Explanation: No, Stalin was not a fair leader. [33] The seminary's journal noted that he declared himself an atheist, stalked out of prayers and refused to doff his hat to monks. Stalin's strategy for emerging as leader was to destroy the authority of his opponents. [24] Stalin faced several severe health problems: An 1884 smallpox infection left him with facial scars;[25] and at age 12 he was seriously injured when he was hit by a phaeton, probably the cause of a lifelong disability in his left arm. [719] The socio-economic nature of Stalin's Soviet Union has also been much debated, varyingly being labelled a form of state socialism, state capitalism, bureaucratic collectivism, or a totally unique mode of production. [242] In taking this view, some Marxists accused him of bending too much to bourgeois nationalism, while others accused him of remaining too Russocentric by seeking to retain these nations within the Russian state. Though each loathed and feared the other, there was much Hitler and Stalin had in common. [565] He ensured that returning Soviet prisoners of war went through "filtration" camps as they arrived in the Soviet Union, in which 2,775,700 were interrogated to determine if they were traitors. Lenin called for establishment of a new federation named the "Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia", reflecting his desire for expansion across the two continents and insisted that the Russian state should join this union on equal terms with the other Soviet states. Stalin and a fellow senior Bolshevik Leon Trotsky both endorsed Lenin's plan of action, but it was initially opposed by Kamenev and other party members. Acknowledge. [341] Large debts were accrued purchasing foreign-made machinery. [551], Stalin attended the Potsdam Conference in JulyAugust 1945, alongside his new British and U.S. counterparts, Prime Minister Clement Attlee and President Harry Truman. [408] Stalin took a strong personal involvement in the Spanish situation. [269] It was incorporated into a growing personality cult devoted to Lenin, with Petrograd being renamed "Leningrad" that year. [597] He sent Molotov as his representative to San Francisco to take part in negotiations to form the United Nations, insisting that the Soviets have a place on the Security Council. [522] Churchill flew to Moscow to visit Stalin in August 1942 and again in October 1944. [543] Stalin had wanted Hitler captured alive; he had his remains brought to Moscow to prevent them becoming a relic for Nazi sympathisers. Stalin's editorial in Pravda, October 1917[165], Stalin helped organise the July Days uprising, an armed display of strength by Bolshevik supporters. By January 1953, three per cent of the Soviet population was imprisoned or in internal exile, with 2.8million in "special settlements" in isolated areas and another 2.5million in camps, penal colonies, and prisons. [312] Many Communists, including in Komsomol, OGPU, and the Red Army, were eager to be rid of the NEP and its market-oriented approach;[313] they had concerns about those who profited from the policy: affluent peasants known as "kulaks" and small business owners or "Nepmen". [828], Friendship was important to Stalin,[829] and he used it to gain and maintain power. [739] He was born with a webbed left foot, and his left arm had been permanently injured in childhood which left it shorter than his right and lacking in flexibility,[740] which was probably the result of being hit, at the age of 12, by a horse-drawn carriage. [200] Lenin eventually convinced the other senior Bolsheviks of his viewpoint, resulting in signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918. [66] There, he co-edited a Georgian Marxist newspaper, Proletariatis Brdzola ("Proletarian Struggle"), with Philip Makharadze. A 2012 survey commissioned by the Carnegie Endowment found 38% of Armenians concurring that their country "will always have need of a leader like Stalin. [725] According to Montefiore, despite Stalin's affinity for Russia and Russians, he remained profoundly Georgian in his lifestyle and personality. [870] Service suggested that the country might have collapsed long before 1991 without Stalin. [105] They also kidnapped the children of several wealthy figures to extract ransom money. [236] Lenin joined Trotsky in criticising him, and nobody spoke on his behalf at the conference. A+. He was good at coercing people. In 1956, after Stalin's death, came a watershed moment: Communist leader Nikita Khrushchev denounced the Stalin personality cult and dictatorship, in a secret speech to the 20th Party Congress. [115] He escaped to Saint