Joseph Stalin – One Of The Most Terrible Villains In History

A cold blooded murderer, an unfair ruler, who is the first person that comes to mind when you think about this… Hitler? Well, what about Joseph Stalin a violent man who sent more Russians to their death than Hitler did with Jews. “Death is the solution to all problems. No man - no problem”. “The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.” These are both quotes said by Joseph Stalin these quotes do not completely prove that Stalin is a villain but it just shows his terrible mindset and what he thinks about people's lives and how careless he is towards them. Joseph Stalin was born on December 8, 1878 in Gori, Georgia. Stalin’s real name is actually Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. But he was referred as Stalin which means man of steel. Although in a way Stalin did help defeat the Nazi’s, he still threw many innocent civilians in the Gulags, and he effected and killed the lives of many innocent Ukrainians.

Stalin was a villain for many countless reasons but a really major reason that Stalin is seen as a villain and a terrible leader is because he sent many people to the Gulags. Let me explain what the Gulags are. The gulags were a system of forced labour camps. They were first established in 1919 before Stalin was the ruler. But when Stalin had power that's when the Gulags started having a bigger population. Stalin thought that throwing many people there would help with industrialization and building the countries resources. Stalin did not throw criminals into the Gulags to work he throw innocent people who he saw as a threat or basically anyone who had disobeyed him. Adding to this Stalin started throwing in innocent students, doctors, intellects, and scientists so anyone who could oppose Stalin publicly. So other than the fact that Stalin carelessly threw in innocent people into the Gulags what was actually so bad about the Gulags? Well with the women many of them were raped and assaulted by male guards in the gulag and sadly they couldn't really do anything about it because anyone who retaliated or went against Stalin’s orders and his guards orders they were executed then and there. In fact, 12 million people who were sent to the Gulags ended up dying there this includes executions, suicides, and death by the lack of resources that were given to the people in the Gulags. And for the workers themselves they endured so much. They revived little clothing which really affected them by knowing that the weather was really cold. Hypothermia and frostbites were really common to the prisoners as if that was not enough people had missing toes, fingers, ears and even noses because of the lack of clothes provided. All this pain and suffering made many prisoners commit suicide out of pain and depression. How does one know that Stalin caused all this. Well, after Stalin’s death millions of prisoners were released and had freedom.

Moving on the second reason that I believe Stalin is a villain was the collectivization theory that he had implemented. Collectivization meant forcing millions of small farmers off their own land into larger collective farms. Stalin implemented the idea of collectivization to be able to fix his grain deficiency that he had. Looking at it from a more broad perspective collectivization doesn't really seem as a terrible idea but when we look deep into the methods on how he did it and what he did to do it we can find many wrong doings. The Ukrainian community was mostly made up with small farm owners who were obliged to let go of their property for the sake of creating larger collective farms. Not only that but they were urged to sacrifice the production of their grains. Stalin created mandatory amounts of food to be shipped out of Ukraine to different parts of the Soviet Union. This was way beyond the capability of the farmers to produce it so they rightfully refused. After this Stalin then built military borders around the Ukrainian villages to prevent them from getting food from the outside back in the farms and the villages. This was really bad because as much as 25,000 Ukrainians were constantly dying everyday. But the refusal from the Ukrainians got higher when Stalin raised the collectivisation from 3% to 20% all the way up to 30%. This just proves how Stalin had the mindset of a villain. It shows how he is selfish and only cares about his well being not the other citizens. We can again see this because Stalin wanted all the grains from the Ukrainian people. As if that was not bad enough he demanded that the farmers will do that work for him and get the grains for him. They rightfully disagreed and Stalin made the problem even worse.

Now there are some reasons why people still think that Stalin is a hero even after all the disasters and countless deaths that he caused. People say that he helped The Soviet Union grow as a country and the industrialization became better. People also claim that Stalin was the one who defeated the Nazi’s and that this makes him a so called ‘hero’ but was he really the one that impacted the Nazi’s and made them suffer a defeat? He wasn’t, the Germans surprisingly attacked the Soviet Union and it caught them by surprise instead of fighting back and killing the Germans. The Germans killed so many Soviet Union soldiers. In fact, when the war ended there were 31 million soldiers who dies. When we take a look at the numbers from each nation we can see that 27 million of the deaths were soldiers from the Soviet Union and 4 million German soldiers died. This shows that the Soviet army was not ready and they didn’t really do a good job of fighting back against the Germans. Well this information clearly shows that the Soviet Union's army was not as strong as Germany's army so how did the Soviet Union win. The German army kept pushing and they were on the edge of Moscow. But it was winter. The only thing that had defeated the Germans was the cold weather, not Stalin’s army or Stalin’s plans. And if it was not for the weather and if Germany had proper form of clothes and transportation they would have pushed farther east in the Soviet Union and that would probably end bad for them.

In conclusion, it is really clear that Stalin is a villain because he threw millions of innocent civilians into the Gulags, he completely destroyed the Ukrainians and their way of life and they ended up dying due to Stalin’s regime and its quite obvious that if it was not for the weather the Soviet Union would have suffered a defeat against the Germans.