Stalin's Irony

Joseph Stalin was the most controversial person in Russia who has come into power. This has come from his 5 year plan that he has assembled when Russia was in shambles, due to the civil war, the economy failing, and no industrial equipment. His job now was to restore Russia and make it into an industrial powerhouse.

"I believe in one thing only, the power of human will" said Stalin once. He certainly did have cause to believe in the power of a human's will as he experienced it in himself firsthand, having had extraordinary willpower and perseverance (He didn't call himself "Man of Steel" for nothing, folks), rising up from the lowly station of alcoholic's son in Georgia to one of the biggest monsters in human history, supposedly killing more than Hitler. Exactly how did he do this? Why? And how did his corruption reach such extents as to do all this for power?

How does a leader gain and maintain the love of his people when he is killing them in mass numbers? Joseph Stalin was successful in this by following the political tactic of using fear to gain love. A tactic that was highly valued by Nicolo Machiavelli in his work The Prince. “In Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, the main character, and Old Bolshevik, Nikolaiz Rubashov, declares that “Number one” (Stalin) kept Machiavelli’s The Prince as his favorite night-table book” (Tisemanean). Stalin’s strategy of leadership can be closely compared to the strategies that Machiavelli describes in The Prince. A work that received much controversy over the lessons it preached to political leaders. It coined the phrase “the end justify the means” which follows as a consequence of considering vice a virtue. Stalin used many vices to gain and maintain his state till the day he died. Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn work, The First Circle, showcased how even on death’s door Stalin still used traits treasured in a Machiavellian prince. This paper will assess how Stalin follows Machiavelli’s guidelines for a prince in the areas of war, fear, crime, and in dealing with the people.

Question: How far did Stalin achieve and maintain what Kruchev described as “the accumulation of immense and limitless power”, in the USSR between 1924 and 1945?

In George Orwell’s 1984, the strategies used by Oceania’s Political Party to achieve total control over the population are similar to the ones employed by Joseph Stalin during his reign. Indeed, the tactics used by Oceania’s Party truly depicts the brutal totalitarian society of Stalin’s Russia. In making a connection between Stalin’s Russia and Big Brothers’ Oceania, each Political Party implements a psychological and physical manipulation over society by controlling the information and the language with the help of technology.

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.

Plato’s account of a tyrant is close to that of the “great” Soviet Leader, Joseph Stalin. In Book IX of the Republic, Glaucon notes that under a tyrannic rule, a city or state will be tragic and depressing; additionally, it is also stated that city will always experience more freedom and content under a king. (Bloom, 257). This account is a key factor in comparing Stalin with the Republic, as Stalin’s ambitions were similar with Plato’s descriptions. Using other descriptions from Plato’s Republic, it clear that Joseph Stalin fits Plato’s account of a tyrant. The Soviet regime under Joseph Stalin suffered greatly and the tyrant rule of Stalin was oppressive, restrictive, and produced great amounts of casualties. We are comparing how Plato’s account for a tyrant is accurate of the results of Joseph Stalin; that a city will experience freedom with kingship, as well as darkness and scrutiny under a tyranny.

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.

The 20th century was marked by many unforgettable events such as World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. Some of these events occurred because of the birth of a government system called totalitarianism. A totalitarian regime is gained either through legal or illegal means and transforms the entire society into a single party regime with the sole purpose of conquering society (Zani, 2003). One of the founding fathers of totalitarianism, Joseph Stalin, ruined the lives of many by taking complete control over their lives through brainwashing techniques and destroying their rights to express their opinion.

Yusef Komunyakaa and Eavan Boland illustrate their personal experiences in order to emphasize how mistakes or tragic events will follow you for the rest of your life. The events that occur personally will haunt you every second of your life until you come to terms with them. The poems “Facing It” and “The Necessity of Irony” both reflect on past memories by using similar language and tone in order to realize what is truly important in life for a better future.

While no one would think to compare children's books to the Cold War, Dr. Seuss did just that. Suess has wrote many children's book including The Butter Battle Book, Green Eggs and Ham, and The Lorax. Suess seems to have mastered the art of using an array of different craft in his books. Metaphors, irony, and parallel structure are all conveyed to make the book interesting and catch the reader's attention. Suess is excellent at using creative words such as walloping whizz-zinger, utterly sputter, and finally yooks and zooks to describe two different people to show the real meaning behind the story. Seuss’ writing may seem innocent to the eye, but behind the text there’s actually a cold meaning.

In this essay I’m going to be assessing Stalin’s significance between the years 1928-1941. It says in the oxford dictionary the definition of significance is ‘sufficiently great or important to be worthy of attention; noteworthy’. Joseph Stalin was the official dictator of the USSR from 1929-1953. He ruled by terror and thousands of people died during his regime. It is impossible to say that Stalin was not significant because the change in Russia between these years was astounding. He was able to transform Russia from a peasant society to a superpower nation. Could someone else have achieved what he did without causing so much destruction and chaos? Probably, but it would’ve taken a much longer time. I am going to cover the political,

The violent markings of the photo album and its images, however, produce an equally powerful message that jars the memory as it disrupts and distorts the photographic chronicle of her life and that of her family and friends. The result is a complex visual experience that addresses the use of images in producing knowledge and making history.

Joseph Stalin was the leader of the Soviet Union from 1922-1953, when he died. He was responsible for one of the most notable and devastating genocides, the Great Purge. His vicious reign took the lives of around 20-60 million people by his rigid and cruel treatment. Through his exploitation of the lower class and his manipulative abuse of power, Stalin created one of the worst examples of leadership in history. It takes an interesting character to be able to execute the cruelties displayed in his regime and the traits that Stalin developed into his cult of personality were likely acquired as a child and adolescent.

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