Very few individuals have had as tremendous impact on world history as Joseph Stalin. He rose from poverty to the ranks of the Soviet government, eventually gaining supreme rule. He led the USSR through a World War and transformed a nation into a global superpower. Stalin's story is a quest for power, using Machiavellian tactics to climb to the top. Whether his ends justified his means is a point of contention to this day. Though criticized by many, Stalin was and efficient leader who did what was necessary for Russia to survive.
He was born in the Georgian town of Gori, the son of an alcoholic cobbler and a serf mother. His father left them then he was still a boy. Beso often beat him and his mother, sometimes holding all out fistfights in his presence. Some say that this marked the beginning of his hatred for authority, and thusly his quest for power (Radzinsky p19-27).
It was not long before this desire to control blossomed into a full time passion. When he was a teenager, he became involved with the political underground, and began spreading the ideas of Marxism (Montefiore p 1-4). He was arrested numerous times and exiled to Siberia, and eventually began consorting with Lenin and the Bolshevik party (Ulyanova). His first major revolutionary coups came when he was twenty-seven, still living in Gori, robbing banks and carrying out Lenin's agendas (Montefiore p 1-5).
Later, after the death of Lenin, he became General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, title often shortened to First Secretary. This position was really just a euphemism for supreme leader of the Soviet Union after Lenin, as a Secretary would have no special power beyond the other various secretaries of the Party (Radzinsky, p230-250). His rise to power was long struggle, partly fought in a political tug-of-war with Leon Trotsky. Eventually, by about 1936, Stalin had risen to the top. Once he was in power, there was no denying that Joseph Stalin was the absolute ruler of the Soviet Union.
His biggest challenge as a leader would come during World War II. At the very outset of German conquest, the USSR under Stalin signed a nonaggression pact, known as the
“Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.” Stalin was notorious for the pervasive psychological campaign he employed to influence the Russian people. The phrase, “Control the media, control the minds,” has been ascribed to him, and this philosophy was clearly evidenced by the use of propaganda, show trials, and extirpation of human obstacles. The two best examples of these techniques are the infamous Moscow Trials and the Great Purge.
The Moscow trials were a series of court cases in the 1930s wherein “enemies of the state” were dealt with and almost certainly found guilty. Ever since Krushchev revealed, in the 1950's, that the majority of these trials were set up and their defendants' guilt pre-decided, they are now universally regarded as nothing more than show trials. They were political instruments of the Soviet regime. Often, prisoners were pressured into confessing to crimes they had never committed, through intense physical and psychological torture. After they had been found guilty and punished (usually executed), their trials were highly publicized, condemning the criminal as a traitor, either to glorify the government as a guardian of the people for eliminating this threat, or to make an example of this person to deter others from speaking out against the state.
The Great Purge, perhaps the most controversial event of Stalin's reign,
Stalin was also very careful to ensure that he was seen as an omniscient, omnipotent and gracious overlord. He worked to establish a personality cult around himself, to craft a public persona as Russia's hero and savior. He took charge of the press, and ordered thousands of statues built in his honor. There are over 60 places currently or formerly named after him, including Stalingrad (prior Tsaritsyn, now Volgograd) Stalinabad, Stalinogorsk, Stalinsk , and Staliniri. He presented himself as a demigod, and people believed him. Citizens of the Soviet Union were terrified to do wrong, lest they be found out and reported to Comrade Stalin (Radzinsky, p 3-5). Soldiers dared not disobey, for they feared his retribution more than death. Stalin himself once said “
Stalin had a profound impact on the economy of the USSR, dragging that nation back out of the depression that it had sunk into as a result of the Russian Civil War. He did this in two ways: rapid industrialization and aggressive collectivization- the practice of forcing farmers to work together on state-endorsed farms, and be paid with a portion of the farm's output, rather than money. Due to, in most cases, unreasonably high government quotas, some farmers refused to work, or simply would not cooperate with each other or the state. This resulted in the large scale famines that are often blamed on Stalin, such as the холодомор in the Ukraine. The reality is that there was a drought from 1932-1933, and that when the peasants were forced into collectives, they could not produce enough food, nor did they have any money to buy food: they were little more than glorified subsistence farmers. There is still some speculation, however, as to whether Stalin meant for this to happen, as punishment for disobeying him, or if these famines were just an unfortunate coincidence that he was unable to remedy.
