Joseph Stalin, General Secretary, Soviet
Communist Party, 1929--1953
The Cold War--1945-1991, 1992
GALE|K16050002 Joseph Stalin, Ge The Cold War--19 1992 K12-Reference /ic/w hic/Documen
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Born: December 21, 1879 in Gori, Russia
Died: March 05, 1953 in Moscow, Russia
Nationality: Soviet
Occupation: Dictator
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Joseph Stalin, General Secretary, Soviet Communist Party, 1929--1953
Joseph Stalin, Soviet dictator from 1929 until his death in 1953, rivals Adolf Hitler as the twentieth
century's most infamous political figure. Stalin's influence on the development of the Soviet Union
after the 1917 revolution was immense. It has been argued that during the 1930s he carried out
the real revolution when he radically transformed Soviet society and created institutions that
remained intact through most of the twentieth century and bore testimony to his influence: the all-
pervasive role of the secret police and its implied threat of terror; the dominance of the party,
especially over economic affairs; and the cult of personality surrounding Soviet leaders. During
World War II Stalin maintained an uneasy alliance with the United States and Great Britain, an
alliance marked by suspicion and mistrust. His pursuit of Soviet strategic interests during the war
and after, particularly in Eastern Europe and Germany, set the stage for a series of moves and
countermoves that culminated in the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West.
Stalin was born Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili in the Georgian village of Gori. His father, a
shoemaker, died in a drunken brawl when Stalin was eleven, leaving his mother, a peasant
woman, to bring him up. She worked to ensure his education so that he could enter the Orthodox
priesthood. At the Tiflis seminary between 1894 and 1898, however, he began his political
activity, writing poems for a nationalist Georgian paper under the pseudonym Koba, derived from
a character in a minor Georgian novel.
Stalin's political activities led to his expulsion from the seminary. He joined the fledgling Social
Democratic Labor party and organized workers in Transcaucasia. For this activity he was
arrested and exiled to Siberia on more than one occasion. He escaped each time, but it has been
estimated that between 1902 and 1917 Stalin spent roughly seven years in exile. Sometime
between 1902 and 1904 he married Ekaterina Svandize, who bore a son, Yakov, in 1908. She
died shortly afterwards, and Stalin gave the child over to her relatives to bring up.
The party split in 1903 into two factions: the Bolsheviks, the radical wing led by V. I. Lenin who
called for continuous political agitation, and the more moderate Mensheviks, who believed that
communism would follow Russia's natural evolution into a capitalist state. Stalin sided with the
Bolshevik wing, which ultimately became the Communist party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). He
caught the attention of Lenin, who made him a member of the Bolshevik Central Committee in
1912 and assigned him to write for Pravda, the party newspaper in Saint Petersburg. In 1913 he
took for his byline his second and most famous pseudonym, Stalin.
Russian Revolution of 1917
The importance of Stalin's role in the 1917 Russian Revolution is debatable. Eyewitnesses, most
notably Leon Trotsky-later Stalin's most important rival-and the American journalist John Reed,
accord him little distinction for leadership. During the October seizure of power by the
communists Stalin remained behind the scenes, working in the editorial offices of Pravda.
From 1917 until 1922 Stalin acted as people's commissar for nationalities, dealing with the thorny
problem of Soviet policy toward the ethnic minorities of the former Russian Empire. Stalin
envisioned the Soviet Union as a highly centralized, Russian-dominated federal state, in essence
an updated version of the old imperial model. But Lenin considered Stalin's ardent Russian
nationalism excessive, and this point would become a source of conflict between them.
General Secretary
In 1922 Stalin was named general secretary of the party, a position he would ultimately transform
into the center of political authority in the Soviet Union. By this time Lenin, in failing health, had
become alarmed at Stalin's methods and intentions. In a letter he wrote shortly before his death,
Lenin warned his colleagues of Stalin's intolerance and capriciousness and expressed fears that
as general secretary Stalin might abuse his power. He urged that Stalin be removed from his
post, but ill health prevented him from doing more. Lenin died in 1924, and by 1929 Stalin had
succeeded in neutralizing his most serious rivals.
