[919] After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the first President of the new Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin, continued Gorbachev's denunciation of Stalin but added to it a denunciation of Lenin. [44], In October 1899, Stalin began work as a meteorologist at the Tiflis observatory. [421] The first Moscow Trial took place in August 1936; Kamenev and Zinoviev were among those accused of plotting assassinations, found guilty in a show trial, and executed. [610] In Czechoslovakia, where the communists did have a level of popular support, they were elected the largest party in 1946. To eradicate accused "enemies of the working class", Stalin instituted the Great Purge, in which over a million were imprisoned, largely in the Gulag system of forced labour camps, and at least 700,000 executed between 1934 and 1939. [373] In November 1932, after a group dinner in the Kremlin in which Stalin flirted with other women, Nadezhda shot herself. [563], Despite his strengthened international position, Stalin was cautious about internal dissent and desire for change among the population. [703] Stalin adopted the Leninist view on the need for a revolutionary vanguard who could lead the proletariat rather than being led by them. [254], In May 1922, a massive stroke left Lenin partially paralysed. This attack proved unsuccessful. He had to share power with a collection of other Soviet leaders, including Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev. [222] In December 1918, he drew up decrees recognising Marxist-governed Soviet republics in Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia;[223] during the civil war these Marxist governments were overthrown and the Baltic countries became fully independent of Russia, an act Stalin regarded as illegitimate. [894] Stalin ensured that these works gave very little attention to his early life, particularly because he did not wish to emphasise his Georgian origins in a state numerically dominated by Russians. [196] His department allocated funds for establishment of presses and schools in the languages of various ethnic minorities. [205] Eager to prove himself as a commander,[206] once there he took control of regional military operations. [916], Khrushchev's de-Stalinisation process in Soviet society ended when he was replaced as leader by Leonid Brezhnev in 1964; the latter introduced a level of re-Stalinisation within the Soviet Union. [747], As leader of the Soviet Union, Stalin typically awoke around 11am,[748] with lunch being served between 3 and 5pm and dinner no earlier than 9pm;[749] he then worked late into the evening. [86] Although Stalin held Lenin in deep respect, he was vocal in his disagreement with Lenin's view that the Bolsheviks should field candidates for the forthcoming election to the State Duma; Stalin saw the parliamentary process as a waste of time. [696] He claimed to be a loyal Leninist,[697] although wasaccording to Service"not a blindly obedient Leninist". [529] Stalin insisted that, after the war, the Soviet Union should incorporate the portions of Poland it occupied pursuant to the MolotovRibbentrop Pact with Germany, which Churchill opposed. [455] On 3 May 1939, Stalin replaced his western-oriented foreign minister Maxim Litvinov with Vyacheslav Molotov. [771], Stalin could play different roles to different audiences,[772] and was adept at deception, often deceiving others as to his true motives and aims. [209] In Tsaritsyn, Stalin commanded the local Cheka branch to execute suspected counter-revolutionaries, sometimes without trial[210] and in contravention of government orders purged the military and food collection agencies of middle-class specialists, some of whom he also executed. [449], As a MarxistLeninist, Stalin considered conflict between competing capitalist powers inevitable; after Nazi Germany annexed Austria and then part of Czechoslovakia in 1938, he recognised a war was looming. [271] During the 13th Party Congress in May 1924, "Lenin's Testament" was read only to the leaders of the provincial delegations. [574] Capital punishment was abolished in 1947 but re-instituted in 1950. [461] On 28 September, Germany and the Soviet Union exchanged some of their newly conquered territories; Germany gained the linguistically Polish-dominated areas of Lublin Province and part of Warsaw Province while the Soviets gained Lithuania. Stalin made a decision to use his power over the country to raise production. [372] His relationship with Nadezhda was also strained amid their arguments and her mental health problems. [614] He gambled that the others would not risk war, but they airlifted supplies into West Berlin until May 1949, when Stalin relented and ended the blockade. [835], Stalin was no womanizer. Together, the trio laid down the foundation for the Soviet Union. At the end of the titanic struggle he paraded himself as Generalissimus and war hero. [250] At the 11th Party Congress in 1922, Lenin nominated Stalin as the party's new General Secretary. [606] In September 1947, a meeting of East European communist leaders was held in Szklarska Porba, Poland, from which was formed Cominform to co-ordinate the Communist Parties across Eastern Europe and also in France and Italy. I saw Hitler many, many times, and Goering and Goebbels. [600] He erroneously claimed that the initial German advance in the early part of the war was not a result of Soviet military weakness, but rather a deliberate Soviet strategic retreat. [232] In Moscow, Lenin and Trotsky blamed him for his behaviour in the PolishSoviet war. [282] Stalin saw Trotsky whom he personally despised[283] as the main obstacle to his dominance within the party. [439] His motives in doing so have been much debated by historians. [14] Ekaterine and Stalin left the home by 1883 and began a wandering life, moving through nine different rented rooms over the next decade. [792] He never attended torture sessions or executions,[793] although Service thought Stalin "derived deep satisfaction" from degrading and humiliating people and enjoyed keeping even close associates in a state of "unrelieved fear". [580] In the Leningrad Affair, the city's leadership was purged amid accusations of treachery; executions of many of the accused took place in 1950. [457] Stalin saw this as an opportunity both for territorial expansion and temporary peace with Germany. [617] Across Eastern Europe, the Soviet model was enforced, with a termination of political pluralism, agricultural collectivisation, and investment in heavy industry. [533] In 1944, the German armies were pushed out of the Baltic states (with the exception of the Ostland), which were then re-annexed into the Soviet Union. [704] In his words, "the people need a Tsar, whom they can worship and for whom they can live and work". Not the Last Word", "The Personality Cult of Stalin in Soviet Posters, 19291953", "Ukraine