Original subtitles

The Man known to history as Joseph

Stalin was born yev vasovic

jash on the 18th of December

1878 in the Eastern Georgian town of

Gori this was the 6th of December

according to the old style Julian

calendar which was still in operation in

the Russian Empire at the time Stalin

was a pen name which ysf adopted in his

mid-30s his father was basaran jash v a

cobbler who for a while had a thriving

business though he failed to change with

the times and his shoes eventually

became

unfashionable miring the family in

poverty yosef's mother was yarina galad

a devout Orthodox Christian who had

married basaran at the age of 16 and

went on to give birth to Three Sons the

two oldest of which both died in infancy

resulting in yadina placing much of her

hopes for the future in her only

surviving

son yep's parents had a tempestuous

relationship and often fought when ysep

was 10 Yak Catarina left basaran as as

he was by this time an abusive alcoholic

who would on his infrequent visits home

beat his wife and son to escape her

husband Yak Catarina sought the help of

a family friend named Yakov

aatash who had been The Godfather of her

two deceased Sons this enabled both

mother and son to live in relative

security for a time to get by

financially yatar undertook housework in

the local area including in the house of

a priest named christor

charani who in 1888 helped acquire a

place for ysep in the Gory church school

he proved himself to be a capable

student and quickly Rose to the top of

his class despite this upturn in Fortune

ysep narrowly survived a wave of the

small pox epidemic one which left his

face pockmark

a much more drastic episode occurred

when he was 12 and his left arm was

mangled in the wheel of a horsedrawn

cart he was hospitalized for months and

was left with limited use of his left

arm for the rest of his life after

recovering though yep sha academically

he was soon recommended by his teacher

to join the religious Seminary at tbli

and was admitted in 1894

however having arrived to the Seminary

it soon became apparent that his path

lay elsewhere after young ysep declared

that he did not believe in God a crucial

problem for any would be priest instead

he began to read forbidden Publications

such as Nikolai

cherish's famous novel what is to be

done and the notorious DUS Capital Bal

Marx of whom he subsequently became a

great admirer YB soon joined secret

Socialist Workers meetings within

Georgia as resentment and anger was

growing here at the oppression of the

Russian zaris

government by the end of the 19th

century Russia had been ruled by the Zar

for three and a half centuries

stretching back to Ivan the Terrible who

had proclaimed himself the first Zar of

all Russia in the middle of the 16th

century the tars were absolutist rulers

meaning that there was no tradition of a

parliament or public representation in

Russia the country had been ruled

instead by the tars in tandem with the

powerful Nobles at the Orthodox Church

Russia was a great power though Ivan had

expanded outwards from from the duchy of

musy to conquer lands southwards to the

Caspian Sea and then successes like

Peter the Great and Katherine the Great

had conquered large parts of Ukraine and

southwards to the Caucasus the

Napoleonic Wars had marked the Russian

Empire's transition to great power

status and by the second half of the

19th century it was seeking to expand

into the Balkans to replace the in

Ottoman Empire as the main power there

while a rivalry had developed in Central

Asia with Britain for influence in

Persia and

Afghanistan despite this great power

status domestically Russia was very

backwards the Empire's economy was based

almost entirely on agriculture and

serfdom had only been abolished in

1861 tar Al alander II had attempted

wide ranging reforms prior to his

assassination in

1881 but his successor Alexander III was

a reactionary who doubled down on

autocracy by the time Nicholas I second

had come to the throne in

1894 major new movements were

destabilizing the country cities like

Moscow and St Petersburg were

industrializing and this was leading to

an flux of radical socialist and

communist thought combined with new

indigenous political movements like the

anarchists many people within these

groups and within wider Society wanted

political representation and a drastic

overhaul of Russian Society to pull it

firmly into the Modern Age and out of

the medieval habits and traditions that

it was still mired in yet SAR Nicholas

II was the wrong man for this time he

was not a malicious character but he was

weak willed and of limited abilities a

figure who could not grasp what Russia's

problems were and how he might begin to

address them this was the political

social and economic backdrop against

which yoseb would begin his political

rise in the early 20th

century in

1899 ysep began working as a

meteorologist in toi his virulent

opposition to the tarist autocratic

government was evolving during this

period and he also began giving speeches

at meetings of local workers and

clandestine groups that were speaking

out against the political system in

Russia these inevitably attracted the

attention of the tarist secret police

known as the Okana he also joined the

Russian Social Democratic labor party or

rsdlp in

1899 a left-wing socialist movement that

had been founded in

1898 and which would eventually become

the Russian Communist party after he

became a member yose began infiltrating

workers groups in order to stir up

opposition from within them to the

government he developed a reputation for

being willing to use violence and

illegal methods engaging in theft and

criminality to help fund his own and the

party's activities in Georgia once the

authorities homed in on him in 1901 he

left for Batumi on the coast of the

Black Sea where he again organized

protests at one of which many people

were shot by the local police a year

later he was involved in the instigation

of an attack on a local prison where

several Party leaders were being

detained during which over a dozen of

the attackers were killed after he

organized yet another protest on the day

of his comrades funerals he was arrested

and sentenced in 1903 to 3 years Exile

in Siberia the cold desolate region of

Russia east of the Ural

Mountains yep had no intention of

respecting the terms of his Exile and he

soon managed managed to escape and

headed back West to

tbli there he helped edit an underground

newspaper which advocated for the

Georgian branch of the

rsdlp to split off from the Russian

branches of the party and seek Georgian

Independence this coincided with a split

within the

rsdlp after leading members of the party

in Exile in Western Europe divided into

the Bolshevik LED by Vladimir Lenin and

the

menik the bolik were the more Hardline

Wing who only wanted committed political

revolutionaries joining the movement

while the menik sought a wider base of

support yoseb gravitated towards the

Bolsheviks in 1905 during a period of

revolutionary activity throughout the

Russian Empire brought about by a

massacre of peaceful protesters in St

pet pburg by the Taris government on the

22nd of January

1905 yep established himself as the

leader of a squad of Bolshevik fighters

in Georgia in the period that followed

he and his group effectively became a

criminal gang engaging in robberies

attacks on government buildings and

other illicit

activity still it had the desired effect

of making him one of the leading

Bolsheviks in Georg Georgia and in

November 1905 he was dispatched to

represent the region at the party's

Congress in stock Home in Sweden in the

years that followed he continued his

operations as a leader of a Bolshevik

gang and paramilitary unit gaining

notoriety and a degree of respect

amongst the Bolshevik leadership the

most infamous incident during this time

was his organization of the Tiff bank

