What year did Stalin live in? Birth of Donetsk: the city of Stalin. The role of Joseph Stalin in the Great Patriotic War
Childhood and youth of the future ruler
Joseph Dzhugashvili (real name of the ruler) was born in the small Georgian town of Gori in 1879, on December 21. His family was not rich, they belonged to the lower class. His father worked as a shoemaker, and his mother was the daughter of a serf. Joseph was the third child, but he grew up alone, because his older brother and sister died when they were children. Joseph himself was not a completely healthy child. One of his defects was that the toes on his left foot had grown together. In addition, Joseph had problems with the skin of his face and back.When little Soso (a diminutive name) was seven years old, his left hand deteriorated. He received this injury after the boy was hit by a phaeton.
Among other things, Soso's father, Vissarion, was very fond of drinking, and in a state of alcoholic intoxication beat his wife and boy more than once. Stalin noted how in one of these cases, he threw a knife at his father and almost killed him. Soon Vissarion left the family and began to wander. The date and time of his death remain a mystery to this day. Stalin's neighbor, Iosif Iremashvili, spoke of seeing Stalin's father killed in a drunken brawl. According to another version, Vissarion died a natural death. 
The mother of the future ruler, Ketevan Geladze, was a strict and wise woman, but she loved her child very much and dreamed of making him a successful career. Ketevan saw her son as a priest. Stalin's mother died in 1937. Joseph could not attend the funeral, giving his opponents a reason to talk about the fact that there was a bad relationship between mother and son.
In 1888, Stalin was able to enter an Orthodox institution in the city of Gori. After graduating from college, he was enrolled in the spiritual institution of Tiflis. At this very time, he joined the ranks of the revolutionaries, having studied the teachings of Marxism. Stalin studied excellently, all subjects were given to him very easily and he never experienced problems with this. While studying at the seminary, Joseph becomes the head of the Marxist movement, actively engaged in propaganda.
Joseph could not graduate from the institution, he was expelled for absenteeism and failure to appear for tests. He was given a document allowing him to work as a tutor. For some time he had to earn money through tutoring. At the beginning of 1900, he was admitted to the Tiflis Observatory of Physical Phenomena as a calculator.
Road to Power
After Stalin was admitted to the observatory, a new stage of his life began. He began to promote Marxism with even more activity, thanks to which the position of the future manager of the Soviet Union was strengthened. He began to engage in revolutionary affairs. In 1905, he personally met Vladimir Lenin and other influential revolutionaries. In 1912, Joseph definitely decided to change his last name and became Stalin. The origin of this pseudonym is unknown, but there is a version that this is the correct translation from Georgian into Russian of his real name. In Georgian, "dzhuga" means "steel".
Before becoming the ruler of the USSR, Stalin had to go through a lot and endure. From 1913 to 1917 he spent in exile. While in prison, Joseph often corresponded with Vladimir Ilyich. After the February Revolution, he came back to Petrograd.
Upon arrival in Petrograd, Lenin appoints Stalin to the post of People's Commissar for Nationalities. Joseph received a seat in the Council of People's Commissars. Lenin decided to appoint Stalin to this position for his article "Marxism and the national question", which greatly impressed the "leader". The future ruler gained a reputation as the chief expert on nationalities.
The next stage on the road to Stalin's rule was the Civil War. From 1918 to 1922, with a short break, Stalin was in the Revolutionary Military Council. The civil war was a great experience for the future ruler. According to one of the historians, the Civil War contributed to the development of Stalin's military-political qualities. Here he led large troops on several fronts, including the defense of Tsaritsyn and Petrograd.
Most famous historians noted that during the defense of Tsaritsyn, there were disagreements between Stalin and Voroshilov with Trotsky. Trotsky accused these two of insubordination, and the leader was dissatisfied with the great confidence in the "counter-revolutionary" military experts.
In 1922, at the next Plenum of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), Joseph Stalin was appointed General Secretary of the Party. Formally, he led only the party apparatus, and Lenin was still considered the leader of the party and the whole people.
At the same time, Lenin became seriously ill and could no longer engage in politics. In his absence, Stalin, Kamenev and Zinoviev organized the so-called "troika", the main purpose of which was to oppose Trotsky. The members of the "troika" held good positions and had influence. Trotsky was the head of the Red Army. 
In September 1922, Joseph Stalin showed a penchant for Russian autocracy. He developed a plan according to which all the nearest republics were to become part of the RSFSR as autonomous ones. This action of Stalin caused indignation among almost everyone, even Lenin. Under his personal pressure, the republics became part of the union with all the possibilities of statehood.
After that, the state of Lenin's health worsened even more, and the struggle for power began. Stalin turned out to be the strongest of all the contenders. In fact, he was the ruler of the state, gradually eliminating all his opponents. In the end, he got his way and became the chairman of the government of the Soviet Union.
Already in 1930, the board was completely concentrated in the hands of Joseph Stalin. Very great anxiety and perestroika began in the Soviet Union. This time was one of the most terrible in the history of our country. There were mass repressions, collectivization, which eventually led to the death of millions of peasants. Ordinary workers were deprived of food and forced to starve. All the products that were taken from the peasants, the ruler of the USSR sold abroad. The profit earned from the products, the leader invested in the development of the industry, thereby making the Union in the shortest possible time the second country in the world in terms of industrial production. Only the price of such a rise was too high.
The years of Stalin's power
In 1940, Stalin's power was undeniable, he was the sole leader of the Soviet Union. It is no secret that under Stalin we had a totalitarian regime in our state, he was a dictator. Stalin is known, of course, for his ruling power, he was extremely efficient. The ruler knew how to make the most important decision in the shortest possible time. He managed to control absolutely all the processes that took place in the state. All actions were coordinated with him personally, he knew about everything that was happening in the USSR.During the years of his reign at the helm of the Soviet Union, Stalin was able to achieve truly great results. Experts in the field of history highly appreciate his contribution to the development of the USSR. Despite his tough management style, he was able to lead the USSR as a winner in the Great Patriotic War, thanks to him agriculture became more active. He was able to make his state a superpower, which argued with greatness and power only with the United States. The USSR had a huge geopolitical influence in the world, and all this thanks to Joseph Vissarionovich. 
However, the way in which such greatness was achieved, even now, frightens and horrifies many. The basis for governing the country for Stalin was dictatorship, violence, terror. Many accuse him of major murders of scientists and engineers, which caused great harm to the scientific activities of the state.
Despite this, many people who grew up in the USSR deeply respect Stalin and consider him a great man, an outstanding ruler and an honorary citizen.
Personal life
Stalin at one time did everything so that no one knew about his personal life. However, historians, despite all the efforts of the ruler, still managed to restore the sequence of events. The first marriage of the ruler happened in 1906, Ekaterina Svanidze became his chosen one. She gave birth to a son, who received the name Jacob. After living with Stalin for a year, Catherine fell ill with typhus and died.Stalin's second and last marriage happened 14 years later, in 1920. This time, Nadezhda Alliluyeva became his wife, who was able to give birth to his daughter Svetlana and son Vasily. 12 years after the marriage, Stalin turned out to be a widower twice. Nadezhda committed suicide as a result of a quarrel with her husband. This was the last marriage of the ruler.
Death of Stalin
The death of the ruler occurred in 1953, on March 5. Soviet doctors determined that the cause of death was a cerebral hemorrhage. After the autopsy, it turned out that Stalin suffered several strokes during his lifetime, which caused heart problems.At first, Stalin's body was placed in the Mausoleum next to Lenin, but after 9 years it was decided to rebury the ruler near the Kremlin. There are many versions about the death of the ruler. Many believe that his subordinates specifically did not allow doctors to see the ruler so that they could not raise Stalin. His associates did this because they considered his policy to be wrong in governing the state.
The period when Stalin was in power was marked by mass repressions in 1937-1939. and 1943, sometimes directed against entire social strata and ethnic groups, the destruction of prominent figures of science and art, the persecution of the Church and religion in general, the forced industrialization of the country, which turned the USSR into a country with one of the most powerful economies in the world, collectivization, which led to the death of the country's agriculture, the mass exodus of peasants from the countryside and the famine of 1932-1933, the victory in the Great Patriotic war, the establishment of communist regimes in Eastern Europe, the transformation of the USSR into a superpower with a huge military-industrial potential, the beginning cold war. Russian public opinion regarding Stalin's personal merit or responsibility for the listed phenomena has not yet been finally formed.
Name and aliases
Stalin's real name is Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili (his name and the name of his father in Georgian sound like Ioseb and Besarion), the diminutive name is Soso. A version appeared very early, according to which the surname Dzhugashvili was not Georgian, but Ossetian (Dzugaty / Dzugaev), which was only given a Georgian form (the sound “dz” was replaced by “j”, the ending of Ossetian surnames “you” was replaced by the Georgian “shvili”) . Before the revolution, Dzhugashvili used a large number of pseudonyms, in particular, Besoshvili (Beso is a diminutive of Vissarion), Nizheradze, Chizhikov, Ivanovich. Of these, in addition to Stalin, the most famous pseudonym was "Koba" - as is usually believed (based on the opinion of Stalin's childhood friend Iremashvili), by the name of the hero of Kazbegi's novel "The Parricide", a noble robber who, according to Iremashvili, was the idol of young Soso . According to V. Pokhlebkin, the pseudonym came from the Persian king Kavad (in another spelling Kobades), who conquered Georgia and made Tbilisi the capital of the country, whose name in Georgian sounds Koba. Kavad was known as a supporter of Mazdakism, a movement that promoted early communist views. Traces of interest in Persia and Kavad are found in Stalin's speeches of 1904-07. The origin of the pseudonym "Stalin", as a rule, is associated with the Russian translation of the ancient Georgian word "dzhuga" - "steel". Thus, the pseudonym "Stalin" is a literal translation into Russian of his real name.
During the Great Patriotic War, he was usually addressed not by his first name or patronymic or military rank (“Comrade Marshal (Generalissimo) of the Soviet Union”), but simply “Comrade Stalin.”
Childhood and youth
He was born on December 6 (18), 1878 (according to the entry in the metric book of the Gori Assumption Cathedral Church) in Georgia in the city of Gori, although starting from 1929 [source?] His birthday was officially considered December 9 (21), 1879. He was the third son in family, the first two died in infancy. His native language was Georgian, Stalin learned Russian later, but always spoke with a noticeable Georgian accent. According to Svetlana's daughter, however, Stalin sang in Russian with virtually no accent.
He grew up in poverty, in the family of a shoemaker and the daughter of a serf. Father Vissarion (Beso) drank, beat his son and wife; Later, Stalin recalled how, as a child, he threw a knife at his father in self-defense and nearly killed him. Subsequently, Beso left home and wandered. The exact date of his death is unknown; Stalin's peer Iremashvili claims he was stabbed to death in a drunken brawl when Soso was 11 years old (perhaps confusing it with his brother Georgy); according to other sources, he died a natural death and much later. Stalin himself considered him alive back in 1909. Mother Ketevan (Keke) Geladze was known as a strict woman, but who passionately loved her son and sought to make him a career, which she associated with the position of a priest. According to some reports (which are mainly held by opponents of Stalin), his relationship with his mother was cool. Stalin did not come to her funeral in 1937, but only sent a wreath with an inscription in Russian and Georgian: "Dear and beloved mother from her son Joseph Dzhugashvili (from Stalin)". Perhaps his absence was due to the trial of Tukhachevsky that unfolded in those days.
