Joseph Stalin

{{Audio|ru-Stalin.ogg|Joseph Stalin}} (Russian, in full: ????? ????????????? ?????? (Josef Vissarionovich Stalin), real name: ????? ????????????? ?????????? (Josef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvilli), Georgian: ????? ????????? (Ioseb Jughashvili); December 6 (OS)/December 18 (NS), 1878{{ref|Register}} – March 5, 1953) was the leader of the Soviet Union from mid-1920s to his death in 1953 and General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922-1953), a position which had later become that of party leader.

Stalin and changes in Soviet society

Industrialization

Main article: Industrialization of the USSR.

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The Russian Civil War had had a devastating effect on the country's economy. Industrial output in 1922 was 13% of that in 1914. Under Stalin's direction, the New Economic Policy, which allowed a degree of market flexibility within the context of socialism, was replaced by a system of centrally ordained Five-Year Plans in the late 1920s. These called for a highly ambitious program of state-guided crash industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture. In spite of early breakdowns and failures, the first two Five-Year Plans achieved rapid industrialization from a very low economic base. The Soviet Union, generally ranked as the poorest nation in Europe in 1922, now industrialized at a phenomenal rate, far surpassing Germany's pace of industrialization in the 19th century and Japan's earlier in the 20th.

Related Topics:
Russian Civil War - New Economic Policy - 1920s - Agriculture - Soviet Union - Poorest - Europe - Germany - 19th century - Japan - 20th

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With no seed capital, little foreign trade, and barely any modern industry to start with, Stalin's government financed industrialization by both restraining consumption on the part of ordinary Soviet citizens, to ensure that capital went for re-investment into industry, and by ruthless extraction of wealth from the peasantry. In 1933, worker's real earnings sank to about one-tenth of the 1926 level. There was also use of the almost free labor of prisoners in forced-labor camps and the frequent "mobilization" of communists and Komsomol members for various construction projects.

Related Topics:
Trade - Industry - Finance - Investment - Wealth - Forced-labor camps - Komsomol

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Collectivization

Main article: Collectivization in the USSR

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Stalin's regime moved to force collectivization of agriculture. This was in order to increase agricultural output from large-scale mechanized farms, to bring the peasantry under more direct political control, to make tax collection more efficient, and to provide workers for Gulags.

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Collectivization meant drastic social changes, on a scale not seen since the abolition of serfdom in 1861, and alienation from control of the land and its produce. Collectivization also meant a drastic drop in living standards for many peasants, and it faced widespread and often violent resistance among the peasantry.

Related Topics:
1861 - Alienation

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In the first years of collectivization, it was estimated that industrial and agricultural production would rise by 200% and 50%{{ref|histWorld}}, respectively; however, agricultural production actually dropped. Stalin blamed this unexpected drop on kulaks (rich peasants), who resisted collectivization. Therefore those defined as "kulaks," "kulak helpers" and later "ex-kulaks" were to be shot, placed into Gulag labor camps, or deported to remote areas of the country, depending on the charge.

Related Topics:
Kulaks - Gulag - Labor camp

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The two-stage progress of collectivization ? interrupted for a year by Stalin's famous editorial, "Dizzy with success" (Pravda, March 2, 1930) ? is a prime example of his capacity for tactical retreats.

Related Topics:
Pravda - March 2 - 1930 - Tactical retreat

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Many historians agree that the disruption caused by forced collectivization was largely responsible for major famines which caused up to 5 million deaths in 1932–33, particularly in Ukraine and the lower Volga region. (Chairman Mao Zedong of China would trigger a similar famine in 1958 to 1960 with his Great Leap Forward.)

Related Topics:
Famine - Ukraine - Volga - Mao Zedong - 1958 - 1960 - Great Leap Forward

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Not only rich peasants were killed. The Black Book of Communism documents that all grains were taken from areas that did not meet targets, including the next year's seed grain. It also documents that peasants were forced to remain in the starving areas, sales of train tickets were stopped, and the State Political Directorate set up barriers to prevent people from leaving the starving areas (p. 164). The Soviet Union exported grain while millions of Soviet citizens were starving to death (p. 167). Similar detailed references can be found here http://www.overpopulation.com/faq/health/hunger/famine/soviet_famine.html.

Related Topics:
The Black Book of Communism - State Political Directorate

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Science

Main article: Research in the Soviet Union.

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Science in the Soviet Union was under strict ideological control, along with art, literature and everything else. On the positive side, there was significant progress in "ideologically safe" domains due to the free Soviet education system and state-financed research. However, in several cases the consequences of ideological pressure were dramatic, the most notable examples being the "bourgeois pseudosciences," genetics and cybernetics.