robbery on the 26th of junee

1907 a crime in which dozens of people

were killed and a quarter of a million

Rubles were stolen in the winter of 1909

he was once again exiled to Siberia

though he yet again escaped and returned

to

Georgia in 1912 yusep was asked by Lenin

to join the Bolshevik Central Committee

which he agreed to but he was then later

that year arrested once again and sent

into Exile as however he soon escaped

and went underground in St

Petersburg there he contributed to the

foundation of the Bolshevik newspaper

Pravda meaning truth he would be an

editor and contributor to it in its

first years it was whilst working on

this newspaper that yusep started to use

the pseudonym Stalin meaning Steel

this along with the anglicization of his

first name resulted in the version of

his name that the whole world knows

today Joseph Stalin indeed it was the

editorship of Pravda that brought Stalin

to the attention of The Wider Bolshevik

movement it also cemented his position

as one of Lenin's right-hand men a

figure who continued to live in Exile in

Western Europe and relied on operatives

like Stalin to function as his eyes and

ears in Russia Itself by the time of the

outbreak of the first world war in the

late summer of

1914 Stalin was one of the most

influential men in the Bolshevik

movement he was though yet again in

Exile having been sent this time to the

Arctic regions of Russia by the

government in

1913 when the war broke out in 194

consideration was given to forcing him

to enlist in the Russian army but he was

excused service owing to the disability

in his left

arm these were turbulent years in

Stalin's personal life too by this time

he had already been through one marriage

back in 1905 he had been introduced by a

revolutionary colleague Alexander sanid

to his sister yarina

sanid Stalin married her the following

year and they had a son named Yakov

early in

1907 however Yak Catarina died just a

few months later in November

1907 probably from typhus obtained from

drinking contaminated water Stalin was

deeply affected by her passing According

to some reports he had contemplated

taking his own life and stated at her f

funeral that quote with her died my last

warm feelings for Humanity this

contrasts sharply with other reports

that he had been physically abusive

towards her Yakov was raised by Yak

catarina's wider family thereafter now

in Exile in the mid 1910s Stalin began a

relationship with liia Perina a resident

of the Hamlet of Kura that he was

banished to Stalin was 35 years old and

she was 14 she became pregnant before

long and although this first pregnancy

resulted in a miscarriage she later gave

birth to an illegitimate child of

Stalin's named

Alexander by then Starling had returned

to Western Russia and although he knew

of Alexander's existence they never met

by the time Alexander was born Stalin

had just met a 17-year-old old girl

named nesa

alua they married in

1919 and would have two children a boy

named vili born in

1921 and a daughter swetlana born in

1926 whilst Stalin was in Exile a great

wave of political change began to strike

Russia the Army's disastrous performance

on the Eastern Front against Germany in

late 1916 and early

1917 led to the conservative February

revolution of 197 in St Petersburg which

culminated in Nicholas II being forced

to abdicate the Russian Throne he was

then replaced by a provisional

government headed by Alexander kensky

but the new regime's grip over the

country was still relatively weak

meaning that the influence of the farle

in the sh of the Bolsheviks and other

groups like the menik continued to grow

unchecked over the coming months in this

environment Lenin made his way back to

Russia from Switzerland while Stalin

quickly slipped away from his Exile and

returned to St Petersburg which had been

renamed petrograd during the war over

the next few months Lenin in conjunction

with figures like Stalin and leant

troski a Jewish Russian Bolshevik

intellectual planned a revolution in

petrograd they launched this on the 25th

of October

1917 according to the old style calendar

though it was the 7th of November

elsewhere in Europe the October

Revolution resulted in the overthrow of

the conservative government and the

seizure of Power by the Bolsheviks in

petrograd Moscow and other cities

the capital of the newly created Russian

Soviet federative Socialist Republic was

moved back to the traditional Russian

Capital Moscow from here figures like

Stalin were involved in the first stages

of the Russian Civil War and also

organizing peace terms with the Germans

so that the Bolsheviks could exit the

first world war and concentrate on

consolidating their position at home in

Russia

a ceasefire was agreed with Germany on

the 15th of December

1917 and hostilities with the Central

Powers then formally ceased with the

signing of the Treaty of breos on the

3rd of March

1918 at home there was fierce resistance

to the new Bolshevik government

opponents of Lenin and the new Soviet

style regime came from many different

groups from the menik to to

conservatives and Regional groups like

The cacs of Ukraine and the fins who

hoped to benefit from the war by winning

independence from the Russian State

these opponents of the regime

collectively became known as the whites

who fought the Red Army of the

Bolsheviks the conflict would be fought

for half a decade bringing much hardship

including a terrible famine in the early

1920s that killed Millions ions of

Russians during it Stalin was sent to

the city of Tarin present day vrad he

organized the defense of this key City

on the river vulga in Southwestern

Russia his methods were extreme and

included the mass destruction of

villages in The Wider region to deprive

the whites of

resources many within the Bolshevik

movement disapproved of his approach

years later Stalin would rename the city

Stalingrad in their campaign against the

whites the Bolsheviks had started to use

methods which far outweighed the

repressive and brutal nature of the

Taris regime it is clear that one of the

most Relentless Advocates of the policy

of Terror was Stalin perhaps the most

famous example of the increasingly

ruthless approach the Communists

employed came on the 17th of July 1918

when the former tar Nicholas II and his

wife and children were executed by the

Bolsheviks at

Yekaterinburg where they were being held

during the latter stages of the Russian

Civil War Stalin was appointed to

numerous commands in which he proved to

be authoritative and ruthless in dealing

with deserters and was ultimately

rewarded by the government with the

order of the red banner for his services

to the Communist cause he was also

involved in the Polish Soviet War which

had started when the newly reestablished

Republic of Poland had sought to

capitalize on the state of upheaval

within Russia in order to expand its

eastern Frontier by

1922 it was clear that the Civil War

would end in Bolshevik Victory though

fighting continued intermittently in

some places into

1923 the Bolsheviks lost large parts of

the Russian Empire including Poland the

Baltic Sea States and Finland though

they retained control over Ukraine and

the

Caucasus these were formed into the

Union of Soviet Socialist republics the

USSR the Civil War had caused massive

disruption and upheaval across Russia

in response to the death dislocation and

famine Lenin had made economic

concessions in

1921 known as the New Economic Policy

the program was a temporary drift away

from communist principles in allowing

private ownership of goods and Industry

and a free market to operate this was

undertaken in order to stabilize the war

ravaged economy of Russia however it was

unpopular with many ideological purists

such as Trotsky within the Soviet

government who argued that the state

should control all worker activity and

output Stalin supported Lenin in these