Collectivization
In 1930 Stalin reversed Lenin's New Economic Policy (NEP), which in a partial retreat from
socialism had encouraged free enterprise as a way to rebuild the economy, shattered from the
civil war (1917--1920). The NEP allowed private merchants and kulaks (landholding peasants) to
coexist with the Bolsheviks and compete with the state cooperatives. Stalin, however, undertook
to nationalize agriculture with the ostensible aim of bringing communism to the countryside. But
collectivization revealed, if nothing else, the basic hostility of the Bolsheviks toward the peasantry.
Peasants who resisted Stalin's decree-and many slaughtered their livestock rather than let them
be seized-were summarily executed or sent to prison work camps, the infamous gulags.
Estimates vary, but by the time collectivization had run its course in 1933, agricultural output had
declined by more than half, and roughly 5 million peasants had been imprisoned in the gulags.
Stalin himself admitted later to Winston Churchill to a total of 10 million deaths. Some 3.3 to 3.5
million died of starvation; in his memoirs Nikita S. Khrushchev-Stalin's successor-tells of a train
that reached Kiev after a journey through the Ukraine picking up the bodies of those who had
starved to death. Differences with his wife over the policy of collectivization aggravated Stalin's
already difficult second marriage, and in 1932 his wife Nadezhda committed suicide.
When the first horrors of collectivization could no longer be ignored, Stalin defended his actions to
his colleagues, insisting in a speech of 2 March 1930 that local party members, "dizzy with
success," had misunderstood his very simple instructions. Later, Stalin would blame the failures
of collectivization on his enemies-kulaks, rightists, Trokskyites, and other counterrevolutionaries.
Industrialization
Stalin's other monumental economic task at this time was to industrialize the Soviet Union, with
the aim of transforming it into an advanced socialist state. His ambitious plan was to a large
extent made possible by the burgeoning population of the gulags, which provided a massive
source of slave labor. The expansion of heavy industry, as laid out in the first five-year plan in
1928, was officially called a success in 1932. By the German invasion on 22 June 1941, Soviet
industrial production had increased sixfold.
In a series of purges between 1933 and 1939 Stalin imposed his will on the Soviet Union. He
transformed the party into an instrument to serve his personal dictatorship, thereby ensuring that
it would never again be a revolutionary movement. Approximately half of the 1.2 million members
of the party were arrested, and relatively few regained their freedom. Beginning in the summer of
1937 the high command of the Red Army was largely decimated, followed by the liquidation of
half of the officer corps.
Many prominent party figures found themselves accused of conspiring to murder Stalin or of
working for foreign intelligence services and were given spectacular show trials, found guilty, and
sentenced to death. The first show trial took place in August 1936 and ended with the shooting of
Stalin's close colleagues, Grigori Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, along with fourteen others. The
third great trial, held in March 1938, featured Nilolai Bukharin, who had opposed collectivization,
and Aleksei Rykov, Lenin's successor as prime minister.
A sense of suffocating fear pervaded Soviet society during these years, a reflection of the
systematic terror perpetrated by Stalin's secret police, the People's Commissariat of Internal
Affairs (NKVD). Millions of citizens were arrested and charged with a variety of offenses-
conspiracy, espionage, sabotage. What made the terror so stifling was its secret pervasiveness;
no group or individual was immune, and the denunciations, arrests, and sentencings were carried
out with little fanfare: the accused simply disappeared, assumed to have been either executed or
transported to the work camps.
One story concerns two engineers and their families who were arrested because the first received
a package containing shoes, clothes, and toys from an uncle in Poland. The second engineer
was arrested and sentenced to ten years because he was a friend of the first.
Contact with foreigners was particularly dangerous. A cook answered a newspaper advertisement
for a position, which turned out to be at the Japanese embassy. He got the job, but before he
could begin work he was arrested and charged with espionage.
