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Joseph Stalin
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Joseph Stalin იოსებ სტალინი Иосиф Сталин |
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| In office April 3, 1922 – March 5, 1953 |
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| Preceded by | None (position created in 1922) |
| Succeeded by | Nikita Khrushchev |
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| In office May 6, 1941 – March 5, 1953 |
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| Preceded by | Vyacheslav Molotov |
| Succeeded by | Georgy Malenkov |
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| Born | December 18, 1878 Gori, Georgia, Russian Empire |
| Died | March 5, 1953 (aged 74) Moscow, Russian SFSR, USSR |
| Nationality | Georgian |
| Political party | Communist Party of the Soviet Union |
Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili (Georgian: იოსებ ბესარიონის ძე ჯუღაშვილი, Ioseb Besarionis Dze Jughashvili; Russian: Ио́сиф Виссарио́нович Джугашви́ли (help·info), Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili) (December 18 [O.S. December 6] 1878[1] – March 5, 1953), better known by his adopted name, Joseph Stalin (Иосиф Сталин, Iosif Stalin; stalin meaning "made of steel"[2]), was General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee from 1922 until his death in 1953. During that time, he established the eponymous regime, Stalinism. Although Stalin's formal position originally had little significant influence, his office being nominally one of several Central Committee Secretariats, Stalin's increasing control of the Party from 1928 onwards led to his becoming the de facto party leader and the dictator of his country[3], in full control of the Soviet Union and its people. His crash programs of industrialization and collectivization in the 1930s and his campaigns of political repression cost the lives of millions of people. However, it helped industrialize the Soviet Union making it a Great power by 1931. Only six years later, the Soviet Union had become the second largest industrial nation in the world.
During Stalin's reign, the Soviet Union played a major role in the defeat of Nazi Germany in the Second World War (1939–1945) (more commonly known in Russia and post-Soviet republics as the Great Patriotic War). Under Stalin's leadership, the Soviet Union went on to achieve recognition as one of just two superpowers in the post-war era, a status that lasted for nearly four decades after his death.
Introduction
Born Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili (Russian: Иосиф Виссарионович Джугашвили) but later adopting the name Stalin, a revolutionary codename which meant "Man of Steel", that stuck with him. Stalin became General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party in 1922. Following the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924, he prevailed in a power struggle over Leon Trotsky, who was expelled from the Communist Party and deported from the Soviet Union.
In the 1930s Stalin initiated a Purge of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which has become known as the Great Purge, an unprecedented campaign of political repression, persecution and executions that reached its peak in 1937.
Stalin's rule had long-lasting effects on the features that characterized the Soviet state from the era of his rule to its collapse in 1991. Stalin claimed his policies were based on Marxism-Leninism. Now his political and economic system is referred to as Stalinism. Maoists, anti-revisionists and some others say he was actually the last legitimate Socialist leader in the Soviet Union's history.[citation needed]
Stalin replaced the New Economic Policy (NEP) of the 1920s with Five-Year Plans in 1928 and collective farming at roughly the same time. The Soviet Union was transformed from a predominantly peasant society to a major world industrial power by the end of the 1930s.[4][5][6]
Confiscations of grain and other food by the Soviet authorities under his orders contributed to a famine between 1932 and 1934, especially in the key agricultural regions of the Soviet Union, Ukraine (see Holodomor), Kazakhstan and North Caucasus that resulted in millions of deaths. Many peasants resisted collectivization and grain confiscations, but were repressed, most notably well-off peasants deemed "kulaks".[8]
Bearing the brunt of the Nazis' attacks (around 75% of the Wehrmacht's forces), the Soviet Union under Stalin made the largest and most decisive contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany during World War II (known in the USSR as the Great Patriotic War, 1941–1945). After the war, Stalin established the USSR as one of the two major superpowers in the world, a position it maintained for nearly four decades following his death in 1953.
Stalin's rule, reinforced by a cult of personality, fought real and alleged opponents mainly through the security apparatus, such as the NKVD. Millions of people were killed through famines, executions, deportations, and in the Gulag. Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin's eventual successor, denounced Stalin's rule and the cult of personality in 1956, initiating the process of "de-Stalinization" which later became part of the Sino-Soviet Split.
