[795] Stalin also enjoyed watching films late at night at cinemas installed in the Kremlin and his dachas. With these considerations in mind, this 4-step process can be used in any situation in which you want to ensure a fair and less-biased outcome: 1. [566] In the Baltic states, where there was much opposition to Soviet rule, de-kulakisation and de-clericalisation programs were initiated, resulting in 142,000 deportations between 1945 and 1949. [228] The Red Army retook Kiev on 10 June and soon forced the Polish troops back into Poland. [96] After the heist, Stalin settled in Baku with his wife and son. [567], The NKVD were ordered to catalogue the scale of destruction during the war. "[865], The historian Robert Conquest stated that Stalin perhaps "determined the course of the twentieth century" more than any other individual. By 1937, he had absolute control over the party and government. [750] He often dined with other Politburo members and their families. Joseph Stalin (trade unionist) Joseph Stalin is a Sri Lankan trade unionist, as of 2022 serving as general secretary of the Ceylon Teachers' Union. [543] Stalin had wanted Hitler captured alive; he had his remains brought to Moscow to prevent them becoming a relic for Nazi sympathisers. Joseph Stalin was the leader of Soviet Russia from the mid-1920s to his death in 1953. [384] Historians have long debated whether Stalin's government had intended the famine to occur or not;[385] there are no known documents in which Stalin or his government explicitly called for starvation to be used against the population. [77] Amid the growing violence throughout Georgia he formed further Battle Squads, with the Mensheviks doing the same. [929][930] At the same time, there was a growth in pro-Stalinist literature in Russia, much relying upon the misrepresentation or fabrication of source material. [901] Stalin has also been accused of genocide in the cases of forced population transfer of ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union and the famine in Ukraine. [670] The collective leadership included the following eight senior members of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, listed according to the order of precedence presented formally on 5 March 1953: Georgy Malenkov, Lavrentiy Beria, Vyacheslav Molotov, Kliment Voroshilov, Nikita Khrushchev, Nikolai Bulganin, Lazar Kaganovich and Anastas Mikoyan. [731] Described as a poor orator,[732] according to Volkogonov, Stalin's speaking style was "simple and clear, without flights of fancy, catchy phrases or platform histrionics". [782], Stalin was ruthless,[783] temperamentally cruel,[784] and had a propensity for violence high even among the Bolsheviks. ("Koba" is the Georgian diminutive of Yakobi, or Jacob, and Stalin later named his first-born son in Egnatashvili's honour. [55] He found employment at the Rothschild refinery storehouse, where he co-organised two workers' strikes. [519] When Stalin learned that people in Western countries affectionately called him "Uncle Joe" he was initially offended, regarding it as undignified. [44], In October 1899, Stalin began work as a meteorologist at the Tiflis observatory. Stalin was officially the leader of the Communist party, but to many in the Party, he was only a figurehead. [533] In 1944, the German armies were pushed out of the Baltic states (with the exception of the Ostland), which were then re-annexed into the Soviet Union. [139] According to Montefiore, this was "Stalin's most famous work". [587] Tensions among these former Allies grew,[557] resulting in the Cold War. [625] Both Stalin and Mao believed that a swift victory would ensue. [610] At the second Cominform conference, held in Bucharest in June 1948, East European communist leaders all denounced Tito's government, accusing them of being fascists and agents of Western capitalism. [542], In April 1945, the Red Army seized Berlin, Hitler committed suicide, and Germany surrendered in May. Born to a poor family in Gori in the Russian Empire (now Georgia), Stalin attended the Tbilisi Spiritual Seminary before joining the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. [511] In February 1943, the German troops attacking Stalingrad surrendered. [120] In February 1912, Stalin again escaped to Saint Petersburg,[121] tasked with converting the Bolshevik weekly newspaper, Zvezda ("Star") into a daily, Pravda ("Truth"). [16] Ekaterine worked as a house cleaner and launderer and was determined to send her son to school. Germany ended the pact by invading the Soviet Union in 1941. [777] He acknowledged that he could be rude and insulting,[778] but he rarely raised his voice in anger;[779] as his health deteriorated in later life he became increasingly unpredictable and bad-tempered. [262] Lenin accused Stalin of "Great Russian chauvinism"; Stalin accused Lenin of "national liberalism". [358] He oversaw