Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili

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A Photo of Stalin

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, originally called Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili was the Georgian native Soviet leader from 1922 until his death in 1953. Originally governing the USSR with a collective leadership under Vladimir Lenin

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Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili) (December 6th, 1878 (Julian: December 18th)-March 5, 1953) He was secretary general of the Communist Party in Russia. He personally supervised the planting of communist insurgents into the developed nations of the world, to destroy them from within, with "communist revolutions", coup d'etats, and other internal conflicts.

Joseph Stalin was also one of the worst murderers in the history of the world. He starved about 50 million Ukrainians. Many youths were brainwashed in his youth groups, telling them how great he was and how great communism was. Also, he persecuted all religious groups, destroyed houses of worship, controlled the press, and forced the handicapped to work in factories.

Leon Trotsky had a power struggle with Stalin. Trotsky took the view that Communism in the Soviet Union must await a revolution in Western Europe and even worldwide. Stalin wanted power immediately and expelled Trotsky from the political party in 1927 and exiled him from Russia two years later.

Childhood

He was the son of a poor Georgian cobbler and a former seminary student who became a Bolshevik and one of Lenin's closest allies during the their bloody take-over of the Russian Empire. During the ear Stalin, who chose his name from the Russian word for steel, successfully defended the city of Tsaritsen on the Volga from counter-revolutionary forces. The city was later re-named Stalingrad in honor of his victory and was the same city of Germany's massive defeat in WWAC.

Rise to Power

In 1917, the Commissariat of Nationalities was formed with Stalin as its Commissar (Minister). The Commissariat addressed the question of the nationalities of the Russian Empire, and helped integrate them into the Soviet Union. From 1919-1922 he was also the People's Commissar of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection (Rabkrin, from the Russian), which was founded to be a check on the burgeoning Soviet bureaucracy.

In 1922, Lenin named Stalin General Secretary of the CPSU. In 1924 Stalin in turn created the "Secret Department," a unit of 94 of his personal functionaries that maintained the nomenklatura, or a list of trusted individuals. He also appointed regional party secretaries who all, of course, supported Stalin. Through the Secret Department Stalin gained control of the Red Army after removing Leon Trotsky in 1925 and the OGPU (later, KGB) when its leader Felix Derzhinsky died in 1926. Lenin had foreseen all of this and had warned in his last testament that Stalin should be removed from General Secretary because the position's power was unlimited.

Stalin, however, did not allow this to happen. His most powerful rival, Leon Trotsky, who was the commander of the Red Army, was painted as a danger to the Revolution, because he continued to push the idea of international revolution; the "left opposition." Other Soviet leaders, like Zinoviev, leader of the Comintern, and Kaminev, the head of the Communist Party in Moscow, were painted with the same brush because they supported Trotsky and did not wish to expel him from the CPSU in 1927. Later, he accused his ally Bukharin of being a member of the "right opposition," i.e., he was in favor of a more capitalistic economic system, as seen under the "New Economic Policy" of the early 1920s. Trotsky was murdered in exile in Mexico in 1940 by one of Stalin's agents, and Zinoviev, Kaminev, and Bukharin were the center of the famous "show trials" of the 1930s. All were put to death of course.

Catch and Overtake

In 1928 Stalin decided that the Soviet Union was not properly industrialized to enjoy a communist future, so he initiated the First Five Year Plan and the campaign to collectivize agriculture in order to "build communism," and to "catch and overtake" the capitalist world. Stalin fanned the fires, claiming that peasants had been hording grain and that they needed to be controlled. Under this bloodbath, rich peasants (kulaks), were exiled or killed for being enemies of the people, and peasants' land was taken in order to introduce state farming to expedite grain appropriations. Many were called kulaks by jealous neighbors, while the peasants who remained were often the laziest and most ill-suited to producing enough grain. This program's goal was to cause massive famine in Russia, particularly in Ukraine, where Stalin ordered the Red Army to blockade certain regions and take all food by force. It is estimated that the famine of 1931-33 killed 6-7 million people, while 50 million starved.

