"The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic." -Joseph Stalin
Stalin's Early LifeJoseph Stalin was born in Gori, Georgia on December 18, 1879. He was born as Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. When he was young he had small pox which left his face disfigured. Kids in his village teased him because of his face. His mother wanted to Stalin to be a priest and enrolled him in church school. After that he went to Tilfis Theological Seminary School, He began to read "Communist Manifesto" by Karl Marx. He came in contact with people who wanted Georgia separate from Russia, and he took an interest. Eventually he was expelled from school and began participating in protests under the name Koba.
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Russian Revolution
In 1912 Stalin was elected to serve in the Bolshevik Party, led by Vladimir Lenin. Russia underwent two revolutions and the Bolshevik Party took power in 1917. The strikes began because of the corrupt government. The government was run by Czar Nicholas II, he dissolved every new Duma elected. People were also upset because of the causalities their people sustained. They were upset over how agrarian Russia was compared to Germany and other powers.
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National Bolshevik Party Flag
Bolshevik Party
Bolshevik in Russian means "one of the majority." Vladimir Lenin was the leader of the Bolshevik Party, and Stalin was elected to it in 1912. Lenin's first act was to take Russia out of war so they could focus on their internal issues. The Bolsheviks formed the Soviet Union in 1922. Stalin became the Secretary General of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in the same year, he used this role to grow his political foundation and appoint his allies to government jobs.
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Rise To Power
After Lenin died in 1924, Stalin had a chance to take power. Before Lenin died he asked that Stalin and Trotsky be removed from power and the expanded to 100 members, when this message was read to the committee they didn't ask for compliance. In 1924 he became a part of the Politburo, which only had 7 members. By 1940 all of them had died except Stalin.
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Five Year Plan
Stalin had 3 five-year plans and they were focused on industry. He wanted a 110% increase in coal production, 200% in iron production, and 335% in electric power. He told the populace if they didn't industrialize then they couldn't defends themselves against western countries. Stakhanovites went into barren land to make towns and industries from nothing. Strikers were shot, and slow workers were imprisoned, but industries made drastic improvements.
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Treaty with Germany
On August 23rd, 1939 Germany and Russia signed the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact. This stated that neither country would invade each other for 10 years, and neither would aid a country under attack by the other. Stalin signed this because he thought it would help him improve his military before the inevitable war with Germany, and Hitler was preventing the country from fighting a two-front war.
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Stalin's Secret Police, The Cheka
Stalin's Secret Police
The first Russian Secret police were formed in 1917 and called the Cheka. Their purpose was to investigate counter revolutionary crimes, and were meant to be ended once the Bolshevik party had full control. Once they gained power they became Stalin's personal hitmen, and were disbanded after a civil war, and formed again later under the name State Political Directorate. They didn't have as much power but they still functioned the same as the Cheka. They were renamed Commissariat for Internal Affairs or NKVD in 1934 and were above the rule of the law. On December 12th, 1937 Stalin approved the murders or 3,167 people.
Dictator's death tolls, Stalin is next to Hitler.
Cold War
After WWII Stalin insisted Eastern Europe could only have peace if it was under Soviet control. This made many people think that the Soviet Union wished for world domination and his Communist influence must be contained. This was the beginning of the Cold War. Stalin's influence and communist ideas began to spread worldwide. Stalin supported Communist forces in Italy, France, Vietnam, the Communistic dictatorship in North Korea, and the Communist side in the Greek Civil War. In 1948 he demanded a blockade of West Berlin. Stalin faced opposition from Marshal Tito, the Communist leader of Yugoslavia, but did receive support from China when it became under control of the Communist leader Mao Zedong. Stalin's last major action in the Cold War before he died was flooding the west with propaganda for peace.
Stalin Propaganda
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World War II
WWII began for the Soviet Union with the annexation of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and parts of Poland and Romania. The Soviet Union invaded Finland in 1939. In 1940 Finland was forced to negotiate their surrender in the Great of Moscow. The treaty with Germany was broken in June 1941 when Hitler sent three million troops into the Soviet Union. Stalin was unprepared and Germany advanced towards Moscow. Stalin had his men destroy anything that would be useful to the enemy and fought the German off in the Battle of Stalingrad. Stalin began WWII on “good terms” with the Axis Powers, but ended fight for the Allied Forces and didn't receive anything for their involvement in WWII.
DeathJoseph Stalin was one of the most influential men of the 20th century. He spread a political system that was immensely popular in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, played a role in starting a nearly 45 year long arms race with the United States, and was directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of about 100 million people.
When one thinks of the terrible acts committed during WWII the first thought is usually of Hitler, who was responsible for the deaths of around 25 million people, rather that Joseph Stalin. This is largely because of the aid that good old “Uncle Joe” provided in the war against the Axis. Popular history seems to have forgotten about all of the terrible crimes committed by Stalin, including the murder and imprisonment of millions of Jewish people, something that Hitler is most associated with. Life in Stalin's Russia
Life in the Soviet Union meant that everything you saw, read, and heard was dictated by Stalin. And doing otherwise would result in being sent to a labor camp, where the people were forced to work in extreme climates, unsanitary conditions, and a tiny amount of rations. This meant that being sent to one of these camps was almost the same as a death sentence. Whenever Stalin was mentioned or depicted in a book or picture he was always to be glorified. Some artists and authors became very depressed and decided that they would rather end their life then aid Stalin’s propaganda machine. Stalin’s censorship was particularly prevalent in schools. The way subjects were taught was decided by the government. Stalin had a new book created to teach history, called “ A short history of the USSR”. Students were expected to join organizations outside of school. In these groups they were taught how to be good communists. Stalin had churches shut down and their leaders arrested, because he couldn’t allow anybody other than himself to be worshipped by the masses. Even being one of Stalin’s friends didn’t guarantee safety. He frequently “purged” his military, where he removed or killed people who he suspected to be plotting against him, this was mostly due to his extreme paranoia.Stalin did manage to provide a better life for workers than before under the tsarist autocracy, and turn the country into a major industrial nation, but this was at the cost of millions of lives.
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Resources
Russian Revolution- http://www.history.com/topics/russian-revolution
Stalin's Life- http://www.history.com/topics/joseph-stalin
http://www.sparknotes.com/biography/stalin/section6.rhtml
Life in Russia- http://gulaghistory.org/nps/onlineexhibit/stalin/
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/modern-world-history-1918-to-1980/russia-1900-to-1939/life-in-ussr-under-stalin/
Russian Revolution- http://www.history.com/topics/russian-revolution
Stalin's Life- http://www.history.com/topics/joseph-stalin
http://www.sparknotes.com/biography/stalin/section6.rhtml
Life in Russia- http://gulaghistory.org/nps/onlineexhibit/stalin/
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/modern-world-history-1918-to-1980/russia-1900-to-1939/life-in-ussr-under-stalin/