Its the empowerment of ordinary people. Lenin said, No, nationalism is around, its part of the capitalist bourgeois stage of history, and we must recognize its power. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything. Astrological Sign: Sagittarius, Church school (Gori, Georgia, Russian Empire), Death Year: 1953, Death date: March 5, 1953, Death City: Moscow, Death Country: Russia, Article Title: Joseph Stalin Biography, Author: Biography.com Editors, Website Name: The Biography.com website, Url: https://www.biography.com/political-figures/joseph-stalin, Publisher: A&E Television Networks, Last Updated: September 4, 2019, Original Published Date: April 3, 2014. Dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn chronicled the harsh regime in Stalin's Gulag camps, and was persecuted for it. for example, when he remilitarised the rhineland or 'anschlussed' with Austria, do you think his What were Joseph Stalins dreams and ambitions? "The death of Stalin on March 5, 1953, caused the only possible. With Soviet troops liberating countries in Eastern Europe, Stalin was again in a strong position and negotiated virtually a free hand in reorganizing their governments. Joseph Stalin rose to power as General Secretary of the .css-47aoac{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-decoration-thickness:0.0625rem;text-decoration-color:inherit;text-underline-offset:0.25rem;color:#A00000;-webkit-transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;}.css-47aoac:hover{color:#595959;text-decoration-color:border-link-body-hover;}Communist Party in Russia, becoming a Soviet dictator after the death of Vladimir Lenin. But in the following decades the Soviet authorities covered up the true scale of Stalin's crimes. Even Lenin, who was gravely ill, was helpless to regain control from Stalin. In the Soviet army, it takes more courage to retreat than advance. Stalin's first act after becoming leader was to expel his rivals, including Trotsky in 1929. Karl Kautsky, the great theorist of German social democracy, came to the country and wrote a book called Georgia: A Social-Democratic Peasant Republic, praising this democratic experiment. Ordinary people eventually have to go back home, make a living, take care of the kids, make dinner. To attempt to give a simple answer to this question is tempting but not really useful. Others wanted this extraterritorial national cultural autonomy. Instead of saying our enemies are Russians or Armenians, which is the position the nationalists took, these Marxists said our enemy is the autocracy and the oppressive regime, not the Russians per se. Many were exiled abroad to Europe and the Americas, including presumed Lenin successor Leon Trotsky. Any resistance was met with swift and lethal response; millions of people were exiled to the labor camps of the Gulag or were executed. And they were against capitalism and the bourgeoisie, not the Armenians per se. Its not hard to explain why. Thats what made Stalin successful. He thought it wasnt necessarily an enemy of the Bolsheviks, that they could live with it. Advertisement Advertisement In his memoirs, Trotsky judged Stalin to be basically irrelevant to the revolutionary upheavals of 1905 and 1917. Mao Zedong (L) and Josef Stalin (R) were the two most powerful leaders in the communist world at the time (two photos have been merged together to create this image) By Steven Rosenberg. But Stalin still wanted everyone in the Communist Party and Soviet government to bend to his will. He also agreed to enter the war against Japan once Germany was defeated. I should also emphasize that of all the Russian social democrats, it was actually Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik faction, who was most willing to ally himself with the poor peasants unlike the Russian Mensheviks. Stalin was the gravedigger of the revolution. My biography is not psychoanalytical. Why Bolshevism? Coming to pick his girlfriend up after work, he slowly began to gain the trust of the inhabitants of the house: he was invited in, he showed interest towards Trotskys ideas and brought presents for his grandson. The movement was started by the peasants, who then looked for leaders. But since 2015, across all age groups, the proportion of those with favourable opinions on Stalin has risen steadily. Stalins other great talent was he could take the very sophisticated ideas of Lenin, like the ones Ive described in What Is to Be Done?, simplify and articulate them in ways that were very boring to other intellectuals but were effective in convincing ordinary people, workers, or whomever of his points of view. Stalin is also considered one of the most dangerous totalitarian leaders in history, his violent excesses often compared to those of Adolf Hitler. He is currently more popular in Russia now than at any time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, thanks to a rehabilitation campaign by Russian president Vladimir Putin. Who was Stalin? That was one motivation. Stalin is seen as the main figure who defeated fascism, who gets the honours for victory in the Great Patriotic War. This only deepened Stalin's suspicion of the West, as millions of Russians died. What motivated you to write this particular book? The son of Besarion Jughashvili, a cobbler, and . The Allies responded with the massive Berlin Airlift, supplying the city and eventually forcing Stalin to back down. Josef Stalin served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union 's Central Committee from 1922 until his death in 1953. 