Childhood and education, 1878–1899
Joseph Stalin was born Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili in Gori, Georgia, Russian Empire to Vissarion Dzhugashvili and Ekaterina Geladze. (He adopted the name Stalin, which is derived from the Russian stal’ (Russian: сталь) for "steel", in 1913.) His mother was born a serf. The other three Dzhugashvili children died young; "Soso" (the Georgian pet name for Joseph), was effectively the only child. Stalin's father Vissarion (better known as Beso) was a cobbler, who opened his own shop, but went bankrupt in 1889, ultimately forcing him to work in a shoe factory in Tiflis. (Archer 11)
Soso's mother Keke was rumored for having been promiscuous; according to later memoirs, she had been very passionate about sexual affairs, stating, "When I was young, I cleaned house for people and when I met a good-looking boy, I didn't waste the opportunity."[9] Rumors, or, as Beso had called them, "evil tongues" spoke widely across the village that Soso was a bastard son. Possible fathers included Yakov Egnatashvilli, an affluent merchant and wrestling champion, Father Christopher Charkviani, an Orthodox priest, and Damian Davrichewy, a police officer who flirted frequently with Keke.
Rarely seeing his family and drinking heavily, Vissarion often beat his wife and small son. One of Stalin's friends from childhood, Ioseb Iremashvili, wrote: "Those undeserved and fearful beatings made the boy as hard and heartless as his father." The same friend also wrote that he never saw him cry.[10] In his contention, Beso taught him to hate people.[11]
At about seven years of age Stalin fell ill with smallpox and his face was badly scarred by the disease. He later had photographs retouched to make his pockmarks less apparent.
At the age of eight, "Soso" began his education at the Gori Church School.
Joseph and most of his classmates at Gori were Georgians and spoke mostly Georgian. However, at school they were forced to use Russian. Their Russian teachers mocked Joseph and his classmates when they were speaking Russian because of their Georgian accents. His peers were mostly the sons of affluent priests, officials, and merchants.
He graduated first in his class and in 1892, at the age of 14, he was awarded a scholarship to the Georgian Orthodox Seminary of Tiflis (Tbilisi, Georgia). Although his mother wanted him to be a priest (even after he had become leader of the Soviet Union), he attended seminary not because of any religious vocation, but because of the lack of locally available university education. In addition to the scholarship, Stalin was paid a small stipend for singing in the choir. A wonderful singer, Stalin supplemented this income by being regularly employed to sing at weddings.[12]
Stalin's teachers at Tiflis Seminary, like his teachers at Gori, insisted on speaking Russian and looked down on the Georgian tongue. Like many of his comrades, young Stalin reacted by being drawn to Georgian nationalism. He began writing poetry in Georgian, and he gained notoriety among Georgians as a poet long before he was known as a revolutionary.[13] In 1901, the Georgian clergyman M. Kelendzheridze wrote an educational book on language arts, including one of Stalin’s poems, signed by 'Soselo'. In 1907 the same editor published “A Georgian Chrestomathy, or collection of the best examples of Georgian literature” including a poem of Stalin’s dedicated to Raphael Eristavi.[14] His poetry can still be seen in the Stalin Museum in Gori.[15]
While Stalin was at the Tiflis Seminary, his father left Gori to live in Tiflis, leaving the family without support. Rumors said he died in a drunken bar fight; however, others said they had seen him in Georgia as late as 1931.
Stalin's involvement with the Marxist movement began at the seminary. During these school years, Stalin joined a Georgian Social-Democratic organization. While their teachers thought they were studying the Bible, Stalin and his comrades were really reading the works of Karl Marx and Georgi Plekhanov.[16] During this period, Stalin read the novel The Patricide (1883) by Alexander Kazbegi — in this novel, a Robin Hood-like figure named Koba defended the poor Georgian people against their greedy Russian rulers. Increasingly seeing himself as a defender of the poor, in the 1890s, Stalin chose "Koba" as his first revolutionary pseudonym.
Stalin quit the seminary in 1899 just before his final examinations; official biographies preferred to state that he was expelled.[17] He was expelled by Georgy Dolganev (hieromonk Hermogen), the seminary rector.[18] Twenty of his fellow-classmates were expelled for revolutionary activities in 1899, and forty more would be expelled in 1901.[19]
Early years as a Marxist revolutionary, 1899–1917
Stalin (or "Koba", as he was then known), along with his sidekick "Kamo", organized the expelled seminarians into a Marxist street gang which soon ran a protection racket in the workers' districts of Tiflis.[20]
Following a suppressed workers' demonstration in 1901, Stalin fled to Batumi and got work at an oil refinery owned by the Rothschild family. Organizing the workers there, Stalin was almost certainly involved in a 1901 fire at the refinery designed to intimidate the Rothschilds into giving the workers a pay raise. In 1902, after he organized a demonstration in which 7000 workers clashed with imperial troops, Stalin was sent to the city jail — while there, he organized the criminals and was soon the boss of the jail. Following his trial, Stalin was transported to the katorga in Siberia. He soon escaped, however, and was back in Tiflis by the time of the Russian Revolution (1905). During this period, Stalin and Kamo engaged in a series of illegal fundraising activities, including kidnappings and bank robberies. Stalin was sent into penal exile a second time in 1908, and again quickly escaped.[21]
In 1905, Stalin was still a supporter of the separate Georgian Social Democratic Party. By 1907, however, he had come to support the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, abandoning his Georgian nationalism for the more explicitly Marxist position of proletarian internationalism. Stalin sided with Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party and came to adhere to Lenin's doctrine of democratic centralism. Stalin and Lenin both attended the Fifth Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in London in 1907.[22] This congress consolidated the supremacy of Lenin's Bolshevik faction and debated strategy for communist revolution in Russia. Stalin never referred to his stay in London.
