[571] Post-war Soviet society was more tolerant than its pre-war phase in various respects. [485] By July, Germany's Luftwaffe was bombing Moscow,[484] and by October the Wehrmacht was amassing for a full assault on the capital. [614] He gambled that the others would not risk war, but they airlifted supplies into West Berlin until May 1949, when Stalin relented and ended the blockade. [232] In Moscow, Lenin and Trotsky blamed him for his behaviour in the PolishSoviet war. [487], Going against the advice of Zhukov and other generals, Stalin emphasised attack over defence. Conclusion. He slowly died over the course of the next few days, apparently in agony, finally expiring on March 5th of a brain hemorrhage. [196] That month, he travelled to Helsinki to talk with the Finnish Social-Democrats, granting Finland's request for independence in December. [737][738] His mustached face was pock-marked from smallpox during childhood; this was airbrushed from published photographs. [795] Other historians linked his brutality not to any personality trait, but to his unwavering commitment to the survival of the Soviet Union and the international MarxistLeninist cause. [644], From 1946 until his death, Stalin only gave three public speeches, two of which lasted only a few minutes. Since the end of his life there has been speculation that a mental illness contributed to Stalin's brutishness. [822] After Stalin's death, Khrushchev claimed that Stalin encouraged him to incite anti-Semitism in Ukraine, allegedly telling him that "the good workers at the factory should be given clubs so they can beat the hell out of those Jews. There was a power struggle among the Soviet Communist Party elite to succeed Stalin after his death in 1953. [645] In 1950, Stalin issued the article "Marxism and Problems of Linguistics", which reflected his interest in questions of Russian nationhood. As leader of a highly centralised dictatorship Josef Stalin inevitably played a pivotal part in every area of the Soviet war effort during the Great Patriotic War (1941-45). "[322], In 1929, the Politburo announced the mass collectivisation of agriculture,[324] establishing both kolkhozy collective farms and sovkhoz state farms. Some might say he was a good. By January 1953, three per cent of the Soviet population was imprisoned or in internal exile, with 2.8million in "special settlements" in isolated areas and another 2.5million in camps, penal colonies, and prisons. [618] With this accomplished, Marxist governments now controlled a third of the world's land mass. [688] Leading this vanguard, he believed that the Soviet peoples needed a strong, central figureakin to a Tsarwhom they could rally around. I therefore propose to comrades that they should devise a means of removing him from this job and should appoint to this job someone else who is distinguished from comrade Stalin in all other respects only by the single superior aspect that he should be more tolerant, more polite and more attentive towards comrades, less capricious, etc. During a brief period back in Tiflis, Stalin and the Outfit planned the ambush of a mail coach, during which most of the group although not Stalin were apprehended by the authorities. He also placed a ban on factionalism and branded all opposition as traitorous. [100] In August 1907, he attended the Seventh Congress of the Second International an international socialist organisation in Stuttgart, Germany. [850] In any event, she suspected that he was unfaithful with other women,[851] and committed suicide in 1932. [507] While Red Army generals saw evidence that Hitler would shift efforts south, Stalin considered this to be a flanking move in a renewed effort to take Moscow. [476], In June 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union, initiating the war on the Eastern Front. [607] Stalin did not personally attend the meeting, sending Zhdanov in his place. Explanation: No, Stalin was not a fair leader. [787] He was capable of self-righteous indignation,[788] and was resentful,[789] and vindictive,[790] holding on to grudges for many years. He did. Either we do this or we'll be crushed. [318] Bukharin and several other Central Committee members were angry that they had not been consulted about this measure, which they deemed rash. [588] Although Stalin publicly described the British and U.S. governments as aggressive, he thought it unlikely that a war with them would be imminent, believing that several decades of peace was likely. [927] The Center, in 2019, reports that around 70% of Russians believe that Stalin played a positive role in their homeland. [206] At the same time, he disregarded orders and repeatedly threatened to resign when affronted. He held power as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (19221952) and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (19411953). Lenin was selected as the leader of the country and the party. [574] Capital punishment was abolished in 1947 but re-instituted in 1950. [293] In mid-1926, Kamenev and