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It is unlikely that any of the adults in Russia, and indeed in the world, need to be told about Stalin the politician. Much less is known about Stalin as a person, and yet he was a husband, father and, as it turns out, a great hunter of women, at least during his stormy revolutionary youth. True, the fate of the people closest to him always developed tragically. Sweeping aside fiction, myths and gossip, Anews talks about the wives and children of the leader.
Ekaterina (Kato) Svanidze
First wife
At 27, Stalin married the 21-year-old daughter of a Georgian nobleman. Her brother, with whom he once studied at the seminary, was his close friend. They married secretly, at night, in a mountain monastery in Tiflis, because Joseph was already hiding from the authorities as a Bolshevik underground worker. 
The marriage, made out of great love, lasted only 16 months: Kato gave birth to a son, Yakov, and at the age of 22 she died in her husband's arms, either from transient consumption, or from typhus. According to legend, the inconsolable widower allegedly said to a friend at the funeral: "My last warm feelings for people died with her." 
Even if these words are fiction, here is a real fact: years later, Stalinist repressions destroyed almost all of Catherine's relatives. The same brother with his wife and older sister were shot. And the brother's son was kept in a psychiatric hospital until Stalin's death.
Yakov Dzhugashvili
First son
Stalin's firstborn was raised by Kato's relatives. He first saw his father at the age of 14, when he already had a new family. It is believed that Stalin never fell in love with the "wolf cub", as he himself called him, and was even jealous of his wife, who was only five and a half years older than Yasha. He severely punished the teenager for the slightest misconduct, sometimes he did not let him go home, forcing him to spend the night on the stairs. When, at the age of 18, the son married against the will of his father, the relationship finally deteriorated. In desperation, Yakov tried to shoot himself, but the bullet went right through, he was saved, and Stalin moved even further away from the “hooligan and blackmailer” and poisoned him with mockery: “Ha, he didn’t hit!” 
In June of the 41st, Yakov Dzhugashvili went to the front, and to the most difficult sector - near Vitebsk. His battery distinguished itself in one of the largest tank battles, and Stalin's son, along with other fighters, was presented for the award.
But soon Jacob was captured. His portraits immediately appeared on fascist leaflets designed to demoralize Soviet soldiers. There is a myth that Stalin allegedly refused to exchange his son for the German commander Paulus, saying: “I don’t change a soldier for a field marshal!” Historians doubt that the Germans even offered such an exchange, and the phrase itself sounds in the Soviet epic film "Liberation" and, apparently, is an invention of the screenwriters.
German photo: Stalin's son in captivity 
And the next picture of the captured Yakov Dzhugashvili is published for the first time: only recently it was found in the photo archive of the commander of the Third Reich, Wolfram von Richthofen. 
Yakov spent two years in captivity, under no pressure did not cooperate with the Germans. He died in the camp in April 1943: he provoked a sentry to a fatal shot by rushing to a barbed wire fence. According to a widespread version, Yakov was in despair when he heard Stalin's words on the radio that "there are no prisoners of war in the Red Army, there are only traitors and traitors to the Motherland." However, most likely, this "spectacular phrase" was attributed to Stalin later. 
Meanwhile, the relatives of Yakov Dzhugashvili, in particular, his daughter and half-brother Artem Sergeyev, were convinced all their lives that he died in battle in June 41, and his stay in captivity, including photos and interrogation protocols, was from beginning to end played out by the Germans for propaganda purposes. However, in 2007, the FSB confirmed the fact of his capture.
Nadezhda Alliluyeva
Second and last wife
The second time Stalin married at the age of 40, his wife was 23 years younger - a fresh graduate of the gymnasium, who looked with admiration at the seasoned revolutionary, who had just returned from another Siberian exile.
Nadezhda was the daughter of Stalin's longtime associates, and he also had an affair with her mother Olga in his youth. Now, years later, she became his mother-in-law. 
The marriage of Joseph and Nadezhda, at first happy, eventually became unbearable for both. The memories of their family are very contradictory: some said that Stalin was gentle at home, and she imposed strict discipline and flared up easily, others that he was constantly rude, and she endured and accumulated resentment until a tragedy happened ...
In November 1932, after another public skirmish with her husband while visiting Voroshilov, Nadezhda returned home, retired to the bedroom and shot herself in the heart. No one heard the shot, only the next morning she was found dead. She was 31 years old. 
Different things were also told about Stalin's reaction. According to some, he was shocked, sobbed at the funeral. Others remember that he was furious and over the coffin of his wife said: "I did not know that you were my enemy." One way or another, family relationships were forever finished. Subsequently, numerous novels were attributed to Stalin, including with the first beauty of the Soviet screen, Lyubov Orlova, but mostly these are unconfirmed rumors and myths.
Vasily Dzhugashvili (Stalin)
Second son
Nadezhda bore Stalin two children. When she committed suicide, the 12-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter were looked after not only by nannies and housekeepers, but also by male guards, led by General Vlasik. It was them that Vasily later blamed for the fact that from a young age he was addicted to smoking and alcohol. 
Subsequently, being a military pilot and bravely fighting in the war, he repeatedly received penalties and demotions "in the name of Stalin" for hooligan actions. For example, he was removed from command of the regiment for fishing with aircraft shells, which killed his weapons engineer and wounded one of the best pilots.
Or after the war, a year before Stalin's death, he lost his post as commander of the Air Force of the Moscow Military District, when he showed up drunk at a festive reception of the government and was rude to the commander in chief of the Air Force. 
Immediately after the death of the leader, the life of Lieutenant General of Aviation Vasily Stalin went downhill. It began to spread right and left that his father was poisoned, and when the Minister of Defense decided to appoint a troubled son to a position away from Moscow, he disobeyed his order. He was transferred to the reserve without the right to wear a uniform, and then he did the irreparable - he reported his version of Stalin's poisoning to foreigners, hoping to get protection from them.
But instead of going abroad, Stalin's youngest son, an decorated participant in the Great Patriotic War, ended up in prison, where he spent 8 years, from April 1953 to April 1961. The angry Soviet leadership hung a lot of accusations on him, including frankly ridiculous ones, but during interrogations Vasily confessed to everything without exception. At the end of his term, he was “exiled” to Kazan, but he did not live a year at liberty: he died in March 1962, just a couple of days before his 41st birthday. According to the official conclusion, from alcohol poisoning.
Svetlana Alliluyeva (Lana Peters)
Stalin's daughter
Naturally or not, but the only one of the children in whom Stalin did not look for a soul gave him nothing but trouble during her lifetime, and after his death she fled abroad and, in the end, completely abandoned her homeland, where she was threatened with a fate until the end of her days to bear moral punishment for father's sins. 
From a young age, she started countless novels, sometimes disastrous for her chosen ones. When, at the age of 16, she fell in love with the 40-year-old screenwriter Alexei Kapler, Stalin arrested him and exiled him to Vorkuta, completely forgetting how he himself had seduced the young Nadezhda, Svetlana's mother, at the same age.
Only Svetlana had five official husbands, including an Indian and an American. Having escaped to India in 1966, she became a “defector”, leaving her 20-year-old son and 16-year-old daughter to the USSR. They did not forgive such a betrayal. The son is no longer in the world, and the daughter, who is now under 70, abruptly cuts off inquisitive journalists: “You are mistaken, she is not my mother.”
In America, Svetlana, who became Lana Peters by her husband, had a third daughter, Olga. With her, in the mid-80s, she suddenly returned to the USSR, but did not take root either in Moscow or in Georgia, and as a result, she finally left for the United States, renouncing her native citizenship. Her personal life did not work out. She died in a nursing home in 2011, her burial place is unknown. 
Svetlana Alliluyeva: "Wherever I go - to Switzerland, or India, even Australia, even to some lonely island, I will always be a political prisoner of my father's name."
Stalin had three more sons - two illegitimate, born from his mistresses in exile, and one adopted. Surprisingly, their fates were not so tragic, on the contrary, as if remoteness from their father or lack of blood relationship saved them from evil fate.
Artem Sergeev
Stalin's adopted son
His own father was the legendary Bolshevik "Comrade Artem", a revolutionary ally and close friend of Stalin. When his son was three months old, he died in a railway accident, and Stalin took him into his family.
Artem was the same age as Vasily Stalin, the guys from childhood were inseparable. From the age of two and a half, both were brought up in a boarding school for "Kremlin" children, however, in order not to raise a "children's elite", exactly the same number of real street homeless children were placed with them. Everyone was taught to work equally. The children of the party members returned home only on weekends, and they were obliged to invite orphans to their place.
According to the memoirs of Vasily, Stalin "loved Artyom very much, set him as an example." However, the diligent Artyom, who, unlike Vasily, studied well and with interest, Stalin did not give concessions. So, after the war, he had a pretty hard time at the Artillery Academy because of the excessive drill and nitpicking of teachers. Then it turned out that Stalin personally demanded that his adopted son be treated more strictly. 
Already after the death of Stalin, Artem Sergeev became a great military leader, retired with the rank of Major General of Artillery. He is considered one of the founders of the anti-aircraft missile forces of the USSR. He died in 2008 at the age of 86. Until the end of his life he remained a devoted communist. 
Mistresses and illegitimate children
The British expert on Soviet history Simon Seabag Montefiori, who has many awards in documentary films, traveled around the territory of the former USSR in the 90s and found a lot of unpublished documents in the archives. It turned out that the young Stalin was surprisingly amorous, was fond of women of different ages and classes, and after the death of his first wife, during the years of Siberian exile, had a large number of mistresses.
17 year old high school graduate Field of Onufrieva he sent passionate postcards (one of them is in the photo). Postscript: “I have your kiss, passed on to me through Petka. I kiss you in return, and not just a kiss, but gorrrryacho (just kissing is not worth it!). Joseph". 
He had affairs with party comrades - Vera Schweitzer and Lyudmila Stal.
And on a noblewoman from Odessa Stephanie Petrovskaya he even considered getting married. 
However, Stalin lived two sons with simple peasant women from a distant wilderness.
Konstantin Stepanovich Kuzakov
An illegitimate son from a cohabitant in Solvychegodsk Maria Kuzakova 
The son of a young widow who sheltered the exiled Stalin graduated from a university in Leningrad and made a dizzying career - from a non-party university teacher to the head of cinematography at the USSR Ministry of Culture and one of the leaders of the State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company. He recalled in 1995: “My origin was not a big secret, but I always managed to evade the answer when they asked me about it. But I suppose my promotion is also related to my abilities. 
Only in adulthood did he first see Stalin up close, and this happened in the canteen of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. Kuzakov, as a member of the apparatus of the Central Committee responsible for propaganda, was engaged in political editing of speeches. “I didn’t even have time to take a step towards Stalin. The bell rang, and the members of the Politburo went into the hall. Stalin stopped and looked at me. I felt that he wanted to say something to me. I wanted to run towards him, but something stopped me. Probably, subconsciously, I understood that public recognition of kinship would bring me nothing but big trouble. Stalin waved the receiver and walked slowly ... "
After that, Stalin, under the pretext of a working consultation, wanted to arrange a personal reception for Kuzakov, but he did not hear the phone call, having fallen asleep soundly after a late meeting. Only the next morning he was informed that he had missed. Then Konstantin saw Stalin more than once, both close and from a distance, but they never spoke to each other, and he did not call to himself again. "I think he did not want to make me an instrument in the hands of intriguers." 
However, in the 47th Kuzakov almost fell under repression due to the intrigues of Beria. He was expelled from the party for "loss of vigilance", removed from all posts. Beria at the Politburo demanded his arrest. But Stalin saved the unrecognized son. As Zhdanov later told him, Stalin walked along the table for a long time, smoked, and then said: "I see no reason to arrest Kuzakov." 
Kuzakov was reinstated in the party on the day Beria was arrested, and his career resumed. He retired already under Gorbachev, in 1987, at the age of 75. Died in 1996.
Alexander Yakovlevich Davydov
An illegitimate son from a cohabitant in Kureika Lidia Pereprygina 
And here it was almost a criminal story, because the 34-year-old Stalin began to live with Lydia when she was only 14. Under the threat of gendarme prosecution for seducing a minor, he promised to marry her later, but escaped from exile earlier. At the time of his disappearance, she was pregnant and already without him gave birth to a son, Alexander.
There is evidence that at first the runaway father corresponded with Lydia. Then, there was a rumor that Stalin was killed at the front, and she married the fisherman Yakov Davydov, who adopted her child. 
There is documentary evidence that in 1946, 67-year-old Stalin suddenly wanted to find out about their fate and gave a laconic order to find the bearers of such and such surnames. According to the results of the search, Stalin was given a brief reference - such and such live there. And all the personal and piquant details that came to light in the process surfaced only 10 years later, already under Khrushchev, when the campaign to expose the cult of personality began. 
Alexander Davydov lived the simple life of a Soviet soldier and worker. Participated in the Great Patriotic and Korean Wars, rose to the rank of major. After his discharge from the army, he lived with his family in Novokuznetsk, worked in low positions - as a foreman, head of the factory canteen. Died in 1987.
This man made the whole world respect himself and his country. Under him, Russia reached the peak of its power and became a world power. He was feared and respected. Winston Churchill remembers how he tried to force himself not to get up when he appeared. But Stalin entered, and some unknown force grabbed the British Prime Minister and tore him from his chair. You can accuse Stalin of villainy and tyranny, but he was unmercenary and acted for the good of the country, as he understood it. For many years, they tried to slander Stalin, then forget. But it is impossible to ignore the fact that he took the country with a plow and surrendered with an atomic bomb. It is not surprising, therefore, that at the Hero of Russia competition he took second place, losing to the compromise figure of Alexander Nevsky. Even his most cruel acts were dictated by state necessity. It is from this position that one should study his deeds.
Praise to you, Gori Valley
This is the first line of a song about Stalin known in the thirties, which reliably reports the place of his birth. At that semi-legendary time, the biography of the leader of the peoples was dictated by the leader himself, so many unflattering testimonies have been erased, and the date of his birth has been corrected. In fact, Joseph (Soso) Dzhugashvili was born on December 6 (18), 1978 in the city of Gori, Tiflis province. His father, a shoemaker Vissarion Dzhugashvili, drank a lot and raged. Mother, Ekaterina Dzhugashvili, buried two children before giving birth to Joseph. She worked as a day laborer and dreamed of Soso becoming a priest. When the almighty son visits her in Gori and says that he has become something like a tsar in Russia, she will answer: “It would be better if you became a priest.” For this, she worked hard, washing the local nobility and intelligentsia. The courageous woman had to endure the death of her husband in a drunken fight and the trauma of her son, which made him crippled all his life. Stalin was unlucky with his appearance - a pock-marked face, short stature and a low forehead. The stronger was his inner energy, subordinating stronger peers and attracting women.
But not only family circumstances and appearance determined the low start of his career. Young Soso did not know Russian at all. But he had perseverance, which helped him overcome this barrier and enter the Tiflis Theological Seminary. Stalin was far from the only seminarian who lost faith in God. At night, would-be clerics indiscriminately devoured revolutionary literature, from Sergei Nechaev's Catechism of a Revolutionary to Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. Even before being expelled from the seminary for not appearing for the exam, Joseph shows his organizational skills, creating work circles and propagating Marxism. It is difficult to say what is true here, but Stalin's influence on the bandits is confirmed by facts. The most famous Bolshevik terrorist Simon Ter-Petrosyan was betrayed by Dzhugashvili and even received his party nickname Kamo from him.
The beginning of the revolutionary path
At the beginning of the century, the Tiflis proletariat went on strike. Stalin was involved and, in order not to be arrested, goes into hiding. Around this time, he takes his first pseudonym - Koba, in honor of the glorious Georgian robber. Subsequently, this nickname will often be used by Trotsky, wanting to humiliate an opponent.
Koba actively participates in all working actions in the Caucasus. He unquestioningly trusts Lenin, whom he meets in December 1905 at the 1st Conference of the RSDLP in Finland. In 1906, he was a delegate to the IV Congress of the RSDLP in Stockholm, and in 1907 - the V Congress of the RSDLP in London. Between these events, short-term family happiness and the tragedy of Koba fit in. Ekaterina Svanidze, with whom he secretly marries in a church, dies of typhus, leaving him a son, Yakov. Iosif Dzhugashvili by that time was a very important member of the Leninist party, through whom the money seized during the famous Tiflis expropriation passed. But he does not have the funds to buy medicine for his wife.
The following years, right up to the February Revolution, Stalin almost did not get out of exile. In between, he visits Lenin in Switzerland and contributes to the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda. The last and most difficult exile to the Turukhansk region, which he ended up in, probably due to betrayal, will embitter him, make him a cruel and distrustful person. Lenin sees in Stalin a limited, but efficient guy, whom he instructs to interact with the militants in order to expropriate funds to the party fund. Koba organizes Lenin's flight to Finland in the summer of 1917. He does not orate or theorize. It is difficult to say what his role was in the preparation of the October Revolution, but at the beginning of 1918 only two were allowed to enter Ilyich without a report and at any time - Trotsky and Stalin.
dashing twenties
As expected, the Bolshevik coup sparked a civil war in Russia. Stalin heads the Commissariat for Nationalities and is a member of the Revolutionary Military Councils of the Western, Southern, Southwestern Fronts. He will show his iron grip and monstrous capacity for work even before Lenin's death. The leaders of the Bolsheviks, whose portraits floated above the demonstrations, are bored with routine work. All organizational issues fall on the shoulders of Comrade Stalin, who in 1922 was appointed General Secretary of the Central Committee of the RCP(b). In this humble position, he will concentrate enormous power in his hands and crush his rivals.
