Joseph Stalin

Iosif (Joseph) Vissarionovich Stalin ( Russian :ИосифВиссарионовичСталин, Iósif Vissariónovich Stálin), original name IosebJughashvili ( Georgian :იოსებ ჯუღაშვილიtentative, Russian :Иосиф Джугашвили,Iósif Dzhugashvíli; see Other names section) ( December 21 [ December 9 , Old Style ], 1879 ¹ – March 5 , 1953 ) was a Bolshevik revolutionary and the second leader of the Soviet Union .

Under Stalin, who replaced the New Economic Policy (NEP)of the 1920s with five year plans (introduced in 1928 ) and collective farming , the Soviet Union wastransformed from a peasant society to a major world industrial power; meanwhileStalin consolidated his personal power and eliminated effective political opposition during the 1930s through a combination of beneficence, tactical retreats, and purges (see Gulag ) that resulted in millions of deaths. Ahard-won victory in World War II ( 1945 ), made possible in part through the discipline and capacity for production that were the outcome of thecollectivization, industrialization, and purges, laid the groundwork for the formation of the Warsaw Pact and established the USSR as one of the two major world powers , a position it maintained for nearly four decades following Stalin's death in 1953.

Childhood and early years

Stalin was born in the town of Gori , Georgia , to a cobbler named Vissarion (Beso) Dzhugashvili.His mother, Ekaterina, was born a serf . Their other three children died young; Joseph was,effectively, an only child. Soso was often severely beaten by his father, usually while he was drunk; beatings were an acceptedway of "teaching lessons" to children.

One of the people Ekaterina did laundry and housecleaning for was a Gori Jew named David Pismamedov. Pismamedov gave Joseph, who would help out his mother, money and books toread, and otherwise encourage him. Decades later, Pismamedov came to the Kremlin tolearn what had become of little Soso. Stalin shocked his colleagues by not only receiving the elderly Jewish man, but happilychatting with him in public.

Eventually, Beso left for Tiflis , leaving the family without support. Soso beganhis education at the Gori Church School but when he was 14 he was awarded a scholarship to the Tiflis Theological Seminary , a RussianOrthodox institution which he attended from 1894 onward. In addition to the small stipend from the scholarship he was alsopaid for singing in the choir. Although his mother desired (even after he was leader of the Soviet Union) that he be a priest,attending a seminary was not because of any religious vocation but because it was one of the few educational opportunitiesavailable as the Czarist government was leary of establishing a university in Georgia.

Stalin's involvement with the socialist movement began at seminary school,from which he was expelled in 1899 after failing to appear at scheduled examinations. Heworked for a decade with the political underground in the Caucasus , facing repeated arrest and exile to Siberia between 1902 and 1917 . He adhered to Vladimir Lenin's doctrine of a strong centralist party of "professional revolutionaries". Hispractical experience made him useful in Lenin's Bolshevik party, gaining him aplace on its Central Committee in January 1912 . Some historians have argued that, duringthis period, Stalin was actually a Tsarist spy , who was working to infiltrate the Bolshevik party. In 1913 headopted the name Stalin, which means "man of steel" in Russian.

His only significant contribution to the development of Marxist theory at this time was a treatise written while brieflyexiled in Vienna, Marxism and the national question. It presents an orthodox Marxist position on this important debate;see Lenin's article On the right of nations to self-determination for comparison. This treatise may have contributed tohis appointment as People's Commissar for NationalitiesAffairs after the revolution.

Marriage and Family

Stalin's first wife was Ekaterina Svanidze, to whom he was married for just three years until her death in 1907. At herfuneral, Stalin said that any warm feelings he had for people died with her, for only she could melt his heart. He later orderedEkaterina's relatives shot. With her he had a son, Yakov, with whom he did not get along in later years. Yakov served in the Red Army and was captured by the Nazis. They offered to exchange him for a Germanofficer of higher rank, but Stalin turned the offer down, and Yakov is said to have died running into an electric fence in thecamp where he was being held.

He had two children by his second wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, who died in 1932 ;officially she died of an illness, but it believed by many that she committed suicide. With her he had a son, Vassili, and adaughter, Svetlana. Vassili rose through the ranks of the Soviet Air Force, but died an alcoholic in 1962. Stalin doted on hisdaughter, but she eventually adopted the name Alliluyeva and defected from the Soviet Union in 1967.

Rosa Kaganovich, the sister of Lazar Kaganovich , became Stalin'smistress while he was married to Nadezhda (Stalin's daughter, Svetlana, later married Kaganovich's brother, Mihail). They marriedin 1934 and divorced in 1938.

