[534] Cautiously regarding the responses from the Western Allies, Stalin avoided immediately installing Communist Party governments across Eastern Europe, instead initially ensuring that Marxist-Leninists were placed in coalition ministries. Germany ended the pact by invading the Soviet Union in 1941. The Kremlin became home to Stalin, Trotsky, Sverdlov, and Lenin. [539] Privately, Stalin sought to ensure that Poland would come fully under Soviet influence. [880] He has also been labelled a "red fascist". Published April 3, 2022 Updated April 5, 2022 Joseph Stalin died on March 5, 1953, after apparently suffering a stroke but some suspect that he was actually poisoned. Yet he is increasingly paranoid and purges the Communist party and Army of anyone who might oppose him. February 9, 1946. [185] Although not so publicly well known as Lenin or Trotsky,[186] Stalin's importance among the Bolsheviks grew. [261] Stalin believed this would encourage independence sentiment among non-Russians, instead arguing that ethnic minorities would be content as "autonomous republics" within the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. [565] He ensured that returning Soviet prisoners of war went through "filtration" camps as they arrived in the Soviet Union, in which 2,775,700 were interrogated to determine if they were traitors. [610] At the second Cominform conference, held in Bucharest in June 1948, East European communist leaders all denounced Tito's government, accusing them of being fascists and agents of Western capitalism. [389] Stalin blamed the famine on hostile elements and sabotage within the peasantry;[390] his government provided small amounts of food to famine-struck rural areas, although this was wholly insufficient to deal with the levels of starvation. Theories proposed Stalin's involvement with Vladimir's death, in which Stalin later admitted to via letter. From 1934 to 1940 Stalin had vast numbers of government, party, and army officials murdered to satisfy his paranoid delusions that everyone was out to get him. [361] He also expressed patronage for scientists whose research fitted within his preconceived interpretation of Marxism; for instance, he endorsed research of an agrobiologist Trofim Lysenko despite the fact that it was rejected by the majority of Lysenko's scientific peers as pseudo-scientific. [638] He took increasingly long holidays; in 1950 and again in 1951 he spent almost five months on holiday at his Abkhazian dacha. [371] This preoccupation with opposing rival leftists concerned Bukharin, who regarded the growth of fascism and the far right across Europe as a far greater threat. [598] In September 1949 the Western powers transformed Western Germany into an independent Federal Republic of Germany; in response the Soviets formed East Germany into the German Democratic Republic in October. [714] Ultimately he believed that all nations would merge into a single, global human community,[714] and regarded all nations as inherently equal. [359] Socialist realism was promoted throughout arts,[360] while Stalin personally wooed prominent writers, namely Maxim Gorky, Mikhail Sholokhov, and Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy. We have fallen behind the advanced countries by fifty to a hundred years. [927] The Center, in 2019, reports that around 70% of Russians believe that Stalin played a positive role in their homeland. [634] Stalin's increasing tolerance of anti-Semitism may have stemmed from his increasing Russian nationalism or from the recognition that anti-Semitism had proved a useful mobilising tool for Hitler and that he could do the same;[635] he may have increasingly viewed the Jewish people as a "counter-revolutionary" nation whose members were loyal to the U.S.[636] There were rumours, although they have never been substantiated, that Stalin was planning on deporting all Soviet Jews to the Jewish Autonomous Region in Birobidzhan, eastern Siberia. [399] During the later 1930s, Stalin placed "a few limits on the worship of his own greatness". [1] [2] He has led campaigns against the militarisation of education in Sri Lanka. [862] One of them, Konstantin Kuzakov, later taught philosophy at the Leningrad Military Mechanical Institute, but never met Stalin. [581], In the post-war period there were often food shortages in Soviet cities,[582] and the USSR experienced a major famine from 1946 to 1947. [471], The speed of the German victory over and occupation of France in mid-1940 took Stalin by surprise. [340] The USSR underwent a massive economic transformation. [446] As it wound down, Stalin sought to deflect responsibility from himself,[447] blaming its "excesses" and "violations of law" on Yezhov. [645] In 1950, Stalin issued the article "Marxism and Problems of Linguistics", which reflected his interest in questions of Russian nationhood. [486] The German advance on Moscow was halted after two months of battle in increasingly harsh weather conditions. [394], In 193536, Stalin oversaw a new constitution; its dramatic liberal features were designed as propaganda weapons, for all power rested in the hands of Stalin and his Politburo. [176] Trotsky and other later Bolshevik opponents of Stalin used this as evidence that his