Joseph Stalin, was born in Gori, Georgia on 21st December, 1879. He was his
mother's fourth child to be born in less than four years. The first three died
and as Joseph was prone to bad health, his mother feared on several occasions
that he would also die. Understandably, given this background, Joseph's mother
was very protective towards him as a child.
Joseph's father was a bootmaker and his mother took in washing. As a child,
Joseph experienced the poverty that most peasants had to endure in Russia at the end of
the 19th century. At the age of seven he contacted smallpox. He survived but his face remained
scarred for the rest of his life and other children cruelly called him "pocky".
Joseph's mother was deeply religious and in 1888 she managed to obtain him a
place at the local church school. Despite his health problems, he made good
progress at school and eventually won a free scholarship to the Tiflis
Theological Seminary. While studying at the seminary he joined a secret
organization called Messame Dassy. Members were supporters of Georgian
independence from Russia. Some were also socialist revolutionaries and it was through the
people he met in this organization that Stalin first came into contact with the
ideas of Karl Marx.
In May, 1899, Stalin was expelled from the Tiflis Theological Seminary.
Several reasons were given for this action including disrespect for those in
authority and reading forbidden books. Stalin was later to claim that the real
reason was that he had been trying to convert his fellow students to Marxism.
For several months after leaving the seminary Stalin was unemployed. He
eventually found work by giving private lessons to middle class children. Later,
he worked as a clerk at the Tiflis Observatory. He also began writing articles
for the socialist Georgian newspaper, Brdzola Khma
Vladimir.
In 1901 Stalin joined the Social Democratic Labour Party and whereas most
of the leaders were living in exile, he stayed in Russia where he helped to
organize industrial resistance to Tsarism. On 18th April, 1902, Stalin was
arrested after coordinating a strike at the large Rothschild plant at Batum.
After spending 18 months in prison Stalin was deported to Siberia.
At the Second Congress of the Social Democratic Labour Party in London in 1903, there was a dispute between Lenin
and Julius
Martov, two of the party's leaders. Lenin argued for a small
party of professional revolutionaries with a large fringe of non-party
sympathizers and supporters. Martov disagreed believing it was better to have a
large party of activists.
Julius
Martov based his ideas on the socialist parties that existed in
other European countries such as the British Labour Party. Lenin argued that the
situation was different in Russia as it was illegal to form socialist political
parties under the Tsar's autocratic government. At the end of the debate Martov
won the vote 28-23. Lenin
was unwilling to accept the result and formed a faction known as the Bolsheviks. Those who remained loyal to Martov
became known as Mensheviks.
Stalin, like Gregory
Zinoviev, Anatoli Lunacharsky, Mikhail Lashevich, Nadezhda Krupskaya, Mikhail Frunze, Alexei Rykov, Yakov Sverdlov, Lev Kamenev, Maxim Litvinov, Vladimir Antonov, Felix Dzerzhinsky, Gregory Ordzhonikidze and Alexander
Bogdanov joined the Bolsheviks. Whereas George Plekhanov, Pavel Axelrod, Lev Deich, Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, Leon Trotsky, Vera Zasulich, Irakli Tsereteli, Moisei Uritsky, Noi Zhordania, Andrei Vyshinsky and Fedor Dan supported Julius Martov.
In 1904 Stalin escaped from Siberia and within a few months he was back
organizing demonstrations and strikes in Tiflis. Vladimir Lenin was impressed with Stalin's
achievements and in 1905 he was invited to meet him in Finland.
Stalin returned to Russia and over the next eight years he was arrested four
times but each time managed to escape. In 1911 he moved to St, Petersburg and
the following year became editor of Pravda. Arrested again in 1913, Stalin was
exiled for life to North Siberia.
After the overthrow of Nicholas II, the new prime minister, Alexander Kerensky, allowed all political
prisoners to return to their homes. Stalin went back to St. Petersburg and once
again became one of the editors of Pravda. At this time, Stalin, like most Bolsheviks,
took the view that the Russian people were not ready for a socialist revolution.
When Lenin returned to Russia on 3rd April, 1917, he
announced what became known as the April Theses. Lenin attacked Bolsheviks for supporting the Provisional Government. Instead, he argued,
revolutionaries should be telling the people of Russia that they should take
over the control of the country. In his speech, Lenin urged the peasants to take
the land from the rich landlords and the industrial workers to seize the
factories.
Lenin accused those Bolsheviks who were still supporting the Provisional Government of betraying socialism and
suggested that they should leave the party. Some took Lenin's advice, arguing
that any attempt at revolution at this stage was bound to fail and would lead to
another repressive, authoritarian Russian government.
Stalin was in a difficult position. As one of the editors of Pravda, he was aware that he was being held
partly responsible for what Lenin had described as "betraying socialism".
Stalin had two main options open to him: he could oppose Lenin and challenge him
for the leadership of the party, or he could change his mind about supporting
the Provisional Government and remain loyal to Lenin.
After ten days of silence, Stalin made his move. In Pravda he wrote an article dismissing the
idea of working with the Provisional Government. He condemned Alexander Kerensky and Victor Chernov as counter-revolutionaries, and
urged the peasants
to takeover the land for themselves.
In November, 1917, Lenin rewarded Stalin for his support of the October
Revolution by appointing him Commissar of Nationalities. Lenin joked to Stalin
that: "You know, to pass so quickly from an underground existence to power makes
one dizzy."
As a Georgian and a member of a minority group who had written about the
problems of non-Russian peoples living under the Tsar, Stalin was seen as the
obvious choice as Commissar of Nationalities. It was a job that
gave Stalin tremendous power for nearly half the country's population fell into
the category of non-Russian. Stalin now had the responsibility of dealing with
65 million Ukrainians, Georgians, Byelorussians, Tadzhiks, Buriats and Yakuts.
The policy of the Bolsheviks was to grant the right of
self-determination to all the various nationalities within Russia. This was
reinforced by a speech Stalin made in Helsinki on November 16th, 1917. Stalin
promised the crowd that the Soviet government would grant: "complete freedom for
the Finnish people, and for other peoples of Russia, to arrange their own life!"
Stalin's plan was to develop what he called "a voluntary and honest alliance"
between Russia and the different national groups that lived within its borders.
Over the next couple of years Stalin had difficulty controlling the
non-Russian peoples under his control. Independent states were set up without
his agreement. These new governments were often hostile to the Bolsheviks. Stalin had hoped that these
independent states would voluntarily agree to join up with Russia to form a
union of Socialist States. When this did not happen Stalin was forced to revise
his policy and stated that self-determination: "ought to be understood as the
right of self-determination not of the bourgeoisie but of the toiling masses of
a given nation." In other words, unless these independent states had a socialist
government willing to develop a union with Russia, the Bolsheviks would not
allow self-determination.
Lenin
also changed his views on independence. He now came to the conclusion that a
"modern economy required a high degree of power in the centre." Although the Bolsheviks
had promised nearly half the Russian population that they would have
self-determination, Lenin was now of the opinion that such a policy could pose a
serious threat to the survival of the Soviet government. It was the broken
promise over self-determination that was just one of the many reasons why
Lenin's government became unpopular in Russia.
During the Civil
War Stalin played an important administrative role in military
matters and took the credit for successfully defeating the White Army at Tsaritsyn. One strategy developed
by Stalin was to conduct interviews with local administrators on a large barge
moored on the Volga. It was later claimed that if Stalin was not convinced of
their loyalty they were shot and thrown into the river.
In August, 1918, Moisei Uritsky, chief of the Petrograd Secret
Police was assassinated. Two two weeks later Dora Kaplan shot and severely wounded Lenin. Stalin, who was in Tsaritsyn at the time,
sent a telegram advocating an "open and systematic mass terror" against those
responsible. The advice of Stalin was accepted and in September, 1918, Felix Dzerzhinsky, head of the Cheka, instigated as the Red Terror. It is estimated that in the next few
months 800 socialists were arrested and shot without trial.
The Soviet's government's policy of War Communism during the Civil War created social distress and led to
riots, strikes and demonstrations. The Kronstadt Uprising reinforced the idea that the
government was unpopular and in March, 1921, Vladimir Lenin announced details of his New Economic Policy (NEP). Farmers were now
allowed to sell food on the open market and could now employ people to work for
them.
The New
Economic Policy also allowed some freedom of internal trade,
permitted some private commerce and re-established state banks. Factories
employing less than twenty people were denationalized and could be claimed back
by former owners.
Stalin supported Lenin's policy. His view was that as long as there was only
a one party state, the government could allow the introduction of small-scale
private enterprise. As he pointed out: "The New Economic Policy is a special
policy of the proletarian state designed to tolerate capitalism but retain the
key positions in the hands of the proletarian state."
Lenin
found the disagreements over the New Economic Policy exhausting. His health had
been poor ever since Dora Kaplan had shot him in 1918. Severe
headaches limited his sleep and understandably he began to suffer from fatigue.
Lenin decided he needed someone to help him control the Communist Party.
At the Party Conference in April, 1922, Lenin suggested that a new post of General
Secretary should be created. Lenin's choice for the post was Stalin, who in the
past had always loyally supported his policies. Stalin's main opponents for the
future leadership of the party failed to see the importance of this position and
actually supported his nomination. They initially saw the post of General
Secretary as being no more than "Lenin's mouthpiece".
Soon after Stalin's appointment as General Secretary, Lenin went into
hospital to have a bullet removed from his body that had been there since
Kaplan's assassination attempt. It was hoped that this operation would restore
his health. This was not to be; soon afterwards, a blood vessel broke in Lenin's
brain. This left him paralyzed all down his right side and for a time he was
unable to speak. As "Lenin's mouthpiece", Stalin had suddenly become extremely
important.
While Lenin was immobilized, Stalin made full use of
his powers as General Secretary. At the Party Congress he had been granted
permission to expel "unsatisfactory" party members. This enabled Stalin to
remove thousands of supporters of Leon Trotsky, his main rival for the leadership
of the party. As General Secretary, Stalin also had the power to appoint and
sack people from important positions in the government. The new holders of these
posts were fully aware that they owed their promotion to Stalin. They also knew
that if their behaviour did not please Stalin they would be replaced.
Surrounded by his supporters, Stalin's confidence began to grow. In October,
1922, he disagreed with Lenin over the issue of foreign trade. When the matter
was discussed at Central Committee, Stalin's rather Lenin's policy was accepted.
Lenin began to fear that Stalin was taking over the leadership of the party.
Lenin wrote to Leon
Trotsky asking for his support. Trotsky agreed and at the next
meeting of the Central Committee the decision on foreign trade was reversed.
Lenin, who was too ill to attend, wrote to Trotsky congratulating him on his
success and suggesting that in future they should work together against
Stalin.
Stalin, whose wife Nadya Alliluyeva worked in Lenin's private office, soon
discovered the contents of the letter sent to Leon Trotsky. Stalin was furious as he realized
that if Lenin and Trotsky worked together against him, his political career
would be at an end. In a fit of temper Stalin made an abusive phone-call to
Lenin's wife, Nadezhda
Krupskaya, accusing her of endangering Lenin's life by allowing
him to write letters when he was so ill.