In March 2001, Russian Independent Television NTV discovered a previously unknown grandson living in Novokuznetsk . Yuri Davydov told NTV that his father had told him of his lineage,but, because the campaign against Stalin's cult of personality was in full swing at the time, he was told to keep quiet. Severalhistorians, including Alexander Solzhenitsyn , havementioned a son being born to Stalin and his common law wife, Lida, in 1914during his exile in northern Siberia.

Rise to power

Stalin was won over to Lenin's position following the latter's return from exile in April, but only played a minor role in theBolsheviks' seizure of power on November 7 . He was political commissar of the Soviet Army (Western front) during the Russian Civil War and Polish-Soviet war . Stalin's first government position was as People's Commissar of Nationalities Affairs. He held a number of senior administrative posts within theSoviet government and party apparatus, becoming in April 1922 general secretary of theruling Communist Party , a post which he subsequently built up intothe most powerful in the country. This concentration of personal power increasingly alarmed the dying Lenin , and in Lenin's Testament he famously called for the removal of the "rude" Stalin. However, this document waslater suppressed by members of the Central Committee , many ofwhom were also criticised by the Bolshevik leader.

After Lenin 's death inJanuary 1924 , Stalin, Kamenev , and Zinoviev together governed the party, placing themselves ideologically between Trotsky (on the left wing of the party) and Bukharin (on the right).

During this period, Stalin abandoned the traditional Bolshevik emphasis on international revolution in favor of a policy ofbuilding Socialism in One Country , in contrast toTrotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution . Stalin wouldquickly switch sides and join with Bukharin. Together, they fought a new opposition of Trotsky, Kamenev, and Zinoviev. By 1928 (the first year of the Five-YearPlans ) Stalin was supreme among the leadership, and the following year, Trotsky was exiled. Having also outmaneuveredBukharin's Right Opposition and now advocating collectivisation andindustrialisation, Stalin can be said to have exercised control over the party and the country. However, as the popularity ofother leaders such as Sergei Kirov and the so-called Ryutin plot were todemonstrate, Stalin did not achieve absolute power until the Great Purge of 1936 - 1938 .

Stalin and changes in Soviet society

Industrialisation

Main article: Industrialisation of the USSR

World War I and the Russian Civil War had a devastating effect on the country's economy; industrial output in 1922 was 13% ofthat in 1914. Under Stalin's direction, the New EconomicPolicy , which allowed a degree of market flexibility within the context of socialism, was replaced by a system ofcentrally-ordained Five-Year Plans in the late 1920s . These called for a highly ambitiousprogram of state-guided crash industrialisation and the collectivisation of agriculture . In spite of early breakdowns and failures, the first two Five-Year Plans achieved rapidindustrialisation from a very low economic base. Russia , generally ranked as the poorest nation in Europe in 1922, nowindustrialized at a phenomenal rate, far surpassing Germany 's pace ofindustrialisation in the 19th century and Japan 's earlier in the 20th .

With no seed capital, little foreign trade , and barely any modern industry to start with, Stalin's government financed industrialisation by both restraining consumption on the part of ordinary Soviet citizens, to ensurecapital went for re- investment into industry, and by ruthless extraction of wealth from the peasantry, both processes effectively amounting to the primitive accumulation of capital described by Karl Marx in Das Kapital . Collectivisation was instrumental in depriving peasants of the fruits of their labor.

In specific but common cases, the industrial labor was knowingly underpaid. First, there was the usage of the almost freelabor of prisoners in forced labor camps . Second, there was frequent"mobilization" of communists and Komsomol members for various constructionprojects.

Collectivisation

Main article: Collectivisation in theUSSR

Stalin's regime moved to force collectivisation ofagriculture. The theory behind collectivisation was that it would replace the small-scale un-mechanised and inefficient farms with large-scale mechanised farms that would produce food far more efficiently.

Collectivisation meant the destruction of a the way of life introduced after abolition of serfdom in 1861 , and alienation from control of the land and its produce.Collectivisation also meant a drastic drop in living standards for many peasants, and it faced widespread and often violentresistance among the peasantry, and actually the productivity of agriculture dropped.

Stalin blamed this drop in food production on kulaks (Russian: fist; richpeasants), who he believed were capitalistic parasites who were organising resistance to collectivisation. Those who resistedcollectivisation were to be shot, transported to Gulag labour camps or deported to remote areas of the country. In reality however, the term "kulak" was a loose termto describe anyone who opposed collectivisation, which included many poor peasants.