And there were many competitors. The second man in the party, Leon Trotsky, a brilliant orator and creator of the Red Army, does not hide his contempt for the provincial Stalin. Their first and only conflict will take place during the defense of Tsaritsyn, where Stalin was sent as a member of the Revolutionary Military Council. Then Koba gave vent to his feelings and expressed disobedience to Trotsky, who led the army in key positions of the People's Commissariat of Defense and the Pre-Revolutionary Military Council. He will not repeat his mistake again and will act from behind the scenes. After Lenin's death, Stalin crushes the arrogant Trotsky, and then destroys the entire Leninist guard.
The secret of industrialization
Why was it necessary to shoot the weak and demoralized Lenin's comrades-in-arms, who glorified him more than others? One NKVD pensioner who participated in the interrogations told the historian A.I. Fursov: “Stalin always came to the first interrogation and asked the same question: where is the money?” During the first years of Soviet power, a lot of money and jewelry settled in foreign banks. These were countless treasures in the accounts of prominent party members who were in no hurry to return them to the country. Meanwhile, the Nazis came to power. They made no secret of their plans to crush Bolshevism. That is why Stalin said: "If we do not go through the path that the Western countries have gone through in 100 years in ten years, we will perish." For 10 years, the USSR became a powerful industrial power and was able to crush the Nazi machine, which was supplied by almost all of Europe. 9,000 largest enterprises were built, but where did the money come from?! Grain, which as a result of collectivization was snatched from the destitute peasants and sold to the West, brought an insignificant income. The Comintern, the NKVD and other structures of the state waged a secret struggle for the return of the confiscated and looted. The power of the Soviet state was built on this money, torn out under torture.
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
Western countries condemn Stalin for the treaty of friendship and borders with Nazi Germany, but they forget to say that Hitler concluded the first such treaty with Poland. Moreover, the USSR was the last country to officially recognize the claims of the Nazis. What did we get in return? Two years of respite and help from Germany, from which we took a large loan. In addition, the fact that we did not become the aggressor endeared us to the United States, which entered the war on the side of the USSR. Now it is difficult to understand, but things could have been much worse, and not only the Reich, but also America and Japan would have taken up arms against us. Stalin led the country between Scylla and Charybdis.
The mystery of the death of Joseph Stalin
The version that he was helped to die is getting louder and louder. The strange events of the last years of her life speak in her favor. Who played on Stalin's manic suspicion and persuaded him to remove his closest people from him - the head of the personal guard Vlasik and the faithful maid? Who sent the guards to bed the night he had a brain hemorrhage? Who inspired the members of the Politburo not to allow doctors to the body of the paralyzed leader? Witnesses of these events will no longer be able to answer these questions, but it is known what some of them feared. Joseph Stalin understood that he had become a hostage to the apparatus he had fed. Some historians claim that he was preparing a new bloodbath for his associates, others that he planned to move the center of power from the party apparatus to Soviet bodies. Perhaps the secret archives will still tell us the truth about this.
The USSR ate Stalin's legacy until 1991. Many factories, bridges and power plants built by him are still in operation. In search of a new greatness, Russia is doomed to study its experience, trying to avoid Stalin's mistakes. Wherever the gigantic country he built goes, it will look back at Joseph Stalin and will not emerge from his shadow for a long time to come.
The biography of Stalin is one of the most interesting and often studied. After all, being from a simple family, he managed to become a leader, whom he ruled for 29 years.
Stalin carried out many reforms, raised the economy and in record time transformed the country after total devastation during the Second World War.
Under his rule, the Soviet Union became a superpower with nuclear weapons.
So, your attention is invited to the biography of Joseph Stalin.
Biography of Stalin
In Soviet times, tons of books were written about Stalin. Today, interest in it still has not cooled down, as it plays one of the most important roles for the world of the 20th century.
In this article, we will tell you about the key events in Stalin's biography that made him one of the most famous politicians in the history of mankind.
Childhood
Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin (real name - Dzhugashvili) was born on December 9, 1879 in the Georgian city of Gori. He grew up in a poor family belonging to the lower class.
15-year-old Joseph Dzhugashvili, 1894 His father, Vissarion, worked as a shoemaker, and was a very despotic person.
Drunk to unconsciousness, he severely beat his wife, and sometimes Joseph himself.
There was an episode in Stalin's biography when he had to throw a knife at his father in order to protect himself and his mother from beatings.
According to the testimony of local residents, once the father beat little Joseph so badly that he almost broke his head.
Stalin's mother, Ekaterina Georgievna, came from a family of a serf, and was poorly educated.
From a young age, she had to earn a living by hard work.
Despite the fact that she also often beat her son, she, at the same time, loved him unconsciously, and protected him from all sorts of worldly unrest.
Stalin's appearance
Iosif Dzhugashvili had various bodily defects. He had fused second and third toes on his left foot, and pockmarks covered his face.
When he was 6 years old, he was run over by a chaise (an open body car) and seriously injured his arms and legs.
Throughout his life, Stalin's left arm did not fully unbend. In the future, because of these injuries, he will be recognized as unfit for military service.
Education
An interesting fact is that until the age of 8, Stalin did not know at all. Years of biography 1886-1888, Joseph, at the request of his mother, was taught Russian by the children of a local priest.
After that, he studied at the Gori Theological School, which he graduated in 1894. Then his mother sent him to the Tiflis Theological Seminary, because she really wanted her son to become a priest.
However, this did not happen. Interestingly, it was in the seminary that Joseph first heard about Marxism.
The new political movement so captivated the 15-year-old teenager that he began to seriously engage in revolutionary activities. On May 29, 1899, in his fifth year of study, Stalin was expelled from the seminary "for failing to appear for exams for an unknown reason."
In 1931, in an interview with the German writer Emil Ludwig, to the question “What prompted you to be in the opposition? Perhaps the mistreatment by the parents? Stalin replied:
"Not. My parents treated me quite well. Another thing is the theological seminary where I studied then. Out of protest against the mocking regime and the Jesuit methods that existed in the seminary, I was ready to become and really became a revolutionary, a supporter of Marxism ... "
Literally immediately after being expelled from the seminary, the young man decides to join the social democratic movement Mesame-dasi.
This led to the fact that in 1901 he became a professional revolutionary.
Stalin's name
In the same year, Dzhugashvili takes on the pseudonym "Stalin", under which he will go down in history. Why he chose such a pseudonym for himself is not known for certain.
Stalin Koba
Stalin's party friends gave him the nickname "Koba", which greatly flattered the young revolutionary.
Koba is a famous character in the adventure story of the Georgian writer Alexander Kazbegi. Koba was an honest robber, fighting for justice.
Stalin at the age of 23, 1901 revolutionary activity
The period of Stalin's biography of 1902-1913 was full of various events. He was arrested 6 times and sent into exile, from which he made successful escapes several times.
After the party split into "Mensheviks" and "Bolsheviks" in 1903, Stalin supported the latter. This choice was made largely because he was on the side of the Bolsheviks, whom Stalin admired.
At the direction of Lenin, Koba managed to create quite a lot of underground Marxist circles in the Caucasus.
Beginning in 1906, Stalin was a participant and organizer of various expropriations (deprivation of property). All the stolen money was intended for the needs of the party and the financing of the underground activities of the revolutionaries.
In 1907, Stalin became one of the leaders of the Baku Committee of the RSDLP. Since he was a very literate and well-read person, he also participated in the creation of the newspapers Zvezda and Pravda.
Photo of Stalin after his arrest in March 1908 In 1913, Dzhugashvili wrote an article "Marxism and the national question", which received good reviews from colleagues.
In the same year he was arrested and sent to the famous exile in the Turukhansk region.
October Revolution of 1917
In the spring of 1917, Stalin was a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RSDR, and was also a member of the Military Revolutionary Center for leading an armed uprising.
In this regard, he took an active part in the preparation of the coup.
The party was pleased with his actions, as he coped with any task that was entrusted to him, and was absolutely devoted to the ideas of the Bolsheviks.
From the beginning of the Civil War and up to its end, Stalin held many responsible positions.
According to the memoirs of his contemporaries, no matter what he did, he managed to do his job perfectly.
party work
In 1922, a major event took place in Stalin's biography. He becomes the first General Secretary of the Central Committee. At the same time, it should be noted that initially this position meant only the leadership of the party apparatus.
However, over time, it was turned by Stalin into a post with great powers. The uniqueness of the post was that it was the Secretary General who had the right to appoint grassroots party leaders.
Thanks to this, the shrewd and cautious Stalin chose the most devoted people for himself. In the future, this will help him create and lead the vertical of power.
power struggle
In 1924, after Lenin's death, many communists from the Central Committee wanted to take his place. Among them was Dzhugashvili. Wanting to become the new leader, he proclaimed a course towards "building socialism."
In order for his fellow party members to support this idea, he often quoted Lenin, emphasizing his commitment to socialism.
Stalin's main opponent in the struggle for power was. However, he managed to outplay him. The majority of party members voted for Stalin's candidacy.
As a result of this, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin became the first person in the country, and almost single-handedly ruled it from 1924 to 1953, until his death.
First of all, he focused his attention on the industrialization of the country and forced collectivization, which was abolished only in the spring of 1930.
In addition, he did everything possible to get rid of the kulaks. During the years of Stalin's rule, millions of people were evicted or sent into exile.
In the future, collectivization led to a wave of protests among the peasants. Riots broke out in one place after another, many of which were put down with weapons.
father of nations
In the mid-30s, Joseph Stalin became the sole leader of the Soviet people. Former party leaders such as Trotsky (see), Bukharin, Zinoviev, Kamenev and others were repressed because they took an anti-Stalinist position.
Researchers argue that the period of the biography of 1937-1938 was the bloodiest in the entire history of Stalin's rule.
In a short period of time, millions of Soviet citizens of very different social status were repressed. More people ended up in labor camps.
At the same time, the cult of the personality of the leader began to actively develop. Stalin was called none other than the "father of nations."
The Great Patriotic War
Joseph Stalin represented his country in negotiations with the Allied countries in Tehran (1943), Yalta (1945) and Potsdam (1945).
As a result of the bloodiest war in history, the loss of military personnel and civilians amounted to more than 26 million Soviet people.
The Soviet army made the greatest contribution to the victory over the Nazis, becoming the main victorious country. It was the soldiers of the USSR who liberated most of the European countries.
It is important to note that immediately after the war, this fact was impossible to deny or dispute, so the allies, at least verbally, expressed their gratitude to the USSR.
However, today, unfortunately, the history of the Second World War is being actively rewritten.
Postwar years
In the post-war years, much has changed in Stalin's biography. After all, he was the main country that defeated world evil.
In this regard, the "father of peoples" wanted to create a world socialist system, which ran counter to the interests of Western countries.
As a result of this and other factors, the Cold War began, which affected politics, the economy, the military power of countries, etc. The main confrontation took place between the USSR and the USA.
June 27, 1945 Joseph Stalin was awarded the title of Generalissimo of the Soviet Union. A year later, he was approved as Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and Minister of the Armed Forces of the USSR.
After the end of the war in the Soviet Union, totalitarianism resumed again. The autocratic regime did not allow people to have their own point of view, and freedom of speech was strictly controlled by official censorship.
By order of the leadership, constant purges were carried out, concerning both the state apparatus and ordinary people. At the same time, anti-Semitic sentiments began to appear in society.
Achievements
At the same time, despite the fact that there are many dark spots in Stalin's biography, it is fair to note his achievements.
During the reign of the “father of nations”, by the end of the 40s, it developed so rapidly that by 1950 it was 100% higher than its indicators in relation to 1940.
An interesting fact is that in 2009 he spoke out that under the leadership of Stalin the country "turned from an agrarian into", which is simply impossible to argue with.
In addition, the leader paid great attention to increasing the military power of the USSR. He was also the initiator of the "atomic project", thanks to which the Soviet became a superpower.
Personal life
Stalin's first wife was Ekaterina Svanidze, whom he married in 1906. In this marriage, their son Yakov was born.
However, the very next year, Catherine died of typhus. For Stalin, this was a real tragedy, from which he could not recover for a long time.
Stalin's second wife is Nadezhda Alliluyeva. She gave birth to the leader of two children: Vasily and Svetlana.
Stalin and his wife Nadezhda Sergeevna Alliluyeva 
Stalin with his children Death of Stalin
Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin died on March 5, 1953 at the age of 74. There are still heated discussions regarding the causes of his death.
According to the official version, he died as a result of a cerebral hemorrhage. After his death, the body of the leader was exhibited in the Moscow House of the Unions so that people could say goodbye to him.
After that, his body was embalmed and placed in the Mausoleum next to Lenin.
However, in 1961, at the 22nd Congress of the CPSU, party members decided that the coffin with Stalin could not be in the Mausoleum, since he "seriously violated Lenin's precepts."
Stalin's biography has caused a lot of controversy over the years. Some consider him "the devil in the flesh", while others say that he was one of the best rulers of Russia, and even the world.
Today, many documents have been declassified that allow a better understanding of the character and actions of the Soviet leader.
Based on this, everyone is able to independently draw conclusions about who Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili-Stalin really was.
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Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin (real name - Dzhugashvili, Georgian. იოსებ ჯუღაშვილი). Born December 6 (18), 1878 (officially December 9 (21), 1879) in Gori (Tiflis province, Russian Empire) - died March 5, 1953 in the village. Volynskoye (Kuntsevsky district, Moscow region). Russian revolutionary, Soviet political, state, military and party leader. From the end of the 1920s until his death, the permanent leader of the Soviet state.
Iosif Dzhugashvili was born on December 6 (18 according to the new style) December 1878 in Gori, Tiflis province.
For a long time it was believed that he was born on December 9 (21), 1879, but later researchers established the real date of Joseph Stalin's birth: December 6 (18), 1878. The date of his baptism, December 17 (29), 1878, also became known.
Born into a Georgian family belonging to the lower class. A number of sources express versions about the Ossetian origin of Stalin's ancestors.
Father- Vissarion (Beso) Dzhugashvili, came from the peasants of the village of Didi-Lilo, Tiflis province, a shoemaker by profession.
A drinker in fits of rage, he severely beat his wife Ekaterina and little Coco (Joseph). There was a case when a child tried to protect his mother from being beaten. He threw a knife at Vissarion and took to his heels. According to the recollections of the son of a policeman in Gori, on another occasion Vissarion broke into the house where Ekaterina and little Coco were, and attacked them with beatings, inflicting a head injury on the child.
Mother- Ekaterina Georgievna - came from the family of a serf (gardener) Geladze in the village of Gambareuli, worked as a day laborer. She was a hard-pressed Puritan woman who often beat her only surviving child, but was boundlessly devoted to him.
Stalin's childhood friend David Machavariani said that “Kato surrounded Joseph with excessive maternal love and, like a she-wolf, protected him from everyone and everything. She exhausted herself with work to the point of exhaustion in order to make her darling happy. Catherine, however, according to some historians, was disappointed that her son never became a priest.
Joseph was the third son in the family, the first two died in infancy. Some time after the birth of Joseph, things did not go well for his father, and he began to drink. The family changed homes frequently. Ultimately, Vissarion left his wife, while trying to take his son, but Catherine did not give him away.
When Coco was eleven years old, Vissarion "died in a drunken brawl - someone stabbed him."
In 1886, Ekaterina Georgievna wanted to assign Joseph to study at the Gori Orthodox Theological School, however, since he did not know the Russian language at all, he failed to enter.
In 1886-1888, at the request of his mother, the children of the priest Christopher Charkviani undertook to teach Joseph the Russian language. As a result, in 1888, Soso did not enter the first preparatory class at the school, but immediately entered the second preparatory class, in September of the following year he entered the first class of the school, which he graduated in June 1894.
In September 1894, Joseph passed the entrance exams and was enrolled in the Orthodox Tiflis Theological Seminary. There he first became acquainted with Marxism, and by the beginning of 1895 came into contact with underground groups of revolutionary Marxists exiled by the government to Transcaucasia.
Subsequently, Stalin himself recalled: “I entered the revolutionary movement from the age of 15, when I got in touch with underground groups of Russian Marxists who then lived in Transcaucasia. These groups had a great influence on me and instilled in me a taste for underground Marxist literature.”
Stalin was an extremely gifted student, receiving high marks in all subjects: mathematics, theology, Greek, Russian. Stalin liked poetry, and in his youth he himself wrote poems in Georgian, which attracted the attention of connoisseurs.
In 1931, in an interview with the German writer Emil Ludwig, to the question “What prompted you to be in opposition? Perhaps it was bad treatment from the parents?” Stalin replied: “No. My parents treated me quite well. Another thing is the theological seminary where I studied then. Out of protest against the mocking regime and the Jesuit methods that existed in the seminary, I was ready to become and really became a revolutionary, a supporter of Marxism ... ".
In 1898, Dzhugashvili gained experience as a propagandist at a meeting with workers at the apartment of the revolutionary Vano Sturua and soon began to lead a workers' circle of young railway workers, he began to conduct classes in several workers' circles and even compiled a Marxist study program for them.