After Krupskaya told her husband of the phone-call, Lenin made the decision that Stalin was not the
man to replace him as the leader of the party. Lenin knew he was close to death
so he dictated to his secretary a letter that he wanted to serve as his last
"will and testament". The document was comprised of his thoughts on the senior
members of the party leadership.
Lenin became increasing concerned about Stalin's character and wrote a
testament in which he suggested that he be removed. "Comrade Stalin, having
become General Secretary, has concentrated enormous power in his hands: and I am
not sure that he always knows how to use that power with sufficient caution. I
therefore propose to our comrades to consider a means of removing Stalin from
this post and appointing someone else who differs from Stalin in one weighty
respect: being more tolerant, more loyal, more polite, more considerate of his
comrades."
However, Lenin
died before any action was taken. Stalin now emerged as the leader of the Soviet
Union. When he first gained power Stalin continued Lenin's New Economic Policy. Farmers were allowed to sell
food on the open market and were allowed to employ people to work for them.
Those farmers who expanded the size of their farms became known as kulaks.
In 1928 Stalin began attacking kulaks for not supplying enough food for
industrial workers. He also advocated the setting up of collective farms. The proposal involved small
farmers joining forces to form large-scale units. In this way, it was argued,
they would be in a position to afford the latest machinery. Stalin believed this
policy would lead to increased production. However, the peasants liked farming
their own land and were reluctant to form themselves into state collectives.
Stalin was furious that the peasants were putting their own welfare before
that of the Soviet Union. Local communist officials were given instructions to
confiscate kulaks property. This land was then used to form
new collective farms. Thousands of kulaks were executed and an estimated five
million were deported to Siberia or Central Asia. Of these, approximately
twenty-five per cent perished by the time they reached their destination.
After the death of Lenin, Stalin joined forces with two left-wing
members of the Politburo,
Gregory
Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, to keep Leon Trotsky from power. Both these men had
reason to believe that Trotsky would dismiss them from the government once he
became leader. Stalin encouraged these fears. He also suggested that old party
activists like themselves had more right to lead the Bolsheviks than Trotsky, who had only joined the
party in 1917.
Leon
Trotsky accused Stalin of being dictatorial and called for the
introduction of more democracy into the party. Gregory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev united behind Stalin and accused
Trotsky of creating divisions in the party.
Trotsky's main hope of gaining power was for Lenin's last testament to be
published. In May, 1924, Lenin's widow, Nadezhda Krupskaya, demanded that the Central
Committee announce its contents to the rest of the party. Gregory Zinoviev argued strongly against its
publication. He finished his speech with the words: "You have all witnessed our
harmonious cooperation in the last few months, and, like myself, you will be
happy to say that Lenin's fears have proved baseless." The new members of the
Central Committee, who had been sponsored by Stalin, guaranteed that the vote
went against Lenin's testament being made public.
In 1925 Stalin was able to arrange for Leon Trotsky to be removed from the government.
Some of Trotsky's supporters pleaded with him to organize a military coup. As
commissar of war Trotsky was in a good position to arrange this. However,
Trotsky rejected the idea and instead resigned his post.
With the decline of Trotsky, Joseph Stalin felt strong enough to stop sharing
power with Lev
Kamenev and Gregory Zinoviev. Stalin now began to attack
Trotsky's belief in the need for world revolution. He argued that the party's
main priority should be to defend the communist system that had been developed
in the Soviet Union. This put Zinoviev and Kamenev in an awkward position. They
had for a long time been strong supporters of Trotsky's theory that if
revolution did not spread to other countries, the communist system in the Soviet
Union was likely to be overthrown by hostile, capitalist nations. However, they
were reluctant to speak out in favour of a man whom they had been in conflict
with for so long.
When Stalin was finally convinced that Lev Kamenev and Gregory Zinoviev were unwilling to join forces
with Leon Trotsky against him, he began to support
openly the economic policies of right-wing members of the Politburo such as Nikolay Bukharin, Mikhail Tomsky and Alexei Rykov. They now realized what Stalin was
up to but it took them to summer of 1926 before they could swallow their pride
and join with Trotsky against Stalin.
When Lev Kamenev and Gregory Zinoviev eventually began attacking his
policies, Joseph Stalin argued they were creating disunity
in the party and managed to have them expelled from the Central Committee. The
belief that the party would split into two opposing factions was a strong fear
amongst communists in the country. They were convinced that if this happened,
western countries would take advantage of the situation and invade the Soviet
Union.
Under pressure from the Central Committee, Lev Kamenev and Gregory Zinoviev agreed to sign statements
promising not to create conflict in the movement by making speeches attacking
official policies. Leon
Trotsky refused to sign and was banished to the remote area of
Kazhakstan.
In 1927 Stalin's advisers told him that with the modernization of farming the
Soviet Union would require an extra 250,000 tractors. As well as tractors there
was also a need to develop the oil fields to provide the necessary petrol to
drive the machines. Power stations also had to be built to supply the farms with
electricity.
Since the October
Revolution industrial progress had been slow. It was not until
1927 that production had reached the levels achieved before the start of the First World War. Stalin decided that he would use
his control over the country to modernize the economy.
The first Five Year Plan that was introduced in 1928,
concentrated on the development of iron and steel, machine-tools, electric power
and transport. Stalin set the workers high targets. He demanded a 111% increase
in coal production, 200% increase in iron production and 335% increase in
electric power. He justified these demands by claiming that if rapid
industrialization did not take place, the Soviet Union would not be able to
defend itself against an invasion from capitalist countries in the west.
Every factory had large display boards erected that showed the output of
workers. Those that failed to reach the required targets were publicity
criticized and humiliated. Some workers could not cope with this pressure and
absenteeism increased. This led to even more repressive measures being
introduced. Records were kept of workers' lateness, absenteeism and bad
workmanship. If the worker's record was poor, he was accused of trying to
sabotage the Five Year Plan and if found guilty could be shot
or sent to work as forced labour on the Baltic Sea Canal or the Siberian
Railway.
With the modernization of industry, Stalin argued that it was necessary to
pay higher wages to certain workers in order to encourage increased output. His
left-wing opponents claimed that this inequality was a betrayal of socialism and
would create a new class system in the Soviet Union. Stalin had his way and
during the 1930s, the gap between the wages of the labourers and the skilled
workers increased.
In the summer of 1932 Stalin became aware that opposition to his policies
were growing. Some party members were publicly criticizing Stalin and calling
for the readmission of Leon Trotsky to the party. When the issue was
discussed at the Politburo,
Stalin demanded that the critics should be arrested and executed. Sergey Kirov, who up to this time had been a
staunch Stalinist, argued against this policy. When the vote was taken, the
majority of the Politburo supported Kirov against Stalin.
In the spring of 1934 Sergey Kirov put forward a policy of
reconciliation. He argued that people should be released from prison who had
opposed the government's policy on collective farms and industrialization. Once again, Stalin found
himself in a minority in the Politburo.
After years of arranging for the removal of his opponents from the party,
Stalin realized he still could not rely on the total support of the people whom
he had replaced them with. Stalin no doubt began to wonder if Sergey Kirov was willing to wait for his mentor
to die before becoming leader of the party. Stalin was particularly concerned by
Kirov's willingness to argue with him in public, fearing that this would
undermine his authority in the party.
As usual, that summer Kirov and Stalin went on holiday together. Stalin, who
treated Kirov like a son, used this opportunity to try to persuade him to remain
loyal to his leadership. Stalin asked him to leave Leningrad to join him in
Moscow. Stalin wanted Kirov in a place where he could keep a close eye on him.
When Kirov refused, Stalin knew he had lost control over his protégé.
On 1st December, 1934. Sergey Kirov was assassinated by a young party
member, Leonid Nikolayev. Stalin claimed that Nikolayev was part of a larger
conspiracy led by Leon
Trotsky against the Soviet government. This resulted in the
arrest and execution of Lev Kamenev, Gregory Zinoviev, and fifteen other party
members.
In September, 1936, Stalin appointed Nikolai Yezhov as head of the NKVD, the Communist Secret Police. Yezhov quickly
arranged the arrest of all the leading political figures in the Soviet Union who
were critical of Stalin. The Secret Police broke prisoners down by intense
interrogation. This included the threat to arrest and execute members of the
prisoner's family if they did not confess. The interrogation went on for several
days and nights and eventually they became so exhausted and disoriented that
they signed confessions agreeing that they had been attempting to overthrow the
government.
In 1936 Nickolai
Bukharin, Alexei Rykov, Genrikh Yagoda, Nikolai Krestinsky and Christian Rakovsky were arrested and accused of
being involved with Leon Trotsky in a plot against Stalin. They were
all found guilty and were eventually executed.
Stalin now decided to purge the Red Army. Some historians believe that Stalin was
telling the truth when he claimed that he had evidence that the army was
planning a military coup at this time. Leopold Trepper, head of the Soviet spy ring in
Germany, believed that the evidence was planted by a double agent who worked for
both Stalin and Adolf
Hitler. Trepper's theory is that the "chiefs of Nazi
counter-espionage" took "advantage of the paranoia raging in the Soviet Union,"
by supplying information that led to Stalin executing his top military leaders.
In June, 1937, Mikhail Tukhachevsky and seven other top Red Army commanders were charged with conspiracy
with Germany. All eight were convicted and executed. All told, 30,000 members of
the armed forces were executed. This included fifty per cent of all army
officers.
The last stage of the terror was the purging of the NKVD. Stalin wanted to make sure that those who
knew too much about the purges would also be killed. Stalin announced to the
country that "fascist elements" had taken over the security forces which had
resulted in innocent people being executed. He appointed Lavrenti Beria as the new head of the Secret
Police and he was instructed to find out who was responsible. After his
investigations, Beria arranged the executions of all the senior figures in the
organization.
Stalin supported the Popular Front government in Spain. After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War he sent large quantities of
Soviet tanks and aircraft to the Republicans. They were accompanied by a large
number of tank-drivers and pilots from the Soviet Union. All told, about 850 Soviet
advisers, pilots, technical personnel and interpreters took part in the war.
Stalin became increasingly concerned that the Soviet Union would be invaded
by Germany.
Stalin believed the best way to of dealing with Adolf Hitler was to form an anti-fascist alliance
with countries in the west. Stalin argued that even Hitler would not start a war
against a united Europe.
Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister,
was not enthusiastic about forming an alliance with the Soviet Union. He wrote
to a friend: "I must confess to the most profound distrust of Russia. I have no
belief whatever in her ability to maintain an effective offensive, even if she
wanted to. And I distrust her motives, which seem to me to have little
connection with our ideas of liberty, and to be concerned only with getting
everyone else by the ears."
Winston Churchill, an outspoken critic of British
foreign policy, agreed with Stalin: "There is no means of maintaining an eastern
front against Nazi aggression without the active aid of Russia. Russian
interests are deeply concerned in preventing Herr Hitler's designs on eastern
Europe. It should still be possible to range all the States and peoples from the
Baltic to the Black sea in one solid front against a new outrage of invasion.