The two-stage progress of the collectivization, interrupted for a year by Stalin's famous editorial "Dizzy with success"(Pravda, March 30, 1930), is a prime example of his ability for tactical retreats .

Many historians agree that the disruption caused by forced collectivisation was largely responsible for major famines which caused up to 5 million deaths in 1932-33, particularly in Ukraine and the lower Volga region.

Science

Under Stalin's rule, sciences suffered from heavy ideological pressure. In the mid-1930s, the agronomist Trofim Lysenko started a campaign against genetics and was supported by Stalin. Between 1934 and 1940, many geneticists were executed (including Agol,Levit, Nadson) or sent to labor camps (including the best-known Sovietgeneticist, Nikolai Vavilov , who died in prison in 1943 ). Genetics was stigmatized as a "fascist science". However, some geneticists survived andcontinued to work on genetics, dangerous as this was. In 1948 , genetics was officiallydeclared "a bourgeois pseudoscience "; all geneticists were fired fromwork (some were also arrested), and all genetic research was discontinued. The taboo on genetics continued even after Stalin'sdeath. Only in the mid-1960s was it completely waived. (See Lysenkoism .)

Cybernetics was also outlawed. It was officially declared that "a machinecannot think", and any research in computer -related fields was prohibited. As withgenetics, the taboo continued for several years after Stalin's death.

In the late 1940s, there were also attempts to suppress special and general relativity , aswell as quantum mechanics . However, top Soviet physicists made itclear that without using these theories, they would be unable to create a nuclear bomb .

In fact, 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 spenta year in prison in 1938-1939), or executed (like Lev Shubnikov , who was shot in 1937 ). They were persecuted for their(real or imaginary) dissident views, and seldom for "politically incorrect"research.

Prohibition of genetics and cybernetics caused serious harm to Soviet science and economics. Soviet scientists never won a Nobel Prize in Physiology orMedicine or Turing Award . (In comparison, they received seven Nobel Prizes in Physics .) The USSR always suffered from severelag in the fields of computers, microelectronics and biotechnology .

Social services

Stalin's government placed heavy emphasis on the provision of basic 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 decreased. Education was also dramatically expanded, with many more Russians learning to read and write, and highereducation expanded. The generation that grew up under Stalin also saw a major expansion in job opportunities, especially forwomen.

Culture and religion

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

Careers were made and broken, some more than once. Famous names were repressed, both "revolutionaries" (among them Isaac Babel , VsevolodMeyerhold ) and "non-conformists" (for example, Osip Mandelstam ).Others, representing both 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 AlexeiTolstoi in 1925, Alexander Kuprin in 1936, and Alexander Vertinsky in1943. It is of note that Anna Akhmatova was subjected to several cyclesof suppression and rehabilitation, but was never herself arrested, although her first husband, Nikolai Gumilev the poet, had beenshot already in 1921, and her son, LevGumilev the historian, spent two decades in the Gulag .

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

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, was allowed tokeep working. His play "The Days of the Turbins", with its sympathetic treatment of an anti-Bolshevik family caught in the CivilWar, was finally staged, apparently also on Stalin's intervention, and began a decades-long uninterrupted run at the Moscow ArtsTheatre.

In architecture , a Stalinist EmpireStyle (basically updated neoclassicism to a very large scale,exemplified by the seven skyscrapers of Moscow) replaced the constructivism of the 1920's. An amusing anecdote has it that the Moskva Hotel in Moscow was built withmismatching side-wings because Stalin had signed off both of the two proposals submitted.

Stalin's role in the fortunes of the Russian OrthodoxChurch is complex. Continuous persecution in the 1930s resulted in near-extinction: by 1939 active parishes numbered in thelow hundreds (1917: 54,000), many churches had been levelled, and tens of thousands of priests, monks, and nuns were dead orimprisoned. During WWII, however, the Church was allowed a partial revival, as a patriotic organisation: thousands of parisheswere reactivated until a further round of suppression in Khrushchev's time. The Church Synod's recognition of the Sovietgovernment and of Stalin personally led to a schism with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia that remains not fully healed to the presentday.

Purges and deportations

The purges

Main article: Great Purge .

Stalin consolidated near-absolute power in the 1930s with the Great Purge against his suspected political and ideological opponents, culminating inthe extermination of the majority of the original Bolshevik Central Committee , and over half of the largely pliant delegates of the17th Party Congress in January 1934 . Measuresused ranged from imprisonment in labour camps of the Gulag to execution after a show trial or assassinations (such as that of Trotsky and, allegedly, Leningrad party leader Sergei Kirov ).