The prison work camps-the gulags-became an integral part of the mass terror. It has been
estimated that by 1937--1938 they held as many as eight million prisoners. The most infamous
camps were in the Soviet Far East near the goldfields of Kolyma. These camps, each with about
ten thousand prisoners, were spread across the Artic tundra in an area four times the size of
France. Outside work was compulsory until the temperature reached minus fifty degrees celsius.
Mortality rates at the Kolyma camps were particularly high, and most prisoners did not live more
than a year or two. In all about twelve million died in Stalin's camps between 1936 and 1950.
Cult of Personality
The purges coincided with the beginning of Stalin's cult of personality, when he was accorded the
status of demigod. By 1933 he had become the "Father of the Soviet People" and the "Great
Teacher." Poems and songs were written about him; his writings were studied; his dark eyes
stared out from prominently displayed pictures. An engineer passing through Moscow counted
101 portraits and busts of Stalin in the Kazan station. Every meeting that took place in the Soviet
Union ended with a standing ovation for Stalin, and all details of the meeting-including the exact
length of the applause-were reported by the press. The "ungainly dwarf of a man" rarely
appeared, however, before the public, preferring to remain behind the walls of his country dacha.
Foreign Policy Before World War II
Stalin's foreign policy before World War II was largely isolationist. He did, however, recognize the
growing threat of Hitler's Germany and took steps to counter the rise of fascism. He established
relations with the United States in 1933 and joined the League of Nations in 1934. In 1935 he
effected the so-called Popular Front strategy by directing foreign Communist parties to join
political coalitions that were openly antifascist. During the Spanish civil war (1936--1939) between
the Republicans, the legally elected government, and the Loyalists, led by General Francisco
Franco and supported by Germany and Italy, Stalin provided military assistance to the
Republican forces in the hopes of protracting the war and diverting German attention to the West.
When it became apparent to Stalin that the Loyalists would be victorious, he terminated Soviet
aid and even helped to purge the Republican forces of Bolshevik elements. The purge was to
prevent the existence of communist parties outside Moscow's control.
Non-Aggression Pact
On 28 September 1939, in a secret protocol to the Non-Aggression Pact, Hitler and Stalin
claimed those parts of Europe that each considered essential to his country's strategic interests.
For Stalin this meant regaining former parts of the Russian Empire that had been lost at the end
of World War I: eastern Poland, parts of Romania, the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, and
Estonia, and Finland. Finland put up the most resistance, refusing to grant Stalin territory and
bases for the Soviet navy. He reacted by invading Finland on 30 November 1940. The Finns
fought back valiantly throughout the winter but were forced in March 1941 to sue for peace and
cede territory.
German Invasion
Stalin's annexations enlarged the Soviet Union's strategic boundaries. By July 1940 the Soviet
Union encompassed an additional 286,000 square miles and had virtually restored the borders of
imperial Russia. In November 1940 Stalin hinted at further territorial ambitions: he wanted
German recognition of Soviet interests in large parts of Iraq and Iran, so as to gain access to the
Persian Gulf and the oil fields of the Middle East. On 22 June 1941 three German army groups
crossed the eastern frontier of Poland in a surprise attack on the Soviet Union.
The Red Army suffered tremendous losses that summer and fall: by 26 September 665,000
Soviet soldiers surrendered at Kiev. The Germans continued the push east, hoping to take
Moscow by winter and force a Soviet capitulation. Stalin's army narrowly prevented the capture of
the city, and the onset of winter halted further offensive operations until the following year. In the
summer of 1942 Hitler continued his drive against the Soviet army, hoping to capture the Ploesti
oil fields in the Caucasus. He planned to capture Stalingrad on the way to secure his flank against
future Soviet attacks from the interior. But Stalingrad was not taken, and the fighting continued
until General Friedrich Paulus surrendered the German forces on 30 January 1943.