Such a front, if established in good heart, and with resolute and efficient
military arrangements, combined with the strength of the Western Powers, may yet
confront Hitler, Goering, Himmler, Ribbentrop, Goebbels and co. with forces the
German people would be reluctant to challenge."
Stalin's own interpretation of Britain's rejection of his plan for an
antifascist alliance, was that they were involved in a plot with Germany against
the Soviet Union. This belief was reinforced when Neville Chamberlain met with Adolf Hitler at Munich in September, 1938, and
gave into his demands for the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. Stalin now believed
that the main objective of British foreign policy was to encourage Germany to
head east rather than west.
Stalin realized that war with Germany was inevitable. However, to have any
chance of victory he needed time to build up his armed forces. The only way he
could obtain time was to do a deal with Hitler. Stalin was convinced that Hitler
would not be foolish enough to fight a war on two fronts. If he could persuade
Hitler to sign a peace treaty with the Soviet Union, Germany was likely to
invade Western Europe instead.
On 3rd May, 1939, Stalin dismissed Maxim Litvinov, his Jewish Commissar for Foreign Affairs. Litvinov
had been closely associated with the Soviet Union's policy of an antifascist
alliance. Meetings soon took place between Vyacheslav Molotov, Litvinov's replacement and Joachim
von Ribbentrop, the German foreign minister. On 28th August,
1939, the Nazi-Soviet
Pact was signed in Moscow. Under the terms of the agreement, both
countries promised to remain neutral if either country became involved in a
war.
Stalin now ordered the Red Army into Poland and reclaimed land lost when the Brest-Litovsk Treaty was signed in 1918.
Another aspect of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty that made the Soviet Union
vulnerable to attack was the loss of Finland. Leningrad was only thirty-two kilometres
from the Finnish border. This made Leningrad and its 3.5 million population, a
potential target of artillery fire. Stalin therefore began to consider the Invasion
of Finland.
After attempts to negotiate the stationing of Soviet troops in Finland
failed, Stalin ordered the Red Army to invade. Adolf Hitler, who also had designs on Finland,
was forced to standby and watch the Soviet Union build up its Baltic defences.
It took the Soviet troops three months to force the Finnish government to agree
to Stalin's original demands. Although the world was now aware of Stalin's
shrewdness in foreign affairs, Finland's small army of 200,000 men had exposed
the Soviet Union's poorly trained and equipped army.
Stalin believed that Germany would not invade the Soviet Union until Britain
and France had been conquered. From Stalin's own calculations, this would not be
until the summer of 1942. Some of his closest advisers began to argue that 1941
would be a much more likely date. The surrender of France in June, 1940, also
cast doubts on Stalin's calculations.
Stalin's response to France's defeat was to send Vyacheslav Molotov to Berlin for more
discussions. Molotov was instructed to draw out these talks for as long as
possible. Stalin knew that if Adolf Hitler did not attack the Soviet Union in
the summer of 1941, he would have to wait until 1942. No one, not even someone
as rash as Hitler, would invade the Soviet Union in the winter, he argued.
Germany was now in a strong negotiating position and Molotov found it
impossible to agree to Hitler's demands. As soon as talks broke-up, Hitler
ordered his military leaders to prepare for Operation Barbarossa. The plan was for the
invasion of the Soviet Union to start on the 15th May, 1941. Hitler believed
that this would give the German Army enough time to take control of the
country before the harsh Soviet winter set in.
Information on the proposed invasion came to Stalin from various sources. Richard
Sorge, an agent working for the Red Orchestra in Japan, obtained information
about the proposed invasion as early as December, 1940. Winston Churchill sent a personal message to
Stalin in April, 1941, explaining how German troop movements suggested that they
were about to attack the Soviet Union. However, Stalin was still suspicious of
the British and thought that Churchill was trying to trick him into declaring
war on Germany.
When Sorge's prediction that Germany would invade in May, 1941, did not take
place, Stalin became even more convinced that the war would not start until
1942. The reason for this delay was that Germany had invaded Yugoslavia in
April. Adolf Hitler had expected the Yugoslavs to
surrender immediately but because of stubborn resistance, Hitler had to postpone
Operation
Barbarossa for a few weeks.
On 21st June, 1941, a German sergeant deserted to the Soviet forces. He
informed them that the German Army would attack at dawn the following morning.
Stalin was reluctant to believe the soldier's story and it was not until the
German attack took place that he finally accepted that his attempts to avoid war
with Germany until 1942 had failed.
The German forces, made up of three million men and 3,400 tanks, advanced in
three groups. The north group headed for Leningrad, the centre group for Moscow
and the southern forces into the Ukraine. Within six days, the German Army had captured Minsk. General Demitry
Pavlov, the man responsible for defending Minsk, and two of his
senior generals were recalled to Moscow and were shot for incompetence.
With the execution of Pavlov and his generals, Stalin made it clear that he
would punish severely any commander whom he believed had let down the Soviet
Union. In future, Soviet commanders thought twice about surrendering or
retreating. Another factor in this was the way that the German Army massacred
the people of Minsk. Terrified of both Stalin and Adolf Hitler, the Soviet people had no option but
to fight until they were killed.
The first few months of the war was disastrous for the Soviet Union. The
German northern forces surrounded Leningrad while the centre group made steady
progress towards Moscow. German forces had also made deep inroads into the
Ukraine. Kiev was under siege and Stalin's Chief of Staff, Georgi
Zhukov, suggested that the troops defending the capital of the
Ukraine should be withdrawn, thus enabling them to take up strong defensive
positions further east. Stalin insisted that the troops stayed and by the time
Kiev was taken, the casualties were extremely high. It was the most
comprehensive defeat experienced by the Red Army in its history. However, the determined
resistance put up at Kiev, had considerably delayed the attack on Moscow.
It was now September and winter was fast approaching. As German troops moved
deeper into the Soviet Union, supply lines became longer. Stalin gave
instructions that when forced to withdraw, the Red Army should destroy anything that could be of
use to the enemy. The scorched earth policy and the formation of
guerrilla units behind the German front lines, created severe problems for the
German war machine which was trying to keep her three million soldiers supplied
with the necessary food and ammunition.
By October, 1941, German troops were only fifteen miles outside Moscow.
Orders were given for a mass evacuation of the city. In two weeks, two million
people left Moscow and headed east. Stalin rallied morale by staying in Moscow.
In a bomb-proof air raid shelter positioned under the Kremlin, Stalin, as
Supreme Commander-in-Chief, directed the Soviet war effort. All major decisions
made by his front-line commanders had to be cleared with Stalin first.
In November, 1941, the German Army launched a new offensive on Moscow.
The Soviet army held out and the Germans were brought to a halt. Stalin called
for a counter-attack. His commanders had doubts about this policy but Stalin
insisted and on 4th December the Red Army attacked. The German forces, demoralized
by its recent lack of success, was taken by surprise and started to retreat. By
January, the Germans had been pushed back 200 miles.
Stalin's military strategy was basically fairly simple. He believed it was
vitally important to attack the enemy as often as possible. He was particularly
keen to use new, fresh troops for these offensives. Stalin argued that countries
in western Europe had been beaten by their own fear of German superiority. His
main objective in using new troops in this way was to convince them that the
German forces were not invincible. By pushing the German Army back at Moscow, Stalin proved to the
Soviet troops that Blizkrieg could be counteracted; it also provided
an important example to all troops throughout the world fighting the German
war-machine.
The German Army was severely handicapped by the Soviet winter of 1941-42 and
once spring arrived they began to advance once again. German forces were
particularly successful in the south and they were able to close in on
Stalingrad.
Stalin was horrified to hear reports that the Red Army in the Ukraine had been in such a hurry
to retreat that they had left behind their weapons and equipment. Not only were
soldiers shot for desertion but Stalin gave permission for highly critical
articles of the army to be published in the newspapers. The army, which had been
praised during the early stages of the war, was now accused of betraying the
Soviet people. It was an extremely risky move on Stalin's part, but it had the
desired effect and its performance improved.
Stalingrad was Stalin's city. It had been named after him as a result of his
defence of the city during the Russian Civil War. Stalin insisted that it should
be held at all costs. One historian has claimed that he saw Stalingrad "as the
symbol of his own authority." Stalin also knew that if Stalingrad was taken, the
way would be open for Moscow to be attacked from the east. If Moscow was cut off
in this way, the defeat of the Soviet Union was virtually inevitable.
A million Soviet soldiers were drafted into the Stalingrad area. They were supported from an
increasing flow of tanks, aircraft and rocket batteries from the factories built
east of the Urals, during the Five Year Plans. Stalin's claim that rapid
industrialization would save the Soviet Union from defeat by western invaders
was beginning to come true.
General Georgi Zhukov, the military leader who had yet to
be defeated in a battle, was put in charge of the defence of Stalingrad. The
line held and on 19th November, 1942, Stalin gave the order to counterattack
from the north and the south. Although the German 6th Army continued to make
progress towards Stalingrad, they were gradually becoming
encircled. General Friedrich
Paulus, the German commander, asked permission to withdraw but Adolf
Hitler refused and instructed him to continue to advance on
Stalingrad. This they did, but with their supplies cut-off from the west, they
were unable to take the city.
In recognition of his commander's bravery, Adolf Hitler made Friedrich Paulus a Field Marshal on 30th January,
1943. Hitler was furious when a couple of days later Paulus surrendered. The
German losses at Stalingrad were 1.5 million men, 3,500 tanks and
3,000 aircraft. It marked the turning point of the war. From this date on,
Germany began to retreat.
It was only when the Red Army regained territory previously controlled
by the Nazis that the Soviet Government became fully aware of the war crimes that had been committed. Soviet
soldiers who had been taken prisoner had been deliberately starved to death. Of
the 5,170,000 soldiers captured by the Germans, only 1,053,000 survived.
Women and children were also killed in large numbers. The Jews were always the first to be executed, but
other groups, especially the Russians, were also killed. German soldiers were
given the instructions that the "Jewish-Bolshevik system must be destroyed". Adolf
Hitler was aware that to control the vast population of the
Soviet Union would always be an extremely difficult task. His way of dealing
with the problem was by mass exterminations.
Soviet authorities estimated that in all, over twenty million of their people
were killed during the Second World War. However, it has been argued
that Hitler's policy of exterminating the Soviet people guaranteed his defeat.
Stories of German atrocities soon reached Red Army soldiers fighting at the front. Faced
with the choice of being executed or being killed fighting, the vast majority
chose the latter. Unlike most other soldiers, when faced with defeat in battle,
the Soviet army rarely surrendered.
This was also true of civilians. When territory was taken by the German Army, women, children and old men went
into hiding and formed guerrilla units. These groups, who concentrated on
disrupting German supply lines, proved a constant problem to the German
forces.
In November, 1943, Stalin, Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt met together in Teheran, Iran, to discuss military strategy and
post-war Europe. Ever since the Soviet Union had entered the war, Stalin had
been demanding that the Allies open-up a second front in Europe. Churchill and Roosevelt
argued that any attempt to land troops in Western Europe would result in heavy
casualties. Until the Soviet's victory at Stalingrad in January, 1943, Stalin
had feared that without a second front, Germany would defeat them.