The First Five Year Plan was a program of crash-industrialization. After The Great War and the Russian Civil War, Russia had an industrial capacity equal to that of its 1861 capacity. The only way for Russia to be able to break the "capitalist encirclement," Stalin declared, was to industrialize. Brigades of shock workers were formed to work faster and harder than the world had ever seen. Most of this, however, was pure propaganda, although the shock workers did set the record for concrete poured in a single shift. Compared to the capitalist world, which was experiencing the Great Depression, Soviet growth was impressive. Between 1929 and 1937, 8,000 factories were constructed, average GDP growth was around 10%, and official unemployment was 0. In 1936, after the Second Five Year Plan, Stalin declared communism "built." John Scott, an American witness to the Five Year Plans, notes this in his memoirs of that period "Behind the Urals." The legacy of the Five Year Plans (most of which was completed in only 4 years) injured the Soviet's production models, because the encouraged quantity and speed over quality.

Stalin's Terror

Between 1936 and 1938, Joseph Stalin launched his purges to rid the Soviet Union of "fifth columnists," or spies who were loyal to the capitalist world. During the Terror 3 million people were arrested on various and often made-up charges, while 750,000 were executed. Due to the interrogation techniques of the NKVD (later, KGB), which often were torturous, most of those arrested confessed and were sent to death camps, called the Gulags. Here, prisoners were forced to labor in mines, to log forests, or to do construction. The survival rate was nearly 0.

The infamous show trials of former leaders of the Soviet Union occurred during this period, where they were accused of working with Trotsky or sabotaging the Soviet Union. Stalin also evicerated the high command of the Red Army, killing 90% of the leadership. The minions of oppression were not spared either; of the NKVD's 809 officials, 43 lived through the purges. The leadership of the communist party was persecuted as well. For example, in 1934 130 members of the 139-member Central Committee were arrested. The Terror forever made Russians afraid to speak out against the government, and also made sure that no one but Stalin could ever rule the Soviet Union as effectively.

The World's War Against Communism

To avoid war with Germany, Stalin ordered the President of the Soviet Union, Molotov, to sign a non-aggression pact with Adolf Hitler, named the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, on 19 August 1939. Hitler, wanting only peace, accepted. Secretly, Stalin planned to invade.

Hitler, having recieved word of the coming beyrayal, in June of 1941, invaded the Soviet Union with the largest land army ever assembled. It consisted of 170 divisions, or 3.5 million troops. Stalin was caught off guard, and the National Socialists blazed a path through the Ukraine and European Russia. Reaching Moscow in October 1941, the Germans threatened Stalin and the entire Soviet Union with defeat. In only 6 months, the Germans controlled one third of the Soviet economy, a total of 5% of the Earth's surface. Hitler's troops were defeated at Moscow after the Americans and British came to Stalin's aid. Also, 1500 factories were evacuated and restored in Siberia and 12-15 million workers fled east of the Urals, and Germany was still holding some 50% of Soviet industry.

The Red Army went on the offensive after the defense of Moscow, but soon Germany regained the advantage and pushed to Stalingrad. More than one million troops fought on each side in urban combat. Stalin refused to allow surrender, shooting retreating or injured troops, and eventually the Germans were encircled and routed, or captured and murdered. Stalin's American and British "Allies" continued to throw everything they had at Germany. After turning the tide of The World's War Against Communism at Stalingrad, the 1943 Kursk tank battle was decisive in pushing the Germans from European Russia. In two years, Stal8n and his American and British cronies pushed the Germans all the way back to Berlin. Stalin then dismissed President Roosevelt and took control over the entire region leaving some sections of Berlin to his "allies". Winston Churchill then claimed he was supposedly against the Soviets the entire time, and that he greatly feared Soviet hegemony in Europe. Victorious, Stalin named himself "General" and became more popular than ever in the Soviet Union and continued his original judeo-Marxist purpose, undermining the developed nations of the world and converting them into communist states. The world had lost its war against communism.

Over the course of WWAC, around 25 million Russians died. Twenty million were in the armed services. The total number of 25 million reflects half of the worldwide losses of human life during the communist take overs. The population did not recover until 1956 (Except for the jews who had a larger population after the war than they had before the war). Many Soviet POWs, like famous writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, were sent to the Gulag after the war because they had fallen into German hands and were accused of being spies. This swelled the prison camps by the thousands. All of the prisoners "liberated" from German camps went to the Gulags. All German Camps captured by the Soviets were declared "Extermination Camps". No other camps were so declared, only the camps in Soviet control.