temporary measures an action which made

him increasingly powerful as the civil

war came to an end in 1922 and

1923 he was hence able to gain election

as the General Secretary of the

Communist Party of the Soviet Union in

April

1922 a position of considerable power

within the new government which placed

him in charge of party membership along

with disciplinarian duties this role

also gave Stalin a foothold in virtually

every aspect of the governance of Russia

it ensured he was able to gather

information on potential enemies and he

then gradually and quietly began to

accumulate more and more power then in

May

1922 Lenin suffered a severe stroke

which left him partially paralyzed and

bedridden in the months that followed

Stalin tried to control access to Lenin

and started taking over a range of his

responsibilities soon after this Lenin

began to complain to his wife about

Stalin fearing his excessive ambition

and the ruthlessness with which he

pursued power he consequently dictated a

document that is now known as Lenin's

Testament in this he urged reform within

the party's ruling Elite and criticized

its leaders most importantly he

recommended that Stalin should be

removed from his position as general

secretary Lenin wanted his Testament to

be read out at the 12th party Congress

in April

1923 but Stalin had the document

suppressed and did not allow it to be

released to subordinate party members by

then Lenin was almost completely

incapacitated after suffering multiple

further Strokes he eventually died on

the 21st of January

1924 and the major figures within the

Soviet regime then began to Vie with one

another for control of the Communist

Party Stalin as general secretary began

to position himself as one of the

leading candidates to succeed his former

Master Stalin's foremost rival in this

power struggle was Leon Trotsky a major

communist thinker who had been

responsible for forming the Red Army

into a fighting force capable of winning

the Civil War initially trosky seemed to

be the favorite to succeed Ed Lenin as

the leader of the government however in

the course of 1924 and

1925 Stalin outflanked him by forming a

triumvirate of more right-leaning Soviet

leaders along with Lev kenv and gregori

zinovev together they marginalized

Trotsky in the mid

1920s Stalin then turned on them and

used his growing control over the party

apparation us to bring in other

individuals to the polit bureau and the

central government who supported him

unflinchingly Trotsky was removed from

his position as the people's commissar

of military and Naval Affairs in January

of

1925 then he was expelled from the

Central Committee in October

1927 banished to Kazakhstan and later

from the Soviet Union altogether in 19

1929 during his Exile Trotsky became the

figurehead of international socialist

opposition to his old rival and went on

to write numerous books and articles

condemning his former comrade eventually

Stalin ordered his secret services to

assassinate his arch enemy which

succeeded after trosky was attacked with

an ice axe by a Soviet agent at his

house in Mexico City after being taken

to hospital he died from his injuries on

the 21st of August

1940 with Trotsky out of the way Stalin

Consolidated his grip on power he still

faced some opposition especially from

Nikolai

bukharin like Trotsky bukharin was a

prominent Marxist theorist who had

reservations about the kinds of policies

Stalin began to pursue from 1927 onwards

he managed to win some support from

zenovo and kamenov and also from Lenin's

Widow nades

krupskaya Stalin eventually moved

against them by labeling them as a new

right opposition on the right of the

party in any event they were never able

to win over the support of a large

proportion of the party zvv was soon

expelled from the party like Trotsky

bukharin was completely demoted nadda

retained a position within the Soviet

education sector into the

1930s her position as Lenin's Widow

protecting her to a considerable degree

though she died under somewhat

suspicious circumstances in

1939 with some suspecting Stalin's

involvement thus by 1927 Stalin was the

de facto head of the Soviet Union and

any remaining opposition was demoted or

removed entirely from the party in 1928

and

1929 the man who had come to power as

Lenin's successor was a complex figure

it would be easy to dismiss him as a

tyrannical power Monger who wasn't

wedded to any ideology other than his

own accumul ation of power this was one

facet of him but there was more to his

personality ideology and

psychology he was a communist or at

least conceived of himself as such and

was determined to create a socialist and

communist state in Russia this can be

viewed as distinct from the Communist

theories of the 19th century Marx

fredrich Engles and others wrote wrote

about theoretical socialist ideas that

they imagined could be applied to

Britain Germany France or Belgium in

Russia figures like Stalin ran into the

reality of trying to apply their

theoretical Concepts in a country with a

political culture of autocracy and

violence stretching back centuries

Stalin's desire to apply what he

believed were communist principles was

reflected in his written output he wrote

and published many books and papers on

communist theory in them he demonstrated

a considerable knowledge of Marxist

theory and a capacity to reflect on the

Soviet Union's level of development

towards communism he was not an

intellectual in the same vein as Trotsky

and this was possibly one of the reasons

why he disliked his rival so much yet he

was still an intelligent figure though

one seemingly devoid of any ethical

restraint or moral compass in many ways

as leader of the Soviet Union he was the

same as the figure who worked for the

party in Georgia in the late 1800s and

early

1910s a wouldbe communist who mixed

revolutionary Ambitions with running a

criminal

gang we get a good sense of Stalin's

intellectual ual and personal World from

assessing his Library something which

has been the subject of an extensive

recent study Stalin owned somewhere in

the region of 20,000 books these were

not simply volumes that he had someone

working in his office accumulate and put

on a shelf to make it seem to visitors

that he was well read many of the books

in question contain marginal annotations

by Stalin the he made as he read them

and he was known to read several books

every week when he died in

1953 his desk was covered with stacks of

books his tastes were wide ranging

beyond the obligatory Corpus of marxist

and communist writings he was an Avid

Reader of the classics of Russian

literature by Alexander Pushkin Leo

Tolstoy and others while he was a fan of

Shakespeare

Victor Ugo and Daniel defo gifting his

adopted son a copy of Robinson

cruso his marginal annotations were

often basic writing his agreements with

certain points made or at other times

writing things like rubbish or gibberish

when he disagreed with a point being

made although his copies of Fodor Doo's

books are lost we know he was a critic

of his view of Russian Society in a

revelatory act Stalin once underlined a

quote that was attributed to genis Khan

in a book in which the Mongol warlord

stated that in order to establish peace

of mind after a victory the defeated had

to be vanquished utterly it was exactly

what he had done with Trotsky and would

do with his other remaining rivals in

the 1930s

the foremost question confronting the

Soviet Union as Stalin Consolidated his

position in the mid 1920s was the

country's future Economic Policy the New

Economic Policy that Lenin had pursued

in his last years had only ever been a

temporary expedient one which most of

those who oversaw it did not like and

which had capitalist

elements now with peace and ability

restored there was room to begin

implementing ambitious policies to

transform Russia's economy towards a

communist one to this end in

