[864], It was long rumored that Stalin married a sister of Lazar Kaganovich. [340] The USSR underwent a massive economic transformation. [650], On 1 March 1953, Stalin's staff found him semi-conscious on the bedroom floor of his Kuntsevo Dacha. Stalin was Georgian, but during his revolutionary campaigns, adopted the Soviet Nationality law and also changed his Georgian name to a Russian Name. One of the most controversial and enigmatic figures in Russian history, he is still the subject of fierce discussions and assessments. [692] Service argued that Stalin's Marxism was imbued with a great deal of Russian nationalism. [598] In September 1949 the Western powers transformed Western Germany into an independent Federal Republic of Germany; in response the Soviets formed East Germany into the German Democratic Republic in October. [877] Various biographers have described him as a dictator,[878] an autocrat,[879] or accused him of practising Caesarism. [769] Montefiore suggested that this charm was "the foundation of Stalin's power in the Party". Initially Stalin refused to repeal the Sino-Soviet Treaty of 1945, which significantly benefited the Soviet Union over China, although in January 1950 he relented and agreed to sign a new treaty between the two countries. [895] Since his death many more biographies have been written,[896] although until the 1980s these relied largely on the same sources of information. [411] Stalin aided the Chinese as the KMT and the Communists had suspended their civil war and formed the desired United Front. [432] His personal writings from the period were according to Khlevniuk "unusually convoluted and incoherent", filled with claims about enemies encircling him. [166] After the demonstration was suppressed, the Provisional Government initiated a crackdown on the Bolsheviks, raiding Pravda. Bolshevik leaders appointed themselves to many high offices and started implementing communist practices based on Marx's ideology. [591] In August 1949, the bomb was successfully tested in the deserts outside Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan. [473] After the Tripartite Pact was signed by Axis Powers Germany, Japan, and Italy in October 1940, Stalin proposed that the USSR also join the Axis alliance. Video: Vladimir Lenin. Stalin had nearly a million of his own citizens executed, beginning in the 1930s. [491] With Order No. [103] In Baku he had reassembled his gang, the Outfit,[104] which continued to attack Black Hundreds and raised finances by running protection rackets, counterfeiting currency, and carrying out robberies. [85] At the conference Stalin met Lenin for the first time. And what is so awful in his having fun with a woman, after such horrors? [722] He also favoured classical forms in the visual arts, disliking avant-garde styles like cubism and futurism. [568] It was established that 1,710 Soviet towns and 70,000 villages had been destroyed. [395] He declared that "socialism, which is the first phase of communism, has basically been achieved in this country". Best known for: Fighting the Germans in WW2 and starting the Cold War. [53], That month, Stalin travelled to the port city of Batum. [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. Stalin made a decision to use his power over the country to raise production. [795] Stalin also enjoyed watching films late at night at cinemas installed in the Kremlin and his dachas. [115] He escaped to Saint Petersburg,[116] where he was arrested in September 1911 and sentenced to a further three-year exile in Vologda. [267], Lenin died in January 1924. [564] He was also concerned about his returning armies, who had been exposed to a wide range of consumer goods in Germany, much of which they had looted and brought back with them. [418] By the latter part of 1937, the purges had moved beyond the party and were affecting the wider population. [333] Stalin responded to the uprisings with an article insisting that collectivisation was voluntary and blaming any violence and other excesses on local officials. [355] Priests, imams, and Buddhist monks faced persecution. Though each loathed and feared the other, there was much Hitler and Stalin had in common. [556] Still, Stalin foresaw the undesirability of a nuclear conflict, saying in 1949 that "atomic weapons can hardly be used without spelling the end of the world. [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". [567], The NKVD were ordered to catalogue the scale of destruction during the war. [731] Described as a poor orator,[732] according to Volkogonov, Stalin's speaking style was "simple and clear, without flights of fancy, catchy phrases or platform histrionics". Serving in the Russian Civil War before overseeing the Soviet Union's establishment in 1922, Stalin assumed leadership over the country following Lenin's death in 1924. It nevertheless clashed with established Bolshevik views that socialism could not be established in one country but could only be achieved globally through the process of world revolution. [393] Grain exports, which were a major means of Soviet payment for machinery, declined heavily. [227] On 26 May, Stalin was moved to Ukraine, on the Southwest