In January 1912, at the Prague Party Conference, Lenin led his Bolshevik faction out of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, founding the separate Bolshevik Party. Stalin was coopted as a member of the new Bolshevik Central Committee.
In 1913, Stalin published Marxism and the National Question, the first time he used the pseudonym "Stalin" (meaning "man of steel"). This treatise was written while he was briefly in exile in Vienna and presents an orthodox, if somewhat unoriginal, Marxist position (c.f. Lenin's On the Right of Nations to Self-Determination (1914)).
Later in 1913, Stalin was sent into penal exile for a third time. This time he did not escape so quickly, and lived for the next four years in a small hamlet on the Yenisei River. While there, he fathered a son by a 13-year-old orphan girl named Daria, sometimes called the Ruler of All Things Evil.[23]
Rise to power, 1917–1927
- See also: Stalin in the Russian Civil War
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In the wake of the February Revolution in February 1917 (the first phase of the Russian Revolution of 1917), Stalin was released from prison in March 1917. He moved to Saint Petersburg (which the revolutionaries renamed "Petrograd") and, together with Lev Kamenev and Matvei Muranov, ousted Vyacheslav Molotov and Alexander Shlyapnikov as editors of Pravda, the official Bolshevik newspaper, while Lenin and much of the Bolshevik leadership were still in exile[citation needed]. Stalin and the new editorial board took a position in favor of supporting Alexander Kerensky's provisional government (Molotov and Shlyapnikov had wanted to overthrow it) and went to the extent of declining to publish Lenin's articles arguing for the provisional government to be overthrown[citation needed]. However, after Lenin prevailed at the April Party conference, Stalin and the rest of the Pravda staff came on board with Lenin's view and called for overthrowing the provisional government. At this April 1917 Party conference, Stalin was elected to the Central Committee with the third highest vote total in the party and was subsequently elected to the Politburo of the Central Committee (May 1917); he held this position for the remainder of his life.
According to many accounts, Stalin only played a minor role in the October Revolution of November 7, 1917[citation needed]. Adam Ulam and others have argued that each man in the Central Committee had a specific job to which he was assigned.
The following summary of Trotsky's Role in 1917 was given by Stalin in Pravda, November 6, 1918:
| “ | All practical work in connection with the organisation of the uprising was done under the immediate direction of Comrade Trotsky, the President of the Petrograd Soviet. It can be stated with certainty that the Party is indebted primarily and principally to Comrade Trotsky for the rapid going over of the garrison to the side of the Soviet and the efficient manner in which the work of the Military Revolutionary Committee was organised. | ” |
Note: Although this passage was quoted in Stalin's book The October Revolution issued in 1934, it was not included in Stalin's Works released in 1949[citation needed].
Later, in 1924, Stalin himself created a myth around a so-called "Party Centre" which "directed" all practical work pertaining to the uprising, consisting of himself, Sverdlov, Dzerzhinsky, Uritsky, and Bubnov[citation needed]. No evidence was ever shown for the activity of this "centre",[citation needed] which would, in any case, have been subordinate to the Military Revolutionary Council, headed by Trotsky[citation needed].
During the Russian Civil War and Polish-Soviet War Stalin was a political commissar in the Red Army at various fronts. Stalin's first government position was as People's Commissar of Nationalities Affairs (1917–1923). In that position he traveled to Finland in late 1917, and promised the socialists there that the Soviet Union would aid their revolution. However, this aid was never given and the revolution in Finland was defeated.
He was also People's Commissar of the Workers and Peasants Inspection (1919–1922), a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the republic (1920–1923) and a member of the Central Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets (from 1917).