In 1888, Joseph entered the Gori Theological School. In July 1894, after graduating from college, Joseph was noted as the best student. His certificate contains fives in many subjects. Here is a snippet of his certificate:
A pupil of the Gori Theological School, Dzhugashvili Joseph ... entered the first grade of the school in September 1889 and, with excellent behavior (5), made progress:
According to the sacred history of the Old Testament - (5)
Best of the day
According to the Sacred History of the New Testament - (5)
By Orthodox Catechism - (5)
Explanation of worship with the church charter - (5)
Russian with Church Slavonic - (5)
Greek - (4) very good
Georgian - (5) excellent
Arithmetic - (4) very good
Geography - (5)
Calligraphy - (5)
Church singing:
Russian - (5)
and Georgian - (5)
In September of the same 1894, Joseph, having brilliantly passed the entrance exams, was enrolled in the Orthodox Theological Seminary in Tiflis (Tbilisi). Not having completed the full course of study, he was expelled from the seminary in 1899 (according to the official Soviet version, for promoting Marxism, according to the documents of the seminary - for failing to appear for the exam). In his youth, Soso always strove to be a leader and studied well, scrupulously doing his homework.
Memoirs of Joseph Iremashvili
Iosif Iremashvili, a friend and classmate of the young Stalin at the Tiflis Theological Seminary, was expelled from the USSR in 1922 after being released from prison. In 1932, a book of his memoirs was published in Berlin. German"Stalin and the tragedy of Georgia" (German "Stalin und die Tragoedie Georgiens"), which covered the youth of the then leader of the CPSU (b) in a negative light. According to Iremashvili, young Stalin was characterized by vindictiveness, vindictiveness, deceit, ambition and lust for power. According to him, the humiliation suffered in childhood made Stalin “cruel and heartless, like his father. He was convinced that a person to whom other people should obey should be like his father, and therefore he soon developed a deep dislike for all who were above him in position. From childhood, revenge became the goal of his life, and he subordinated everything to this goal. Iremashvili ends his characterization with the words: “It was a triumph for him to achieve victory and inspire fear.”
From the circle of reading, according to Iremashvili, the mentioned novel of the Georgian nationalist Kazbegi "The Parricide" made a special impression on the young Soso, with the hero of which - abrek Koba - he identified himself. According to Iremashvili, “Koba became a god for Coco, the meaning of his life. He would like to be the second Koba, a fighter and a hero as famous as this last one."
Before the revolution
1915 active member of the RSDLP (b)
In 1901-1902 he was a member of the Tiflis and Batumi committees of the RSDLP. After the II Congress of the RSDLP (1903) - a Bolshevik. Repeatedly arrested, exiled, fled from exile. Member of the revolution 1905-1907. In December 1905, a delegate to the 1st Conference of the RSDLP (Tammerfors). Delegate of the IV and V congresses of the RSDLP 1906-1907. In 1907-1908 he was a member of the Baku Committee of the RSDLP. At the plenum of the Central Committee after the 6th (Prague) All-Russian Conference of the RSDLP (1912), he was co-opted in absentia to the Central Committee and the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b) (he was not elected at the conference itself). Trotsky, in his biography of Stalin, believed that this was facilitated by Stalin's personal letter to V. I. Lenin, where he said that he agreed to any responsible work. In those years when the influence of Bolshevism was clearly declining, this made a great impression on Lenin.
In 1906-1907. led the so-called expropriation in Transcaucasia. In particular, on June 25, 1907, in order to raise funds for the needs of the Bolsheviks, he organized a robbery of a collection carriage in Tiflis. [source?]
In 1912-1913, while working in St. Petersburg, he was one of the main contributors to the first mass Bolshevik newspaper Pravda.
At this time, Stalin wrote, at the direction of V. I. Lenin, the work “Marxism and the National Question”, in which he expressed Bolshevik views on the ways of solving the national question and criticized the program of “cultural-national autonomy” of the Austro-Hungarian socialists. This caused an extremely positive attitude towards him from Lenin, who called him a "wonderful Georgian."
In 1913 he was exiled to the village of Kureika in the Turukhansk Territory and was in exile until 1917.
After the February Revolution he returned to Petrograd. Prior to Lenin's arrival from exile, he directed the activities of the Central Committee and the St. Petersburg Committee of the Bolshevik Party. In 1917, he was a member of the editorial board of the Pravda newspaper, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, and the Military Revolutionary Center. In relation to the Provisional Government and its policy, he proceeded from the fact that the democratic revolution was not yet completed, and the overthrow of the government was not a practical task. In view of the forced departure of Lenin into the underground, Stalin spoke at the VI Congress of the RSDLP (b) with a report of the Central Committee. Participated in the October armed uprising as a member of the party center under his leadership. After the victory of the October Revolution of 1917, he joined the Council of People's Commissars as People's Commissar for Nationalities.
Civil War
After the start of the civil war, Stalin was sent to the south of Russia as an extraordinary representative of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee for the procurement and export of grain from the North Caucasus to industrial centers. Arriving in Tsaritsyn on June 6, 1918, Stalin took power in the city into his own hands, established a regime of terror there and engaged in the defense of Tsaritsyn from the troops of Ataman Krasnov. However, the very first military measures taken by Stalin together with Voroshilov turned into defeats for the Red Army. Blaming "military experts" for these defeats, Stalin carried out mass arrests and executions. After Krasnov came close to the city and semi-blocked it, Stalin was recalled from Tsaritsyn at the decisive insistence of Trotsky. Shortly after Stalin's departure, the city fell. Lenin condemned Stalin for executions. Stalin, being absorbed in military affairs, did not forget about the development of domestic production. So, he then wrote to Lenin about sending meat to Moscow: “There are more livestock here than necessary ... It would be good to organize at least one canning factory, put up a slaughterhouse and so on ...”.
In January 1919, Stalin and Dzerzhinsky leave for Vyatka to investigate the reasons for the defeat of the Red Army near Perm and the surrender of the city to the forces of Admiral Kolchak. The Stalin-Dzerzhinsky Commission contributed to the reorganization and restoration of the combat capability of the defeated 3rd Army; however, on the whole, the situation on the Permian front was rectified by the fact that Ufa was taken by the Red Army, and Kolchak already on January 6 gave the order to concentrate forces in the Ufa direction and go on the defensive near Perm. Stalin was awarded the Order of the Red Banner for his work on the Petrograd Front. The firmness of decisions, unprecedented efficiency and a smart combination of military organizational and political activity allowed to gain many supporters.
In the summer of 1920, Stalin, sent to the Polish front, encouraged Budyonny to fail to comply with the orders of the command to transfer the 1st Cavalry Army from near Lvov to the Warsaw direction, which, according to some historians, had fatal consequences for the Red Army campaign.
1920s
RSDLP - RSDLP(b) - RCP(b) - VKP(b) - CPSU
In April 1922, the Plenum of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) elected Stalin General Secretary of the Central Committee. L. D. Trotsky considered G. E. Zinoviev to be the initiator of this appointment, but, perhaps, V. I. Lenin himself, who sharply changed his attitude towards Trotsky after the so-called. "discussions about trade unions" (this version was set out in the famous "Short Course on the History of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks" and was considered mandatory during Stalin's lifetime). Initially, this position meant only the leadership of the party apparatus, while Lenin, the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, formally remained the leader of the party and government. In addition, leadership in the party was considered inextricably linked with the merits of the theorist; therefore, following Lenin, Trotsky, L.B. Kamenev, Zinoviev and N.I. Bukharin were considered the most prominent "leaders", while Stalin was not seen to have either theoretical merits or special merits in the revolution.
Lenin highly valued Stalin's organizational skills; Stalin was considered an expert on the national question, although in recent years Lenin noted in him "Great Russian chauvinism." It was on this basis (the “Georgian Incident”) that Lenin clashed with Stalin; Stalin's despotic demeanor and his rudeness towards Krupskaya caused Lenin to repent of his appointment, and in a "Letter to the Congress" Lenin declared that Stalin was too rude and should be removed from his post as general secretary.
But due to illness, Lenin retired from political activity. The supreme power in the party (and in fact in the country) belonged to the Politburo. In the absence of Lenin, it consisted of 6 people - Stalin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Bukharin and MP Tomsky, where all issues were decided by a majority of votes. Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev organized a "troika" based on opposition to Trotsky, whom they had been negatively opposed to since the civil war (frictions between Trotsky and Stalin began over the defense of Tsaritsyn and between Trotsky and Zinoviev over the defense of Petrograd, Kamenev supported almost everything Zinoviev). Tomsky, being the leader of trade unions, had a negative attitude towards Trotsky since the time of the so-called. trade union discussions. Bukharin could become the only supporter of Trotsky, but his triumvirs began to gradually lure him over to their side.
Trotsky began to resist. He sent a letter to the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission (Central Control Commission) demanding greater democracy in the party. Soon, other oppositionists, not only the Trotskyists, sent a similar so-called to the Politburo. "Statement of the 46". The Troika then showed its power, mainly using the resources of the apparatus led by Stalin. At the XIII Conference of the RCP(b) all oppositionists were condemned. Stalin's influence greatly increased.
January 21, 1924 Lenin died. The Troika united with Bukharin, A.I. Rykov, Tomsky and V.V. Kuibyshev, forming in the Politburo (which included a member of Rykov and a candidate member of Kuibyshev) the so-called. "seven". Later, at the August plenum of 1924, this "seven" even became an official body, although secret and extra-statutory.
The XIII Congress of the RSDLP (b) turned out to be difficult for Stalin. Before the start of the congress, Lenin's widow N. K. Krupskaya handed over the Letter to the Congress. It was announced at a meeting of the Council of Elders (a non-statutory body consisting of members of the Central Committee and leaders of local party organizations). Stalin announced his resignation at this meeting for the first time. Kamenev proposed to resolve the issue by voting. The majority voted in favor of keeping Stalin in the post of general secretary, only Trotsky's supporters voted against. Then the proposal was voted that the document should be announced at closed meetings of individual delegations, while no one had the right to take notes and at the meetings of the congress it was impossible to refer to the "Testament". Thus, the "Letter to the Congress" was not even mentioned in the materials of the Congress. It was first announced by N. S. Khrushchev at the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956. Later, this fact was used by the opposition to criticize Stalin and the party (it was alleged that the Central Committee "concealed" Lenin's "testament"). Stalin himself (in connection with this letter he several times raised the question of his resignation before the plenum of the Central Committee) denied these accusations. Just two weeks after the congress, where Stalin's future victims Zinoviev and Kamenev used all their influence to keep him in office, Stalin opened fire on his own allies. First, he used a typo (“Nepmanovskaya” instead of “NEPovskaya” in a quote from Lenin by Kamenev:
I read in the newspaper the report of one of the comrades at the Thirteenth Congress (I think Kamenev), where it is written in black and white that the next slogan of our party is supposedly the transformation of "Nepman Russia" into socialist Russia. Moreover, - even worse - this strange slogan is attributed to none other than Lenin himself.
In the same report, Stalin accused Zinoviev, without naming him, of the principle of "dictatorship of the party", put forward at the 12th Congress, and this thesis was recorded in the resolution of the congress and Stalin himself voted for it. The main allies of Stalin in the "seven" were Bukharin and Rykov.