In August of the same 1898, Joseph joined the Georgian Social Democratic organization "Mesame-dasi" ("Third Group"). Together with V. Z. Ketskhoveli and A. G. Tsulukidze, Dzhugashvili forms the core of the revolutionary minority of this organization, the majority of which stood on the positions of “legal Marxism” and leaned towards nationalism.
On May 29, 1899, in his fifth year of study, he was expelled from the seminary "for failure to appear for exams for an unknown reason" (probably, the actual reason for the expulsion was the activity of Joseph Dzhugashvili in promoting Marxism among seminarians and workers of railway workshops). The certificate issued to him indicated that he had completed four classes and could serve as a teacher in elementary public schools.
After being expelled from the seminary, Dzhugashvili was interrupted by tutoring for some time. Among his students, in particular, was his closest childhood friend Simon Ter-Petrosyan (the future revolutionary Kamo).
From the end of December 1899, Dzhugashvili was admitted to the Tiflis Physical Observatory as an observer-computer.
On April 23, 1900, Iosif Dzhugashvili, Vano Sturua and Zakro Chodrishvili organized a workers' May Day, which brought together 400-500 workers. At the rally, among others, Joseph himself spoke. This speech was Stalin's first appearance in front of a large gathering of people.
In August of the same year, Dzhugashvili participated in the preparation and conduct of a major protest by the workers of Tiflis - a strike in the Main Railway Workshops. Workers-revolutionaries took part in organizing the protests of the workers: M. I. Kalinin (expelled from St. Petersburg to the Caucasus), S. Ya. Alliluev, and also M. Z. Bochoridze, A. G. Okuashvili, V. F. Sturua. From 1 to 15 August, up to four thousand people took part in the strike. As a result, more than five hundred strikers were arrested.
On March 21, 1901, the police searched the physical observatory where Dzhugashvili lived and worked. He himself, however, escaped arrest and went underground, becoming an underground revolutionary.
In September 1901, in the printing house "Nina", organized by Lado Ketskhoveli in Baku, the illegal newspaper "Brdzola" ("Struggle") began to be printed. The front of the first issue belonged to the twenty-two-year-old Iosif Dzhugashvili. This article is Stalin's first known political work.
In November 1901, he was introduced to the Tiflis Committee of the RSDLP, on behalf of which he was sent to Batum in the same month, where he participates in the creation of the Social Democrat organization.
After the split in 1903 of the Russian Social Democrats into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, Stalin joined the Bolsheviks.
In December 1905, a delegate from the Caucasian Union of the RSDLP at the I Conference of the RSDLP in Tammerfors (Finland) where I first met in person.
In May 1906, a delegate from Tiflis at the IV Congress of the RSDLP in Stockholm, this was his first trip abroad.
On the night of July 16, 1906, in the St. David Church in Tiflis, Joseph Dzhugashvili married Ekaterina Svanidze. From this marriage in 1907, Stalin's first son, Yakov, was born. At the end of that year, Stalin's wife died of typhus.
In 1907, Stalin was a delegate to the Fifth Congress of the RSDLP in London.
According to a number of historians, Stalin was involved in the so-called. "Tiflis expropriation" in the summer of 1907 (the stolen (expropriated) money was intended for the needs of the party).
Since 1910, Stalin has been an authorized representative of the Central Committee of the party ("agent of the Central Committee") for the Caucasus.
In January 1912, at the plenum of the Central Committee of the RSDLP, which took place after the VI (Prague) All-Russian Conference of the RSDLP held in the same month, at the suggestion of Lenin, Stalin was co-opted in absentia to the Central Committee and the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP.
In 1912-1913, while working in St. Petersburg, he was one of the main contributors to the first mass Bolshevik newspaper Pravda.
In 1912, Joseph Dzhugashvili finally takes the pseudonym "Stalin".
In March 1913, Stalin was once again arrested, imprisoned and deported to the Turukhansk region of the Yenisei province, where he stayed until the end of autumn 1916. In exile he corresponded with Lenin.
Having gained freedom as a result of the February Revolution, Stalin returned to St. Petersburg. Before Lenin arrived from exile, he was one of the leaders of the Central Committee of the RSDLP and the St. Petersburg Committee of the Bolshevik Party, and was a member of the editorial board of the Pravda newspaper.
At first, Stalin supported the Provisional Government on the basis that the democratic revolution was not yet completed and that the overthrow of the government was not a practical task. At the All-Russian Conference of the Bolsheviks on March 28 in Petrograd, during a discussion of the Menshevik initiative on the possibility of reunification into a single party, Stalin noted that "unification is possible along the Zimmerwald-Kienthal line." However, after Lenin's return to Russia, Stalin supported his slogan of turning the "bourgeois-democratic" February revolution into a proletarian socialist revolution.
April 14 - 22 was a delegate to the I Petrograd city conference of the Bolsheviks. April 24 - 29 at the VII All-Russian Conference of the RSDLP (b) spoke in the debate on the report on the current situation, supported the views of Lenin, made a report on the national question; was elected a member of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b).
In May - June he participated in anti-war propaganda; was one of the organizers of the re-elections of the Soviets and participated in the municipal campaign in Petrograd. June 3 - 24 participated as a delegate in the I All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies; was elected a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and a member of the Bureau of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee from the Bolshevik faction. Also participated in the preparation of the failed demonstration, scheduled for June 10, and the demonstration on June 18; published a number of articles in the newspapers Pravda and Soldatskaya Pravda.
In view of the forced departure of Lenin into the underground, Stalin spoke at the VI Congress of the RSDLP (b) (July - August 1917) with a report of the Central Committee. At a meeting of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b) on August 5, he was elected a member of the narrow membership of the Central Committee. In August - September, he mainly conducted organizational and journalistic work. On October 10, at a meeting of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b), he voted in favor of a resolution on an armed uprising, was elected a member of the Political Bureau, created "for political leadership in the near future."
On the night of October 16, at an expanded meeting of the Central Committee, he opposed the position of L. B. Kamenev and G. E. Zinoviev, who voted against the decision to insurrection, at the same time he was elected a member of the Military Revolutionary Center, which entered the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee.
On October 24 (November 6), after the Junkers destroyed the printing house of the Pravda newspaper, Stalin ensured the publication of the newspaper, in which he published the editorial "What do we need?" calling for the overthrow of the Provisional Government and its replacement by a Soviet government elected by "representatives of the workers, soldiers and peasants." On the same day, Stalin and Trotsky held a meeting of the Bolsheviks - delegates to the 2nd All-Russian Congress of Soviets of the RSD, at which Stalin made a report on the course of political events. On the night of October 25 (November 7) - participated in a meeting of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b), which determined the structure and name of the new, Soviet government.
After the victory of the October Revolution, Stalin joined the Council of People's Commissars (SNK) as People's Commissar for Nationalities (at the end of 1912-1913, Stalin wrote the article "Marxism and the National Question" and from that time was considered an expert on national problems).
On November 29, Stalin entered the Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b), together with Lenin, and Sverdlov. This body was given "the right to decide all urgent matters, but with the obligatory involvement in the decision of all members of the Central Committee who were at that moment in Smolny."
From October 8, 1918 to July 8, 1919 and from May 18, 1920 to April 1, 1922, Stalin is a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the RSFSR. Stalin was also a member of the Revolutionary Military Councils of the Western, Southern, Southwestern Fronts.
During the Civil War, Stalin gained vast experience in the military-political leadership of large masses of troops on many fronts (the defense of Tsaritsyn, Petrograd, on the fronts against Wrangel, the White Poles, etc.).
As many researchers note, during the defense of Tsaritsyn there was a personal quarrel between Stalin and Voroshilov with Commissar Trotsky. The parties made accusations against each other. In response, Trotsky accused Stalin and Voroshilov of insubordination, in response to receiving accusations of excessive trust in the "counter-revolutionary" military experts.
In 1919, Stalin was ideologically close to the "military opposition", condemned personally by Lenin at the VIII Congress of the RCP (b), but never officially joined it.
Under the influence of the leaders of the Kavburo Ordzhonikidze and Kirov, in 1921 Stalin spoke in defense of the Sovietization of Georgia.
At the Plenum of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) on April 3, 1922, Stalin was elected to the Politburo and the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), as well as the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the RCP (b). Initially, this position meant only the leadership of the party apparatus, and Lenin continued to be perceived as the leader of the party and government by everyone.
Since 1922, due to illness, Lenin actually retired from political activity. Within the Politburo, Stalin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev organized a "troika" based on opposition to Trotsky. All three party leaders at that time combined a number of key posts. Zinoviev headed the influential Leningrad party organization, while also being chairman of the Executive Committee of the Comintern. Kamenev headed the Moscow party organization and at the same time also led the Council of Labor and Defense, which united a number of key people's commissariats. With Lenin's departure from political activity, it was Kamenev who most often presided over meetings of the Council of People's Commissars instead of him. Stalin, on the other hand, united the leadership of the Secretariat and the Orgburo of the Central Committee at the same time, also heading the Rabkrin and the People's Commissariat of Nationalities.
In contrast to the "troika", Trotsky led the Red Army in key positions of the People's Commissariat of Defense and the Pre-revolutionary Military Council.
In September 1922, Stalin proposed a plan for "autonomization" (inclusion of the outskirts into the RSFSR as autonomies), in particular, Georgia was to remain part of the Transcaucasian Republic. This plan met with fierce resistance in Ukraine, and especially in Georgia, and was rejected under pressure from Lenin personally. The outskirts became part of the Soviet federation as union republics with all the attributes of statehood, however, fictitious under the conditions of a one-party system. From the name of the federation itself (“USSR”), the word “Russian” (“Russian”) was eliminated, and in general geographical names.
In late December 1922 - early January 1923, Lenin dictated a "Letter to the Congress", in which he gave critical characteristics to his closest associates in the party, including Stalin, proposing to remove him from the post of general secretary. The situation was aggravated by the fact that in the last months of Lenin's life there was a personal quarrel between Stalin and Krupskaya N.K.
The letter was read among the members of the Central Committee on the eve of the XIII Congress of the RCP(b), held in May 1924. Stalin resigned, but it was not accepted. At the congress, the letter was read out to each delegation, however, following the results of the congress, Stalin remained in his post.
After the 13th Congress (1924), at which Trotsky suffered a crushing defeat, Stalin launched an attack on his former allies in the Troika. After the "literary discussion with Trotskyism" (1924), Trotsky was forced to resign from the post of the Pre-Revolutionary Military Council. Following this, Stalin's bloc with Zinoviev and Kamenev collapsed completely.
At the XIV Congress (December 1925) the so-called "Leningrad opposition", also known as the "platform of 4" was condemned: Zinoviev, Kamenev, People's Commissariat of Finance Sokolnikov and N. K. Krupskaya (a year later she withdrew from the opposition). To combat them, Stalin preferred to rely on one of the largest party theorists of that time, N. I. Bukharin, and Rykov and Tomsky, who were close to him (later - "right deviators").
The congress itself was held in an atmosphere of noisy scandals and obstruction. The parties accused each other of various deviations (Zinoviev accused the Stalin-Bukharin group of "semi-Trotskyism" and "kulak deviation", especially focusing on the slogan "Get rich"; in return, he received accusations of "Akselrodovism" and "underestimation of the middle peasant"), used directly opposite quotes from the rich heritage of Lenin. There were also diametrically opposed accusations of purges and counter-purges; Zinoviev was directly accused of turning into the "viceroy" of Leningrad, of having purged from the Leningrad delegation of all persons who had the reputation of "Stalinists".
Kamenev's statement that "Comrade Stalin cannot fulfill the role of a unifier of the Bolshevik headquarters" was interrupted by mass shouts from the place: "The cards have been revealed!", "We will not give you commanding heights!", "Stalin! Stalin!”, “This is where the party united! The Bolshevik headquarters must unite!”, “Long live the Central Committee! Hooray!".
Trotsky, who did not share Stalin's theory of the victory of socialism in one country, joined Zinoviev and Kamenev in April 1926. The so-called "United Opposition" was created, putting forward the slogan "let's move the fire to the right - against the Nepman, the kulak and the bureaucrat."
In 1926-27, internal party relations became especially tense. Stalin slowly but surely squeezed the opposition out of the legal field. Among his political opponents were many people with rich experience of pre-revolutionary underground activities.
To publish propaganda literature, the opposition created an illegal printing house. On the anniversary of the October Revolution on November 7, 1927, they held a "parallel" opposition demonstration. These actions became the reason for the exclusion of Zinoviev and Trotsky from the party (November 16, 1927).
In 1927, Soviet-British relations sharply escalated, the country was gripped by military psychosis. Stalin considered that such a situation would be convenient for the final organizational defeat of the left.
However, the picture changed dramatically the following year. Under the influence of the grain procurement crisis of 1927, Stalin made a "left turn", in practice intercepting the Trotskyist slogans, still popular among student youth and radical workers, dissatisfied with the negative aspects of the NEP (unemployment, sharply increased social inequality).
In 1928-1929, Stalin accused Bukharin and his allies of "right deviation" and in fact began to implement the program of the "leftists" to curtail the NEP and accelerate industrialization. Among the defeated “rightists” were many active fighters against the so-called “Trotskyite-Zinovievist bloc”: Rykov, Tomsky, Uglanov and Ryutin, who led the defeat of the Trotskyists in Moscow, and many others. The third chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR Syrtsov also became an oppositionist.
Stalin declared 1929 the year of the "great turning point". Industrialization, collectivization and cultural revolution were declared strategic tasks of the state.
One of the last oppositions was the Ryutin group. In his 1932 programmatic work "Stalin and the Crisis of the Proletarian Dictatorship" (better known as "Ryutin's platform"), the author made his first serious attack on Stalin personally. It is known that Stalin took this work as an incitement to terrorism, and demanded execution. However, this proposal was then rejected by the OGPU, which sentenced Ryutin to 10 years in prison (he was shot later, in 1937).
The exclusion of Zinoviev and Trotsky from the party in 1927 was carried out by a mechanism developed personally by Lenin in 1921 to combat the "workers' opposition" - the joint plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission (party control bodies).
At the XV Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, which was held from December 2 to 19, 1927, it was decided to carry out the collectivization of agricultural production in the USSR - the elimination of individual peasant farms and their unification into collective farms (collective farms). Collectivization was carried out in 1928-1933 (in the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus, as well as in Moldova, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, annexed to the USSR in 1939-1940 - after the war, in 1949-1950).
The background for the transition to collectivization was the grain procurement crisis of 1927, aggravated by the military psychosis that gripped the country and the massive buying up of essential goods by the population. The notion that the peasants are holding back grain in an effort to raise the price of it (the so-called "kulak grain strike") has become widespread. On January 15 - February 6, 1928, Stalin personally made a trip to Siberia, during which he demanded the maximum pressure on "kulaks and speculators."
In 1926-27, the “Trotskyist-Zinoviev bloc” widely accused the supporters of the “general line” of underestimating the so-called kulak danger, demanded that a “compulsory grain loan” be introduced among the wealthy sections of the countryside at fixed prices. In practice, Stalin even exceeded the demands of the "leftists", the scale of the seizure of grain was significantly increased, and fell with its weight on the middle peasants. This was also facilitated by the widespread falsification of statistics, which created the idea that the peasants had some fabulous hidden stocks of grain. According to the recipes of the Civil War, attempts were also made to set one part of the village against another; up to 25% of the seized bread was sent to the rural poor.
Collectivization was accompanied by the so-called "dispossession" (a number of historians speak of "de-peasantization") - political repressions used administratively by local authorities on the basis of the resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks dated January 30, 1930 "On measures to eliminate kulak farms in the regions complete collectivization.
According to the order of the OGPU No. 44.21 of February 6, 1930, an operation began to “seize” 60 thousand fists of the “first category”. Already on the first day of the operation, the OGPU arrested about 16 thousand people, and on February 9, 1930, 25 thousand people were “seized”.
In total, in 1930-1931, as indicated in the certificate of the Department for Special Settlers of the Gulag of the OGPU, 381,026 families with a total number of 1,803,392 people were sent to a special settlement. During 1932-1940, another 489,822 dispossessed people arrived in special settlements.
The actions of the authorities to carry out collectivization led to mass resistance among the peasants. In March 1930 alone, the OGPU counted 6,500 riots, eight hundred of which were suppressed with the use of weapons. On the whole, during 1930 about 2.5 million peasants took part in 14,000 protests against collectivization.
The situation in the country in 1929-1932 was close to a new civil war. According to the reports of the OGPU, in a number of cases, local Soviet and party workers took part in the unrest, and in one case even a district representative of the OGPU. The situation was aggravated by the fact that the Red Army was, due to demographic reasons, mostly peasant in composition.
In 1932, a number of regions of the USSR (Ukraine, the Volga region, Kuban, Belarus, the Southern Urals, Western Siberia and Kazakhstan) were struck by famine.
At the same time, starting at least from the summer of 1932, the state allocated extensive assistance to the starving regions in the form of the so-called "prodsud" and "semsud", grain procurement plans were repeatedly reduced, but even in a reduced form they were frustrated. The archives contain, in particular, a cipher telegram from the secretary of the Dnepropetrovsk regional committee, Khataevich, dated June 27, 1933, with a request to allocate an additional 50,000 poods of grain to the regions; the document contains Stalin's resolution: “We must give. I. St.