proliferation of schools, newspapers, and libraries, as well as advancement of literacy and numeracy. [176] Trotsky and other later Bolshevik opponents of Stalin used this as evidence that his role in the coup had been insignificant, although later historians reject this. These reasons build to why Stalin emerged as leader of the USSR by 1929. [642] That same month, a much publicised trial of accused Jewish industrial wreckers took place in Ukraine. Stalin had nearly a million of his own citizens executed, beginning in the 1930s. [773] Several historians have seen it as appropriate to follow Lazar Kaganovich's description of there being "several Stalins" as a means of understanding his multi-faceted personality. [494] Amid the fighting, both the German and Soviet armies disregarded the law of war set forth in the Geneva Conventions;[495] the Soviets heavily publicised Nazi massacres of communists, Jews, and Romani. [219], The Bolsheviks won the Russian civil war by the end of 1919. [70] Although he established a Bolshevik stronghold in the mining town of Chiatura,[71] Bolshevism remained a minority force in the Menshevik-dominated Georgian revolutionary scene. [895] Since his death many more biographies have been written,[896] although until the 1980s these relied largely on the same sources of information. [351] Many religious buildings were demolished, most notably Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, destroyed in 1931 to make way for the (never completed) Palace of the Soviets. [41] At night, he attended secret workers' meetings[42] and was introduced to Silibistro "Silva" Jibladze, the Marxist founder of Mesame Dasi ("Third Group"), a Georgian socialist group. [531], In 1944, the Soviet Union made significant advances across Eastern Europe toward Germany,[532] including Operation Bagration, a massive offensive in the Byelorussian SSR against the German Army Group Centre. Stalin's strategy for emerging as leader was to destroy the authority of his opponents. "[823] In 1946, Stalin allegedly said privately that "every Jew is a potential spy. [693] During the period of his revolutionary activity, Stalin regarded some of Lenin's views and actions as being the self-indulgent activities of a spoiled migr, deeming them counterproductive for those Bolshevik activists based within the Russian Empire itself. Publicly, the cause of death was given as appendicitis; Stalin also concealed the real cause of death from his children. [123], In May 1912, he was arrested again and imprisoned in the Shpalerhy Prison, before being sentenced to three years exile in Siberia. Stalin's editorial in Pravda, October 1917[165], Stalin helped organise the July Days uprising, an armed display of strength by Bolshevik supporters. [660] His body was embalmed,[661] and then placed on display in Moscow's House of Unions for three days. [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. It nevertheless clashed with established Bolshevik views that socialism could not be established in one country but could only be achieved globally through the process of world revolution. [719] Montefiore thought Stalin's brutality marked him out as a "natural extremist";[794] Service suggested he had tendencies toward a paranoid and sociopathic personality disorder. "[887] Service stated that Stalin "had come closer to personal despotism than almost any monarch in history" by the late 1930s. [488] In June 1941, he ordered a scorched earth policy of destroying infrastructure and food supplies before the Germans could seize them,[489] also commanding the NKVD to kill around 100,000 political prisoners in areas the Wehrmacht approached. [246] On this trip, Stalin met with his son Yakov, and brought him back to Moscow;[247] Nadezhda had given birth to another of Stalin's sons, Vasily, in March 1921. [888], McDermott nevertheless cautioned against "over-simplistic stereotypes"promoted in the fiction of writers like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Vasily Grossman, and Anatoly Rybakovthat portrayed Stalin as an omnipotent and omnipresent tyrant who controlled every aspect of Soviet life through repression and totalitarianism. Though Hitler and Stalin never met or even spoke on the telephone, their lives and fates were inextricably linked. [368], Stalin faced problems in his family life. [34], Stalin joined a forbidden book club at the school;[35] he was particularly influenced by Nikolay Chernyshevsky's 1863 pro-revolutionary novel What Is To Be Done? [318] Bukharin and several other Central Committee members were angry that they had not been consulted about this measure, which they deemed rash. [159] In a celebratory mood, Stalin travelled by train to Petrograd in March. [14] Ekaterine and Stalin left the home by 1883 and began a wandering life, moving through nine different rented rooms over the next decade. [266] Some historians have questioned whether Lenin ever produced these, suggesting instead that they may have been written by Krupskaya, who had personal differences with Stalin;[254] Stalin, however, never publicly voiced concerns about their authenticity. As leader of a highly centralised dictatorship Josef Stalin inevitably played a pivotal part in every area of the Soviet war effort during the Great Patriotic War (1941-45). [862] One of them, Konstantin Kuzakov, later taught philosophy at the Leningrad Military Mechanical Institute, but never met Stalin. 