Josef Stalin Иосиф Сталин იოსებ სტალინი | |
|---|---|
 Portrait of comrade Stalin | |
| Born | Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili December 21, 1878 Gori, Tiflis Governorate, Russian Empire (present-day Georgia) |
| Died | March 5, 1953 (aged 74) Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union |
| Cause of death | Cerebral hemorrhage |
| Nationality | Georgian |
| Political orientation | Marxism-Leninism |
Iósif Vissariónovich Dzhugashvili (December 21st, 1878 — March 5th, 1953), more popularly known as Joseph Stalin was the democratically elected[1][2] leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, being the General Secretary of Central Committee of Communist Party of Soviet Union from 3 April 1922 to 16 October 1952. Although he is often portrayed as a dictator in the West, even the reactionary CIA admitted that there was collective leadership during his time in office.[3]
Pre-revolution
Early life
Iósif Vissariónovich Dzhugashvili was born on 21 December, 1878[a] in Gori[b] a city of the Russian Empire. Like his parents, Stalin was an ethnic Georgian, and he grew up speaking the Georgian language. Both his father and his mother came from a family of serfs.[4]
Stalin's revolutionary activities can be traced to his time as a student after 1894, when he joined the Orthodox Theological Seminary in Tiflis.[5][6] In 1896 and 1897, Stalin was a part of Marxist study groups in the seminary, and in August 1898, he formally joined the Tiflis branch of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP). An avid reader, he read Capital and the Manifesto of the communist party, written by Karl Marx, subsequently taking a profound interest in Marxism. At that time, he became acquainted with some of Lenin's articles criticizing the Narodniks and the "Legal Marxists".[7]
Revolutionary activities
While organizing in the Caucasus, Stalin exposed the Mensheviks as liberal reformists. He met Lenin in person for the first time at a Bolshevik conference in Tampere, Finland in 1905.[8] In 1912, the party elected Stalin to the Central Committee even though he was in exile at the time.[9] In 1912, Stalin helped found the newspaper Pravda.[10]
After the February Revolution, Stalin returned from exile in Siberia. He called for an overthrow of the provisional government and opposed the imperialist First World War. At a party conference in April 1917, he argued with Bukharin and Pyatakov, who did not support the right of nations to self-determination. In September, Stalin opposed participating in the bourgeois Provisional Council and called for a revolution instead.
On 29 October 1917, the Central Committee elected Stalin as head of the Party Center to direct the October Revolution.[11]
Post-revolution
Civil War
In summer 1919, the Central Committee sent Stalin, Voroshilov, Orjonikidze, and Budyonny to the southern front, where he organized an attack against Anton Denikin from the Donbass. The Red Army defeated Denikin in October 1919 and liberated all of Ukraine by early 1920.[12]
14th Party Congress
At the 14th Party Congress in 1925, when the Soviet economy had almost recovered from the Civil War, Stalin reported that the Soviet Union needed to industrialize. The New Opposition led by Zinoviev and Kamenev wanted the Soviet Union to stay mostly agricultural and import its industry from capitalist countries.[13]
Collectivization
In 1930, Stalin released the Pravda article "Dizzy with Success," criticizing people who were overenthusiastic about collectivization and forced peasants onto collective farms. This issue was most severe in Transcaucasia and Central Asia, where collectivization was not scheduled to finish until 1933.[14]
1936 Constitution
Stalin helped draft the 1936 Constitution of the Soviet Union, which the Eighth Congress of Soviets approved in November 1936.[15] This constitution remained in effect until 1977.
Second World War
Joseph Stalin became Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars in 1941, a position he would hold until his death.[16] During the course of the Second World War, known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War, Stalin gave weekly addresses to the Soviet people while the Red Army, led by Georgy Zhukov, freed Europe from the Nazis.
Debunking myths
Antisemitism
Despite right-wingers and fascists spreading conspiracy theories about "Judeo-Bolshevism," some historians have made baseless claims that Stalin was an anti-Semite. The below letter from Stalin refutes this claim.
In answer to your inquiry:
National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the period of cannibalism. Anti-semitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism.
Anti-semitism is of advantage to the exploiters as a lightning conductor that deflects the blows aimed by the working people at capitalism. Anti-semitism is dangerous for the working people as being a false path that leads them off the right road and lands them in the jungle. Hence Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable, sworn enemies of anti-semitism.
In the U.S.S.R. anti-semitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system. Under U.S.S.R. law active anti-semites are liable to the death penalty.