The five-year plan for the construction of 1,500 factories, approved by Stalin in 1928, required huge expenditures on the purchase of foreign technologies and equipment. To finance purchases in the West, Stalin decided to increase the export of raw materials, mainly oil, furs, and grain. The problem was compounded by the fall in the scale of grain production. So, if in 1913 pre-revolutionary Russia exported about 10 million tons of grain, then in 1925-1926 the annual export was only 2 million tons. Stalin believed that the collective farms could be a means to restore grain exports, through which the state was going to withdraw agricultural products from the countryside needed to finance war-oriented industrialization.
Rogovin V. Z. points out that the export of bread was by no means the main item of the export income of the USSR. So, in 1930, the country received 883 million rubles from the export of bread, oil products and timber gave 1 billion 430 million, furs and flax - up to 500 million. According to the results of 1932-33, bread gave only 8% of export earnings.
Industrialization and collectivization led to enormous social changes. Millions of people moved from the collective farms to the cities. The USSR was engulfed in a grandiose migration. The number of workers and employees increased from 9 million people. in 1928 to 23 million in 1940. The population of cities increased sharply, in particular, Moscow from 2 million to 5, Sverdlovsk from 150 thousand to 500. At the same time, the pace of housing construction was completely insufficient to accommodate such a number of new citizens. Typical housing in the 30s was communal apartments and barracks, and in some cases dugouts.
At the January Plenum of the Central Committee in 1933, Stalin announced that the first five-year plan had been completed in 4 years and 3 months. During the years of the first five-year plan, up to 1,500 enterprises were built, whole new industries appeared (tractor building, the aviation industry, etc.). However, in practice, growth was achieved due to the industry of group “A” (production of means of production), the plan for group “B” was not completed. According to a number of indicators, the plans of group "B" were fulfilled only by 50%, and even less. In addition, agricultural production has fallen sharply. In particular, the number of cattle was supposed to increase by 20-30% over the years 1927-1932, instead it fell by half.
The euphoria of the first years of the five-year plan led to an assault, to an unrealistic inflation of planned indicators. According to Rogovin, the first five-year plan, drawn up at the 16th Party Conference and the 5th Congress of Soviets, was not actually implemented, not to mention the increased indicators approved by the 16th Congress (1930). So, instead of 10 million tons of pig iron, 6.2 were smelted, cars in 1932 were produced 23.9 thousand instead of 100 thousand. cast iron, tractors and automobiles - in 1950, 1956 and 1957, respectively.
Official propaganda in every possible way glorified the names of the leading worker of production Stakhanov, the pilot Chkalov, the construction site of Magnitogorsk, Dneproges, Uralmash. During the second five-year plan in the USSR, there was a certain increase in housing construction, and, as part of the cultural revolution, theaters and rest homes.
Commenting on a certain increase in the standard of living that emerged with the beginning of the Stakhanov movement, on November 17, 1935, Stalin remarked that "Life has become better, life has become more fun." Indeed, just a month before this statement, cards were canceled in the USSR. However, at the same time, the standard of living in 1913 was only reached again in the 1950s (according to official statistics, the level of 1913 in terms of GDP per capita was reached in 1934).
One of the strategic goals of the state was declared a cultural revolution. Within its framework, educational campaigns were carried out (which began in 1920), since 1930, universal primary education was introduced in the country for the first time. In parallel with the mass construction of rest houses, museums, parks, an aggressive anti-religious campaign was also carried out.
After Hitler came to power, Stalin drastically changed the traditional Soviet policy: if earlier it was aimed at an alliance with Germany against the Versailles system, and along the line of the Comintern - at fighting the Social Democrats as the main enemy (the theory of "social fascism" - Stalin's personal attitude ), now it consisted in creating a system of "collective security" as part of the USSR and the former countries of the Entente against Germany and an alliance of communists with all leftist forces against fascism ("popular front" tactics).
A week after the start of the war (June 30, 1941), Stalin was appointed Chairman of the newly formed State Defense Committee. On July 3, Stalin delivered a radio address to the Soviet people, beginning with the words: “Comrades, citizens, brothers and sisters, soldiers of our army and navy! I turn to you, my friends! On July 10, 1941, the Headquarters of the High Command was transformed into the Headquarters of the High Command, and Stalin was appointed chairman instead of Timoshenko.
July 19, 1941 Stalin replaces Tymoshenko as People's Commissar of Defense. On August 8, 1941, by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Stalin was appointed Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of the USSR.
On July 31, 1941, Stalin received the personal representative and closest adviser to US President Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Hopkins. On December 16-20, in Moscow, Stalin negotiates with British Foreign Minister E. Eden on the issue of concluding an agreement between the USSR and Great Britain on an alliance in the war against Germany and on post-war cooperation.
During the Battle of Moscow in 1941, after Moscow was declared under a state of siege, Stalin remained in the capital. On November 6, 1941, Stalin spoke at a solemn meeting held at the Mayakovskaya metro station, which was dedicated to the 24th anniversary of the October Revolution. In his speech, Stalin explained the start of the war, which was unsuccessful for the Red Army, in particular, by the "lack of tanks and partly aviation."
The next day, November 7, 1941, at the direction of Stalin, a traditional military parade was held on Red Square.
On February 11, 1943, Stalin signed the GKO decree on the start of work on the creation of an atomic bomb. The beginning of a radical turning point in the war, laid in the Battle of Stalingrad, was continued during the Winter Offensive of the Red Army in 1943. In the Battle of Kursk, what had been started near Stalingrad was completed, a radical turning point came not only in the Second World War, but in the entire Second World War.
On November 25, Stalin, accompanied by the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR V. M. Molotov and a member of the State Defense Committee, Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR K. E. Voroshilov, travels to Stalingrad and Baku, from where he flies by plane to Tehran (Iran). From November 28 to December 1, 1943, Stalin participates in the Tehran Conference - the first conference of the "Big Three" in the years of World War II - the leaders of three countries: the USSR, the USA and Great Britain.
February 4 - February 11, 1945, Stalin participates in the Yalta Conference of the Allied Powers, dedicated to the establishment of a post-war world order.
Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin at the Yalta Conference
On December 14, 1947, Stalin signed Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks No. 4004 “On the implementation of the monetary reform and the abolition of cards for food and industrial goods.”
On October 20, 1948, the Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks No. 3960 “On the plan for field-protective afforestation, the introduction of grass-field crop rotations, the construction of ponds and reservoirs to ensure high sustainable yields in the steppe and forest-steppe regions of the European part of the USSR” was adopted, which was included in history as Stalin's plan for the transformation of nature. An integral part of this grandiose plan was the large-scale construction of industrial power plants and canals, which were called the Great Construction Sites of Communism.
On July 24, 1945, in Potsdam, Truman informed Stalin that the United States "now has a weapon of extraordinary destructive power." According to Churchill's memoirs, Stalin smiled, but did not become interested in the details. From this, Churchill concluded that Stalin did not understand anything and was not aware of the events. That same evening, Stalin ordered Molotov to speak with Kurchatov about speeding up work on the atomic project.
On August 20, 1945, to manage the atomic project, the GKO created a Special Committee with emergency powers headed by L.P. Beria. Under the Special Committee, an executive body was created - the First Main Directorate under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR (PGU). Stalin's directive obliged PGU to ensure the creation of atomic bombs, uranium and plutonium, in 1948.
On January 25, 1946, Stalin first met with the developer of the atomic bomb, Academician I. V. Kurchatov; present at the meeting: Chairman of the Special Committee on the Use of Atomic Energy L.P. Beria, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs V.M. Molotov, Chairman of the State Planning Committee of the USSR N.A. Voznesensky, Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars G.M. Malenkov, People's Commissar for Foreign Trade A.I. Mikoyan, Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks A. A. Zhdanov, President of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR S. I. Vavilov, Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR S. V. Kaftanov.
In 1946, Stalin signed about sixty documents that determined the development of atomic science and technology, the result of which was the successful testing of the first Soviet atomic bomb on August 29, 1949 at a test site in the Semipalatinsk region of the Kazakh SSR and the construction of the world's first nuclear power plant in Obninsk (1954) .
Death of Stalin
Stalin died at his official residence, the Near Dacha, where he lived permanently in the post-war period. On March 1, 1953, one of the guards found him lying on the floor of a small dining room. On the morning of March 2, doctors arrived at the Near Dacha and diagnosed paralysis on the right side of the body. On March 5, at 21:50, Stalin died. According to the medical report, death was the result of a cerebral hemorrhage.
The medical history and autopsy results show that Stalin had several ischemic strokes (lacunar, but probably atherothrombotic as well).
There are numerous versions that suggest the unnaturalness of death and the involvement of Stalin's entourage in it. According to the historian I. I. Chigirin, the killer-conspirator should be considered. Other historians consider him involved in the death of Stalin. Almost all researchers agree that Stalin's associates contributed (not necessarily intentionally) to his death, not in a hurry to call for medical help.
In the obituary on the death of I.V. Stalin in the Manchester Guardian newspaper dated March 6, 1953, his truly historical achievement is called the transformation of the Soviet Union from an economically backward to the level of the second industrialized country in the world.
The embalmed body of Stalin was placed in the Lenin Mausoleum, which in 1953-1961 was called the "Mausoleum of V. I. Lenin and I. V. Stalin."
After Stalin's death, public opinion about Stalin was largely formed in accordance with the position of the officials of the USSR and Russia. After the XX Congress of the CPSU, Soviet historians assessed Stalin taking into account the position of the ideological bodies of the USSR. In the index of names to the Complete Collected Works of Lenin, published in 1974, it is written about Stalin: “In addition to the positive side, there was also a negative side to Stalin’s activities. Being in the most important party and government posts, Stalin committed gross violations of the Leninist principles of collective leadership and the norms of party life , violation of socialist legality, unjustified mass repressions against prominent state, political and military figures of the Soviet Union and other honest Soviet people.
On October 30, 1961, the XXII Congress of the CPSU decided that "Stalin's serious violations of Lenin's precepts ... make it impossible to leave the coffin with his body in the Mausoleum." On the night of October 31 to November 1, 1961, Stalin's body was taken out of the Mausoleum and buried in a grave near the Kremlin wall.
Joseph Stalin awards:
● November 27, 1919 - Order of the Red Banner No. 400 (replaced by duplicate No. 3) - "in commemoration of his merits in the defense of Petrograd and selfless work on the Southern Front";
● August 18, 1922 - Order of the Red Star, 1st class (Bukhara People's Soviet Republic);
● February 13, 1030 - Order of the Red Banner No. 19 (with the number "2" in the shield) - "at the numerous petitions of organizations, general meetings of workers, peasants and Red Army soldiers ... for great services on the front of social construction";
● 1938 - Jubilee medal "XX years of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army";
● December 20, 1939 - Hammer and Sickle Medal of the Hero of Socialist Labor No. 1 - "for exceptional services in organizing the Bolshevik Party, building a socialist society in the USSR and strengthening friendship between the peoples of the Soviet Union ... on the day of the sixtieth anniversary";
● December 20, 1939 - Order of Lenin (order book No. 59382) - "for exceptional services in organizing the Bolshevik Party, building a socialist society in the USSR and strengthening friendship between the peoples of the Soviet Union ... on the day of the sixtieth anniversary";
● 1943 - Order of the Republic (Tuva Arat Republic);
● 1943 - Military Cross (Czechoslovakia);
● November 6, 1943 - Order of Suvorov, I degree No. 112 - "for the correct leadership of the operations of the Red Army in the Patriotic War against the German invaders and the successes achieved";
● July 20, 1944 - Medal "For the Defense of Moscow" (Certificate for the medal No. 000001) - "For Participation in the Heroic Defense of Moscow"; "for leading the heroic defense of Moscow and organizing the defeat of German troops near Moscow";
● July 29, 1944 - Order "Victory" (Order Book No. 3) - "for exceptional merits in organizing and conducting offensive operations of the Red Army, which led to the largest defeat of the German army and to a radical change in the situation on the front against the German invaders in favor of the Red Army »;
● November 3, 1944 - Order of the Red Banner No. 1361 (with the number "3" in the shield) - "for 20 years of service";
● 1945 - Medal "For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945";
● 1945 - Order of Sukhe-Bator (Mongolian People's Republic);
● June 26, 1945 - Medal "Gold Star" of the Hero of the Soviet Union No. 7931 - "who led the Red Army in the difficult days of our Motherland and its capital Moscow, who led the fight against Nazi Germany";
● June 26, 1945 - Order of Lenin No. 117859 - "who led the Red Army in the difficult days of our Motherland and its capital Moscow, who led the fight against Nazi Germany";
● June 26, 1945 - Order "Victory" (Order Book No. 15) - "for exceptional services in organizing all the armed forces of the Soviet Union and their skillful leadership in the Great Patriotic War, which ended in complete victory over Nazi Germany";
● 1945 - Military Cross (Czechoslovakia);
● 1945 - Order of the White Lion, 1st class (Czechoslovakia);
● 1945 - Order of the White Lion "For Victory", 1st class (Czechoslovakia);
● 1945 - Medal "For the Victory over Japan";
● 1945 - Medal "For the Victory over Japan" (Mongolian People's Republic);
● 1946 - Medal "25 Years of the Mongolian People's Revolution" (Mongolian People's Republic);
● 1947 - Medal "In memory of the 800th anniversary of Moscow";
● December 17, 1949 - Medal "Gold Star" of the Hero of the Mongolian People's Republic (Mongolian People's Republic);
● December 17, 1949 - Order of Sukhe-Bator (Mongolian People's Republic);
● December 20, 1949 - Order of Lenin No. 117864 - "in connection with the seventieth anniversary of the birth of comrade. I. V. Stalin and taking into account his exceptional merits in the strengthening and development of the USSR, building communism in our country, in organizing the defeat of the Nazi invaders and Japanese imperialists, as well as in restoring the national economy in the post-war period.
Joseph Stalin (documentary)
Height of Joseph Stalin: 167 centimeters.
Personal life of Joseph Stalin:
Ekaterina Svanidze died of tuberculosis (according to other sources, the cause of death was typhoid fever), leaving an eight-month-old son. She was buried in Tbilisi at the Kuki cemetery.
Ekaterina Svanidze - Stalin's first wife
On the night of November 8-9, 1932, Nadezhda Sergeevna shot herself in the heart with a Walter pistol, locking herself in her room.
Artyom Sergeev was brought up in the Stalin family, whom Stalin adopted after the death of his close friend, the revolutionary F. A. Sergeev.
According to some statements, Stalin's actual wife was Valentina Vasilievna Istomina (nee Zhbychkina; 1917-1995).
Istomina was born on November 7, 1917 in the village of Donok (now in the Korsakov district of the Oryol region). At the age of eighteen, she came to Moscow, where she got a job working at a factory, and attracted the attention of the head of security, I.V. Stalin, after which she was hired as a cook at the Near Dacha. Over time, she married Ivan Istomin, who also worked in military structures. Subsequently, Istomina became so close to Stalin himself and his entourage that she practically became a member of his family and was with him inseparably until his death. Stalin trusted Istomina so much that he only allowed food or medicine to be served to her.
After the death of Stalin, Istomina was relieved of her post and sent to a personal pension, she no longer worked. She adopted the son of her brother who died in the war. During the years of perestroika, she categorically avoided contact with journalists, she did not tell anyone about her work at the Near Dacha. She died in December 1995 and was buried at the Khovansky cemetery.
