A Short Biography of Stalin On December 21, 1879, a young boy named Josif Djugashvili was born in Gori, Georgia. This little boy would grow up to be Josef Stalin, one of the most ruthless, yet successful dictators the world has ever seen. The fact that Stalin was born to a peasant family was one of the keys to his political success. Through experience, he was able to sympathize with the working class where no other politicians could. However, just because he could understand people did not mean he tolerated ignorance and stupidity. His series of purges were possibly the most ruthless acts that the world has ever witnessed. But after he had firmly established his position as the real power in Russia, he unified the Russians better than any previous time, or any time since for that matter. Through this unification, Stalin was perhaps Russia's best ruler, and it was through him that the German army in World War II was kept from crushing Russia.
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Stalin?s intense hatred for those who had more power than him came at a young age. His father beat and abused him, thus giving Stalin a vengeful nature against all who stood above him. In fact, as described by one of his friends, everything else came second to revenge. His horrible childhood also made him mentally tough. This hatred for those in power caused him to lean toward revolutionaries. From the very beginning of his education, he rebelled against conformity. While all others in his seminar followed along with Georgian Nationalism, he was extremely attracted to Marxism in general, and, more specifically, the idea of class war and the overthrow of an unjust and corrupt social order. Later in his life, he was to see the works and ideas of Lenin in the revolutionary newspaper "Iskra". Stalin obviously liked what he saw there because he soon adopted Lenin's ideas as his own, and, in a way, looked up to Lenin as a role model. He saw that a revolution was necessary, and the only way it was to be carried out is if it was planned and organized.
Stalin began to take a part in many small revolutionary movements. After the May Day revolution, Stalin was noticed by the police, and was captured and exiled to Siberia for three years. All this time, Lenin was working to separate the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, because the Mensheviks did not believe that the revolution should be forced. Lenin was a Bolshevik, so naturally, Stalin became one too. Stalin continued to play an active role in movements, and they paid off when, in 1905, something more than a minor revolt began. The loss of the war with Japan had caused the tsar to lose face with his country, and the peasants were being underfed and overworked. These, as well as many other issues, caused the Revolution of 1905. The fact that this revolution did not succeed was due mainly to the fact that neither the Bolsheviks nor the Mensheviks took control of it. With no support, the tsar eventually put down the revolution. This spontaneous revolution had failed, as Lenin had always said it would. After the tsar had gained enough power back, he sent Lenin and the other leaders of the social democracy into exile once again. It was during this time that Stalin was allowed a free hand with the Russian people. He wrote various statements in revolutionary papers, which continued to print even when he was put in jail. He was eventually sent to a labor camp when the authorities realized that Stalin would not stop as long as he was near people who could help him. Stalin soon escaped. This pattern of being arrested and escaping continued until 1910, when Stalin was over thirty years old.
It was then that Lenin really began to take notice of Stalin. He saw Stalin as a well-enlightened person with ideas that agreed with his own. He found in Stalin great potential, and so gave him the opportunity to study in Vienna for a month. Vienna was the home of a unique kind of socialism, and Lenin wanted Stalin to review it, and send him a paper on what he thought of the situation. The essay was so well written that Lenin had it published in the current revolutionary paper. This improved Stalin's standing in the eyes of the other Bolsheviks. However, it did have some bad effects as well. Stalin was soon reported to the secret police, and was given a four-year sentence in the most remote reaches of Siberia. World War I started, and Lenin decided that this was the time to revolt. By "throwing off" the war, the tsar would once again lose power. This is, indeed, what happened. With the abdication of the tsar, the Revolution of 1917 was underway. When Stalin heard of this, he quickly escaped his prison and arrived at the capital on March 12. The revolution was something that was bound to happen, with the working class being forced into war, and the peasants without food. The war only caused more controversy as to the competence of their current leader. Lenin promised the people what they wanted to hear, and they began to listen to him as the new power in Russia. This was for the betterment of Russia, as Lenin did actually bring peace for his country.
However, all things must soon come to an end, and the end of Lenin's reign was soon at hand. The necessity that Lenin name a successor was fairly obvious, and had been in the front of the minds of all candidates jockeying for the position. Stalin, however, had made it less obvious that he was solely interested in the power that the position possessed, and made it seem as if he was actually interested in the well being of the country, and perhaps Stalin was. At least, this is what Lenin saw in Stalin. He saw Stalin as an ambitious, trustworthy person, who knew how to wield power. So, before Lenin passed away, he named Stalin as his successor. (YEAH, RIGHT!)
Many who had been opposed to the revolution saw the death of Lenin as the opportunity to re-establish their power in Russia. However, Stalin quickly made it clear that any actions against the dictatorship of the proletariat would be punished with the utmost severity. People who were said to be against the government (or the proletariat) were almost always put to death immediately, or else sent to Siberia, not a much better fate. The rebellions against the revolution were quickly quelled. After Stalin established his power, he began his reforms of the country, starting with the economy.
From the beginning, Stalin had been aware of the party's desire for change, and immediately brought out new policies in hopes of turning Russia from a backward country to a modern state. Stalin launched forced industrialization and collectivization. When certain members in the party urged more realistic and restrained procedures, they were forcefully swept from office. He would not let anything stand in his way now that he had power.