Court Finds Bolsheviks Guilty of Holodomor Genocide", Stalin Library (with all 13 volumes of Stalin's, Library of Congress: Revelations from the Russian Archives, Electronic archive of Stalin's letters and presentations, Joseph Stalin Newsreels // Net-Film Newsreels and Documentary Films Archive, Stalin Biography from Spartacus Educational, A List of Key Documentary Material on Stalin, Stalinka: The Digital Library of Staliniana, Electronic archive of Stalins letters and presentations, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Joseph_Stalin&oldid=1133956104, This page was last edited on 16 January 2023, at 08:16. [610] At the second Cominform conference, held in Bucharest in June 1948, East European communist leaders all denounced Tito's government, accusing them of being fascists and agents of Western capitalism. [782], Stalin was ruthless,[783] temperamentally cruel,[784] and had a propensity for violence high even among the Bolsheviks. [562] He was quoted in Pravda on a daily basis and pictures of him remained pervasive on the walls of workplaces and homes. [9], Besarion was a cobbler who was employed in a workshop owned by another man;[10] it was initially a financial success but later fell into decline,[11] and the family found itself living in poverty. Acknowledge. [413] This mixed approach began to change in December 1934, after prominent party member Sergey Kirov was murdered. It comprised the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the Ukrainian Social Republic, the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Transcaucasian Soviet Socialist Republic. [343] The last elements of workers' control over industry were removed, with factory managers increasing their authority and receiving privileges and perks;[344] Stalin defended wage disparity by pointing to Marx's argument that it was necessary during the lower stages of socialism. [686], As a Marxist and an anti-capitalist, Stalin believed in an inevitable "class war" between the world's proletariat and bourgeoise. Stalin was officially the leader of the Communist party, but to many in the Party, he was only a figurehead. [431] During these years, approximately 1.6million people were arrested,[432] 700,000 were shot, and an unknown number died under NKVD torture. [274] Favouring new Communist Party members from proletarian backgrounds, to the "Old Bolsheviks" who tended to be middle class university graduates,[275] he ensured he had loyalists dispersed across the country's regions. [314] At this point, Stalin turned against the NEP, which put him on a course to the "left" even of Trotsky or Zinoviev. [664] That month featured a surge in arrests for "anti-Soviet agitation," as those celebrating Stalin's death came to police attention. [185] Although not so publicly well known as Lenin or Trotsky,[186] Stalin's importance among the Bolsheviks grew. Lenin called for establishment of a new federation named the "Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia", reflecting his desire for expansion across the two continents and insisted that the Russian state should join this union on equal terms with the other Soviet states. [400], Seeking improved international relations, in 1934 the Soviet Union secured membership of the League of Nations, from which it had previously been excluded. [146] In August, he arrived in the village of Monastyrskoe, although after four weeks was relocated to the hamlet of Kostino. [399] During the later 1930s, Stalin placed "a few limits on the worship of his own greatness". [750] He often dined with other Politburo members and their families. [181] Stalin became part of an informal foursome leading the government, alongside Lenin, Trotsky, and Sverdlov;[182] of these, Sverdlov was regularly absent and died in March 1919. [200] Lenin eventually convinced the other senior Bolsheviks of his viewpoint, resulting in signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918. [528] Roosevelt and Churchill also agreed to Stalin's demand that the German city of Knigsberg be declared Soviet territory. One is the political scientist Rudolph Rummel (1932-2014), a non-China specialist who made wildly higher estimates than any other historianthat Mao was responsible for 77 million deaths. [474] To demonstrate peaceful intentions toward Germany, in April 1941 the Soviets signed a neutrality pact with Japan. [368], Stalin faced problems in his family life. [117], In January 1912, while Stalin was in exile, the first Bolshevik Central Committee was elected at the Prague Conference. [640] He instructed the arrested doctors to be tortured to ensure confession. [718] Stalin's push for Soviet westward expansion into eastern Europe resulted in accusations of Russian imperialism. 1. [530] Discussing the fate of the Balkans, later in 1944 Churchill agreed to Stalin's suggestion that after the war, Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary, and Yugoslavia would come under the Soviet sphere of influence while Greece would come under that of the West. [555], After the war, Stalin wasaccording to Serviceat the "apex of his career". They were similar in some respects and yet very different. [904] In addition, while archival data shows that 1,053,829 perished in the Gulag from 1934 to 1953,[905] the current historical consensus is that of the 18million people who passed through the Gulag system from 1930 to 1953, between 1.5 and 1.7million died as a result of their incarceration. [259] Another disagreement came over the Georgian affair, with Lenin backing the Georgian Central Committee's desire for a Georgian Soviet Republic over Stalin's idea of a Transcaucasian one. The Soviets invaded Finland in November 1939, yet despite numerical inferiority, the Finns kept the Red Army at bay. [710] He first developed the idea in December 1924 and elaborated upon in his writings of 192526. Comrades! [337], Officially, the Soviet Union had replaced the "irrationality" and "wastefulness" of a market economy with a planned economy organised along a long-term, precise, and scientific framework; in reality, Soviet economics were based on ad hoc commandments issued from the centre, often to make short-term targets. [136], Stalin's article Marxism and the National Question[137] was first published in the March, April, and May 1913 issues of the Bolshevik journal Prosveshcheniye;[138] Lenin was pleased with it. Born into poverty in 1879 to an alcoholic cobbler father and washerwoman mother, Stalin . In 1956, after Stalin's death, came a watershed moment: Communist leader Nikita Khrushchev denounced the Stalin personality cult and dictatorship, in a secret speech to the 20th Party Congress. [351] Many religious buildings were demolished, most notably Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, destroyed in 1931 to make way for the (never completed) Palace of the Soviets. 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