-62-9.)
- Volkogonov, Dmitri Antonovich
Dmitri Antonovich Volkogonov was a Russian historian and officer.-Biography:...
(Author); Shukman, Harold (Editor, Translator). Autopsy for an Empire: the Seven Leaders Who Built the Soviet Regime. Free Press, 1998 (Hardcover, ISBN 0684834200); (Paperback, ISBN 0684871122)
- Ward, Chris. The Stalinist Dictatorship. London: Arnold Publishers, 1998 (hardcover, ISBN 0-340-70640-6; paperback, ISBN 0-340-70641-4).
- Ward, Chris. "Stalin Through Seventeenth-Century Eyes", Journal of European Studies, Vol. 36, No. 2. (2006), pp. 181–200.
- Yakovlev, Alexander N.
Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev, Александр Николаевич Яковлев was a Russian economist who was a Soviet governmental official in the 1980s and a member of the Politburo and Secretariat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union...
(Author); Austin, Anthony (Translator). A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia. Yale University PressYale University Press is a book publisher founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day. It became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but remains financially and operationally autonomous....
, 2002 (Hardcover, ISBN 0300087608); 2004 (Paperback, ISBN 0300103220)
External links
- Stalin Library (with all 13 volumes of Stalin's works and "volume 14")
- Nikolai Getman: The Gulag collection
- Library of Congress: Revelations from the Russian Archives
- Electronic archive of Stalin's letters and presentations
- Sovetika.ru A site about the Soviet era
- "Another view of Stalin" by Ludo Martens
Ludo Martens is a Belgian historian noted for his work on francophone Africa and the Soviet Union. He has also been the chairman of the Workers' Party of Belgium....
, Progressive Labor PartyThe Progressive Labor Party is a transnational communist party based in the United States. It was formed in the fall of 1961 by members of the Communist Party USA who felt that the Soviet Union had betrayed communism and become revisionist and state capitalist...
website
- "The Revolution Betrayed" by Leon Trotsky
- Impressions of Soviet Russia by John Dewey
- Stalin and the 'Cult of Personality'
- A "Stalinist" rebuttal of the Khrushchev's "Secret Speech" from the CPUSA, 1956
- Stalin Biography from Spartacus Educational
- A List of Key Documentary Material on Stalin
- "Stalin and the Struggle for Democratic Reform, Part One" and "Part Two" by Grover Furr.
- Stalinka: The Digital Library of Staliniana
- Modern History Sourcebook: Stalin's Reply to Churchill, 1946
- Modern History Sourcebook: Nikita S. Khrushchev: The Secret Speech — On the Cult of Personality, 1956
- The political economy of Stalinism: evidence from the Soviet secret archives / Paul R. Gregory
- "Demographic catastrophes of the 20th century", chapter from Demographic Modernization in Russia 1900–2000, ed. A. G. Vishnevsky, 2006 ISBN 5983790420 — estimates of the human cost of Stalin's rule
- Annotated bibliography for Joseph Stalin from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
- "Secret documents reveal Stalin was poisoned" study by the Russian paper Pravda
Pravda was a leading newspaper of the Soviet Union and an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1912 and 1991....
of events behind possible death by poisoning
- Over 2,000 original German WWII soldier photographs from the Eastern Front
- Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Current Intelligence. Death of Stalin, 16 July 1953.
- How Many Did Stalin Really Murder? by Professor R.J. Rummel
- Death of the Butcher by Hoover
The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace is a public policy think tank and library founded in 1919 by then-future U.S. president Herbert Hoover....
fellow Arnold BeichmanArnold Beichman is a conservative political pundit. He is currently a Hoover Institution research fellow and a columnist for The Washington Times. He spent much of his life as a crusader against communism....
- A secret revealed: Stalin's police killed Americans (1997 Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
article)
- Stalin giving a speech in Russian with English subtitles
- The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine (1986)
- Getty, J. Arch
John Arch Getty is an American historian and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is noted for his research on Russian and Soviet history, especially the period under Joseph Stalin and the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.-Life and career:Getty was born in...
, Gabor T. Rittersporn, and Viktor N. Zemskov. "Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-war Years:A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence" The American Historical Review 4 (October 1993)
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