We stand for peace and champion the cause of peace.
/AND. Stalin/
Stalin (real name - Dzhugashvili) Joseph Vissarionovich, one of the leading figures Communist Party, Soviet state, international communist and labor movement, prominent theorist and propagandist of Marxism-Leninism. Born into the family of a handicraft shoemaker. In 1894 he graduated from the Gori Theological School and entered the Tbilisi Orthodox Seminary. Under the influence of Russian Marxists who lived in Transcaucasia, he joined the revolutionary movement; in an illegal circle he studied the works of K. Marx, F. Engels, V. I. Lenin, G. V. Plekhanov. Since 1898 member of the CPSU. Being in a social democratic group "Mesame-dashi", carried out propaganda of Marxist ideas among the workers of the Tbilisi railway workshops. In 1899 he was expelled from the seminary for revolutionary activity, went underground and became a professional revolutionary. He was a member of the Tbilisi, Caucasian Union and Baku Committees of the RSDLP, participated in the publication of newspapers “Brdzola” (“Struggle”), “Proletariatis Brdzola” (“Struggle of the Proletariat”), “Baku Proletarian”, “Buzzer”, “Baku Worker”, was an active participant in the Revolution of 1905-07. in Transcaucasia. Since the creation of the RSDLP, he supported Lenin’s ideas of strengthening the revolutionary Marxist party, defended the Bolshevik strategy and tactics of the class struggle of the proletariat, was a staunch supporter of Bolshevism, and exposed the opportunist line of the Mensheviks and anarchists in the revolution. Delegate to the 1st conference of the RSDLP in Tammerfors (1905), 4th (1906) and 5th (1907) congresses of the RSDLP.
During the period of underground revolutionary activity, he was repeatedly arrested and exiled. In January 1912, at a meeting of the Central Committee, elected by the 6th (Prague) All-Russian Conference of the RSDLP, he was co-opted in absentia into the Central Committee and introduced into Russian Bureau of the Central Committee. In 1912-13, working in St. Petersburg, he actively collaborated in newspapers "Star" And "Is it true". Participant Krakow (1912) meeting of the Central Committee of the RSDLP with party workers. At this time Stalin wrote a work "Marxism and the National Question", in which he highlighted Lenin’s principles for solving the national question, and criticized the opportunist program of “cultural-national autonomy.” The work received a positive assessment from V.I. Lenin (see Complete collection of works, 5th ed., vol. 24, p. 223). In February 1913, Stalin was again arrested and exiled to the Turukhansk region.
After the overthrow of the autocracy, Stalin returned to Petrograd on March 12 (25), 1917, was included in the Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b) and in the editorial office of Pravda, and took an active part in developing the work of the party in new conditions. Stalin supported Lenin's course of developing the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a socialist one. On 7th (April) All-Russian Conference of the RSDLP (b) elected member of the Central Committee(from that time on he was elected as a member of the party’s Central Committee at all congresses up to and including the 19th). At the 6th Congress of the RSDLP (b), on behalf of the Central Committee, he delivered a political report to the Central Committee and a report on the political situation.
As a member of the Central Committee, Stalin actively participated in the preparation and conduct of the Great October Socialist Revolution: he was a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee, the Military Revolutionary Center - the party body for leading the armed uprising, and in the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee. At the 2nd All-Russian Congress of Soviets on October 26 (November 8), 1917, he was elected to the first Soviet government as People's Commissar for National Affairs(1917-22); at the same time in 1919-22 he headed People's Commissariat of State Control, reorganized in 1920 into the People's Commissariat Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate(RCT).
During Civil War and foreign military intervention 1918-20 Stalin carried out a number of important assignments of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) and the Soviet government: he was a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, one of the organizers defense of Petrograd, member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Southern, Western, Southwestern Fronts, representative of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee in the Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defense. Stalin proved himself to be a major military-political worker of the party. By resolution of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of November 27, 1919 awarded the order Red Banner.
After the end of the Civil War, Stalin actively participated in the party’s struggle for the restoration of the national economy, for the implementation of a new economic policy(NEP), for strengthening the alliance of the working class with the peasantry. During the discussion about trade unions imposed on the party Trotsky, defended Lenin's platform on the role of trade unions in socialist construction. On 10th Congress of the RCP (b)(1921) gave a presentation “The party’s immediate tasks in the national question”. In April 1922, at the Plenum of the Central Committee, Stalin was elected General Secretary of the Central Committee Party and held this post for over 30 years, but since 1934 he was formally Secretary of the Central Committee.
As one of the leading figures in the field of nation-state building, Stalin took part in the creation of the USSR. However, initially in solving this new and difficult task made a mistake by putting forward "autonomization" project(entry of all republics into the RSFSR with autonomy rights). Lenin criticized this project and justified the plan to create a single union state in the form of a voluntary union of equal republics. Taking into account the criticism, Stalin fully supported Lenin’s idea and, on behalf of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), spoke at 1st All-Union Congress of Soviets(December 1922) with a report on the formation of the USSR.
On 12th Party Congress(1923) Stalin made an organizational report on the work of the Central Committee and a report “National moments in party and state building”.
V.I. Lenin, who knew the party cadres excellently, had a huge influence on their education, sought the placement of cadres in the interests of the overall party cause, taking into account their individual qualities. IN "Letter to the Congress" Lenin gave characterizations to a number of members of the Central Committee, including Stalin. Considering Stalin one of the outstanding figures of the party, Lenin at the same time wrote on December 25, 1922: “Comrade. Stalin, having become Secretary General, concentrated immense power in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be able to use this power carefully enough” (ibid., vol. 45, p. 345). In addition to his letter, Lenin wrote on January 4, 1923:
“Stalin is too rude, and this shortcoming, quite tolerable in the environment and in communications between us communists, becomes intolerable in the position of Secretary General. Therefore, I suggest that the comrades consider a way to move Stalin from this place and appoint another person to this place, who in all other respects differs from Comrade. Stalin has only one advantage, namely, more tolerant, more loyal, more polite and more attentive to his comrades, less capriciousness, etc.” (ibid., p. 346).
By decision of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), all delegations were familiarized with Lenin’s letter 13th Congress of the RCP (b), held in May 1924. Considering the difficult situation in the country and the severity of the struggle against Trotskyism, it was considered advisable to leave Stalin as General Secretary of the Central Committee so that he would take into account criticism from Lenin and draw the necessary conclusions from it.