Stalin played a decisive role in engineering the 1921 Red Army invasion of Georgia[citation needed] following which he adopted particularly hardline, centralist policies towards Soviet Georgia, which included severe repression of all opposition within the local Communist party (e.g., Georgian Affair of 1922), not to mention any manifestations of anti-Sovietism (August Uprising of 1924).[24] It was in the Georgian affairs that Stalin first began to play his own hand.[25]
Campaign against the left and right opposition
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On April 3, 1922, Stalin was made general secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), a post that he subsequently built up into the most powerful in the country. It has been claimed that he initially attempted to decline accepting the post, but was refused.[citation needed] This position was seen to be a minor one within the party[citation needed] (Stalin was sometimes referred to as "Comrade Card-Index" by fellow party members) but, when combined with personal leadership over the Orgburo and with an ally (Kaganovich) heading the organizational Registration and Distribution Department of the Central Committee, actually had potential as a power base as it allowed Stalin to fill the party with his allies. After Lenin's death in January 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 of building "Socialism in One Country", in contrast to Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution.
In the struggle for leadership one thing was evident: whoever ended up ruling the party had to be considered very loyal to Lenin. Stalin organized Lenin's funeral and made a speech professing undying loyalty to Lenin, in almost religious terms[citation needed].
For more about Stalin's relationship with Lenin, a post Soviet extract of Lenin's sister.[26][27]
He undermined Trotsky, who was sick at the time, possibly by misleading him about the date of the funeral[citation needed]. Thus although Trotsky was Lenin’s associate throughout the early days of the Soviet regime, he lost ground to Stalin. Stalin made great play of the fact that Trotsky had joined the Bolsheviks just before the revolution, and publicized Trotsky's pre-revolutionary disagreements with Lenin[citation needed]. Another event that helped Stalin's rise was the fact that Trotsky came out against publication of Lenin's Testament in which he pointed out the strengths and weaknesses of Stalin and Trotsky and the other main players, and suggested that he be succeeded by a small group of people[citation needed].
An important feature of Stalin’s rise to power is the way that he manipulated his opponents and played them off against each other[citation needed]. Stalin formed a "troika" of himself, Zinoviev, and Kamenev against Trotsky. When Trotsky had been eliminated, Stalin then joined Bukharin and Rykov against Zinoviev and Kamenev, emphasising their vote against the insurrection in 1917[citation needed]. Zinoviev and Kamenev then turned to Lenin's widow, Krupskaya; they formed the "United Opposition" in July 1926.
In 1927 during the 15th Party Congress Trotsky and Zinoviev were expelled from the party and Kamenev lost his seat on the Central Committee. Stalin soon turned against the "Right Opposition", represented by his erstwhile allies, Bukharin and Rykov[citation needed].
Stalin gained popular appeal from his presentation as a 'man of the people' from the poorer classes[citation needed]. The Russian people were tired from the world war and the civil war, and Stalin's policy of concentrating in building "Socialism in One Country" was seen as an optimistic antidote to war[citation needed].
Stalin took great advantage of the ban on factionalism which meant that no group could openly go against the policies of the leader of the party because that meant creation of an opposition[citation needed]. By 1928 (the first year of the Five-Year Plans) Stalin was supreme among the leadership, and the following year Trotsky was exiled because of his opposition. Having also outmaneuvered Bukharin's Right Opposition and now advocating collectivization and industrialization, Stalin can be said to have exercised control over the party and the country.
However, as the popularity of other leaders such as Sergei Kirov and the so-called Ryutin Affair were to demonstrate, Stalin did not achieve absolute power until the Great Purge of 1936–1938.
Soviet secret service and intelligence
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Stalin vastly increased the scope and power of the state's secret police and intelligence agencies. Under his guiding hand, Soviet intelligence forces began to set up intelligence networks in most of the major nations of the world, including Germany (the famous Rote Kappelle spy ring), Great Britain, France, Japan, and the United States. Stalin saw no difference between espionage, communist political propaganda actions, and state-sanctioned violence[citation needed], and he began to integrate all of these activities within the NKVD. Stalin made considerable use of the Communist International movement in order to infiltrate agents and to ensure that foreign Communist parties remained pro-Soviet and pro-Stalin[citation needed].
One of the best early examples of Stalin's ability to integrate secret police and foreign espionage came in 1940, when he gave approval to the secret police to have Leon Trotsky assassinated in Mexico.[28]
Stalin and changes in Soviet society, 1927–1939
Industrialization
The Russian Civil War and wartime communism had a devastating effect on the country's economy. Industrial output in 1922 was 13% of that in 1914. A recovery followed under the New Economic Policy, which allowed a degree of market flexibility within the context of socialism.
Under Stalin's direction, this 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.