A new split appeared in the Politburo in October 1925, when Zinoviev, Kamenev, G. Ya. Sokolnikov and Krupskaya presented a document that criticized the party line from a "left" point of view. (Zinoviev led the Leningrad communists, Kamenev the Moscow ones, and among the working class of large cities, who lived worse than before the First World War, there was strong dissatisfaction with low wages and rising prices for agricultural products, which led to the demand for pressure on the peasantry and especially on the kulaks ). "Seven" broke up. At that moment, Stalin began to unite with the "right" Bukharin-Rykov-Tomsky, who expressed the interests of the peasantry above all. In the inner-party struggle that had begun between the "rights" and "lefts", he provided them with the forces of the party apparatus, they (namely Bukharin) acted as theoreticians. The "new opposition" of Zinoviev and Kamenev was condemned at the XIV Congress
By that time, the theory of the victory of socialism in one country had arisen. This view was developed by Stalin in the pamphlet "On Questions of Leninism" (1926) and by Bukharin. They divided the question of the victory of socialism into two parts - the question of the complete victory of socialism, i.e. about the possibility of building socialism and the complete impossibility of restoring capitalism by internal forces, and the question of final victory, i.e., the impossibility of restoration due to the intervention of the Western powers, which would be excluded only by establishing a revolution in the West.
Trotsky, who did not believe in socialism in one country, joined Zinoviev and Kamenev. The so-called. United Opposition. It was finally defeated after a demonstration organized by Trotsky's supporters on November 7, 1927 in Leningrad. At this time, including the Bukharinites, the creation of a “personality cult” of Stalin began, who was still considered a party bureaucrat, and not a theoretical leader who could lay claim to Lenin’s legacy. Having strengthened himself as a leader, in 1929 Stalin dealt an unexpected blow to his allies, accusing them of a "right deviation" and actually began to implement (at the same time in extreme forms) the program of the "leftists" to curtail the NEP and accelerate industrialization through the exploitation of the countryside, up to still served as the subject of condemnation. At the same time, the 50th anniversary of Stalin is celebrated on a large scale (whose date of birth was then changed, according to Stalin's critics, in order to somewhat smooth out the "excesses" of collectivization with the celebration).
1930s
Immediately after the assassination of Kirov on December 1, 1934, a rumor arose that the assassination was organized by Stalin. There are different versions of the murder from the involvement of Stalin, to everyday.
After the 20th Congress, by order of Khrushchev, a Special Commission of the Central Committee of the CPSU headed by N. M. Shvernik with the participation of the old Bolshevik Olga Shatunovskaya was created to investigate the issue. The commission interrogated over 3 thousand people and, according to the letters of O. Shatunovskaya addressed to N. Khrushchev, A. Mikoyan and A. Yakovlev, she found reliable evidence that allows us to assert that Stalin and the NKVD organized the murder of Kirov. N. S. Khrushchev also speaks of this in his memoirs). Subsequently, Shatunovskaya expressed her suspicion that documents compromising Stalin had been confiscated.
In 1990, in the course of a re-investigation conducted by the USSR Prosecutor's Office, a conclusion was made: the assassination attempt on Kirov, as well as the involvement of the NKVD and Stalin in this crime, is not contained.
A number of modern historians support the version of the murder of Kirov on Stalin's orders, others insist on the version of a lone killer.
Mass repressions in the second half of the 1930s
Politburo decision signed by Stalin obliging the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR to pass sentences to death and imprisonment in camp 457 "members of counter-revolutionary organizations" (1940)
As the historian M. Geller notes, the assassination of Kirov served as a signal for the beginning of the Great Terror. On December 1, 1934, at the initiative of Stalin, the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR adopted a resolution "On Amending the Current Criminal Procedure Codes of the Union Republics" with the following content:
Introduce the following changes to the current criminal procedure codes of the Union republics for the investigation and consideration of cases of terrorist organizations and terrorist acts against workers of the Soviet government:
1. The investigation of these cases shall be completed within no more than ten days;
2. The indictment shall be handed over to the accused one day before the trial of the case in court;
3. Cases to hear without the participation of the parties;
4. Cassation appeal against sentences, as well as filing petitions for pardon, should not be allowed;
5. The sentence to capital punishment shall be carried out immediately after the sentence is pronounced.
After that, the former party opposition to Stalin (Kamenev and Zinoviev, who allegedly acted on the instructions of Trotsky) was accused of organizing the murder. Subsequently, according to Shatunovskaya, in Stalin's archives, lists of the "Moscow" and "Leningrad" centers of the opposition, which allegedly organized the murder, were found in Stalin's archive. Orders were issued to expose the "enemies of the people" and a series of trials began.
The mass terror of the period of "Yezhovshchina" was carried out by the then authorities of the country throughout the USSR (and, at the same time, in the territories of Mongolia, Tuva and Republican Spain controlled at that time by the Soviet regime), as a rule, on the basis of previously "lowered into place" by the party authorities figures of "planned assignments" to identify people (the so-called "enemies of the people"), as well as compiled by the Chekist authorities (based on these figures) by surname lists of pre-scheduled victims of terror, the massacre of which was centrally planned by the authorities. [source?] During the “Yezhovshchina” period, the regime that ruled in the USSR completely rejected even that socialist legality, which, for some reason, it considered necessary to observe, sometimes, in the period preceding the “Yezhovshchina”. During the "Yezhovshchina", torture was widely used on those arrested; sentences that were not subject to appeal (often to death) were passed without any trial, and were immediately (often even before the sentence was pronounced) carried out; all the property of the absolute majority of arrested people was immediately confiscated; relatives of the repressed were themselves subjected to the same repressions - for the mere fact of their relationship with them; The children of the repressed (regardless of their age) left without parents were also placed, as a rule, in prisons, camps, colonies, or in special “orphanages for children of enemies of the people.”[source?]
In 1937-1938, the NKVD arrested about 1.5 million people, of which about 700 thousand were shot, that is, on average, 1,000 executions per day.
Historian V. N. Zemskov names a smaller number of those who were shot - 642,980 people (and at least 500,000 more who died in the camps).
As a result of collectivization, famine and purges between 1926 and 1939. the country lost according to various estimates from 7 to 13 million and even up to 20 million people.
The Second World War
German propaganda reporting Stalin's alleged flight from Moscow and propaganda coverage of the capture of his son Yakov. Autumn 1941
Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at the Yalta Conference.
During the Great Patriotic War, Stalin actively participated in hostilities in the position of Supreme Commander-in-Chief. Already on June 30, by order of Stalin, the GKO was organized. During the war, Stalin lost his son.
After the war
Portrait of Stalin on a diesel locomotive TE2-414, 1954 Central Museum of the October Railway, St. Petersburg
Portrait of Stalin on a diesel locomotive TE2-414, 1954
Central Museum of the October Railway, St. Petersburg
After the war, the country embarked on a course of accelerated revival of the economy, devastated by warfare and scorched earth tactics pursued by both sides. Stalin, with harsh measures, suppressed the nationalist movement, which was actively manifested in the territories newly annexed to the USSR (the Baltic states, Western Ukraine).
In the liberated states of Eastern Europe, pro-Soviet communist regimes were established, which later formed a counterbalance to the militaristic NATO bloc from the west of the USSR. Post-war contradictions between the USSR and the USA in the Far East led to the Korean War.
The human losses did not end with the war. Only the Holodomor of 1946-1947 claimed the lives of about a million people. In total, for the period 1939-1959. population losses amounted to various estimates from 25 to 30 million people.
In the late 1940s, the great-power component of Soviet ideology (the fight against cosmopolitanism) intensified. In the early 1950s in the countries of Eastern Europe, and then in the USSR, several high-profile anti-Semitic trials were held (see the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, Doctors' Case). All Jewish educational institutions, theaters, publishing houses and mass media were closed (except for the newspaper of the Jewish Autonomous Region "Birobidzhaner Shtern" ("Birobidzhan Star")). Mass arrests and dismissals of Jews began. In the winter of 1953 there were persistent rumors about the impending deportation of the Jews; the question of whether these rumors corresponded to reality is debatable.
In 1952, according to the recollections of the participants in the October plenum of the Central Committee, Stalin tried to resign from his party duties, refusing the post of secretary of the Central Committee, but under pressure from the delegates of the plenum, he accepted this position. It should be noted that the post of General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks was formally abolished even after the 17th Party Congress, and Stalin was nominally considered one of the equal secretaries of the Central Committee. However, in the book published in 1947 “Joseph Vissarionov Stalin. short biography" said:
On April 3, 1922, the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Party ... elected Stalin as General Secretary of the Central Committee ... Stalin. Since then, Stalin has been permanently working in this post.
Stalin and metro
Under Stalin, the first metro in the USSR was built. Stalin was interested in everything in the country, including construction. His former bodyguard Rybin recalls:
I. Stalin personally inspected the necessary streets, going into the yards, where basically the shacks that breathed incense leaned sideways and a lot of mossy sheds on chicken legs huddled. The first time he did it was during the day. Immediately a crowd gathered, which did not allow to move at all, and then ran after the car. I had to reschedule my appointments for the night. But even then, passers-by recognized the leader and accompanied him with a long tail.
As a result of long preparations, the master plan for the reconstruction of Moscow was approved. This is how Gorky Street, Bolshaya Kaluzhskaya Street, Kutuzovsky Prospekt and other beautiful highways appeared. During another trip along Mokhovaya, Stalin said to the driver Mitryukhin:
We need to build a new Lomonosov University so that students study in one place, and not wander around the city.
During the construction process, on the personal order of Stalin, the Sovetskaya metro station was adapted for the underground command post of the Moscow Civil Defense Headquarters. In addition to the civilian metro, complex secret complexes were built, including the so-called Metro-2, which Stalin himself used. In November 1941, a solemn meeting on the occasion of the anniversary of the October Revolution was held in the metro at the Mayakovskaya station. Stalin arrived by train along with guards, and he did not leave the building of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command on Myasnitskaya, but went down from the basement into a special tunnel that led to the subway.
Stalin and higher education in the USSR
Stalin paid great attention to the development of Soviet science. So, according to Zhdanov's memoirs, Stalin believed that higher education in Russia went through three stages: “In the first period ... they were the main forge of personnel. Along with them, the workers' faculties developed only to a very slight extent. Then, with the development of the economy and trade, a large number of practitioners and businessmen were required. Now ... we should not plant new ones, but improve existing ones. You can't put the question this way: universities train either teachers or researchers. It is impossible to teach without leading and without knowing scientific work... now we often say: give us a sample from abroad, we will analyze it, and then we will build it ourselves.”
Stalin paid personal attention to the construction of Moscow State University. The Moscow City Committee and the Moscow City Council proposed to build a four-story town in the Vnukovo area, where there were wide fields, based on economic considerations. The President of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR Academician S. I. Vavilov and the Rector of Moscow State University A. N. Nesmeyanov proposed to build a modern ten-story building. However, at a meeting of the Politburo, which Stalin personally led, he said: “This complex is for Moscow University, and not 10-12, but 20 floors. We will instruct Komarovsky to build. To accelerate the pace of construction, it will have to be carried out in parallel with the design ... It is necessary to create living conditions by building dormitories for teachers and students. How long will students live? Six thousand? So the hostel should have six thousand rooms. Special care should be taken for family students.
The decision to build Moscow State University was supplemented by a set of measures to improve all universities, primarily in cities affected by the war. Universities were given large buildings in Minsk, Voronezh, Kharkov. Universities of a number of Union republics began to actively create and develop.
In 1949, the issue of naming the Moscow State University complex on the Lenin Hills was discussed. However, Stalin categorically opposed this proposal.