03:28. [230] Stalin lost the argument, after which he accepted Lenin's decision and supported it. [655] According to Svetlana, it had been "a difficult and terrible death". [551], Stalin attended the Potsdam Conference in JulyAugust 1945, alongside his new British and U.S. counterparts, Prime Minister Clement Attlee and President Harry Truman. Machiavelli in our time. [122] The new newspaper was launched in April 1912,[123] although Stalin's role as editor was kept secret. [365], Throughout the 1920s and beyond, Stalin placed a high priority on foreign policy. [434] In May, this was followed by the arrest of most members of the military Supreme Command and mass arrests throughout the military, often on fabricated charges. [922] In recent years, the government and general public of Russia has been accused of rehabilitating Stalin. [174] A Bolshevik-controlled ship, the Aurora, opened fire on the Winter Palace; the Provisional Government's assembled delegates surrendered and were arrested by the Bolsheviks. [889] Service similarly warned of the portrayal of Stalin as an "unimpeded despot", noting that "powerful though he was, his powers were not limitless", and his rule depended on his willingness to conserve the Soviet structure he had inherited. [453] Between 1940 and 1941 he also purged the military, leaving it with a severe shortage of trained officers when war broke out. [927] The Center, in 2019, reports that around 70% of Russians believe that Stalin played a positive role in their homeland. Joseph Stalin was the General Secretary of the Communist Party and the Soviet Union's sole leader from 1924 until his death in 1953. [521] There remained mutual suspicions between Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who were together known as the "Big Three". [491] With Order No. [795] Like all Bolshevik leaders, Stalin believed that reading could help transform not just people's ideas and consciousness, but human nature itself. [593], The U.S. began pushing its interests on every continent, acquiring air force bases in Africa and Asia and ensuring pro-U.S. regimes took power across Latin America. [699] After the October Revolution, they continued to have differences. [83], In November 1905, the Georgian Bolsheviks elected Stalin as one of their delegates to a Bolshevik conference in Saint Petersburg. [92] In March 1907 she bore a son, Yakov. [127] [613] In accordance with their earlier agreements, the Western powers expected Poland to become an independent state with free democratic elections. He also placed a ban on factionalism and branded all opposition as traitorous. [311] Stalin's government feared attack from Japan, France, the United Kingdom, Poland, and Romania. Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin [g] (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; [d] 18 December [ O.S. [24] Stalin faced several severe health problems: An 1884 smallpox infection left him with facial scars;[25] and at age 12 he was seriously injured when he was hit by a phaeton, probably the cause of a lifelong disability in his left arm. [39] Stalin devoted himself to Marx's socio-political theory, Marxism,[40] which was then on the rise in Georgia, one of various forms of socialism opposed to the empire's governing tsarist authorities. [326] Although officially voluntary, many peasants joined the collectives out of fear they would face the fate of the kulaks; others joined amid intimidation and violence from party loyalists. [651] He had suffered a cerebral haemorrhage. Although probably a hoax, the story of "Rosa Kaganovich" was spread by notable Soviet defectors, including Trotsky, who alleged that "Stalin married the sister of Kaganovich, thereby presenting the latter with hopes for a promising future. [330] Famine broke out in many areas,[331] with the Politburo frequently ordering distribution of emergency food relief to these regions. [372] His relationship with Nadezhda was also strained amid their arguments and her mental health problems. [795] An autodidact,[806] he claimed to read as many as 500 pages a day,[807] with Montefiore regarding him as an intellectual. [808] Lenin was his favourite author but he also read, and sometimes appreciated, a great deal of writing by Leon Trotsky and other arch-enemies. 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