With seed capital unavailable because of international reaction to Communist policies, little international trade, and virtually no modern infrastructure, Stalin's government financed industrialization both by 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 kulaks.
In 1933 workers' real earnings sank to about one-tenth of the 1926 level. Common and political prisoners in labor camps were forced to do unpaid labor, and communists and Komsomol members were frequently "mobilized" for various construction projects. The Soviet Union used foreign experts, e.g. British engineer Stephen Adams, to instruct their workers and improve their manufacturing processes.
In spite of early breakdowns and failures, the first two Five-Year Plans achieved rapid industrialization from a very low economic base. While it is generally agreed that the Soviet Union achieved significant levels of economic growth under Stalin, the precise rate of growth is disputed. What is not disputed is that these gains were accomplished at the cost of millions of lives.
Official Soviet estimates stated the annual rate of growth at 13.9%; Russian and Western estimates gave lower figures of 5.8% and even 2.9%. Indeed, one estimate is that Soviet growth became temporarily much higher after Stalin's death.[20] [21]
According to Robert Lewis the Five-Year Plan substantially helped to modernize the previously backward Soviet economy. New products were developed, and the scale and efficiency of existing production greatly increased. Some innovations were based on indigenous technical developments, others on imported foreign technology.[29]
Collectivization
Stalin's regime moved to force collectivization of agriculture. This was intended to increase agricultural output from large-scale mechanized farms, to bring the peasantry under more direct political control, and to make tax collection more efficient. 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 violent reaction among the peasantry.
In the first years of collectivization it was estimated that industrial production would rise by 200% and and agricultural production by 50%[30], but these estimates were not met. Stalin blamed this unanticipated failure on kulaks (rich peasants), who resisted collectivization. (However, kulaks proper made up only 4% of the peasant population; the "kulaks" that Stalin targeted included the slightly better-off peasants who took the brunt of violence from the OGPU and the Komsomol. These peasants were about 60% of the population). Those officially 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.
The two-stage progress of collectivization—interrupted for a year by Stalin's famous editorial, "Dizzy with success" (Pravda, March 2, 1930), and "Reply to Collective Farm Comrades" (Pravda, April 3, 1930)—is a prime example of his capacity for tactical political withdrawal followed by intensification of initial strategies.
Many historians assert that the disruption caused by collectivization was largely responsible for major famines.[citation needed]
The 1932–1933 famine in Ukraine and the Kuban regions has been termed the Holodomor (Ukrainian: Голодомор).
According to Alan Bullock, "the total Soviet grain crop was no worse than that of 1931 … it was not a crop failure but the excessive demands of the state, ruthlessly enforced, that cost the lives of as many as five million Ukrainian peasants." Stalin refused to release large grain reserves that could have alleviated the famine, while continuing to export grain; he was convinced that the Ukrainian peasants had hidden grain away, and strictly enforced draconian new collective-farm theft laws in response.[31][32]
Other historians hold that it was largely the insufficient harvests of 1931 and 1932 caused by a variety of natural disasters that resulted in famine, with the successful harvest of 1933 ending the famine.[33]
Famine affected other parts of the USSR. The death toll from famine in the Soviet Union at this time is estimated at between five and ten million people. The worst crop failure of late tsarist Russia, in 1892, had caused 375,000 to 400,000 deaths.)[34]
Soviet and other historians have argued that the rapid collectivization of agriculture was necessary in order to achieve an equally rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union[citation needed] and ultimately win World War II. This is disputed by other historians; Alec Nove claims that the Soviet Union industrialized in spite of, rather than because of, its collectivized agriculture.
Science
- Main articles: Science and technology in the Soviet Union, Suppressed research in the Soviet Union, Lysenkoism
Science in the Soviet Union was under strict ideological control by Stalin and his government, along with art and literature. There was significant progress in "ideologically safe" domains, owing 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.
In the late 40's, some areas of physics, especially quantum mechanics but also special and general relativity, were also criticized on grounds of "idealism". Soviet physicists, such as K. V. Nikolskij and D. Blokhintzev, developed a version of the statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics, which was seen as more adhering to the principles of dialectical materialism.[35][36] However, although initially planned,[37] this process did not go as far as defining an "ideologically correct" version of physics and purging those scientists who refused to conform to it, because this was recognized as potentially too harmful to the Soviet nuclear program.
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 Yakovlevich 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, read a letter by Arnold Chikobava criticizing the theory. He "summoned Chikobava to a dinner that lasted from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. taking notes diligently."[38] In this way 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 in a small essay, "Marxism and Linguistic Questions."[39]
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.
