[641] In November, the Slnsk trial took place in Czechoslovakia as 13 senior Communist Party figures, 11 of them Jewish, were accused and convicted of being part of a vast Zionist-American conspiracy to subvert Eastern Bloc governments. [175] Although he had been tasked with briefing the Bolshevik delegates of the Second Congress of Soviets about the developing situation, Stalin's role in the coup had not been publicly visible. [467] In June 1940, the Red Army occupied the Baltic states, which were forcibly merged into the Soviet Union in August;[468] they also invaded and annexed Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, parts of Romania. [8] He was their only child to survive past infancy. Fair warning: if the title isn't enough of a clue, there's a lot in this game . [852] Stalin regarded Vasily as spoiled and often chastised his behaviour; as Stalin's son, Vasily nevertheless was swiftly promoted through the ranks of the Red Army and allowed a lavish lifestyle. [263] A compromise was reached, in which the federation would be renamed the "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" (USSR). [457] Stalin saw this as an opportunity both for territorial expansion and temporary peace with Germany. [3] He was born on 18 December[O.S. [849] It is unclear if Stalin ever had a mistress during or after his marriage to Alliluyeva. [706] In the personality cult constructed around him, he was known as the vozhd, an equivalent to the Italian duce and German fhrer. [395] In 1938, The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), colloquially known as the Short Course, was released;[396] biographer Robert Conquest later referred to it as the "central text of Stalinism". [208] Believing that victory was assured by numerical superiority, he sent large numbers of Red Army troops into battle against the region's anti-Bolshevik White armies, resulting in heavy losses; Lenin was concerned by this costly tactic. [704] In his words, "the people need a Tsar, whom they can worship and for whom they can live and work". And what is so awful in his having fun with a woman, after such horrors? [722] It has been argued that his ancestry was Ossetian, because his genetic haplotype (G2a-Z6653) is considered typical of the Ossetians, but he never acknowledged an Ossetian identity. The Stalin memorial in Moscow's Red Square is a shrine for some Russians. [718] Stalin's push for Soviet westward expansion into eastern Europe resulted in accusations of Russian imperialism. Instead, the KMT repressed the Communists and a civil war broke out between the two sides.[308]. [62], Stalin left Batum in October, arriving at the small Siberian town of Novaya Uda in late November 1903. [586] Much of this was constructed by prison labour. He was good at backroom political maneuvering. 227 in July 1942, which directed that those retreating unauthorised would be placed in "penal battalions" used as cannon fodder on the front lines. [299], Stalin was now the party's supreme leader,[300] although he was not the head of government, a task he entrusted to his key ally Vyacheslav Molotov. [868] According to historian Kevin McDermott, interpretations of Stalin range from "the sycophantic and adulatory to the vitriolic and condemnatory. [528] Roosevelt and Churchill also agreed to Stalin's demand that the German city of Knigsberg be declared Soviet territory. This purge left his military in bad shape when war came, stripped of many of its most capable officers, but just another day for "The Man of Steel." I stand on the ground of the latter". 23M views 5 years ago The personalities and spectres of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin loom large in the events of the twentieth Century. [611], In October 1949, Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong took power in China. [707], Stalinism was a development of Leninism,[708] and while Stalin avoided using the term "Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism", he allowed others to do so. He did. Despite initial catastrophes, the Soviet Red Army repelled the German invasion and captured Berlin in 1945, ending World War II in Europe. [217] He was reprimanded by Lenin at the 8th Party Congress for employing tactics which resulted in far too many deaths of Red Army soldiers. [589] He nevertheless secretly intensified Soviet research into nuclear weaponry, intent on creating an atom bomb. [454], As Britain and France seemed unwilling to commit to an alliance with the Soviet Union, Stalin saw a better deal with the Germans. [610] The 1947 Hungarian elections were also rigged, with the Hungarian Working People's Party taking control. [143], In adulthood, Stalin measured 1.70m (5feet 7inches). [528] Stalin was impatient for the UK and U.S. to open up a Western Front to take the pressure off of the East; they eventually did so in mid-1944. At the end of the titanic struggle he paraded himself as Generalissimus and war hero. Stalin presided over the Soviet post-war reconstruction and its development of an atomic bomb in 1949. [846] Yakov had a daughter, Galina, before fighting for the Red Army in the Second World War. [355] Conservative social policies were promoted to enhance social discipline and boost population growth; this included a focus on strong family units and motherhood, re-criminalisation of homosexuality, restrictions placed on abortion and divorce, and abolition of the Zhenotdel women's department. [259] Another disagreement came over the Georgian