1. Stalin would later make the USSR a more centralized and Russifying state, but they would never get rid of this encouragement of national culture, right to the end. I learned Georgian, which is very difficult. Lenin did not want to ally with the bourgeois liberals and said, No, dont be afraid of that. What's he waiting for? It's estimated that Stalin killed as many as 20 million people, directly or indirectly, through famine, forced labor camps, collectivization and executions. When the Kremlin tried to kill Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, his wife launched an epic battle to save his lifeand became the face of the resistance to Vladimir Putin. Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was born on December 18, 1878, in Gori, Georgia. Lenin resolved this conflict in favor of Trotsky. But whats very interesting is that, in the 1890s, certain Georgian intellectuals, many of whom came out of the same religious Orthodox seminary that Stalin would go through, migrated to Poland and to Russia and came back with what was then the most progressive, Western, revolutionary, modernizing philosophy: Marxism. Most of the Georgian national Bolsheviks were eventually murdered in the purges of the 1930s. At a young age, his family was . Stalin cut a cake and laid wreaths at the samadhis of former Chief Ministers M Karunanidhi and CN Annadurai on the Marina beachfront . In his lifetime he was worshipped by. He left a legacy of death and horror, even as he turned a backward Russia into a world superpower. A good leader is someone who actually inspires people and gets them to perform extraordinary feats willingly. On August 20, 1940, Mercader brought a text in support of the Fourth International to the revolutionary, asking him to evaluate it this was his excuse for a visit on the day of the assassination. The mainstream Georgian social democrats also wound up shifting their approach to the national question once they took power. Atop it, additional commentary mused: A loyal henchman of Joseph Stalin's while he was alive, Nikita Khrushchev went against him after the fearsome leader died. Surprisingly, perhaps, it soon moved from being the ideology of this intellectual elite to the national liberation movement of Georgians. It destroyed many of the important achievements that were won earlier. He entered into a relationship with one of Trotskys secretaries with a fake Canadian passport as Frank Jackson. Leon Trotsky (1879-1940), was the co-leader of the 1917 Russian Revolution, socialist opponent of Joseph Stalin, founder of the Fourth International, and strategist of world socialist revolution . cstepshs123. What role did Stalin actually play, not just in the Bolshevik faction but in the social-democratic movement as a whole? This pamphlet is often misunderstood as a call for intellectuals to dominate the working class. mriedel17. Millions were killed in forced labor or starved during the ensuing famine. But when the workers were spontaneously getting active and revolutionary, Lenin wanted to celebrate that. Chennai, Mar 1 (PTI) DMK President and Chief Minister M K Stalin turned 70 on Wednesday and his party and supporters are celebrating his birthday across Tamil Nadu with fervour and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a host of leaders wished him on the occasion. Joseph Stalin was the dictator of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) from 1929 to 1953. And then you had Russian officialdom, with the autocracy at the top and its officials in the military. 1 March, 2023 09:00 am IST. But Stalinism was the nadir of the Soviet experiment. Im sure this was not the goal of the people who ran it. The leader of the Nazi party has remained universally reviled and detested as a psychopathic despot motivated by bigotry, racism and a deluded belief in Aryan superiority. Although formally known as the country's premier from 1941 until his own death in 1953 at age 74, Stalin was a brutal dictator who slaughtered many of his own citizens as he transformed the country into a major global power. Why did the Bolsheviks overthrow it, and what role did Stalin play in the decision? But he was not a good leader. Dravidian leader MK Stalin is at a seminal moment in his political career. Educators go through a rigorous application process, and every answer they submit is reviewed by our in-house editorial team. 2023 eNotes.