role in the coup had been insignificant, although later historians reject this. This attack proved unsuccessful. [509] This resulted in the protracted Battle of Stalingrad. Joseph Stalin epitomised the 'New Prince', who Machiavelli described, somehow unifying love and fear whilst simultaneously pursuing his ambitious political plan for Russia. At that point, the country was only about a decade old and was. [372] His relationship with Nadezhda was also strained amid their arguments and her mental health problems. [170] Lenin returned to Petrograd and secured a majority in favour of a coup at a meeting of the Central Committee on 10 October. [929][930] At the same time, there was a growth in pro-Stalinist literature in Russia, much relying upon the misrepresentation or fabrication of source material. [937] In December 2010, unknown persons decapitated it and it was destroyed in a bomb attack in 2011. [429] That month, Stalin and Yezhov signed Order No. [57] Stalin organised another mass demonstration on the day of their funeral,[58] before being arrested in April 1902. [115] He escaped to Saint Petersburg,[116] where he was arrested in September 1911 and sentenced to a further three-year exile in Vologda. Since the 1920s, he'd ruled with an iron fist. [722] It has been argued that his ancestry was Ossetian, because his genetic haplotype (G2a-Z6653) is considered typical of the Ossetians, but he never acknowledged an Ossetian identity. His work is disregarded as polemical, but has a strange life online, where it is cited regularly by anyone who wants to score a quick victory for Mao. [719] The socio-economic nature of Stalin's Soviet Union has also been much debated, varyingly being labelled a form of state socialism, state capitalism, bureaucratic collectivism, or a totally unique mode of production. [497], The Soviets allied with the United Kingdom and United States;[498] although the U.S. joined the war against Germany in 1941, little direct American assistance reached the Soviets until late 1942. [939], Yevstafy Zhakov, a pastor of St. Olga Strelna near St. Petersburg, caused an uproar after he hung a portrait of Stalin among sacred images, stating: "I remember him [Stalin] on appropriate occasions, the day of his birthday, his death and that of Victory. [872] Under his rule, the average Soviet life expectancy grew due to improved living conditions, nutrition and medical care[873] as mortality rates also declined. [431] During these years, approximately 1.6million people were arrested,[432] 700,000 were shot, and an unknown number died under NKVD torture. Stalin presided over the Soviet post-war reconstruction and its development of an atomic bomb in 1949. [629] He was further angered by Israel's growing alliance with the U.S.[630] After Stalin fell out with Israel, he launched an anti-Jewish campaign within the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. [198] Stalin supported Lenin's desire to sign an armistice with the Central Powers regardless of the cost in territory. [607] Stalin did not personally attend the meeting, sending Zhdanov in his place. [126] After two months, Stalin and Sverdlov escaped back to Saint Petersburg. [727] Service also noted that Stalin "would never be Russian", could not credibly pass as one, and never tried to pretend that he was. [356], Stalin desired a "cultural revolution",[357] entailing both creation of a culture for the "masses" and wider dissemination of previously elite culture. [682] The historian Alfred J. Rieber noted that he had been raised in "a society where rebellion was deeply rooted in folklore and popular rituals". [144], In February 1913, Stalin was arrested while back in Saint Petersburg. Illness and Inhumanity in Stalin's Gulag", "Reactions of Chinese Citizens to the Death of Stalin: Internal Communist Party Reports", "Stalin, the Pact with Nazi Germany, and the Origins of Postwar Soviet Diplomatic Historiography", "The Scale and Nature of German and Soviet Repression and Mass Killings, 193045", "Controversy in Moscow: Stalin icon revered", "The Stalin Puzzle: Deciphering Post-Soviet Public Opinion", "Georgia Divided Over Stalin 'Local Hero' Status in Gori", "Russians name Stalin as the most 'outstanding' figure of all times", "Stalin as a Neo-Pagan Deity in Contemporary Russia", "Moscow's Memory Wars: Putin seeks to whitewash Russia's Stalinist past", "Josef Stalin: communist, murderer - saint? [664] That month featured a surge in arrests for "anti-Soviet agitation," as those celebrating Stalin's death came to police attention. A 2012 survey commissioned by the Carnegie Endowment found 38% of Armenians concurring that their country "will always have need of a leader like Stalin. [352] Aware that the ethnic Russian majority may have concerns about being ruled by a Georgian,[353] he promoted ethnic Russians throughout the state hierarchy and made the Russian language compulsory throughout schools and offices, albeit to be used in tandem with local languages in areas with non-Russian majorities. [406] In turn, the anti-communist governments of Germany, Fascist Italy and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact of 1936. 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was stalin a fair leader