[364] Religion retained an influence over much of the population; in the 1937 census, 57% of respondents were willing to admit to being religious. [261] The USSR's formation was ratified in December 1922; although officially a federal system, all major decisions were taken by the governing Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in Moscow. [456] Germany began negotiations with the Soviets, proposing that Eastern Europe be divided between the two powers. [407], When the Spanish Civil War broke out in July 1936, the Soviets sent 648 aircraft and 407 tanks to the left-wing Republican faction; these were accompanied by 3,000 Soviet troops and 42,000 members of the International Brigades set up by the Communist International. Iosif Stalin, Speech Delivered at a Meeting of Voters of the Stalin Electoral District, Moscow. [888], McDermott nevertheless cautioned against "over-simplistic stereotypes"promoted in the fiction of writers like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Vasily Grossman, and Anatoly Rybakovthat portrayed Stalin as an omnipotent and omnipresent tyrant who controlled every aspect of Soviet life through repression and totalitarianism. [912] In 1956, Khrushchev gave his "Secret Speech", titled "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences", to a closed session of the Party's 20th Congress. Plans were made for the Soviet government to evacuate to Kuibyshev, although Stalin decided to remain in Moscow, believing his flight would damage troop morale. [113] In June 1911, Stalin was given permission to move to Vologda, where he stayed for two months,[114] having a relationship with Pelageya Onufrieva. [625] Both Stalin and Mao believed that a swift victory would ensue. [287] Stalin built up a retinue of his supporters in the Central Committee,[288] while the Left Opposition were gradually removed from their positions of influence. [723] He remained proud of his Georgian identity,[724] and throughout his life retained a heavy Georgian accent when speaking Russian. [554] He also 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. [774] He was a good organiser,[775] with a strategic mind,[776] and judged others according to their inner strength, practicality, and cleverness. [290], In late 1924, Stalin moved against Kamenev and Zinoviev, removing their supporters from key positions. [96] After the heist, Stalin settled in Baku with his wife and son. [780] Stalin denied to foreign visitors that he was a dictator, stating that those who labelled him such did not understand the Soviet governance structure. ("Koba" is the Georgian diminutive of Yakobi, or Jacob, and Stalin later named his first-born son in Egnatashvili's honour. [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. [581], In the post-war period there were often food shortages in Soviet cities,[582] and the USSR experienced a major famine from 1946 to 1947. We have fallen behind the advanced countries by fifty to a hundred years. [413] In May 1933, he released from prison many convicted of minor offences, ordering the security services not to enact further mass arrests and deportations. [669] The system of collective leadership was restored, and measures introduced to prevent any one member from attaining autocratic domination. Chennai (Tamil Nadu) [India], January 14 (ANI) Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin on Saturday took a veiled dig at Governor RN Ravi without mentioning his name during a Youth wing event organised to remember DMK founder Peraringar Anna. [231], In mid-August 1920, the Poles repulsed the Russian advance, and Stalin returned to Moscow to attend the Politburo meeting. [910], Shortly after his death, the Soviet Union went through a period of de-Stalinization. [467] In June 1940, the Red Army occupied the Baltic states, which were forcibly merged into the Soviet Union in August;[468] they also invaded and annexed Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, parts of Romania. Stalin is too crude, and this defect which is entirely acceptable in our milieu and in relationships among us as communists, becomes unacceptable in the position of General Secretary. [315], In early 1928 Stalin travelled to Novosibirsk, where he alleged that kulaks were hoarding their grain and ordered that the kulaks be arrested and their grain confiscated, with Stalin bringing much of the area's grain back to Moscow with him in February. [478] He formed a State Defense Committee, which he headed as Supreme Commander,[479] as well as a military Supreme Command (Stavka),[480] with Georgy Zhukov as its Chief of Staff. [122] The new newspaper was launched in April 1912,[123] although Stalin's role as editor was kept secret. He did. [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. [567], The NKVD were ordered to catalogue the scale of destruction during the war. [301] Other important supporters on the Politburo were Voroshilov, Lazar Kaganovich, and Sergo Ordzhonikidze,[302] with Stalin ensuring his allies ran the various state institutions. [427], Repressions further intensified in December 1936 and remained at a high level until November 1938, a period known as the Great Purge. [207] He befriended two military figures, Kliment Voroshilov and Semyon Budyonny, who would form the nucleus of his military and political support base. Stalin was clever in his tactics to become leader. 23M views 5 years ago The personalities and spectres of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin loom large in the events of the twentieth Century. Stalin was born in the Georgian town of Gori,[2] then part of the Tiflis Governorate of the Russian Empire and home to a mix of Georgian, Azeri, Armenian, Russian, and Jewish communities. [589] He nevertheless secretly intensified Soviet research into nuclear weaponry, intent on creating an atom bomb. [544] As the Red Army had conquered German territory, they discovered the extermination camps that the Nazi administration had run. On the one hand, you can argue that Stalin was clearly an effective leader. "[841] Stalin married twice and had several children. Some of the photos may be from earlier dates, but it is believed that this photo of Stalin was taken in 1893. [432] His personal writings from the period were according to Khlevniuk "unusually convoluted and incoherent", filled with claims about enemies encircling him. On March 5, 1953, Joseph Stalin died of a stroke. [94] He attended the Fifth RSDLP Congress, held at the Brotherhood Church in London in MayJune 1907. [880] He has also been labelled a "red fascist". [345] To promote intensification of labour, a series of medals and awards as well as the Stakhanovite movement were introduced. [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. The Soviets invaded Finland in November 1939, yet despite numerical inferiority, the Finns kept the Red Army at bay. [802] His taste in music and theatre was conservative, favouring classical drama, opera, and ballet over what he dismissed as experimental "formalism". 