Hitler's last offensive on the Soviet front ended with the Soviet victory at Kursk in July 1943. From
then on, the Red Army was able to keep the Germans on the defensive until they surrendered on
8 May 1945.
Role as Military Leader
Stalin maintained a high degree of control over the military during the war, but his abilities as a
strategist and leader are debatable. In the 1930s he had purged the Red Army of many of its best
officers. In the Winter War of 1939--1940 with Finland, the army had performed miserably against
the Finns. Stalin repeatedly ignored warnings from foreign governments and his own generals
and spies that Hitler was going to invade the Soviet Union, preferring to believe that he could
remain on Hitler's good side. Once war did come he made a series of tactical errors that
culminated in the surrender of Kiev, the low point of the Soviet war effort. After the Germans
renewed their offense in 1942, Stalin convinced himself that Moscow was their goal when actually
it was to take the Crimea. But as the war progressed Stalin's reputation grew, especially after the
victory at Stalingrad.
Wartime Relations with Allied Leaders
The German invasion immediately put Stalin in the Allied camp alongside Franklin D. Roosevelt
and Winston Churchill. For Stalin this was a marriage of convenience. He was firmly convinced
that Roosevelt and Churchill intended to let the Soviet Union bear the brunt of the war against
Hitler. At Stalin's urging, Roosevelt promised in May 1942 to open a second front in Europe
against the Germans by the end of the year, in order to take pressure off the Red Army.
Roosevelt, however, opted for a different proposal, put forth by the British, calling for a
preliminary attack in North Africa. This action delayed the invasion of the Continent until June
1944. To Stalin, who made the establishment of an early second front a test of Anglo-American
intentions, this two-year delay did nothing more than feed his paranoia.
Stalin was convinced throughout the war that his allies would not hesitate to make a separate
peace with Hitler at Soviet expense. When German general Karl Wolff arrived in Bern in March
1945 to negotiate the possible surrender of German forces in northern Italy, Stalin demanded to
be included. Roosevelt decided against Soviet participation, feeling that it might spook the
Germans. Stalin immediately accused Roosevelt of plotting against him and claimed to know of
an arrangement whereby the Germans would allow Allied forces to move into Eastern Europe in
exchange for more favorable peace terms.
Postwar Relations with Allied Leaders
Stalin's postwar territorial aims played a strong role in his wartime relations with the Allied
leaders. As early as July 1941 Stalin announced that he intended to keep those parts of Poland
he acquired as a result of the Non-Aggression Pact. In December 1941 he urged Churchill to
support his bid for the Baltic states and parts of Finland and Romania. After Benito Mussolini fell
in July 1943 and the Italians were negotiating a possible peace, Stalin insisted on being included
so as to have a part in the occupation of Italy. At the Tehran Conference in November 1943 Stalin
announced that in return for declaring war on Japan he expected certain territorial concessions in
the Far East.
In February 1945 Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt met at Yalta in the Crimea, where they sealed
the fate of Poland. Churchill and Roosevelt accepted the provisional Polish government
supported by Moscow in return for the promise of free elections for the Polish people.
At the Potsdam Conference in July 1945 the division of Germany into occupation zones,
discussed in 1944, was further set. The conference effectively established the western boundary
for Soviet military expansion into Europe. It also set the stage for further disputes among the
Allies over their postwar policies toward Germany. Stalin wanted to cart off as much of Germany's
industrial plant as he could, both to help rebuild the Soviet economy and to prevent Germany's
recovery. Reparations figures were agreed upon at Potsdam, but not to Stalin's liking. The other
Allied powers by this point sought to rehabilitate Germany economically, knowing that not to do
so would mean future, costly Western aid.
Postwar Foreign Policy
Stalin's postwar foreign policy was a continuation of his wartime goals. His most immediate aim
was to secure the Soviet Union's strategic periphery. In Eastern Europe this meant gaining
political control over the areas that the Soviet army was then occupying. He based his strategy on
the assumption that the United States and Great Britain had ceded to the Soviet Union control of
the region's political future. The Soviets were aided by the extensive turnover of political parties
and leaders during the war-a turnover which left a vacuum of power across central Europe-and by
the respect they had earned for their resistance to the Fascist regimes.
