1
Joseph Stalin: A Great Leader, Yet a Killer of Millions
Noah Berger
Junior Division
Historical Paper
Paper length: 2488
2
Throughout recorded time… there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle, and the Low… The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low… is to… create a society in which all men are equal.1
The quote above by George Orwell examining the wheel of change of power throughout time was broken by Joseph Stalin, because he started as a peasant and eventually became a dictator. Stalin was a great leader, a hard worker, and street smart. Unfortunately, he used these abilities for immoral motives. He utilized his persuasive leadership skills to mobilize his country into the industrial age. However, he did it in a way that killed millions of his people and left a legacy of terror and death throughout Europe and the world. He broke barriers by destroying Orwell’s wheel of power, pulling off the greatest shift in government in human history.
Stalin’s early life shaped his aspirations as an adult. Losif Vissarionovich
Dzhugashvili was born in Gori, Georgia on the eighteenth of December in 1878. He would later become the dictator of Russia. Losif’s father, Besarion Jughashvili, was a cobbler, and his mother was a washerwoman named Ketevan Geladze.2 Both of Losif’s parents gave out tough beatings. His father was an alcoholic3, while his mother swayed from affectionate to abusive regularly.4 Georgian folklore and traditions became his
1 George Orwell, 1984 (Harvill Secker, 1949), 254
2 Biography.com Editors, Joseph Stalin Biography (A&E Television Networks, 2 Apr. 2014)
3 BBC, “Joseph Stalin: National hero or cold-blooded murderer?” (BBC Teach)
4 William Grimes, "The Dictator as a Young Poet-Thug" (The New York Times [New York], 19 Oct. 2007),
3
escape, connecting him to the Republic.5 When he was seven, Losif got smallpox, which went away but left his face scarred. To make things worse, a few years later he was in a carriage accident that left his arm deformed. These injuries caused his peers to be rude to him, which installed in Stalin a desire for respect and power. Later, he brutalized the people who crossed him, a result of his inability to defend himself in his early life.6
Losif’s mother was an Orthodox Christian who wanted him to become a priest.
She worked hard, and in 1888 her efforts paid off and Losif got into church school.7 He went against his mother, however, and became an Atheist.8 Losif was both smart and violent because, in Gori, street fights were a casual sport.9 He did very well in school10 and was said to have been a fantastic poet.11 His talents were noticed by Tiflis
Theological Seminary, who in 1894 gave Losif a scholarship. At the seminary he learned of a secret society called Messame Dassy that wanted Georgia to be independent. He joined in 1898. Members of Messame Dassy showed Losif the writings of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin. In 1899 he left school. Official school reports say that he was unable to pay the tuition, but rumors persisted that he had political views against
5 BBC, “Joseph Stalin: National hero or cold-blooded murderer?”
6 Editors, Joseph Stalin Biography
7 Editors, Joseph Stalin Biography
8 BBC, “Joseph Stalin: National hero or cold-blooded murderer?”
9 Grimes, "The Dictator as a Young Poet-Thug"
10 Editors, Joseph Stalin Biography
11 Grimes, "The Dictator as a Young Poet-Thug"
4
the Tsar, Nicholas ll, and was asked to leave.12
After leaving school, Losif stayed in Tiflis instead of returning home and used his time to help with the Georgian Revolution. He found work as a tutor, and then as a clerk. In 1901 he joined the Social Democratic Labor Party, and acted as an enforcer.13
Although it is not yet proven, there is strong historical evidence that Losif burned down the Rothschilds’ refinery in the town of Batumi in January of 1902. He probably used this as leverage to bully other oil barons into giving him “protection money.”14 He coordinated a failed labor strike, also in 1902, and was exiled to Siberia because of it.15
This was the beginning of many operations that Stalin would plan, some of which ended in his arrest. Most men would have given up after being arrested multiple times as a young adult, but this shows another way Stalin broke barriers.