Scientific research 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 1938–1939) or executed (e.g. Lev Shubnikov, shot in 1937). They were persecuted for their dissident views, not for their research. Nevertheless, much 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 expressed a fear, after the "Sputnik crisis," that their country had been eclipsed by the Soviet Union in science and in public education.
Social services
Under the Soviet government people benefited from some social liberalization. Girls were given an adequate, equal education and women had equal rights in employment[40], improving lives for women and families. Stalinist development also contributed to advances in health care, which significantly increased the lifespan and quality of life of the typical Soviet citizen[41]. Stalin's policies granted the Soviet people universal access to healthcare and education, effectively creating the first generation free from the fear of typhus, cholera, and malaria [42]. The occurrences of these diseases dropped to record low numbers, increasing life spans by decades [43].
Soviet women under Stalin were the first generation of women able to give birth in the safety of a hospital, with access to prenatal care [44]. Education improved. Millions benefitted from mass literacy campaigns in the 1930s, and from workers training schemes[45]. Engineers were sent abroad to learn industrial technology, and hundreds of foreign engineers were brought to Russia on contract [46]. Transport links were improved and many new railways built. Workers who exceeded their quotas, Stakhanovites, received many incentives for their work [47]; they could afford to buy the goods that were mass-produced by the rapidly expanding Soviet economy.
The increase in demand due to industrialization and the decrease in the workforce due to World War II and repressions generated a major expansion in job opportunities for the survivors, especially for women [48].
Culture
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Although born in Georgia, Stalin became a Russian nationalist and significantly promoted Russian history, language, and Russian national heroes, particularly during the 1930s and 1940s. He held the Russians up as the elder brothers of the non-Russian minorities.[49]
During Stalin's reign 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". Careers were made and broken, some more than once. Famous figures were repressed, and many persecuted, tortured and executed, both "revolutionaries" (among them Isaac Babel, Vsevolod Meyerhold) and "non-conformists" (for example, Osip Mandelstam).
A minority, both representing the "Soviet man" (e.g. Arkady Gaidar) and remnants of the older pre-revolutionary Russia (e.g. Konstantin Stanislavski), thrived. A number of émigrés returned to the Soviet Union, among them Alexei Tolstoi in 1925, Alexander Kuprin in 1936, and Alexander Vertinsky in 1943.
Poet Anna Akhmatova was subjected to several cycles of suppression and rehabilitation, but was never herself arrested. Her first husband, poet Nikolai Gumilev, was shot in 1921, and her son, historian Lev Gumilev, spent two decades in a gulag.
The degree of Stalin's personal involvement in general, and in specific instances, has been the subject of discussion. His name was as constantly invoked during his reign in discussions of culture as in just about everything else; in several famous 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, 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.
Some insights into Stalin's political and esthetic thinking might perhaps be gleaned by reading his favorite novel, Pharaoh, by the Polish writer Bolesław 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.
In architecture, a Stalinist Empire Style (basically, updated neoclassicism on a very large scale, exemplified by the Seven Sisters of Moscow) replaced the constructivism of the 1920s.
Stalin's rule had a largely disruptive effect on the many indigenous cultures within the Soviet Union. The politics of the Korenization and forced development of "Cultures National by Form, Socialist by their substance" was arguably beneficial to later generations of indigenous cultures in allowing them to integrate more easily into Russian society.
The attempted unification of cultures in Stalin's later period was very harmful. Political repressions and purges were even more devastating to indigenous cultures than on urban ones as the cultural elites were smaller. The traditional lives of many peoples in the Siberian, Central Asian and Caucasian provinces was upset and large populations were displaced and scattered in order to prevent nationalist uprisings.
The Moskva Hotel in Moscow was said to have been built with mismatched side wings because Stalin had mistakenly signed off both of the proposals submitted, and the architects had been too afraid to clarify the matter. (The hotel had actually been built by two independent teams of architects with differing ideas.)
Religion
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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 leveled, and tens of thousands of priests, monks and nuns were persecuted and killed. Over 100,000 were shot during the purges of 1937–1938.[50][51] During World War II, however, the Church was allowed a revival as a patriotic organization, after the NKVD had recruited the new metropolitan, the first after the revolution, as a secret agent. Thousands of parishes were reactivated, until a further round of suppression in Khrushchev's time.
The Russian Orthodox Church Synod's recognition of the Soviet government and of Stalin personally led to a schism with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. An Act of Canonical Communion was signed on the May 17, 2007, followed immediately by a full restoration of communion with the Moscow Patriarchate, however there remain some issues not fully healed to the present day.
Just days before Stalin's death, certain religious sects were outlawed and persecuted.
