Stalin And The Soviet Union

Throughout the 1920's and 30's Joseph Stalin was able to rise to power and build a totalitarian state. After Vladimir Lenin died in 1924, Stalin was able to maneuver his way to the top. Stalin was able to rise to power, build a totalitarian state, and was able to disrupt and transform soviet society by using propaganda.

Joseph Stalin was a callous dictator who governed the Soviet Union for nearly thirty years. He rose to power as the General Secretary of the Communist Party and became the dictator of Russia after Vladimir Lenin’s death in 1924. Stalin was known for his Marxist-Leninist ideology, but his policies soon became known as Stalinism. He rose through the ranks and became one of the most powerful leaders and communist revolutionaries that Russia had ever seen. A few of Stalin’s policies did in fact benefit the social, political and economic prosperity of the country, but overall, his leadership was detrimental to the Soviet Union and its people.

Between 1924 and 1945, Joseph Stalin was able to emerge as the leader of the USSR and maintain what Kruchev described as “the accumulation of immense and limitless power”. Stalin's rise to power was a combination of his ability to manipulate situations and the failure of others to prevent him from taking power, especially Leon Trotsky. Stalin ruled the USSR from 1929 until his death in 1953. His rule was one of tyranny, a great change from the society that his predecessor, Lenin, had envisioned. During his time of reign, Stalin put into effect two self-proclaimed "five-year

Almost everyone knows what a monster Adolf Hitler was, but most people do not know that one of the great ally leader of World War II, Joseph Stalin, had committed even greater atrocities than Hitler. Joseph Stalin was a ruthless and yet diligent dictator of the Soviet Union, whose rise to power influenced a multitude of major events in his country’s history. Due to Stalin’s impactful reign, he made the Soviet Union become a global superpower, underwent difficult hardships such as the Great Famine in the Soviet Union, and after his death, caused the Soviet Union to go through a process known as de-Stalinization.

Joseph Stalin greatly influenced Russia in the years 1924 through 1932. His rise to this power can be explained by the Russian Revolutionary experience that allowed him to gain authority in Russia. Although historians often refer to Stalin as a ruthless, mindless dictator, he redirected the Russian Revolution to major economic development. Stalin’s character in Russia during the Revolution catalyzed the many events that took place during the time period. Because of Stalin’s ability to both appeal to the masses, and take advantage of events, like Lenin’s death, Stalin was able to rise to power. Essentially, the Russian Revolution fostered the development of Stalin’s dictatorship leading the country into a state of economic growth and influence. The Revolution fostered Stalin’s ability to maintain a central leadership, use violence to gain control, and regenerate a previously disconnected economy.

Joseph Stalin was one of Russia’s most powerful and ruthless leaders. With his economic policies, he attained the favour of the struggling working class people and with the power he obtained from being a leader he eliminated the opposing party members. The concept of a ‘Five-Year-Plan’ was adopted by the Soviet Union as they sought escalated industrialization and controlled the economy where peasantry was directly in political power.

Throughout historical times, the rule of Josef Stalin has been questioned due to his position as being one of the most popular and contentious leaders. Through the evaluation of his ruling within the Soviet Union, he can be seen as both a positive and negative ruler. His methods of changing the country following World War I were sudden, causing a complete change in societal ways of life in controversial ways. While his changes created one of the most powerful countries the world had ever seen at its’ time, they also caused for massive discontent within the citizens of Soviet Russia.

Joseph Stalin was the political leader of the Soviet Union during the twentieth century. Stalin’s leadership style was most commonly defined as brutal due to him abolishing private ownership, as well as his numerous political purges that resulted in the deaths of thousands of officials within the communist party. While in the end Stalin did lead the Soviets to win World War II, a large number of lives were lost in the process.

There are many evil dictators, but one of Russia’s worst one, Joseph Stalin, changed history and impacted millions of lives. History.com stated that “Joseph Stalin (1878-1953) was the dictator of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) from 1929 to 1953” (1). He forced his way into being the complete ruler of the Soviet Union. Stalin had a 5-year plan in which he would make the Soviet Union an industrial superpower, and he ended up killing around 20 million people to get his way Although people feared him and his punishments, there were people who wrote about the events that took place during his reign.