Stalin, who always favoured in offensive strategy, believed that there were
political, as well as military reasons for the Allies' failure to open up a
second front in Europe. Stalin was still highly suspicious of Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt and was worried about them
signing a peace agreement with Adolf Hitler. The foreign policies of the
capitalist countries since the October Revolution had convinced Stalin that
their main objective was the destruction of the communist system in the Soviet
Union. Stalin was fully aware that if Britain and the USA withdrew from the war,
the Red
Army would have great difficulty in dealing with Germany on its
own.
At Teheran, Stalin reminded Churchill and Roosevelt
of a previous promise of landing troops in Western Europe in 1942. Later they
postponed it to the spring of 1943. Stalin complained that it was now November
and there was still no sign of an allied invasion of France. After lengthy
discussions it was agreed that the Allies would mount a major offensive in the
spring of 1944.
From the memoirs published by those who took part in the negotiations in
Teheran, it would appear that Stalin dominated the conference. Alan
Brook, chief of the British General Staff, was later to say: "I
rapidly grew to appreciate the fact that he had a military brain of the very
highest calibre. Never once in any of his statements did he make any strategic
error, nor did he ever fail to appreciate all the implications of a situation
with a quick and unerring eye. In this respect he stood out compared with
Roosevelt and Churchill."
The D-Day landings in June, 1944, created a second front, and took the pressure off the
Soviet Union and the Red Army made steady progress into territory held
by Germany. Country after country fell to Soviet forces. Winston Churchill became concerned about the
spread of Soviet power and visited Moscow in October, 1944. Churchill agreed
that Rumania and Bulgaria should be under "Soviet influence" but argued that
Yugoslavia and Hungary should be shared equally amongst them.
The most heated discussion concerned the future of Poland. The Polish
Government in exile, based in London, had a reputation for being extremely
anti-Communist. Although Stalin was willing to negotiate with the Polish prime
minister, Stanislaw
Mikolajczyk, he insisted that he was unwilling to have a
government in Poland that was actively hostile to the Soviet Union.
In February, 1945, Stalin, Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt met again. This time the
conference was held in Yalta in the Crimea. With Soviet troops in most
of Eastern Europe, Stalin was in a strong negotiating position. Roosevelt and
Churchill tried hard to restrict postwar influence in this area but the only
concession they could obtain was a promise that free elections would be held in
these countries.
Once again, Poland was the main debating point. Stalin explained that
throughout history Poland had either attacked Russia or had been used as a
corridor through which other hostile countries invaded her. Only a strong,
pro-Communist government in Poland would be able to guarantee the security of
the Soviet Union.
Stalin also promised that the Soviet Union would enter the war against Japan
three months after the war with Germany ended and in return would recover what
Russia had lost at the end of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05).
At Yalta, the decision at Teheran to form a United Nations organization was confirmed. It was
only on this issue that all three leaders were enthusiastically in
agreement.
At the time of Yalta, Germany was close to defeat. British and USA troops
were advancing from the west and the Red Army from the east. At the conference it was
agreed to divide Germany up amongst the Allies. However, all parties to that
agreement were aware that the country that actually took control of Germany
would be in the strongest position over the future of this territory.
The main objective of Winston Churchill and Stalin was the capture of
Berlin, the capital of Germany. Franklin D. Roosevelt did not agree and the
decision of the USA Military commander, General Dwight Eisenhower, to head south-east to Dresden,
ensured that Soviet forces would be the first to reach Berlin.
The leaders of the victorious countries met once more at Potsdam in July, 1945. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had died in April,
1945, had been replaced by the Vice-President, Harry S. Truman. While the conference was taking
place, the British General Election results were announced.
The landslide victory of the Labour Party meant that Clement Attlee replaced Winston Churchill as Britain's main negotiator.
Although Germany had been defeated, the USA and Britain were still at war
with Japan. At Yalta,
the Allies had attempted to persuade Stalin to join in the war with Japan. By
the time the Potsdam
meeting took place, they were having doubts about this strategy. Churchill in
particular, were afraid that Soviet involvement would lead to an increase in
their influence over countries in the Far East.
At Yalta, Stalin had promised to enter the war with
Japan within three months of the defeat of Germany. Originally, it was planned
that the conference at Potsdam would confirm this decision. However,
since the previous meeting the USA had successfully tested the Atom Bomb. Truman's advisers were urging him to
use this bomb on Japan. They also pointed out that its employment would avoid an
invasion of Japan and thus save the lives of up to two million American troops.
When Harry S. Truman told Stalin that the USA had a
new powerful bomb he appeared pleased and asked no further questions about it.
Truman did not mention that it was a atomic bomb and it appears that Stalin did
not initially grasp the significance of this new weapon. However, with the
dropping of the Atom Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945, the Japanese quickly
surrendered and the Allies were successful in preventing Soviet gains in the Far
East.
Stalin's main concern at Potsdam was to obtain economic help for the
Soviet Union. Nearly a quarter of Soviet property had been destroyed during the
Second World War. This included 31,000 of her
factories. Agriculture had also been badly hit and food was being strictly
rationed. Stalin had been told by his advisers that under-nourishment of the
workforce was causing low-productivity. He believed that the best way to revive
the Soviet economy was to obtain massive reparation payments from Germany.
Unlike at Yalta,
the Allies were no longer willing to look sympathetically at Stalin's demands.
With Germany defeated and the USA now possessing the Atom Bomb, the Allies no longer needed the
co-operation of the Soviet Union. Stalin felt betrayed by this change of
attitude. He believed that the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt was an important factor in
this.
The ending of lend-lease supplies to the Soviet Union immediately the war
ended with Germany in May, 1945 and the insistence that Henry Wallace, the US Secretary of Commerce,
resign after he made a speech in support of Soviet economic demands, convinced
Stalin that the hostility towards the Soviet Union that had been in existence
between the wars, had returned.
Stalin once again became obsessed by the threat of an invasion from the west.
Between 1945 and 1948, Stalin made full use of his abilities by arranging the
setting up of communist regimes in Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany,
Poland and Czechoslovakia. He now had a large buffer zone of "friendly states"
on his western border. Western powers interpreted these events as an example of
Stalin's desire to impose communism on the whole of Europe. The formation of NATO and the stationing of American troops in
Western Europe was a reaction to Stalin's policies and helped ensure the
development of the Cold War.
In 1948, Stalin ordered an economic blockade of Berlin. He hoped this measure
would help him secure full control over Berlin. The Allies airlifted supplies to
the beleaguered Berlin and and Stalin was eventually forced to back down and
allow the land and air routes to be reopened.
Stalin also miscalculated over Korea. In 1950, he encouraged Kim Il Sung, the communist ruler of North Korea,
to invade South Korea. Stalin had assumed that the USA would not interfere and
that Kim IL Sung would be able to unite Korea as a communist state.
Stalin's timing was particularly bad on this occasion as the Soviet
representative had at that time been ordered to boycott the Security Council.
With the Soviet Union unable to use its veto, it was powerless to stop the United Nations sending troops to defend South
Korea.
The Korean War ended in 1953. Not only had the
communists failed to unite Korea, the war also provided support for those
right-wing American politicians such as Joseph McCarthy who had been arguing that the
Soviet Union wanted to control the world. Hostility between the Soviet Union and
the United States continued to increase as the world became divided between the
two power blocks. Harry
S. Truman and Winston Churchill may have been responsible for
the start of the Cold War but Stalin's policies in Eastern Europe
and Korea had ensured its continuance.
At home, Stalin was closely associated with the Soviet Union's victory in the
Second World War and so his prestige and status
remained high. His only possible rival for the leadership was Georgi
Zhukov, who had played such an important role in the defeat of
Germany. Stalin's response to the public acclaim that Zhukov received was to
accuse him of "immodesty, unjustified conceit, and megalomania." After the war
Zhukov was demoted and once again Stalin had removed from power someone who was
potentially his successor.
Now in his seventies, Stalin's health began to deteriorate. His main problem
was high blood-pressure. While he was ill, Stalin received a letter from a Dr.
Lydia Timashuk claiming that a group of seven doctors, including his own
physician, Dr. Vinogradov, were involved in a plot to murder Stalin and some of
his close political associates. The doctors named in the letter were arrested
and after being tortured, confessed to being involved in a plot arranged by the
American and British intelligence organizations.
Stalin's response to this news was to order Lavrenti Beria, the head of the Secret Police, to
instigate a new purge of the Communist Party. Members of the Politburo began to panic as they saw the
possibility that like previous candidates for Stalin's position as the head of
the Soviet Union, they would be executed.
Fortunately for them, Stalin's health declined even further and by the end of
February, 1953, he fell into a coma. After four days, Stalin briefly gained
consciousness. The leading members of the party were called for. While they
watched him struggling for his life, he raised his left arm. His nurse, who was
feeding him with a spoon at the time, took the view that he was pointing at a
picture showing a small girl feeding a lamb. His daughter, Svetlana
Alliluyeva, who was also at his bedside, later claimed that he
appeared to be "bringing a curse on them all". Stalin then stopped breathing and
although attempts were made to revive him, his doctors eventually accepted he
was dead.
Three years after his death, Nikita Khrushchev, the new leader of the Soviet
Union, made a speech at the Twentieth Party Congress, where he attacked the
policies of Stalin. Khrushchev revealed how Stalin had been responsible for the
execution of thousands of loyal communists during the purges.
In the months that followed Khrushchev's speech, thousands of those people
imprisoned under Stalin were released. Those who had been in labour camps were
given permission to publish their experiences. The most notable of these was the
writer Alexander
Solzhenitsyn, whose powerful novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan
Denisovich, became a world-wide bestseller.
In 1962 the official party newspaper published a poem by the poet Yevgeni Yevtushenko called the Heirs of
Stalin. The poem describes the burial of Stalin but at the end suggests that
the problems are not yet over: "Grimly clenching his embalmed fists, just
pretending to be dead, he watched from inside. He was scheming. Had merely dozed
off. And I, appealing to our government, petition them to double, and treble,
the sentries guarding the slab, and stop Stalin from ever rising again."
After Khrushchev's revelations, attempts were made to erase Stalin's image
from the Soviet Union. Statues and portraits of Stalin were removed from public
places. Towns, streets and parks named after him were changed. Stalingrad, which had been closely associated
with his generalship during both the Civil War and the Second World War, was renamed Volgagrad. Even his
ashes were takes from the Kremlin Wall and placed elsewhere.
Although the superficial aspects of Stalinism was removed, the system that he
created remained. Stalin had developed a state apparatus that protected those in
power. It was a system that the Soviet leaders who were to follow him for the
next thirty years, were only too pleased to employ in order to prevent any
questioning of their policies. Writers like Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Yevgeni Yevtushenko were free to criticize Stalin
but not those currently in power. The excesses of Stalinism had been removed but
the structure of his totalitarian state remained until the emergence of Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s
by: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSstalin.htm
mother's fourth child to be born in less than four years. The first three died
and as Joseph was prone to bad health, his mother feared on several occasions
that he would also die. Understandably, given this background, Joseph's mother
was very protective towards him as a child.