Education and science
On Stalin's orders, a profound restructuring of the entire system of the humanities was undertaken. In 1934, the teaching of history was resumed in secondary and higher schools. According to the historian Yuri Felshtinsky, “Under the influence of the instructions of Stalin, Kirov and Zhdanov and the decisions of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on the teaching of history (1934-1936), dogmatism and dogmatism began to take root in historical science, the replacement of research with quotations, and the fitting of material to biased conclusions ". The same processes took place in other areas of humanitarian knowledge. In philology, the advanced "formal" school (Tynyanov, Shklovsky, Eikhenbaum, and others) was destroyed; philosophy began to be based on a primitive exposition of the foundations of Marxism in Chapter IV " short course". Pluralism within Marxist philosophy itself, which existed until the end of the 1930s, became impossible after that; "philosophy" was reduced to commenting on Stalin; all attempts to go beyond the official dogma, manifested by the Lifshitz-Lukach school, were severely suppressed. The situation especially worsened in the post-war period, when massive campaigns began against the departure from the "party principle", against the "abstract academic spirit", "objectivism", as well as against "anti-patriotism", "rootless cosmopolitanism" and "belittling Russian science and Russian philosophy". ”, Encyclopedias of those years report, for example, the following about Socrates:“ other Greek. idealist philosopher, ideologist of the slave-owning aristocracy, enemy of ancient materialism.
To encourage outstanding figures in science, technology, culture and organizers of production, in 1940 the Stalin Prizes were awarded annually, starting from 1941 (instead of the Lenin Prize, established in 1925, but not awarded since 1935). The development of Soviet science and technology under Stalin can be described as a takeoff. The created network of fundamental and applied research institutes, design bureaus and university laboratories, as well as prison camp design bureaus (the so-called "sharag") covered the entire front of research. Scientists have become the true elite of the country. Such names as the physicists Kurchatov, Landau, Tamm, the mathematician Keldysh, the creator of space technology Korolev, the aircraft designer Tupolev are known all over the world. In the post-war period, based on the obvious military needs, the greatest attention was paid to nuclear physics. So, in 1946 alone, Stalin personally signed about sixty major documents that determined the development of atomic science and technology. The implementation of these decisions resulted in the creation of an atomic bomb, as well as the construction of the world's first nuclear power plant in Obninsk (1954) and the subsequent development of nuclear energy.
At the same time, the centralized management of scientific activity, which was not always competent, led to the restriction of directions that were considered to be contrary to dialectical materialism and therefore of no practical use. Entire fields of research, such as genetics and cybernetics, were declared "bourgeois pseudosciences". The consequence of this was the arrests and sometimes even executions, as well as the suspension of prominent Soviet scientists from teaching. According to one of the widespread points of view, the defeat of cybernetics ensured the fatal lag of the USSR from the USA in the creation of electronic computers - work on the creation of a domestic computer began only in 1952, although immediately after the war the USSR had all the scientific and technical personnel necessary for its creation. The Russian genetic school, which was considered one of the best in the world, was completely destroyed. Under Stalin state support real pseudoscientific trends were used, such as Lysenkoism in biology and (until 1950) the new doctrine of language in linguistics, however, debunked by Stalin himself at the end of his life. Science was also affected by the struggle against cosmopolitanism and the so-called "cow-worship of the West", which had a strong anti-Semitic connotation, which had been going on since 1948.
Stalin's personality cult
Soviet propaganda created around Stalin a semi-divine halo of an infallible "great leader and teacher." Cities, factories, collective farms, military equipment were named after Stalin and his closest associates. The city of Donetsk (Stalino) bore the name of Stalin for a long time. His name was mentioned in the same row with Marx, Engels and Lenin. On January 1, 1936, the first two poems glorifying I.V. Stalin, written by Boris Pasternak, appear in Izvestia. According to Korney Chukovsky and Nadezhda Mandelstam, he "simply raved about Stalin."
Poster depicting Stalin
Poster depicting Stalin
“And in those same days, at a distance behind the ancient stone wall
It is not a person who lives, but an act: an act as tall as the globe of the earth.
Fate gave him the lot of the previous gap.
He is what the most daring dream about, but no one dared before him.
Behind this fabulous deed, the way of things remained intact.
He did not rise as a celestial body, did not distort, did not decay ..
In the collection of fairy tales and relics floating over Moscow by the Kremlin
Centuries have become so accustomed to it, as to the battle of the sentinel tower.
But he remained a man, and if, against the hare
He fires at the cutting areas in winter, the forest will answer him, like everyone else "
The name of Stalin is also mentioned in the anthem of the USSR, composed by S. Mikhalkov in 1944:
Through the storms the sun of freedom shone for us,
And the great Lenin lit the way for us,
We were raised by Stalin - to be loyal to the people,
Inspired us to work and deeds!
Similar in nature, but on a smaller scale, phenomena were also observed in relation to other state leaders (Kalinin, Molotov, Zhdanov, Beria, etc.), as well as Lenin.
A panel with the image of I. V. Stalin at the Narvskaya station of the St. Petersburg metro existed until 1961, then it was covered with a false wall
Khrushchev, in his famous report at the 20th Party Congress, argued that Stalin encouraged his cult in every possible way. So, Khrushchev stated that he knew for certain that, while editing his own biography prepared for publication, Stalin entered whole pages there, where he called himself the leader of the peoples, the great commander, the highest theoretician of Marxism, a brilliant scientist, etc. . In particular, Khrushchev claims that the following passage was inscribed by Stalin himself: “Skillfully fulfilling the tasks of the leader of the party and the people, having the full support of the entire Soviet people, Stalin, however, did not allow in his activities even a shadow of conceit, arrogance, narcissism.” It is known that Stalin stopped some acts of his praise. So, according to the memoirs of the author of the orders "Victory" and "Glory", the first sketches were made with the profile of Stalin. Stalin asked that his profile be replaced with the Spasskaya Tower. To Lion Feuchtwanger's remark "about the tasteless, exaggerated admiration for his personality", Stalin "shrugged his shoulders" and "excused his peasants and workers that they were too busy with other things and could not develop good taste in themselves."
After the “exposure of the cult of personality”, the phrase usually attributed to M. A. Sholokhov (but also to other historical characters) became famous: “Yes, there was a cult ... But there was a personality!”
In modern Russian culture, there are also many cultural sources glorifying Stalin. For example, you can point to the songs of Alexander Kharchikov: "Stalin's March", "Stalin is our father, our Motherland is our mother", "Stalin, get up!"
Stalin and anti-Semitism
Some Jewish authors, based on the fact that under Stalin, including Jews, were subject to criminal liability, on some cases of manifestations of everyday anti-Semitism in Soviet society, and also on the fact that in some of his theoretical works Stalin mentions Zionism in the same row with other types of nationalism and chauvinism (including anti-Semitism), draw a conclusion about Stalin's anti-Semitism. Stalin himself repeatedly issued statements severely condemning anti-Semitism. Among Stalin's closest associates there were many Jews.
Stalin's role in the creation of the State of Israel
Stalin has a great merit in the creation of the State of Israel. The first official contact between the Soviet Union and the Zionists took place on February 3, 1941, when Chaim Weizmann, a world-famous scientist and head of the World Zionist Organization, came to the ambassador in London, I. M. Maisky. Weizmann made a trade offer to supply oranges in exchange for furs. The business failed, but the contacts remained. Relations between the Zionist movement and Moscow leaders had already changed after the German attack on the Soviet Union in June. The need to defeat Hitler was more important than ideological differences - before that, the attitude of the Soviet government towards Zionism was negative.
Already on September 2, 1941, Weizmann reappeared with the Soviet ambassador. The head of the World Zionist Organization said that the appeal of Soviet Jews to world Jewry with an appeal to unite efforts in the fight against Hitler made a great impression on him. Use of Soviet Jews for psychological impact on world public opinion, primarily on the Americans, was a Stalinist idea. At the end of 1941, a decision was made in Moscow to form the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee - along with the All-Slavic, Women's, Youth and Committee of Soviet Scientists. All these organizations were focused on educational work abroad. The Jews, at the call of the Zionists, collected and handed over to the Soviet Union 45,000,000 dollars. However, the main role belonged to them in explanatory work among the Americans, because at that time isolationist sentiments were strong.
After the war, the dialogue continued. The British secret services spied on the Zionists because their leaders had sympathy for the USSR. The British and American governments placed an embargo on Jewish settlements in Palestine. Great Britain sold weapons to the Arabs. The Arabs, in addition, hired Bosnian Muslims, former soldiers of the SS Volunteer Division, soldiers of Anders, Arab units in the Wehrmacht. By decision of Stalin, Israel began to receive artillery and mortars, German Messerschmitt fighters through Czechoslovakia. Basically it was a German captured weapon. The CIA offered to shoot down planes, but the politicians prudently refused this step. In general, few weapons were supplied, but they helped to maintain a high morale of the Israelis. There was also a lot of political support. According to P. Sudoplatov, before the UN vote on the division of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states in November 1947, Stalin told his subordinates: “Let's agree with the formation of Israel. This will be a pain in the ass for the Arab states, and then they will seek an alliance with us.
Already in 1948, a cooling in Soviet-Israeli relations began, which led to the severance of diplomatic relations with Israel on February 12, 1953 - the basis for such a step was a bomb explosion near the doors of the Soviet embassy in Tel Aviv (diplomatic relations were restored shortly after Stalin's death, but then worsened again due to military conflicts).
Stalin and the Church
Stalin's policy towards the Russian Orthodox Church was not homogeneous, but it was distinguished by consistency in pursuing the pragmatic goals of the survival of the communist regime and its global expansion. To some researchers, Stalin's attitude to religion was not entirely consistent. On the one hand, not a single atheistic or anti-church work by Stalin remained. On the contrary, Roy Medvedev cites Stalin's statement about atheistic literature as waste paper. On the other hand, on May 15, 1932, a campaign was announced in the USSR, the official goal of which was the complete eradication of religion in the country by May 1, 1937, the so-called "godless five-year plan." By 1939, the number of churches opened in the USSR numbered in the hundreds, and the diocesan structures were completely destroyed.
Some weakening of the anti-church terror took place after the arrival of L.P. Beria to the post of chairman of the NKVD, which was associated both with a general weakening of repressions and the fact that in the fall of 1939 the USSR annexed significant territories on its western borders, where there were numerous and full-blooded church structures.
On June 22, 1941, Metropolitan Sergius sent out an appeal to the dioceses “To the pastors and flock of Christ's Orthodox Church,” which did not go unnoticed by Stalin.
There are many mythical tales about Stalin's alleged recourse to the prayerful help of the Church during the war, but there are no serious documents that would confirm this. According to the oral testimony of Anatoly Vasilyevich Vedernikov, secretary of Patriarch Alexy I, in September 1941, Stalin allegedly ordered Sergius Stragorodsky to be locked up together with his cell-attendant in the Assumption Cathedral of the Kremlin, so that he would pray there in front of the icon Mother of God Vladimirskaya (the icon was moved there at that time). Sergius stayed in the Assumption Cathedral for three days.
In October 1941, the Patriarchy and other religious centers were ordered to leave Moscow. Orenburg was proposed, but Sergius objected and Ulyanovsk (formerly Simbirsk) was chosen. Metropolitan Sergius and his apparatus stayed in Ulyanovsk until August 1943.
According to the memoirs of the NKGB officer Georgy Karpov, on September 4, 1943, at a meeting attended by Molotov and Beria, in addition to Karpov, Stalin ordered the formation of a body for the work of interaction between the Russian Orthodox Church and the government - the Council for the Russian Orthodox Church under the Council of People's Commissars. A few hours after the meeting, in the dead of night, Metropolitans Sergius, Alexy (Simansky), Nikolai (Yarushevich) were brought to Stalin. During the conversation, a decision was made to elect a Patriarch, open churches, seminaries and a theological academy. As a residence, the Patriarch was given the building of the former German embassy. The state actually stopped supporting renovationist structures, which by 1946 were completely liquidated.
The apparent change in policy towards the ROC causes numerous disputes among researchers. Versions are expressed from Stalin's deliberate use of church circles to subjugate the people to himself, to opinions that Stalin remained a secretly believing person. The latter opinion is also confirmed by the stories of Artyom Sergeev, who was brought up in Stalin's house. And also, according to the memoirs of Stalin's bodyguard Yuri Solovyov, Stalin prayed in the church in the Kremlin, which was on the way to the cinema. Yuri Solovyov himself remained outside the church, but could see Stalin through the window.