Kirov was a full member of the Politburo, and an influential member of the ruling elite. His skills as an orator and genuineconcern for the poor earned him great popularity. While he differed with Stalin on some minor issues, he was completely loyal tohim. However, many historians believe Stalin came to see Kirov as a potential threat to his rule. Indeed, some party members hadsecretly approached Kirov about taking over as General Secretary.

On December 1 , 1934 , Kirov wasassassinated by a young man named Leonid Nikolaev , who many believewas acting under Stalin's orders. Many see the Kirov murder as a prelude to the Great Purge, which lasted roughly from 1936 to 1938 . Draconian laws against political crime wereintroduced, and alleged conspirators were tried and sentenced to death or to years imprisoned in gulags under very harshconditions.

Several show trials known as the Moscow Trials were held, but theprocedures 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 .

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 twomembers of the " Old Bolsheviks " (Lenin's Politburo ) now remained -Stalin himself and his foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov . Therepression 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.

What began as a purge of the Party expanded to leave no segment of society untouched. 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 thepeople were confirmed by the Politburo . Over time the procedure was greatlysimplified and delegated down the line of command. The Russian word troika gained a newmeaning: a quick, simplified trial by a committee of three.

Deportations

Main article: Population transfer in the Soviet Union .

Shortly before, during and immediately after World War II , Stalinconducted a series of deportations on a huge scale which profoundly affected the ethnic map of the Soviet Union. Over 1.5 millionpeople 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 thedeportations, although an ambition to ethnically cleanse regions ina process known as "Russification" may have also been a factor.

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

In February 1956 , NikitaKhrushchev 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. Thedeportations had a profound effect on the peoples of the Soviet Union. The memory of the deportations played a major part in theseparatist movements in the Baltic republics, Tatarstan and Chechnya .

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 labour 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.

On March 5, 1940, Stalin himself and other Soviet leaders signed the order to execute 25,700 Polish intelligentsia including14,700 Polish POWs . It became known as Katyn massacre . Some other infamous massacres: massacre of prisoners 30,000-40,000 people.

It is generally agreed by historians that if famines, prison and labour 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. Howmany 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 eight and twenty million.Comparison of the 1926-39 census results suggests 5-10 million deaths in excess of what would be normal in the period, mostlythrough famine in 1931-34. The 1926 census shows the population of the Soviet Union at 147 million while the 1939 census at 162million. (Another census from 1937 is known as the "wrecker's census"; its figures were suppressed.) The highest death estimatesare 50 million from the 1920s to 1950s, but they are probably greatly exaggerated.

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

World War II

In his speech on August 19 , 1939 , Stalin prepared his comrades onthe general turn in Soviet policy, the Molotov-RibbentropPact with Nazi Germany which divided Central Europe into the two powers' respective spheres of influence. In June 1941 , however, Hitler broke the pact and invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa . Stalin had not expected this and the Soviet Union was largely unprepared forthis invasion. Until the last moment, Stalin had sought to avoid any obvious defensive preparation which might provoke Germanattack, in the hope of buying time to modernise and strengthen his military forces. Even after the attack commenced Stalinappeared unwilling to accept the fact and, according to some historians, was too stunned to react appropriately for a number ofdays. A controversial theory put forward by Victor Suvorov asserts thatStalin had been preparing an invasion of Germany while neglecting preparations for defensive warfare, which left Soviet forcesvulnerable despite their heavy concentration near the border. Such speculations are difficult to either support or reject, asinformation on the Soviet Army from 1939 to 1941 remains classified.

The Nazis initially made huge advances, capturing or killing hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops. The earlier execution ofmany of the Red Army 's experienced generals had a severely negative effect onRussia's ability to organise defenses. In response on November 6 , 1941 , Stalin addressed the Soviet Union for only the second time during his three-decade rule (thefirst time was earlier that year on July 2 ). He claimed that athough 350,000 troops hadbeen killed by German attacks, the Germans had lost 4.5 million soldiers (a gross over-estimate) and that Soviet victory wasnear. The Soviet Red Army did put up fierce resistance, but during the war's early stages was largely ineffective against thebetter-equipped and trained Nazi forces, until the invaders were halted and then drivenback in December 1941 in front of Moscow .