After Lenin's death, Stalin actively participated in the development and implementation of the policies of the CPSU, plans for economic and cultural construction, measures to strengthen the country's defense capability and the foreign policy of the party and the Soviet state. Together with other leading figures of the party, Stalin waged an irreconcilable struggle against the opponents of Leninism, played an outstanding role in the ideological and political defeat of Trotskyism and right-wing opportunism, in defending Lenin’s teaching on the possibility of the victory of socialism in the USSR, and in strengthening the unity of the party. The works of Stalin were important in the propaganda of Lenin’s ideological heritage "On the Foundations of Leninism" (1924), "Trotskyism or Leninism?" (1924), "On questions of Leninism" (1926), “Once again about the social-democratic deviation in our party” (1926), “On the right deviation in the CPSU (b)” (1929), “On issues of agricultural policy in the USSR”(1929), etc.
Under the leadership of the Communist Party, the Soviet people implemented Lenin’s plan for building socialism and carried out revolutionary transformations of gigantic complexity and world-historical significance. Stalin, together with other leading figures of the party and the Soviet state, made a personal contribution to the solution of these problems. The key task in building socialism was the socialist industrialization, which ensured the economic independence of the country, the technical reconstruction of all sectors of the national economy, and the defense capability of the Soviet state. The most complex and difficult task of the revolutionary changes was the reconstruction Agriculture on socialist principles. When conducting collectivization of agriculture mistakes and excesses were made. Stalin also bears responsibility for these mistakes. However, thanks to decisive measures taken by the party with the participation of Stalin, the mistakes were corrected. Of great importance for the victory of socialism in the USSR was the implementation cultural revolution .
In the conditions of impending military danger and in the years Great Patriotic War 1941-45 Stalin took a leading part in the multilateral activities of the party to strengthen the defense of the USSR and organize the defeat fascist Germany and militaristic Japan. At the same time, on the eve of the war, Stalin made a certain miscalculation in assessing the timing of a possible attack by Nazi Germany on the USSR. On May 6, 1941 he was appointed Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR(from 1946 - Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR), June 30, 1941 - Chairman State Committee defense ( GKO), July 19 - People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR, August 8 - Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the USSR.
As head of the Soviet state, he took part in Tehran (1943), Crimean(1945) and Potsdam (1945) conferences leaders of three powers - the USSR, the USA and Great Britain. In the post-war period, Stalin continued to work as General Secretary of the Party Central Committee and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. During these years, the party and the Soviet government carried out great job to mobilize the Soviet people to fight for recovery and further development National economy, carried out a foreign policy aimed at strengthening the international position of the USSR and the world socialist system, at uniting and developing the international labor and communist movement, at supporting the liberation struggle of the peoples of colonial and dependent countries, at ensuring the peace and security of peoples throughout the world.
In Stalin's activities, along with positive aspects There were theoretical and political mistakes, and some traits of his character had a negative impact. If in the first years of work without Lenin he took into account critical remarks addressed to him, then later he began to retreat from Lenin's principles collective leadership and the norms of party life, to overestimate their own merits in the successes of the party and the people. Gradually formed Stalin's personality cult, which entailed gross violations of socialist legality and caused serious harm to the activities of the party and the cause of communist construction.
20th Congress of the CPSU(1956) condemned the cult of personality as a phenomenon alien to the spirit of Marxism-Leninism, the nature of socialist social order. In the resolution of the CPSU Central Committee of June 30, 1956 “On overcoming the cult of personality and its consequences” the party gave an objective, comprehensive assessment of Stalin’s activities and a detailed criticism of the cult of personality. The cult of personality did not and could not change the socialist essence of the Soviet system, the Marxist-Leninist character of the CPSU and its Leninist course, and did not stop the natural course of development of Soviet society. The party developed and implemented a system of measures that ensured the restoration and further development of Leninist norms of party life and the principles of party leadership.
Stalin was a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1919-52, the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1952-53, a member of the Executive Committee of the Comintern in 1925-43, a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee from 1917, the Central Executive Committee of the USSR from 1922, a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the 1st-3rd convocations . He was awarded the titles of Hero of Socialist Labor (1939), Hero Soviet Union(1945), Marshal of the Soviet Union (1943), highest military rank - Generalissimo of the Soviet Union (1945). He was awarded 3 Orders of Lenin, 2 Orders of Victory, 3 Orders of the Red Banner, Order of Suvorov 1st degree, as well as medals. After his death in March 1953, he was buried in the Lenin-Stalin Mausoleum. In 1961, by decision of the XXII Congress of the CPSU, he was reburied on Red Square.
Soch.: Soch., vol. 1-13, M., 1949-51; Questions of Leninism, and ed., M., 1952: On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union, 5th ed., M., 1950; Marxism and questions of linguistics, [M.], 1950; Economic problems of socialism in the USSR, M., 1952. Lit.: XX Congress of the CPSU. Verbatim report, vol. 1-2, M., 1956; Resolution of the CPSU Central Committee “On overcoming the cult of personality and its consequences.” June 30, 1956, in the book: CPSU in resolutions and decisions of congresses. Conferences and plenums of the Central Committee, 8th ed., vol. 7, M., 1971; History of the CPSU, vol. 1-5, M., 1964-70: History of the CPSU, 4th ed., M., 1975.
Events during Stalin's reign:
- 1925 - adoption of a course towards industrialization at the XIV Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks).
- 1928 - the first five-year plan.
- 1930 - the beginning of collectivization
- 1936 - adoption of the new constitution of the USSR.
- 1939 –1940 - Soviet-Finnish War
- 1941 –1945 - The Great Patriotic War
- 1949 - creation of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA).
- 1949 - successful test of the first Soviet atomic bomb, which was created by I.V. Kurchatov under the leadership of L.P. Beria.
- 1952 - renaming the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) into the CPSU
His reign and his death will forever remain in the memory of all the people who inhabited that vast country. To the country to which he brought suffering - poverty, torture, hunger, fear, death, and at the same time some kind of greatness and some kind of victories, which are now fashionable to downplay.Stalin's death brought an end an entire era, debates about which continue to this day. Why this is so, we tried to answer in this article. Also, you can read.
The fate of his wife and children
His manner of communicating with those closest to him can say a lot about a person’s personality. Stalin's wife and children constantly lived under control and cold cruelty.
With his insults and betrayals of his wife Nadezhda, he thereby drove her to the idea of suicide. While at home, she wrote a letter in which she described her husband as a tyrant who tormented not only the people, but also his family. Then she shot herself. When Stalin's wife died, this did not particularly affect the leader of the people.
Nadezhda Alliluyeva, second wife of the leader of the peoples
As for the question of how his children died, it is not possible to call their fates successful. Life with Stalin was so unbearable that one day, left alone in the apartment, Yakov shot himself in the chest, he was taken to the hospital, where doctors saved his life. But during the Great Patriotic War, after being captured, he was shot by a guard while trying to escape.
Yakov - Stalin's eldest son
After Yakov was captured, his beloved son Vasily was returned home from the war, who always received special attention from his father.
But after the death of the leader, he was sent to prison. Having suffered from poor health there and becoming disabled, he soon died of alcoholism.
