Stalin's childhood and early life are difficult to retell accurately. This is because Stalin went back and attempted to rewrite his own past. He was born in Georgia in 1879. It is known that his father was an abusive alcoholic. Stalin's mother had wanted him to be a priest but instead of introducing him to God, the seminary introduced him to Marxism1.*
Stalin grew to be barely five feet tall. His face was scarred (he had contracted smallpox at 7) and one of his arms was disabled to the point of preventing him from the army. Those who knew him described him as ill-mannered and rough1. Hence the change in his last name from his biological surname, Dzhugashvili, to his nickname, Stalin, which means "steel."
He joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in 1901, where he used robbery and counterfeiting to gain revenue. Only 2 years later, he was caught and sent to Siberia, but he escaped. He went on to be arrested 5 more times.
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| Stalin's registration card with the St. Petersburg Police Department2 |
Using Lenin's work as "rough draft," Stalin refined his bureaucratic system, secret police, and slave labor camps. However, unlike his predecessor, he had capitalism completely banned. He demanded complete focus on industry as well as "collectivization of agriculture," the latter of which would kill roughly 15 million people1. (For more on how Stalin starved the very people making the Soviet Union's food supply, stay tuned for the article on the Holodomor.)
Stalin also initiated his infamous Great Purges, in which he removed all potential threats by sentencing them to public "show trials" and then condemning them to execution or lengthy sentences in harsh labor camps (gulags). Disturbingly suspicious of Western influence, nearly anyone who had been to the West - voluntarily or otherwise - was looked upon as an enemy.1 In a later event known as the Great Comb-Out, 8 million people "simply disappeared" without any sort of a trial. 7 million were sentenced to gulag camps. The other 1 million were killed.3
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| Joseph Stalin, 1942. |
Stalin used heavy propaganda to promote strong nationalism and in hopes of getting the public to hold his same anti-Western ideology. He was also responsible for the launching of the Cold War, and he tried to develop an atomic bomb. He agreed with North Korea's invasion of South Korea, hoping the peninsula would fall completely to communist control. He also attempted to have 9 doctors convicted of assassinations. 6 of them were Jewish, and this was partially an act of anti-Semitism.1
However, these allegations, that became known as "The Doctor's Plot," were never carried out, as Stalin died on 5 March 1953.
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| Stalin died in 1953 after a paralytic stroke. |
- 1 Tucker, Spencer C. "Joseph Stalin." World at War: Understanding Conflict and Society. ABC-CLIO, 2010. Web. 22 Oct. 2010.
- 4 "Joseph Stalin." Image. Library of Congress. World at War: Understanding Conflict and Society. ABC-CLIO, 2010. Web. 22 Oct. 2010.
- "Revelations from the Russian Archives." Library of Congress, 1992. Web. 22 Oct. 2010.
- Simkin, John. "Joseph Stalin: Biography." Spartacus Educational. Web. 22 Oct. 2010.
- Service, Robert. Stalin: A Biography. Pan, 2010. Print.
- Shalamov, Varlam, and John Glad. Kolyma Tales. Penguin, 1994. Print.
* - I feel it necessary to mention that true Marxism does not equate to the communism Stalin imposed on Russia or many modern ideas of what communism is today. To fully understand what Marx really argued, read his Communist Manifesto.