The real reason for the temporary change in the repressive policy towards the Church lay in considerations primarily of foreign policy expediency. (See the article History of the Russian Church)
Since the autumn of 1948, after the Conference of Heads and Representatives in Moscow Orthodox Churches, the results of which were disappointing in terms of advancing the foreign policy interests of the Kremlin, the former repressive policy was largely resumed.
Sociocultural dimensions of Stalin's personality
Assessments of Stalin's personality are contradictory. The party intelligentsia of the Leninist era put him extremely low; Trotsky, reflecting her opinion, called Stalin "the most outstanding mediocrity of our era." On the other hand, many people who communicated with him later spoke of him as a broadly and versatilely educated and extremely intelligent person. According to the English historian Simon Montefiore, who studied Stalin's personal library and reading circle, he spent a lot of time reading books, on the margins of which his notes remained: “His tastes were eclectic: Maupassant, Wilde, Gogol, Goethe, and also Zola, whom he adored. He liked poetry. (...) Stalin was an erudite person. He quoted long passages from the Bible, the works of Bismarck, the works of Chekhov. He admired Dostoevsky."
Against, Soviet historian Leonid Batkin, while recognizing Stalin's love of reading, believes, however, that he was an "aesthetically dense" reader, and at the same time remained a "practical politician." Batkin believes that Stalin had no idea “of the existence of such a ‘subject’ as art”, of a “special artistic world”, of the structure of this world, and so on. On the example of Stalin's statements on literary and cultural topics, cited in the memoirs of Konstantin Simonov, Batkin concludes that "everything that Stalin says, everything that he thinks about literature, cinema, and so on, is utterly ignorant," and that the hero of the memoirs is "quite - still a primitive and vulgar type. For comparison with the words of Stalin, Batkin cites marginals - the heroes of Mikhail Zoshchenko; in his opinion, they hardly differ from Stalin's statements. In general, according to Batkin’s conclusion, Stalin brought “certain energy” of a semi-educated and average layer of people to a “pure, strong-willed, outstanding form”.
It should be noted that Batkin fundamentally refuses to consider Stalin as a diplomat, military leader, economist, as he says at the beginning of the article.
Roy Medvedev, speaking out against "often extremely exaggerated estimates of the level of his education and intellect", at the same time warns against underestimation. He notes that Stalin read a lot, and diversified, from fiction to popular science. In the article, the historian cites Stalin's words about reading: "This is my daily norm - 500 pages"; thus, Stalin read several books a day and about a thousand books a year. In the pre-war period, Stalin paid most of his attention to historical and military-technical books, after the war he switched to reading works of a political direction, such as the History of Diplomacy, Talleyrand's biography. At the same time, Stalin actively studied the works of Marxists, including the works of his associates, and then opponents - Trotsky, Kamenev and others. Medvedev notes that Stalin, being responsible for the death of a large number of writers and the destruction of their books, at the same time patronized M. Sholokhov, A. Tolstoy and others, returns from exile E. V. Tarle, whose biography of Napoleon he treated with great interest and personally supervised its publication, stopping tendentious attacks on the book. Medvedev emphasizes the knowledge of the national Georgian culture, in 1940 Stalin himself makes changes to the new translation of The Knight in the Panther's Skin. .
Stalin as an orator and writer
According to L. Batkin, Stalin's oratorical style is extremely primitive. It is distinguished by “the catechistic form, endless repetitions and reversals of the same thing, the same phrase in the form of a question and in the form of a statement, and again it is the same through a negative particle; curses and cliches of the party bureaucratic dialect; invariably meaningful, important mine, designed to hide the fact that the author has little to say; poverty of syntax and vocabulary. A.P. Romanenko and A.K. Mikhalskaya also pay attention to the lexical scarcity of Stalin's speeches and the abundance of repetitions. The Israeli scholar Mikhail Weiskopf also argues that Stalin's argument "is based on more or less hidden tautologies, on the effect of mind-boggling hammering."
The formal logic of Stalin's speeches, according to Batkin, is characterized by "chains of simple identities: A = A and B = B, this cannot be, because it can never be" - that is, there is no logic, in the strict sense of the word, in Stalin's speeches at all. Weiskopf speaks of Stalin's "logic" as a collection logical errors: “the main features of this pseudo-logic are the use of an unproven judgment as a premise, and the so-called. petitio principii, that is, the hidden identity between the basis of the proof and the thesis supposedly arising from it. The tautology of Stalin's arguments (idem per idem) constantly forms the classic "circle in proof". Often there is a permutation of the so-called. strong and weak judgments, substitution of terms, errors - or rather, falsifications - associated with the ratio of the volume and content of concepts, with deductive and inductive conclusions, etc.” Weisskopf generally considers tautology as the basis of the logic of Stalin's speeches (more precisely, "the ground of the foundation," as the author puts it, paraphrasing the real words of the leader). In particular, Weiskopf cites the following examples of Stalin's "logic":
It can ruin the common cause if it is downtrodden and dark, of course, not because of its evil will, but because of its darkness.
Weisskopf finds in this phrase a petitio principii class error, stating that one of the references to "darkness" is a premise, and the other is a conclusion following from it, thus the premise and conclusion are identical.
"The words and deeds of the opposition bloc invariably come into conflict with each other. Hence the discord between deed and word."
“The misfortune of the Bukharin group lies precisely in the fact that they do not see the characteristic features of this period. Hence their blindness”
“Why is it precisely the capitalists who take the fruits of the labor of the proletarians, and not the proletarians themselves? Why do capitalists exploit proletarians and not proletarians exploit capitalists? Because the capitalists buy the labor power of the proletarians, and that is why the capitalists take away the fruits of the labor of the proletarians, that is why the capitalists exploit the proletarians, and not the proletarians of the capitalists. But why exactly are the capitalists buying the labor power of the proletarians? Why are proletarians employed by capitalists, and not capitalists by proletarians? Because the main basis of the capitalist system is private ownership of the instruments and means of production…”
However, according to Batkin, it is unlawful to make claims to Stalin's speeches in tautologies, sophisms, gross lies and idle talk, since they were not intended to convince anyone, but were of a ritual nature: in them the conclusion does not follow from reasoning, but precedes it, "that is, not a “conclusion”, of course, but “intent and decision. Therefore, the text is a way to make it clear, to guess about the decision, and to the same extent a way to prevent guessing.”
Georgy Khazagerov elevates Stalin's rhetoric to the traditions of solemn, homiletic (preaching) eloquence and considers it didactic-symbolic. According to the author's definition, “the task of didactics is, based on symbolism as an axiom, to streamline the picture of the world and convey this ordered picture intelligibly. Stalinist didactics, however, took on the functions of symbolism. This was manifested in the fact that the zone of axioms grew to entire curricula, and evidence, on the contrary, was replaced by a reference to authority. V. V. Smolenenkova notes the strong impact that, with all these qualities, Stalin's speeches had on the audience. Thus, Ilya Starinov conveys the impression made on him by Stalin's speech: “We listened with bated breath to Stalin's speech. (...) Stalin talked about what worried everyone: about people, about cadres. And how convincingly he spoke! Here I first heard: “Cadres decide everything.” Words about how important it is to take care of people, to take care of them…” Cf. also an entry in the diary of Vladimir Vernadsky: “Only yesterday did we get the text of Stalin's speech, which made a huge impression. Previously listened to on the radio from the fifth to the tenth. The speech, no doubt, of a very intelligent person.”
VV Smolenenkova explains the effect of Stalin's speeches by the fact that they were quite adequate to the mood and expectations of the audience. L. Batkin also emphasizes the moment of “fascination” that arose in an atmosphere of terror and the fear and reverence for Stalin generated by it as the personification of a higher power that controlled destinies. On the other hand, in Yuli Daniel's story "Atonement" (1964), student conversations about Stalin's logic are described, which were conducted during his lifetime in the spirit of future articles by Batkin and Weisskopf: "well, you remember -" this cannot be, because this can never be”, and so on, in the same vein.
Stalin and the culture of contemporaries
Stalin was a very readable person and was interested in culture. After his death, he left a personal library consisting of thousands of books, many with personal notes in the margins. He himself told some visitors, pointing to a stack of books on his desk: "This is my daily norm - 500 pages." Up to a thousand books were produced this way a year. There is also evidence that back in the 1920s, Stalin visited the play "Days of the Turbins" by the then little-known writer Bulgakov eighteen times. At the same time, despite the difficult situation, he walked without personal protection and transport. Later, Stalin took part in the popularization of this writer. Stalin also maintained personal contacts with other cultural figures: musicians, film actors, directors. Stalin personally entered into polemics also with the composer Shostakovich. According to Stalin, his post-war musical compositions were written for political reasons - with the aim of discrediting the Soviet Union.
Personal life and death of Stalin
In 1904, Stalin married Ekaterina Svanidze, but three years later his wife died of tuberculosis. Their only son, Yakov, was taken prisoner by the Germans during World War II. According to the widespread version, reflected, in particular, in the novel by Ivan Stadnyuk "War" and the Soviet film "Liberation" (the authenticity of this story is unclear), the German side offered to exchange him for Field Marshal Paulus, to which Stalin replied: "I do not change a soldier for a field marshal ". In 1943, Yakov was shot dead in the German concentration camp Sachsenhausen while trying to escape. Yakov was married three times and had a son, Evgeny, who participated in the 1990s. in Russian politics (Stalin's grandson was on the electoral lists of the Anpilov bloc); this direct male line of the Dzhugashvili family still exists.
In 1919, Stalin married a second time. His second wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, a member of the CPSU (b), committed suicide in her Kremlin apartment in 1932 (the sudden death was officially announced) [source?]. From his second marriage, Stalin had two children: Svetlana and Vasily. His son Vasily, an officer of the Soviet air force, took part in the Great Patriotic War in command positions, after its completion he led the air defense of the Moscow Region (lieutenant general), was arrested after Stalin's death, died shortly after his release in 1960. Stalin's daughter Svetlana On March 6, 1967, Alliluyeva applied for political asylum at the United States Embassy in Delhi and moved to the United States the same year. Artyom Sergeev (the son of the deceased revolutionary Fyodor Sergeev - “Comrade Artyom”) was brought up in the Stalin family until the age of 11 years.
In addition, it is believed that in Turukhansk exile, Stalin was born illegitimate son- Konstantin Kuzakov. Stalin did not maintain relations with him.
Stalin with children from his second marriage: Vasily (left) and Svetlana (center)
According to the testimonies, Stalin beat his sons, so, for example, Yakov (whom Stalin usually called: “my fool” or “wolf cub”) more than once had to spend the night on the landing or in the apartments of neighbors (including Trotsky); N. S. Khrushchev recalled that once Stalin beat Vasily with his boots for poor progress. Trotsky believed that these scenes of domestic violence reproduced the atmosphere in which Stalin was brought up in Gori; modern psychologists agree with this opinion. With his attitude, Stalin brought Yakov to a suicide attempt, to the news of which he reacted mockingly: “Ha, he didn’t hit!” . On the other hand, Stalin's adopted son A. Sergeev retained favorable memories of the atmosphere in Stalin's house. Stalin, according to the memoirs of Artyom Fedorovich, treated him strictly, but with love and was a very cheerful person.
Stalin died on March 5, 1953. The specific reason is still unknown. Officially, it is believed that death was the result of a cerebral hemorrhage. There is a version according to which Lavrenty Beria or N. S. Khrushchev contributed to his death without providing assistance. However, there is another version of his death, and it is very likely [source?] - Stalin was poisoned by his closest associate Beria.