The Soviet Bloc
The formation of the Soviet bloc was completed in two steps. The first, satellization, ensured that
the Eastern European states became Soviet allies. Stalin accomplished this by initially directing
regional communists to cooperate with other parties within the framework of coalition
governments. In the second stage the communists came to dominate the coalitions, which
included "fellow travelers," picked by Moscow and content to go along with Soviet directives. The
presence of fellow travelers gave a thin veneer of legitimacy to the process, largely for the benefit
of Western observers. True political rivals with real popular support, especially Social Democrats,
were neutralized. The third stage, Sovietization, saw the Soviets effectively in control and ready
to begin transforming the various economies and societies into copies of the Soviet model.
The satellization of Eastern Europe was largely completed by 1947--1948, although the timing
varied from country to country. The coalition government in Czechoslovakia, for instance, lasted
until the communist coup of March 1948. Czechoslovakia had been spared in order to ease
Western fears about the fate of Poland. Ensuring Soviet control of Poland was a prime concern of
Stalin, and the pseudocoalition ruled there from the beginning.
Marshall Plan
Stalin's postwar strategy in Western Europe was different. He ordered the European Communist
parties to foment workers' strikes so as to cripple the political structures and economies. The
resulting economic chaos led to the Marshall Plan, a U.S. offer of financial assistance made to
the European countries in June 1947.
In September 1947 Stalin created the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform) in order to
consolidate Soviet power over the regional Communist parties that were expected to come to
power or already were in power. Stalin's concern was that these parties, once in command, might
not show unquestioning obedience to the Soviet Union; this was the case when Poland and
Czechoslovakia initially indicated that they would accept U.S Marshall Plan aid. Stalin's foreign
minister, Vyacheslav Michailovich Molotov, had already declined the U.S. offer on behalf of the
Soviet Union when he walked out of a meeting in Paris in June 1947. The Eastern European
foreign ministers were then summoned to Moscow, reprimanded, and ordered not to accept help
from the United States.
Relations with Foreign Communist Movements
The Soviet Union supported only those foreign communist movements that Moscow could expect
to control. However, almost every communist movement that succeeded on its own merits-
without the Soviet Union's direct or indirect support-had a strongly nationalistic component that
was incompatible with Soviet hegemony. A case in point was Yugoslavia: Josip Broz Tito
continued to pursue his own foreign and economic policy after World War II. He provided aid to
the communists during the Greek civil war in 1948, a policy that threatened Great Britain's
traditional interest in the region. Feeling no doubt that this might endanger Soviet actions in
Eastern Europe, Stalin ordered Tito in early 1948 to stop aiding the Greeks. Tito refused, and
Stalin expelled the Yugoslavs from the Cominform in June 1948.
Stalin also had trouble with the Chinese communists. Poor relations had existed since the
abortive Chinese communist revolution in the 1920s. After World War II Stalin, underestimating
the communists' power, urged Mao Zedong, the Chinese communist leader, to join the nationalist
government of Chiang Kai-shek. Mao preferred to fight the nationalists, and the communists
eventually came to power on 1 October 1949. Stalin continued to provide economic assistance to
the Chinese in the hope of ensuring Chinese dependency, but the relationship continued to be
marked by mistrust. The Chinese situation was a foreign-policy defeat for Stalin because he could
never be sure that the Soviet Union's eastern border would be secure.
The Berlin Blockade
By 1948 the British and Americans realized the necessity, if not the desirability, of an
economically and politically reconstituted Germany. They had merged their occupation zones in
anticipation of German statehood, a merger to which Stalin strenuously objected. He challenged
Western plans for Germany by taking advantage of Berlin's isolation, eighty miles inside the
Soviet zone of occupation. On 18 June 1948, the day a new currency was introduced in the
western zones of Germany, the Soviets stopped all surface traffic between the West and Berlin,
citing technical problems with the routes. This was followed by a cutoff of electricity, coal, and
food to the city. The Anglo-American powers immediately began an airlift of essential supplies to
Berlin, which held out until Stalin called off the blockade in May 1949. The failure of the Berlin
blockade was an acute embarrassment to the Soviet government. Berlin had served as an exit
from the Soviet occupation zone for 2.6 million Germans. The city's stand was seen to be
symbolic of Western determination and competence in the face of ruthless Soviet designs.