Vasily Stalin
Svetlana, the daughter of Joseph Vissarionovich, also suffered from her father.Accustomed to exercising complete control, he listened to everything telephone conversations Svetlana. He rejected all her loves, and after marrying young man Jewish origin, she forever lost interest in herself from her father.
After the death of her husband, Svetlana left for India, and eventually moved to permanent place residence in America. Where she actually passed away in a nursing home.
Beginning of the End
At the end of the Great Patriotic War, Stalin's health became worse. He suffered from atherosclerosis, the disease made itself felt more and more, and the reason for this was the leader’s smoking.
During the Victory Parade he suffered a mild stroke and a heart attack in October 1945. In what year did the leader of the peoples die and how old was he?
- On March 1, 1953, Stalin and Beria arrived at his dacha. The next day, at about 10 pm, a guard found the leader of the people on the floor of the room. Lavrentiy Beria was first informed about what happened, and he arrived within 2 hours.
- On March 2, early in the morning, doctors arrived for an examination. The diagnosis was: cerebral hemorrhage caused by hypertension with gastric bleeding.
- On March 4, newspapers and radio informed the Soviet people about the illness of Joseph Vissarionovich, with all the details of his condition. They only kept silent about the fact that the attack on the leader occurred not on the 1st, but on the 2nd of March.
- On March 5, 1953, at 9:50 a.m., Stalin, without getting out of bed, died at the age of 74.
Last years
Victory in the war opened many pages in the history of the country and instilled hope in the people for better life, the hope of all kinds of changes in political and economic cultures.
After the war, perhaps the highest stage of Stalinism begins. Stalin was able to successfully unite the interests of both the “bottoms” and the “tops”. For thirty years his power became limitless.
However, the successes achieved by the national economy in the first post-war years cannot be ignored. According to the opinions of foreign intelligence services, the USSR could completely restore its economy and industry in no less than 20-30 years. And this was done by the end of the 40s!
Additionally, the Soviet atomic bomb was created in 1949 in response to the US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. The Soviet Union became a nuclear power. According to experts, the same amount of resources were spent on creating this bomb as on the Great Patriotic War. Thus, by creating it, the Soviet people defeated Hitler and his Germany for the second time.
By the end of his life, Stalin had reached the zenith of his power.But the totalitarianism he built faced challenges to which, as the future showed, he was unable to provide answers.
Funeral
On March 9, 1953, to bid farewell to the people, the leader’s body was exhibited in the House of Unions. On a pedestal, buried in flowers, stood a coffin with the body of the deceased.
A gray-green uniform with gold buttons was put on the body of Joseph Vissarionovich, and orders and medals lay next to the coffin.
And past, in an endless stream, walked ordinary Muscovites, residents of other cities, who had come to say goodbye.
People walked for 3 days and 3 nights. There were cars with installed spotlights on the streets. Everyone was overcome by one desire - to get into the hall and see the one whom many idolized.
On March 9 at 7 a.m., troops blocked the areas and streets along which the funeral procession was supposed to pass. At 9 am, people gathered in the main square of the country. After this, the funeral procession went to the Mausoleum.
Exactly at 12 o'clock, after the striking of the Kremlin chimes, an artillery salute was fired, the ceremony ended with 5 minutes of silence and the Anthem of the Soviet Union, and planes flying in the sky.
This is how I finished my life path comrade Stalin.
The death of the tyrant was a shock for many; people cried, and not only out of pity, but also out of fear. At that time, many had to go through the war and suffer the loss of loved ones.
But there were also people who were happy. In prisons and camps they tossed their hats and shouted “freedom.”
And the thought crept into the heads of ordinary Soviet families that maybe now fathers, husbands, brothers, and children would finally return home. But the common thought of all people, without exception, was: How to live now? Will there be war again?
People hoped for a better life that they deserved. They deserve it with blood and sweat.
End of the system
Along with the death of the leader of the peoples, the most odious cases initiated by the special services during his lifetime were terminated - for example, the doctors’ case. The political regime that replaced Stalin's is sometimes called post-totalitarian in political science. It is characterized by all the other signs, but it is significantly softer.
However, in the socio-economic life of the USSR, itself economic system, did not actually change until . One can argue long and bitterly about Stalin. One thing is clear, since these debates continue to this day, it means that history as a science is very relevant, and in particular the history of Stalinism.
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (real name Dzhugashvili) was born on December 21 (Old Style 9), 1879 (according to other sources, December 18 (Old Style 6), 1878), in the Georgian city of Gori in the family of a shoemaker.
After graduating from the Gori Theological School in 1894, Stalin studied at the Tiflis Theological Seminary, from where he was expelled for revolutionary activities in 1899. A year earlier, Joseph Dzhugashvili joined the Georgian social-democratic organization Mesame Dasi. Since 1901 he has been a professional revolutionary. At the same time, the party nickname “Stalin” was assigned to him (for his inner circle he had another nickname - “Koba”). From 1902 to 1913, he was arrested and expelled six times, and escaped four times.
When in 1903 (at the Second Congress of the RSDLP) the party split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, Stalin supported the Bolshevik leader Lenin and, on his instructions, began creating a network of underground Marxist circles in the Caucasus.
In 1906-1907, Joseph Stalin participated in organizing a number of expropriations in Transcaucasia. In 1907, he was one of the leaders of the Baku Committee of the RSDLP.
In 1912, at the plenum of the Central Committee of the RSDLP, Stalin was in absentia introduced into the Central Committee and the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP. Participated in the creation of the newspapers Pravda and Zvezda.
In 1913, Stalin wrote the article “Marxism and the National Question,” which earned him the authority of an expert on the national question. In February 1913, he was arrested and exiled to the Turukhansk region. Due to a hand injury suffered in childhood, in 1916 he was declared unfit for military service.
From March 1917, he participated in the preparation and conduct of the October Revolution: he was a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b), and was a member of the Military Revolutionary Center for the leadership of the armed uprising. In 1917-1922 he was People's Commissar for Nationalities Affairs.
During the Civil War, he carried out important assignments of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) and the Soviet government; was a member of the Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defense from the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, was a member of the Revolutionary Military Council (RVS) of the Republic, a member of the RVS of the Southern, Western and Southwestern Fronts.
When on April 3, 1922, at the plenum of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), a new position was established - the General Secretary of the Central Committee, Stalin was elected as the first Secretary General.
This initially purely technical position was used and turned by Stalin into a post with high powers. Its hidden strength lay in the fact that it was the general secretary who appointed the lower-level party leaders, thanks to which Stalin formed a personally loyal majority among the middle ranks of party members. In 1929, his 50th anniversary was celebrated for the first time on a state scale. Stalin remained in the position of General Secretary until the end of his life (from 1922 - General Secretary of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), from December 1925 - CPSU (b), from 1934 - Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b), from 1952 - CPSU).
