Essays on Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin, original name (Georgian) Ioseb Dzhugashvili, was a secretary-general of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–53) and premier of the Soviet state (1941–53), who for a quarter of a century dictatorially ruled the Soviet Union and transformed it into a major world power.

Stalin industrialized the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, forcibly collectivized its agriculture, consolidated his position by intensive police terror, helped to defeat Germany in 1941–45, and extended Soviet controls to include a belt of eastern European states. Chief architect of Soviet totalitarianism and a skilled but phenomenally ruthless organizer, he destroyed the remnants of individual freedom and failed to promote individual prosperity, yet he created a mighty military-industrial complex and led the Soviet Union into the nuclear age.

Stalin was the son of a poor cobbler in the provincial Georgian town of Gori in the Caucasus, then an imperial Russian colony. The drunken father savagely beat his son. Speaking only Georgian at home, Joseph learned Russian, while attending the church school at Gori (1888–94). He then moved to the Tiflis Theological Seminary, where he secretly read Karl Marx, the chief theoretician of international Communism, and other forbidden texts, being expelled in 1899 for revolutionary activity.

Stalin claimed to have embraced Marxism at the age of fifteen, and it served as the guiding philosophy throughout his adult life. He believed in an inevitable "class war" between the world's proletariat and bourgeoise. He believed that the working classes would prove successful in this struggle and would establish a dictatorship of the proletariat, regarding the Soviet Union as an example of such a state.

In 1912, Lenin, then in exile in Switzerland, appointed Joseph Stalin to serve on the first Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party. After Lenin died in 1924, Stalin eventually outmaneuvered his rivals and won the power struggle for control of the Communist Party. By the late 1920s, he had become dictator of the Soviet Union.

Stalin's regime forcibly purged society of what it saw as threats to itself and its brand of communism, which included political dissidents, non-Soviet nationalists, the bourgeoisie, better-off peasants ("kulaks"), and those of the working class who demonstrated "counter-revolutionary" sympathies. This resulted in mass repression of such people as well as their families, including mass arrests, show trials, executions, and imprisonment in forced labor and concentration camps known as gulags. The most notable example of this was the Great Purge. Stalinism was also marked by militant atheism and mass anti-religious persecution and ethnic cleansing through forced deportations.

From 1928 until his death in 1953, Joseph Stalin ruled the Soviet Union as a dictator, transforming the country from an agrarian peasant society into a global superpower. The cost was tremendous, however: Stalin was responsible for the deaths of millions of Soviet citizens.

“It is not heroes that make history, but history that makes heroes.”
“Death is the solution to all problems. No man - no problem.”
“History has shown there are no invincible armies.”
“I believe in only one thing, the power of human will.”

December 6, 1878

March 5, 1953 (aged 74)

Joseph Stalin, original name (Georgian) Ioseb Dzhugashvili, was a secretary-general of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–53) and premier of the Soviet state (1941–53), who for a quarter of a century dictatorially ruled the Soviet Union and transformed it into a major world power.

Stalin industrialized the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, forcibly collectivized its agriculture, consolidated his position by intensive police terror, helped to defeat Germany in 1941–45, and extended Soviet controls to include a belt of eastern European states. Chief architect of Soviet totalitarianism and a skilled but phenomenally ruthless organizer, he destroyed the remnants of individual freedom and failed to promote individual prosperity, yet he created a mighty military-industrial complex and led the Soviet Union into the nuclear age.

Stalin was the son of a poor cobbler in the provincial Georgian town of Gori in the Caucasus, then an imperial Russian colony. The drunken father savagely beat his son. Speaking only Georgian at home, Joseph learned Russian, while attending the church school at Gori (1888–94). He then moved to the Tiflis Theological Seminary, where he secretly read Karl Marx, the chief theoretician of international Communism, and other forbidden texts, being expelled in 1899 for revolutionary activity.

Stalin claimed to have embraced Marxism at the age of fifteen, and it served as the guiding philosophy throughout his adult life. He believed in an inevitable "class war" between the world's proletariat and bourgeoise. He believed that the working classes would prove successful in this struggle and would establish a dictatorship of the proletariat, regarding the Soviet Union as an example of such a state.

In 1912, Lenin, then in exile in Switzerland, appointed Joseph Stalin to serve on the first Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party. After Lenin died in 1924, Stalin eventually outmaneuvered his rivals and won the power struggle for control of the Communist Party. By the late 1920s, he had become dictator of the Soviet Union.

Stalin's regime forcibly purged society of what it saw as threats to itself and its brand of communism, which included political dissidents, non-Soviet nationalists, the bourgeoisie, better-off peasants ("kulaks"), and those of the working class who demonstrated "counter-revolutionary" sympathies. This resulted in mass repression of such people as well as their families, including mass arrests, show trials, executions, and imprisonment in forced labor and concentration camps known as gulags. The most notable example of this was the Great Purge. Stalinism was also marked by militant atheism and mass anti-religious persecution and ethnic cleansing through forced deportations.

From 1928 until his death in 1953, Joseph Stalin ruled the Soviet Union as a dictator, transforming the country from an agrarian peasant society into a global superpower. The cost was tremendous, however: Stalin was responsible for the deaths of millions of Soviet citizens.

“It is not heroes that make history, but history that makes heroes.”
“Death is the solution to all problems. No man - no problem.”
“History has shown there are no invincible armies.”
“I believe in only one thing, the power of human will.”