Bibliography of Joseph Stalin:
Stalin IV Works. Volume 1. - M .: State Publishing House of Political Literature, 1951;
Stalin IV Works. Volume 2. - M .: State Publishing House of Political Literature, 1951;
Stalin IV Works. Volume 3. - M .: State Publishing House of Political Literature, 1951;
Stalin IV Works. Volume 4. - M .: State Publishing House of Political Literature, 1951;
Stalin IV Works. Volume 5. - M .: State Publishing House of Political Literature, 1951;
Stalin IV Works. Volume 6. - M .: State Publishing House of Political Literature, 1951;
Stalin IV Works. Volume 7. - M .: State Publishing House of Political Literature, 1951;
Stalin IV Works. Volume 8. - M .: State Publishing House of Political Literature, 1951;
Stalin IV Works. Volume 9. - M .: State Publishing House of Political Literature, 1951;
Stalin IV Works. Volume 10. - M .: State Publishing House of Political Literature, 1951;
Stalin IV Works. Volume 11. - M .: State Publishing House of Political Literature, 1951;
Stalin IV Works. Volume 12. - M .: State Publishing House of Political Literature, 1951;
Stalin IV Works. Volume 13. - M .: State Publishing House of Political Literature, 1951;
Stalin IV Works. Volume 14. March 1934 - June 1941. - M .: Information and Publishing Center "Soyuz", 2007;
Stalin IV Works. Volume 15. Part 1. June 1941 - February 1943. - M .: ITRK, 2010;
Stalin IV Works. Volume 15. Part 2. February 1943 - November 1944. - M .: ITRK, 2010;
Stalin IV Works. Volume 15. Part 3. November 1944 - September 1945. - M .: ITRK, 2010;
Stalin IV Works. Volume 16. Part 1. September 1945 - December 1948. - M .: ITRK, 2011;
Stalin IV Works. Volume 16. Part 2. January 1949 - February 1953. - M .: Rychenkov, 2012;
Stalin IV Works. Volume 17. 1895-1932. - Tver: Scientific and publishing company "Northern Crown", 2004;
Stalin IV Works. Volume 18. 1917-1953. - M.: Information and publishing center "Soyuz", 2006;
Stalin IV Questions of Leninism. / Edition 11th. - M.: OGIZ, State publishing house of political literature, 1953;
Stalin I. V. Poems. Correspondence with mother and relatives. - M.: FUAinform, 2005;
Stalin IV About Lenin. - M.: Partizdat of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, 1937;
Stalin I. V. Marxism and the national-colonial question. - M .: Partizdat of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, 1936;
Stalin IV Marxism and questions of linguistics. - M.: State publishing house of political literature, 1952;
Stalin IV On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union. - M.: State publishing house of political literature, OGIZ, 1947;
Stalin I. V. On the industrialization of the country and on the right deviation in the CPSU (b). - M.: Partizdat of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, 1935;
Stalin I. V. About dialectical and historical materialism. - M.: State publishing house of political literature, 1950;
Stalin IV Marxism and the national question. - M.: State publishing house of political literature, 1953;
Stalin IV Economic problems of socialism in the USSR. - M.: State publishing house of political literature, 1952;
Stalin I. V. On the shortcomings of party work and the measure of liquidation of Trotskyists and other double-dealers. - M.: Partizdat of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, 1937;
Orders of the Supreme Commander during the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union. - M.: Military Publishing, 1975;
Correspondence of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR with the Presidents of the United States and Prime Ministers of Great Britain during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. Tt. 1-2.;
Stalin I.V. The October Revolution and the Tactics of the Russian Communists. The international character of the October Revolution. - M.: State publishing house of political literature, 1954;
Stalin I. V. Report on the draft Constitution of the USSR. Constitution (basic law) of the USSR. - M.: State publishing house of political literature, 1951;
Stalin IV Anarchism or socialism? - M.: State publishing house of political literature, 1950;
Stalin I.V. The National Question and Leninism - M .: State Publishing House of Political Literature, 1950
The image of Stalin in the cinema:
1934 - "British Agent" (British Agent), USA - Joseph Mario;
1937 - "Lenin in October" - Semyon Goldshtab;
1938 - "Vyborg side" -;
1938 - "Man with a gun" - Mikhail Gelovani;
1938 - "The Great Glow" - Mikhail Gelovani;
1938 - "If there is war tomorrow";
1939 - "Lenin in 1918" - Mikhail Gelovani;
1940 - "Siberians" - Mikhail Gelovani;
1940 - "Yakov Sverdlov" - Andro Kobaladze;
1941 - "Valery Chkalov" - Mikhail Gelovani;
1941 - "First equestrian" - Semyon Goldshtab;
1942 - "Defense of Tsaritsyn" - Mikhail Gelovani;
1942 - "Alexander Parkhomenko" - Semyon Goldshtab;
1942 - “His name is Sukhe-Bator” - Semyon Goldshtab;
1943 - "Mission to Moscow" (Mission to Moscow, USA) - Manart Kippen;
1946 - "Oath" - Mikhail Gelovani;
1947 - "Light over Russia" - Mikhail Gelovani;
1947 - "Private Alexander Matrosov" - Alexey Dikiy;
1948 - "The Third Strike" - Alexey Dikiy;
1949 - "Battle of Stalingrad" - Alexey Dikiy;
1949 - "The Fall of Berlin" - Mikhail Gelovani
1950 - "Fires of Baku" - Mikhail Gelovani;
1951 - "Unforgettable 1919" - Mikhail Gelovani;
1953 - “Hostile whirlwinds” (“Felix Dzerzhinsky”) - Mikhail Gelovani;
1953 - Soldier of Victory (Żołnierz Zwycięstwa, Poland) - Kazimierz Wilyamowski;
1954 - "Ernst Thälmann - the son of his class" (Ernst Thälmann - Sohn seiner Klasse, GDR) - Gerd Jager;
1957 - The Girl in the Kremlin - Maurice Manson;
1957 - "Truth" - Andro Kobaladze;
1958 - "In the days of October" - Andro Kobaladze;
1960 - "Morning" (Azerbaijan) - Andro Kobaladze;
1965 - "On the same planet" - Andro Kobaladze
1965 - "Bürgerkrieg in Rußland", television series (Germany) - Hubert Drying;
1968-1971 - "Liberation" - Bukhuti Zakariadze;
1970 - "Why Russians made a revolution" (Why Russians Are Revolting), USA - Saul Katz;
1971 - "Nicholas and Alexandra" (Nicholas and Alexandra) - James Hazeldin;
1974-1977 - Blockade - Boris Gorbatov;
1972 - "Taming the Fire" - Andro Kobaladze;
1973 - "Seventeen Moments of Spring" - Andro Kobaladze;
1975 - "Choice of purpose" - Yakov Tripolsky;
1977 - "Soldiers of Freedom" - Yakov Tripolsky;
1978 - "Sodan ja rauhan miehet" (Finland) - Mikko Niskanen;
1979 - "To the last drop of blood" - Andro Kobaladze;
1979 - "Stalin - Trotsky" (Staline - Trotsky: Le pouvoir et la révolution), France - Maurice Barrier;
1980 - "Tehran-43" - Georgy Sahakyan;
1981 - "December 20" - Vladimir Zumakalov;
1981 - "Through the Gobi and Khingan" - Andro Kobaladze;
1982 - “State border. Eastern frontier "- Andro Kobaladze;
1982 - "Lenin" Lénine (France) - Jacques Giraud;
1982 - “If the enemy does not surrender ...” - Yakov Tripolsky
1983 - "Red Bells" - Tengiz Daushvili;
1983 - "Reilly - the king of spies (TV series)" - David Burke;
1983 - "Red Monarch" "Red Monarch" (England, 1983) - Colin Blakely;
1984 - Yalta (France, 1984) - Danilo Bata Stoikovich;
1985 - "Battle for Moscow" - Yakov Tripolsky;
1985 - "Victory" - Ramaz Chkhikvadze;
1986 - “State border. Year forty-one - Archil Gomiashvili;
1988 - "Testament" (USA) - Terence Rigby;
1989 - "Stalingrad" - Archil Gomiashvili;
1989 - “Black rose is the emblem of sadness, red rose is the emblem of love” - Georgy Sahakyan;
1989 - "Feasts of Belshazzar, or Night with Stalin" - Alexei Petrenko
1990 - "10 years without the right to correspond" - Georgy Sahakyan;
1990 - "Jakov, son of Stalin" - Evgeny Dzhugashvili;
1990 - "Enemy of the people - Bukharin" - Sergey Shakurov;
1990 - "The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon" - Viktor Proskurin;
1990 - "War in the Western Direction" - Archil Gomiashvili;
1990 - "Nikolai Vavilov" - Georgy Kavtaradze;
1991 - "Inner circle" - Alexander Zbruev;
1992 - "Stalin" (USA) - Robert Duval;
1991 - "Comrade Stalin's Journey to Africa" - Ramaz Chkhikvadze;
1992 - "Waiter with a golden tray" - Ramaz Chkhikvadze;
1992 - "In the first circle" (USA) - Murray Abraham;
1992 - "Cooperative "Politburo", or It will be a long farewell" (Belarus) - Alexei Petrenko;
1993 - "Lenin in the Ring of Fire" - Levan Mskhiladze;
1993 - "Trotsky" - Evgeny Zharikov;
1993 - "Angels of Death" - Archil Gomiashvili;
1993-1994 - "The Tragedy of the Century" - Yakov Tripolsky, Archil Gomiashvili, Bukhuti Zakariadze;
1994 - Hammer and Sickle - Vladimir Steklov;
1994 - "World War II: When the Lions Roared" (World War II: When Lions Roared) - Michael Caine;
1995 - "The Great Commander Georgy Zhukov" - Yakov Tripolsky;
1995 - "Under the sign of Scorpio" - Igor Kvasha;
1996 - "Children of the Revolution" (Australia) - Murray Abraham;
1996 - “Ms. Kollontai” (Gospodja Kolontaj) (Yugoslavia) - Mihailo Janketich;
1997 - “All my Lenins” (Estonia) - Eduard Toman;
1998 - "Khrustalev, the car!" - Ali Misirov;
2000 - “In August 44th ...” - Ramaz Chkhikvadze;
2001 - "Taurus" - Sergey Razhuk;
2002 - "The Adventures of a Magician" - Igor Guzun;
2003 - Spy Sorge (Japan-Germany);
2004 - "Moscow Saga" - Vladimir Mironov;
2004 - "Children of the Arbat" - Maxim Sukhanov;
2004 - "Death of Tairov" - Alexey Petrenko;
2005 - "In the first circle" - Igor Kvasha;
2005 - "Star of the era" - Armen Dzhigarkhanyan;
2005 - "Yesenin" - Andrey Krasko;
2005 - "Archangel" - Avtandil Makharadze;
2005 - "Tehran-43" (Canada) - Igor Guzun;
2006 - "Stalin's Wife" - Duta Skhirtladze;
2006 - "Cliffs. A life-long song" - Yevgeny Paperny;
2006 - "6 frames" - Fedor Dobronravov;
2007 - “Stalin. Live" - David Giorgobiani;
2008 - Mustafa Shokai (Kazakhstan) - Igor Guzun;
2009 - "Hour of Volkov-3" - Igor Guzun;
2009 - “Ordered to destroy! Operation: "Chinese Box" - Gennady Khazanov;
2009 - "Wolf Messing: who saw through time" - Alexey Petrenko;
2009 - "The Legend of Olga" - Malkhaz Zhvania;
2009 - "One and a half rooms, or Sentimental journey home";
2010 - "Burnt by the Sun 2: Anticipation" - Maxim Sukhanov;
2010 - "Tukhachevsky: Marshal's Conspiracy" - Anatoly Dzivaev;
2011 - "Battle of Warsaw. 1920 "(Poland) - Igor Guzun;
2011 - "Comrade Stalin" - Sergei Yursky;
2011 - "Hotel Lux" (Germany) - Valery Grishko;
2011 - "Counterplay" - Levan Mskhiladze;
2011 - "Narkomovsky convoy" - Ivan Matskevich;
2011 - "House of exemplary content" - Igor Guzun;
2011 - "Furtseva" - Gennady Khazanov;
2011 - "Burnt by the Sun 2: Citadel" - Maxim Sukhanov;
2012 - "Zhukov" - Anatoly Dzivaev;
2012 - "Chkalov" - Viktor Terelya;
2012 - "Spy" - Mikhail Fillipov;
2012 - "The Second Revolt of Spartacus" - Anatoly Dzivaev;
2012 - "It all started in Harbin" - Alexander Voitov;
2012 - El efecto K. El montador de Stalin (Spain) - Antonio Bachero;
2013 - "Stalin is with us" - Roman Kheidze;
2013 - "Kill Stalin" - Anatoly Dzivaev;
2013 - "Son of the Father of Nations" - Anatoly Dzivaev;
2013 - "The centenary old man who climbed out the window and disappeared" (Sweden) - Algirdas Romualdas; David Giorgobiani;
;
(5 films);
Yakov Trypolsky (6 films);
Igor Kvasha ("Under the sign of the scorpion", "In the first circle");
Andrey Krasko ("Yesenin");
Victor Proskurin;
Sergei Shakurov ("Enemy of the people - Bukharin");
Yevgeny Zharikov ("Trotsky");
(“Lenin in the Ring of Fire”, “Vlasik. The Shadow of Stalin”);
Ali Misirov ("Khrustalev, the car!");
Vladimir Mironov ("Moscow Saga");
("Hammer and sickle");
David Burke ("Reilly - King of Spies");
Robert Duvall (Stalin);
Terence Rigby ("Will");
Murray Abraham (Children of the Revolution);
Ilya Oleinikov (in the program "Gorodok");
Fedor Dobronravov (in the program "6 frames");
Igor Guzun (7 films);
Gennady Khazanov;
Mikhail Fillipov;
Ivan Matskevich;
Victor Terelya;
Georgy Kavtaradze;
("Tukhachevsky. The Marshal's Conspiracy", "Zhukov", "The Second Spartacus Uprising", "Son of the Father of Nations", "Kill Stalin", "Sorge")
The period when Stalin was in power was marked by mass repressions in 1937-1939. and 1943, sometimes directed against entire social strata and ethnic groups, the destruction of prominent figures of science and art, the persecution of the Church and religion in general, the forced industrialization of the country, which turned the USSR into a country with one of the most powerful economies in the world, collectivization, which led to the death of the country's agriculture, the exodus of peasants from the countryside and the famine of 1932-1933, the victory in the Great Patriotic War, the establishment of communist regimes in Eastern Europe, the transformation of the USSR into a superpower with a huge military-industrial potential, the beginning of the Cold War. Russian public opinion regarding Stalin's personal merit or responsibility for the listed phenomena has not yet been finally formed.
Name and aliases
Stalin's real name is Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili (his name and the name of his father in Georgian sound like Ioseb and Besarion), the diminutive name is Soso. A version appeared very early, according to which the surname Dzhugashvili was not Georgian, but Ossetian (Dzugaty / Dzugaev), which was only given a Georgian form (the sound “dz” was replaced by “j”, the ending of Ossetian surnames “you” was replaced by the Georgian “shvili”) . Before the revolution, Dzhugashvili used a large number of pseudonyms, in particular, Besoshvili (Beso is a diminutive of Vissarion), Nizheradze, Chizhikov, Ivanovich. Of these, in addition to Stalin, the most famous pseudonym was "Koba" - as is usually believed (based on the opinion of Stalin's childhood friend Iremashvili), by the name of the hero of Kazbegi's novel "The Parricide", a noble robber who, according to Iremashvili, was the idol of young Soso . According to V. Pokhlebkin, the pseudonym came from the Persian king Kavad (in another spelling Kobades), who conquered Georgia and made Tbilisi the capital of the country, whose name in Georgian sounds Koba. Kavad was known as a supporter of Mazdakism, a movement that promoted early communist views. Traces of interest in Persia and Kavad are found in Stalin's speeches of 1904-07. The origin of the pseudonym "Stalin", as a rule, is associated with the Russian translation of the ancient Georgian word "dzhuga" - "steel". Thus, the pseudonym "Stalin" is a literal translation into Russian of his real name.
During the Great Patriotic War, he was usually addressed not by his first name or patronymic or military rank (“Comrade Marshal (Generalissimo) of the Soviet Union”), but simply “Comrade Stalin.”
Childhood and youth
He was born on December 6 (18), 1878 (according to the entry in the metric book of the Gori Assumption Cathedral Church) in Georgia in the city of Gori, although starting from 1929 [source?] His birthday was officially considered December 9 (21), 1879. He was the third son in family, the first two died in infancy. His native language was Georgian, Stalin learned Russian later, but always spoke with a noticeable Georgian accent. According to Svetlana's daughter, however, Stalin sang in Russian with virtually no accent.
He grew up in poverty, in the family of a shoemaker and the daughter of a serf. Father Vissarion (Beso) drank, beat his son and wife; Later, Stalin recalled how, as a child, he threw a knife at his father in self-defense and nearly killed him. Subsequently, Beso left home and wandered. The exact date of his death is unknown; Stalin's peer Iremashvili claims he was stabbed to death in a drunken brawl when Soso was 11 years old (perhaps confusing it with his brother Georgy); according to other sources, he died a natural death and much later. Stalin himself considered him alive back in 1909. Mother Ketevan (Keke) Geladze was known as a strict woman, but who passionately loved her son and sought to make him a career, which she associated with the position of a priest. According to some reports (which are mainly held by opponents of Stalin), his relationship with his mother was cool. Stalin did not come to her funeral in 1937, but only sent a wreath with an inscription in Russian and Georgian: "Dear and beloved mother from her son Joseph Dzhugashvili (from Stalin)". Perhaps his absence was due to the trial of Tukhachevsky that unfolded in those days.
In 1888, Joseph entered the Gori Theological School. In July 1894, after graduating from college, Joseph was noted as the best student. His certificate contains fives in many subjects. Here is a snippet of his certificate:
A pupil of the Gori Theological School, Dzhugashvili Joseph ... entered the first grade of the school in September 1889 and, with excellent behavior (5), made progress:
According to the sacred history of the Old Testament - (5)
Best of the day
According to the Sacred History of the New Testament - (5)
According to the Orthodox Catechism - (5)
Explanation of worship with the church charter - (5)
Russian with Church Slavonic - (5)
Greek - (4) very good
Georgian - (5) excellent
Arithmetic - (4) very good
Geography - (5)
Calligraphy - (5)
Church singing:
Russian - (5)
and Georgian - (5)
In September of the same 1894, Joseph, having brilliantly passed the entrance exams, was enrolled in the Orthodox Theological Seminary in Tiflis (Tbilisi). Not having completed the full course of study, he was expelled from the seminary in 1899 (according to the official Soviet version, for promoting Marxism, according to the documents of the seminary - for failing to appear for the exam). In his youth, Soso always strove to be a leader and studied well, scrupulously doing his homework.
