Stalin, Joseph (1878–1953)

Soviet dictator and despot famed for his brilliant tactics, brutal methods, and police-state totalitarian rule. [Page 677]Stalin was a secretive figure, a man who obscured his past as much as possible, rendering even his birth date a matter of dispute.

Stalin was born Iosif Dzhugashvili in 1878 (he claimed 1879) to poor parents in Georgia, then part of Greater Russia, or the Russian Empire. He attended a strict religious seminary in Tiflis, then became involved in politics. Between 1902 and 1917, Stalin was arrested for revolutionary activity, was exiled within the Russian Empire, and escaped repeatedly.

He first used the pseudonym Stalin—signifying man of steel—in 1912, signing that name to an editorial for the newspaper Pravda. He used multiple aliases over the years, but eventually settled on Stalin in 1913. Possessed of an excellent memory, a gift for intrigue, and ruthlessness, Stalin came to dominate the Soviet Union for many years.

Stalin became the general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party in 1922, and thereafter used that position to build a support base. When Soviet revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin died in 1924, Stalin defeated Leon Trotsky—a gifted orator and political philosopher and Stalin's greatest rival—for leadership of the Communist Party. Stalin successfully portrayed Trotsky as a counterrevolutionary and enemy of the Soviet Union, and forced him into exile.

Stalin thus emerged as Lenin's successor, surprising many party members who saw him as an excellent organizer but not a visionary. He worked hard to promote his legitimacy in the eyes of the party and the public, stressing his devoted adherence to Leninism. Stalin went so far as to have history rewritten to make the roles of his adversaries less, and his own revolutionary role greater.

Once in power, Stalin implemented his vision to the detriment of the people. He forced collectivization in agriculture, a move that was both unpopular and unproductive, and led, moreover, to a massive famine. He emphasized military buildup in his first Five-Year Plan, created the first modern command economy, and steered the country toward industrialization. Nevertheless, his rule heartened Russia in the early 1930s. His vision was the dawn of hope after the previous decades of unrest, civil war, and famine. His popularity gave rise to a Stalinist cult of personality.

Stalin was a leader who, like the Machiavellian princes he admired, was more feared than loved. Terror was a fundamental part of the regime, at no time more so than during the purges of 1936–1938. Paranoid and focused on maintaining power, Stalin instituted the so-called Great Terror to rid the country of “anti-Soviet elements.” He instituted show trials to make an example of those who had “strayed” and become “traitors.” Victims of Stalin's ruthlessness often were sent to prisons or labor camps, known as gulags. Millions perished, including ordinary citizens, top party members, and many of the original Bolshevik revolutionaries. Many of these individuals were killed because of their dissent or imaginary crimes against the state, or because they represented threats to Stalin's own power.

Stalin's international politics tended to be opportunistic. In 1939, he formed an alliance with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler against the “capitalist-imperialist victors of World War I,” an alliance formalized by the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression pact. However, when Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union in violation of the alliance, Stalin formed an uneasy Grand Alliance with the United States and Great Britain. After World War II ended, this alliance collapsed with mutual distrust and the intensification of power rivalries and the fall of the Iron Curtain.

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