I see the picture on the left to be as Stalin to be as a caring person.He seems to care about his citizens. He was portrayed as good person which then brings you to the second picture.In the right he is seen as a communist ruler and seems a little majestic. I believe that the one on the left is when the United States saw Russia as a problem because we believed they would spread their communist views. We can learn from these pictures that we shifted from allies to enemy. One is while the U.S.A was allies with Russia and the other on the left is when we feared communism the Red Scare.

Joseph Stalin ruled as dictator of the Union Soviet Socialists Republic (USSR) from 1929-1923. Stalin manipulated and outmanoeuvred his political opponents for control of the party. During his rule Stalin used terror and violence to transform the Soviet Union from a peasant society to an industrial and military superpower, killing millions along the way (http://www.history.com/topics/joseph-stalinv). Stalin was born in rural Georgia, Russia in 1879. By the time of his birth, the Georgia nation had become disaffected by the years of Russian domination through the forced assimilation of ethnic minorities and suppression of its distinctive culture under tsarist rule (Joseph Stalin, A Biographical Companion). Stalin attended a seminary school where he began secretly reading the works of Karl Marx and became interested in the revolutionary movement against the Russian monarchy. Stalin was eventually expelled from the seminary for missing too many exams. After Stalin was expelled he began taking part in labor strikes and demonstrations, which eventually led him to join the Bolsheviks (a militant wing of the Marxist Social Democratic,) led by Vladimir Lenin. In 1912, Lenin

Stalin’s “revolution from above” reshaped the Soviet Union through his many policies including his Five Year Plans, industrialization and collectivization. The Soviet Union was transformed from technologically backward to industrialized. Carter’s view that history is driven from above or from below relates to Fitzpatrick and Bailes’ essays because they show that Stalin’s policies to create a new elite were prompted by the social mobility of the working class. The education of the working class and the fact that the Communists were mainly working class prompted Stalin to put anti-intelligentsia policies in place in order. The working class became more educated and technically skilled while also being promoted to higher, more powerful administrative positions. Praktiki were those who were promoted without being formally educated because they were loyal to Stalin and had practical experience. This shows that the new elite was created through the upward mobility of the technically educated and those who were not. Stalin’s polices were created as a result of what was happening in the working class. The creation of the new elite shows that while this elite acted as the administration and policy makers of the Soviet Union, they had come from below, the working class. The social mobility of the lower classes may have caused them to be more supportive of the government and this would influence the history of Russia as a whole. The elite was created by Stalin and was aimed to

Stalin ruled up until his own death in 1953. He was known as a brutal leader who was responsible for the deaths of over 20 million people.

Joseph Stalin, leader of Russia (1928-1953), created a Five-Year Plan that included methods and goals which were detrimental to Russian agriculture in 1928. Stalin wanted to transform individual farms into large collective farms because he saw that the government was losing money to private traders. This required that the majority of farmers would have to work and live together on large state-run farms. Through these farms Stalin hoped to increase agricultural productivity, to create grain reserves for Russia, and to free many peasants for industrial work in the cities. In order to begin collectivization Stalin had about 5 million wealthier peasants, or kulaks, deported and/or killed and their equipment and livestock sent to collective farms.

Joseph Stalin’s three decade long dictatorship rule that ended in 1953, left a lasting, yet damaging imprint on the Soviet Union in political, economic and social terms. “Under his inspiration Russia has modernised her society and educated her masses…Stalin found Russia working with a wooden plough and left her equipped with nuclear power” (Jamieson, 1971). Although his policies of collectivisation and industrialisation placed the nation as a leading superpower on the global stage and significantly ahead of its economic position during the Romanov rule, this was not without huge sacrifices. Devastating living and working standards for the proletariat, widespread famine, the Purges, and labour camps had crippling impacts on Russia’s social