Zinoviev joined with Trotsky's supporters to form the United Opposition against Stalin;[294] in October they agreed to stop factional activity under threat of expulsion, and later publicly recanted their views under Stalin's command. Not true at all. [919] After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the first President of the new Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin, continued Gorbachev's denunciation of Stalin but added to it a denunciation of Lenin. [341] New mines were opened, new cities like Magnitogorsk constructed, and work on the White Sea-Baltic Canal began. [685] Stalin referred to himself as a praktik, meaning that he was more of a practical revolutionary than a theoretician. [652] Svetlana and Vasily were called to the dacha on 2 March; the latter was drunk and angrily shouted at the doctors, as a result of which he was sent home. February 9, 1946. [234] At the 9th Bolshevik Conference in late September, Trotsky accused Stalin of "strategic mistakes" in his handling of the war. "[838] Montefiore described Stalin's favoured types as "young, malleable teenagers or buxom peasant women,"[839] who would be supportive and unchallenging toward him. [834] While head of the Soviet Union he remained in contact with many of his old friends in Georgia, sending them letters and gifts of money. [872] Stalin's necessity for Soviet Union's economic development has been questioned, and it has been argued that Stalin's policies from 1928 onwards may have only been a limiting factor. [727] Service also noted that Stalin "would never be Russian", could not credibly pass as one, and never tried to pretend that he was. Malenkov denounced the Stalin personality cult,[911] which was subsequently criticised in Pravda. [229] On 16 July, the Central Committee decided to take the war into Polish territory. [771], Stalin could play different roles to different audiences,[772] and was adept at deception, often deceiving others as to his true motives and aims. [336] In November 1929 Stalin removed him from the Politburo. [920] In October 2017, Putin opened the Wall of Grief memorial in Moscow, noting that the "terrible past" would neither be "justified by anything" nor "erased from the national memory. He edited the party's newspaper, Pravda, and raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction via robberies, kidnappings and protection rackets. [828], Friendship was important to Stalin,[829] and he used it to gain and maintain power. [503], In April 1942, Stalin overrode Stavka by ordering the Soviets' first serious counter-attack, an attempt to seize German-held Kharkov in eastern Ukraine. [795] He was instead an emotionally intelligent and feeling intellectual. [347], In 1928, Stalin declared that class war between the proletariat and their enemies would intensify as socialism developed. [699] After the October Revolution, they continued to have differences. The existing government of landlords and capitalists must be replaced by a new government, a government of workers and peasants.The existing pseudo-government which was not elected by the people and which is not accountable to the people must be replaced by a government recognised by the people, elected by representatives of the workers, soldiers and peasants and held accountable to their representatives. [12] Besarion became an alcoholic[13] and drunkenly beat his wife and son. [208] Believing that victory was assured by numerical superiority, he sent large numbers of Red Army troops into battle against the region's anti-Bolshevik White armies, resulting in heavy losses; Lenin was concerned by this costly tactic. Leon Trotsky (1879-1940), was the co-leader of the 1917 Russian Revolution, socialist opponent of Joseph Stalin, founder of the Fourth International, and strategist of world socialist revolution . [645] He was very interested in the reigns of Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great and Catherine the Great. Ruthless in his conduct, moderate estimates suggest that he was directly responsible for the death of 40 million people. [422] The second Moscow Show Trial took place in January 1937,[423] and the third in March 1938, in which Bukharin and Rykov were accused of involvement in the alleged Trotskyite-Zinovievite terrorist plot and sentenced to death. (Library of Congress/Getty Images ) In 1943, when the Second World War had reached its most pitiless intensity, three of the world's most powerful menunlikely allies against the Axis onslaught . addressing the closing ceremony of the chennai international book fair that began on monday, stalin said the state government has allotted rs 3 crore as translation grants and rs 6 crore for. [482] The German Wehrmacht pushed deep into Soviet territory;[483] soon, Ukraine, Byelorussia, and the Baltic states were under German occupation, and Leningrad was under siege;[484] and Soviet refugees were flooding into Moscow and surrounding cities. [723] He remained proud of his Georgian identity,[724] and throughout