[201] The treaty gave vast areas of land and resources to the Central Powers and angered many in Russia; the Left Socialist Revolutionaries withdrew from the coalition government over the issue. [678] Some of these derived from political expediency rather than any sincere intellectual commitment;[678] Stalin would often turn to ideology post hoc to justify his decisions. Shvernik did not offer details about the most serious episode of unrest-a wave . [110] In June, he escaped the village and made it to Kotlas disguised as a woman and from there to Saint Petersburg. A 2012 survey commissioned by the Carnegie Endowment found 38% of Armenians concurring that their country "will always have need of a leader like Stalin. [543] Stalin had wanted Hitler captured alive; he had his remains brought to Moscow to prevent them becoming a relic for Nazi sympathisers. [643] In 1951, he initiated the Mingrelian affair, a purge of the Georgian branch of the Communist Party which resulted in over 11,000 deportations. [455] On 3 May 1939, Stalin replaced his western-oriented foreign minister Maxim Litvinov with Vyacheslav Molotov. [817] His Volynskoe suburb had a 20-hectare (50-acre) park, with Stalin devoting much attention to its agricultural activities. Stalin in fact respected and liked when this happened. [525], In November 1943, Stalin met with Churchill and Roosevelt in Tehran, a location of Stalin's choosing. [847], Stalin's second wife was Nadezhda Alliluyeva; theirs was not an easy relationship, and they often fought. I saw Hitler many, many times, and Goering and Goebbels. [296] In October 1927, Zinoviev and Trotsky were removed from the Central Committee;[297] the latter was exiled to Kazakhstan and later deported from the country in 1929. "[865], The historian Robert Conquest stated that Stalin perhaps "determined the course of the twentieth century" more than any other individual. [885] Dmitri Volkogonov characterised him as "one of the most powerful figures in human history. [265] In the final years of his life, Krupskaya provided governing figures with Lenin's Testament, a series of increasingly disparaging notes about Stalin. We must close that gap in ten years. [597] He sent Molotov as his representative to San Francisco to take part in negotiations to form the United Nations, insisting that the Soviets have a place on the Security Council. [327] By 1932, about 62% of households involved in agriculture were part of collectives, and by 1936 this had risen to 90%. He was faced with the problem that there were few Marxists left in Eastern Europe, with most having been killed by the Nazis. [551], Stalin attended the Potsdam Conference in JulyAugust 1945, alongside his new British and U.S. counterparts, Prime Minister Clement Attlee and President Harry Truman. [326] Although officially voluntary, many peasants joined the collectives out of fear they would face the fate of the kulaks; others joined amid intimidation and violence from party loyalists. [255] Residing at his Gorki dacha, Lenin's main connection to Sovnarkom was through Stalin, who was a regular visitor. [676] A mass amnesty for certain categories of convicts was issued, halving the country's inmate population, while the state security and Gulag systems were reformed, with torture being banned in April 1953. [693] Stalin respected Lenin, but not uncritically,[698] and spoke out when he believed that Lenin was wrong. [229] On 16 July, the Central Committee decided to take the war into Polish territory. [174] A Bolshevik-controlled ship, the Aurora, opened fire on the Winter Palace; the Provisional Government's assembled delegates surrendered and were arrested by the Bolsheviks. Under Stalin, socialism in one country became a central tenet of the party's ideology. [711] Although retaining the Marxist belief that the state would wither away as socialism transformed into pure communism, he believed that the Soviet state would remain until the final defeat of international capitalism. [605] In November 1948, he abolished the JAC,[631] and show trials took place for some of its members. [52] In November 1901, he was elected to the Tiflis Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), a Marxist party founded in 1898. [840] According to Service, Stalin "regarded women as a resource for sexual gratification and domestic comfort. [221] Although Stalin did not share Lenin's belief that Europe's proletariat were on the verge of revolution, he acknowledged that as long as it stood alone, Soviet Russia remained vulnerable. [247], After the civil war, workers' strikes and peasant uprisings broke out across Russia, largely in opposition to Sovnarkom's food requisitioning project; as an antidote, Lenin introduced market-oriented reforms: the New Economic Policy (NEP). [827] Additionally, according to Beria, Stalin had affairs with several Jewish women. Despite all that it is fair to say that Lenin was a successful leader without whom November revolution . [414] In September 1934, he launched a commission to investigate false imprisonments; that same month he called for the execution of workers at the Stalin Metallurgical Factory accused of spying for Japan. In April 1932, Nikolai Shvernik, the head of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, informed Stalin and Lazar Kaganovich that Soviet workers were rebelling against "starvation" rations implemented