After Lenin's death, Stalin declared himself the sole successor to the work of the late leader and his teachings. He proclaimed a course towards “building socialism in one single country.” In April 1925, at the XIV Conference of the RCP (b), a new theoretical and political position was formalized. Stalin, quoting a number of Lenin's sayings various years, emphasized that it was Lenin, and not anyone else, who discovered the truth about the possibility of the victory of socialism in one country.
Stalin carried out accelerated industrialization of the country and forced collectivization peasant farms, Which was . The kulaks were liquidated as a class. The department of the central registry of the OGPU in the certificate of eviction of kulaks determined the number of special settlers as 517,665 families with a population of 2,437,062 people. The death toll during these relocations to areas poorly suited for living is estimated at at least 200 thousand people.
In his foreign policy activities, Stalin adhered to the class line of fighting the “capitalist encirclement” and supporting the international communist and labor movement.
By the mid-1930s, Stalin concentrated all state power in his hands and actually became the sole leader of the Soviet people. Old party leaders - Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Rykov and others, who were part of the anti-Stalinist opposition, were gradually expelled from the party, and then physically destroyed as “enemies of the people.” In the second half of the 1930s, a regime of severe terror was established in the country, which reached its climax in 1937-1938. The search and destruction of “enemies of the people” affected not only the highest party bodies and the army, but also broad layers of Soviet society. Millions of Soviet citizens were illegally repressed on far-fetched, unsubstantiated charges of espionage, sabotage, and sabotage; exiled to camps or executed in the basements of the NKVD.
With the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War, Stalin concentrated all political and military power in his hands as Chairman of the State Defense Committee (June 30, 1941 - September 4, 1945) and Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the USSR Armed Forces. At the same time, he took the post of People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR (July 19, 1941 - March 15, 1946; from February 25, 1946 - People's Commissar of the Armed Forces of the USSR) and was directly involved in drawing up plans for military operations.
During the war, Joseph Stalin, together with US President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, initiated the creation of an anti-Hitler coalition. He represented the USSR in negotiations with countries participating in the anti-Hitler coalition (Tehran, 1943; Yalta, 1945; Potsdam, 1945).
After the end of the war, during which the Soviet army liberated most of the countries of Eastern and Central Europe, Stalin became an ideologist and practitioner of the creation of a “world socialist system,” which was one of the main factors in the emergence of “ cold war"and the military-political confrontation between the USSR and the USA.
On June 27, 1945, Stalin was awarded the title of Generalissimo of the Soviet Union.
On March 19, 1946, during the restructuring of the Soviet government apparatus, Stalin was confirmed as Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and Minister of the Armed Forces of the USSR.
After the end of the war in 1945, Stalin's regime of terror resumed. Totalitarian control over society was again established. Under the pretext of fighting “cosmopolitanism,” Stalin carried out purges one after another, and anti-Semitism actively flourished.
However, Soviet industry developed rapidly, and by the beginning of the 1950s the level industrial production already twice the level of 1940. The standard of living of the rural population remained extremely low.
Special attention Stalin paid attention to increasing the defense capability of the Soviet Union and the technical re-equipment of the army and navy. He was one of the main initiators of the implementation of the Soviet “atomic project”, which contributed to the transformation of the USSR into one of the two “superpowers”. He refused to return to the USSR. The move to the West and the subsequent publication of Twenty Letters to a Friend (1967), in which Alliluyeva recalled her father and Kremlin life, caused a worldwide sensation. She stopped in Switzerland for a while, then lived in the USA. In 1970, she married the American architect Wesley Peters, gave birth to a daughter, and soon divorced, but...
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Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (real name: Dzhugashvili) is an active revolutionary, leader of the Soviet state from 1920 to 1953, marshal and generalissimo of the USSR.The period of his reign, called the “era of Stalinism,” was marked by the victory in World War II, the striking successes of the USSR in the economy, in eradicating illiteracy among the population, and in creating the world image of the country as a superpower. At the same time, his name is associated with the horrific facts of the mass extermination of millions of Soviet people through the organization of artificial famine, forced deportations, repressions directed against opponents of the regime, and internal party “cleansings.”
Regardless of his crimes, he remains popular among Russians: a 2017 Levada Center poll found that most citizens consider him an outstanding leader of the state. In addition, he unexpectedly took a leading position in the results of the audience vote during the 2008 television project to select the greatest hero of Russian history, “The Name of Russia.”
Childhood and youth
The future “father of nations” was born on December 18, 1878 (according to another version - December 21, 1879) in eastern Georgia. His ancestors belonged to the lower strata of the population. Father Vissarion Ivanovich was a shoemaker, earned little, drank a lot and often beat his wife. Little Soso, as his mother Ekaterina Georgievna Geladze called her son, also got it from him.The two eldest children in their family died shortly after birth. And the surviving Soso had physical disabilities: two fingers fused on his foot, damage to the skin of his face, and an arm that could not fully straighten due to an injury received at the age of 6 when he was hit by a car.
Joseph's mother worked hard. She wanted her beloved son to achieve “the best” in life, namely, to become a priest. At an early age, he spent a lot of time among street rowdies, but in 1889 he was accepted into the local Orthodox school, where he demonstrated extreme talent: he wrote poetry, received high marks in theology, mathematics, Russian and Greek.
In 1890, the head of the family died from a knife wound in a drunken brawl. True, some historians claim that the boy’s father was in fact not his mother’s official husband, but her distant relative, Prince Maminoshvili, Nikolai Przhevalsky’s confidant and friend. Others even attribute paternity to this to the famous traveler, outwardly very similar to Stalin. These assumptions are confirmed by the fact that the boy was admitted to a very reputable religious educational institution, where people from poor families were barred from entering, as well as the periodic transfer by Prince Maminoshvili to Soso’s mother of funds for raising her son.
After graduating from college at the age of 15, the young man continued his education at the Tiflis Theological Seminary (now Tbilisi), where he made friends among Marxists. In parallel with his main studies, he began to educate himself, studying underground literature. In 1898, he became a member of the first social democratic organization in Georgia, showed himself to be a brilliant speaker and began promoting the ideas of Marxism among workers.
Participation in the revolutionary movement
In his last year of study, Joseph was expelled from the seminary with the issuance of a document giving him the right to work as a teacher in institutions that provided primary education.Since 1899, he began to professionally engage in revolutionary work, in particular, he became a member of the party committees of Tiflis and Batumi, and participated in attacks on banking institutions to obtain funds for the needs of the RSDLP.
In the period 1902-1913. he was arrested eight times and sent into exile seven times as a criminal punishment. But between arrests, while at large, he continued to be active. For example, in 1904, he organized the grandiose Baku strike, which ended with the conclusion of an agreement between workers and oil owners.
Out of necessity, the young revolutionary then had many party pseudonyms - Nizheradze, Soselo, Chizhikov, Ivanovich, Koba. Their total number exceeded 30 names.