Joseph's father was a bootmaker and his mother took in washing. As a child,
Joseph experienced the poverty that most peasants had to endure in Russia at the end of
the 19th century. At the age of seven he contacted smallpox. He survived but his face remained
scarred for the rest of his life and other children cruelly called him "pocky".
Joseph's mother was deeply religious and in 1888 she managed to obtain him a
place at the local church school. Despite his health problems, he made good
progress at school and eventually won a free scholarship to the Tiflis
Theological Seminary. While studying at the seminary he joined a secret
organization called Messame Dassy. Members were supporters of Georgian
independence from Russia. Some were also socialist revolutionaries and it was through the
people he met in this organization that Stalin first came into contact with the
ideas of Karl Marx.
In May, 1899, Stalin was expelled from the Tiflis Theological Seminary.
Several reasons were given for this action including disrespect for those in
authority and reading forbidden books. Stalin was later to claim that the real
reason was that he had been trying to convert his fellow students to Marxism.
For several months after leaving the seminary Stalin was unemployed. He
eventually found work by giving private lessons to middle class children. Later,
he worked as a clerk at the Tiflis Observatory. He also began writing articles
for the socialist Georgian newspaper, Brdzola Khma
Vladimir.
In 1901 Stalin joined the Social Democratic Labour Party and whereas most
of the leaders were living in exile, he stayed in Russia where he helped to
organize industrial resistance to Tsarism. On 18th April, 1902, Stalin was
arrested after coordinating a strike at the large Rothschild plant at Batum.
After spending 18 months in prison Stalin was deported to Siberia.
At the Second Congress of the Social Democratic Labour Party in London in 1903, there was a dispute between Lenin
and Julius
Martov, two of the party's leaders. Lenin argued for a small
party of professional revolutionaries with a large fringe of non-party
sympathizers and supporters. Martov disagreed believing it was better to have a
large party of activists.
Julius
Martov based his ideas on the socialist parties that existed in
other European countries such as the British Labour Party. Lenin argued that the
situation was different in Russia as it was illegal to form socialist political
parties under the Tsar's autocratic government. At the end of the debate Martov
won the vote 28-23. Lenin
was unwilling to accept the result and formed a faction known as the Bolsheviks. Those who remained loyal to Martov
became known as Mensheviks.
Stalin, like Gregory
Zinoviev, Anatoli Lunacharsky, Mikhail Lashevich, Nadezhda Krupskaya, Mikhail Frunze, Alexei Rykov, Yakov Sverdlov, Lev Kamenev, Maxim Litvinov, Vladimir Antonov, Felix Dzerzhinsky, Gregory Ordzhonikidze and Alexander
Bogdanov joined the Bolsheviks. Whereas George Plekhanov, Pavel Axelrod, Lev Deich, Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, Leon Trotsky, Vera Zasulich, Irakli Tsereteli, Moisei Uritsky, Noi Zhordania, Andrei Vyshinsky and Fedor Dan supported Julius Martov.
In 1904 Stalin escaped from Siberia and within a few months he was back
organizing demonstrations and strikes in Tiflis. Vladimir Lenin was impressed with Stalin's
achievements and in 1905 he was invited to meet him in Finland.
Stalin returned to Russia and over the next eight years he was arrested four
times but each time managed to escape. In 1911 he moved to St, Petersburg and
the following year became editor of Pravda. Arrested again in 1913, Stalin was
exiled for life to North Siberia.
After the overthrow of Nicholas II, the new prime minister, Alexander Kerensky, allowed all political
prisoners to return to their homes. Stalin went back to St. Petersburg and once
again became one of the editors of Pravda. At this time, Stalin, like most Bolsheviks,
took the view that the Russian people were not ready for a socialist revolution.
When Lenin returned to Russia on 3rd April, 1917, he
announced what became known as the April Theses. Lenin attacked Bolsheviks for supporting the Provisional Government. Instead, he argued,
revolutionaries should be telling the people of Russia that they should take
over the control of the country. In his speech, Lenin urged the peasants to take
the land from the rich landlords and the industrial workers to seize the
factories.
Lenin accused those Bolsheviks who were still supporting the Provisional Government of betraying socialism and
suggested that they should leave the party. Some took Lenin's advice, arguing
that any attempt at revolution at this stage was bound to fail and would lead to
another repressive, authoritarian Russian government.
Stalin was in a difficult position. As one of the editors of Pravda, he was aware that he was being held
partly responsible for what Lenin had described as "betraying socialism".
Stalin had two main options open to him: he could oppose Lenin and challenge him
for the leadership of the party, or he could change his mind about supporting
the Provisional Government and remain loyal to Lenin.
After ten days of silence, Stalin made his move. In Pravda he wrote an article dismissing the
idea of working with the Provisional Government. He condemned Alexander Kerensky and Victor Chernov as counter-revolutionaries, and
urged the peasants
to takeover the land for themselves.
In November, 1917, Lenin rewarded Stalin for his support of the October
Revolution by appointing him Commissar of Nationalities. Lenin joked to Stalin
that: "You know, to pass so quickly from an underground existence to power makes
one dizzy."
As a Georgian and a member of a minority group who had written about the
problems of non-Russian peoples living under the Tsar, Stalin was seen as the
obvious choice as Commissar of Nationalities. It was a job that
gave Stalin tremendous power for nearly half the country's population fell into
the category of non-Russian. Stalin now had the responsibility of dealing with
65 million Ukrainians, Georgians, Byelorussians, Tadzhiks, Buriats and Yakuts.
The policy of the Bolsheviks was to grant the right of
self-determination to all the various nationalities within Russia. This was
reinforced by a speech Stalin made in Helsinki on November 16th, 1917. Stalin
promised the crowd that the Soviet government would grant: "complete freedom for
the Finnish people, and for other peoples of Russia, to arrange their own life!"
Stalin's plan was to develop what he called "a voluntary and honest alliance"
between Russia and the different national groups that lived within its borders.
Over the next couple of years Stalin had difficulty controlling the
non-Russian peoples under his control. Independent states were set up without
his agreement. These new governments were often hostile to the Bolsheviks. Stalin had hoped that these
independent states would voluntarily agree to join up with Russia to form a
union of Socialist States. When this did not happen Stalin was forced to revise
his policy and stated that self-determination: "ought to be understood as the
right of self-determination not of the bourgeoisie but of the toiling masses of
a given nation." In other words, unless these independent states had a socialist
government willing to develop a union with Russia, the Bolsheviks would not
allow self-determination.
Lenin
also changed his views on independence. He now came to the conclusion that a
"modern economy required a high degree of power in the centre." Although the Bolsheviks
had promised nearly half the Russian population that they would have
self-determination, Lenin was now of the opinion that such a policy could pose a
serious threat to the survival of the Soviet government. It was the broken
promise over self-determination that was just one of the many reasons why
Lenin's government became unpopular in Russia.
During the Civil
War Stalin played an important administrative role in military
matters and took the credit for successfully defeating the White Army at Tsaritsyn. One strategy developed
by Stalin was to conduct interviews with local administrators on a large barge
moored on the Volga. It was later claimed that if Stalin was not convinced of
their loyalty they were shot and thrown into the river.
In August, 1918, Moisei Uritsky, chief of the Petrograd Secret
Police was assassinated. Two two weeks later Dora Kaplan shot and severely wounded Lenin. Stalin, who was in Tsaritsyn at the time,
sent a telegram advocating an "open and systematic mass terror" against those
responsible. The advice of Stalin was accepted and in September, 1918, Felix Dzerzhinsky, head of the Cheka, instigated as the Red Terror. It is estimated that in the next few
months 800 socialists were arrested and shot without trial.
The Soviet's government's policy of War Communism during the Civil War created social distress and led to
riots, strikes and demonstrations. The Kronstadt Uprising reinforced the idea that the
government was unpopular and in March, 1921, Vladimir Lenin announced details of his New Economic Policy (NEP). Farmers were now
allowed to sell food on the open market and could now employ people to work for
them.
The New
Economic Policy also allowed some freedom of internal trade,
permitted some private commerce and re-established state banks. Factories
employing less than twenty people were denationalized and could be claimed back
by former owners.
Stalin supported Lenin's policy. His view was that as long as there was only
a one party state, the government could allow the introduction of small-scale
private enterprise. As he pointed out: "The New Economic Policy is a special
policy of the proletarian state designed to tolerate capitalism but retain the
key positions in the hands of the proletarian state."
Lenin
found the disagreements over the New Economic Policy exhausting. His health had
been poor ever since Dora Kaplan had shot him in 1918. Severe
headaches limited his sleep and understandably he began to suffer from fatigue.
Lenin decided he needed someone to help him control the Communist Party.
At the Party Conference in April, 1922, Lenin suggested that a new post of General
Secretary should be created. Lenin's choice for the post was Stalin, who in the
past had always loyally supported his policies. Stalin's main opponents for the
future leadership of the party failed to see the importance of this position and
actually supported his nomination. They initially saw the post of General
Secretary as being no more than "Lenin's mouthpiece".
Soon after Stalin's appointment as General Secretary, Lenin went into
hospital to have a bullet removed from his body that had been there since
Kaplan's assassination attempt. It was hoped that this operation would restore
his health. This was not to be; soon afterwards, a blood vessel broke in Lenin's
brain. This left him paralyzed all down his right side and for a time he was
unable to speak. As "Lenin's mouthpiece", Stalin had suddenly become extremely
important.
While Lenin was immobilized, Stalin made full use of
his powers as General Secretary. At the Party Congress he had been granted
permission to expel "unsatisfactory" party members. This enabled Stalin to
remove thousands of supporters of Leon Trotsky, his main rival for the leadership
of the party. As General Secretary, Stalin also had the power to appoint and
sack people from important positions in the government. The new holders of these
posts were fully aware that they owed their promotion to Stalin. They also knew
that if their behaviour did not please Stalin they would be replaced.
Surrounded by his supporters, Stalin's confidence began to grow. In October,
1922, he disagreed with Lenin over the issue of foreign trade. When the matter
was discussed at Central Committee, Stalin's rather Lenin's policy was accepted.
Lenin began to fear that Stalin was taking over the leadership of the party.
Lenin wrote to Leon
Trotsky asking for his support. Trotsky agreed and at the next
meeting of the Central Committee the decision on foreign trade was reversed.
Lenin, who was too ill to attend, wrote to Trotsky congratulating him on his
success and suggesting that in future they should work together against
Stalin.
Stalin, whose wife Nadya Alliluyeva worked in Lenin's private office, soon
discovered the contents of the letter sent to Leon Trotsky. Stalin was furious as he realized
that if Lenin and Trotsky worked together against him, his political career
would be at an end. In a fit of temper Stalin made an abusive phone-call to
Lenin's wife, Nadezhda
Krupskaya, accusing her of endangering Lenin's life by allowing
him to write letters when he was so ill.