The leader of the Georgian Revolution, Vladimir Lenin, had liked Stalin since he first met him in 1905. Lenin referred to Stalin as a “man of action” opposed to “one of the tea drinkers.”16 Lenin promised “peace, land, and bread” to common folk of the revolution and had success; the Bolshevik party grew quickly. Stalin played an important role running Pravda, the Russian newspaper, and he also helped Lenin
12 Editors, Joseph Stalin Biography
13 Editors, Joseph Stalin Biography
14 Grimes, "The Dictator as a Young Poet-Thug"
15 Editors, Joseph Stalin Biography
16 Grimes, "The Dictator as a Young Poet-Thug"
5
escape the Tsar. Subsequently, Lenin allowed Stalin into his inner circle.
Losif married Ketevan Svanidze in 1906. Ketevan came from a poor, humble family and gave birth to Yakov Dzhugashvili in 1907. After one of Losif’s arrests, the whole family escaped the Tsarist, Nicholas II’s secret police, by going to Baku in
Azerbaijan. Unfortunately, Ketevan died of typhus in 1907. Her death made Losif pitiful and a terrible father. He said, “This creature softened my heart of stone. She died and with her died my last warm feelings for humanity.” Losif sent Yakov to be cared for by
Ketevan’s parents.17 He started working on the revolution even more than before. It was also at this point that he changed his name to Joseph Stalin. Interestingly, Stalin means steel in Russian.
In addition to running Pravda, Stalin was very good at leading day-to-day operations for the revolution. When he escaped from exile, the Tsarist marked him as an outlaw. This did not stop Stalin from continuing his work for the revolution, but he had to do it on the lam. Since working for the revolution was not a paying job, he made money for himself and the revolution through robbing, kidnapping, and extortion. He gained fame by being associated with the 1907 Tiflis Bank robbery, which resulted in multiple deaths and the theft of 250,000 rubles, which is equivalent to approximately
$3.4 million in today's money. Going from a thief to a dictator is another way Stalin broke barriers.
In February 1917, Nicholas the Second’s regime ended, beginning the Russian
17 BBC, “Joseph Stalin: National hero or cold-blooded murderer?”
6
Revolution. The Revolutionists liked the previous government because they thought a smooth transition could be possible, but in April Lenin denounced the current government. On the contrary, he told the peasants to rise up and take land from the rich and factories from the industrialists. By October the Bolsheviks had completed the revolution and were in control. This caused a violent struggle between politicians for status in 1922. Stalin was put in the new position of General Secretary of the
Communist Party. It was not a powerful office, but it gave him the power to choose who was appointed to all party member posts, allowing him to build a structure. By using his new-found power, Stalin was cunning with whom he appointed, and sooner or later many important people owed their position to him. Nobody realized how powerful he had become until it was too late. Even Lenin, who was on his deathbed, was unable to regain power from Stalin. Lenin died in 1924.18
After Lenin died, most thought Leon Trotsky, the leader of the Red Army, would take over. However, his philosophies were idealistic, while Stalin had his own style of isolationist Socialism, or “Socialism in one country”.19 Stalin decided to ruin old party leadership and take over the country, which he did at first by removing enemies using underhanded tactics. Then he decided to use fear-mongering to his advantage. The secret police enforced Stalin’s commands and he had them arrest rivals in the middle of the night for being aligned with capitalist nations. Then he would put them through show
18 Editors, Joseph Stalin Biography
19 BBC, “Joseph Stalin: National hero or cold-blooded murderer?”
7
trials, call them enemies of the people, and have them executed. A lot of people were also exiled to Europe and the Americas.20 Stalin had 93 of 139 Central Committee members and 81 of 103 generals and admirals exiled.21 His eradication of rivals soon expanded from the party’s elite to officials suspected of plotting against the revolution.22
Soon he had control of the country, and anyone who dared to stand up to him would be exiled, killed, or sent to labor camps.
Stalin married Nadezhda Alliluyeva in 1919. They had two children named
Svetlana and Vassily. Unfortunately, Stalin abused Nadezhda, which led to her suicide in 1932. Stalin ensured her cause of death was on the record as appendicitis.23 In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Stalin did the opposite of the Bolshevik Agrarian policy, which entailed giving land to peasants for farming. Stalin took land from the poor which was given to them earlier. He used the land to organize collective farming, which is grouping together all farms, government-owned or private, to be owned by the state.
