Stalin - The Picture Encyclopedia of Cultural Images

Stalin - The Picture Encyclopedia of Cultural Images

Josef Stalin was secretary general of the Soviet Communist Party and leader of the Soviet Union. He played an important role in establishing the Communist system in Russia. Stalin is also responsible for the spreading of this system to eastern and central Europe after World War II. He built a cult of personality, and despite it was abolished after his death, Stalinism, as a political regime, existed in a milder form until as late as 1990.

Josef Stalin was born in Georgia in 1878, in a poor family. He attended church school, not because of his religious beliefs, but because it was the only opportunity of education in Georgia at that time. Stalin was a bright student; he earned a scholarship to an Orthodox Institution in Tiflis, which he attended from 1894. He discovered the ideas of Marxism-Leninism there, and actively engaged in their propagation, for which he was expelled in 1899.

In the early 1900’s, Stalin became a follower of Vladimir Lenin and his doctrines. He became member of the Central Committee of Lenin’s illegal Bolshevik Party in 1912, and adopted the name Stalin (“steel man” in Russian) in 1913.

Stalin played a key role in overthrowing the Czarist system, and, a few weeks later, the provisional government of Kerensky. After Lenin’s death in 1924, Stalin got rid of all other aspirants for the leadership of the Communist Party, most importantly Trotsky, one of Lenin’s earliest associates. By 1928, Stalin was the sole leader of the Communist Party, and with it, leader of the Soviet Union.

In the 1930’s Stalin introduced many reforms based on the slightly changed version of Marxism-Leninism, which he called Stalinism. The reforms included heavy industrialization and collectivization of property (starting from the 1920’s). In a decade Stalin built a powerful economy based on five-year plans instead of the principles of market economy. He established a centralized system of terror and oppression, murdering and deporting thousands to subjugate the people.

In the late 1930’s, Stalin decided to purge the system of the anti-communist elements, exiling or murdering many high-ranking military leaders, and leaving the Soviet Union without a capable military leadership for World War II. In the last days before the war, Russia signed a pact with Germany in which they divided Poland between the two countries.

In 1941, Hitler turned against the Soviet Union, to the surprise of Stalin. The Soviet war machine came into motion very slowly, and only managed to stop the invading German forces a few kilometers off Moscow. Although it took three years, the Russian Red Army managed to turn the tide of the war, recapture Russia and liberate central and eastern Europe. Russia claimed its place among the Allies, and Stalin claimed a right to govern the countries the Red Army occupied at that time.

In the aftermath of the war, Stalinism became a popular alternative for liberalism, especially in Asia. In 1949, Mao Zedong converted China to the ideology of Stalinism, and declared an alliance with the Soviet Union which lasted until Stalin’s death in 1953. The influence of Stalin’s ideology and economical system had also been felt in the occupied middle and eastern Europe, Yugoslavia, Korea, and, for a time, many countries of the middle-east and north Africa.

Stalin remained the leader of the Soviet Union until his death in 1953. Constantly eliminating his opposition, deporting or murdering those who resisted or who were accused of anti-soviet conspiracy, he maintained his unquestioned power until his last days. He died in March, 1953, at the age of 74, of cerebral hemorrhage. It is also widely believed that Stalin was poisoned by one of his associates, Beria.

Shortly after Stalin’s death, on the 20th congress of the Soviet Communist Party, his successor, Nikita Khrushchev abolished the cult of personality, along with the harsher methods Stalin used to govern the Soviet state. These steps alienated China but initiated friendship with Yugoslavia. The death of Stalin also gave many European countries a hope for freedom. Freedom did not arrive at that time: the system Stalin established stood for almost 40 years afterwards, and believed to influence the public and political life of Russia even today.

Picture 1: Stalin