Stalin's Order No. 227 of July27 , 1942 illustrates the ruthlessness with which he sought to stiffen army resolve: allthose who retreated or otherwise left their positions without orders to do so were to be summarily shot. In the war's openingstages, the retreating Red Army also sought to deny resources to the enemy through a scorched earth policy of destroying theinfrastructure and food supplies of areas before the Germans could seize them. Unfortunately, this, along with abuse by Germantroops, caused starvation and suffering among the civilian population that was left behind.

The Soviets bore the brunt of civilian and military losses in World War II. Between 21 and 28 million Soviets died, most ofthem civilians. The Nazis considered Slavs to be "sub-human," and many people believe the Nazis killed Slavs as an ethnicallytargeted genocide . This concept of Slavic inferiority was also the reason whyHitler did not accept into his army many Russians who wanted to fight the Stalinist regime until 1944, when the war was lost forGermany. In the Soviet Union, World War II left a huge deficit of men of the wartime fighting-age generation. To this day the waris remembered very vividly in Russia, Belarus , and other parts of the former SovietUnion as the Great Patriotic War , and May 9 , Victory Day, is one of Russia's biggest national holidays.

Post-war era

Following World War II , the Red Army occupied much of the territory thathad been formerly held by the Axis countries: there were Soviet occupation zones in Germany and Austria , and Hungary and Poland were under practical military occupation, despite the fact that the latter was formally an Alliedcountry. Soviet-friendly governments were established in Romania , Bulgaria , Czechoslovakia , andhomegrown communist regimes existed in Yugoslavia and Albania . Finland retained formal independence, but was politically isolated and economically dependenton the Soviet Union. Greece , Italy and France were under the strong influence of local communist parties, directed from Moscow. Stalinhoped that the withdrawal of Americans from Europe would lead to Soviet hegemony over whole continent. The foundation of Trizonia and American help for the non-communistside in the Greek Civil War changed the situation. East Germany was proclaimed a separate country in 1949 , ruled by German communists. Moreover, Stalin made a decision to switch to direct control over his satellites inCentral Europe: all of the countries were to be ruled by local communists parties that tried to implement the Soviet templatelocally.

This decision lead to Stalinist turn of 1948 in Poland , Czechoslovakia , Hungary , Romania and Bulgaria , later called the"Communist Bloc". Communist Albania remained an ally, but Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito broke with the USSR. Stalin's friends in Western Europeexplained Soviet consolidation of power in the region as a necessary step to protect the USSR by surrounding it with countrieswith friendly governments, to act as a buffer against possible invaders.

This action reversed the hopes of the West that Eastern Europe would be friendly to the West and form a cordon sanitaire (buffer) against Communism . It confirmed the fears of many in the west that the Soviet Union stillintended to spread communism across the world. The relations between the Soviet Union and its former World War II western alliessoon broke down, and gave way to a prolonged period of tension and distrust between east and west known as the Cold War . (See also Ironcurtain .)

At home, Stalin presented himself as a great wartime leader who had led the USSR to victory against the Nazis. By the end of 1940s , Russian nationalism increased. For instance, some scientific discoveries were"reclaimed" by ethnic Russian researchers. Examples include Watt 's boiler engine, reclaimedby father and son Cherepanovs ; Edison 's electric bulb, by Yablochkov and Lodygin ; Marconi 's radio, by Popov ; Wright brothers ' airplane, by Mojaisky ; etc.

Stalin's internal repressive policies continued and intensified (including in newly acquired territories), but never reachedthe extremes of the 1930s.

According to some witness accounts, the anti-Semitic campaigns of1948-1953 (see Jewish Anti-FascistCommittee , rootless cosmopolitan , doctors' plot ) were only the precursors of greater repression to come, but ifsuch plans did indeed exist, Stalin died before he could implement them.

On March 1 , 1953 , after an all-night dinnerwith interior minister Lavrenty Beria and future premiers Georgi Malenkov , Nikolai Bulganin and Nikita Khrushchev ,Stalin collapsed, having suffered a stroke that paralyzed the right side of his body. He died four days later, on March 5 , 1953 , at the age of 73. Officially, the causeof death was listed as a cerebral hemorrhage . His body waspreserved in Lenin's Mausoleum until October 31 , 1961 , when de-Stalinisation was taking place in theSoviet Union. Stalin's body was then buried by the Kremlin walls.