1928 Stalin began the first 5-year plan

the concept of a 5-year plan had

originated with Trotsky who first

proposed it in

1925 Stalin accepted the validity of the

approach and pursued it the goal of the

the first 5-year plan which would

operate down to

1932 was to rapidly expand the

industrial economy of the Soviet Union

at the time of the revolution in

1917 Russia had a number of cities with

a considerable industrial capacity but

the USSR was still a resoundingly

agricultural and Rural

Society heavy industry of any kind

hardly existed east of the river vulga

the first 5-year plan sought to expand

things like steel and coal production at

a very quick rate this would be achieved

by introducing efficiencies into the

agriculture sector by developing large

statun Collective Farms that would

require less labor to produce larger

amounts of food thus freeing up rural

Farmers to move to the cities and work

in the new

factories this was the basic Theory

which underpinned the first 5-year

plan if it is viewed solely from the

perspective of the increase in

industrial capacity across the

USSR there is no doubt that the first

5-year plan was considerably successful

the number of industrial Factory workers

doubled from around 3 million to 6

million while large factories and plants

were established to increase production

of basic Commodities like steel and iron

and manufactured goods like Automobiles

and tractors as well as the extraction

of raw materials like coal oil and

copper the Soviets were not dogmatic in

how they approached this they invited

industrial experts from the US and

Western Europe into Russia to provide

technical

expertise for instance the Stalingrad

tractor plant in what is now vulgargrad

was built by Albert Khan Associates The

Firm that had worked closely with Henry

Ford in developing his automobile

factories in Detroit production and

output of everything increased in the

late 1920s and early

1930s there has been much emphasis

placed since on Soviet propaganda and

the way that it exaggerated the scale of

industrial Improvement at this time

but while there was a lot of propaganda

there was also a substantial amount of

Truth underlying the claims being made

Iron production for instance doubled by

1932 another KnockOn effect was a steady

increase in literacy levels Stalin's

government was anxious that the workers

of tomorrow would be able to take

courses on things like manufacturing and

increase their technical knowledge they

would need to be able to read to do so

where literacy levels in Russia were

little above 20% of the population in

1900 nearly 90% of people were literate

in

1940 the average visitor to Moscow

Leningrad or keev in the late 1920s and

early

1930s would have seen posters

encouraging men and women alike to learn

to read

this was the positive side of the first

5-year plan and Stalin's early time in

charge there was no shortage of negative

elements as well while industrial

productivity had expanded and Industrial

policy would continue to flourish in the

USSR for decades to come the policy of

farm

collectivization initially led to

immense suffering part of the goal here

was to break the e economic power of the

kulacs a class of wealthy peasants who

owned extensive farms and

livestock these were perceived as

opponents of the regime and individuals

who had profited from the abolition of

serfdom in

1861 at the expense of the average

agricultural worker Stalin developed a

particular ideological objection to the

kulacs though his designation of who was

a kulak was very loose consequently the

collectivization strategy involved

taking land and herds away from both

wealthy and middling farmers and forming

these into huge Collective Farms where

farm machinery such as that being

produced at the new Stalingrad tractor

Factory was

introduced the scale of collectivization

was huge over 50% of Russian

were operating within Collective Farms

by

1931 often this was achieved through

coercion and violence people were forced

into what were little better than labor

camps many did not know what was

happening and believed that these

strange bureaucrats from Moscow with

their unusual ideas about a thing called

communism were forcing them back into

the surom that their grandfathers had

been Li at from 70 years

earlier the collectivization strategy

was not just difficult for those who had

little option but to accept what the

state dictated to them it would also end

very badly in the short run often the

collective Farms were being overseen by

Soviet officials who had grown up in the

cities of the West and who knew little

about farming in some cases yields fell

as as the system was introduced more

worryingly Stalin and his advisers

decided that the best way to facilitate

the industrial program was to manage how

agriculture produce was distributed in

order to favor urban

communities this had catastrophic

consequences between 1930 and

1933 famine struck much of the

USSR the region running from Ukraine

Eastward through Southwestern Russia and

the Caucasus and into Kazakhstan was the

epicenter of it as agricultural workers

were pulled away from the new Collective

farms and Stalin issued orders for the

kulac to be liquidated as a social and

economic class agricultural output fell

dramatically even when it became clear

what was happening the policy of

prioritizing Urban industrial

communities for grain distribution was

continued as people began starving to

death in the countryside many fled into

the towns and cities the famine followed

them as the supplies here were consumed

it is estimated that anywhere between 4

and 9 million people died in total the

death toll was especially large in

Ukraine where these events are known as

the

hore death by hunger and Stalin Bears

considerable guilt for executing

policies which killed so many and for

failing to respond in a humane way once

it became apparent what was happening in

Ukraine and Southern

Russia it was during the Hol doore in

Ukraine and The Wider famine that

Stalin's personal affairs took a

controversial turn he had remained

married to his second wife n

throughout the

1920s and his rise to absolute power

their family extended beyond their two

biological children in 1921 Stalin's son

from his first marriage Yakov who by

then was 14 years old joined them in

Moscow while they also adopted arom

sergeev the infant son of Fodor surv a

friend of stalins and a senior bolik who

died testing the AOW wagon an

experimental Russian high-speed train in

the summer of

1921 despite the surface image of a

happy nuclear family Stalin and nadda

argued frequently often owing to his

possible infidelities and frequent

prolonged absences from home she also

suffered from bouts of depression and

ill health all of these issues came to

ah head at a celebration to commemorate

the 15th anniversary of the October

Revolution held in Moscow in early

November

1932 at the reception Stalin and his

wife flung insults at each other she had

seemingly learned of the famine that was

occurring in Ukraine and Southern Russia

and the worsening of it by her husband's

policies Stalin was drunk and openly

flirted with another woman

then on the morning of the 9th of

November nadeshda was found dead having

seemingly shot herself in the heart

Stalin was disturbed by this turn of

events and it is generally accepted that

she did take her own life but the

circumstances of her death were not made

public it was simply noted that she had

died

unexpectedly Stalin's relationship with

his children was strange for the rest of

his life he was closest to his daughter

swetlana though when she developed a

teenage crush on a filmmaker named alexe

Stalin had him sent into Exile in

Siberia s Lana would famously defect the

United States in

1967 and only died in Wisconsin in

2011 1932 could be viewed as a a turning

point in Stalin's life and rule over the