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. [56] After several strike leaders were arrested, he co-organised a mass public demonstration which led to the storming of the prison; troops fired upon the demonstrators, 13 of whom were killed. [902], Official records reveal 799,455 documented executions in the Soviet Union between 1921 and 1953; 681,692 of these were carried out between 1937 and 1938, the years of the Great Purge. [139] According to Montefiore, this was "Stalin's most famous work". [167] During this raid, Stalin smuggled Lenin out of the newspaper's office and took charge of the Bolshevik leader's safety, moving him between Petrograd safe houses before smuggling him to Razliv. [8] He was their only child to survive past infancy. [464], The Soviets further demanded parts of eastern Finland, but the Finnish government refused. [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. [673], Stalin claimed to have embraced Marxism at the age of fifteen,[677] and it served as the guiding philosophy throughout his adult life;[678] according to Kotkin, Stalin held "zealous Marxist convictions",[679] while Montefiore suggested that Marxism held a "quasi-religious" value for Stalin. Stalin allowed the Russian Orthodox Church to retain the churches it had opened during the war. Either we do this or we'll be crushed. [704] In his words, "the people need a Tsar, whom they can worship and for whom they can live and work". [112] There he had affairs with at least two women; his landlady, Maria Kuzakova, later gave birth to his second son, Konstantin. On June 11, 1937, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin had 8 of his top army generals executed as part of The Great Purge. [883] According to Kotkin, Stalin "built a personal dictatorship within the Bolshevik dictatorship. [907] Wheatcroft and historian R. W. Davies estimate famine deaths at 5.56.5million[908] while scholar Steven Rosefielde gives a number of 8.7million. [237] Stalin felt disgraced and increased his antipathy toward Trotsky. He edited the party's newspaper, Pravda, and raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction via robberies, kidnappings and protection rackets. [751] As leader, he rarely left Moscow unless to go to one of his dachas for holiday;[752] he disliked travel,[753] and refused to travel by plane. )[38] He also read Das Kapital, the 1867 book by German sociological theorist Karl Marx. [373] In November 1932, after a group dinner in the Kremlin in which Stalin flirted with other women, Nadezhda shot herself. [75] Stalin was in Baku in February when ethnic violence broke out between Armenians and Azeris; at least 2,000 were killed. [716] He was of the view that if they became fully autonomous, then they would end up being controlled by the most reactionary elements of their community; as an example he cited the largely illiterate Tatars, whom he claimed would end up dominated by their mullahs. [341] Millions of peasants moved to the cities, although urban house building could not keep up with the demand. The existing government of landlords and capitalists must be replaced by a new government, a government of workers and peasants.The existing pseudo-government which was not elected by the people and which is not accountable to the people must be replaced by a government recognised by the people, elected by representatives of the workers, soldiers and peasants and held accountable to their representatives. He was good at coercing people. [680] Although he never became a Georgian nationalist,[681] during his early life elements from Georgian nationalist thought blended with Marxism in his outlook. 6 December]1878[4][i] and baptised on 29 December. [559] At a banquet held for army commanders, he described the Russian people as "the outstanding nation" and "leading force" within the Soviet Union, the first time that he had unequivocally endorsed the Russians over other Soviet nationalities. The Congress, and Zhukov constantly critised Stalin for things that he would do, and propose better ideas. [555] Various East European communists also visited Stalin in Moscow. [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. [63] There, he lived in a two-room peasant's house, sleeping in the building's larder. [444] Yezhov was arrested in April 1939 and executed in 1940. He argued that Jewish nationalism, particularly Zionism, was hostile to socialism. [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. [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. Stalin, however, did this strategically, executing the murder of Vladimir Lenin in a guiltless manner. [931] In this literature, Stalin's repressions are regarded either as a necessary measure to defeat "enemies of the people" or the result of lower-level officials acting without Stalin's knowledge. [862] One of them, Konstantin Kuzakov, later taught philosophy at the Leningrad Military Mechanical Institute, but never met Stalin. Hundreds of thousands of people came to see the Generalissimo in the mausoleum. The first step in Stalin's rise to power was to eliminate his opponent. Despite initial catastrophes, the Soviet Red Army repelled the German invasion and captured Berlin in 1945, ending World War II in Europe. 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. [941] Nonetheless, some churches have kept religious icons showing Stalin at least since 2008. 6 December] 1878 [1] - 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin[g] (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili;[d] 18 December[O.S. [818], Stalin publicly condemned anti-Semitism,[819] although he was repeatedly accused of it. [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. [66] There, he co-edited a Georgian Marxist newspaper, Proletariatis Brdzola ("Proletarian Struggle"), with Philip Makharadze. [124] In July, he arrived at the Siberian village of Narym,[125] where he shared a room with a fellow Bolshevik Yakov Sverdlov. [292] At the 14th Party Congress in December, they launched an attack against Stalin's faction, but it was unsuccessful. [742] By 1907, he grew his hair long and often wore a beard; for clothing, he often wore a traditional Georgian chokha or a red satin shirt with a grey coat and black fedora. [922] In recent years, the government and general public of Russia has been accused of rehabilitating Stalin. [719], Ethnically Georgian,[720] Stalin grew up speaking the Georgian language,[721] and did not begin learning Russian until the age of eight or nine. One of the most controversial and enigmatic figures in Russian history, he is still the subject of fierce discussions and assessments. [613] When the U.S. and UK remained opposed to this, Stalin sought to force their hand by blockading Berlin in June 1948. 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