Memoirs of Joseph Iremashvili
Joseph Iremashvili, a friend and classmate of the young Stalin at the Tiflis Theological Seminary, in 1922, after being released from prison, was expelled from the USSR. In 1932, a book of his memoirs in German, “Stalin and the Tragedy of Georgia” (German: “Stalin und die Tragoedie Georgiens”), was published in Berlin, covering the youth of the then leader of the CPSU (b) in a negative light. According to Iremashvili, young Stalin was characterized by vindictiveness, vindictiveness, deceit, ambition and lust for power. According to him, the humiliation suffered in childhood made Stalin “cruel and heartless, like his father. He was convinced that a person to whom other people should obey should be like his father, and therefore he soon developed a deep dislike for all who were above him in position. From childhood, revenge became the goal of his life, and he subordinated everything to this goal. Iremashvili ends his characterization with the words: “It was a triumph for him to achieve victory and inspire fear.”
From the circle of reading, according to Iremashvili, the mentioned novel of the Georgian nationalist Kazbegi "The Parricide" made a special impression on the young Soso, with the hero of which - abrek Koba - he identified himself. According to Iremashvili, “Koba became a god for Coco, the meaning of his life. He would like to be the second Koba, a fighter and a hero as famous as this last one."
Before the revolution
1915 active member of the RSDLP (b)
In 1901-1902 he was a member of the Tiflis and Batumi committees of the RSDLP. After the II Congress of the RSDLP (1903) - a Bolshevik. Repeatedly arrested, exiled, fled from exile. Member of the revolution 1905-1907. In December 1905, a delegate to the 1st Conference of the RSDLP (Tammerfors). Delegate of the IV and V congresses of the RSDLP 1906-1907. In 1907-1908 he was a member of the Baku Committee of the RSDLP. At the plenum of the Central Committee after the 6th (Prague) All-Russian Conference of the RSDLP (1912), he was co-opted in absentia to the Central Committee and the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b) (he was not elected at the conference itself). Trotsky, in his biography of Stalin, believed that this was facilitated by Stalin's personal letter to V. I. Lenin, where he said that he agreed to any responsible work. In those years when the influence of Bolshevism was clearly declining, this made a great impression on Lenin.
In 1906-1907. led the so-called expropriation in Transcaucasia. In particular, on June 25, 1907, in order to raise funds for the needs of the Bolsheviks, he organized a robbery of a collection carriage in Tiflis. [source?]
In 1912-1913, while working in St. Petersburg, he was one of the main contributors to the first mass Bolshevik newspaper Pravda.
At this time, Stalin wrote, at the direction of V. I. Lenin, the work “Marxism and the National Question”, in which he expressed Bolshevik views on the ways of solving the national question and criticized the program of “cultural-national autonomy” of the Austro-Hungarian socialists. This caused an extremely positive attitude towards him from Lenin, who called him a "wonderful Georgian."
In 1913 he was exiled to the village of Kureika in the Turukhansk Territory and was in exile until 1917.
After the February Revolution he returned to Petrograd. Prior to Lenin's arrival from exile, he directed the activities of the Central Committee and the St. Petersburg Committee of the Bolshevik Party. In 1917, he was a member of the editorial board of the Pravda newspaper, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, and the Military Revolutionary Center. In relation to the Provisional Government and its policy, he proceeded from the fact that the democratic revolution was not yet completed, and the overthrow of the government was not a practical task. In view of the forced departure of Lenin into the underground, Stalin spoke at the VI Congress of the RSDLP (b) with a report of the Central Committee. Participated in the October armed uprising as a member of the party center under his leadership. After the victory of the October Revolution of 1917, he joined the Council of People's Commissars as People's Commissar for Nationalities.
Civil War
After the start of the civil war, Stalin was sent to the south of Russia as an extraordinary representative of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee for the procurement and export of grain from the North Caucasus to industrial centers. Arriving in Tsaritsyn on June 6, 1918, Stalin took power in the city into his own hands, established a regime of terror there and engaged in the defense of Tsaritsyn from the troops of Ataman Krasnov. However, the very first military measures taken by Stalin together with Voroshilov turned into defeats for the Red Army. Blaming "military experts" for these defeats, Stalin carried out mass arrests and executions. After Krasnov came close to the city and semi-blocked it, Stalin was recalled from Tsaritsyn at the decisive insistence of Trotsky. Shortly after Stalin's departure, the city fell. Lenin condemned Stalin for executions. Stalin, being absorbed in military affairs, did not forget about the development of domestic production. So, he then wrote to Lenin about sending meat to Moscow: “There are more livestock here than necessary ... It would be good to organize at least one canning factory, put up a slaughterhouse and so on ...”.
In January 1919, Stalin and Dzerzhinsky leave for Vyatka to investigate the reasons for the defeat of the Red Army near Perm and the surrender of the city to the forces of Admiral Kolchak. The Stalin-Dzerzhinsky Commission contributed to the reorganization and restoration of the combat capability of the defeated 3rd Army; however, on the whole, the situation on the Permian front was rectified by the fact that Ufa was taken by the Red Army, and Kolchak already on January 6 gave the order to concentrate forces in the Ufa direction and go on the defensive near Perm. Stalin was awarded the Order of the Red Banner for his work on the Petrograd Front. The firmness of decisions, unprecedented efficiency and a clever combination of military organizational and political activities made it possible to win many supporters.
In the summer of 1920, Stalin, sent to the Polish front, encouraged Budyonny to fail to comply with the orders of the command to transfer the 1st Cavalry Army from near Lvov to the Warsaw direction, which, according to some historians, had fatal consequences for the Red Army campaign.
1920s
RSDLP - RSDLP(b) - RCP(b) - VKP(b) - CPSU
In April 1922, the Plenum of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) elected Stalin General Secretary of the Central Committee. L. D. Trotsky considered G. E. Zinoviev to be the initiator of this appointment, but, perhaps, V. I. Lenin himself, who sharply changed his attitude towards Trotsky after the so-called. "discussions about trade unions" (this version was set out in the famous "Short Course on the History of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks" and was considered mandatory during Stalin's lifetime). Initially, this position meant only the leadership of the party apparatus, while Lenin, the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, formally remained the leader of the party and government. In addition, leadership in the party was considered inextricably linked with the merits of the theorist; therefore, following Lenin, Trotsky, L.B. Kamenev, Zinoviev and N.I. Bukharin were considered the most prominent "leaders", while Stalin was not seen to have either theoretical merits or special merits in the revolution.
Lenin highly valued Stalin's organizational skills; Stalin was considered an expert on the national question, although in recent years Lenin noted in him "Great Russian chauvinism." It was on this basis (the “Georgian Incident”) that Lenin clashed with Stalin; Stalin's despotic demeanor and his rudeness towards Krupskaya caused Lenin to repent of his appointment, and in a "Letter to the Congress" Lenin declared that Stalin was too rude and should be removed from his post as general secretary.
But due to illness, Lenin retired from political activity. The supreme power in the party (and in fact in the country) belonged to the Politburo. In the absence of Lenin, it consisted of 6 people - Stalin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Bukharin and MP Tomsky, where all issues were decided by a majority of votes. Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev organized a "troika" based on opposition to Trotsky, whom they had been negatively opposed to since the civil war (frictions between Trotsky and Stalin began over the defense of Tsaritsyn and between Trotsky and Zinoviev over the defense of Petrograd, Kamenev supported almost everything Zinoviev). Tomsky, being the leader of trade unions, had a negative attitude towards Trotsky since the time of the so-called. trade union discussions. Bukharin could become the only supporter of Trotsky, but his triumvirs began to gradually lure him over to their side.
Trotsky began to resist. He sent a letter to the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission (Central Control Commission) demanding greater democracy in the party. Soon, other oppositionists, not only the Trotskyists, sent a similar so-called to the Politburo. "Statement of the 46". The Troika then showed its power, mainly using the resources of the apparatus led by Stalin. At the XIII Conference of the RCP(b) all oppositionists were condemned. Stalin's influence greatly increased.
January 21, 1924 Lenin died. The Troika united with Bukharin, A.I. Rykov, Tomsky and V.V. Kuibyshev, forming in the Politburo (which included a member of Rykov and a candidate member of Kuibyshev) the so-called. "seven". Later, at the August plenum of 1924, this "seven" even became an official body, although secret and extra-statutory.
The XIII Congress of the RSDLP (b) turned out to be difficult for Stalin. Before the start of the congress, Lenin's widow N. K. Krupskaya handed over the Letter to the Congress. It was announced at a meeting of the Council of Elders (a non-statutory body consisting of members of the Central Committee and leaders of local party organizations). Stalin announced his resignation at this meeting for the first time. Kamenev proposed to resolve the issue by voting. The majority voted in favor of keeping Stalin in the post of general secretary, only Trotsky's supporters voted against. Then the proposal was voted that the document should be announced at closed meetings of individual delegations, while no one had the right to take notes and at the meetings of the congress it was impossible to refer to the "Testament". Thus, the "Letter to the Congress" was not even mentioned in the materials of the Congress. It was first announced by N. S. Khrushchev at the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956. Later this fact was used by the opposition to criticize Stalin and the party (it was alleged that the Central Committee "concealed" Lenin's "testament"). Stalin himself (in connection with this letter he several times raised the question of his resignation before the plenum of the Central Committee) denied these accusations. Just two weeks after the congress, where Stalin's future victims Zinoviev and Kamenev used all their influence to keep him in office, Stalin opened fire on his own allies. First, he used a typo (“Nepmanovskaya” instead of “NEPovskaya” in a quote from Lenin by Kamenev:
I read in the newspaper the report of one of the comrades at the Thirteenth Congress (I think Kamenev), where it is written in black and white that the next slogan of our party is supposedly the transformation of "Nepman Russia" into socialist Russia. Moreover, - even worse - this strange slogan is attributed to none other than Lenin himself.
In the same report, Stalin accused Zinoviev, without naming him, of the principle of "dictatorship of the party", put forward at the 12th Congress, and this thesis was recorded in the resolution of the congress and Stalin himself voted for it. The main allies of Stalin in the "seven" were Bukharin and Rykov.
A new split appeared in the Politburo in October 1925, when Zinoviev, Kamenev, G. Ya. Sokolnikov and Krupskaya presented a document that criticized the party line from a "left" point of view. (Zinoviev led the Leningrad communists, Kamenev the Moscow ones, and among the working class of large cities, who lived worse than before the First World War, there was strong dissatisfaction with low wages and rising prices for agricultural products, which led to the demand for pressure on the peasantry and especially on the kulaks ). "Seven" broke up. At that moment, Stalin began to unite with the "right" Bukharin-Rykov-Tomsky, who expressed the interests of the peasantry above all. In the inner-party struggle that had begun between the "rights" and "lefts", he provided them with the forces of the party apparatus, they (namely Bukharin) acted as theoreticians. The "new opposition" of Zinoviev and Kamenev was condemned at the XIV Congress
By that time, the theory of the victory of socialism in one country had arisen. This view was developed by Stalin in the pamphlet "On Questions of Leninism" (1926) and by Bukharin. They divided the question of the victory of socialism into two parts - the question of the complete victory of socialism, i.e. about the possibility of building socialism and the complete impossibility of restoring capitalism by internal forces, and the question of final victory, i.e., the impossibility of restoration due to the intervention of the Western powers, which would be excluded only by establishing a revolution in the West.
Trotsky, who did not believe in socialism in one country, joined Zinoviev and Kamenev. The so-called. United Opposition. It was finally defeated after a demonstration organized by Trotsky's supporters on November 7, 1927 in Leningrad. At this time, including the Bukharinites, the creation of a “personality cult” of Stalin began, who was still considered a party bureaucrat, and not a theoretical leader who could lay claim to Lenin’s legacy. Having strengthened himself as a leader, in 1929 Stalin dealt an unexpected blow to his allies, accusing them of a "right deviation" and actually began to implement (at the same time in extreme forms) the program of the "leftists" to curtail the NEP and accelerate industrialization through the exploitation of the countryside, up to still served as the subject of condemnation. At the same time, the 50th anniversary of Stalin is celebrated on a large scale (whose date of birth was then changed, according to Stalin's critics, in order to somewhat smooth out the "excesses" of collectivization with the celebration).
1930s
Immediately after the assassination of Kirov on December 1, 1934, a rumor arose that the assassination was organized by Stalin. There are different versions of the murder from the involvement of Stalin, to everyday.
After the 20th Congress, by order of Khrushchev, a Special Commission of the Central Committee of the CPSU headed by N. M. Shvernik with the participation of the old Bolshevik Olga Shatunovskaya was created to investigate the issue. The commission interrogated over 3 thousand people and, according to the letters of O. Shatunovskaya addressed to N. Khrushchev, A. Mikoyan and A. Yakovlev, she found reliable evidence that allows us to assert that Stalin and the NKVD organized the murder of Kirov. N. S. Khrushchev also speaks of this in his memoirs). Subsequently, Shatunovskaya expressed her suspicion that documents compromising Stalin had been confiscated.
In 1990, in the course of a re-investigation conducted by the USSR Prosecutor's Office, a conclusion was made: the assassination attempt on Kirov, as well as the involvement of the NKVD and Stalin in this crime, is not contained.
A number of modern historians support the version of the murder of Kirov on Stalin's orders, others insist on the version of a lone killer.
Mass repressions in the second half of the 1930s
Politburo decision signed by Stalin obliging the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR to pass sentences to death and imprisonment in camp 457 "members of counter-revolutionary organizations" (1940)
As the historian M. Geller notes, the assassination of Kirov served as a signal for the beginning of the Great Terror. On December 1, 1934, at the initiative of Stalin, the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR adopted a resolution "On Amending the Current Criminal Procedure Codes of the Union Republics" with the following content:
Introduce the following changes to the current criminal procedure codes of the Union republics for the investigation and consideration of cases of terrorist organizations and terrorist acts against workers of the Soviet government:
1. The investigation of these cases shall be completed within no more than ten days;
2. The indictment shall be handed over to the accused one day before the trial of the case in court;
3. Cases to hear without the participation of the parties;
4. Cassation appeal against sentences, as well as filing petitions for pardon, should not be allowed;
5. The sentence to capital punishment shall be carried out immediately after the sentence is pronounced.
After that, the former party opposition to Stalin (Kamenev and Zinoviev, who allegedly acted on the instructions of Trotsky) was accused of organizing the murder. Subsequently, according to Shatunovskaya, in Stalin's archives, lists of the "Moscow" and "Leningrad" centers of the opposition, which allegedly organized the murder, were found in Stalin's archive. Orders were issued to expose the "enemies of the people" and a series of trials began.
The mass terror of the period of "Yezhovshchina" was carried out by the then authorities of the country throughout the USSR (and, at the same time, in the territories of Mongolia, Tuva and Republican Spain controlled at that time by the Soviet regime), as a rule, on the basis of previously "lowered into place" by the party authorities figures of "planned assignments" to identify people (the so-called "enemies of the people"), as well as compiled by the Chekist authorities (based on these figures) by surname lists of pre-scheduled victims of terror, the massacre of which was centrally planned by the authorities. [source?] During the “Yezhovshchina” period, the regime that ruled in the USSR completely rejected even that socialist legality, which, for some reason, it considered necessary to observe, sometimes, in the period preceding the “Yezhovshchina”. During the "Yezhovshchina", torture was widely used on those arrested; sentences that were not subject to appeal (often to death) were passed without any trial, and were immediately (often even before the sentence was pronounced) carried out; all the property of the absolute majority of arrested people was immediately confiscated; relatives of the repressed were themselves subjected to the same repressions - for the mere fact of their relationship with them; The children of the repressed (regardless of their age) left without parents were also placed, as a rule, in prisons, camps, colonies, or in special “orphanages for children of enemies of the people.”[source?]
In 1937-1938, the NKVD arrested about 1.5 million people, of which about 700 thousand were shot, that is, on average, 1,000 executions per day.
Historian V. N. Zemskov names a smaller number of those who were shot - 642,980 people (and at least 500,000 more who died in the camps).
As a result of collectivization, famine and purges between 1926 and 1939. the country lost according to various estimates from 7 to 13 million and even up to 20 million people.
The Second World War
German propaganda reporting Stalin's alleged flight from Moscow and propaganda coverage of the capture of his son Yakov. Autumn 1941
Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at the Yalta Conference.
During the Great Patriotic War, Stalin actively participated in hostilities in the position of Supreme Commander-in-Chief. Already on June 30, by order of Stalin, the GKO was organized. During the war, Stalin lost his son.
After the war
Portrait of Stalin on a diesel locomotive TE2-414, 1954 Central Museum of the October Railway, St. Petersburg
Portrait of Stalin on a diesel locomotive TE2-414, 1954
Central Museum of the October Railway, St. Petersburg
After the war, the country embarked on a course of accelerated revival of the economy, devastated by warfare and scorched earth tactics pursued by both sides. Stalin, with harsh measures, suppressed the nationalist movement, which was actively manifested in the territories newly annexed to the USSR (the Baltic states, Western Ukraine).
In the liberated states of Eastern Europe, pro-Soviet communist regimes were established, which later formed a counterbalance to the militaristic NATO bloc from the west of the USSR. Post-war contradictions between the USSR and the USA in the Far East led to the Korean War.
The human losses did not end with the war. Only the Holodomor of 1946-1947 claimed the lives of about a million people. In total, for the period 1939-1959. population losses amounted to various estimates from 25 to 30 million people.
In the late 1940s, the great-power component of Soviet ideology (the fight against cosmopolitanism) intensified. In the early 1950s, several high-profile anti-Semitic trials were held in the countries of Eastern Europe, and then in the USSR (see Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, Doctors' Case). All Jewish educational institutions, theaters, publishing houses and mass media were closed (except for the newspaper of the Jewish Autonomous Region "Birobidzhaner Shtern" ("Birobidzhan Star")). Mass arrests and dismissals of Jews began. In the winter of 1953 there were persistent rumors about the impending deportation of the Jews; the question of whether these rumors corresponded to reality is debatable.