Soviet Union in more ways than one as

ruthless as his takeover of power had

been in the

1920s it had few

casualties conversely what Stalin

engaged in during the mid to late 1930s

was unprecedented in how repressive and

totalitarian it was from its earliest

days the Soviet system had included a

secret police and labor camps these were

features of Russia's political culture

and extended back to the 16th century

when Ivan the Terrible had created one

of History's first secret police forces

the Checker and secret police was set up

in December

1917 and the main directorate of

Correctional labor camps was founded not

long after the latter became known as

the Gulag an abbreviation of its name

Stalin expanded his Camp system far and

wide anyone who was in any way deemed a

threat to the regime or Soviet

principles was liable to find themselves

sent to labor camps in Siberia and the

frozen Arctic the very places Stalin had

been sent so regularly in his younger

years the 1930s saw the system reach a

level of severity not previously seen

overall between 1930 and the end of

Stalin's rule in

1953 over 4 million people were sent to

the gulag camps furthermore the

conditions were much worse than had been

the case under the tarist system of

Siberian Exile Stalin survived his

spells in the Frozen East and North over

1 and a half million of the people sent

to the gulag camps by Stalin's

government between 1930 and

1953 did

not many of those who ended up in the

gulag camps were victims of the Great

Purge which Stalin orchestrated between

1936 and

1938 the peak of which came in

1937 this was undertaken by Stalin in an

effort to cement his control over the

Soviet Union though it is hard to see

how he perceived that there was any real

threat to his position by the mid

1930s Beyond General discontent with

elements of Soviet Economic Policy the

Great Purge began with efforts to root

out any possible opponents from within

the senior members of the Communist

political

establishment it then expanded outwards

to local officials and provincial party

members soon the Red Army was being

systematically scoured for Imaginary

enemies the final stages of the Great

Purge was still underway when the Second

World War began with Nikolai yof for

instance a figure who had overseen many

of the purges on Stalin's behalf being

executed in February 1940 as his master

turned on him too attempting to blame

his underlings for

excesses in total over a period of 2 and

a/ qu years between the summer of

1936 and late

1938 upwards of 3/4 of a million people

were executed and hundreds of thousands

more were sent to the camps or otherwise

punished an unexpected consequence of

this was that the Red Army was deprived

of some of its best generals and

divisional commanders just as the

USSR was about to head into the largest

war in human

history the most notorious element of

Stalin's Great Purge was the Moscow show

trials these were a series of stage

trials held in Moscow between

1936 and

1938 in which the Great Purge was

justified by dragging Stalin's old

enemies from the trotskyite faction and

right opposition in the 1920s out of

retirement and obscurity and placing

them on trial in public in the capital

amongst those that Stalin ordered to be

placed on trial in this manner were

gregori zenov and Lev kenv the two

figures who had aided his rise to power

back in the mid 1920s and then had been

violently ostracized by him from the

polit bureau

as well as Nikolai

bukharin many of these men made

elaborate confessions when questioned on

the stand the manner in which they

implicated themselves shocked

International observers and inspired

Arthur kler to write Darkness at noon

one of the great novels of the 20th

century yet the motivations of those who

confessed to all manner of invented

crimes are hardly too mysterious

they were told by Stalin that if they

played along with the trials in public

he would spare their lives as soon as

the trials were over they were all

executed in the basement of the prison

they were being detained

in as the Great Purge was underway the

second 5-year plan was coming to a

conclusion this had been initiated

straight after the first 5-year plan by

Stalin and ran to 1936 7 it was followed

immediately afterwards by the third

5-year plan which was interrupted in

1941 by the German invasion of the

Soviet Union both of these continued to

see steady improvements in industrial

productivity and by the end of the 1930s

the USSR was beginning to catch up with

Germany in many elements of heavy

industry moreover The Agrarian

catastrophes of the first 5-year plan

were not repeated Stalin who had once

attended a religious Seminary ordered a

major attack on the Orthodox Church

through the second plan and the mass

confiscation of church land incentives

were introduced to encourage Factory

workers to increase their

productivity all of this met with

considerable success the Russian economy

would not have been capable of the level

of industrial productivity

that allowed it to defeat the Nazis in

the second world war had it been so

invaded in saris times moreover the

groundwork was laid in the three decades

between the mid 1920s and Stalin's death

in 1953 for the excellent growth rates

which the Soviet economy sustained

through the 1950s and

1960s it was only in the mid 1970s when

systemic issues emerged within the the

economic planning of the Soviet system

that the economy of the

USSR began to

stagnate so what did all this amount to

The Peculiar mix of 5year plans that

were much more effective than many

observers would like to admit the brutal

manner in which end goals justifi

Draconian means the ruthless

centralization of power in the hands of

one person and the near total Crackdown

on any political or social

opposition historians in the second half

of the 20th century were uncomfortable

with describing this simply as

communism in light of this the term

stalinism was developed as early as the

1930s though Stalin himself disliked the

word and it only entered wide usage

after his death essentially stalinism

combined elements of Communism and

leninism into a new system which was

suffused with a ruthless application of

policy and a dictatorial centralization

of power within stalinism the

dictatorship of the proletariat which

earlier communist theorists had written

about became the dictatorship of Stalin

and Stalin alone things like famine Mass

arrests show trials ethnic cleansing Ing

and mass murder were all presented as

necessary evils on the road to Communism

while a pervasive Cult of leadership

suffused Soviet Society stalinism was

communism crossed with a leadership cult

that had no moral

barometer stalinism would soon be

pitched against the other political

ideology that emerged in Europe in the

interwar period

fascism had first emerged in Italy in

1922 though it is with Germany that it

will forever be

Associated the Nazis had claimed power

there in

1933 and had immediately set about

trying to overturn the terms of the

Treaty of Versa which had dismantled the

German Empire in

1919 and severely curtailed Germany's

strength as a European nation fascism

was a complicated

ideology a large number of the fascist

leaders in Italy Germany and elsewhere

had previously been involved in

communist movements in their countries

before becoming fascists and indeed the

Nazis conceived of themselves as

National

socialists this early entanglement with

Communism had led to a bitter rivalry

and the Nazis perceived the Bolsheviks

of Russia as being their main

ideological enemy a legacy of the

running Street battles that had been

fought between German Communists and

right-wing groups in Berlin Munich and

other cities back during the German

Revolution of

1919 as the Nazis expanded to

aggressively Annex Austria and

Czechoslovakia in 1938 and

1939 it appeared inevitable that someday

the German and the Soviets would end up