Soviet Atomic Weaponry
On 29 August 1949 the Soviets detonated their first atomic device, finally achieving one of
Stalin's primary postwar goals: acquisition of the weapon that would allow the Soviets to attain
military parity with the United States. Ever since Stalin had been informed about the existence of
the bomb on 24 July 1945, he had outwardly appeared quite unimpressed by it. However, he had
immediately ordered his scientists and those captured from Nazi Germany to redouble their
efforts to develop fission. The American decision in the 1940s to maintain control over the
weapon and its technology contributed to Stalin's mistrust of Western intentions.
The Korean War
The Korean War (1950--1953) marked a serious miscalculation in Stalin's foreign policy.
Frustrated by Western European economic recovery, the failure of the Berlin blockade, and the
U.S. presence in Japan, he strongly encouraged, if not ordered, the communist government of
North Korea to invaded the noncommunist South. Stalin foresaw an easy victory because of the
apparent lack of importance accorded Korea in official U.S. pronouncements and the withdrawal
of U.S. troops from South Korea in June 1950. Secretary of State Dean Acheson, on 12 January
1950, had laid out the boundaries of the American defense perimeter, which ran "along the
Aleutians to Japan and then ... to the Ryukyus." Korea, however, was not mentioned and was
made conspicuous by its absence, something Stalin was sure to have noted.
North Korea invaded the South on 25 June 1950. Coming close to a quick victory, the North
Koreans were met by a hastily formed United Nations (UN) force composed largely of American
troops. By October the U.S. forces were counter-attacking and advancing to the Yalu River near
the Manchurian border. The Chinese, alarmed by the proximity of U.S. forces and fearing a
possible invasion, entered the war in November. Eventually a two-year stalemate developed
along the 38th parallel until an armistice was reached in July 1953.
Stalin did gain some advantages from the Korean War: the United States had to commit a large
number of troops to the peninsula, troops that otherwise could have been used to hinder Soviet
moves in Eastern Europe. Further, the Chinese became more dependent on Soviet military
equipment and on the Soviet Union itself, thereby delaying the eventual split between the two
countries.
But the Korean War fundamentally transformed American opinion towards the U.S.-Soviet rivalry.
Henceforth, military considerations would prevail over political ones in Washington. The recently
established North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) would be strengthened accordingly, soon
to include the military forces of a rearmed West Germany. Stalin's successors began negotiating
an end to the war soon after his death.
During his last years Stalin ruled more autocratically than ever. He assigned small groups of
advisers-known as sextets or quartets-to study particular problems and then present their
recommendations to him. By assigning more than one group to examine the same problem, he
was able to play his advisers off one another and prevent the emergence of any coordinated
opposition.
Revival of the Purges
The show trials that marked the "Great Purge" were revived, the latest victims being those
accused of Titoist affiliations or sympathies. In January 1953 Stalin accused the doctors in the
Kremlin of having murdered Andrei Zhdanov, a high-ranking party official. This charge,
undoubtedly false, was to serve as a pretext for another purge to eliminate more colleagues that
Stalin had come to regard with suspicion-Anastas Mikoyan, Lavrenty Beria, and Molotov would
have been the next to go. However, Stalin's death two months later on 5 March 1953 kept him
from conducting this last purge.
His death may have ended an era in Soviet history, but Stalin's influence persisted until the mid
1980s, when a new generation of Soviet leaders emerged that did not owe their early rise to
Stalin.
Source Citation:
"Joseph Stalin, General Secretary, Soviet Communist Party, 1929--1953." The Cold War--1945-
1991. Gale, 1992. Gale World History In Context. Web. 17 Dec. 2010.
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