Stalin 's Influence On The Soviet Union

Joseph Stalin. One of the Russias most supreme leaders. But one of its most horrid as well. He brought them up while also letting them down. Some could say where would we be without him. But others wish they never were led by him. He went from nothing to the most powerful man in the now most powerful country.

Factors that Helped Stalin in his Rise to Power Following the death of Lenin in 1922, it was simply a matter of time before one member of the Politburo, who announced they would be acting as a collective leadership, gained individual power. The successful individual was Stalin, who hailing from humble beginnings, rose up through the ranks to become the brutal and ruthless dictator of the Soviet State. Stalin managed to do this not simply because of his personal strengths or brilliances, neither was it purely down to luck. It was due to a combination of factors, some concerning Stalin's actions and his opportunist ways, some to do with his opponents such as Trotsky and their fundamental weaknesses,

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.

From the 1920's onwards, Stalin set the stage for gaining absolute power, through a number of campaigns of repression against groups which opposed the Communist Party and Stalin himself. The use of terror became a central part to Stalin's rule during the 1930's with the launching of The Great Purges against opposition to Stalin. It can be seen that Stalin did effectively remove opposition to the exercise of his personal power until 1941 when Germany invaded Russia. The term 'purge' in Soviet political slang was an abbreviation of the expression 'purge of the party ranks.'

Khrushchev was born on April, 15, 1894 in Kalinovka, a small town near the Ukraine border. He joined the communist Bolsheviks in 1918, which was more than a year after they seized power in the Russian Revolution. During the Russian Civil War, his first wife died of typhus, leaving him with 2 children. He remarried and had four more kids.

Joseph Stalin was in office for Russia for thirty years, he was the General Secretary of the central committee of the communist party of the Soviet Union. He died March fifth in the year of 1953, and he lived to the age of seventy four. He was married to Ekaterina Svanidze, then later re-married to Nadezhda Alliluyeva. Stalin was also father to three children.

To what extent did Stalin’s rule mar the key turning point in Russia’s political development 1856-1953?

Pyotr Stolypin is one of the key figures of the Russian Revolution who earned “a reputation for suppressing revolutionaries.” (Perfect, Ryan, & Sweeney, 2008) He was appointed Prime Minster in August 1906 after serving as Minister for the Interior from April that same year (Trueman). “One of Stolypin’s great strengths as a politician was his ability to wait and observe rather than make an immediate decision” (Trueman). Stolypin’s responsibilities and roles as Prime Minister included looking after Russian peasants in which he showed by issuing a series of agricultural reforms, he said “It is impossible to resolve this issue once and for all – it must be tackled over a certain period of time.” As he was fixated on laying an appropriate foundation so that Russia can be brought from its troubles and given a bright future (Valdai, 2011). He also organised public trials which saw terrorists and criminals executed.

Joseph Stalin life ended bearing a reputation of being a brutal dictator that killed, destroyed his people. His wish for a new start meant inevitable death for millions. Stalin ruled for nearly three decades in which he transformed the Soviet Union from an agricultural economy into an industrialized society, He led his country during WWII and played a major role in the defeat of Germany’s Hitler. The Soviet Union was turned into a superpower to stand beside the United States. But Stalin’s dark side was apparent in immeasurable arrests, purges, deportations and executions which earned him the reputation the cruelest leaders in modern history.

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

Politically one could argue Joseph Stalin was a good Marxist by his ability to completely transform the Soviet Union. Stalin was able to have it become an extremely powerful nation from being more of a middle-class peasant society. In the moral aspect, Stalin’s methods of achieving this powerful nation were highly distasteful and he significantly distorted Marxism/ Therefore in my opinion, I do not think he was a good Marxist. During his barbarous reign, millions of his citizens died due to his rulings of utter terror. Stalin intended to get rid of the Communist party along with the military and certain parts of the Soviet Union because he considered them to be a threat.

Stalin, whose original name was Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, was born on Dec. 21, 1879, in the Caucasian town of Gori, Georgia. He was the only one of four children to survive infancy. His father, Vissarion Dzhugashvili, an unsuccessful cobbler, entered a factory in Tiflis, took to drink, and died in 1890 from wounds received in a brawl. However, his mother, Yekaterina, kept the family together by taking in washing and sewing, hiring out for housework, and nursing young Joseph through various sicknesses including smallpox and septicemia, which left his left arm slightly crippled for life. An illiterate peasant girl herself, Yekaterina was deeply religious, puritanical, ambitious, and intent on securing for her son

Joseph Stalin was born Ioseb Djugashvili in Gorgi, Georgia. He was the third son of Yekaterina and Vissarion Djugashvili, and the only one to survive past infancy. His parents had a violent marriage, with Vissarion beating hos wife and son. His parents had very different ambitions for Stalin, with his mother encouraging him to become a Russian Orthodox priest and his father believing that a working class life was good enough for Stalin. When his father returned from Tiflis to bring Stalin back to the factory, in which he worked, to become an apprentice cobbler brought the argument to a head. His mother brought Stalin back to Gorgi, and got him back on the path of attending seminary. After this incident, Vissarion ended the marriage.

Why was Stalin able to achieve total power in the USSR by the end of the 1920’s?

World war two saw a grand alliance of Britain, America and Russia created in order to defeat their common enemy, Adolf Hitler. In pursuit of this goal they attended a number of conferences to plan their attacks and to decide on the future of post war Europe. At Teheran in 1943 Churchill voiced concerns about the post-war situation in Eastern Europe, he was afraid that victory over the Nazis would leave the USSR in control of Eastern Europe. To prevent this from happening he proposed that the Anglo-American’s open up a second front in the Balkans. Stalin rejected this proposal as he knew it would thwart his plan to extend his ‘sphere of influence’ in Eastern Europe after the war, and insisted the