In 1905, at the first party conference in Finland, he first met Vladimir Ulyanov-Lenin. Then he was a delegate at the IV and V party congresses in Sweden and Great Britain. In 1912, at the party plenum in Baku, he was included in absentia into the Central Committee. In the same year, he decided to finally change his last name to the party nickname “Stalin”, consonant with the established pseudonym of the leader of the world proletariat.
In 1913, the “fiery Colchian,” as Lenin sometimes called him, once again fell into exile. Having been released in 1917, together with Lev Kamenev (real name Rosenfeld), he headed the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda and worked to prepare an armed uprising.
How did Stalin come to power?
After the October Revolution, Stalin joined the Council of People's Commissars and the Bureau of the Party Central Committee. During the Civil War, he also held a number of responsible positions and gained enormous experience in political and military leadership. In 1922, he took the position of General Secretary, but the General Secretary in those years was not yet the head of the party. 
When Lenin died in 1924, Stalin took over the country, crushing the opposition, and began industrialization, collectivization, and a cultural revolution. The success of Stalin's policy lay in competent personnel policy. “Personnel decide everything,” is a quote from Joseph Vissarionovich in a speech to graduates of the military academy in 1935. During his first years in power, he appointed more than 4 thousand party functionaries to responsible positions, thereby forming the backbone of the Soviet nomenklatura.
Joseph Stalin. How to become a leader
But first of all, he eliminated his competitors in the political struggle, not forgetting to take advantage of their achievements. Nikolai Bukharin became the author of the concept of the national question, which the Secretary General took as the basis for his course. Grigory Lev Kamenev owned the slogan “Stalin is Lenin today,” and Stalin actively promoted the idea that he was the successor of Vladimir Ilyich and literally instilled the cult of Lenin’s personality, strengthening leader sentiments in society. Well, Leon Trotsky, with the support of ideologically close economists, developed a plan for forced industrialization.
It was the latter who became Stalin's main opponent. Disagreements between them began long before this - back in 1918, Joseph was indignant that Trotsky, a newcomer to the party, was trying to teach him the right course. Immediately after Lenin's death, Lev Davidovich fell into disgrace. In 1925, the plenum of the Central Committee summed up the “damage” that Trotsky’s speeches caused to the party. The activist was removed from the post of head of the Revolutionary Military Council, and Mikhail Frunze was appointed in his place. Trotsky was expelled from the USSR, and a struggle against manifestations of “Trotskyism” began in the country. The fugitive settled in Mexico, but was killed in 1940 by an NKVD agent.
After Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev came under Stalin’s crosshairs and were eventually eliminated during the apparatus war.
Stalin's repressions
Stalin's methods of achieving impressive success in transforming an agricultural country into a superpower - violence, terror, repression with torture - cost millions human lives. 
Along with the kulaks, the innocent rural population of middle income also became victims of dispossession (evictions, confiscation of property, executions), which led to the virtual destruction of the village. When the situation reached critical proportions, the Father of Nations issued a statement about “excesses on the ground.”
Forced collectivization (unification of peasants into collective farms), the concept of which was adopted in November 1929, destroyed traditional agriculture and led to dire consequences. In 1932, mass famine struck Ukraine, Belarus, Kuban, the Volga region, the Southern Urals, Kazakhstan, and Western Siberia.
Researchers agree that enormous harm was also caused to the state political repression dictator-“architect of communism” in relation to the command staff of the Red Army, persecution of scientists, cultural figures, doctors, engineers, mass closures of churches, deportations of many peoples, including Crimean Tatars, Germans, Chechens, Balkars, Ingrian Finns.
In 1941, after Hitler's attack on the USSR, the Supreme Commander made many erroneous decisions in the art of war. In particular, his refusal to promptly withdraw military formations from near Kyiv led to the unjustified death of a significant mass of the armed forces - five armies. But later, when organizing various military operations, he already showed himself to be a very competent strategist.
The significant contribution of the USSR to the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 contributed to the formation of the world socialist system, as well as the growth of the authority of the country and its leader. The “Great Helmsman” contributed to the creation of a powerful domestic military-industrial complex, the transformation of the Soviet Union into a nuclear superpower, one of the founders of the UN and a permanent member of its Security Council with the right of veto.
Personal life of Joseph Stalin
“Uncle Joe,” as Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill called Stalin, was married twice. His first chosen one was Ekaterina Svanidze, the sister of his friend from studying at the Tiflis Theological Seminary. Their wedding took place in the Church of St. David in July 1906. 
A year later, Kato gave her husband her first child, Yakov. When the boy was only 8 months old, she died (according to some sources from tuberculosis, others from typhoid fever). She was 22 years old. As the English historian Simon Montefiore noted, during the funeral, 28-year-old Stalin did not want to say goodbye to his beloved wife and jumped into her grave, from where he was rescued with great difficulty.
After the death of his mother, Yakov met his father only at the age of 14. After school, without his permission, he got married, then, due to a conflict with his father, he tried to commit suicide. During the Second World War he died in German captivity. According to one legend, the Nazis offered to exchange Jacob for Friedrich Paulus, but Stalin did not take the opportunity to save his son, saying that he would not exchange a field marshal for a soldier.
The second time the “Locomotive of the Revolution” tied the knot of Hymen at the age of 39, in 1918. His affair with 16-year-old Nadezhda, the daughter of one of the revolutionary workers Sergei Alliluyev, began a year earlier. Then he returned from Siberian exile and lived in their apartment. In 1920, the couple had a son, Vasily, a future lieutenant general of aviation, and in 1926, a daughter, Svetlana, who emigrated to the United States in 1966. She married an American and took the surname Peters. Stalin's main hobby was reading
The leader's main hobby was reading. He loved Maupassant, Dostoevsky, Wilde, Gogol, Chekhov, Zola, Goethe, and quoted the Bible and Bismarck without hesitation.
Death of Stalin
At the end of his life, the Soviet dictator was praised as a professional in all fields of knowledge. One word from him could decide the fate of any scientific discipline. There was a struggle against “kowtowing to the West”, against “cosmopolitanism”, and the exposure of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee.The last speech of J.V. Stalin (Speech at the 19th Congress of the CPSU, 1952)
In his personal life, he was lonely, rarely communicated with children - he did not approve of his daughter’s endless affairs and his son’s spree. At the dacha in Kuntsevo, he remained alone at night with the guards, who could usually enter him only after being called.
Svetlana, who came on December 21 to congratulate her father on his 73rd birthday, noted later that he did not look well and, apparently, did not feel well, since he unexpectedly quit smoking.