Related Topics:
Soviet Union - Soviet education - Bourgeois pseudoscience - Genetics - Cybernetics

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In the late 1940s there were also attempts to suppress special and general relativity, as well as quantum mechanics, on grounds of "idealism." However, top Soviet physicists made it clear that without using these theories, they would be unable to create a nuclear bomb.

Related Topics:
1940s - Special - General relativity - Quantum mechanics - Idealism - Nuclear bomb

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Linguistics was the only area of Soviet academic thought to which Stalin personally and directly contributed. At the beginning of Stalin's rule, the dominant figure in Soviet linguistics was Nikolai Yakovievich Marr, who argued that language is a class construction and that language structure is determined by the economic structure of society. Stalin, who had previously written about language policy as People's Commissar for Nationalities, felt he grasped enough of the underlying issues to coherently oppose this simplistic Marxist formalism, ending Marr's ideological dominance over Soviet linguistics. Stalin's principal work discussing linguistics is a small essay, Marxism and Linguistic Questions {{ref|StalinLinguistics}}. Although no great theoretical contributions or insights came from it, neither were there any apparent errors in Stalin's understanding of linguistics; his influence arguably relieved Soviet linguistics from the sort of ideologically driven theory that dominated genetics.

Related Topics:
Linguistics - Nikolai Yakovievich Marr

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Scientific research in nearly all areas was hindered by the fact that many scientists were sent to labor camps (including Lev Landau, later a Nobel Prize winner, who spent a year in prison in 1938?39) or executed (e.g. Lev Shubnikov, shot in 1937). They were persecuted for their (real or imaginary) dissident views, and seldom for "politically incorrect" research.

Related Topics:
Labor camp - Lev Landau - Nobel Prize - 1938 - 39 - Lev Shubnikov - 1937 - Dissident

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Nevertheless, great progress was made under Stalin in some areas of science and technology. It laid the ground for the famous achievements of Soviet science in the 1950s, such as the development of the BESM-1 computer in 1953 and the launching of Sputnik in 1957. Indeed, many politicians in the United States began to fear, after the "Sputnik crisis," that their country had been eclipsed by the Soviet Union in science and in public education.

Related Topics:
1950s - BESM - 1953 - Sputnik - 1957 - United States - Sputnik crisis

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Social services

Stalin's government placed heavy emphasis on the provision of free medical services. Campaigns were carried out against typhus, cholera, and malaria; the number of doctors was increased as rapidly as facilities and training would permit; and death and infant mortality rates steadily declined. General education was free and was dramatically expanded, with many more Soviet citizens learning to read and write, and higher education also expanded. Likewise, the generation that grew up under Stalin saw a major expansion in job opportunities, especially for women.

Related Topics:
Medical - Typhus - Cholera - Malaria - Doctor - Infant mortality - Education

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Culture and religion

It was during Stalin's reign that the official and long-lived style of Socialist Realism was established for painting, sculpture, music, drama and literature. Previously fashionable "revolutionary" expressionism, abstract art, and avant-garde experimentation were discouraged or denounced as "formalism."

Related Topics:
Socialist Realism - Painting - Sculpture - Music - Drama - Literature - Expressionism - Abstract art - Avant-garde - Experimentation - Formalism

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Careers were made and broken, some more than once. Famous names were repressed, both "revolutionaries" (among them Isaac Babel, Vsevolod Meyerhold) and "non-conformists" (for example, Osip Mandelstam). Others, both representing the "Soviet man" (Arkady Gaidar) and remnants of the older pre-revolutionary Russia (Konstantin Stanislavski), thrived. A number of former emigrés returned to the Soviet Union, among them Alexei Tolstoi in 1925, Alexander Kuprin in 1936, and Alexander Vertinsky in 1943. It is of note that Anna Akhmatova was subjected to several cycles of suppression and rehabilitation, but was never herself arrested, although her first husband, poet Nikolai Gumilev, had been shot in 1921, and her son, historian Lev Gumilev, spent two decades in the Gulag.

Related Topics:
Isaac Babel - Vsevolod Meyerhold - Osip Mandelstam - Arkady Gaidar - Konstantin Stanislavski - Emigrés - Alexei Tolstoi - Alexander Kuprin - Alexander Vertinsky - Anna Akhmatova - Nikolai Gumilev - Lev Gumilev - Gulag

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The degree of Stalin's personal involvement in general and specific developments has been assessed variously. His name, however, was constantly invoked during his reign in discussions of culture as in just about everything else; and in several famous cases, his opinion was final.