on the first of the month. Comrades! [264], Their differences also became personal; Lenin was particularly angered when Stalin was rude to his wife Krupskaya during a telephone conversation. [625] The U.S. went to the UN Security Councilwhich the Soviets were boycotting over its refusal to recognise Mao's governmentand secured military support for the South Koreans. [457] Stalin saw this as an opportunity both for territorial expansion and temporary peace with Germany. [808] Lenin was his favourite author but he also read, and sometimes appreciated, a great deal of writing by Leon Trotsky and other arch-enemies. He also placed a ban on factionalism and branded all opposition as traitorous. [620] In December 1949, Mao visited Stalin. [557] His armies controlled Central and Eastern Europe up to the River Elbe. [666] A memorial service in his honour was also held at St George the Martyr, Holborn in London. [798] He protected several Soviet writers from arrest and prosecution, such as Mikhail Bulgakov, even when their work was labelled harmful to his regime. [926], Polling by the Levada Center suggest Stalin's popularity has grown since 2015, with 46% of Russians expressing a favourable view of him in 2017 and 51% in 2019. [723] He remained proud of his Georgian identity,[724] and throughout his life retained a heavy Georgian accent when speaking Russian. December 21, 1878 - March 5, 1953. [814] When at social events, he encouraged singing,[815] as well as alcohol consumption; he hoped that others would drunkenly reveal their secrets to him. [127] [293] Stalin in turn accused Kamenev and Zinoviev of reintroducing factionalism and thus instability into the party. [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. "[824] Conquest stated that although Stalin had Jewish associates, he promoted anti-Semitism. 2 [899] Socialist writers like Volkogonov have acknowledged that Stalin's actions damaged "the enormous appeal of socialism generated by the October Revolution". [511] In February 1943, the German troops attacking Stalingrad surrendered. [350] From 1929 to 1930, further show trials were held to intimidate opposition:[351] these included the Industrial Party Trial, Menshevik Trial, and Metro-Vickers Trial. [346] His speeches and articles reflected his utopian vision of the Soviet Union rising to unparalleled heights of human development, creating a "new Soviet person". [482] The German Wehrmacht pushed deep into Soviet territory;[483] soon, Ukraine, Byelorussia, and the Baltic states were under German occupation, and Leningrad was under siege;[484] and Soviet refugees were flooding into Moscow and surrounding cities. [317] Stalin announced that both kulaks and the "middle peasants" must be coerced into releasing their harvest. [101] In November 1907, his wife died of typhus,[102] and he left his son with her family in Tiflis. [914] In October 1961, Stalin's body was removed from the mausoleum and buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, the location marked by a bust. [759] In 1934, his new Kuntsevo Dacha was built; 9km from the Kremlin, it became his primary residence. Joseph Stalin used savage tactics to keep his powers. [645] He was very interested in the reigns of Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great and Catherine the Great. . [378] Like its predecessor, this plan was repeatedly amended to meet changing situations; there was for instance an increasing emphasis placed on armament production after Adolf Hitler became German chancellor in 1933. Stalin had called for the Chinese Communists to ally themselves with Kuomintang (KMT) nationalists, viewing a Communist-Kuomintang alliance as the best bulwark against Japanese imperial expansionism. [518], In Allied countries, Stalin was increasingly depicted in a positive light over the course of the war. [395] In 1938, The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), colloquially known as the Short Course, was released;[396] biographer Robert Conquest later referred to it as the "central text of Stalinism". Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin terrorised his own people, but for the first time a survey suggests . Born to a poor family in Gori in the Russian Empire (now Georgia), Stalin attended the Tbilisi Spiritual Seminary before joining the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. [718] Stalin's push for Soviet westward expansion into eastern Europe resulted in accusations of Russian imperialism. [733] He rarely spoke before large audiences, and preferred to express himself in written form. Firstly, the divisions within the party, made his task of eliminating people less complicated, he only had individuals, not groups of people against him. [171], On 24 October, police raided the Bolshevik newspaper offices, smashing machinery and presses; Stalin salvaged some of this equipment to continue his activities. [261] Stalin believed this would encourage independence sentiment among non-Russians, instead arguing that ethnic minorities would be content as "autonomous republics" within the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. [226] Along the Southwest Front, he became determined to conquer Lvov; in focusing on this goal he disobeyed orders in early August to transfer his troops to assist Mikhail Tukhachevsky's forces that were attacking Warsaw. [361] He also expressed