— J. Stalin, Reply to an inquiry of the Jewish News Agency in the United States [17]
Personality cult
Stalin did not want to have a personality cult around himself. In 1938, he requested destroying a book that portrayed him too positively and stated that the theory of "heroes" was an SR and not a Bolshevik theory.[18]
Popular support
In 2019, 70% of Russians said they had a positive view of Stalin's role in history. This was a 12 percentage point increase from 58% in 2015.[19]
References
- ↑ “This article outlines Joseph Stalin's attempts, from the 1930s until his death, to democratize the government of the Soviet Union.”
Glover Furr (2019). Stalin and the Struggle for Democratic Reform. [PDF] - ↑ Pat Sloan (1937). Soviet Democracy (p. 9). [PDF] ISBN 9781092297394
- ↑ "Comments on the Change in Soviet Leadership" (2008-02-26). Central Intelligence Agency.
- ↑ “Vissarion, his father, came from the village of Didi-Lilo, near Tiflis, where his parents, like their forebears, had been peasant serfs. For Vissarion emancipation meant that he was free to follow his trade as a cobbler. Around 1870 he moved to Gori, where in 1874 he married Ekaterina Georgievna Geladze, daughter of a serf family from a nearby village. She was about eighteen years of age, some five years younger than her husband. They were humble working people, poor and illiterate.”
Ian Grey (1979). Stalin, man of history (p. 9). [LG] - ↑ “In the autumn of 1888 Stalin entered the church school in Gori, from which, in 1894, he passed to the Orthodox Theological Seminary in Tiflis.
This was a period when, with the development of industrial capitalism and the attendant growth of the working-class movement, Marxism had begun to spread widely throughout Russia. The St. Petersburg League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class, founded and led by Lenin, had given a powerful stimulus to the Social-Democratic movement all over the country.”
Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute (1949). Joseph Stalin: a political biography (p. 5). [LG] - ↑ “I joined the revolutionary movement at the age of fifteen, when I became connected with certain illegal groups of Russian Marxists in Transcaucasia. These groups exerted a great influence on me and instilled in me a taste for illegal Marxian literature.”
Stalin interview with Emil Ludwig (1931). - ↑ “Jn 1896 and 1897, Stalin conduoled Marxist study circles in the seminary, and in August 1898 he formally enrolled as a member of the Tiflis Branch of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. [...]
Stalin worked hard to broaden his knowledge. He studied Capital, the Communist Manifesto and other works of Marx and Engels. He acquainted himself with Lenin's polemical writings against Narodism, "Legal Marxism" and "Economism." His theoretical interests were extremely broad. He studied philosophy, political economy, history and natural science. He read widely in the classics. He thus trained himself to he an educated Marxist. Even at this early date Lenin's writings made a deep impression on him. "I must meet him al all costs," one of Stalin's friends. reports him to have said. after reading an article by Tulin (Lenin).”
Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute (1945). Joseph Stalin: a short biography (p. 5). [LG] - ↑ Joseph Stalin (1939). History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): 'The Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks in the Period of the Russo-Japanese War and the First Russian Revolution'. [MIA]
- ↑ Joseph Stalin (1939). History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): 'The Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks in the Period of the Stolypin Reaction. The Bolsheviks Constitute Themselves an Independent Marxist Party'. [MIA]
- ↑ Joseph Stalin (1939). History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): 'The Bolshevik Party during the New Rise of the Working Class Movement before the First Imperialist War'. [MIA]
- ↑ Joseph Stalin (1939). History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): 'The Bolshevik Party in the Period of Preparation and Realization of the October Socialist Revolution'. [MIA]
- ↑ Joseph Stalin (1939). History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): 'The Bolshevik Party in the Period of Foreign Military Intervention and Civil War'. [MIA]
- ↑ Joseph Stalin (1939). History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): 'The Bolshevik Party in the Period of Transition to the Peaceful Work of Economic Restoration'. [MIA]
- ↑ Joseph Stalin (1939). History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): 'The Bolshevik Party in the Struggle for the Collectivization of Agriculture'. [MIA]
- ↑ Joseph Stalin (1939). History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): 'The Bolshevik Party in the Struggle to Complete the Building of the Socialist Society. Introduction of the New Constitution'. [MIA]
- ↑ Samuel Totten, Paul Bartrop (2008). Dictionary of Genocide: A–L. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 9780313346422
- ↑ Stalin: Reply to an inquiry of the Jewish News Agency in the United States MIA link
- ↑ Joseph Stalin (1938). Letter on Publications for Children Directed to the Central Committee of the All Union Communist Youth. London: Red Star Press. [MIA]
- ↑ "Anticommunism Fails: 70% of Russians have a positive opinion on Joseph Stalin" (2019-04-17). In Defense of Communism. Archived from the original on 2021-06-29.
Notes
- ↑ Although some historians claim he was born in 18th December, his birthday was officially celebrated on 21st December.
- ↑ The city of Gori was part of the Tiflis Governorate, which was one of the administrative divisions of the Russian Empire.