at War the world was consequently

shocked to learn that on the 23rd of

August

1939 the Soviet foreign minister VES

Molotov who Stalin had only appointed 3

months earlier had negotiated a major

diplomatic agreement with his German

counterpart Yim Fon ribbon trop the

molotov ribbon trop pact laid out a

non-aggression agreement between the two

Nations and pav the way for the Nazis to

invade Poland 9 days

later the molotov ribbon trop pact could

just as easily have been called the

Hitler Stalin pact to the rest of the

world it was simply a non-aggression

agreement but secret Clauses were

included and kept private these allowed

for Hitler to conquer the bulk of Poland

while St Stalin was to be allowed to

occupy the Eastern sections of Poland

the Baltic states of Latvia Estonia and

much of Lithuania as well as Finland in

essence this was an agreement between

the Nazi and Soviet dictators whereby

they would conquer most of the lands in

Eastern Europe which the German Empire

and the Russian Empire had lost at the

end of the first world war and in the

course of the Russian Civil War the

Nazis invaded Poland on the 1st of

September

1939 triggering the second world war as

Britain and France declared war on

Germany 2 days later in response just

over 2 weeks later on the 17th of

September Stalin ordered his forces into

Eastern Poland to make good on his

claims there too it wasn't until the

following year in the summer of 1940

that Stalin implemented measures to

occupy the Baltic states while Soviet

troops also occupied the provinces of

bessarabia and Northern bukovina in the

Northern parts of Romania in late June

and early July

1940 Stalin had been slow in

implementing the terms of the molotov

ribbon throp pact when it came to the

Baltic states

the delay was partly because the Nazi

invasion of the low countries and France

in May 1940 had provided a smoke screen

for Stalin to do so more importantly he

had been distracted by events elsewhere

after the conquest of Eastern Poland in

the Autumn of

1939 the Soviet Red Army had turned its

attentions to Finland Stalin ordered his

troops over the border into the country

on the 30th of of November

1939 it had been expected that what

became known as the winter War would be

a short sharp Affair one in which the

might of the Red Army would quickly

conquer Finland a country of just 3.7

million people the Soviet dictator began

to receive frustrating reports within

days the fins were proving unusually

resilient and were engaged in a Guerilla

war that included homemade incendiary

devices which they ironically named

Molotov cocktails in recognition that

their country was being invaded because

of the molotov ribbon trop PCT the

winter War would drag on until mid-march

when peace terms were agreed whereby

Finland seeded less than 10% of its

territory to the

USSR the conflict highlighted the

weaknesses of the Red Army many of which

which was

self-inflicted the Great Purge of the

1930s had seen many of Russia's foremost

generals ousted or killed by Stalin he

only had himself to blame now that his

armed forces were failing to defeat

small Nations like Finland on the

battlefield the deficiencies in the

leadership and fighting capabilities of

the Red Army would become much more

serious in the summer of 1941

the molotov ribbon trop pact had

established a treaty of non-aggression

between Germany and the USSR for 10

years having conquered Western Europe in

less than 7 weeks in May and June

1940 the Nazis had initiated the Battle

of Britain but Hitler soon grew weary of

trying to bludgeon the British into

submission and turned his attention

eastwards here was the real ideolog iCal

foe as far as the Nazi dictator was

concerned only through war with the

Soviet Union would the laban's realm or

living space which was so Central to

Nazi political and racial ideology be

made available accordingly he began

preparing operation Barbarosa the

invasion of the Soviet Union whereby 3

million men would invade Stalin's Nation

on the 20 2nd of June

1941 a great criticism which was leveled

against Stalin in his own time and ever

since concerned the lackluster manner in

which he prepared for the Nazi invasion

it was very peculiar he was convinced

that the Germans were not going to do so

for some time and ignored intelligence

reports which demonstrated that millions

of German military personnel were

clearly being massed in Poland for the

invasion of the Soviet Union it is

possible there was an element of Wishful

Thinking here the debacle of the winter

War had dented Stalin's confidence in

the Red Army and on the 13th of April

1941 he had agreed to a non-aggression

pact with the Empire of Japan an ally of

Germany's in the hope that this would

delay any potential Nazi

offensive it didn't and on the 22nd of

June

1941 operation Barbarosa

commenced the Nazi invasion of the

Soviet Union went as badly as it

possibly could have for Stalin in the

first 3 and a half months Eastern Poland

and bellarus were quickly overrun and

the German Army group South moved

quickly into Ukraine

large scale encirclements of detachments

of the Red Army led to the capture of

hundreds of thousands of Soviet

prisoners of war in July August and

September while thousands of Russian

tanks and airplanes were captured keev

fell in late September by October the

race was on to capture Moscow and

Leningrad before the worst of the

Russian winter set in Stalin's response

to all of this was not immediately good

it has been argued that he suffered some

sort of temporary psychological collapse

following the German invasion one which

meant that it was Molotov rather than

Stalin who addressed the Russian people

via radio shortly after the invasion to

alert them to what was happening one

version of events also has it that in

the first weeks of the campaign Stalin

was in talks with the Bulgarian

Ambassador in Moscow Ivan stamenov to

see if the bulgarians would actors

intermediaries to broker peace terms It

is believed Stalin pondered the

possibility of relinquishing Eastern

Poland and much of Ukraine and bellarus

to the Nazis in return for peace the

veracity of this has never been 100%

established as much of the evidence of

such talks would have been

comprehensively destroyed in the years

that

followed what is clear is it while

Stalin's initial reaction to the

invasion by the Nazis was not ideal he

quickly kicked into action within days

of the invasion he issued an order that

the Red Army was to engage in scorched

Earth tactics whereby crops were to be

burned and everything that could be of

value to the enemy was to be either

destroyed or removed before the Nazis

could claim it in this he was mimicking

the actions of the Russians during the

Napoleonic invasion of Russia in

1812 on the 30th of June 1941 he

established the State Defense committee

to manage the war effort centrally with

himself as Supreme Commander other

measures involved mobilizing vast parts

of the Soviet population to begin

working in Munitions and armaments

factories while the women of Moscow were

co-opted into digging defensive

Earthworks around the city in the Autumn

of

1941 as the months went by Stalin grew

into the position of wartime leader and

offered effective leadership of the

Soviet Union during what became known to

Russians as the Great Patriotic War his

leadership was not pleasant by any means

atrocities were committed against

collaborators recruits to the Red Army

were treated as cannon fodder and the

nkvd and other security branches

conducted a Relentless propaganda war

against their own people but ultimately

Moscow and Leningrad held out against

the Nazi assault and more than anywhere

the second world war was won by the

Soviets on the Eastern

Front a sign of how ruthless darling

could be was the case of his own son

from his first marriage Yakov was

captured on the front lines in mid July

1941 when Stalin learned of this he

