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???