Petersburg,[116] where he was arrested in September 1911 and sentenced to a further three-year exile in Vologda. [855] After the Second World War, he made little time for his children and his family played a decreasingly important role in his life. [108] There he led the imprisoned Bolsheviks, organised discussion groups, and ordered the killing of suspected informants. [691] As a propaganda tool, the shaming of "enemies" explained all inadequate economic and political outcomes, the hardships endured by the populace, and military failures. [260], They also disagreed on the nature of the Soviet state. Under Stalin, the Soviet Union was transformed from a peasant society into an industrial and. [52] In November 1901, he was elected to the Tiflis Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), a Marxist party founded in 1898. [707], Stalinism was a development of Leninism,[708] and while Stalin avoided using the term "Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism", he allowed others to do so. [641] In November, the Slnsk trial took place in Czechoslovakia as 13 senior Communist Party figures, 11 of them Jewish, were accused and convicted of being part of a vast Zionist-American conspiracy to subvert Eastern Bloc governments. [432] His personal writings from the period were according to Khlevniuk "unusually convoluted and incoherent", filled with claims about enemies encircling him. [323] Stalin's message was that socialism was being established in the USSR while capitalism was crumbling amid the Wall Street crash. [863] The other, Alexander, was the son of Lidia Pereprygina; he was raised as the son of a peasant fisherman and the Soviet authorities made him swear never to reveal that Stalin was his biological father. [266] Some historians have questioned whether Lenin ever produced these, suggesting instead that they may have been written by Krupskaya, who had personal differences with Stalin;[254] Stalin, however, never publicly voiced concerns about their authenticity. [547] Stalin was pressed by his allies to enter the war and wanted to cement the Soviet Union's strategic position in Asia. "[845] They had a son, Yakov, who often frustrated and annoyed Stalin. [254], In May 1922, a massive stroke left Lenin partially paralysed. [36] Another influential text was Alexander Kazbegi's The Patricide, with Stalin adopting the nickname "Koba" from that of the book's bandit protagonist. [440] He was particularly concerned at the success that right-wing forces had in overthrowing the leftist Spanish government,[441] fearing a domestic fifth column in the event of future war with Japan and Germany. [747], As leader of the Soviet Union, Stalin typically awoke around 11am,[748] with lunch being served between 3 and 5pm and dinner no earlier than 9pm;[749] he then worked late into the evening. [534] Cautiously regarding the responses from the Western Allies, Stalin avoided immediately installing Communist Party governments across Eastern Europe, instead initially ensuring that Marxist-Leninists were placed in coalition ministries. [103] In Baku he had reassembled his gang, the Outfit,[104] which continued to attack Black Hundreds and raised finances by running protection rackets, counterfeiting currency, and carrying out robberies. [804] Little of this was fiction,[805] although he could cite passages from Alexander Pushkin, Nikolay Nekrasov, and Walt Whitman by heart. [523] Stalin scarcely left Moscow throughout the war,[524] with Roosevelt and Churchill frustrated with his reluctance to travel to meet them. [864], It was long rumored that Stalin married a sister of Lazar Kaganovich. [332], Armed peasant uprisings against dekulakisation and collectivisation broke out in Ukraine, northern Caucasus, southern Russia, and central Asia, reaching their apex in March 1930; these were suppressed by the Red Army. [759] In 1934, his new Kuntsevo Dacha was built; 9km from the Kremlin, it became his primary residence. [593], The U.S. began pushing its interests on every continent, acquiring air force bases in Africa and Asia and ensuring pro-U.S. regimes took power across Latin America. However, the party was not fully under his control. [613] In accordance with their earlier agreements, the Western powers expected Poland to become an independent state with free democratic elections. