One of the most powerful and murderous dictators in history, Stalin was the supreme ruler of the Soviet Union for a quarter of a century. His regime of terror caused the death and suffering of tens of millions, but he also oversaw the war machine that played a key role in the defeat of Nazism.
Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili was born on 18 December 1879 in Gori, Georgia, which was then part of the Russian empire. His father was a cobbler and Stalin grew up in modest circumstances. He studied at a theological seminary where he began to read Marxist literature. He never graduated, instead devoting his time to the revolutionary movement against the Russian monarchy. He spent the next 15 years as an activist and on a number of occasions was arrested and exiled to Siberia.
BBC Website: Historic Figures - http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/stalin_joseph.shtml
Stalin was born on 18 December 1878 in Gori, Georgia to a family of limited financial means in a town plagued by gang warfare and street brawls. At seven, he contracted smallpox, which permanently scarred his face. At twelve, two horse-drawn carriage accidents left his left arm permanently damaged. At ten, he began attending a church school that required the Georgian children to speak Russian. At sixteen, he received a scholarship to a Georgian Orthodox seminary, where he wrote poetry and rebelled against being forced to speak Russian. Though he performed well, his was expelled shortly before his final exams because he was unable to pay his tuition fees.
Shortly after leaving the Seminary, he discovered the writings of Vladimir Lenin and decided to become a Marxist revolutionary. He began organizing strikes in 1902 and joined the Bolsheviks in 1903. Stalin at first worked against the Mensheviks and, during the Russian Revolution of 1905, he organized and armed Bolshevik militias across Georgia, running protection rackets waging guerrilla warfare on Cossacks, policemen and the Okhrana. After meeting Lenin at a Bolshevik conference, Stalin returned to Georgia, and plotted the assassination of a Cossack general with the Mensheviks, while raising money for the Bolsheviks through extortion, bank robberies and hold-ups.
Wikipedia contributors, "Joseph Stalin," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Joseph_Stalin&oldid=289180955 (accessed May 12, 2009).
The Plan to Modernize the Soviet Union
Once Stalin felt secure in his position as leader of the Party, he began to outline his plans for the USSR. The USSR held tremendous potential in terms of human and natural resources, but both were very undeveloped. Stalin believed that under a five-year economic plan, the USSR would industrialize, and become stronger than any nation in the West.
Unfortunately, the USSR was made up mostly of poor peasants who farmed small plots of land. In most cases, these peasants still harvested crops by hand and used wooden plows. Therefore, to make the plan successful, he would need to make changes to the peasant way of life. Two things were required of the peasants by Stalin: the peasants would have to be taxed heavily to pay for his new factories and secondly, the peasants would have to produce more food for all of the new factory workers in the cities.
Collectivization and the Kulaks
In 1929 Stalin announced the "collectivization" (joining together) of all farms in the country. This meant that hundreds of small farms were forced to join into larger ones, and the peasants had to work together in order to make the bigger farms successful. The large farms would be about 450 hectares in size, with anywhere from 50 to 100 families working on them. The new farms were supposed to receive new tractors and other modern equipment to help modernized and increase the production of food.
Stalin wanted all of the roughly 100 million peasants to join his planned collectivization program although he realized that the peasants would not necessarily like the new system. The people most likely to resist the change would be the ones with the most to lose. In the USSR, the Kulaks (translated to "fists") were the richest farmers. They owned two or more horses, several cows and had larger farms than most peasants.
The solution for Stalin was simple. The five million Kulaks who existed within the USSR were to be liquidated as a social class. By using his powerful secret police, Kulaks were murdered, exiled to Siberia, and robbed of all possessions. Approximately 1.5 million Kulaks died as a direct result of Stalin's policies.
Many peasants showed their displeasure to collectivization by not planting crops or by killing all of their animals. Stalin had hoped to eliminate the problem of food production, but the opposite happened. A lack of food became a major problem in the cities because of the peasants resistance to collectivization. Stalin was forced to send the police into the countryside to raid farms for food and ultimately, the army was used to force the peasants to work and send food to the cities. Furthermore, as a punishment for not collectivizing, the farmers were given little or no food. Mass starvation occurred during this period, with close to 30 million peasants starving to death.
Stalin still needed to convince the people that he was the best choice as leader of the USSR. To do this, he entered into an intense campaign to have the people recognize him. Huge portraits of Stalin were place all over the country, upon walls of large buildings and on small posters everywhere. Every store had a small statue of him on display, movies were made about his life, poems, and books even plays were written to celebrate his great leadership. His presence was everywhere, but the truths about his atrocities were well hidden.
Religion Under Stalin
Marx had clearly identified organized religion as a threat to the worker because the loyalty of individual workers should be to each other, not to a supreme being. As a result, Stalin took steps to limit the power of religion in the USSR. Churches and mosques were closed and converted into schools or movie theaters. Religious icons were melted down, and meetings were banned throughout the country. Religion was forced to go underground, in order to hide from the prying eyes of Stalin's police.
QUOTES:
The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.
It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.
Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.
“When we hang the capitalists they will sell us the rope”
“Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas.”
“Print is the sharpest and the strongest weapon of our party.”
“In the Soviet army it takes more courage to retreat than advance.”
“If any foreign minister begins to defend to the death a "peace conference," you can be sure his government has already placed its orders for new battleships and airplanes.”
VIDEOS:
Whatever Happened to Joseph Stalin? - Ravi Zacharias
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