It has been suggested that Stalin was murdered. The ex-Communist exile Avtorkhanov argued this point as early as 1975. Thepolitical memoirs of Vyacheslav Molotov , published in 1993 , claimed Beria had boasted to Molotov that he poisoned Stalin. In 2003 , a joint group of Russian and American historians announced their view that Stalin ingested warfarin , a powerful rat poison that thins the blood and causes strokes and hemorrhages.Since it is flavorless, warfarin is a plausible murder weapon. But the facts of Stalin's death will probably never be known withcertainty, unless an autopsy is performed on his corpse, which is still embalmed.

Policies and accomplishments

Under Stalin the Soviet Union was industrialised to the point that by the time of World War II the country was able to survive and defeat the German invasion, though at an enormous cost inhuman lives.

While the social and economic transformations over which he presided laid the foundations for the USSR's emergence as a globalsuperpower, the harshness of means employed by Stalin to conduct Soviet affairs was subsequently repudiated by his successors inthe Communist Party leadership, notably in his denunciation by Khrushchev in February 1956 .However, his immediate successors continued to follow the basic principles of Stalin's rule -- the political monopoly of theCommunist Party presiding over a command economy and a security service able to suppress dissent. The large-scale purges werenever repeated.

Other names and rumors about ancestry

His first name is also transliterated as Josif. Hissurname is sometimes transliterated as Dzhugashvili and occasionally rendered as Djugashvili.Shvili is a Georgian suffix meaning "son of". Neither the word nor the name Jugha (or Dzhuga) belongto the Georgian language. On the other hand, the name "Jugaev" is known among Ossetians . In 1939 , Giorgi Leonidze wrote a poem aboutStalin's early years. The poem claimed that Stalin's ancestors came from South Ossetian village of Geri . The poem was written during the purges and passed censors, and thus can be considered a significantsource. These facts could be the basis of the rumors regarding Stalin's allegedly Ossetian ethnical roots.

While some believe that Stalin's childhood association with David Pismamedov could have been the original source of rumorsabout his alleged Jewish ancestry, it must be noted that Stalin's third wife and some high-ranking Soviet politicians of theperiod, such as Lazar Kaganovich and Maxim Litvinov , were Jewish.

He was also known as Koba (a revolutionary nickname, after a Georgian folk hero , a Robin Hood -like brigand). The name Stalin is derived from combiningRussian stal, " steel " with the possessive suffix "-in". This construction isagainst the rules of the Russian language, and it is argued it was done as an imitation of the name Lenin by anon-native Russian speaker. Originally Stalin was a conspiratorial nickname ; however, it stuck with him and he continued to call himself Stalin afterthe Russian Revolution . Stalin is also reported to have used atleast a dozen other names for the purpose of secret communications , but for obvious reasons most of themremain unknown. His other nicknames were Ivanovich, Soso, David,Nijeradze, and Chizhikov.

Notes

¹ According to the birth register of the Uspensky church in Gori, Georgia, Stalin was born on December 6 , 1878 . He himself maintained that hewas born on December 21 [ December 9 , Old Style ], 1879 and that was the day his birthday was celebrated in the Soviet Union.

Further reading

• Alan Bullock, Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives, HarperCollins, 1991, ISBN 0679729941
• Walter Laqueur, Stalin, Ediciones B, 2003, ISBN 8466613161
• Adam B. Ulam , Stalin : The Man and His Era, Beacon Press, 1987, ISBN 080707005X
• Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The court of the Red Tsar, Knopf, 2004, ISBN 1400042305
• Robert C. Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary,1879-1929, Norton, 1973, ISBN 039305487X
• Robert C. Tucker, Stalin in Power. The Revolution from Above, 1928-1941, Norton, 1990, ISBN 039302881X

Related topics

• History of the Soviet Union
• Stalinism
• 1936 Soviet Constitution
• Svetlana Alliluyeva (Stalin's daughter)
• Nadezhda Alliluyeva-Stalin (Stalin's secondwife)
• Maxim Litvinov
• Anastas Mikoyan
• Vyacheslav Molotov
• Andrey Vyshinsky
• Stalin Peace Prize

External links

• Another view of Stalin - Progressive Labor Party
• "The Revolution Betrayed" by Leon Trotsky
• - Stalin nicknames
• An account of the Kirov Murder
• Death toll during Stalin's rule:estimates
• Modern History Sourcebook: Stalin's Reply to Churchill, 1946
• Modern History Sourcebook: Nikita S. Khrushchev: The SecretSpeech - On the Cult of Personality, 1956
• The political economy of Stalinism: evidence from the Sovietsecret archives / Paul R. Gregory
• Impressions of Soviet Russia, by John Dewey

For places named after Joseph Stalin, see: List of places named after Stalin