1953 - END OF LEADERSHIP

JOSEPH STALIN

b. December 21, 1879

d. March 5, 1953

When the job of party secretary came up in 1922, Stalin took it on after all the other leading Bolsheviks had turned it down. they didn't take Stalin seriously (referring to him as the "Grey blur", because he was happy to stay out of the limelight), but he was determined that when Lenin died he would become the new leader of Russia. Joseph Stalin was born in 1879. His real name was Djugashvili, but he later changed it to Stalin which meant "man of steel". He came from Georgia in southern Russia and started to train to be a priest, but joined the Bolshevik party in about 1903. By 1917, he had become the editor of Pravda, the Bolshevik newspaper and had taken a minor role in the Bolshevik seizure of power. Stalin used the post of General Secretary to find out about everything that was going on in the party and to make sure that all posts were filled by his supporters. He managed to build up support for himself throughout Russia. When the other leaders discovered what had been going on, it was too late to do anything about it. In 1922 Lenin wrote a "Political Testament". In it he said that Trotsky should become the leader of Russia after him. Lenin also suggested that the other Bolshevik leaders should find a way of getting rid of Stalin. However, when the will was given to the Bolshevik leaders after Lenin's death in 1924, they decided not to publish it, because they did not want Trotsky to take over. He was unpopular. Between 1924 and 1929 Stalin managed to force most of the other leading Bolsheviks out of power. He sided with one group and then another, gradually isolating the other leading Bolsheviks. Stalin's main target was Trotsky, who left the Soviet Union (as Russia was now called) for good in 1929. the others, like Kamenev, Bukharin and Zinoviev retired from their posts. Stalin used his support throughout the country to undermine his opponents and backed one against the other. By 1928 he had total control. When Stalin gained total control of the Soviet Union, he immediately began to change agriculture and industry. He believed that the Soviet Union was one hundred years behind the West and had to catch up as quickly as possible. This could only be achieved, he believed, by creating a "command economy" and forcing farmers and industry to modernise. So, in 1928 Stalin ended Lenin's New Economic Policy and began to force all peasants to join Collective Farms: Peasants had to pool their machinery and livestock on large farms, which were controlled by the State. 5,000,000 richer peasants, Kulaks, were murdered or starved to death. On the Collective farms, peasants were forced to hand over their produce to the government and were either paid wages or had to feed themselves on what was left over. the ensuing result was a devastating famine. Kulaks burnt their crops and killed their animals, rather than hand them over. 5,000,000 people starved to death in the Soviet Union between 1932 to 1934 . Agricultural production fell by 15%. Collectivisation was part of the first Five Year Plan. This was an attempt to modernise industry by the state taking over all firms and businesses: Each business or factory was given a target that it had to meet every year for a five-year period. the targets were worked out by "Gosplan" in Moscow. This organisation had half a million workers who did nothing but set targets for every factory and works and then check how much was actually produced. the First Five year plan was actually cut to four years to make people work harder. Punishment for failing to meet targets was severe. Managers of factories could be executed. Workers were forced to work longer hours and were not allowed to change their jobs. Being away from work became a crime. Those who objected to Stalin's methods ended up in slave labour camps called Gulags. these were often in Siberia or in Northern Russia, where the weather in winter was very cold. Here they worked with little food for ten years or more. Many died from exhaustion. Many factories faked production figures, or disregarded the quality of goods produced. So long as the numbers were right, nothing else mattered. It was estimated that half of all tractors made in the 1930s broke down. Overall the first three Five Year Plans, which ran from 1928 to 1941, increased industrial production by about 400%, but how much of that increase was genuine is very difficult to say. In December 1934 SergeiKirov, the Communist Party leader in Leningrad, was murdered. It is now widely believed that his murder was ordered by Stalin, who was frightened, because Kirov appeared to be more popular than he was. As a result of this murder Stalin initiated 'the Purges' as a means of removing any perceived opposition. From 1934 to 1938 at least 7,000,000 people disappeared. these included the Bolshevik leaders whom he had forced out from 1925 to 1927, poets, scientists, managers of industries who did not meet their targets for production and millions of ordinary Soviet citizens, who often did not know what they had done to anger Stalin. Most of the senior officers in the Red Army and the Red Navy were also executed. The leading Bolsheviks were given "Show Trials", where they were forced to confess to ridiculous crimes which they could not possibly have committed. In the 1930s Stalin began to rewrite the history of Russia and the Soviet Union in the twentieth century - school books and encyclopaedias were destroyed or altered, and children in school had to paste over pages in their books with the new versions of what had happened. This became known as the "Revision of History". Stalin wanted to destroy the reputations of the other Bolshevik leaders, like Bukharin and Kamenev. This would explain why he had put them on trial and had them executed. He picked on Trotsky in particular, because Lenin had chosen him as his successor. He accused him of treason and said that he had done nothing to help Russia or the Soviet Union. Stalin claimed that he alone had been responsible for the successes in the Civil War in 1918 to 1920. Stalin wanted to make out that only he knew what Lenin had intended to do in Russia. This would help Stalin justify why he became the leader and would make Russians accept him. Stalin had many paintings produced, which showed him close to Lenin. He had Lenin's body preserved in a huge mausoleum in Red Square and encouraged Soviet citizens to visit it. In fact Lenin had not wanted this to happen; he had requested a small burial. Stalin wanted to build himself up to be all-powerful and stop anyone opposing his ideas. This became known as the "Cult of Personality". Stalin made out that he was a superman who never made any mistakes. He was called the "wisest man alive", and the "genius of the age". Stalin made sure that everyone knew about his successes. He used many forms of propaganda to pass on the news, but his favourite form was paintings and sculptures. these appeared all over Russia. they showed Stalin meeting smiling people, opening factories and dams, and he always looked rather taller and fitter than he actually was. Of all the dictators who came to power between the two World Wars, Stalin was the most successful. Not only did he murder more people than any of the others, but lived to be seventy-three, dying in 1953.