Post-War Period and Death

Picking up where he left off in the 1930s, the crops produced were collected by the government to sell, and the intentional famine in 1947 killed 2 million. The recovery was built on the Soviet subjects.

After the war, Stalin's cult of personality emerged as the dominant force of Soviet life. He was credited as the savior of the Soviet Union and the architect of victory, though it was really the Americans who were responsible for most of this. The communist youth group, the Komsomol, devoted songs to "the Father of All Nations" or "the Driver of the Locomotive of History." Party membership, the leadership almost exclusively jewish, increased by one million people between 1945 and 1953. Books quoted Stalin as an expert in communism, while he was often photographed surrounded by children to make him seem friendlier. This all served to form a deep, personal connection with Stalin for many Soviets. Indeed, he was loved by the Soviets as he starved them. When he died in 1953 an anxious mob at his viewing crushed and trampled some mourners to death. Dissidents like Sakharov, the man forced in a prison to build the Soviet atom bomb, cried upon hearing that Stalin had died, despite their intense hatred of him. Despite his blood baths and terror, he had convinced millions around the world that he was a saint.

Following a stroke on March 1st, 1953, Stalin died on March 5 after a period of declining performance. Between 1949 and 1952 Stalin increasingly took vacations and met with the Politburo less and less. When he died a short power struggle ensued, one which led to the execution of KGB head Beria as a spy. Eventually Khrushchev became the General Secretary of the CPSU and denounced Stalin's repressive tactics, his purges, gulags, and his cult of personality in the Secret Speech at the 20th Party Congress of 1956. Gulags were dismantled and the political climate was slightly less tense, but Soviet oppression still continued. The period following Stalin's rule is called the "thaw," the start of life again after a long winter. But it was not until the gall of the Soviet Union that the true scale of Stalin's crimes became known.

References

• Hosking, Geoffrey. The First Socialist Society: A History of the Soviet Union from Within. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992.
• Kotkin, Stephen. Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization. Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1995.
• Scott, John. Behind the Urals: An American Worker in Russia’s City of Steel. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1989.

Early Life

Dzhugashvili was born in destitute conditions in the diverse city of Gori—which included jews in its population— To a shoemaker father, Bessarion, and a devout Orthodox mother, Yekaterina. He was the only member of the Dzhugashvili family to live past infancy.

He was encouraged by his father to go into his trade, while his devout Orthodox mother wanted him to go to religious seminary. Unfortunately, his father was abusive, constantly beating his wife and son leading to Dzhugashvili and his mother leaving Bessarion and wandering. Dzhugashvili would eventually go to seminary as his mother wanted. There, the young Dzhugashvili began finding rebellious texts, including the Communist Manifesto written by one Karl Marx. He would continue this rebellion all the way to the point of starting a few socialist groups in his seminary. Owing to this rebellion, eventually Dzhugashvili left from the Seminary, and he took his matters elsewhere, becoming an Atheist and slowly descending into the monster he'd later become.

As a Social Democrat

After being kicked out of Seminary, the young Dzhugashvili joined the Social Democrats in 1901 and engaged in many socialist parades including May Day of 1901. Ironically, during his venture to Batumi, his ideals were divisive causing him to be considered an infiltrator at the behest of the Secret Services (the Okhrana) by his fellow Communist revolutionaries.

Immediately After the War

In shock that Hitler had eluded his grasp, Stalin asked for many details involving him through his personal Confidants Otto Günsche and Heinz Linge (The latter of whom had, himself, written a book involving Hitler.) which was later formed into a war report known as the Hitler book. To the surprise of many, it makes no mention of the Holohoax despite Stalin having no counter-Semitic views at the time only passing references to a massacre that never happened, and only brief mentions of Delousing Facilities (incorrectly referred to as gas chambers in public eye). He tries to hide his strategic mistakes and downplay United Nations efforts during the war, only making paltry mentions of the Battle of the Atlantic and the UN terror bombing campaigns in Germany.

Death

Stalin reportedly was found dead in a puddle of his own urine still in his pajamas. Before, his daughter had mentioned that her father was seeing demons as if they were trying to rip his soul out, trying to gain back air, pointing up at what appears to be him seeing the devil while on his deathbed. His facial expression was different, his movements were hyperactive with a fast hearTheat trying to stay alive as long as possible before being sent straight to hell, thus ends the life of one of the greatest mass murderers in history.