expressed dismay that he had not killed

himself before being captured he even

had yakov's wife temporarily arrested

Stalin would eventually refuse to

negotiate terms for the return of his

son to Russia and he died at Saxon Howen

concentration camp in April

1943 by then the war had turned the

focus of it in the second half of

1942 had switched to the city that bore

Stalin's own name Stalingrad on the

vulgar River was considered the key to

the oil fields of the

Caucasus Hitler ordered a large assault

on the city in the late summer of

1942 the belief now being that depriving

the Soviets of their oil sources might

be the only way to achieve victory in

the war after the United States joined

the conflict in December

1941 Stalin issued order number

227 on the 28th of July 1942 in response

in this he issued the famous instruction

not a step back henceforth the Red Army

was to hold firm and not surrender

Stalingrad to the enemy one of the

bloodiest military clashes in history

followed during which the Germans nearly

secured control over the city in

September

1942 but the Red Army fought back in

October and in November launched

operation Uranus through this the German

sixth Army was encircled with their

supplies cut off and no possibility of

major

reinforcement the sixth Army Was

Defeated at the end of January

1943 with this Soviet Victory on the

Eastern Front became something of an

inevitability though it would take 2 and

a half more years of bitter fighting

before the Germans were pushed all the

way back to B

Berlin during that 2 and 1/2 year period

Stalin was attending a growing number of

Allied conferences and War Summits the

most important were those held at Tan in

Iran in late November

1943 at Yalta in the Crimea in February

1945 and at potam in Germany in the

summer of

1945 after the Germans were defeated

during these the postwar settlement of

Europe was debated and negotiated over

between Stalin Churchill and President

Roosevelt of the United States Stalin

had a surprisingly good working

relationship with

Roosevelt he and Churchill clashed

frequently the major source of tension

was the postwar status of Poland Greece

and several other countries

Stalin pushed for these countries which

the Red Army was liberating to be

spheres of Soviet influence after the

war Churchill would eventually win out

when it came to Greece though Poland

would fall into the Soviet sphere by

Dent of being wholly occupied by the Red

Army in the course of the second half of

1944 Beyond these discussions Stalin

pushed consistently for the opening of

new fronts by the Western allies in

southern and western Europe to take some

pressure off the Soviets on the Eastern

front it was also agreed that the USSR

would not declare war yet on the Empire

of Japan but would do so within 3 months

of the defeat of Nazi

Germany by the time Stalin met with

Churchill and Roosevelt at yelta in

February 194 5 the Western allies were

entering the Rin land in Western Germany

while the soldiers of the Red Army were

moving towards Berlin they encircled the

city and in April the battle for the

capital of the Third Reich commenced on

the 30th of April Hitler took his own

life and his nominated successor Joseph

Gobles imitated him the following day

Carl donitz the head of the German Navy

the CS Marina then took over as head of

a government operating from flansburg on

the German Danish border he surrendered

to the Western allies and the act of

surrender was signed at Reams in France

on the 7th of May Stalin immediately

objected to this stating that it was

unacceptable that the instrument of

surrender would be signed before us

British and French officials in France

when the Russian people had done the

heavy lifting in the war he was entirely

justified in this view an estimated 9

million Soviet soldiers lost their lives

in the war with a further 15 to 20

million Soviet civilians on top of that

whereas the combined death toll of the

British French and Americans was around

1 and A2 million in light of his

objections a second instrument of

surrender was signed by vilhelm kitle

the head of the German verak in front of

Soviet commanders in Berlin on the 8th

of May it was signed at 2300 hours in

the German Capital making it after

midnight on the 9th of May in Moscow for

this reason Victory Day is celebrated in

the former countries of the Soviet Union

each year on the 9th of May Stalin

oversaw the 1945 Moscow Victory Day

Parade on Red Square the largest

military parade ever held there on the

24th of June

1945 it involved over

40,000 Red Army

soldiers the argument over the signing

of the instrument of surrender was just

the first of a series of escalating

confrontations between Stalin and the

governments of the western allies once

the war was over Stalin honored his word

and declared war on the Empire of Japan

in early August

1945 though he was motivated as much by

a desire to claim parts of Manchuria and

the Korean Peninsula as to Aid the

Americans meanwhile in Europe it quickly

became evident that Poland was going to

be established with a pro- Soviet

communist government and that it like

numerous other countries in Eastern

Europe and the Balkans was about to

become a satellite of Stalin's Soviet

Empire though ysep bro Tito the partisan

leader of the Yugoslav Communists who

became ruler of the country after the

war would soon steer his own line

independent of Moscow the US managed to

win over Greece and Turkey through

extensive economic aid the main points

of contention thus became Germany and

Austria in the end after much wrangling

Austria was allowed to steer its own

path in line with the Moscow Treaty of

1943 and in

1955 became independent of both the US

and Soviet camps in the Cold War through

the Austrian state treaty even today it

remains an outlier in Central Europe in

not being a member of

NATO Germany became more contentious and

in the course of

1948 Stalin ordered that rail supplies

to West Berlin be prevented from passing

through the Soviet spheres of occupation

ultimately leading to the Berlin airlift

and the division of the country into

West Germany and communist East Germany

in

1949 while Europe was dividing fairly

evenly along pro- US and pro- Soviet

camps in the aftermath of the war the

situation was much more positive for

Stalin and the Communist cause in the

Far East Stalin had provided extensive

Aid to the Communists in the Chinese

Civil War going all the way back to the

mid 1920s when he had first come to

power and their struggle with the Quint

Tang the Chinese nationalists was just

beginning as he funneled extra arms and

Aid to the Communists who had emerged

from the end of the second World War

under the leadership of maong as much

the stronger of the two factions in the

Civil War the US was becoming equally

reluctant to continue providing Aid to

the nationalists who President Truman in

Washington correctly viewed as appalling

kleptocrats the Communists would emerge

Victorious from the Civil War in

1949 on the 6th of December that year

Mau headed for Moscow by train 10 days

later he and Stalin sat down in the

Kremlin to discuss future relations

between the world's most important

Communist States there were were

disagreements between the pair and their

diplomats over the next few weeks but on

the 14th of February 1950 the sinos

Soviet Treaty of friendship Alliance and

mutual assistance was signed it laid out

the basis for cooperation between the

USSR and the People's Republic of China

economically and

militarily at this stage Mau was very

much the junior partner and had

succeeded in cutting China off from the

Western Powers he scored a further

Victory months later when the Korean War

erupted a clash over a minor

geopolitical region but one which

swallowed up us resources and attentions

for years to

come Stalin had other reasons to feel

buoyant as the 1940s ended and the 1950s

