Joseph Stalin Dbq

Ioseb Besarionis Dze Jugashvili is the real name of one of the most important actors of the 20th century. When he joined the Bolshevik revolution he changed his name in Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin, but the world knows him as Joseph Stalin. During Stalin’s regime, no one was allowed to pronounce Stalin’s original name. The action was considered disrespectful to the supreme leader, and a direct provocation to the nation. The October revolution was the baptism of one of the most ruthless leader of contemporary world history. Stalin was a real Bolshevik man, deeply committed to the cause and truly loyal to Lenin. Stalin was a Georgian man with the determination of a soldier; he was able and willing to do everything in order to become the supreme leader of the USSR. He knew that he had to slowly gain the confidence of the party, and then turn the leadership in his

control. On the 2nd of April 1922, Stalin became General secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and since then he ruled the country until his death on the 5th of March 1953. Stalin was the incarnation of the Machiavelli’s Prince. He was an amoral and ruthless leader able and willing to do everything in order to submit everyone inside of the nation. No one, regardless his military rank, position in the party, or importance in the government could avoid Stalin’s anger. From the bottom to the top of Soviet population everyone could experienced the brutality of Stalin’s regime. For Stalin, there were no difference between 1,000 of government staff and 1,000 thousand peasants. Stalin had no mercy neither for his population nor for his closest collaborators. The American diplomat George F. Kennan depicted him as, “gave him the aspect of an old battle-scarred tiger… An unforewarned visitor would never guessed what depths of calculation, ambition, love of power, jealousy, cruelty, and sly vindictiveness lurked behind this unpretentious façade.” (Gaddis 10) This paper will address Stalinism from the point of view of Stalin closest enemies and collaborators. The paper will reconstruct Stalin route to power and talk about how Stalin was able exercise a total control on his government and population.

Lenin himself neither trusted nor respected Stalin. When Lenin became the supreme leader of the USSR, Stalin had only a marginal role in regime. Lenin never considered Stalin adequate to become an important figure inside of the party. Even though, Stalin’s propaganda has always depicted him as the natural successor of the father of the Bolshevik revolution, Stalin was considered too rude and brute to become a conscientious leader. For example, there are no official picture of Lenin and Stalin together; Lenin’s funeral is the first and only time where Lenin and Stalin are together. Nevertheless, Stalin was able to gain the control of most of the lower strata of the party. In his testament, Lenin said specifically that Stalin was rude and could not be trusted, so Trotsky had to be appointed leader of the party. Stalin knew that he had to act in order gain the control of the political establishment and eradicate the party leadership. First, when Lenin was dying, he pushed the party to appoint him as responsible to the leader’s health in order to influence the future policy of the party. Second, he forced the party to appoint him as secretary General, which only after Stalin became a ruling position in the party. Stalin was able to use the force, and when the force was not enough, he was able to reinvent the rule of the game.

Stalin biggest treat and obstacle to his route to power, was Lenin’s favorite candidate.

Trotsky was an educated and respected Soviet leader. On the contrary to Stalin, he thought that in order to ensure Communism in the Soviet Union, the country had to support a full-scale communist revolution in Eastern Europe. Unfortunately, Trotsky was not a stable and healthy man; he suffered of hysteria and terrible stomach pain that did not allow him to have a stable political life. Stalin was able to use this weakness to exclude Trotsky from the leadership of the party. With Trotsky, Stalin had to send a strong message to all his enemies. First, Trotsky was sent to exile and his philosophy became a crime in Russia. Then, Stalin started to eliminate Trotsky’s supporters and family affections. While Trotsky’s older sun, died during a suspicious surgery in Paris, the younger one was deported in a gulag. Nothing was enough for Stalin; first he had to inflict pain, then he wanted to see his enemies die. On the 20th of August, 1940, Trotsky was assassinated by a Stalinist Agent in his house in the suburbs of Mexico

City.

In order to pursue his regime of terror, Stalin created an organized and compact judiciary system. He created a squad of executors, which was a traveling court that could arrest the suspects, read the charges, and directly supervise the execution or the deportation. Especially after the December laws, there was no need for a trial. Stalin’s “Troika” had the power to eliminate directly everyone who was against the regime. The NKVD assisted directly all the investigation. The NKVD was the state’s secrete police; it was in charge of the foreign and domestic espionage.