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Stalin's occasional beneficence showed itself in strange ways. For example, Mikhail Bulgakov was driven to poverty and despair; yet, after a personal appeal to Stalin, he was allowed to continue working. His play, The Days of the Turbines, with its sympathetic treatment of an anti-Bolshevik family caught up in the Civil War, was finally staged, apparently also on Stalin's intervention, and began a decades-long uninterrupted run at the Moscow Arts Theater.

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Some insights into Stalin's political and esthetic thinking might perhaps be gleaned by reading his favorite novel, Pharaoh, by the Polish writer Boles?aw Prus, a historical novel on mechanisms of political power. Similarities have been pointed out between this novel and Sergei Eisenstein's film, Ivan the Terrible, produced under Stalin's tutelage.

Related Topics:
Esthetic - Novel - Pharaoh - Polish - Writer - Boles?aw Prus - Historical novel - Political power - Sergei Eisenstein - Film - Ivan the Terrible

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In architecture, a Stalinist Empire Style (basically, updated neoclassicism on a very large scale, exemplified by the seven skyscrapers of Moscow) replaced the constructivism of the 1920s. An amusing anecdote has it that the Moskva Hotel in Moscow was built with mismatched side wings because Stalin had mistakenly signed off on both of the two proposals submitted, and the architects had been too afraid to clarify the matter. (This was actually just a joke: the hotel had been built by two independent teams of architects that had different visions of how the hotel should look.)

Related Topics:
Architecture - Stalinist Empire Style - Neoclassicism - Constructivism

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Stalin's role in the fortunes of the Russian Orthodox Church is complex. Continuous persecution in the 1930s resulted in its near-extinction: by 1939, active parishes numbered in the low hundreds (down from 54,000 in 1917), many churches had been levelled, and tens of thousands of priests, monks and nuns were dead or imprisoned. During World War II, however, the Church was allowed a partial revival, as a patriotic organization: thousands of parishes were reactivated, until a further round of suppression in Khrushchev's time. The Church Synod's recognition of the Soviet government and of Stalin personally led to a schism with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia that remains not fully healed to the present day. Just days before Stalin's death, certain religious sects were outlawed and persecuted.

Related Topics:
Russian Orthodox Church - 1930s - 1939 - 1917 - World War II - Khrushchev - Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia - Were outlawed and persecuted

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Purges and deportations

The purges

Main article: Great Purge

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Stalin, as head of the Politburo, consolidated near-absolute power in the 1930s with a Great Purge of his political and ideological opponents (real or merely suspected), culminating in the extermination of the majority of the original Bolshevik Central Committee and of over half of the largely pliant delegates of the 17th Party Congress in January 1934. Measures ranged from imprisonment in Gulag labor camps to execution after a show trial or summary trial by NKVD troikas. Some argue that a motive for the purge was a feeling that the Party needed to be unified in the face of anticipated conflict with Nazi Germany; others believe that it was motivated only by Stalin's desire to consolidate his own power.

Related Topics:
Politburo - 1930s - Great Purge - Bolshevik - Central Committee - January - 1934 - Gulag - Labor camp - Show trial - NKVD troika - Nazi Germany

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Several trials known as the Moscow Trials were held, but the procedures were replicated throughout the country. There were four key trials during this period: the Trial of the Sixteen (August 1936); Trial of the Seventeen (January 1937); the trial of Red Army generals, including Marshal Tukhachevsky (June 1937); and finally the Trial of the Twenty One (including Bukharin) in March 1938.

Related Topics:
Moscow Trials - 1936 - 1937 - Red Army - Tukhachevsky - Trial of the Twenty One - Bukharin - 1938

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Trotsky's August 1940 assassination in Mexico, where he had lived in exile since 1936, eliminated the last of Stalin's opponents among the former Party leadership. Only three members of the "Old Bolsheviks" (Lenin's Politburo) now remained in Politburo —Stalin himself, "the all-Union Chieftain" (?????????? ????????) Mikhail Kalinin, and Chairman of Sovnarkom Vyacheslav Molotov. The repression of so many formerly high-ranking revolutionaries and party members led Leon Trotsky to claim that a "river of blood" separated Stalin's regime from that of Lenin. However, it has been argued that Stalin only continued the political repressions that had started under Lenin's regime, such as labor camps and express executions of political opponents.