"We are 100 years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this lag in ten years. Either we do it, or they crush us." This is a quote from Stalin at the beginning of his reign, when he realizes just how far behind his country was industrially. There was no foreign investment available for Stalin to turn to for help on this issue, so he had to turn to domestic sources to find sufficient supplies to further the industrialization of Russia. The sources were also necessary for the increase of supplies and weapons to defend Russia against the threatening outside world. Stalin also realized that the current agricultural situation would not work at all. The solution was for Stalin to force the peasants to work collectively, to destroy the kulaks by deporting them to Siberia, collecting the output, and fixing the prices of wages and food. This way, the state made itself the middle-man between the rural producers and the urban consumers. The result of this was for the state to make inordinate amounts of money, while the peasants suffered. In response to this new-found suffering, the peasants revolted. The problem with this was, Stalin saw the peasant class as an expendable item, because they would not be of use to him. Lacking sufficient strength to actually accomplish anything, the peasant fell back into line. However, because the problem was still there, millions of peasants starved to death in 1933, and cannibalism was rampant throughout the rural sector. But despite the problems, Stalin pursued these measures relentlessly, and met resistance with his usual ruthlessness. Another result of this plan was that the state had incredible sums of money to spend on science, education, and armed forces. Also, the percent of population working in the agriculture fell from somewhere around seventy-five percent to less than fifty percent. Industrialization increased drastically. This level of increase would not have been possible in an ordinary government, but in a system as ruthless as Stalins, the state was able to make great industrial strides.
Over 25 million peasants were transformed into factory workers in this new system. Basically, throughout the Stalin era, the USSR became ever more increasingly urban year after year. Stalin also realized, with the increased urbanity, that there would be more demand for food. He saw that the current agricultural system was too inefficient, and chose that to be his next area of reform. The 25 million or so farms that had previously existed were now replaced by only one hundred thousand highly mechanized farms. The resulting increase in production and income was something unprecedented in the history of industry. By the late 1930's, Stalin and his country had pulled off a stunning achievement. In eight years, Russia had become the second largest economy in the world. However, the system still had many deficiencies. The production of food was not enough to support Russia, not to mention other countries. Therefore, some of the Russian population did not survive. It was during this time when the USSR went through yet another famine, killing millions, and making life miserable for peasants in general.
For other economic purposes, Stalin created the Gosplan, whose only job was to monitor all production. The size of the item being produced didn't matter. From nails to cars, the Gosplan made all the production orders. These orders went in five-year periods (called Five Year Plans), making it incredibly difficult for the Gosplan to estimate how much of each item would be needed. They based their estimate on supply and demand, and the increase in demand over the previous Five Year Plan. Although this plan has the potential to be an extremely efficient means of running industry, the fact that there is no possible way to determine exactly how much demand there would be made it fail more often than not. The people were often left with not enough supplies, due to the underestimation of demand. However, when the Gosplan did estimate right, it saved time, money, and labor. In the end though, it only added to the pain and suffering felt by the peasants during the times of the famines.
It was during these times of turmoil and suppression that Stalin was moved against. The political tensions and considerable disappointment felt by the party caused an uprising to replace Stalin with Sergei Kirov, a secretary of the central committee and party leader in Leningrad. Apparently, Stalin became aware of this before it could take effect, as Kirov was found murdered in his office in December of 1934. This was the beginning of a ruthless series of purges that left the world appalled at the horror they saw. The purges lasted almost five years, which were marked by the execution of virtually the entire political and military elite. Besides this, Stalin also created forced labor camps to which he sent millions of his fellow Soviets. The secret police acted as Stalin?s fist, quelling rebellion before it could be started. The secret police, or KGB, served many of the same functions as any other secret police (such as Napoleon's and Hitler's). It was with the help of the KGB that Stalin was able to carry out these purges, and it was through these purges that Stalin could establish his authority over his party and country. Although he went about it in a harsh manner, Stalin created a completely unified USSR, with all decisions made by one man. Although the country was ruled by terror, it was, nevertheless, unified and obedient. In this, Stalin had accomplished something that hadn?t been ever been seen in Russia: a unified country that did not have individual races or classes bickering about their class rights. This created a much more orderly country, and a party that would conform to Stalin?s demands.
The political terror touched everyone, as Stalin felt it must. Nobody was spared in Stalin?s judgment, not his close friends, or even his relatives. Stalin was already an untrusting man; add that to the normal paranoia that comes with the position of dictator, and one can see how so many could suffer. He became even more bitter after the death of his second wife. She had committed suicide after writing him a letter indicting him personally and politically. After this occurrence, he seemed just a shell filled with seething hatred and need for revenge. One cannot expect Stalin to act reasonably after his background and what had happened to him.
Stalin was not explicitly an "evil" man but was the product of his environment, and was born into a situation that he handled within reason. One might even go so far as to say that Stalin reacted well to the conditions. Stalin is always judged by the West, and so therefore has an extreme Western bias that is not entirely fair, or logical. Stalin did what was best for his party, and therefore, what was best for the USSR at the time. Stalin's solutions were the only appropriate ones to be made at the time. It took a strong authoritarian leader like Stalin for Russia to accomplish anything at all during this time. What the USSR did accomplish could not have been accomplished had any other person been in power. It is also possible to argue that one cannot condone Stalin's actions, no matter what he hoped to accomplish by them. The starvation of 20 million Ukrainians may have helped Russia advance faster, but it is a crime nevertheless. However, when one looks at how much Russia advanced in the fifty years that Stalin was in power. Maybe those 20 million deaths can be blamed on Stalin, as well as how many he killed with his purges, but how many people die in other society's revolutions. The numbers actually favor Stalin in that fewer people were killed during his reign than were killed by other countries during their revolutions. So, Stalin?s action, although not admirable, allowed the USSR to become the second most productive country in only eight years, and it was only through Stalin that this was possible. He created a unified, stable country that was more prosperous than it had been at any previous time.