Front. [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. [257] Despite this comradeship, Lenin disliked what he referred to as Stalin's "Asiatic" manner and told his sister Maria that Stalin was "not intelligent". "[886] McDermott stated that Stalin had "concentrated unprecedented political authority in his hands. "We have lost one of the tallest socialist leaders, who remained deeply committed to the ideals of . [16] Ekaterine worked as a house cleaner and launderer and was determined to send her son to school. [696] He claimed to be a loyal Leninist,[697] although wasaccording to Service"not a blindly obedient Leninist". [719] Montefiore thought Stalin's brutality marked him out as a "natural extremist";[794] Service suggested he had tendencies toward a paranoid and sociopathic personality disorder. [183] Stalin's office was based near to Lenin's in the Smolny Institute,[184] and he and Trotsky were the only individuals allowed access to Lenin's study without an appointment. This has been a period replete with events of a decisive nature. [519] When Stalin learned that people in Western countries affectionately called him "Uncle Joe" he was initially offended, regarding it as undignified. [244] The Georgian Communist Party opposed the idea, resulting in the Georgian affair. [163] This reflected his senior standing in the party at the time.[164]. [270] To bolster his image as a devoted Leninist, Stalin gave nine lectures at Sverdlov University on the "Foundations of Leninism", later published in book form. [14] Ekaterine and Stalin left the home by 1883 and began a wandering life, moving through nine different rented rooms over the next decade. [359] Socialist realism was promoted throughout arts,[360] while Stalin personally wooed prominent writers, namely Maxim Gorky, Mikhail Sholokhov, and Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy. [620] In December 1949, Mao visited Stalin. [394], In 193536, Stalin oversaw a new constitution; its dramatic liberal features were designed as propaganda weapons, for all power rested in the hands of Stalin and his Politburo. [639] Stalin nevertheless mistrusted his doctors; in January 1952 he had one imprisoned after they suggested that he should retire to improve his health. . [774] He was a good organiser,[775] with a strategic mind,[776] and judged others according to their inner strength, practicality, and cleverness. [653] He was hand-fed using a spoon, given various medicines and injections, and leeches were applied to him. [187] He co-signed Lenin's decrees shutting down hostile newspapers,[188] and along with Sverdlov, he chaired the sessions of the committee drafting a constitution for the new Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. [77] Stalin formed a Bolshevik Battle Squad which he used to try to keep Baku's warring ethnic factions apart; he also used the unrest as a cover for stealing printing equipment. [909], In 2011, historian Timothy D. Snyder summarised modern data made after the opening of the Soviet archives in the 1990s and states that Stalin's regime was responsible for 9million deaths, with 6million of these being deliberate killings. [204] To secure access to the dwindling food supply, in May 1918 Sovnarkom sent Stalin to Tsaritsyn to take charge of food procurement in southern Russia. [254], In May 1922, a massive stroke left Lenin partially paralysed. [714] Ultimately he believed that all nations would merge into a single, global human community,[714] and regarded all nations as inherently equal. It is a chance to consider only what is necessary to make a decision. [795] Other historians linked his brutality not to any personality trait, but to his unwavering commitment to the survival of the Soviet Union and the international MarxistLeninist cause. Here are 10 facts about Joseph Stalin. [291] In 1925, the two moved into open opposition to Stalin and Bukharin. [26], In August 1894, Stalin enrolled in the Orthodox Spiritual Seminary in Tiflis, enabled by a scholarship that allowed him to study at a reduced rate. [549] These events led to the Japanese surrender and the war's end. [464], The Soviets further demanded parts of eastern Finland, but the Finnish government refused. [765] According to historian Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin wasn't a psychopath. [336] In November 1929 Stalin removed him from the Politburo. In 1929, his son Yakov unsuccessfully attempted suicide; his failure earned Stalin's contempt. [554] Germany was divided into four zones: Soviet, U.S., British, and French, with Berlin itselflocated within the Soviet areaalso subdivided thusly. [542] After receiving a complaint about this from Yugoslav communist Milovan Djilas, Stalin asked how after experiencing the traumas of war a soldier could "react normally? Tamil Nadu Governor vs Stalin govt: Guv RN Ravi to visit Delhi again; second such visit within a week. [289] He was supported in this by Bukharin, who, like Stalin, believed that the Left Opposition's proposals would plunge the Soviet Union into instability. [91], Stalin married Kato Svanidze in an Orthodox church ceremony at Senaki in July 1906. [754] His choice of favoured holiday house changed over the