On the evening of Sunday, March 1, 1953, the assistant commandant entered the chief's office with mail received at 10 p.m. and saw him lying on the floor. Having carried him along with the guards who came running to help to the sofa, he informed the senior leadership of the party about what had happened. At 9 am on March 2, a group of doctors diagnosed the patient with paralysis right side bodies. The time for his possible rescue was lost, and on March 5 he died of a cerebral hemorrhage.
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin(real name Dzhugashvili) - Russian revolutionary, Soviet political, party, statesman, military leader. Joseph Stalin was awarded the title of Generalissimo of the Soviet Union (1945). Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the leader of the Soviet state from the late 1920s until his death on March 5, 1953.
The childhood and education of Joseph Stalin
According to the official version, Joseph Stalin was born on December 9 (21), 1879 in the city of Gori, Tiflis province. According to unofficial data, Joseph Vissarionovich was born on December 6 (18), 1878.
Stalin's father Vissarion Dzhugashvili- was a shoemaker. He didn't earn much. He drank often.
Stalin's mother - Ekaterina Georgievna(nee - Geladze) loved her son very much. She dreamed that Joseph Stalin would become a priest. In 1888, Joseph was immediately accepted into the second preparatory class at the Gori Orthodox Theological School, and in September 1889, Joseph Dzhugashvili entered the first class of the school, where he received his education. Joseph Vissarionovich studied very well. He graduated from college in 1894 and his college graduation certificate had almost all excellent marks.
Joseph Stalin then continued his education; in September 1894, Dzhugashvili entered the Orthodox Tiflis Theological Seminary. But it was during this period that young Joseph Dzhugashvili made Marxist friends. Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin began to attend meetings of underground groups of revolutionaries expelled by the tsarist government to Transcaucasia.
According to Wikipedia, English historian Simon Sebag-Montefiore wrote: “Stalin was an extremely gifted student who received high marks in all subjects: mathematics, theology, Greek language, Russian language. Stalin liked poetry, and in his youth he himself wrote poems in Georgian, which attracted the attention of connoisseurs.” In his opinion, Stalin had outstanding intellectual abilities: for example, could read Plato in original. When Stalin came to power, the historian continues, he always wrote his own speeches and articles in a clear and often sophisticated style. The English historian argued that the myth of Stalin the ignoramus was spread Leon Trotsky and his supporters.
In 1931, a German writer Emil Ludwig in an interview he asked Stalin: “What prompted you to become an oppositionist? Possibly mistreatment from parents? Stalin replied: “No. My parents treated me quite well. Another thing is the theological seminary where I studied then. Out of protest against the mocking regime and the Jesuit methods that existed in the seminary, I was ready to become and actually became a revolutionary, a supporter of Marxism...” At the same time, Joseph Vissarionovich did not talk about his drunkard father, who beat him, and his wife.
Communicating with new friends, Joseph Stalin systematically engaged in self-education, and then in revolutionary affairs. In 1898, young Dzhugashvili joined the first Georgian Social Democratic organization. Joseph Vissarionovich immediately proved himself to be a convincing speaker. Therefore, he was assigned to conduct propaganda in workers' circles.
Revolutionary career
In 1899, Joseph Dzhugashvili left the seminary, and in 1901 the young man actually became a professional revolutionary and went underground. He worked under the party nicknames “Koba”, “David”, “Stalin”. Joseph Vissarionovich took part in the so-called “exes”, that is, in attacks on banks to replenish the party treasury. Joseph Stalin became a member of the Tiflis and Batumi committees of the RSDLP. He was eventually arrested.
From 1902 and over the next eleven years, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was arrested 8 times. The young revolutionary was in exile seven times, but each time he managed to escape (except for exile in 1913). In exile, as Stalin’s comrades noted, in particular, Mikhail Sverdlov, he behaved aloofly, even arrogantly.
In the intervals between arrests, Joseph Vissarionovich was engaged in great revolutionary work. Stalin organized the Baku strike in 1904, after which a collective agreement was concluded between the strikers and industrialists. In 1905 at 1st conference Joseph Stalin personally met the RSDLP in Tammerfors (Finland) for the first time V. I. Lenina. Further, Stalin took part as a delegate from Tiflis in the IV and V congresses (1907) in Stockholm and London.
In 1912, at the plenum of the Baku RSDLP, Stalin was introduced in absentia to the Central Committee and to the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP.
Having noticed Joseph Vissarionovich’s literary abilities, he was entrusted with organizing the publication of the newspapers “Pravda” and “Zvezda”. In 1913, Stalin’s article “Marxism and the National Question” was published in Vienna. From that moment on, Joseph Dzhugashvili began to be considered an expert on the national question in revolutionary circles. In the same year in February, Joseph Vissarionovich was arrested and exiled to the Turukhansk region. He was freed only after February revolution. Stalin returned to Petrograd and entered the Bureau of the Central Committee, and then, together with Lev Kamenev headed the editorial office of the newspaper Pravda.
Since Vladimir Lenin was abroad, Stalin, along with other revolutionaries in Petrograd, took an active part in the preparation and conduct of the October Revolution.
Wikipedia reports that due to Lenin’s forced departure into hiding, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, as his follower and like-minded person, spoke at the VI Congress of the RSDLP (b) (July-August 1917) with a report to the Central Committee. At a meeting of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b) on August 5, Joseph Stalin was elected a member of the narrow composition of the Central Committee. In August-September, Joseph Dzhugashvili mainly carried out organizational and journalistic work, publishing his articles in the newspapers “Pravda” and “Soldatskaya Pravda”.
On the night of October 16, at an extended meeting of the Central Committee, he spoke out against the position of L. B. Kamenev and G. E. Zinovieva who voted against the decision to revolt. Joseph Stalin was elected a member of the Military Revolutionary Center, which joined the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee (VRK).
During this period, Joseph Stalin often spoke in debates at city conferences, where they reported on the current situation, and participated in anti-war propaganda. Joseph Stalin was elected a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Bureau from the Bolshevik faction. He increasingly supported Lenin's views. On October 10, 1917, at a meeting of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b), Joseph Vissarionovich voted for a resolution on an armed uprising.
After the October Revolution, Joseph Stalin was directly involved in the development of a plan for the defeat of the troops advancing on Petrograd A.F. Kerensky And P.N. Krasnova. And then, together with Vladimir Lenin, he signed the decision of the Council of People's Commissars to ban the publication of “all newspapers closed by the Military Revolutionary Committee.”
Civil War
When the civil war began, Stalin was appointed chairman of the Military Council of the North Caucasus Military District (June-September 1918). Later, Joseph Stalin was a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Southern Front, then a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic and a representative of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee in the Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defense (from late 1918 to May 1919, and also from May 1920 to April 1922).
As the doctor of military and historical sciences wrote Mahmut Gareev, during the Civil War, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin gained extensive experience in military-political leadership of large masses of troops on many fronts (defense of Tsaritsyn, Petrograd, on the fronts against Denikin, Wrangel, White Poles).