After Krupskaya told her husband of the phone-call, Lenin made the decision that Stalin was not the
man to replace him as the leader of the party. Lenin knew he was close to death
so he dictated to his secretary a letter that he wanted to serve as his last
"will and testament". The document was comprised of his thoughts on the senior
members of the party leadership.
Lenin became increasing concerned about Stalin's character and wrote a
testament in which he suggested that he be removed. "Comrade Stalin, having
become General Secretary, has concentrated enormous power in his hands: and I am
not sure that he always knows how to use that power with sufficient caution. I
therefore propose to our comrades to consider a means of removing Stalin from
this post and appointing someone else who differs from Stalin in one weighty
respect: being more tolerant, more loyal, more polite, more considerate of his
comrades."
However, Lenin
died before any action was taken. Stalin now emerged as the leader of the Soviet
Union. When he first gained power Stalin continued Lenin's New Economic Policy. Farmers were allowed to sell
food on the open market and were allowed to employ people to work for them.
Those farmers who expanded the size of their farms became known as kulaks.
In 1928 Stalin began attacking kulaks for not supplying enough food for
industrial workers. He also advocated the setting up of collective farms. The proposal involved small
farmers joining forces to form large-scale units. In this way, it was argued,
they would be in a position to afford the latest machinery. Stalin believed this
policy would lead to increased production. However, the peasants liked farming
their own land and were reluctant to form themselves into state collectives.
Stalin was furious that the peasants were putting their own welfare before
that of the Soviet Union. Local communist officials were given instructions to
confiscate kulaks property. This land was then used to form
new collective farms. Thousands of kulaks were executed and an estimated five
million were deported to Siberia or Central Asia. Of these, approximately
twenty-five per cent perished by the time they reached their destination.
After the death of Lenin, Stalin joined forces with two left-wing
members of the Politburo,
Gregory
Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, to keep Leon Trotsky from power. Both these men had
reason to believe that Trotsky would dismiss them from the government once he
became leader. Stalin encouraged these fears. He also suggested that old party
activists like themselves had more right to lead the Bolsheviks than Trotsky, who had only joined the
party in 1917.
Leon
Trotsky accused Stalin of being dictatorial and called for the
introduction of more democracy into the party. Gregory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev united behind Stalin and accused
Trotsky of creating divisions in the party.
Trotsky's main hope of gaining power was for Lenin's last testament to be
published. In May, 1924, Lenin's widow, Nadezhda Krupskaya, demanded that the Central
Committee announce its contents to the rest of the party. Gregory Zinoviev argued strongly against its
publication. He finished his speech with the words: "You have all witnessed our
harmonious cooperation in the last few months, and, like myself, you will be
happy to say that Lenin's fears have proved baseless." The new members of the
Central Committee, who had been sponsored by Stalin, guaranteed that the vote
went against Lenin's testament being made public.
In 1925 Stalin was able to arrange for Leon Trotsky to be removed from the government.
Some of Trotsky's supporters pleaded with him to organize a military coup. As
commissar of war Trotsky was in a good position to arrange this. However,
Trotsky rejected the idea and instead resigned his post.
With the decline of Trotsky, Joseph Stalin felt strong enough to stop sharing
power with Lev
Kamenev and Gregory Zinoviev. Stalin now began to attack
Trotsky's belief in the need for world revolution. He argued that the party's
main priority should be to defend the communist system that had been developed
in the Soviet Union. This put Zinoviev and Kamenev in an awkward position. They
had for a long time been strong supporters of Trotsky's theory that if
revolution did not spread to other countries, the communist system in the Soviet
Union was likely to be overthrown by hostile, capitalist nations. However, they
were reluctant to speak out in favour of a man whom they had been in conflict
with for so long.
When Stalin was finally convinced that Lev Kamenev and Gregory Zinoviev were unwilling to join forces
with Leon Trotsky against him, he began to support
openly the economic policies of right-wing members of the Politburo such as Nikolay Bukharin, Mikhail Tomsky and Alexei Rykov. They now realized what Stalin was
up to but it took them to summer of 1926 before they could swallow their pride
and join with Trotsky against Stalin.
When Lev Kamenev and Gregory Zinoviev eventually began attacking his
policies, Joseph Stalin argued they were creating disunity
in the party and managed to have them expelled from the Central Committee. The
belief that the party would split into two opposing factions was a strong fear
amongst communists in the country. They were convinced that if this happened,
western countries would take advantage of the situation and invade the Soviet
Union.
Under pressure from the Central Committee, Lev Kamenev and Gregory Zinoviev agreed to sign statements
promising not to create conflict in the movement by making speeches attacking
official policies. Leon
Trotsky refused to sign and was banished to the remote area of
Kazhakstan.
In 1927 Stalin's advisers told him that with the modernization of farming the
Soviet Union would require an extra 250,000 tractors. As well as tractors there
was also a need to develop the oil fields to provide the necessary petrol to
drive the machines. Power stations also had to be built to supply the farms with
electricity.
Since the October
Revolution industrial progress had been slow. It was not until
1927 that production had reached the levels achieved before the start of the First World War. Stalin decided that he would use
his control over the country to modernize the economy.
The first Five Year Plan that was introduced in 1928,
concentrated on the development of iron and steel, machine-tools, electric power
and transport. Stalin set the workers high targets. He demanded a 111% increase
in coal production, 200% increase in iron production and 335% increase in
electric power. He justified these demands by claiming that if rapid
industrialization did not take place, the Soviet Union would not be able to
defend itself against an invasion from capitalist countries in the west.
Every factory had large display boards erected that showed the output of
workers. Those that failed to reach the required targets were publicity
criticized and humiliated. Some workers could not cope with this pressure and
absenteeism increased. This led to even more repressive measures being
introduced. Records were kept of workers' lateness, absenteeism and bad
workmanship. If the worker's record was poor, he was accused of trying to
sabotage the Five Year Plan and if found guilty could be shot
or sent to work as forced labour on the Baltic Sea Canal or the Siberian
Railway.
With the modernization of industry, Stalin argued that it was necessary to
pay higher wages to certain workers in order to encourage increased output. His
left-wing opponents claimed that this inequality was a betrayal of socialism and
would create a new class system in the Soviet Union. Stalin had his way and
during the 1930s, the gap between the wages of the labourers and the skilled
workers increased.
In the summer of 1932 Stalin became aware that opposition to his policies
were growing. Some party members were publicly criticizing Stalin and calling
for the readmission of Leon Trotsky to the party. When the issue was
discussed at the Politburo,
Stalin demanded that the critics should be arrested and executed. Sergey Kirov, who up to this time had been a
staunch Stalinist, argued against this policy. When the vote was taken, the
majority of the Politburo supported Kirov against Stalin.
In the spring of 1934 Sergey Kirov put forward a policy of
reconciliation. He argued that people should be released from prison who had
opposed the government's policy on collective farms and industrialization. Once again, Stalin found
himself in a minority in the Politburo.
After years of arranging for the removal of his opponents from the party,
Stalin realized he still could not rely on the total support of the people whom
he had replaced them with. Stalin no doubt began to wonder if Sergey Kirov was willing to wait for his mentor
to die before becoming leader of the party. Stalin was particularly concerned by
Kirov's willingness to argue with him in public, fearing that this would
undermine his authority in the party.
As usual, that summer Kirov and Stalin went on holiday together. Stalin, who
treated Kirov like a son, used this opportunity to try to persuade him to remain
loyal to his leadership. Stalin asked him to leave Leningrad to join him in
Moscow. Stalin wanted Kirov in a place where he could keep a close eye on him.
When Kirov refused, Stalin knew he had lost control over his protégé.
On 1st December, 1934. Sergey Kirov was assassinated by a young party
member, Leonid Nikolayev. Stalin claimed that Nikolayev was part of a larger
conspiracy led by Leon
Trotsky against the Soviet government. This resulted in the
arrest and execution of Lev Kamenev, Gregory Zinoviev, and fifteen other party
members.
In September, 1936, Stalin appointed Nikolai Yezhov as head of the NKVD, the Communist Secret Police. Yezhov quickly
arranged the arrest of all the leading political figures in the Soviet Union who
were critical of Stalin. The Secret Police broke prisoners down by intense
interrogation. This included the threat to arrest and execute members of the
prisoner's family if they did not confess. The interrogation went on for several
days and nights and eventually they became so exhausted and disoriented that
they signed confessions agreeing that they had been attempting to overthrow the
government.
In 1936 Nickolai
Bukharin, Alexei Rykov, Genrikh Yagoda, Nikolai Krestinsky and Christian Rakovsky were arrested and accused of
being involved with Leon Trotsky in a plot against Stalin. They were
all found guilty and were eventually executed.
Stalin now decided to purge the Red Army. Some historians believe that Stalin was
telling the truth when he claimed that he had evidence that the army was
planning a military coup at this time. Leopold Trepper, head of the Soviet spy ring in
Germany, believed that the evidence was planted by a double agent who worked for
both Stalin and Adolf
Hitler. Trepper's theory is that the "chiefs of Nazi
counter-espionage" took "advantage of the paranoia raging in the Soviet Union,"
by supplying information that led to Stalin executing his top military leaders.
In June, 1937, Mikhail Tukhachevsky and seven other top Red Army commanders were charged with conspiracy
with Germany. All eight were convicted and executed. All told, 30,000 members of
the armed forces were executed. This included fifty per cent of all army
officers.
The last stage of the terror was the purging of the NKVD. Stalin wanted to make sure that those who
knew too much about the purges would also be killed. Stalin announced to the
country that "fascist elements" had taken over the security forces which had
resulted in innocent people being executed. He appointed Lavrenti Beria as the new head of the Secret
Police and he was instructed to find out who was responsible. After his
investigations, Beria arranged the executions of all the senior figures in the
organization.
Stalin supported the Popular Front government in Spain. After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War he sent large quantities of
Soviet tanks and aircraft to the Republicans. They were accompanied by a large
number of tank-drivers and pilots from the Soviet Union. All told, about 850 Soviet
advisers, pilots, technical personnel and interpreters took part in the war.
Stalin became increasingly concerned that the Soviet Union would be invaded
by Germany.
Stalin believed the best way to of dealing with Adolf Hitler was to form an anti-fascist alliance
with countries in the west. Stalin argued that even Hitler would not start a war
against a united Europe.
Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister,
was not enthusiastic about forming an alliance with the Soviet Union. He wrote
to a friend: "I must confess to the most profound distrust of Russia. I have no
belief whatever in her ability to maintain an effective offensive, even if she
wanted to. And I distrust her motives, which seem to me to have little
connection with our ideas of liberty, and to be concerned only with getting
everyone else by the ears."
Winston Churchill, an outspoken critic of British
foreign policy, agreed with Stalin: "There is no means of maintaining an eastern
front against Nazi aggression without the active aid of Russia. Russian
interests are deeply concerned in preventing Herr Hitler's designs on eastern
Europe. It should still be possible to range all the States and peoples from the
Baltic to the Black sea in one solid front against a new outrage of invasion.