years,[755] although he holidayed in southern parts of the USSR every year from 1925 to 1936 and again from 1945 to 1951. [314] At this point, Stalin turned against the NEP, which put him on a course to the "left" even of Trotsky or Zinoviev. [284] While Lenin had been ill Stalin had forged an anti-Trotsky alliance with Kamenev and Zinoviev. Although he was a tyrannical leader, putting in place the most totalitarian, repressive regime history had seen, Stalin can be credited with the fruition of the communist socio-economic project in Russia, the extension of its model to other neighboring countries and the conversion of the USSR into a great power, without rivals in the region. [435] These purges replaced most of the party's old guard with younger officials who did not remember a time before Stalin's leadership and who were regarded as more personally loyal to him. "[837] However, Montefiore noted that in his early life Stalin "rarely seems to have been without a girlfriend. [598] Within Western countries, Stalin was increasingly portrayed as the "most evil dictator alive" and compared to Hitler. [279] In his private life, he divided his time between his Kremlin apartment and a dacha at Zubalova;[280] his wife gave birth to a daughter, Svetlana, in February 1926. [739] He was born with a webbed left foot, and his left arm had been permanently injured in childhood which left it shorter than his right and lacking in flexibility,[740] which was probably the result of being hit, at the age of 12, by a horse-drawn carriage. [317] Stalin announced that both kulaks and the "middle peasants" must be coerced into releasing their harvest. [51] He continued to evade arrest by using aliases and sleeping in different apartments. He was faced with the problem that there were few Marxists left in Eastern Europe, with most having been killed by the Nazis. [293] In mid-1926, Kamenev and Zinoviev joined with Trotsky's supporters to form the United Opposition against Stalin;[294] in October they agreed to stop factional activity under threat of expulsion, and later publicly recanted their views under Stalin's command. 6 December]1878[4][i] and baptised on 29 December. Conversely, his regime has been described as totalitarian, and has been widely condemned for overseeing mass repression, ethnic cleansing, wide-scale deportation, hundreds of thousands of executions, and famines that killed millions. [940] There have also been requests by communist officials to canonize Stalin as an official saint, although these requests were never implemented the author referencing the church's suffering under Stalin's rule. Asatar Bair, a self . [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. The effective leader of the party was Kamenevwho took the Chair of the Politburo. [373] In November 1932, after a group dinner in the Kremlin in which Stalin flirted with other women, Nadezhda shot herself. [850] In any event, she suspected that he was unfaithful with other women,[851] and committed suicide in 1932. [836] According to Boris Bazhanov, Stalin's one-time secretary, "Women didn't interest him. [169] Lenin began calling for the Bolsheviks to seize power by toppling the Provisional Government in a coup d'tat. [306], In 1926, Stalin published On Questions of Leninism. [143] Stalin retained the name for the rest of his life, possibly because it was used on the article that established his reputation among the Bolsheviks. [711] Stalin's doctrine held that socialism could be completed in Russia but that its final victory there could not be guaranteed because of the threat from capitalist intervention. Demanding that Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev apologise to the Party for the errors when they lost votes at the Party Congress. [847], Stalin's second wife was Nadezhda Alliluyeva; theirs was not an easy relationship, and they often fought. [796], Keenly interested in the arts,[797] Stalin admired artistic talent. [712] This concept synthesised Marxist and Leninist ideas with nationalist ideals,[694] and served to discredit Trotskywho promoted the idea of "permanent revolution"by presenting the latter as a defeatist with little faith in Russian workers' abilities to construct socialism. Stalin, for the most part, was a successful leader. [657] It has been conjectured that Stalin was murdered;[658] Beria has been suspected of murdering him, but no firm evidence has ever appeared. [424] By late 1937, all remnants of collective leadership were gone from the Politburo, which was controlled entirely by Stalin. [682] The historian Alfred J. Rieber noted that he had been raised in "a society where rebellion was deeply rooted in folklore and popular rituals". Succeeding Lenin and his Rise to Power [809] He liked the Western genre,[810] although his favourite films were Volga Volga and Circus (both directed by Grigori Alexandrov and starring Lyubov Orlova). Moreover he knew perfectly how to manipulate people on his behalf and also how to gain supporters and how . These criticised Stalin's rude manners and excessive power, suggesting that Stalin should be removed from the position of general secretary. 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