his life retained a heavy Georgian accent when speaking Russian. [231], In mid-August 1920, the Poles repulsed the Russian advance, and Stalin returned to Moscow to attend the Politburo meeting. Though each loathed and feared the other, there was much Hitler and Stalin had in common. [273], As General Secretary, Stalin had a free hand in making appointments to his own staff, implanting his loyalists throughout the party and administration. [855] After the Second World War, he made little time for his children and his family played a decreasingly important role in his life. [531], In 1944, the Soviet Union made significant advances across Eastern Europe toward Germany,[532] including Operation Bagration, a massive offensive in the Byelorussian SSR against the German Army Group Centre. [733] He rarely spoke before large audiences, and preferred to express himself in written form. [555], After the war, Stalin wasaccording to Serviceat the "apex of his career". [499] They achieved high levels of industrial productivity, outstripping that of Germany. [449], As a MarxistLeninist, Stalin considered conflict between competing capitalist powers inevitable; after Nazi Germany annexed Austria and then part of Czechoslovakia in 1938, he recognised a war was looming. [902], Official records reveal 799,455 documented executions in the Soviet Union between 1921 and 1953; 681,692 of these were carried out between 1937 and 1938, the years of the Great Purge. . [416] State repression intensified after Kirov's death;[417] Stalin instigated this, reflecting his prioritisation of security above other considerations. The details of the assassination still remain a mystery, but much circumstantial evidence indicates that the head of the Soviet secret police planned Kirov's murder on orders from Stalin. [744] He was a lifelong smoker, who smoked both a pipe and cigarettes. [428] In July 1937, the Politburo ordered a purge of "anti-Soviet elements" in society, targeting anti-Stalin Bolsheviks, former Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, priests, ex-White Army soldiers, and common criminals. [579] In 1949, he brought Nikita Khrushchev from Ukraine to Moscow, appointing him a Central Committee secretary and the head of the city's party branch. [720] In private he often used coarse language and profanity, although avoided doing so in public. Demanding that Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev apologise to the Party for the errors when they lost votes at the Party Congress. Fair warning: if the title isn't enough of a clue, there's a lot in this game . [139] According to Montefiore, this was "Stalin's most famous work". [230] He also believed that the Red Army was ill-prepared to conduct an offensive war and that it would give White Armies a chance to resurface in Crimea, potentially reigniting the civil war. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Stalin has retained popularity in Russia and Georgia as a victorious wartime leader who cemented the Soviet Union's status as a leading world power. [438], Stalin initiated all key decisions during the Terror, personally directing many of its operations and taking an interest in their implementation. [268] Stalin took charge of the funeral and was one of its pallbearers; against the wishes of Lenin's widow, the Politburo embalmed his corpse and placed it within a mausoleum in Moscow's Red Square. [711] Stalin's doctrine held that socialism could be completed in Russia but that its final victory there could not be guaranteed because of the threat from capitalist intervention. [187] He co-signed Lenin's decrees shutting down hostile newspapers,[188] and along with Sverdlov, he chaired the sessions of the committee drafting a constitution for the new Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. "[694], Stalin adhered to the Leninist variant of Marxism. Copy. [500] He also permitted a wider range of cultural expression, notably permitting formerly suppressed writers and artists like Anna Akhmatova and Dmitri Shostakovich to disperse their work more widely. [350] From 1929 to 1930, further show trials were held to intimidate opposition:[351] these included the Industrial Party Trial, Menshevik Trial, and Metro-Vickers Trial. [523] Stalin scarcely left Moscow throughout the war,[524] with Roosevelt and Churchill frustrated with his reluctance to travel to meet them. But he was not a good leader. [925] A 2013 survey by Tbilisi State University found 45% of Georgians expressing "a positive attitude" to him. PM Modi's advice to BJP workers: 'Don't make anti-Muslim remarks' Views: 264. [542] After receiving a complaint about this from Yugoslav communist Milovan Djilas, Stalin asked how after experiencing the traumas of war a soldier could "react normally? State University found 45 % of Georgians expressing `` a was stalin a fair leader attitude '' to.. 206 ] At the same time, he disregarded orders and repeatedly threatened to resign affronted! 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