Such a front, if established in good heart, and with resolute and efficient
military arrangements, combined with the strength of the Western Powers, may yet
confront Hitler, Goering, Himmler, Ribbentrop, Goebbels and co. with forces the
German people would be reluctant to challenge."
Stalin's own interpretation of Britain's rejection of his plan for an
antifascist alliance, was that they were involved in a plot with Germany against
the Soviet Union. This belief was reinforced when Neville Chamberlain met with Adolf Hitler at Munich in September, 1938, and
gave into his demands for the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. Stalin now believed
that the main objective of British foreign policy was to encourage Germany to
head east rather than west.
Stalin realized that war with Germany was inevitable. However, to have any
chance of victory he needed time to build up his armed forces. The only way he
could obtain time was to do a deal with Hitler. Stalin was convinced that Hitler
would not be foolish enough to fight a war on two fronts. If he could persuade
Hitler to sign a peace treaty with the Soviet Union, Germany was likely to
invade Western Europe instead.
On 3rd May, 1939, Stalin dismissed Maxim Litvinov, his Jewish Commissar for Foreign Affairs. Litvinov
had been closely associated with the Soviet Union's policy of an antifascist
alliance. Meetings soon took place between Vyacheslav Molotov, Litvinov's replacement and Joachim
von Ribbentrop, the German foreign minister. On 28th August,
1939, the Nazi-Soviet
Pact was signed in Moscow. Under the terms of the agreement, both
countries promised to remain neutral if either country became involved in a
war.
Stalin now ordered the Red Army into Poland and reclaimed land lost when the Brest-Litovsk Treaty was signed in 1918.
Another aspect of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty that made the Soviet Union
vulnerable to attack was the loss of Finland. Leningrad was only thirty-two kilometres
from the Finnish border. This made Leningrad and its 3.5 million population, a
potential target of artillery fire. Stalin therefore began to consider the Invasion
of Finland.
After attempts to negotiate the stationing of Soviet troops in Finland
failed, Stalin ordered the Red Army to invade. Adolf Hitler, who also had designs on Finland,
was forced to standby and watch the Soviet Union build up its Baltic defences.
It took the Soviet troops three months to force the Finnish government to agree
to Stalin's original demands. Although the world was now aware of Stalin's
shrewdness in foreign affairs, Finland's small army of 200,000 men had exposed
the Soviet Union's poorly trained and equipped army.
Stalin believed that Germany would not invade the Soviet Union until Britain
and France had been conquered. From Stalin's own calculations, this would not be
until the summer of 1942. Some of his closest advisers began to argue that 1941
would be a much more likely date. The surrender of France in June, 1940, also
cast doubts on Stalin's calculations.
Stalin's response to France's defeat was to send Vyacheslav Molotov to Berlin for more
discussions. Molotov was instructed to draw out these talks for as long as
possible. Stalin knew that if Adolf Hitler did not attack the Soviet Union in
the summer of 1941, he would have to wait until 1942. No one, not even someone
as rash as Hitler, would invade the Soviet Union in the winter, he argued.
Germany was now in a strong negotiating position and Molotov found it
impossible to agree to Hitler's demands. As soon as talks broke-up, Hitler
ordered his military leaders to prepare for Operation Barbarossa. The plan was for the
invasion of the Soviet Union to start on the 15th May, 1941. Hitler believed
that this would give the German Army enough time to take control of the
country before the harsh Soviet winter set in.
Information on the proposed invasion came to Stalin from various sources. Richard
Sorge, an agent working for the Red Orchestra in Japan, obtained information
about the proposed invasion as early as December, 1940. Winston Churchill sent a personal message to
Stalin in April, 1941, explaining how German troop movements suggested that they
were about to attack the Soviet Union. However, Stalin was still suspicious of
the British and thought that Churchill was trying to trick him into declaring
war on Germany.
When Sorge's prediction that Germany would invade in May, 1941, did not take
place, Stalin became even more convinced that the war would not start until
1942. The reason for this delay was that Germany had invaded Yugoslavia in
April. Adolf Hitler had expected the Yugoslavs to
surrender immediately but because of stubborn resistance, Hitler had to postpone
Operation
Barbarossa for a few weeks.
On 21st June, 1941, a German sergeant deserted to the Soviet forces. He
informed them that the German Army would attack at dawn the following morning.
Stalin was reluctant to believe the soldier's story and it was not until the
German attack took place that he finally accepted that his attempts to avoid war
with Germany until 1942 had failed.
The German forces, made up of three million men and 3,400 tanks, advanced in
three groups. The north group headed for Leningrad, the centre group for Moscow
and the southern forces into the Ukraine. Within six days, the German Army had captured Minsk. General Demitry
Pavlov, the man responsible for defending Minsk, and two of his
senior generals were recalled to Moscow and were shot for incompetence.
With the execution of Pavlov and his generals, Stalin made it clear that he
would punish severely any commander whom he believed had let down the Soviet
Union. In future, Soviet commanders thought twice about surrendering or
retreating. Another factor in this was the way that the German Army massacred
the people of Minsk. Terrified of both Stalin and Adolf Hitler, the Soviet people had no option but
to fight until they were killed.
The first few months of the war was disastrous for the Soviet Union. The
German northern forces surrounded Leningrad while the centre group made steady
progress towards Moscow. German forces had also made deep inroads into the
Ukraine. Kiev was under siege and Stalin's Chief of Staff, Georgi
Zhukov, suggested that the troops defending the capital of the
Ukraine should be withdrawn, thus enabling them to take up strong defensive
positions further east. Stalin insisted that the troops stayed and by the time
Kiev was taken, the casualties were extremely high. It was the most
comprehensive defeat experienced by the Red Army in its history. However, the determined
resistance put up at Kiev, had considerably delayed the attack on Moscow.
It was now September and winter was fast approaching. As German troops moved
deeper into the Soviet Union, supply lines became longer. Stalin gave
instructions that when forced to withdraw, the Red Army should destroy anything that could be of
use to the enemy. The scorched earth policy and the formation of
guerrilla units behind the German front lines, created severe problems for the
German war machine which was trying to keep her three million soldiers supplied
with the necessary food and ammunition.
By October, 1941, German troops were only fifteen miles outside Moscow.
Orders were given for a mass evacuation of the city. In two weeks, two million
people left Moscow and headed east. Stalin rallied morale by staying in Moscow.
In a bomb-proof air raid shelter positioned under the Kremlin, Stalin, as
Supreme Commander-in-Chief, directed the Soviet war effort. All major decisions
made by his front-line commanders had to be cleared with Stalin first.
In November, 1941, the German Army launched a new offensive on Moscow.
The Soviet army held out and the Germans were brought to a halt. Stalin called
for a counter-attack. His commanders had doubts about this policy but Stalin
insisted and on 4th December the Red Army attacked. The German forces, demoralized
by its recent lack of success, was taken by surprise and started to retreat. By
January, the Germans had been pushed back 200 miles.
Stalin's military strategy was basically fairly simple. He believed it was
vitally important to attack the enemy as often as possible. He was particularly
keen to use new, fresh troops for these offensives. Stalin argued that countries
in western Europe had been beaten by their own fear of German superiority. His
main objective in using new troops in this way was to convince them that the
German forces were not invincible. By pushing the German Army back at Moscow, Stalin proved to the
Soviet troops that Blizkrieg could be counteracted; it also provided
an important example to all troops throughout the world fighting the German
war-machine.
The German Army was severely handicapped by the Soviet winter of 1941-42 and
once spring arrived they began to advance once again. German forces were
particularly successful in the south and they were able to close in on
Stalingrad.
Stalin was horrified to hear reports that the Red Army in the Ukraine had been in such a hurry
to retreat that they had left behind their weapons and equipment. Not only were
soldiers shot for desertion but Stalin gave permission for highly critical
articles of the army to be published in the newspapers. The army, which had been
praised during the early stages of the war, was now accused of betraying the
Soviet people. It was an extremely risky move on Stalin's part, but it had the
desired effect and its performance improved.
Stalingrad was Stalin's city. It had been named after him as a result of his
defence of the city during the Russian Civil War. Stalin insisted that it should
be held at all costs. One historian has claimed that he saw Stalingrad "as the
symbol of his own authority." Stalin also knew that if Stalingrad was taken, the
way would be open for Moscow to be attacked from the east. If Moscow was cut off
in this way, the defeat of the Soviet Union was virtually inevitable.
A million Soviet soldiers were drafted into the Stalingrad area. They were supported from an
increasing flow of tanks, aircraft and rocket batteries from the factories built
east of the Urals, during the Five Year Plans. Stalin's claim that rapid
industrialization would save the Soviet Union from defeat by western invaders
was beginning to come true.
General Georgi Zhukov, the military leader who had yet to
be defeated in a battle, was put in charge of the defence of Stalingrad. The
line held and on 19th November, 1942, Stalin gave the order to counterattack
from the north and the south. Although the German 6th Army continued to make
progress towards Stalingrad, they were gradually becoming
encircled. General Friedrich
Paulus, the German commander, asked permission to withdraw but Adolf
Hitler refused and instructed him to continue to advance on
Stalingrad. This they did, but with their supplies cut-off from the west, they
were unable to take the city.
In recognition of his commander's bravery, Adolf Hitler made Friedrich Paulus a Field Marshal on 30th January,
1943. Hitler was furious when a couple of days later Paulus surrendered. The
German losses at Stalingrad were 1.5 million men, 3,500 tanks and
3,000 aircraft. It marked the turning point of the war. From this date on,
Germany began to retreat.
It was only when the Red Army regained territory previously controlled
by the Nazis that the Soviet Government became fully aware of the war crimes that had been committed. Soviet
soldiers who had been taken prisoner had been deliberately starved to death. Of
the 5,170,000 soldiers captured by the Germans, only 1,053,000 survived.
Women and children were also killed in large numbers. The Jews were always the first to be executed, but
other groups, especially the Russians, were also killed. German soldiers were
given the instructions that the "Jewish-Bolshevik system must be destroyed". Adolf
Hitler was aware that to control the vast population of the
Soviet Union would always be an extremely difficult task. His way of dealing
with the problem was by mass exterminations.
Soviet authorities estimated that in all, over twenty million of their people
were killed during the Second World War. However, it has been argued
that Hitler's policy of exterminating the Soviet people guaranteed his defeat.
Stories of German atrocities soon reached Red Army soldiers fighting at the front. Faced
with the choice of being executed or being killed fighting, the vast majority
chose the latter. Unlike most other soldiers, when faced with defeat in battle,
the Soviet army rarely surrendered.
This was also true of civilians. When territory was taken by the German Army, women, children and old men went
into hiding and formed guerrilla units. These groups, who concentrated on
disrupting German supply lines, proved a constant problem to the German
forces.
In November, 1943, Stalin, Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt met together in Teheran, Iran, to discuss military strategy and
post-war Europe. Ever since the Soviet Union had entered the war, Stalin had
been demanding that the Allies open-up a second front in Europe. Churchill and Roosevelt
argued that any attempt to land troops in Western Europe would result in heavy
casualties. Until the Soviet's victory at Stalingrad in January, 1943, Stalin
had feared that without a second front, Germany would defeat them.