At the funeral of Stalin on March 9, 1953, due to the huge number of people who wanted to say goodbye to Stalin, there was a stampede. The exact number of victims is still unknown, although it is estimated to be significant. In particular, it is known that one of the unidentified victims of the stampede received the number 1422; numbering was carried out only for those dead who could not be identified without the help of relatives or friends.
The embalmed body of Stalin was placed on public display in the Lenin Mausoleum, which in 1953-1961 was called the "Mausoleum of V. I. Lenin and I. V. Stalin." On October 30, 1961, the XXII Congress of the CPSU decided that "Stalin's serious violations of Lenin's precepts ... make it impossible to leave the coffin with his body in the Mausoleum." On the night of October 31 to November 1, 1961, Stalin's body was taken out of the Mausoleum and buried in a grave near the Kremlin wall. Subsequently, a monument was opened on the grave (a bust by N. V. Tomsky). Stalin became the only Soviet leader for whom a memorial service was performed by the Russian Orthodox Church.
Myths about Stalin
There are many myths about Stalin. Often they were distributed by opponents of Stalin (mainly such as L. D. Trotsky, B. G. Bazhanov, N. S. Khrushchev, and others). Sometimes they appeared on their own. So there are myths about rape; that he was an Okhrana agent; about how he only pretended to be a Marxist-Leninist/Communist, but in fact was a covert counter-revolutionary; that he was an anti-Semite and a Great Russian chauvinist/ethno-nationalist; that he was an alcoholic; that he suffered from paranoia and even about the statements of Stalin.
Alleged poems by Stalin
On December 21, 1939, on the day of the solemn celebration of Stalin's 60th birthday, the newspaper Zarya Vostoka published an article by N. Nikolaishvili "Poems of young Stalin", in which it was reported that Stalin allegedly wrote six poems. Five of them were published from June to December 1895 in the newspaper "Iberia", edited by Ilya Chavchavadze signed "I. J-shvili", the sixth - in July 1896 in the social-democratic newspaper "Keali" ("Furrow") signed "Soselo". Of these, I. J-shvili's poem "To Prince R. Eristavi" in 1907 was included, among the selected masterpieces of Georgian poetry, in the collection "Georgian Reader".
Until then, there was no news that the young Stalin wrote poetry. Iosif Iremashvili does not write about this either. Stalin himself did not confirm the version that the poems belonged to him, but he did not refute either. By the 70th anniversary of Stalin, in 1949, a book of his alleged poems was being prepared in translation into Russian (large masters were involved in the work on translations - in particular, Boris Pasternak and Arseniy Tarkovsky), but by Stalin's order, the publication was stopped.
Modern researchers note that the signatures of I. J-shvili, and even more Soselo (a diminutive of "Joseph"), cannot be the basis for attributing poems to Stalin, especially since one of I. J-shvili's poems is addressed to Prince R. Eristavi, with whom the seminarian Stalin clearly could not be familiar with. It is suggested that the author of the first five poems was a philologist, historian and archaeologist, an expert on Georgian culture Ivan Javakhishvili.
Awards
Stalin had:
* title of Hero of Socialist Labor (1939)
* the title of Hero of the Soviet Union (1945).
Was a cavalier:
* three orders of Lenin (1939, 1945, 1949)
* two Orders of Victory (1943, 1945)
* Order of Suvorov I degree (1943)
* three orders of the Red Banner (1919, 1939, 1944).
In 1953, immediately after the death of I.V. Stalin, four copies of the Order of Generalissimo Stalin were urgently made (without the use of precious metals) for approval by the main members of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU.
Modern opinions about Stalin
The events of the Stalin era were so grandiose that, naturally, they caused a huge flow of various literature. With all the diversity, there are several main directions in it.
* Liberal Democratic. The authors, proceeding from liberal and humanistic values, consider Stalin the strangler of any freedom, initiative, the creator of a totalitarian-type society, and also the perpetrator of crimes against humanity, comparable to Hitler. This assessment prevails in the West; during the era of perestroika and in the early 1990s. it prevailed in Russia as well. During the life of Stalin himself, in the left circles in the West, a different attitude was also developed towards him (in the spectrum from benevolent to enthusiastic), as the creator of an interesting social experiment; such an attitude was expressed, in particular, by Bernard Shaw, Leon Feuchtwanger, Henri Barbusse. After the revelations of the 20th Congress, Stalinism in the West disappeared as a phenomenon. [source?]
* Communist-anti-Stalinist. His adherents accuse Stalin of destroying the party, of departing from the ideals of Lenin and Marx. This approach originated in the environment of the “Leninist Guard” (F. Raskolnikov, L. D. Trotsky, N. I. Bukharin’s suicide letter, M. Ryutin “Stalin and the Crisis of the Proletarian Dictatorship”) and became dominant after the 20th Congress, and under Brezhnev was the banner of socialist dissidents (Alexander Tarasov, Roy Medvedev, Andrey Sakharov). Among the Western Left, from moderate social democrats to anarchists and Trotskyists, Stalin is usually seen as the mouthpiece of the bureaucracy and a traitor to the revolution Stalin's Soviet Union as a deformed workers' state). The categorical rejection of Stalin's authoritarianism, which perverted the principles of Marxist theory, is characteristic of the dialectical-humanistic tradition in Western Marxism, represented, in particular, by the Frankfurt School, as well as of the "new left". One of the first studies of the USSR as a totalitarian state belongs to Hannah Arendt (“The Origins of Totalitarianism”), who also identified herself (with some reservations) as a leftist. In our time, Stalin is condemned from communist positions by Trotskyists and unorthodox Marxists.
* Communist-Stalinist. Its representatives fully justify Stalin, consider him a faithful successor of Lenin. In general, they are within the official theses of the Soviet propaganda of the 1930s. As an example, we can cite the book by M. S. Dokuchaev “History remembers”.
* Nationalist-Stalinist. Its representatives, while criticizing both Lenin and the democrats, at the same time praise Stalin highly for his contribution to the strengthening of Russian imperial statehood. They consider him the undertaker of the "Russophobes"-Bolsheviks, the restorer of Russian statehood. In this direction, an interesting opinion belongs to the followers of L. N. Gumilyov (although the elements vary). In their opinion, under Stalin, during the repressions, the anti-system of the Bolsheviks perished. Also, excessive passionarity was knocked out of the ethnic system, which allowed it to get the opportunity to enter the inertial phase, the ideal of which was Stalin himself. The initial period of Stalin's rule, in which many actions of an "anti-systemic" nature were undertaken, is considered by them only as a preparation for the main action, which does not determine the main direction of Stalin's activity. One can cite as an example the articles by I. S. Shishkin “The Internal Enemy”, and V. A. Michurin “The Twentieth Century in Russia through the L.N.
opinion
hafiz 08.03.2008 04:57:37
Stalin made Russia very developed country in all areas of society
About I.V. Stalin
16.10.2012 11:43:08
State and political figure of a large scale. A man who possessed iron logic in reasoning and actions.
11.08.2010 - 11:13
Everyone is submissive to love - including the people who make history. Sometimes cruel tyrants, sending people to their deaths by the thousands, turn out to be the most reverent and tender husbands. But basically dictators are too cruel and merciless even with loving and beloved women...
Poor Kato
Little is known about the personal life of Joseph Stalin. He carefully destroyed any documents and evidence relating to his love and family relationships.
Historians have to rely only on what he nevertheless decided to leave to posterity, and on rare eyewitness accounts who sin with inaccuracies and sometimes outright lies - in the name of saving lives.
But still, some facts are known reliably. The first wife of Joseph Dzhugashvili, who did not yet have a significant party pseudonym Stalin, was a young Georgian girl Ekaterina (Kato) Svanidze. Joseph was then only 26 years old, but he already had a reputation as a fiery revolutionary who did not spare his belly in the name of the ideas of universal equality and fraternity. True, the means by which the Bolsheviks achieved their goal turned out to be bloody - death and destruction trailed behind them like a train ... But in those days it only gave a halo of romantics to these gloomy and merciless young people who went through exile, prisons, escapes ...
They considered themselves noble knights - for example, Joseph Dzhugashvili coined the nickname Koba for himself - in honor of a literary hero, a robber who robbed the rich and gave money to the poor.
16-year-old Kato was the sister of the same fanatical revolutionary Alexander Svanidze, who had nothing against marriage to Soso Dzhugashvili, who had great authority among the Caucasian freedom fighters. In 1904, Soso and Kato got married and settled in a small poor room - poor and ragged. At the same time, huge funds expropriated from the rich passed through the hands of Dzhugashvili - but they all went to the needs of the party. Koba himself practically did not appear at home - his life is too complicated and stressful, in which everything is subordinated to the service of the revolution, but by no means to the family hearth and beloved woman. Kato spends all her time alone, cleaning up their miserable shack and figuring out what to make their meager dinner out of.
In 1907, Kato and Soso had a son, Yakov. The life of a woman became even harder, and she, torn by childbirth, fell ill with typhus. Soso had no money for treatment. The weakened body could not cope with the disease, and Kato died ... Soso sincerely experienced her death, and according to eyewitnesses, he began to destroy his enemies with redoubled fury. And little Yakov ended up in the family of Kato's parents, with whom he lived until the age of 14 ...
Tenderness of a tyrant
The stern revolutionary was left alone. He had to go through a lot of terrible and cruel events, go through exile, prisons, escapes again ... He went into the service of the revolution, and there was no time left for his personal life. A new love in his heart flared up after the victory of the Bolsheviks, in the 20s ...
Young Nadenka (she was 23 years younger than Stalin), the daughter of the revolutionary Sergei Alliluyev, gave her heart to this silent, gloomy and legendary man. He came to the house of an old comrade-in-arms, sparingly talked about all the horrors that he had experienced in life, and she listened with bated breath ... Everything happened according to the old scheme: “She fell in love with him for torment, and he loved her for compassion for him." But nevertheless, they sincerely loved each other, although in those harsh years, various sentimental tendernesses were considered a weakness characteristic only of the unfinished bourgeoisie.
In 1921, their son Vasily was born, and at the same time Yakov was brought from Georgia - Stalin finally had a real family. But the old story was repeated again - Koba did not have time for ordinary human joys. He inexorably walked towards his goal, destroying enemies along the way, and he had no time to deal with all sorts of cute family nonsense and sentimentality. At the same time, Nadia was an ordinary weak woman - not a fiery revolutionary, not a fanatic of serving the ideals of Marxism. They even wanted to expel her from the AUCPB at one time, as "a ballast who is not interested in the party." But at the same time, Stalin, a man who has already achieved power and all the heights of position that were possible in the USSR, lives with Nadezhda and loves her and her children very much - Vasya and little Svetlana, who was born in 1925.
Very little is known about their relationship, and very little written evidence of their love remains - short lines of letters with which they did not indulge each other - people who dream of a world revolution are not up to trifles. But even in these mean lines one can see both Nadezhda's love for “dear Joseph” and tenderness for “Tatka” (that was her childhood nickname), unexpected for the bloody image of Stalin.
“As soon as you find yourself 6-7 free days, roll straight to Sochi. I kiss my Tatka. Your Joseph. “Tatka! How did you get there, what did you see, did you see the doctors, what is the opinion of the doctors about your health, write ... We will open the Congress on the 26th ... Things are going well. I really miss you, Tatochka, I'm sitting at home alone, like an owl ... Well, goodbye ... come soon. Kisses".
“Tatka! Forgot to send you money. I am sending them with a comrade who is leaving today ... Your Joseph "("cap" and "nogo" - this is how their daughter Svetlana pronounced the words "strongly" and "a lot").