affair, with Lenin backing the Georgian Central Committee's desire for a Georgian Soviet Republic over Stalin's idea of a Transcaucasian one. Joseph Stalin was the General Secretary of the Communist Party and the Soviet Union's sole leader from 1924 until his death in 1953. [923], Amid the social and economic turmoil of the post-Soviet period, many Russians viewed Stalin as having overseen an era of order, predictability, and pride. Stalin's chief ideological hatchet man, Andrey Zhdanov, a secretary of the Central Committee, began a reign of terror in the Soviet artistic and intellectual world; foreign achievements were derided, and the primacy of Russians as inventors and pioneers in practically every field was asserted. [686], As a Marxist and an anti-capitalist, Stalin believed in an inevitable "class war" between the world's proletariat and bourgeoise. [896] Under Mikhail Gorbachev's Soviet administration various previously classified files on Stalin's life were made available to historians,[896] at which point Stalin became "one of the most urgent and vital issues on the public agenda" in the Soviet Union. 18991904: Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, 19051912: Revolution of 1905 and its aftermath, 19121917: Rise to the Central Committee and editorship of, 19271931: Dekulakisation, collectivisation, and industrialisation, 19451947: Post-war reconstruction and famine, In the Soviet Union and its successor states, Despite abolishing the office of General Secretary in 1952, Stalin continued to exercise its powers as the, After Stalin's death, Georgy Malenkov succeeded him as both. [640] He instructed the arrested doctors to be tortured to ensure confession. [813] He also enjoyed practical jokes; for instance, he would place a tomato on the seat of Politburo members and wait for them to sit on it. [325] Stalin barred kulaks from joining these collectives. [394], In 193536, Stalin oversaw a new constitution; its dramatic liberal features were designed as propaganda weapons, for all power rested in the hands of Stalin and his Politburo. [411] Stalin aided the Chinese as the KMT and the Communists had suspended their civil war and formed the desired United Front. Since the 1920s, he'd ruled with an iron fist. [196] His department allocated funds for establishment of presses and schools in the languages of various ethnic minorities. [365], Throughout the 1920s and beyond, Stalin placed a high priority on foreign policy. Using the idea of collective responsibility as a basis, Stalin's government abolished their autonomous republics and between late 1943 and 1944 deported the majority of their populations to Central Asia and Siberia. Like with the order 227, everyone in the high command called it a stupid order and for Stalin to remove it. [892], A vast literature devoted to Stalin has been produced. [585] While agricultural production stagnated, Stalin focused on a series of major infrastructure projects, including the construction of hydroelectric plants, canals, and railway lines running to the polar north. [126] After two months, Stalin and Sverdlov escaped back to Saint Petersburg. Hundreds of thousands of people came to see the Generalissimo in the mausoleum. [924] He remains a revered figure among many Russian nationalists, who feel nostalgic about the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II,[925] and he is regularly invoked approvingly within both Russia's far-left and far-right. Some of the photos may be from earlier dates, but it is believed that this photo of Stalin was taken in 1893. Joseph Stalin was the dictator of the U.S.S.R. from the mid 1920s till his death in 1953. [917] In 1969 and again in 1979, plans were proposed for a full rehabilitation of Stalin's legacy but on both occasions were defeated by critics within the Soviet and international MarxistLeninist movement. [927] The Center, in 2019, reports that around 70% of Russians believe that Stalin played a positive role in their homeland. Not true at all. [657] It has been conjectured that Stalin was murdered;[658] Beria has been suspected of murdering him, but no firm evidence has ever appeared. [96] After the heist, Stalin settled in Baku with his wife and son. [751] As leader, he rarely left Moscow unless to go to one of his dachas for holiday;[752] he disliked travel,[753] and refused to travel by plane. Stalin later implanted the use of fear, as well as the use of a secret police force to keep the people in check. [55] He found employment at the Rothschild refinery storehouse, where he co-organised two workers' strikes. [744] He was a lifelong smoker, who smoked both a pipe and cigarettes. [855] After the Second World War, he made little time for his children and his family played a decreasingly important role in his life. [870] In under three decades, Stalin transformed the Soviet Union into a major industrial world power,[871] one which could "claim impressive achievements" in terms of urbanisation, military strength, education and Soviet pride. [368], Stalin faced problems in his family life. [470] One of the most noted instances was the Katyn massacre of April and May 1940, in which around 22,000 members of the Polish armed forces, police, and intelligentsia were executed. [545] Stalin refused to punish the offenders. 1. [436] Party functionaries readily carried out their commands and sought to ingratiate themselves with Stalin to avoid becoming the victim of the purge. D. 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