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“So the bastard's
dead? Too bad we didn't capture him alive!”
[PHOTO SOURCE: http://izquotes.com/quote/268858]
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“So the bastard's dead? Too bad we didn't capture him alive!”
AUTHOR: Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (/ˈstɑːlɪn/;
birth surname: Jughashvili; 18 December 1878 – 5 March 1953) was the
leader of the Soviet Union
from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953. Holding the post of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union, he was effectively the dictator of the state.
Stalin was one of the seven members of the
first Politburo, founded in 1917 in order to
manage the Bolshevik
Revolution, alongside Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Sokolnikov and Bubnov. Among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who took part in
the Russian Revolution
of 1917, Stalin was appointed General Secretary of the party's Central
Committee in 1922. He subsequently managed to
consolidate power following the 1924 death of Vladimir Lenin by
suppressing Lenin's criticisms (in the postscript of his testament)
and expanding the functions of his role, all the while eliminating any
opposition. He remained General Secretary until the post was abolished in 1952,
concurrently serving as the Premier of
the Soviet Union from 1941 onward.
Under Stalin's rule, the concept of "Socialism in
One Country" became a central tenet of Soviet society, contrary
to Leon Trotsky's view that socialism must be spread through continuous
international revolutions. He replaced the New Economic Policy
introduced by Lenin in the early 1920s with a highly centralised command economy, launching a period of industrialization and collectivization
that resulted in the rapid transformation of the USSR from an agrarian society
into an industrial power. However, the economic changes coincided with the
imprisonment of millions of people in Gulag
labour camps. The initial upheaval in
agriculture disrupted food production and contributed to the catastrophic Soviet famine
of 1932–33, known in Ukraine as the Holodomor. Between 1934 and 1939 he
organized and led a massive purge (known as "Great Purge") of the party,
government, armed forces and intelligentsia, in which millions of
so-called "enemies of
the working class" were imprisoned, exiled or executed, often without due
process. Major figures in the Communist Party and government, and
many Red Army high commanders, were killed after
being convicted of treason in show trials.
In August 1939, after failed attempts to
conclude anti-Hitler pacts with other major European powers, Stalin entered
into a non-aggression
pact with Nazi Germany that divided their influence and territory
within Eastern Europe, resulting in their invasion of Poland
in September of that year, but Germany later violated the agreement and
launched a massive invasion of the
Soviet Union in June 1941. Despite heavy human and territorial
losses, Soviet forces managed to halt the Nazi incursion after the decisive
Battles of Moscow and Stalingrad.
After defeating the Axis powers on the Eastern
Front, the Red Army captured Berlin in May 1945, effectively
ending the war in Europe for the Allies.
The Soviet Union subsequently emerged as one of two recognized world superpowers,
the other being the United States. Communist governments loyal to the Soviet
Union were established in most countries freed from German occupation by the
Red Army, which later constituted the Eastern Bloc. Stalin also had close
relations with Mao Zedong in
China and Kim Il-sung in
North Korea.
Stalin led the Soviet Union through its
post-war reconstruction phase, which saw a significant rise in tension with the
Western world that would later be known as the Cold War. During this period, the USSR
became the second country in the world to successfully
develop a nuclear weapon, as well as launching the Great
Plan for the Transformation of Nature in response to another
widespread famine and the Great
Construction Projects of Communism. In the years following his
death, Stalin and his regime have been condemned on numerous occasions, most
notably in 1956 when his successor Nikita Khrushchev denounced
his legacy and initiated a process of de-Stalinization. Stalin remains a
controversial figure today, with many regarding him as a tyrant. However,
popular opinion within the Russian Federation is
mixed.The exact number of deaths caused by Stalin's regime
is still a subject of debate, but it is widely agreed to be in the order of
millions.
