Who Was Stalin???
Joseh Besarionis Jughasvili• Born 18 December 1878 in
Gori, Georgia (not Georgia as in USA)
• Scared from smallpox at 7; left arm permanently damaged from two horse cart accidents by age 12
• Expelled from an Orthodox seminary at age 19—couldn’t afford the tuition
Then, along came Lenin..• Radical Marxist in exile
—Geneva, Switzerland until 1917
• Stalin joins Bolsheviks in 1903
• Marked by the Okhranka (Tsar’s secret police)
• Chief operator in the Caucasus region
Vladimir Ilyich Ulanov Lenin, 1895
…and Stalin becomes a bad boy…
• Bank robber• Kidnapper• Incites strikes• Organizes
paramilitaries• Extortion rackets• Counterfeiting Stalin’s mug shot, 1911
…and Worse• Organizes the
Muslim Azeri and Persian militants
• Bank robbery murder of 40 Black Hundred (right-wing Czarists)
• Even the Bolsheviks banned him from the Party
Black Hundred were reactionaries made up of Russian Orthodox religious fanatics and noblemen with positions of power in the army
After Seven Captures…• Sent to Siberia
each time• April 1912, sets
up Pravda, the Bolshevik newspaper in St. Petersburg
• Adopts the name Stalin—The Man of Steel
1917 • Rejected from army conscription due to his arm
• Supports Alexander Kerensky’s Provisional Government
• Elected to Bolshevik Central Committee
• Smuggles Lenin to Finland and Russia courtesy of the Germans
Lenin, clean-shaven while in Finland, arrives in Russia and changes the tone of Revolution
Russian Civil War (1917-1919)• Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky
instigate a coup against Kerensky
• Arrests Provisional cabinet 8 November 1917
• Used WWI as a rally point
• As a military leader…Stalin was a good politician…he refused to lead
Alexander Kerensky led Provisional Government from March to
November of 1918
Rise to Power• Opposes Leon Trotsky,
leader of the Red Army• Forges alliances with
Lenin and Lev Kamenev to get appointment to General Secretary of the Communist Party (1922)
• Lenin has a stroke and J.S. acts as Lenin’s contact with the outside world Lenin and Trotsky with the Red Army in
Petrograd (St. Petersburg)
Lenin at the End (1922)• Stroke forces semi-
retirement• Thinks Stalin is rude,
too ambitious, a politician, and should be removed from Party leadership
• Dictates Testament, critical of Stalin, that mysteriously disappears upon his death
Left-Lenin’s last pictureAbove-Lenin’s makeoverBelow-Lenin’s tomb
Stalin Assumes Control• Ousts Lenin’s people
—Kamenev and Zinoviev
• Trotsky exiled then found murdered in Mexico
• Forms an alliance with Nikolai Bukharin
• Suspends Lenin’s New Economic Policy
Anti-Stalin Trotsky Slayer Poster
Control of Politburo• Grain shortage• Collectivization of
farms• Seizes grain hoards
from kulaks (wealthy peasants)
• Opposed by Bukharin, but Party backs Stalin
Left top—BukharinLeft bottom—ZinovievAbove—Collective propaganda poster
Secret Police Activities—Russian Style
Czar’s Okhranka Stalin’s KGB
Cult of Personality
Stalin’s Titles• Coryphaeus of Science• Father of Nations• Brilliant Genius of
Humanity• Great Architect of
Communism• Gardener of Human
Happiness• Papa Joe
Stalin in Fact5’6”, 190 lbs
The Purges
Now you see him… …now you don’t!
Commissar Nikolai Yezhov was edited out of the photo following his death in 1940
Moscow TrialsCounterrevolutionary Targets
• Ethnic “national contingents”:– Poles (144,000
arrested)– Koreans– Germans
• American émigrés from the Depression executed
• History Rewritten to include only Stalin and Lenin
Article 38 of the Legal Code
• Enemy of the People• Interrogation, torture,
deportation, death• Sentences carried out
within 24 hours of “trial”• Only Stalin, Mikhail
Kalinin, and Vyacheslav Molotov remain of the Old Bolsheviks
Off to the Gulags
Family Reunion Entering the Camp
Deportation • 3.3 million (1941-1949)• 43% die of disease,
malnutrition• Camps: Siberia and Central
Asia• Charge: collaboration w/Nazis• Move entire populations–Crimean Tartars–Chechens– Turks–Kulaks (wealthy peasants)Order to remove Enemies
of the People
Famine by Design• Ukraine’s Holodomor
(hunger plague, 1932-3)• 2.2 million to 5 million
deaths from starvation• Entire harvest taken
from the Ukraine SSR and sent to Russia SSR
• Question: was it genocide or policy against idlers and thieves
Population Decline, 1929-1933
Five-Year Plans
Industrialize, mobilize, socialism for all!
If they don’t work, get another in 4!
Soviet Democracy
• Girls given an equal education
• Women have equal work rights
• Advances in health care
• Literacy rate way up
Only Lenin is right and only Stalin can do it!
Socialist Realism
Religion• Active parishes face Purge
of priests and nuns• Recognition of Soviet Union
and Stalin leads to schism• Persecution of Catholics,
Protestants, Islam, Buddhists, Judaism
• Churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, sacred monuments, monasteries razed
• Communism is the Church
World War II• Non-aggression pact
with Hitler• Molotov and
Ribbentrop agree to split Poland, and give Balkans, Romania, and Finland to USSR
• Pact with the Devil???
Stalin and von Ribbentrop
Plans for Europe
Can you trust him?
1941: Operation Barbarossa
Sure…Top Left: Nazis capture Red Army POWsTop Right: Nazis execute Jews Left: Red Army forces retreat of Nazi including Hitler and Ribbentrop
Stalingrad
Tanya Savicheva’s Diary, age 11, witnessed the death of her grandmother, uncle, brother, then her mother, until “only Tanya was left.” She died three months later of dysentery and starvation.
They stayed in until the end
Stalin: One of the Big Three
Left: Churchill, FDR, and Stalin at YaltaAbove: Stalin, FDR, and Churchill at TehranNB: FDR is replaced by Harry Truman and Winston Churchill by Atlee
After the War, It Paid Off
Promises, Promises
• Free elections—if the pro-Soviet Communist won
• Non-intervention—if the bloc satellite countries kept quiet and obeyed
• Agreed to borders—if you don’t count Greece, Yugoslavia, Albania…
• Recovery—if they don’t need the Marshall Plan or other US help to rebuild
Asian AffairsTop Left: Long live Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao (isms)
Bottom Left: 1950 stamp with Stalin and Mao Stalin and Mao
supported North Korea while the South was backed by NATO
The Last Years
Anti-Semitic Actions– The “Doctors’ Plot” they were trying to poison Stalin– Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee has 13 members
secretly executed although they supported Stalin– “Night of Murdered Poets” slaughter of
intellectuals, all Jewish– Jews, like Trotsky, are a potential spy– Pravda and TASS run caricatures of Jews in all issues
The End 9 March 1953
RIP? No, the controversy persists• Officially, it was cerebral
hemorrhage, but doctors weren’t called for 3 days after seizure
• His aide L. Beria says to Molotov, “I took him out.”
• Stalin’s body was removed from Lenin’s tomb 31 October 1961
The suspects:
Above: Beria
Top Right: Kaganovich
Bottom Right: Molotov
Joseph Stalin’s LegacyNikita Khrushchev, his
successor, launched a de-Stalinization program to rid the USSR of any memory of the man of steel. The 34-year autocrat brought the Soviet Union from the most backward country of Europe to a superpower
Who was Stalin???