Many religions popular in the ethnic regions of the Soviet Union including the Roman Catholic Church, Uniats, Baptists, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, etc. underwent ordeals similar to the Orthodox churches in other parts: thousands of monks were persecuted, and hundreds of churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, sacred monuments, monasteries and other religious buildings were razed.
Purges and deportations
The purges
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| Left: Beria's January 1940 letter to Stalin, asking permission to execute 346 "enemies of the CPSU and of the Soviet authorities" who conducted "counter-revolutionary, right-Trotskyite plotting and spying activities." Middle: Stalin's handwriting: "за" (support). Right: The Politburo's decision is signed by Secretary Stalin. |
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Stalin, as head of the Politburo, consolidated near-absolute power in the 1930s with a Great Purge of the party, justified as an attempt to expel 'opportunists' and 'counter-revolutionary infiltrators'. Those targeted by the purge were often expelled from the party, however more severe measures ranged from banishment to the Gulag labor camps, to execution after trials held by NKVD troikas.
The Purges commenced after the assassination of Sergei Kirov, the popular leader of the party in Leningrad. Kirov was very close to Stalin and his assassination sent chills through the Bolshevik party. Publicly Stalin merely reacted to this assassination by tightening security by seeking out alleged spies and counter-revolutionaries, but in effect he was removing those who might have threatened Stalin's leadership. This process then transformed itself into extensive purges.
There are two different versions for the background of Kirov's murder. According to the first Stalin, fearing that he might be next in line to be assassinated, decided to initiate purges instead of passively wait. According to the second version Stalin saw Kirov as a dangerous competitor for top-spot in the Soviet Union and decided to kill Kirov himself.
In the 1930s, Stalin apparently became increasingly worried about Kirov's growing popularity. At the 1934 Party Congress where the vote for the new Central Committee was held, Kirov received only three negative votes, the fewest of any candidate, while Stalin received 292 negative votes, the highest of any candidate. Kirov was a close friend with Sergo Ordzhonikidze, and together they formed a moderate bloc to Stalin in the Politburo. Later in 1934, Stalin asked Kirov to work for him in Moscow. One theory suggests that Stalin did this in order to keep a closer eye on Kirov, this despite of the supposed fact that Stalin entirely controlled the NKVD. Kirov refused, however, and according to the same theory he became a competitor in Stalin's eyes.
On December 1, 1934, Kirov was killed by Leonid Nikolaev (also seen spelt Nikolayev) in the Smolny Institute Leningrad. Kirov had arrived at the Smolny to work in his office, and, apparently leaving his bodyguard downstairs, headed to the upper floors, where the officials had their rooms. Nikolayev emerged from a bathroom and followed Kirov towards his office, shooting him in the back of the neck. Officially Stalin claimed that Nikolayev was part of a larger conspiracy led by Leon Trotsky against the Soviet government. This resulted in the arrest and execution of Lev Kamenev, Grigory Zinoviev, and fourteen others in 1936. The death of Kirov ignited the great purge where supporters of Trotsky and other suspected enemies of the state were arrested. It has been speculated that Stalin was the man who ordered the murder of Kirov, and that the shooting was carried out with the help of the NKVD. However, although most historians believe that this second version of why and how Kirov was killed is more likely[citation needed], it has so far not been unambiguously proven as right and it is still disputed by some.
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.
Most notably in the case of alleged Nazi collaborator Tukhachevsky, many military leaders were convicted of treason. The shakeup in command may have cost the Soviet Union dearly during the German invasion of 22 June 1941, and its aftermath.
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. Solzhenitsyn alleges that Stalin drew inspiration from Lenin's regime with the presence of labor camps and the executions of political opponents that occurred during the Russian Civil War. Trotsky's August 1940 assassination in Mexico, where he had lived in exile since January 1937, eliminated the last of Stalin's opponents among the former Party leadership. Only three members of the "Old Bolsheviks" (Lenin's Politburo) now remained—Stalin himself, "the all-Union Chieftain" (всесоюзный староста) Mikhail Kalinin, and Chairman of Sovnarkom Vyacheslav Molotov.
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| Nikolai Yezhov, the young man strolling with Stalin to his left, was shot in 1940. He was edited out from a photo by Soviet censors [22]. Such retouching was a common occurrence during Stalin's reign. |
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. People would inform on others arbitrarily, to attempt to redeem themselves, or to gain small retributions. The flimsiest pretexts were often enough to brand someone an "Enemy of the People," starting the cycle of public persecution and abuse, often proceeding to interrogation, torture and deportation, if not death. Nadezhda Mandelstam, the widow of the poet Osip Mandelstam and one of the key memoirists of the Purges, recalls being shouted at by Akhmatova: "Don't you understand? They are arresting people for nothing now?" 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, Genrikh Yagoda, removed in order to deflect blame from himself.