But, as often happens, tender feelings woke up mainly during separation, and when lovers were nearby, friction constantly arose. They were especially aggravated by the fact that Nadezhda had almost no one to communicate with, except for Stalin, and he could not devote much time and attention to her. And the reasons for the loneliness of the first lady of the state lay in her special position. Stalin's secretary Boris Bazhanov recalled: “When I met Nadia, I had the impression that there was some kind of emptiness around her - she somehow had no female friends at that time, and the male audience was afraid to approach her - suddenly Stalin if he suspects that they are courting his wife, he will die. I had a clear feeling that the wife of an almost dictator needs the most basic human relations.
But the relationship with the closest and only person was very difficult. The same Bazhanov, who became friends with Nadia, wrote: “Her life at home was difficult. Stalin was a tyrant at home. Constantly restraining himself in business relations with people, he did not stand on ceremony with his family. More than once, Nadya told me, sighing: “The third day she is silent, does not talk to anyone and does not answer when they turn to him; an unusually difficult person” ... One can only imagine how hard she was going through all this ...
"My personal life is hard" ...
The circumstances of the death of Nadezhda Alliluyeva are still and, most likely, forever shrouded in uncertainty. She committed suicide on November 8, 1932 by shooting herself in the temple. By official version Hope died of appendicitis. But even then, when the general public did not know that she had committed suicide, rumors spread about the suspicious circumstances of Alliluyeva's death.
For example, the Western press put forward the following versions: “Hirst's newspapers publish new reports in which they again convey rumors that Stalin's wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, did not die of appendicitis, but was poisoned. According to this version, she always herself tried the products from which they prepared dinner for her husband. She recently tasted poisoned foods sent by the 'conspirators' and ended up poisoning herself." (New Russian Word, New York, December 3, 1932).
But in the USSR they whispered muffledly that it was Stalin himself who killed her. True, those who knew him closely did not believe this. It is difficult to imagine that a man who loved his wife so much could kill her himself. To torment - yes, to bring to tears - yes, but to kill the only beloved woman and the mother of your children is completely different ...
After the death of his wife, Stalin wrote to his mother: “Hello, my mother. I received your letter. I'm healthy, don't worry about me - I'll stand my share ... The children bow to you. After the death of Nadia, my personal life is hard. But never mind, a courageous person must always remain courageous.”
It is hard to imagine that a person is lying to his mother on such a serious issue as the death of his wife ... Most likely, her death was a complete surprise for him and shocked him very much, maybe even broke him, making him a truly cruel person. Stalin never married again, although, of course, he could choose any, the most beautiful, women as his wife. But he preferred to remain alone, never showing his true feelings to anyone else and not becoming attached to anyone ...
Let me remind you that I also talked about Stalin's personal pilot and bodyguard
- 66518 views
This man made the whole world respect himself and his country. Under him, Russia reached the peak of its power and became a world power. He was feared and respected. Winston Churchill remembers how he tried to force himself not to get up when he appeared. But Stalin entered, and some unknown force grabbed the British Prime Minister and tore him from his chair. You can accuse Stalin of villainy and tyranny, but he was unmercenary and acted for the good of the country, as he understood it. For many years, they tried to slander Stalin, then forget. But it is impossible to ignore the fact that he took the country with a plow and surrendered with an atomic bomb. It is not surprising, therefore, that at the Hero of Russia competition he took second place, losing to the compromise figure of Alexander Nevsky. Even his most cruel acts were dictated by state necessity. It is from this position that one should study his deeds.
Praise to you, Gori Valley
This is the first line of a song about Stalin known in the thirties, which reliably reports the place of his birth. At that semi-legendary time, the biography of the leader of the peoples was dictated by the leader himself, so many unflattering testimonies have been erased, and the date of his birth has been corrected. In fact, Joseph (Soso) Dzhugashvili was born on December 6 (18), 1978 in the city of Gori, Tiflis province. His father, a shoemaker Vissarion Dzhugashvili, drank a lot and raged. Mother, Ekaterina Dzhugashvili, buried two children before giving birth to Joseph. She worked as a day laborer and dreamed of Soso becoming a priest. When the almighty son visits her in Gori and says that he has become something like a tsar in Russia, she will answer: “It would be better if you became a priest.” For this, she worked hard, washing the local nobility and intelligentsia. The courageous woman had to endure the death of her husband in a drunken fight and the trauma of her son, which made him crippled all his life. Stalin was unlucky with appearance- a face covered with pockmarks, small stature and a low forehead. The stronger was his inner energy, subordinating stronger peers and attracting women.
But not only family circumstances and appearance determined the low start of his career. Young Soso did not know Russian at all. But he had perseverance, which helped him overcome this barrier and enter the Tiflis Theological Seminary. Stalin was far from the only seminarian who lost faith in God. At night, would-be clerics indiscriminately devoured revolutionary literature, from Sergei Nechaev's Catechism of a Revolutionary to Manifesto Communist Party» Karl Marx. Even before being expelled from the seminary for not appearing for the exam, Joseph shows his organizational skills by creating work circles and promoting Marxism. It is difficult to say what is true here, but Stalin's influence on the bandits is confirmed by facts. The most famous Bolshevik terrorist Simon Ter-Petrosyan was betrayed by Dzhugashvili and even received his party nickname Kamo from him.
The beginning of the revolutionary path
At the beginning of the century, the Tiflis proletariat went on strike. Stalin was involved and, in order not to be arrested, goes into hiding. Around this time, he takes his first pseudonym - Koba, in honor of the glorious Georgian robber. Subsequently, this nickname will often be used by Trotsky, wanting to humiliate an opponent.
Koba actively participates in all working actions in the Caucasus. He unquestioningly trusts Lenin, whom he meets in December 1905 at the 1st Conference of the RSDLP in Finland. In 1906, he was a delegate to the IV Congress of the RSDLP in Stockholm, and in 1907 - the V Congress of the RSDLP in London. Between these events, short-term family happiness and the tragedy of Koba fit in. Ekaterina Svanidze, with whom he secretly marries in a church, dies of typhus, leaving him a son, Yakov. Iosif Dzhugashvili by that time was a very important member of the Leninist party, through whom the money seized during the famous Tiflis expropriation passed. But he does not have the funds to buy medicine for his wife.
The following years, right up to the February Revolution, Stalin almost did not get out of exile. In between, he visits Lenin in Switzerland and contributes to the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda. The last and most difficult exile to the Turukhansk region, which he ended up in, probably due to betrayal, will embitter him, make him a cruel and distrustful person. Lenin sees in Stalin a limited, but efficient guy, whom he instructs to interact with the militants in order to expropriate funds to the party fund. Koba organizes Lenin's flight to Finland in the summer of 1917. He does not orate or theorize. It is difficult to say what his role was in preparing the October Revolution, but at the beginning of 1918 only two were allowed to enter Ilyich without a report and at any time - Trotsky and Stalin.
dashing twenties
As expected, the Bolshevik coup caused in Russia civil war. Stalin heads the Commissariat for Nationalities and is a member of the Revolutionary Military Councils of the Western, Southern, Southwestern Fronts. He will show his iron grip and monstrous capacity for work even before Lenin's death. The leaders of the Bolsheviks, whose portraits floated above the demonstrations, are bored with routine work. All organizational issues fall on the shoulders of Comrade Stalin, who in 1922 was appointed General Secretary of the Central Committee of the RCP(b). In this humble position, he will concentrate enormous power in his hands and crush his rivals.
And there were many competitors. The second man in the party, Leon Trotsky, a brilliant orator and creator of the Red Army, does not hide his contempt for the provincial Stalin. Their first and only conflict will take place during the defense of Tsaritsyn, where Stalin was sent as a member of the Revolutionary Military Council. Then Koba gave vent to his feelings and expressed disobedience to Trotsky, who led the army in key positions of the People's Commissar of the Navy and the Pre-Revolutionary Military Council. He will not repeat his mistake again and will act from behind the scenes. After Lenin's death, Stalin crushes the arrogant Trotsky, and then destroys the entire Leninist guard.
The secret of industrialization
Why was it necessary to shoot the weak and demoralized Lenin's comrades-in-arms, who glorified him more than others? One NKVD pensioner who participated in the interrogations told the historian A.I. Fursov: “Stalin always came to the first interrogation and asked the same question: where is the money?” During the first years of Soviet power, a lot of money and jewelry settled in foreign banks. These were countless treasures on the accounts of prominent party members who were in no hurry to return them to the country. Meanwhile, the Nazis came to power. They made no secret of their plans to crush Bolshevism. That is why Stalin said: "If we do not go through the path that the Western countries have gone through in 100 years in ten years, we will perish." For 10 years, the USSR became a powerful industrial power and was able to crush the Nazi machine, which was supplied by almost all of Europe. 9,000 largest enterprises were built, but where did the money come from?! Grain, which as a result of collectivization was snatched from the destitute peasants and sold to the West, brought an insignificant income. The Comintern, the NKVD and other structures of the state waged a secret struggle for the return of the confiscated and looted. The power of the Soviet state was built on this money, torn out under torture.
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
Western countries condemn Stalin for the treaty of friendship and borders with Nazi Germany, but they forget to say that Hitler concluded the first such treaty with Poland. Moreover, the USSR was the last country to officially recognize the claims of the Nazis. What did we get in return? Two years of respite and help from Germany, from which we took a large loan. In addition, the fact that we did not become the aggressor endeared us to the United States, which entered the war on the side of the USSR. Now it is difficult to understand, but things could have been much worse, and not only the Reich, but also America and Japan would have taken up arms against us. Stalin led the country between Scylla and Charybdis.
The mystery of the death of Joseph Stalin
The version that he was helped to die is getting louder and louder. Strange events recent years life speaks in her favor. Who played on Stalin's manic suspicion and persuaded him to remove his closest people from him - the head of the personal guard Vlasik and the faithful maid? Who sent the guards to bed the night he had a brain hemorrhage? Who inspired the members of the Politburo not to allow doctors to the body of the paralyzed leader? Witnesses of these events will no longer be able to answer these questions, but it is known what some of them feared. Joseph Stalin understood that he had become a hostage to the apparatus he had fed. Some historians claim that he was preparing a new bloodbath for his associates, others that he planned to move the center of power from the party apparatus to Soviet bodies. Perhaps the secret archives will still tell us the truth about this.
The USSR ate Stalin's legacy until 1991. Many factories, bridges and power plants built by him are still in operation. In search of a new greatness, Russia is doomed to study its experience, trying to avoid Stalin's mistakes. Wherever the gigantic country he built goes, it will look back at Joseph Stalin and will not emerge from his shadow for a long time to come.
Cities, towns, districts, squares, metro stations, mountain peaks, universities...
