A History of Joseph Stalin in Russia
“OK, Maybe I’ll Be a Priest”
For a time, Ioseb seemed poised to realize his mother’s dream. He attended seminary, but lost interest in God and got hooked on Karl Marx instead. He left without graduating in 1899, either because he was expelled for revolutionary activities (as the party line later had it) or because he had to help his sick mother (as she claimed). By 1901, he had plunged headlong into full-time revolutionary activities.
At first, his rise through the party ranks was slow and unremarkable. He helped organize strikes and demonstrations, along with at least one fundraising robbery at gunpoint. He also began publishing articles and essays under a variety of pseudonyms – including “Stalin,” which means “man of steel.” Authorities arrested and imprisoned him seven times between 1902 and 1913, but he always managed to escape in short order (leading some scholars to speculate that he may have been a shill for the imperial police).
“No, A Politician”
In 1912, Vladimir Lenin needed a trustworthy organizer and man of action to oversee underground work in Russia. Lenin had left Russia to avoid capture, and he apparently realized that Stalin had a special genius for administration. Unlike his more intellectual co-revolutionaries, Stalin was less interested in debating policy than in getting things done – both by applying his remarkable will and by creating, then manipulating, the necessary bureaucratic machinery.
After the czar’s abdication in 1917, Lenin and some flashier-than-Stalin sidekicks (including the latter’s future nemesis, Leon Trotsky) moved to the forefront in Russian politics. Stalin himself moved cautiously, helping, as always, to organize. When the new Soviet regime was formed, he took only a relatively minor cabinet post.
Over the next several years, however, Stalin assumed ever-greater control over the party bureaucracy. In 1919, he took control of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate, an agency with the power to investigate any official in the country. In 1921, he took charge of the Organizational Bureau, the group that appointed and dismissed members of the party. Then, in 1922, he became secretary general of the party’s Central Committee. Soon he was appointing personal supporters to party posts throughout the country.
“No, Dictator!”
After Lenin died in 1924, Stalin repeatedly shifted allegiances to eliminate emerging rivals, including people who had helped him. By 1928, he had effectively become dictator. That same year, he launched a series of five-year plans compelling industrialization and collectivization of Russia’s largely agricultural economy. He deported or executed hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of peasants, and he forced those who remained onto state-run farms that produced food for export while millions at home starved.
Stalin was determined to turn the Soviet Union into a military and industrial superpower, with himself at the helm, regardless of cost. Those who were even rumored to stand in his way ended up dead or deported. All the while, he encouraged, even demanded, public glorification and adulation – through countless statues and paintings, propaganda, and the rewriting of Russian history.
“But I Need a Bigger Country”
In 1939, after first attempting to broker an anti-Hitler pact with the western European powers, Stalin made a deal with Hitler himself. While the German dictator was conquering western Europe between 1939 and 1941, Stalin managed to annex much of eastern Europe, including Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, and parts of Romania. Realizing the Nazis would eventually turn on him, he also readied Russia’s defenses.
When the German attack came in June 1941, Stalin’s preparations proved insufficient. But with Hitler’s forces closing in on Moscow, Stalin gamely stayed on to oversee the Russian counterattack. The tide of battle eventually turned. By 1943, the Germans were in retreat, and “Papa Joe” (as the Allied press had taken to calling him) was a global hero. Time magazine even named Stalin its “Man of the Year.”
When peace came, however, “Papa Joe” moved almost immediately to revive his reign of terror. Once again, he succeeded in expanding his sphere of influence, this time by propping up Soviet-controlled communist regimes throughout eastern Europe. He effectively (and ruthlessly) ruled those regimes, along with his own, until his sudden death from a brain hemorrhage in 1953.