When Stalin presented the collectivization program, he faced a strong resistance of peasant middle class who were unwilling to give up their lands. Stalin started a bloody campaign against the kulak, and targeted them as enemy of the state. The Kulaks started to kill government representative and set their crops on fire. Rather than see their crop confiscated by the government, they were prepared to die. Stalin divided the kulak in three categories: the one who had to be deported to exile; the one who had to be deported in gulag; and the one who had to be eliminated. More then (number) died during the campaign, and this animated the souls of the more moderate wing of the party. All the anger erupted during the 17th party congress, where a group of soviets representative planned to appoint Sergey Kirov in charge of the party. Kirov was for Stalin a close friend and a loyal collaborator; he did not expect from such a disappointment from him. For this reason, Stalin brought inside of the 17th Congress the Georgian Vendetta. Even though, only around 300 representatives voted in favor of Kirov, Stalin made execute almost all the 2000 soviets representative to the Congress. Soon after, everyone understood that no one harm the supreme leader of the USSR, or take his regime. Stalin was determined to govern the nation by all means, even without the part, and if the party will resist or attack him, he has able and willing to eliminate all of them.

Kirov was no longer trusted, and Stalin was truly disappointed by the Congress’s act. On the 1st of December 1924, Leoni Nikolaed murdered Kirov in his office in Leningrad. It has never been confirmed that Stalin directly asked for the murder of Kirov. Even though Kirov turned into a conspirator, Stalin was truly saddened by the death of his friend. Kirov did not candidate himself for the leadership during the Congress; he was appointed by a group of conspirators in the congress. Because of his friendship with Kirov, Stalin personally interrogated the murderer, and made execute him. In order to send a stronger message to all the “enemies of the people”, Stalin made execute the murderer’s wife, brother, and sister in law. All the scholars that tried to address Kirov’s murder, have always been skeptics on the accuracy of the NKVD’s document. In his book Amy knight, the American historian of the Soviet Union and Russia, highlighted, “For further details about Nikolaev we must turn to the less reliable source-the NKVD, which had its own the NKVD might easily have doctored or even fabricated them completely in an effort to attribute a specific motive for Nikolaev’s killing of Kirov.” (Knight 203) For this reason, people will never know if Stalin was the mandatory of Kirov murder; but the facts happened after 17th congress were a strong message to the nation. If the party would not follow Stalin, he will build one that would.

Total loyalty was not enough for the leader, Stalin had to subdue even his closest and most loyal collaborators. He had to be sure that the people around him were 100% Stalinist, and committed to his cause. Any sign of weaknesses was for Stalin a reason to act; even family affections. For example, Molotov served Stalin since the early stage of his regime, he was a true Stalinist and he never betrayed the leader. On the contrary to the vast majority of the early Stalinist supporters, Molotov was a highly educated. However, Stalin spotted a dangerous weakness in Molotov; he was in love for his wife who was also Jewish. Stalin has always been obsessed by the wives of his collaborators; he considered them distractive to the cause. Stalinism was a true faith, not even human love could hinder the relationship between the leader and his men. Stalin could not tolerate such a behavior from his closest collaborator, so had to eliminate the problem. In 1948, Molotov’s wife, Polina Zhemchuzhina, met the new Israeli ambassador, Golda Meir; after the meeting Polina referred to herself as a “Jewish Woman”. It is important to remember that religion was not totally tolerated in the USSR, and especially Judaism. Jews were considered parasites, crooks, cowards, and unpatriotic. What Polina said, was a sign of Jewish pride and an attack to the national pride, so Stalin had finally the chance to remove her. Stalin forced Molotov to divorce, and Polina was deported in a Siberian gulag. The leader was able to submitted Molotov to the point to disown his own wife. Only after Stalin’s death Polina was released from the gulag, and Molotov immediately remarried her.

In the last year his paranoia became so influential that he started to eliminate all the collaborators, which he had not made execute yet, only a few survived. Neither his family supported him anymore; probably they have never supported him. He was so cruel and careless of his family, that when his older son, Yakov Dzhugashvili, tried to kill himself and survived, he said” he is not even able to shoot straight at his head.” Stalin died on the 1st of March 1953, and the world will always remember him as one of the most brutal, cruel, and inhuman figures of history. He died alone in his bedroom inside his Kuntsevo residence 15 km west of Moscow center.