began in

1942 like many of the other major Powers

involved in the second world war Stalin

had ordered the development of a Soviet

nuclear weapons program it ploted along

making little progress in various

research facilities near Moscow down to

1945 what changed matters was when the

US dropped its two nuclear weapons on

Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945

as soon as this happened Stalin informed

his security forces that the development

of a nuclear weapon was now a priority

until such time as the USSR had a

comparable weapon it was vulnerable he

appointed laen Bara the head of the

Soviet Security Services during the war

to head up the reinvigorated program

over the next 3 years barrier over saw

the development of an implosion type

nuclear weapon similar to the bomb that

the Americans had dropped on

Nagasaki they were aided by the fact

that Stalin spiring in the US headed by

Ethel and Julius Rosenberg had acquired

Intelligence on the Manhattan Project

there the Soviets tested their first

nuclear weapon rds1 or first lightning

at a sight in Kazakhstan on the 29 of

August

1949 Stalin was said to have been

immensely pleased when he received news

of the successful test an even playing

field had at least temporarily been

achieved in the Cold War though he would

live long enough to see the Americans

gain the Competitive Edge with the

detonation of the first Hydrogen Bomb in

1952

as successful as the late 1940s and

early 1950s were for Stalin in terms of

the accelerating Cold War he was never

satisfied with developments and remained

a paranoid figure resorting to Terror

tactics were he felt appropriate towards

the end of the war in

1944 he had engaged in the forc

transplantation of hundreds of thousands

of Chens from the northern caucuses to

Siberia and other parts of Russia

falsely claiming that they had

collaborated extensively with the

Germans this act of ethnic cleansing was

followed by another major Soviet famine

in 1946 and

1947 one which killed at least 1 million

people in this case the cause of the

famine was poor weather and the Damage

inflicted on the Soviet economy by the

Germans

but Stalin compounded the problem

through a poorly conceived rationing

system and the appointment of Gori

malenkov a figure with little or no

knowledge of agricultural Affairs to

head up the relief program in the early

1950s Stalin's atrocities included a

purging of Georgia through the mingran

affair where he believed barrier's

influence had become too great he was

also largely responsible for a

nationwide Purge of Jewish doctors and

other professionals from their positions

after he became convinced that his own

Jewish Physicians were trying to kill

him and other leading Soviet

officials that Stalin's paranoia and

wroth had turned towards Russia's

doctors is indicative of his growing

health problems he was suffering from a

of issues ones which led him to employ a

team of doctors and also to spend

several months of every year at his data

in abazia in the

Caucasus he was also increasingly

reclusive once the war celebrations and

other events commemorating the conflict

had been concluded in

1945 he only gave a handful of public

speeches for the remainder of his life

he also decided to get rid of the polit

bureau and replace it with a new

presidium in

1952 given his behavior those closest to

him must have been glad when the old

leader was found face down on the floor

on the 1st of March

1953 he had suffered a major cerebral

hemorrhage he died 4 days later on the

5th of March in Moscow at 74 years of

age after what by all accounts was a

painful death his State funeral was held

3 days later and he was interred in

Lenin's melum alongside his predecessor

who before his own end had tried to warn

the Bolshevik leadership about his

successor flaws once a consensus had

developed in the years that followed

about how catastrophic elements of

Stalin's Reign had been a decision was

taken to remove his remains from the

melum in

1961 and they were buried in the Kremlin

wall

necropolis Stalin's death ushered in a

period of uncertainty in the Soviet

Union a dedicated Tyrant until the very

end he had made no clear plans for how

the succession should occur and his

dictatorial approach was such that there

was no obvious successor the foreign

minister

Molotov had seemed like a natural Heir

for much of the

1940s but he had fallen out of favor at

the end of the

1940s thus power devolved to a committee

of members of the presidium including

Bara malankov and Lazar

kaganovich eventually after months of

wrangling Nikita Kristof a figure who

had governed Ukraine for many years is

emerged as the new de facto leader of

the Soviet Union he began the gradual

process of D

stalinization in the mid1 1950s he

ordered investigations into the purges

of the

1930s and the excessive behavior of

Stalin as ruler then on the 25th of

February

1956 he gave a closed speech to the 20th

party Congress in which he denounced

Stalin's excesses and the Bloodshed of

his time as head of the

USSR a year later he expelled Molotov

malankov and kaganovich from the central

leadership and banished them to remote

parts of the Soviet Union excising the

unreformed stalinists from the party a

more public program of dest

stalinization followed in the Years

thereafter with staling being renamed as

vulgarr in

1961 as the decades have gone by and

particularly so since the end of the

Cold War in the early

1990s the full extent of Stalin's crimes

has been made

public the British American historian

Robert Conquest once stated that no one

shaped the course of the 20th century

and the lives of more people within it

than did Joseph Stalin there is a lot of

truth to this Stalin ruled the Soviet

Union for three decades in which the

country emerged from the chaos of the

Russian Civil War to become one of the

two Global

superpowers his legacy was the Cold War

that outlasted him for nearly 40 years

it would not have been possible had it

not been for the enormous industrial and

economic gains

which occurred in Soviet Society through

Stalin's 5-year plans though they came

at a terrible price for the victims of

the hollida Moore and the state Terror

which Stalin employed to acquire

complete control over Russian Society it

was also Stalin more so than any figure

other than Winston Churchill who led the

Allied victory over Nazi Germany if the

Soviets had not held firm in the autumn

and winter of

1941 under Stalin's leadership the

history of the 20th century could have

been very different yet these

substantial facts aside there is also no

denying that Stalin was an appalling

dictator a man so steeped in Bloodshed

that none of his achievements were not

colored by his tyrannical behavior in

total when the Great per

the show trials the ethnic cleansing the

Hol deore of the early

1930s and the general attrition that

characterized Soviet life under his rule

are all taken into account Stalin was

directly responsible for the deaths of

upwards of 15 million people some

unintentionally and many

intentionally this makes him one of the

foremost Mass murderers in his history

eclipsed only in the modern world by his

enemy and his ally Adolf Hitler and

madong in many ways Stalin could be said

to be the most successful dictator in

history as every enemy Who Rose against

him was defeated or held in check and it

could be said that the only enemy that

finally vanquished him was death itself

what do you think of Joseph Stalin was

he genuinely a communist who believed

that the brutal policies he oversaw were

the only means of securing the future of

the Soviet Union and its path towards

communism or should he be described

primarily as a power hungry dictator and

was he the crucial figure in the Allied

victory over the Nazis dur during the

second world war please let us know in

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