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Later on, in 1905, Lenin put the argument of What Is to Be Done? So why this love affair with a leader who caused so much suffering? As war clouds gathered over Europe in 1939, Stalin made a seemingly brilliant move, signing a nonaggression pact with Germany's Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party. What did the Gilded Age reformers have in common with Jackson era reformers? Why is the Elizabethan age called the Golden Age of England? Ronald Suny has devoted his life to studying the history of the Soviet Union and the countries of the South Caucasus. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images). Theres no shortage of material on Stalin out there. The Russian Mensheviks wanted to ally with bourgeois liberals and were worried about scaring them off into reaction. It was 6:40 on . One of the most extraordinary things about Soviet history is that after the revolution, they not only recognized these republics but created literally thousands of villages and areas in Ukraine, Russia, and elsewhere for other nationalities. Demonized by the western propaganda, we fought very hard against. Inshallah. What crisis occurred in Italy that allowed Mussolini to take power? This website uses cookies. This, they say, is evidence that Stalin must have been a good leader. The latter was the main associate of the undisputed leader of the Bolsheviks Vladimir Lenin. On March 5, 1953, Joseph Stalin died of a stroke. My parents spoke it, but not to me. It's complicated. What was the DRG? He didnt himself go into the archives, he doesnt know Georgian, and Im not sure how good his Russian is, even. Some scholars have argued that Stalin's record of killings amount to genocide and make him one of history's most ruthless mass murderers. Which of these was Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's primary goal during negotiations with Britain and the United States at Yalta and Potsdam? Theyll turn into our enemies as they did in 1848 and 1871 with the Paris Commune. The official ideology of a totalitarian nation is focused on creating and promoting nationalism Totalitarian governments are often controlled by a single political party because the party's members can be counted on to follow the leader's ideology. Just after the turn of the century, in 1902, local peasants in a place called Guria in western Georgia revolted against their landlords. This essentially reduced the peasants back to serfs, as they had been during the monarchy. Stalin was opposed to the views of others like the Georgian Mensheviks, or the Jewish Bund, or the Austro-Marxists, who argued for something that you can call extraterritorial national cultural autonomy. This would mean that citizens of the state carry their ethnicity and nationality around with them wherever they live in the state. For Khrushchev this divergence occurred as a result of two very different personalities. Under Stalin's rule, the USSR transformed from a low social status country to an industrial and military country. Its led by social democrats, but its policies are what you would call bourgeois democratic. Stalin would have been a good mafia boss, or corporate CEO. Stalin and the few Georgian Bolsheviks who remained loyal to Lenin were left high and dry, generals without an army. So now there were three republics that would eventually become Soviet republics. Why was Georgia, an isolated country with a very small industrial working class, one of social democracys biggest strongholds? The movement was started by the peasants, who then looked for leaders. aside and said, Workers are now out in the streets. The Death of Stalin was one of the most acclaimed films of recent years. To be fair, it needs to be noted that fear of competition was far from the only reason for Stalin to fight Trotsky. HOME; ABOUT; EQUIPMENT; SERVICES; CONTACT; was stalin a fair leader Theres a funny anecdote which is probably not true, but its illustrative. A year later, Stalin came in contact with Messame Dassy, a secret organization that supported Georgian independence from Russia. Convinced of the Allies' hostility toward the Soviet Union, Stalin became obsessed with the threat of an invasion from the West. He married Eva Braun on April 30, 1945. Stalins great talent was what a friend of mine, Paul Gregory, called the ground game. Rather than just writing articles (which he did) or speaking to crowds, he worked at organizing and getting to people in the factories, working with people and trying to agitate them into action on the streets. Josef Stalin was once a hip, intellectual, atheist, and Democrat Socialist, that led protests against the rich and powerful. Stalin was called off from the front to Moscow, but, soon after, he was appointed as a member of the Revolutionary Military Council. The latter was the main associate of the undisputed leader of the Bolsheviks - Vladimir Lenin.The influence and authority of Trotsky were so large that, after the October Revolution, he could rise to the position of the head of the new government . At age 7, he contracted smallpox, leaving his face scarred. Beauregid Genden is a shrewd and proud politician. It's also speculated he was asked to leave due to his political views challenging the tsarist regime of Nicholas II. 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