This action turned the former peasants back into peasants; it was resisted by millions, who killed livestock and secretly held onto the grain. Stalin thought this would make food production go faster. Stalin also got the gears turning on industrialization, which at first was a huge success. Millions of people died from forced labor or famine, though, and there was much damage to the environment. Any rebellious people were lethally
20 Editors, Joseph Stalin Biography
21 BBC, “Joseph Stalin: National hero or cold-blooded murderer?”
22 Editors, Joseph Stalin Biography
23 BBC, “Joseph Stalin: National hero or cold-blooded murderer?”
8
punished-executed, exiled, or taken to labor camps in Gulag.24 One of these people was
Leon Trotsky, who was exiled to Mexico City in 1929. Still, Trotsky kept arguing against
Stalin, until being murdered in 1940 for political reasons.25
In 1939 WWII began. Stalin made the seemingly brilliant move of signing a treaty with Hitler and The Nazis.26 In the non-aggression pact, Hitler and Stalin agreed to divide Poland and not attack each other.27 Stalin was convinced of Hitler’s honesty and consequently ignored all tip-offs that the Nazis were mobilizing armies on Russia’s eastern border. There was a Nazi blitzkrieg against the Soviets in June 1941. USSR was startled and immediately lost soldiers. Stalin was hysterical because of Hitler’s treachery and hid in his office for multiple days. By the time Stalin was back to his normal self, Ukraine and Belarus had been conquered, and the Nazis were about to invade Leningrad. To make matters worse, the executions and exiles in the 1930s left the army and government in rough shape.28 The purges affected almost everyone who had an intellectual job. This robbed the USSR of the majority of its intelligent people.
Yakov, Stalin’s first son, was in the Red Army and was captured early in WWII. The
Nazis offered a prisoner swap, but Stalin didn’t accept it because he thought his son surrendered on purpose. Yakov died in a Nazi concentration camp in 1943. Stalin was
24 Editors, Joseph Stalin Biography
25 BBC, “Joseph Stalin: National hero or cold-blooded murderer?”
26 Editors, Joseph Stalin Biography
27 BBC, “Joseph Stalin: National hero or cold-blooded murderer?”
28 Editors, Joseph Stalin Biography
9
credited with saying “Everything's lost, I give up. Lenin founded our state, and we've screwed it up!” This is another example of Stalin breaking barriers, because the majority of tyrants don’t admit their mistakes.
Although the Nazis had practically conquered the Soviet Union, Stalin didn’t leave Moscow because he thought there must be victory at all costs. The tide turned at the battle of Stalingrad. Hitler attacked the city named after Stalin not because it was an especially important city, but to embarrass Stalin. Stalin commanded, “Not a step backwards” to the Red Army. Although there were over a million Russian deaths,29 in
1943, after amazing efforts by militia and the army, the Nazis were pushed back from
Stalingrad. By 1944, the Soviets were pushing Nazis out of other countries in Europe.
Stalin hadn’t liked the West since the Soviet Union was founded, and he wanted the allies to attack a second German border. Both British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and American President Franklin D. Roosevelt said this would result in heavy deaths, and this only made Stalin dislike the West more. When the Allies began to win the war,
Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt met with Stalin to discuss postwar arrangements. The first of these meetings was in 1943, in Tehran, Iran. Stalin was in a good position because of the victory in Stalingrad. He used his bargaining power to make the Allies open a second front on Germany, which they did in 1944. They met again in February, 1945 in Yalta in Crimea, and once again Stalin had a lot of bargaining power because the USSR was freeing other countries in Europe. As a result,
29 BBC, “Joseph Stalin: National hero or cold-blooded murderer?”
10
he got almost complete power over those countries’ governments in exchange for armies in Japan. By the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, there were new negotiators from Britain and America; Harry S. Truman was now the President of America, and
Clement Attlee was the Prime Minister of Britain. Stalin now had a hard time bargaining for two reasons: both were suspicious of Stalin’s intentions and the atomic bombs ended the war with Japan before the Soviets could help. Since the USSR hadn’t helped with Japan, and the Allies thought Stalin would try to spread communism to Japan, they didn’t let him do anything about it.30
WWII made Stalin very popular.31 The Soviet Union was now one of the most powerful countries in the world, with a permanent place on the Security Council.