Stalin - the path to power
English writer Charles Snow also characterized educational level Stalin is quite high: “One of the many curious circumstances related to Stalin: he was much more educated in a literary sense than any of his contemporaries statesmen. Compared to him Lloyd George And Churchill- surprisingly poorly read people. As, indeed, Roosevelt».
Apparently thanks to his abilities, Joseph Stalin was elected to the Politburo and Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), as well as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the RCP (b). Initially, this position meant only the leadership of the party apparatus, and the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR, Lenin, continued to be perceived by everyone as the leader of the party and government.
After Lenin's death, by the end of the 20s, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin defeated the opposition and became the head Soviet Russia. From that moment on, Stalin took up state affairs. He decisively began to speed up industrialization and complete collectivization of agriculture.
Hunger and progress
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin declared 1929 the year of the “great turning point.” Joseph Vissarionovich was going to transform agricultural Russia into a developed industrial state. He named industrialization, collectivization and cultural revolution as the strategic objectives of the state. The course of the “great turning point” was carried out using violent methods that cost millions of human lives. But thanks to the enthusiasm of the population, the country has achieved a lot. Hydroelectric power stations and factories were built, and the first metro lines appeared in Moscow. At the same time, people died of hunger.
In 1932, a number of regions of the USSR (Ukraine, Volga region, Kuban, Belarus, Southern Urals, Western Siberia and Kazakhstan) were struck by famine. According to a number of historians, the famine of 1932-1933 was artificial; the state had the ability to reduce its scale and consequences.
Stalin's general line destroyed the rural worker. Along with the fists, innocent people also suffered. The rural population was forced to go to the city in search of work. The situation was critical. And then Joseph Stalin made a statement about “excesses on the ground,” and already before the war the situation in the village improved.
During these same years, Joseph Stalin decisively dealt with the opposition. As is known, the so-called “Congress of Winners”, the XVII Congress of the CPSU (b) (1934), for the first time stated that the resolution of the Tenth Congress had been implemented, and there was no longer any opposition in the party.
Joseph Stalin and the Great Patriotic War
Just before World War II, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, focusing on the situation that arose in Europe, decided to get closer to Germany. Thus, the leader of Soviet Russia, realizing that war with Hitler was inevitable, wanted to postpone the military conflict for some time in order to complete the rearmament of the army and completely switch to new types of military equipment.
Based on the pact Molotov-Ribbentrop, the USSR reached agreements on the delimitation of spheres of influence, and after the outbreak of World War II annexed the territories of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, the Baltic states, Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina.
But World War II began on September 1, 1939, when Hitler attacked Poland. Since September 1939, Poland, France, Great Britain and its dominions were at war with Germany (Anglo-Polish Military Alliance of 1939 and Franco-Polish Alliance of 1921).
In June 1941 there was treacherous attack Hitler on the USSR. In this difficult war, the country led by Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (as Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces) suffered serious material and bitter human losses.
During 1941, the USSR, USA and China joined the anti-Hitler coalition. As of January 1942, the coalition consisted of 26 states: the Big Four (USA, UK, USSR, China), the British dominions (Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa), Central and Latin America, the Caribbean, and governments in exile of occupied European countries. The number of coalition participants increased during the war.
The Soviet Union, under the leadership of Stalin, made a decisive contribution to the victory over Nazism, which contributed to the expansion of the USSR's influence in Eastern Europe and East Asia, as well as the formation of the world socialist system.
In the post-war years, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin contributed to the creation of a powerful military-industrial complex in the country and the transformation of the USSR into one of the two world superpowers, possessing nuclear weapons and became a co-founder of the UN, being a permanent member of the UN Security Council with the right of veto.
Deportations and repressions in the USSR
In the USSR, many peoples were subjected to total deportation, among them: Koreans, Germans, Ingrian Finns, Karachais, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Crimean Tatars and Meskhetian Turks. Of these, seven - Germans, Karachais, Kalmyks, Ingush, Chechens, Balkars and Crimean Tatars - also lost their national autonomy.
Historians agree that Stalin's repressions in the Red Army caused serious damage to the country's defense capability and, among other factors, led to significant losses Soviet troops V initial period Great Patriotic War.
Those repressed during these years included three of the five marshals of the Soviet Union, 20 army commanders of the 1st and 2nd rank, 5 fleet flagships of the 1st and 2nd rank, 6 flagships of the 1st rank, 69 corps commanders, 153 division commanders, 247 brigade commanders.
During the war, the aggressive anti-religious campaign and mass closures of churches were stopped. Stalin became a supporter of the comprehensive expansion of the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church.
After the victory in 1945, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin proposed a toast “To the Russian people!”, which he called “the most outstanding nation of all the nations that make up the Soviet Union.”
July 24, 1945 in Potsdam Truman told Joseph Stalin that the United States “now has weapons of extraordinary destructive power.” According to Churchill's recollections, Stalin smiled, but did not become interested in the details. From this, Churchill concluded that Stalin did not understand anything and was not aware of events. But he was wrong.
That same evening, Stalin ordered Molotov to talk with Kurchatov on accelerating work on the nuclear project. On August 20, 1945, to manage the atomic project, the State Defense Committee created a Special Committee with emergency powers, headed by L.P. Beria. An executive body was created under the Special Committee - the First Main Directorate under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR (PGU). Stalin's directive obliged the PGU to ensure the creation atomic bombs, uranium and plutonium, in 1948.
Personal life of Joseph Stalin
On the night of July 16, 1906, in the Tiflis Church of St. David, Joseph Dzhugashvili married Ekaterina Svanidze. From this marriage, Stalin’s first son, Yakov, was born in 1907. At the end of the same year, Stalin's wife died of typhus.
In the spring of 1918, Stalin married for the second time. His wife was the daughter of a Russian revolutionary S. Ya. Alliluyeva — Nadezhda Alliluyeva.
On March 24, 1921, a son, Vasily, was born to Joseph Stalin and Nadezhda Alliluyeva in Moscow. Stalin also adopted Artem Sergeeva after the death of his close friend, a revolutionary Fedor Andreevich Sergeev.
In February 1926, daughter Svetlana was born.
Grandson of Stalin Evgeny Dzhugashvili born in 1936. For 25 years he worked as a senior lecturer in the history of wars and military art at the Military Academy of the General Staff Armed Forces USSR named after K.E. Voroshilova. Performed the role of I.V. Stalin in a film by a Soviet Georgian director D.K. Abashidze"Yakov, son of Stalin" (1990). Citizen of Russia and Georgia, lived in Moscow and Tbilisi. Died in 2016.