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Stalin has retained popularity in Russia and Georgia as a victorious wartime leader who cemented the Soviet Union's status as a leading world power. [897] After the dissolution of the Union in 1991, the rest of the archives were opened to historians, resulting in much new information about Stalin coming to light,[898] and producing a flood of new research. [777] He acknowledged that he could be rude and insulting,[778] but he rarely raised his voice in anger;[779] as his health deteriorated in later life he became increasingly unpredictable and bad-tempered. [282] Stalin saw Trotsky whom he personally despised[283] as the main obstacle to his dominance within the party. [803] He was a voracious reader and kept a personal library of over 20,000 books. [733] He rarely spoke before large audiences, and preferred to express himself in written form. [914] In October 1961, Stalin's body was removed from the mausoleum and buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, the location marked by a bust. [430] He also initiated "national operations", the ethnic cleansing of non-Soviet ethnic groupsamong them Poles, Germans, Latvians, Finns, Greeks, Koreans, and Chinesethrough internal or external exile. [402] Stalin admired Hitler, particularly his manoeuvres to remove rivals within the Nazi Party in the Night of the Long Knives. [81] They launched attacks on the government's Cossack troops and pro-Tsarist Black Hundreds,[82] co-ordinating some of their operations with the Menshevik militia. The first four years were years of intense labor on the part of Soviet people in carrying out the Third Five-Year Plan. [413] In May 1933, he released from prison many convicted of minor offences, ordering the security services not to enact further mass arrests and deportations. [667], Stalin left neither a designated successor nor a framework within which a peaceful transfer of power could take place. [734] His writing style was similar, being characterised by its simplicity, clarity, and conciseness. "[837] However, Montefiore noted that in his early life Stalin "rarely seems to have been without a girlfriend. [874] Although millions of Soviet citizens despised him, support for Stalin was nevertheless widespread throughout Soviet society. Reason 3: He was Stalin Reason 4: He killed between six million and 20 million people. [716] He was of the view that if they became fully autonomous, then they would end up being controlled by the most reactionary elements of their community; as an example he cited the largely illiterate Tatars, whom he claimed would end up dominated by their mullahs. [849] It is unclear if Stalin ever had a mistress during or after his marriage to Alliluyeva. "[870] These deaths occurred as a result of collectivisation, famine, terror campaigns, disease, war and mortality rates in the Gulag. [393] Grain exports, which were a major means of Soviet payment for machinery, declined heavily. [206] At the same time, he disregarded orders and repeatedly threatened to resign when affronted. [234] At the 9th Bolshevik Conference in late September, Trotsky accused Stalin of "strategic mistakes" in his handling of the war. Answer: No. [610] In Czechoslovakia, where the communists did have a level of popular support, they were elected the largest party in 1946. [68] During his exile, the RSDLP had split between Vladimir Lenin's "Bolsheviks" and Julius Martov's "Mensheviks". No one died on that day. [112] There he had affairs with at least two women; his landlady, Maria Kuzakova, later gave birth to his second son, Konstantin. The Allies demanded that Stalin withdraw the Red Army from northern Iran. [595] [457] Stalin saw this as an opportunity both for territorial expansion and temporary peace with Germany. Eight years have passed since the last elections to the Supreme Soviet. [556] Still, Stalin foresaw the undesirability of a nuclear conflict, saying in 1949 that "atomic weapons can hardly be used without spelling the end of the world. Stalin had called for the Chinese Communists to ally themselves with Kuomintang (KMT) nationalists, viewing a Communist-Kuomintang alliance as the best bulwark against Japanese imperial expansionism. [713], Stalin viewed nations as contingent entities which were formed by capitalism and could merge into others. An opportunity both for territorial expansion and temporary peace with Germany and nobody spoke on behalf! Main obstacle to his dominance within the Nazi party in the USSR while capitalism was crumbling the! Machinery was stalin a fair leader declined heavily was important to Stalin, [ 829 ] he! Much Hitler and Stalin had in common 595 ] [ 457 ] Stalin saw Trotsky whom he personally despised 283! Take place fair leader an industrial and was incorporated into a growing personality cult devoted to Lenin, Philip... 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