In parallel with the purges, efforts were made to rewrite the history in Soviet textbooks and other propaganda materials. Notable people executed by NKVD were removed from the texts and photographs as though they never existed. Gradually, the history of revolution was transformed to a story about just two key characters: Lenin and Stalin.
In light of revelations from the Soviet archives, historians now estimate that nearly 700,000 people were executed in the course of the terror,[52] with the great mass of victims being ordinary peasants and workers.[53]
It is worth noting that 2007 tours of Stalin's Museum in Gori, Georgia reference the purges only in passing. "Sure, during the process of collectivization, some mistakes were made" is the official line at the museum. No other references to mortalities are made during the tour, and when asked about actual fatalities, the estimate of 25,000 is given.
Ukrainian famine
The Ukrainian famine (Holodomor) (1932–1933), KGB documents located in Kiev purportedly demonstrate how the famine was artificially engineered,[54] and that while some areas of the Soviet Union affected by the famine were sent humanitarian aid, Ukraine was systematically denied such assistance.[55] Also, the famine was accompanied by a devastating purge of the Ukrainian intelligentsia and the Ukrainian Communist party itself.[56] One document is an order from Moscow to shoot people who steal food. It is signed by Stalin in red ink.[54] According to Professor Donald Rayfield, within a year 6,000 had been executed and tens of thousands imprisoned.[57]
Most modern scholars agree that the famine was caused by the policies of the government of the Soviet Union under Stalin, rather than by natural reasons[citation needed], and the Holodomor is sometimes referred to as the Ukrainian Genocide,[58][59][60][61] implying that the Holodomor was engineered by the Soviets, specifically targeting the Ukrainian people to destroy the Ukrainian nation as a political factor and social entity.[62] While historians continue to disagree whether the policies that led to Holodomor fall under the legal definition of genocide, twenty six countries have officially recognized the Holodomor as such. On 28 November 2006 the Ukrainian Parliament approved a bill, according to which the Soviet-era forced famine was an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people.[63]
Deportations
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. It is estimated that between 1941 and 1949 nearly 3.3 million[64] were deported to Siberia and the Central Asian republics. Separatism, resistance to Soviet rule and collaboration with the invading Germans were cited as the official reasons for the deportations, rightly or wrongly. Historian Allan Bullock explains:
| “ | Many no doubt had collaborated with the occupying forces … but many had done so not out of disloyalty but from the instinct to survive when abandoned to their fate by the retreating Soviet armies. The individual circumstances were of no interest to Stalin … After the brief Nazi occupation of the Caucasus was over … the entire population of five of the small highland peoples of the North Caucasus, as well as the Crimean Tatars — more than a million souls — (were deported) without notice or any opportunity to take their possessions. There were certainly collaborators among these peoples, but most of those had fled with the Germans. The majority of those left were old folk, women, and children; their men were away fighting at the front, where the Chechens and Ingushes alone produced thirty-six Heroes of the Soviet Union.[65] | ” |
During Stalin's rule the following ethnic groups were deported completely or partially: Ukrainians, Poles, Koreans, Volga Germans, Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Karachays, Meskhetian Turks, Finns, Bulgarians, Greeks, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, and Jews. Large numbers of Kulaks, regardless of their nationality, were resettled to Siberia and Central Asia. Deportations took place in appalling conditions, often by cattle truck, and hundreds of thousands of deportees died en route.[66] Those who survived were forced to work without pay in the labour camps. Many of the deportees died of hunger or other conditions.
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 States, Tatarstan and Chechnya, even today.
Number of victims
Early researchers attempting to tally the number of people killed under Stalin's regime were forced to rely largely upon anecdotal evidence. Their estimates ranged from a low of 3 million to as high as 60 million.[67][68] When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 however, evidence from the Soviet archives finally became available. The archives record that about 800,000 prisoners were executed (for either political or criminal offences) under Stalin, while about 1.7 million died in the GULAG and some 389,000 perished during kulak forced resettlement — a total of about 3 million.
Debate continues, however,[69] since some historians believe the archival figures to be unreliable.[70][71] For example, some argue that the many suspects tortured to death while in "investigative custody" were likely not counted amongst the executed.[72][73] Also, there are certain categories of victim which it is generally agreed were carelessly recorded by the Soviets — such as the victims of ethnic deportations, or of German population transfer in the aftermath of WWII.
Thus while some archival researchers have estimated the number of victims of Stalin's repressions to be no more than about 4 million in total,[74]