Stalin, who always favoured in offensive strategy, believed that there were
political, as well as military reasons for the Allies' failure to open up a
second front in Europe. Stalin was still highly suspicious of Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt and was worried about them
signing a peace agreement with Adolf Hitler. The foreign policies of the
capitalist countries since the October Revolution had convinced Stalin that
their main objective was the destruction of the communist system in the Soviet
Union. Stalin was fully aware that if Britain and the USA withdrew from the war,
the Red
Army would have great difficulty in dealing with Germany on its
own.
At Teheran, Stalin reminded Churchill and Roosevelt
of a previous promise of landing troops in Western Europe in 1942. Later they
postponed it to the spring of 1943. Stalin complained that it was now November
and there was still no sign of an allied invasion of France. After lengthy
discussions it was agreed that the Allies would mount a major offensive in the
spring of 1944.
From the memoirs published by those who took part in the negotiations in
Teheran, it would appear that Stalin dominated the conference. Alan
Brook, chief of the British General Staff, was later to say: "I
rapidly grew to appreciate the fact that he had a military brain of the very
highest calibre. Never once in any of his statements did he make any strategic
error, nor did he ever fail to appreciate all the implications of a situation
with a quick and unerring eye. In this respect he stood out compared with
Roosevelt and Churchill."
The D-Day landings in June, 1944, created a second front, and took the pressure off the
Soviet Union and the Red Army made steady progress into territory held
by Germany. Country after country fell to Soviet forces. Winston Churchill became concerned about the
spread of Soviet power and visited Moscow in October, 1944. Churchill agreed
that Rumania and Bulgaria should be under "Soviet influence" but argued that
Yugoslavia and Hungary should be shared equally amongst them.
The most heated discussion concerned the future of Poland. The Polish
Government in exile, based in London, had a reputation for being extremely
anti-Communist. Although Stalin was willing to negotiate with the Polish prime
minister, Stanislaw
Mikolajczyk, he insisted that he was unwilling to have a
government in Poland that was actively hostile to the Soviet Union.
In February, 1945, Stalin, Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt met again. This time the
conference was held in Yalta in the Crimea. With Soviet troops in most
of Eastern Europe, Stalin was in a strong negotiating position. Roosevelt and
Churchill tried hard to restrict postwar influence in this area but the only
concession they could obtain was a promise that free elections would be held in
these countries.
Once again, Poland was the main debating point. Stalin explained that
throughout history Poland had either attacked Russia or had been used as a
corridor through which other hostile countries invaded her. Only a strong,
pro-Communist government in Poland would be able to guarantee the security of
the Soviet Union.
Stalin also promised that the Soviet Union would enter the war against Japan
three months after the war with Germany ended and in return would recover what
Russia had lost at the end of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05).
At Yalta, the decision at Teheran to form a United Nations organization was confirmed. It was
only on this issue that all three leaders were enthusiastically in
agreement.
At the time of Yalta, Germany was close to defeat. British and USA troops
were advancing from the west and the Red Army from the east. At the conference it was
agreed to divide Germany up amongst the Allies. However, all parties to that
agreement were aware that the country that actually took control of Germany
would be in the strongest position over the future of this territory.
The main objective of Winston Churchill and Stalin was the capture of
Berlin, the capital of Germany. Franklin D. Roosevelt did not agree and the
decision of the USA Military commander, General Dwight Eisenhower, to head south-east to Dresden,
ensured that Soviet forces would be the first to reach Berlin.
The leaders of the victorious countries met once more at Potsdam in July, 1945. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had died in April,
1945, had been replaced by the Vice-President, Harry S. Truman. While the conference was taking
place, the British General Election results were announced.
The landslide victory of the Labour Party meant that Clement Attlee replaced Winston Churchill as Britain's main negotiator.
Although Germany had been defeated, the USA and Britain were still at war
with Japan. At Yalta,
the Allies had attempted to persuade Stalin to join in the war with Japan. By
the time the Potsdam
meeting took place, they were having doubts about this strategy. Churchill in
particular, were afraid that Soviet involvement would lead to an increase in
their influence over countries in the Far East.
At Yalta, Stalin had promised to enter the war with
Japan within three months of the defeat of Germany. Originally, it was planned
that the conference at Potsdam would confirm this decision. However,
since the previous meeting the USA had successfully tested the Atom Bomb. Truman's advisers were urging him to
use this bomb on Japan. They also pointed out that its employment would avoid an
invasion of Japan and thus save the lives of up to two million American troops.
When Harry S. Truman told Stalin that the USA had a
new powerful bomb he appeared pleased and asked no further questions about it.
Truman did not mention that it was a atomic bomb and it appears that Stalin did
not initially grasp the significance of this new weapon. However, with the
dropping of the Atom Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945, the Japanese quickly
surrendered and the Allies were successful in preventing Soviet gains in the Far
East.
Stalin's main concern at Potsdam was to obtain economic help for the
Soviet Union. Nearly a quarter of Soviet property had been destroyed during the
Second World War. This included 31,000 of her
factories. Agriculture had also been badly hit and food was being strictly
rationed. Stalin had been told by his advisers that under-nourishment of the
workforce was causing low-productivity. He believed that the best way to revive
the Soviet economy was to obtain massive reparation payments from Germany.
Unlike at Yalta,
the Allies were no longer willing to look sympathetically at Stalin's demands.
With Germany defeated and the USA now possessing the Atom Bomb, the Allies no longer needed the
co-operation of the Soviet Union. Stalin felt betrayed by this change of
attitude. He believed that the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt was an important factor in
this.
The ending of lend-lease supplies to the Soviet Union immediately the war
ended with Germany in May, 1945 and the insistence that Henry Wallace, the US Secretary of Commerce,
resign after he made a speech in support of Soviet economic demands, convinced
Stalin that the hostility towards the Soviet Union that had been in existence
between the wars, had returned.
Stalin once again became obsessed by the threat of an invasion from the west.
Between 1945 and 1948, Stalin made full use of his abilities by arranging the
setting up of communist regimes in Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany,
Poland and Czechoslovakia. He now had a large buffer zone of "friendly states"
on his western border. Western powers interpreted these events as an example of
Stalin's desire to impose communism on the whole of Europe. The formation of NATO and the stationing of American troops in
Western Europe was a reaction to Stalin's policies and helped ensure the
development of the Cold War.
In 1948, Stalin ordered an economic blockade of Berlin. He hoped this measure
would help him secure full control over Berlin. The Allies airlifted supplies to
the beleaguered Berlin and and Stalin was eventually forced to back down and
allow the land and air routes to be reopened.
Stalin also miscalculated over Korea. In 1950, he encouraged Kim Il Sung, the communist ruler of North Korea,
to invade South Korea. Stalin had assumed that the USA would not interfere and
that Kim IL Sung would be able to unite Korea as a communist state.
Stalin's timing was particularly bad on this occasion as the Soviet
representative had at that time been ordered to boycott the Security Council.
With the Soviet Union unable to use its veto, it was powerless to stop the United Nations sending troops to defend South
Korea.
The Korean War ended in 1953. Not only had the
communists failed to unite Korea, the war also provided support for those
right-wing American politicians such as Joseph McCarthy who had been arguing that the
Soviet Union wanted to control the world. Hostility between the Soviet Union and
the United States continued to increase as the world became divided between the
two power blocks. Harry
S. Truman and Winston Churchill may have been responsible for
the start of the Cold War but Stalin's policies in Eastern Europe
and Korea had ensured its continuance.
At home, Stalin was closely associated with the Soviet Union's victory in the
Second World War and so his prestige and status
remained high. His only possible rival for the leadership was Georgi
Zhukov, who had played such an important role in the defeat of
Germany. Stalin's response to the public acclaim that Zhukov received was to
accuse him of "immodesty, unjustified conceit, and megalomania." After the war
Zhukov was demoted and once again Stalin had removed from power someone who was
potentially his successor.
Now in his seventies, Stalin's health began to deteriorate. His main problem
was high blood-pressure. While he was ill, Stalin received a letter from a Dr.
Lydia Timashuk claiming that a group of seven doctors, including his own
physician, Dr. Vinogradov, were involved in a plot to murder Stalin and some of
his close political associates. The doctors named in the letter were arrested
and after being tortured, confessed to being involved in a plot arranged by the
American and British intelligence organizations.
Stalin's response to this news was to order Lavrenti Beria, the head of the Secret Police, to
instigate a new purge of the Communist Party. Members of the Politburo began to panic as they saw the
possibility that like previous candidates for Stalin's position as the head of
the Soviet Union, they would be executed.
Fortunately for them, Stalin's health declined even further and by the end of
February, 1953, he fell into a coma. After four days, Stalin briefly gained
consciousness. The leading members of the party were called for. While they
watched him struggling for his life, he raised his left arm. His nurse, who was
feeding him with a spoon at the time, took the view that he was pointing at a
picture showing a small girl feeding a lamb. His daughter, Svetlana
Alliluyeva, who was also at his bedside, later claimed that he
appeared to be "bringing a curse on them all". Stalin then stopped breathing and
although attempts were made to revive him, his doctors eventually accepted he
was dead.
Three years after his death, Nikita Khrushchev, the new leader of the Soviet
Union, made a speech at the Twentieth Party Congress, where he attacked the
policies of Stalin. Khrushchev revealed how Stalin had been responsible for the
execution of thousands of loyal communists during the purges.
In the months that followed Khrushchev's speech, thousands of those people
imprisoned under Stalin were released. Those who had been in labour camps were
given permission to publish their experiences. The most notable of these was the
writer Alexander
Solzhenitsyn, whose powerful novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan
Denisovich, became a world-wide bestseller.
In 1962 the official party newspaper published a poem by the poet Yevgeni Yevtushenko called the Heirs of
Stalin. The poem describes the burial of Stalin but at the end suggests that
the problems are not yet over: "Grimly clenching his embalmed fists, just
pretending to be dead, he watched from inside. He was scheming. Had merely dozed
off. And I, appealing to our government, petition them to double, and treble,
the sentries guarding the slab, and stop Stalin from ever rising again."
After Khrushchev's revelations, attempts were made to erase Stalin's image
from the Soviet Union. Statues and portraits of Stalin were removed from public
places. Towns, streets and parks named after him were changed. Stalingrad, which had been closely associated
with his generalship during both the Civil War and the Second World War, was renamed Volgagrad. Even his
ashes were takes from the Kremlin Wall and placed elsewhere.
Although the superficial aspects of Stalinism was removed, the system that he
created remained. Stalin had developed a state apparatus that protected those in
power. It was a system that the Soviet leaders who were to follow him for the
next thirty years, were only too pleased to employ in order to prevent any
questioning of their policies. Writers like Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Yevgeni Yevtushenko were free to criticize Stalin
but not those currently in power. The excesses of Stalinism had been removed but
the structure of his totalitarian state remained until the emergence of Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s
by: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSstalin.htm