Cities
Stalin
(Bulgarian Stalin) People's Republic of Bulgaria 1949 1956 Varna
Stalinabad USSR, Tajik SSR 1929 1961 Dushanbe
Stalingrad USSR, RSFSR 1925 1961 Volgograd
Staliniri USSR, Georgian SSR, South Ossetian Autonomous Okrug 1934 1961 Tskhinval
Stalino USSR, Ukrainian SSR 1924 1961 Donetsk
Stalinogorsk USSR, RSFSR, Tula region 1934 1961 Novomoskovsk
Stalinsk USSR, RSFSR 1932 1961 Novokuznetsk
Stalinisi USSR, Georgian SSR 1931 1934 Khashuri
Orashul-Stalin
(rum. Oraşul Stalin) Socialist Republic of Romania 1950 1960 Brasov
Stalin
(Alb. Stalin) People's Socialist Republic of Albania 1950 1990 Kuchova
Stalinogrud
(Polish Stalinogrud) Polish People's Republic 1953 1956 Katowice
Stalinstadt
(German: Stalinstadt) Germanic Democratic Republic 1953 1961 Eisenhüttenstadt
Stalinvarosh
(Hungarian Sztblinvbros) Hungarian People's Republic 1951 1961 Dunaujváros
Other settlements
Settlement ... Territory ......... Appropriation ... .... Deprivation ....... Modernity
Stalino settlement USSR, Uzbek SSR, Andijan region 1924 1961 Shakhrikhan
Stalinist settlement USSR, RSFSR, Moscow region 1939 1961 Vostochny (Moscow region)
Stalinist village of the USSR, RSFSR, Tula region Podlesny
Stalinist settlement of the USSR, Kazakh SSR, Akmola region Aksu
Stalinka village of the USSR, Ukrainian SSR, Poltava region Chervonozavodskoe
Stalindorf settlement of the USSR, RSFSR, Stalingrad region Primorsky
Stalingrad village of the USSR, Kazakh SSR, Kustanai region Volgograd
Stalindorf settlement of the USSR, Ukrainian SSR, Dnepropetrovsk region, Nikopol district Zhovtneve (as part of the village of Loshkarevka
Stalinskoe settlement of the USSR, Kirghiz SSR, Chui region Belovodskoe
Stalino settlement USSR, Turkmen SSR, Mary region Murgap
Stalin's winery village of the USSR, RSFSR, Mordovian ASSR Dachny
Stalinist
(settlement of the factory named after Stalin) settlement of the USSR, RSFSR, Moscow region Pervomaisky (district of the city of Korolev)
Stalindorf village USSR, Ukrainian SSR, Dnepropetrovsk region Izluchistoye
Stalinaul village USSR, RSFSR, Dagestan ASSR Leninaul
Stalinaul village USSR, RSFSR, Dagestan ASSR Atlanaul
Stalinweg village USSR, RSFSR, Crimean ASSR Arbuzovo
Stalino village USSR, Ukrainian SSR, Odessa region Poznanka 1st
Stalino village USSR, Ukrainian SSR, Odessa region Chervonoznamenka
Stalinovka village USSR, Ukrainian SSR, Cherkasy region Yavorovka
Stalinaul village USSR, RSFSR, Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of Meskets
Stalindorf village USSR, RSFSR, Amurskaya Oblast Zarechnoe
Stalinfeld
(Yiddish סטאלינפעלד) village of the USSR, RSFSR, Jewish Autonomous Region Oktyabrskoe
Stalinskoe village USSR, RSFSR, Bashkir ASSR Magash
Stalino village USSR, Kazakh SSR, Alma-Ata region, Taldy-Kurgan district
Stalin village of the USSR, Tajik SSR Pasaryk
Stalinesti village USSR, Ukrainian SSR, Chernivtsi region Stalnovtsy
Stalingrad village USSR, RSFSR, Stalingrad region Oktyabrsky
Stalinka village USSR, RSFSR, Omsk region Lugovoe
Stalinka village USSR, RSFSR, Penza region Krasnaya Polyana
Stalino village USSR, Azerbaijan SSR Chayly
Stalinskoe village USSR, Ukrainian SSR, Donetsk region Kommunarovka
Stalinchilyar village USSR, RSFSR, Dagestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic Stalinchilyar
Stalin Factory USSR, RSFSR, Krasnoyarsk Territory, Evenk National District Osharovo
Novo-Stalinsk settlement of the USSR, RSFSR, Novosibirsk region
Peaks
Name....Height.......Mountain system......Location...Assigned...Renaming..
Modern name
Stalin Peak 7495 m Pamir Tajikistan 1932 1962 Ismail Samani Peak
Stalin
(Bulgarian Stalin) 2925 m Rila Bulgaria 1949 1962 Musala
Stalin's Shtit
(Czech. Stalinův štнt / Slovak. Stalinov štнt) 2655 m High Tatras Slovakia 1949 1959 Gerlachovský Shtit
Mount Stalin
(eng. Mount Stalin) 2807 m Canadian Rockies Canada, British Columbia 1987 Mount Peck (eng. Mount Peck)
Stalinsky district
Astrakhan, RSFSR, until 1956 (abolished)
Baku, AzSSR, 1931-1960 - Sabail district
Voronezh, RSFSR, became part of the Left Bank District in 1957
Gorky (Nizhny Novgorod), RSFSR, until 1956 - became part of the Sormovsky district
Zaporozhye, Ukrainian SSR, 1929-1961 - Zhovtnevy district
Zlatoust, RSFSR, until 1957 (abolished)
Ivanovo, RSFSR, since 1961 Pervomaisky district
Irkutsk, RSFSR, since 1961 Oktyabrsky district
Kazan, RSFSR, since 1956 Privolzhsky district
Kaunas, Lithuanian SSR - until 1955 (abolished)
Kirov, RSFSR, since 1957 (according to other sources - since 1962) Oktyabrsky district
Kirovabad (Ganja), AzSSR - until 1956 (abolished)
Komsomolsk-on-Amur, RSFSR, in 1943-1956 (abolished)
Kopeysk, RSFSR, until 1957 (abolished)
Krasnodar, RSFSR, since 1961 Oktyabrsky district
Krasnoyarsk, RSFSR, 1938-1961 - Central District
Kuibyshev (Samara), RSFSR, until 1962 - Oktyabrsky district
Kursk, RSFSR, until 1956, became part of the Industrial District
Leningrad (St. Petersburg), RSFSR, 1952-1957 - Vyborgsky district
Magnitogorsk, RSFSR, before 1960 (discontinued)
Makhachkala, RSFSR - Leninsky district
Minsk, BSSR, 1938-1961 - Zavodskoy district
Moscow, RSFSR, 1930-1961 - later, before the reform of the administrative division of the 1990s, - Pervomaisky district
Nizhny Tagil, RSFSR, until 1957 (abolished)
Odessa, Ukrainian SSR, since 1961 Zhovtnevy district, now Primorsky district
Omsk, RSFSR, since 1961 Sovetsky district
Orsk, RSFSR, until 1958 (discontinued)
Perm, RSFSR, since 1961 Sverdlovsk region
Rostov-on-Don, RSFSR, 1931-1961 - Pervomaisky
Rybinsk, RSFSR, 1939-1947 (abolished)
Saratov, RSFSR - Zavodskoy or Oktyabrsky district
Sverdlovsk (Yekaterinburg), RSFSR, until 1932-1956 - became part of the Leninsky, Kirovsky and Zheleznodorozhny districts
Sevastopol, Ukrainian SSR (since 1954 - RSFSR), until 1961 - Leninsky district
Smolensk, RSFSR, until 1956 (abolished)
Stavropol, RSFSR, until 1956 (abolished)
Stalingrad (Volgograd), RSFSR, 1948-1961 - Central District
Taganrog, RSFSR, since 1961 Oktyabrsky district
Tashkent, UzSSR, until 1956 (abolished)
Ulyanovsk, RSFSR, since 1958 Zasviyazhsky district
Ufa, RSFSR, 1936-1944 - the area went to the newly formed city of Chernikovsk
Khabarovsk, RSFSR, since 1961 Industrial district
Kharkov, Ukrainian SSR, since 1961 Moskovsky district
Chelyabinsk, RSFSR - Central District
Chernikovsk, RSFSR, 1952-1956 - the district was abolished simultaneously with the inclusion of the city into Ufa
Yaroslavl, RSFSR, 1936-1961 - Leninsky district
Raionul Stalin - district of Bucharest, Romania
Metro stations
Stalinskaya metro station, 1944-1961 - Semyonovskaya metro station, Moscow.
Stalinskaya metro station, 1955 (renamed before opening) - Narvskaya metro station, Leningrad.
Zavod Stalin metro station, 1943-1956 — Avtozavodskaya metro station, Moscow
Metro station Izmailovsky park of culture and rest named after Stalin, 1944-1948 — Partizanskaya metro station, Moscow
squares
Stalin Square:
Barnaul, RSFSR (1953-1956) - October Square
Kyiv, Ukrainian SSR, (1944-1961) - European Square
Krivoy Rog, Ukrainian SSR – Liberation Square
Makhachkala, RSFSR, – Lenin Square
Novodvinsk, RSFSR - Lenin Square
Novosibirsk, RSFSR, — Lenin Square
Khabarovsk, RSFSR (until 1957) - Lenin Square
Plac Stalina in Polish cities:
Krakow (Nova Huta district) – Plac Centralny
Lublin – Plac Litewski
Poznań – Plac Mickiewicza
Czestochowa – Plac Biegańskiego
Stalinplatz, 1946-1956 - Schwarzenbergplatz, Vienna, Austria
Stalinplatz - Universitätsplatz, Rostock, Germany
Stalinovo nбměstн — Palackйho nбměstн, Bruntal, Czech Republic
Stalinovo nаmestie, 1945-1962 - Nаmestie SNP, Bratislava, Slovakia
Piața I.V. Stalin - Piaţa Charles de Gaulle, Bucharest, Romania
parks
Stalinsky Square, until 1961 - Leninsky Square in Lipetsk
Izmailovsky PKiO named after Stalin, 1932-1961 - Izmailovsky Park in Moscow
Parcul I.V. Stalin - Herăstrău Park, Bucharest, Romania
Stalin Park - Harbin, China
Square named after Stalin - Oryol
Regions, administrative, municipal units
Stalin region, 1925-1961 - Donetsk region, Ukrainian SSR
Stalinsky district - in the Stalin region, Ukrainian SSR; abolished
Stalindorf national Jewish district in the Dnepropetrovsk region, Ukrainian SSR; abolished in 1940
Stalindorf district, 1940-1944 - Dnepropetrovsk region, Ukrainian SSR
Stalinsky district:
Kazakh SSR, Akmola region (1930-1961); now Akkol district
Kirghiz SSR (until 1961); now Moskovsky district
RSFSR, Jewish Autonomous Region (until 1961); now Oktyabrsky district
RSFSR, Krasnodar Territory, from December 31, 1934 to December 12, 1960 (renamed Leningradsky District)
Ukrainian SSR, Dnepropetrovsk region (1944 - ????)
Turkmen SSR, Mary region (1935-1961); now Murgap etrap
Uzbek SSR, Andijan region (1926-1961); now Shakhrikhan district
Regiunea Stalin, 1950-1960 - an area in central Romania
Geographic Township of Stalin, until 1986 - Hansen Township, Ontario, Canada
Other objects
White Sea-Baltic Canal named after Stalin
Shadrinsk auto-aggregate plant im. I. V. Stalin (Shadrinsk, RSFSR)
Plant named after Stalin (ZiS), 1931-1959 - Plant named after Likhachev (ZiL), Moscow, Russia
Stalinovy zбvody, 1946-1962 - a chemical factory in Zaluzhi near the city of Most, Czech Republic
The Stalin Tunnel is a railway tunnel in Vladivostok.
Poznań Steel Works named after Stalin
Leningrad Metal Plant named after Stalin
Stalin's bridge
Stalin bridge in Grozny.
universities
Belarusian Polytechnic Institute I. V. Stalin
Dnepropetrovsk Metallurgical Institute. I. V. Stalin
Moscow Mining Institute. I. V. Stalin
Moscow Institute became them. I. V. Stalin
Moscow Machine Tool Institute. I. V. Stalin [source not specified 129 days]
Tbilisi State University I. V. Stalin
Stalin Academy of Armored and Motorized Troops
I. V. Stalin Communist University of the Workers of the East
Crimean Medical Institute
Russian State Geological Prospecting University named after Sergo Ordzhonikidze
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