Related Topics:
1940 - Mexico - Old Bolshevik - Politburo - Mikhail Kalinin - Chairman of Sovnarkom - Vyacheslav Molotov - Leon Trotsky

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No segment of society was left untouched during the purges. Article 58 of the legal code, listing prohibited "anti-Soviet activities", was applied in the broadest manner. Initially, the execution lists for the enemies of the people were confirmed by the Politburo. Over time the procedure was greatly simplified and delegated down the line of command. The Russian word troika gained a new meaning: a quick, simplified trial by a committee of three subordinated to NKVD. Towards the end of the purge, the Politburo relieved NKVD head Nikolai Yezhov, from his position for overzealousness. He was subsequently executed. Some historians such as Amy Knight and Robert Conquest postulate that Stalin had Yezhov and his predecessor, Yagoda, removed in order to deflect blame from himself.

Related Topics:
Article 58 - Enemies of the people - Troika - Committee of three subordinated to NKVD - Nikolai Yezhov

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Deportations

Main article: Population transfer in the Soviet Union

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Shortly before, during and immediately after World War II, Stalin conducted a series of deportations on a huge scale which profoundly affected the ethnic map of the Soviet Union. Over 1.5 million people were deported to Siberia and the Central Asian republics. Separatism, resistance to Soviet rule and collaboration with the invading Germans were cited as the main official reasons for the deportations.

Related Topics:
World War II - Siberia

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The following ethnic groups were deported completely or partially: Poles, Koreans, Volga Germans, Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Karachays, Meskhetian Turks, Finns, Bulgarians, Greeks, Armenians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians. Large numbers of Kulaks, regardless of their nationality, were resettled to Siberia and Central Asia.

Related Topics:
Poles - Koreans - Volga Germans - Crimean Tatars - Kalmyks - Chechens - Ingush - Balkars - Karachay - Meskhetian Turks - Finns - Bulgarians - Greeks - Armenians - Latvia - Lithuania - Estonia - Kulaks - Siberia - Central Asia

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In February 1956, Nikita Khrushchev condemned the deportations as a violation of Leninist principles, and reversed most of them, although it was not until as late as 1991 that the Tatars, Meskhs and Volga Germans were allowed to return en masse to their homelands. The deportations had a profound effect on the peoples of the Soviet Union. The memory of the deportations played a major part in the separatist movements in the Baltic republics, Tatarstan and Chechnya.

Related Topics:
1956 - Nikita Khrushchev - Leninist - 1991 - Meskh - Tatarstan - Chechnya

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Death toll

About one million people were shot during the periods 1935–38, 1942 and 1945–50 and millions of people were transported to Gulag labor camps. In Georgia about 80,000 people were shot during 1921, 1923–24, 1935–38, 1942 and 1945-50, and more than 100,000 people were transported to Gulag camps.

Related Topics:
1945 - 50 - Gulag - Labor camps - Georgia

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On March 5, 1940, Stalin himself and other Soviet leaders signed the order to execute 25,700 Polish intelligentsia including 14,700 Polish POWs. It became known as Katyn massacre. See massacre of prisoners.

Related Topics:
March 5 - 1940 - POW - Katyn massacre - Massacre of prisoners

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It is generally agreed by historians that if famines, prison and labor camp mortality, and state terrorism (deportations and political purges) are taken into account, Stalin and his colleagues were directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of millions. How many millions died under Stalin is greatly disputed. Although no official figures have been released by the Soviet or Russian governments, most estimates put the figure between 10 and 50 million. Comparison of the 1926–37 census results suggests 5–10 million deaths in excess of what would be normal in the period, mostly through famine in 1931–34. The 1926 census shows the population of the Soviet Union at 147 million and in 1937 another census found a population of between 162 and 163 million. This was 14 million less than the projected population value and was suppressed as a "wrecker's census" with the census takers severely punished. A census was taken again in 1939, but its published figure of 170 million has been generally attributed directly to the decision of Stalin{{ref|Cunningham}} (see also Demographics of the Soviet Union). Note that the figure of 14 million does not have to imply 14 million additional deaths, since as many as 3 million may be births that never took place due to reduced fertility and choice.

Related Topics:
Labor camp - State terrorism - Russian - 1926 - 37 - Census - 1931 - 34 - Wrecker - Demographics of the Soviet Union

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Since "the margin of error" with regard to the number of Stalin's victims is virtually impossible to narrow down to a universally accepted figure, various historians have come up with extremely varying estimates of the number of victims, the highest being 60 million deaths.

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A quote popularly attributed to Stalin is "The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic." (possibly said in response to Churchill at the Potsdam Conference in 1945).

Related Topics:
Churchill - Potsdam Conference

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