In 1952, according to the recollections of the participants in the October plenum of the Central Committee, Stalin tried to resign from his party duties, refusing the post of secretary of the Central Committee, but under pressure from the delegates of the plenum, he accepted this position. It should be noted that the post of General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks was formally abolished even after the 17th Party Congress, and Stalin was nominally considered one of the equal secretaries of the Central Committee. However, in the book published in 1947 “Joseph Vissarionov Stalin. Brief biography" said:
On April 3, 1922, the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Party ... elected Stalin as General Secretary of the Central Committee ... Stalin. Since then, Stalin has been permanently working in this post.
Stalin and metro
Under Stalin, the first metro in the USSR was built. Stalin was interested in everything in the country, including construction. His former bodyguard Rybin recalls:
I. Stalin personally inspected the necessary streets, going into the yards, where basically the shacks that breathed incense leaned sideways and a lot of mossy sheds on chicken legs huddled. The first time he did it was during the day. Immediately a crowd gathered, which did not allow to move at all, and then ran after the car. I had to reschedule my appointments for the night. But even then, passers-by recognized the leader and accompanied him with a long tail.
As a result of long preparations, the master plan for the reconstruction of Moscow was approved. This is how Gorky Street, Bolshaya Kaluzhskaya Street, Kutuzovsky Prospekt and other beautiful highways appeared. During another trip along Mokhovaya, Stalin said to the driver Mitryukhin:
We need to build a new Lomonosov University so that students study in one place, and not wander around the city.
During the construction process, on the personal order of Stalin, the Sovetskaya metro station was adapted for the underground command post of the Moscow Civil Defense Headquarters. In addition to the civilian metro, complex secret complexes were built, including the so-called Metro-2, which Stalin himself used. In November 1941, a solemn meeting on the occasion of the anniversary of the October Revolution was held in the metro at the Mayakovskaya station. Stalin arrived by train along with guards, and he did not leave the building of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command on Myasnitskaya, but went down from the basement into a special tunnel that led to the subway.
Stalin and higher education in the USSR
Stalin paid great attention to the development of Soviet science. So, according to Zhdanov's memoirs, Stalin believed that higher education in Russia went through three stages: “In the first period ... they were the main forge of personnel. Along with them, the workers' faculties developed only to a very slight extent. Then, with the development of the economy and trade, a large number of practitioners and businessmen were required. Now ... we should not plant new ones, but improve existing ones. You can't put the question this way: universities train either teachers or researchers. It is impossible to teach without conducting and not knowing scientific work ... now we often say: give us a sample from abroad, we will sort it out, and then we will build it ourselves.”
Stalin paid personal attention to the construction of Moscow State University. The Moscow City Committee and the Moscow City Council proposed to build a four-story town in the Vnukovo area, where there were wide fields, based on economic considerations. The President of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR Academician S. I. Vavilov and the Rector of Moscow State University A. N. Nesmeyanov proposed to build a modern ten-story building. However, at a meeting of the Politburo, which Stalin personally led, he said: “This complex is for Moscow University, and not 10-12, but 20 floors. We will instruct Komarovsky to build. To accelerate the pace of construction, it will have to be carried out in parallel with the design ... It is necessary to create living conditions by building dormitories for teachers and students. How long will students live? Six thousand? So the hostel should have six thousand rooms. Special care should be taken for family students.
The decision to build Moscow State University was supplemented by a set of measures to improve all universities, primarily in cities affected by the war. Universities were given large buildings in Minsk, Voronezh, Kharkov. Universities of a number of Union republics began to actively create and develop.
In 1949, the issue of naming the Moscow State University complex on the Lenin Hills was discussed. However, Stalin categorically opposed this proposal.
Education and science
On Stalin's orders, a profound restructuring of the entire system of the humanities was undertaken. In 1934, the teaching of history was resumed in secondary and higher schools. According to the historian Yuri Felshtinsky, “Under the influence of the instructions of Stalin, Kirov and Zhdanov and the decisions of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on the teaching of history (1934-1936), dogmatism and dogmatism began to take root in historical science, the replacement of research with quotations, and the fitting of material to biased conclusions ". The same processes took place in other areas of humanitarian knowledge. In philology, the advanced "formal" school (Tynyanov, Shklovsky, Eikhenbaum, and others) was destroyed; philosophy began to be based on a primitive exposition of the foundations of Marxism in Chapter IV of the Short Course. Pluralism within Marxist philosophy itself, which existed until the end of the 1930s, became impossible after that; "philosophy" was reduced to commenting on Stalin; all attempts to go beyond the official dogma, manifested by the Lifshitz-Lukach school, were severely suppressed. The situation especially worsened in the post-war period, when massive campaigns began against the departure from the “party principle”, against the “abstract-academic spirit”, “objectivism”, as well as against “anti-patriotism”, “rootless cosmopolitanism” and “belittling Russian science and Russian philosophy”. ”, Encyclopedias of those years report, for example, the following about Socrates:“ other Greek. idealist philosopher, ideologist of the slave-owning aristocracy, enemy of ancient materialism.
To encourage outstanding figures in science, technology, culture and organizers of production, in 1940 the Stalin Prizes were awarded annually, starting from 1941 (instead of the Lenin Prize, established in 1925, but not awarded since 1935). The development of Soviet science and technology under Stalin can be described as a takeoff. The created network of fundamental and applied research institutes, design bureaus and university laboratories, as well as prison camp design bureaus (the so-called "sharag") covered the entire front of research. Scientists have become the true elite of the country. Such names as the physicists Kurchatov, Landau, Tamm, the mathematician Keldysh, the creator of space technology Korolev, the aircraft designer Tupolev are known all over the world. In the post-war period, based on the obvious military needs, the greatest attention was paid to nuclear physics. Thus, in 1946 alone, Stalin personally signed about sixty major documents that determined the development of atomic science and technology. The implementation of these decisions resulted in the creation of an atomic bomb, as well as the construction of the world's first nuclear power plant in Obninsk (1954) and the subsequent development of nuclear energy.
At the same time, the centralized management of scientific activity, which was not always competent, led to the restriction of directions that were considered to be contrary to dialectical materialism and therefore of no practical use. Entire areas of research, such as genetics and cybernetics, were declared "bourgeois pseudosciences." The consequence of this was the arrests and sometimes even executions, as well as the suspension of prominent Soviet scientists from teaching. According to one of the widespread points of view, the defeat of cybernetics ensured the fatal lag of the USSR from the USA in the creation of electronic computers - work on the creation of a domestic computer began only in 1952, although immediately after the war the USSR had all the scientific and technical personnel necessary for its creation. The Russian genetic school, which was considered one of the best in the world, was completely destroyed. Under Stalin, truly pseudoscientific trends enjoyed state support, such as Lysenkoism in biology and (until 1950) the new doctrine of language in linguistics, however, debunked by Stalin himself at the end of his life. Science was also affected by the struggle against cosmopolitanism and the so-called "cow-worship of the West", which had a strong anti-Semitic connotation, which had been going on since 1948.
Stalin's personality cult
Soviet propaganda created around Stalin a semi-divine halo of an infallible "great leader and teacher." Cities, factories, collective farms, military equipment were named after Stalin and his closest associates. The city of Donetsk (Stalino) bore the name of Stalin for a long time. His name was mentioned in the same row with Marx, Engels and Lenin. On January 1, 1936, the first two poems glorifying I.V. Stalin, written by Boris Pasternak, appear in Izvestia. According to Korney Chukovsky and Nadezhda Mandelstam, he "simply raved about Stalin."
Poster depicting Stalin
Poster depicting Stalin
“And in those same days, at a distance behind the ancient stone wall
It is not a person who lives, but an act: an act as tall as the globe of the earth.
Fate gave him the lot of the previous gap.
He is what the most daring dream about, but no one dared before him.
Behind this fabulous deed, the way of things remained intact.
He did not rise as a celestial body, did not distort, did not decay ..
In the collection of fairy tales and relics floating over Moscow by the Kremlin
Centuries have become so accustomed to it, as to the battle of the sentinel tower.
But he remained a man, and if, against the hare
He fires at the cutting areas in winter, the forest will answer him, like everyone else "
The name of Stalin is also mentioned in the anthem of the USSR, composed by S. Mikhalkov in 1944:
Through the storms the sun of freedom shone for us,
And the great Lenin lit the way for us,
We were raised by Stalin - to be loyal to the people,
Inspired us to work and deeds!
Similar in nature, but on a smaller scale, phenomena were also observed in relation to other state leaders (Kalinin, Molotov, Zhdanov, Beria, etc.), as well as Lenin.
A panel with the image of I. V. Stalin at the Narvskaya station of the St. Petersburg metro existed until 1961, then it was covered with a false wall
Khrushchev, in his famous report at the 20th Party Congress, argued that Stalin encouraged his cult in every possible way. So, Khrushchev stated that he knew for certain that, while editing his own biography prepared for publication, Stalin entered whole pages there, where he called himself the leader of the peoples, a great commander, the highest theoretician of Marxism, a brilliant scientist, etc. . In particular, Khrushchev claims that the following passage was inscribed by Stalin himself: “Skillfully fulfilling the tasks of the leader of the party and the people, having the full support of the entire Soviet people, Stalin, however, did not allow in his activities even a shadow of conceit, arrogance, narcissism.” It is known that Stalin stopped some acts of his praise. So, according to the memoirs of the author of the orders "Victory" and "Glory", the first sketches were made with the profile of Stalin. Stalin asked that his profile be replaced with the Spasskaya Tower. To Lion Feuchtwanger's remark "about the tasteless, exaggerated admiration for his personality", Stalin "shrugged his shoulders" and "excused his peasants and workers that they were too busy with other things and could not develop good taste in themselves."
After the “exposure of the cult of personality”, the phrase usually attributed to M. A. Sholokhov (but also to other historical characters) became famous: “Yes, there was a cult ... But there was a personality!”
In modern Russian culture, there are also many cultural sources glorifying Stalin. For example, you can point to the songs of Alexander Kharchikov: "Stalin's March", "Stalin is our father, our Motherland is our mother", "Stalin, get up!"
Stalin and anti-Semitism
Some Jewish authors, based on the fact that under Stalin, including Jews, were subject to criminal liability, on some cases of manifestations of everyday anti-Semitism in Soviet society, and also on the fact that in some of his theoretical works Stalin mentions Zionism in the same row with other types of nationalism and chauvinism (including anti-Semitism), draw a conclusion about Stalin's anti-Semitism. Stalin himself repeatedly issued statements severely condemning anti-Semitism. Among Stalin's closest associates there were many Jews.
Stalin's role in the creation of the State of Israel
Stalin has a great merit in the creation of the State of Israel. The first official contact between the Soviet Union and the Zionists took place on February 3, 1941, when Chaim Weizmann, a world-famous scientist and head of the World Zionist Organization, came to the ambassador in London, I. M. Maisky. Weizmann made a trade offer to supply oranges in exchange for furs. The business failed, but the contacts remained. Relations between the Zionist movement and Moscow leaders had already changed after the German attack on the Soviet Union in June. The need to defeat Hitler was more important than ideological differences - before that, the attitude of the Soviet government towards Zionism was negative.
Already on September 2, 1941, Weizmann reappeared with the Soviet ambassador. The head of the World Zionist Organization said that the appeal of Soviet Jews to world Jewry with an appeal to unite efforts in the fight against Hitler made a great impression on him. The use of Soviet Jews for psychological influence on world public opinion, primarily on Americans, was a Stalinist idea. At the end of 1941, a decision was made in Moscow to form the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee - along with the All-Slavic, Women's, Youth and Committee of Soviet Scientists. All these organizations were focused on educational work abroad. The Jews, at the call of the Zionists, collected and handed over to the Soviet Union 45,000,000 dollars. However, the main role belonged to them in explanatory work among the Americans, because at that time isolationist sentiments were strong.
After the war, the dialogue continued. The British secret services spied on the Zionists because their leaders had sympathy for the USSR. The British and American governments placed an embargo on Jewish settlements in Palestine. Great Britain sold weapons to the Arabs. The Arabs, in addition, hired Bosnian Muslims, former soldiers of the SS Volunteer Division, soldiers of Anders, Arab units in the Wehrmacht. By decision of Stalin, Israel began to receive artillery and mortars, German Messerschmitt fighters through Czechoslovakia. Basically it was a German captured weapon. The CIA offered to shoot down planes, but the politicians prudently refused this step. In general, few weapons were supplied, but they helped to maintain a high morale of the Israelis. There was also a lot of political support. According to P. Sudoplatov, before the UN vote on the division of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states in November 1947, Stalin told his subordinates: “Let's agree with the formation of Israel. This will be a pain in the ass for the Arab states, and then they will seek an alliance with us.
Already in 1948, a cooling in Soviet-Israeli relations began, which led to the severance of diplomatic relations with Israel on February 12, 1953 - the basis for such a step was a bomb explosion near the doors of the Soviet embassy in Tel Aviv (diplomatic relations were restored shortly after Stalin's death, but then worsened again due to military conflicts).
Stalin and the Church
Stalin's policy towards the Russian Orthodox Church was not homogeneous, but it was distinguished by consistency in pursuing the pragmatic goals of the survival of the communist regime and its global expansion. To some researchers, Stalin's attitude to religion was not entirely consistent. On the one hand, not a single atheistic or anti-church work by Stalin remained. On the contrary, Roy Medvedev cites Stalin's statement about atheistic literature as waste paper. On the other hand, on May 15, 1932, a campaign was announced in the USSR, the official goal of which was the complete eradication of religion in the country by May 1, 1937, the so-called "godless five-year plan." By 1939, the number of churches opened in the USSR numbered in the hundreds, and the diocesan structures were completely destroyed.
Some weakening of the anti-church terror took place after the arrival of L.P. Beria to the post of chairman of the NKVD, which was associated both with a general weakening of repressions and the fact that in the fall of 1939 the USSR annexed significant territories on its western borders, where there were numerous and full-blooded church structures.
On June 22, 1941, Metropolitan Sergius sent out an appeal to the dioceses “To the pastors and flock of Christ's Orthodox Church,” which did not go unnoticed by Stalin.
There are many mythical tales about Stalin's alleged recourse to the prayerful help of the Church during the war, but there are no serious documents that would confirm this. According to the oral testimony of Anatoly Vasilyevich Vedernikov, secretary of Patriarch Alexy I, in September 1941, Stalin allegedly ordered Sergius Stragorodsky to be locked up together with his cell-attendant in the Assumption Cathedral of the Kremlin, so that he would pray there before the icon of the Mother of God of Vladimir (the icon was moved there at that time). Sergius stayed in the Assumption Cathedral for three days.
In October 1941, the Patriarchy and other religious centers were ordered to leave Moscow. Orenburg was proposed, but Sergius objected and Ulyanovsk (formerly Simbirsk) was chosen. Metropolitan Sergius and his apparatus stayed in Ulyanovsk until August 1943.
According to the memoirs of the NKGB officer Georgy Karpov, on September 4, 1943, at a meeting attended by Molotov and Beria, in addition to Karpov, Stalin ordered the formation of a body for the work of interaction between the Russian Orthodox Church and the government - the Council for the Russian Orthodox Church under the Council of People's Commissars. A few hours after the meeting, in the dead of night, Metropolitans Sergius, Alexy (Simansky), Nikolai (Yarushevich) were brought to Stalin. During the conversation, a decision was made to elect a Patriarch, open churches, seminaries and a theological academy. As a residence, the Patriarch was given the building of the former German embassy. The state actually stopped supporting renovationist structures, which by 1946 were completely liquidated.
The apparent change in policy towards the ROC causes numerous disputes among researchers. Versions are expressed from Stalin's deliberate use of church circles to subjugate the people to himself, to opinions that Stalin remained a secretly believing person. The latter opinion is also confirmed by the stories of Artyom Sergeev, who was brought up in Stalin's house. And also, according to the memoirs of Stalin's bodyguard Yuri Solovyov, Stalin prayed in the church in the Kremlin, which was on the way to the cinema. Yuri Solovyov himself remained outside the church, but could see Stalin through the window.
The real reason for the temporary change in the repressive policy towards the Church lay in considerations primarily of foreign policy expediency. (See the article History of the Russian Church)
Since the autumn of 1948, after the Conference of the Heads and Representatives of the Orthodox Churches was held in Moscow, the results of which were disappointing in terms of advancing the foreign policy interests of the Kremlin, the former repressive policy was largely resumed.
Sociocultural dimensions of Stalin's personality
Assessments of Stalin's personality are contradictory. The party intelligentsia of the Leninist era put him extremely low; Trotsky, reflecting her opinion, called Stalin "the most outstanding mediocrity of our era." On the other hand, many people who communicated with him later spoke of him as a broadly and versatilely educated and extremely intelligent person. According to the English historian Simon Montefiore, who studied Stalin's personal library and reading circle, he spent a lot of time reading books, on the margins of which his notes remained: “His tastes were eclectic: Maupassant, Wilde, Gogol, Goethe, and also Zola, whom he adored. He liked poetry. (...) Stalin was an erudite person. He quoted long passages from the Bible, the works of Bismarck, the works of Chekhov. He admired Dostoevsky."