Soldiers returned and people who ran from the war were arrested and executed or sent to labor camps. Entire nationalities that had been exiled as traitors didn’t have a place to call home.32
Stalin was sure the allies were distrusting of the USSR, and he became paranoid of an invasion from the West. From 1945 to 1948 he imposed communism on all the
European countries that the Soviets had liberated, creating the Iron Curtain. This made space between the West and “Mother Russia.” The allies thought this meant Russia wanted to take over Europe and to combat it, they created the North Atlantic Treaty
30 Editors, Joseph Stalin Biography
31 Editors, Joseph Stalin Biography
32 BBC, “Joseph Stalin: National hero or cold-blooded murderer?”
11
Organization (NATO). In 1948, Stalin attempted to destroy the economy of Berlin,
Germany’s capital, as a means to take over Germany. The West used airplanes to supply the city and eventually forced Stalin to stop.33 The USSR tested its first nuke on
August 29, 1949. All these factors caused the Cold War to begin.34
Stalin pushed North Korea to invade South Korea, thinking the United Nations
(UN) wouldn’t interfere, but he was wrong. He had ordered the USSR’s UN representative to leave because the UN wouldn’t let the new Communist People's
Republic of China be represented. This meant the Soviet Union didn’t get a vote to decide on whether the UN would help South Korea or not.35
In the early 1950s, Stalin’s health started getting worse and an assassination plot was uncovered. Because of this, he commanded the head of the secret police to put a purge of the Communist Party into effect, but Stalin died on March 5, 1953, before the purge happened.36 The dictator after Stalin was Nikita Khrushchev, who condemned
Stalin and began de-Stalinization (a policy that destroyed the influence of Stalin).37
Joseph Stalin had a huge impact on the world by helping with the Russian
Revolution and being a dictator of the Soviet Union. He killed millions of his people,
33 Editors, Joseph Stalin Biography
34 BBC, “Joseph Stalin: National hero or cold-blooded murderer?”
35 Editors, Joseph Stalin Biography
36 Editors, Joseph Stalin Biography
37 BBC, “Joseph Stalin: National hero or cold-blooded murderer?”
12
moved the USSR into the industrial age, and stopped Hitler. In the end, Joseph Stalin fulfilled his desire to be respected and feared, and in doing so, broke barriers because he revolutionized his country and changed the landscape of the world indefinitely. He and the other fathers of the Russian Revolution broke barriers in a variety of ways.
13
Annotated Bibliography
Biography.com Editors. Joseph Stalin Biography. A&E Television Networks, 2 Apr. 2014. The Biography.com Website, www.biography.com/people/ joseph-stalin-9491723. Accessed 21 Jan. 2020. Using this I found some slightly deeper info about his whole life. I used it to organize my paper and the majority of facts.
Newspaper Article Grimes, William. "The Dictator as a Young Poet-Thug" ["The Dictator as a Young Poet-Thug"]. The New York Times [New York], 19 Oct. 2007, Books of the Times sec. The New York Times, www.nytimes.com/2007/10/19/books/ 19book.html. Accessed 29 Jan. 2020. Using this source I learned about Stalin's early life. I used it to talk about his early life.
Film or Video Recording Joseph Stalin. History.com. History.com, www.history.com/topics/joseph-stalin. Accessed 21 Jan. 2020. Using this I found the basics of Stalin. I will use it to help organize my paper.
Technical/Research Report Joseph Stalin (1879-1953). PBS, 1999. PBS Biographies. PBS.org, www.pbs.org/ redfiles/bios/all_bio_joseph_stalin.htm. Accessed 29 Jan. 2020. From this source I learned more details. It will help make my paper longer and more detailed.
Technical/Research Report Joseph Stalin: National hero or cold-blooded murderer? BBC. BBC Teach. BBC, www.bbc.co.uk/timelines/z8nbcdm#z22pfg8. Accessed 29 Jan. 2020. Using this I found a timeline about Stalin. I used it to make my essay chronological and find some smaller details.
Book Orwell, George. 1984. Vol. 1, Harvill Secker, 1949. 1 vols. Using the book I learned about how tyrannies operate. In the essay I used it for a quote. 14