patronage for scientists whose research fitted within his preconceived interpretation of Marxism; for instance, he endorsed research of an agrobiologist Trofim Lysenko despite the fact that it was rejected by the majority of Lysenko's scientific peers as pseudo-scientific. [227] On 26 May, Stalin was moved to Ukraine, on the Southwest Front. He had to share power with a collection of other Soviet leaders, including Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev. Germany ended the pact by invading the Soviet Union in 1941. Stalin, Trotsky, Sverdlov, and Lenin lived at the Kremlin. [208] Believing that victory was assured by numerical superiority, he sent large numbers of Red Army troops into battle against the region's anti-Bolshevik White armies, resulting in heavy losses; Lenin was concerned by this costly tactic. [863] The other, Alexander, was the son of Lidia Pereprygina; he was raised as the son of a peasant fisherman and the Soviet authorities made him swear never to reveal that Stalin was his biological father. [621] Stalin was concerned that Mao might follow Tito's example by pursuing a course independent of Soviet influence, and made it known that if displeased he would withdraw assistance from China; the Chinese desperately needed said assistance after decades of civil war. [605], Churchill observed that an "Iron Curtain" had been drawn across Europe, separating the east from the west. [735] Throughout his life, he used various nicknames and pseudonyms, including "Koba", "Soselo", and "Ivanov",[736] adopting "Stalin" in 1912; it was based on the Russian word for "steel" and has often been translated as "Man of Steel". [586] Much of this was constructed by prison labour. [773] Several historians have seen it as appropriate to follow Lazar Kaganovich's description of there being "several Stalins" as a means of understanding his multi-faceted personality. [448] According to historian James Harris, contemporary archival research shows that the motivation behind the purges was not Stalin attempting to establish his own personal dictatorship; evidence suggests he was committed to building the socialist state envisioned by Lenin. [197] Socialist revolutionaries accused Stalin's talk of federalism and national self-determination as a front for Sovnarkom's centralising and imperialist policies. [607] Stalin did not personally attend the meeting, sending Zhdanov in his place. [586], In the aftermath of the Second World War, the British Empire declined, leaving the U.S. and USSR as the dominant world powers. [345] To promote intensification of labour, a series of medals and awards as well as the Stakhanovite movement were introduced. [242] In taking this view, some Marxists accused him of bending too much to bourgeois nationalism, while others accused him of remaining too Russocentric by seeking to retain these nations within the Russian state. [900], With a high number of excess deaths occurring under his rule, Stalin has been labelled "one of the most notorious figures in history. [859] There are unproven rumours that from 1934 onward he had a relationship with his housekeeper Valentina Istomina. 1922 (29th December) The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was created. [94] He attended the Fifth RSDLP Congress, held at the Brotherhood Church in London in MayJune 1907. [568] It was established that 1,710 Soviet towns and 70,000 villages had been destroyed. [120] In February 1912, Stalin again escaped to Saint Petersburg,[121] tasked with converting the Bolshevik weekly newspaper, Zvezda ("Star") into a daily, Pravda ("Truth"). [78] Stalin's squads disarmed local police and troops,[79] raided government arsenals,[80] and raised funds through protection rackets on large local businesses and mines. Conclusion. [734] His writing style was similar, being characterised by its simplicity, clarity, and conciseness. [610] The 1947 Hungarian elections were also rigged, with the Hungarian Working People's Party taking control. [366] He personally met with a range of Western visitors, including George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells, both of whom were impressed with him. [143], In adulthood, Stalin measured 1.70m (5feet 7inches). Despite calls of "some Russians" to "beatify" Stalin, the Russian Orthodox Church has stood its ground in refusing to do so. [64] He made two escape attempts: On the first, he made it to Balagansk before returning due to frostbite. [737][738] His mustached face was pock-marked from smallpox during childhood; this was airbrushed from published photographs. [544] As the Red Army had conquered German territory, they discovered the extermination camps that the Nazi administration had run. "[887] Service stated that Stalin "had come closer to personal despotism than almost any monarch in history" by the late 1930s. He believed that Lenin was a successful leader without whom November revolution George the Martyr Holborn! Resource for sexual gratification and domestic comfort and branded all opposition as traitorous but uncritically... Party taking control 1,710 Soviet towns and 70,000 villages had been drawn across Europe, Stalin... And Eastern Europe, separating the east from the west the Nazis was similar, characterised. From 1934 onward he had a 20-hectare ( 50-acre ) was stalin a fair leader, most... 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