On the contrary, the Soviet historian Leonid Batkin, while acknowledging Stalin's love of reading, believes, however, that he was an "aesthetically dense" reader, and at the same time remained a "practical politician." Batkin believes that Stalin had no idea “of the existence of such a ‘subject’ as art”, of a “special artistic world”, of the structure of this world, and so on. On the example of Stalin's statements on literary and cultural topics, given in the memoirs of Konstantin Simonov, Batkin concludes that "everything that Stalin says, everything that he thinks about literature, cinema, and so on, is utterly ignorant," and that the hero of the memoirs is "quite - still a primitive and vulgar type. For comparison with the words of Stalin, Batkin cites marginals - the heroes of Mikhail Zoshchenko; in his opinion, they hardly differ from Stalin's statements. In general, according to Batkin’s conclusion, Stalin brought “certain energy” of a semi-educated and average layer of people to a “pure, strong-willed, outstanding form”.
It should be noted that Batkin fundamentally refuses to consider Stalin as a diplomat, military leader, economist, as he says at the beginning of the article.
Roy Medvedev, speaking out against "often extremely exaggerated estimates of the level of his education and intellect", at the same time warns against underestimation. He notes that Stalin read a lot, and diversified, from fiction to popular science. In the article, the historian cites Stalin's words about reading: "This is my daily norm - 500 pages"; thus, Stalin read several books a day and about a thousand books a year. In the pre-war period, Stalin paid most of his attention to historical and military-technical books, after the war he switched to reading works of a political direction, such as the History of Diplomacy, Talleyrand's biography. At the same time, Stalin actively studied the works of Marxists, including the works of his associates, and then opponents - Trotsky, Kamenev and others. Medvedev notes that Stalin, being responsible for the death of a large number of writers and the destruction of their books, at the same time patronized M. Sholokhov, A. Tolstoy and others, returns from exile E. V. Tarle, whose biography of Napoleon he treated with great interest and personally supervised its publication, stopping tendentious attacks on the book. Medvedev emphasizes the knowledge of the national Georgian culture, in 1940 Stalin himself makes changes to the new translation of The Knight in the Panther's Skin. .
Stalin as an orator and writer
According to L. Batkin, Stalin's oratorical style is extremely primitive. It is distinguished by “the catechistic form, endless repetitions and inversions of the same thing, the same phrase in the form of a question and in the form of an assertion, and again it is the same through a negative particle; curses and cliches of the party bureaucratic dialect; invariably meaningful, important mine, designed to hide the fact that the author has little to say; poverty of syntax and vocabulary. A.P. Romanenko and A.K. Mikhalskaya also pay attention to the lexical scarcity of Stalin's speeches and the abundance of repetitions. The Israeli scholar Mikhail Weiskopf also argues that Stalin's argument "is based on more or less hidden tautologies, on the effect of mind-boggling hammering."
The formal logic of Stalin's speeches, according to Batkin, is characterized by "chains of simple identities: A = A and B = B, this cannot be, because it can never be" - that is, there is no logic, in the strict sense of the word, in Stalin's speeches at all. Weisskopf speaks of Stalin's "logic" as a collection of logical errors: "The main features of this pseudo-logic are the use of an unproven judgment as a premise, and so on. petitio principii, that is, the hidden identity between the basis of the proof and the thesis supposedly arising from it. The tautology of Stalin's arguments (idem per idem) constantly forms the classic "circle in proof". Often there is a permutation of the so-called. strong and weak judgments, substitution of terms, errors - or rather, falsifications - associated with the ratio of the volume and content of concepts, with deductive and inductive conclusions, etc." Weisskopf generally considers tautology as the basis of the logic of Stalin's speeches (more precisely, "the ground of the foundation," as the author puts it, paraphrasing the real words of the leader). In particular, Weiskopf cites the following examples of Stalin's "logic":
It can ruin the common cause if it is downtrodden and dark, of course, not because of its evil will, but because of its darkness.
Weisskopf finds in this phrase a petitio principii class error, stating that one of the references to "darkness" is a premise, and the other is a conclusion following from it, thus the premise and conclusion are identical.
"The words and deeds of the opposition bloc invariably come into conflict with each other. Hence the discord between deed and word."
“The misfortune of the Bukharin group lies precisely in the fact that they do not see the characteristic features of this period. Hence their blindness.”
“Why is it precisely the capitalists who take the fruits of the labor of the proletarians, and not the proletarians themselves? Why do capitalists exploit proletarians and not proletarians exploit capitalists? Because the capitalists buy the labor power of the proletarians, and that is why the capitalists take away the fruits of the labor of the proletarians, that is why the capitalists exploit the proletarians, and not the proletarians of the capitalists. But why exactly are the capitalists buying the labor power of the proletarians? Why are proletarians employed by capitalists, and not capitalists by proletarians? Because the main basis of the capitalist system is private ownership of the instruments and means of production…”
However, according to Batkin, it is unlawful to make claims to Stalin's speeches in tautologies, sophisms, gross lies and idle talk, since they were not intended to convince anyone, but were of a ritual nature: in them the conclusion does not follow from reasoning, but precedes it, "that is, not a “conclusion”, of course, but “intent and decision. Therefore, the text is a way to make it clear, to guess about the decision, and to the same extent a way to prevent guessing.”
Georgy Khazagerov elevates Stalin's rhetoric to the traditions of solemn, homiletic (preaching) eloquence and considers it didactic-symbolic. According to the author's definition, “the task of didactics is, based on symbolism as an axiom, to streamline the picture of the world and convey this ordered picture intelligibly. Stalinist didactics, however, took on the functions of symbolism. This was manifested in the fact that the zone of axioms grew to entire curricula, and evidence, on the contrary, was replaced by a reference to authority. V. V. Smolenenkova notes the strong impact that, with all these qualities, Stalin's speeches had on the audience. Thus, Ilya Starinov conveys the impression made on him by Stalin's speech: “We listened with bated breath to Stalin's speech. (...) Stalin talked about what worried everyone: about people, about cadres. And how convincingly he spoke! Here I first heard: “Cadres decide everything.” Words about how important it is to take care of people, to take care of them…” Cf. also an entry in the diary of Vladimir Vernadsky: “Only yesterday did we get the text of Stalin's speech, which made a huge impression. Previously listened to on the radio from the fifth to the tenth. The speech, no doubt, of a very intelligent person.”
V. V. Smolenenkova explains the effect of Stalin's speeches by the fact that they were quite adequate to the mood and expectations of the audience. L. Batkin also emphasizes the moment of “fascination” that arose in an atmosphere of terror and the fear and reverence generated by it for Stalin as the personification of a higher power that controlled destinies. On the other hand, in Yuli Daniel's story "Atonement" (1964), student conversations about Stalin's logic are described, which were conducted during his lifetime in the spirit of future articles by Batkin and Weisskopf: "well, you remember -" this cannot be, because this can never be”, and so on, in the same vein.
Stalin and the culture of contemporaries
Stalin was a very readable person and was interested in culture. After his death, he left a personal library consisting of thousands of books, many with personal notes in the margins. He himself told some visitors, pointing to a stack of books on his desk: "This is my daily norm - 500 pages." Up to a thousand books were produced this way a year. There is also evidence that back in the 1920s, Stalin visited the play "Days of the Turbins" by the then little-known writer Bulgakov eighteen times. At the same time, despite the difficult situation, he walked without personal protection and transport. Later, Stalin took part in the popularization of this writer. Stalin also maintained personal contacts with other cultural figures: musicians, film actors, directors. Stalin personally entered into polemics also with the composer Shostakovich. According to Stalin, his post-war musical compositions were written for political reasons - with the aim of discrediting the Soviet Union.
Personal life and death of Stalin
In 1904, Stalin married Ekaterina Svanidze, but three years later his wife died of tuberculosis. Their only son, Yakov, was taken prisoner by the Germans during World War II. According to the widespread version, reflected, in particular, in Ivan Stadnyuk’s novel “War” and the Soviet film “Liberation” (the reliability of this story is unclear), the German side offered to exchange him for Field Marshal Paulus, to which Stalin replied: “I don’t change a soldier for a field marshal ". In 1943, Yakov was shot dead in the German concentration camp Sachsenhausen while trying to escape. Yakov was married three times and had a son, Evgeny, who participated in the 1990s. in Russian politics (Stalin's grandson was on the electoral lists of the Anpilov bloc); this direct male line of the Dzhugashvili family still exists.
In 1919, Stalin married a second time. His second wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, a member of the CPSU (b), committed suicide in her Kremlin apartment in 1932 (the sudden death was officially announced) [source?]. From his second marriage, Stalin had two children: Svetlana and Vasily. His son Vasily, an officer of the Soviet air force, took part in the Great Patriotic War in command positions, after its completion he led the air defense of the Moscow Region (lieutenant general), was arrested after Stalin's death, died shortly after his release in 1960. Stalin's daughter Svetlana On March 6, 1967, Alliluyeva applied for political asylum at the United States Embassy in Delhi and moved to the United States the same year. Artyom Sergeev (the son of the deceased revolutionary Fyodor Sergeev - “Comrade Artyom”) was brought up in the Stalin family until the age of 11 years.
In addition, it is believed that an illegitimate son, Konstantin Kuzakov, was born to Stalin in exile in Turukhansk. Stalin did not maintain relations with him.
Stalin with children from his second marriage: Vasily (left) and Svetlana (center)
According to the testimonies, Stalin beat his sons, so, for example, Yakov (whom Stalin usually called: “my fool” or “wolf cub”) more than once had to spend the night on the landing or in the apartments of neighbors (including Trotsky); N. S. Khrushchev recalled that once Stalin beat Vasily with his boots for poor progress. Trotsky believed that these scenes of domestic violence reproduced the atmosphere in which Stalin was brought up in Gori; modern psychologists agree with this opinion.. With his attitude, Stalin brought Yakov to a suicide attempt, to the news of which he reacted mockingly: “Ha, he didn’t hit!” . On the other hand, Stalin's adopted son A. Sergeev retained favorable memories of the atmosphere in Stalin's house. Stalin, according to the memoirs of Artyom Fedorovich, treated him strictly, but with love and was a very cheerful person.
Stalin died on March 5, 1953. The specific reason is still unknown. Officially, it is believed that death was the result of a cerebral hemorrhage. There is a version according to which Lavrenty Beria or N. S. Khrushchev contributed to his death without providing assistance. However, there is another version of his death, and it is very likely [source?] - Stalin was poisoned by his closest associate Beria.
At the funeral of Stalin on March 9, 1953, due to the huge number of people who wanted to say goodbye to Stalin, there was a stampede. The exact number of victims is still unknown, although it is estimated to be significant. In particular, it is known that one of the unidentified victims of the stampede received the number 1422; numbering was carried out only for those dead who could not be identified without the help of relatives or friends.
The embalmed body of Stalin was placed on public display in the Lenin Mausoleum, which in 1953-1961 was called the "Mausoleum of V. I. Lenin and I. V. Stalin." On October 30, 1961, the XXII Congress of the CPSU decided that "Stalin's serious violations of Lenin's precepts ... make it impossible to leave the coffin with his body in the Mausoleum." On the night of October 31 to November 1, 1961, Stalin's body was taken out of the Mausoleum and buried in a grave near the Kremlin wall. Subsequently, a monument was opened on the grave (a bust by N. V. Tomsky). Stalin became the only Soviet leader for whom a memorial service was performed by the Russian Orthodox Church.
Myths about Stalin
There are many myths about Stalin. Often they were distributed by opponents of Stalin (mainly such as L. D. Trotsky, B. G. Bazhanov, N. S. Khrushchev, and others). Sometimes they appeared on their own. So there are myths about rape; that he was an Okhrana agent; about how he only pretended to be a Marxist-Leninist/Communist, but in fact was a covert counter-revolutionary; that he was an anti-Semite and a Great Russian chauvinist/ethno-nationalist; that he was an alcoholic; that he suffered from paranoia and even about the statements of Stalin.
Alleged poems by Stalin
On December 21, 1939, on the day of the solemn celebration of Stalin's 60th birthday, the newspaper Zarya Vostoka published an article by N. Nikolaishvili "Poems of young Stalin", in which it was reported that Stalin allegedly wrote six poems. Five of them were published from June to December 1895 in the newspaper "Iberia", edited by Ilya Chavchavadze signed "I. J-shvili", the sixth - in July 1896 in the social-democratic newspaper "Keali" ("Furrow") signed "Soselo". Of these, I. J-shvili's poem "To Prince R. Eristavi" in 1907 was included, among the selected masterpieces of Georgian poetry, in the collection "Georgian Reader".
Until then, there was no news that the young Stalin wrote poetry. Iosif Iremashvili does not write about this either. Stalin himself did not confirm the version that the poems belonged to him, but he did not refute either. By the 70th anniversary of Stalin, in 1949, a book of his alleged poems was being prepared in translation into Russian (large masters were involved in the work on translations - in particular, Boris Pasternak and Arseniy Tarkovsky), but by Stalin's order, the publication was stopped.
Modern researchers note that the signatures of I. J-shvili, and even more Soselo (a diminutive of "Joseph"), cannot be the basis for attributing poems to Stalin, especially since one of I. J-shvili's poems is addressed to Prince R. Eristavi, with whom the seminarian Stalin clearly could not be familiar with. It is suggested that the author of the first five poems was a philologist, historian and archaeologist, an expert on Georgian culture Ivan Javakhishvili.
Awards
Stalin had:
* title of Hero of Socialist Labor (1939)
* the title of Hero of the Soviet Union (1945).
Was a cavalier:
* three orders of Lenin (1939, 1945, 1949)
* two Orders of Victory (1943, 1945)
* Order of Suvorov I degree (1943)
* three orders of the Red Banner (1919, 1939, 1944).
In 1953, immediately after the death of I.V. Stalin, four copies of the Order of Generalissimo Stalin (without the use of precious metals) were urgently made for approval by the main members of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU.
Modern opinions about Stalin
The events of the Stalin era were so grandiose that, naturally, they caused a huge flow of various literature. With all the diversity, there are several main directions in it.
* Liberal Democratic. The authors, proceeding from liberal and humanistic values, consider Stalin the strangler of any freedom, initiative, the creator of a totalitarian-type society, and also the perpetrator of crimes against humanity, comparable to Hitler. This assessment prevails in the West; during the era of perestroika and in the early 1990s. it prevailed in Russia as well. During the life of Stalin himself, in the left circles in the West, a different attitude was also developed towards him (in the spectrum from benevolent to enthusiastic), as the creator of an interesting social experiment; such an attitude was expressed, in particular, by Bernard Shaw, Leon Feuchtwanger, Henri Barbusse. After the revelations of the 20th Congress, Stalinism in the West disappeared as a phenomenon. [source?]
* Communist-anti-Stalinist. His adherents accuse Stalin of destroying the party, of departing from the ideals of Lenin and Marx. This approach originated in the environment of the “Leninist Guard” (F. Raskolnikov, L. D. Trotsky, N. I. Bukharin’s suicide letter, M. Ryutin “Stalin and the Crisis of the Proletarian Dictatorship”) and became dominant after the 20th Congress, and under Brezhnev was the banner of socialist dissidents (Alexander Tarasov, Roy Medvedev, Andrey Sakharov). Among the Western Left, from moderate social democrats to anarchists and Trotskyists, Stalin is usually seen as the mouthpiece of the bureaucracy and a traitor to the revolution Stalin's Soviet Union as a deformed workers' state). The categorical rejection of Stalin's authoritarianism, which perverted the principles of Marxist theory, is characteristic of the dialectical-humanistic tradition in Western Marxism, represented, in particular, by the Frankfurt School, as well as of the "new left". One of the first studies of the USSR as a totalitarian state belongs to Hannah Arendt (“The Origins of Totalitarianism”), who also identified herself (with some reservations) as a leftist. In our time, Stalin is condemned from communist positions by Trotskyists and unorthodox Marxists.
* Communist-Stalinist. Its representatives fully justify Stalin, consider him a faithful successor of Lenin. In general, they are within the official theses of the Soviet propaganda of the 1930s. As an example, we can cite the book by M. S. Dokuchaev “History remembers”.
* Nationalist-Stalinist. Its representatives, while criticizing both Lenin and the democrats, at the same time praise Stalin highly for his contribution to the strengthening of Russian imperial statehood. They consider him the undertaker of the "Russophobes"-Bolsheviks, the restorer of Russian statehood. In this direction, an interesting opinion belongs to the followers of L. N. Gumilyov (although the elements vary). In their opinion, under Stalin, during the repressions, the anti-system of the Bolsheviks perished. Also, excessive passionarity was knocked out of the ethnic system, which allowed it to get the opportunity to enter the inertial phase, the ideal of which was Stalin himself. The initial period of Stalin's rule, in which many actions of an "anti-systemic" nature were undertaken, is considered by them only as a preparation for the main action, which does not determine the main direction of Stalin's activity. One can cite as an example the articles by I. S. Shishkin “The Internal Enemy”, and V. A. Michurin “The Twentieth Century in Russia through the L.N.
opinion
hafiz 08.03.2008 04:57:37
Stalin made Russia a very developed country in all spheres of society
About I.V. Stalin
16.10.2012 11:43:08
State and political figure of a large scale. A man who possessed iron logic in reasoning and actions.