Hobbies of Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin loved to read. As Simon Sebag-Montefiore wrote: “...Stalin's library consisted of 20,000 volumes, and he spent many hours every day reading books, making notes in their margins and cataloging them. At the same time, Stalin’s tastes in reading were eclectic: Maupassant, Wilde, Gogol, Goethe, Zola. Stalin was an erudite man - he quoted the Bible, works Bismarck, works Chekhov, admired Dostoevsky, considering him a subtle psychologist.”
Death of Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin died at his official residence - the Near Dacha, where he constantly lived in the post-war period. On March 1, 1953, one of the guards found Joseph Stalin lying on the floor of a small dining room. On the morning of March 2, doctors arrived at Nizhnyaya Dacha and diagnosed paralysis on the right side of the body. On March 5 at 21:50, Stalin died. According to the medical report, death was caused by a cerebral hemorrhage.
In the Necropolis near the Kremlin wall, the memorial cemetery on Red Square, and in the wall itself there are urns with the ashes of state, party and military leaders of the USSR, participants in the October Revolution of 1917. To the right of the Mausoleum, especially prominent party leaders are buried without cremation, in a coffin and in a grave and the government, including in 1961 the body of Joseph Stalin was transferred there from the Mausoleum.
Assessment of the activities of Joseph Stalin
The activities of Joseph Stalin will be debated for a long time. Stalin's supporters believe that he left behind a strong party, a country with advanced social and political system. Made the USSR a power of global importance.
Opponents of Joseph Vissarionovich believe that Stalin’s reign was characterized by the presence of an autocratic regime of personal power, the dominance of authoritarian-bureaucratic methods of management, an excessive strengthening of the repressive functions of the state, the merging of party and government agencies, strict state control over all aspects of society, violation of the fundamental rights and freedoms of citizens, deportations of peoples, mass deaths as a result of the famine of 1931-1933 and rampant repression.
In the obituary for the death of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, The Manchester Guardian of March 6, 1953 wrote: “The essence of Stalin’s historical achievement is that he took Russia with a plow and left it with nuclear reactors. He raised Russia to the level of the second industrial power in the world. This was not the result of purely material progress and organization. Such achievements would not have been possible without a comprehensive cultural revolution, during which the entire population attended school and studied very hard."
After Stalin's death, public opinion about him was largely shaped in accordance with the position of officials of the USSR and Russia. After the 20th Congress of the CPSU, Soviet historians assessed Stalin taking into account the position of the ideological bodies of the USSR.
Nevertheless, geographical objects in many countries of the world are named after Stalin.
In the Foundation's report Carnegie(2013) notes that if in 1989 Stalin’s “rating” in the list of the greatest historical figures was minimal - 12% (Vladimir Lenin - 72%, Peter I - 38%, Alexander Pushkin - 25%), then in 2012 Stalin turned out to be in first place with 49%. According to a public opinion poll conducted by the Public Opinion Foundation on February 18-19, 2006, 47% of Russian residents considered Stalin’s role in history to be generally positive, 29% - negative. During a survey of television viewers (May 7 - December 28, 2008), organized by the Rossiya TV channel in order to select the most valued, noticeable and symbolic personality Russian history, Stalin occupied the leading position by a large margin. As a result, Stalin took third place, losing to the first two historical figures about 1% of the vote.
When Nikita Khrushchev at the 20th Congress he debunked Stalin’s personality cult, after which at one meeting in the Kremlin he declared:
— The Chief of the General Staff is present here Sokolovsky, he will confirm that Stalin did not understand military issues. Am I right? “No way, Nikita Sergeevich,” the marshal answered clearly. He was relieved of his post.
Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov also confirmed: “We are not worth Stalin’s little finger!”
Joseph Stalin in the news these days
The figure of Joseph Stalin continues to play a huge role in the political life of the country; films are made about Stalin, with which scandals are associated; Joseph Vissarionovich is discussed by politicians and ordinary people.
Every now and then scandals arise with banners or memorial signs to Stalin. The online publication “Free Press-South” states that a banner with a portrait of Joseph Stalin in the uniform of a generalissimo and the inscription: “We remember, we are proud!”, which was hung on April 29, 2015 in the center of Stavropol, caused a scandal. In May 2015, the monument to Joseph Stalin, erected in Lipetsk on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the Victory by local communists, was doused with pink paint. That same year, a banner depicting Stalin was hung in the center of Moscow.
In the Chelyabinsk region, coins with Stalin and Zhukov were issued. An initiative group of residents of the closed city of Ozersk in the Chelyabinsk region appealed to the administration of the locality with a request to erect a monument to Joseph Stalin for the 70th anniversary of the Victory.
In 2015, a monument dedicated to the participants of the 1945 Yalta Conference was unveiled in Yalta. The composition repeats the famous photograph taken at the end of the conference, in which Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt are sitting next to each other. In the fall of the same year, in the village of Shelanger in the Mari El Republic, a monument to Joseph Stalin was unveiled at the entrance of the Zvenigovsky meat processing plant.
"Free Press" reported that, in the opinion of the President of Ukraine Petra Poroshenko, Joseph Stalin was one of those who unleashed the Second World War in September 1939 world war.
In 2016 Vladimir Zhirinovsky got into the news with a proposal to move all burials from Red Square in the capital to Mytishchi near Moscow. The LDPR leader mentioned that a few days ago people brought flowers to the grave of the “bloody dictator” Stalin in honor of the anniversary of his death. Although the country, according to him, still cannot recover from his rule.
Joseph Stalin is often mentioned in the campaign of Russian presidential candidates in the 2018 Elections. So the candidate Ksenia Sobchak in the fall of 2017, she called Stalin “an executioner and a criminal,” accusing him of “full-scale genocide of the Russian people.”
The Communist Party of the Russian Federation responded to this that it is connected with the name of Stalin scientific progress, hundreds of new research institutes, hundreds of new educational institutes, literacy, cultural breakthrough, industrialization.
Stalin was the most outstanding personality in the history of mankind.
Scandal with the film “The Death of Stalin”
On January 23, Free Press reported that the Ministry of Culture had revoked the distribution certificate of the satirical comedy “The Death of Stalin” by the British director Armando Iannucci. The film was also sent for additional legal examination, the news reported.
According to the head of the department Vladimir Medinsky, many people of the older generation, and not only those, will perceive it as an offensive mockery of the entire Soviet past, of the country that defeated fascism, of Soviet army and above ordinary people. Medinsky assures that the revocation of the rental certificate is not related to issues of censorship, but to issues of morality.
The film, which was due to be released on January 25, tells the story of the struggle for power after the death of the Soviet leader. The main roles in the film were played by Jason Isaacs, Olga Kurilenko, Steve Buscemi And Rupert Friend.
The director of the feature film “The Death of Stalin” Armando Iannucci told reporters that he still hopes that his work will be released in Russia.
Press Secretary of the President of Russia Dmitry Peskov refused to consider the situation with the withdrawal of the distribution certificate from the film “The Death of Stalin” a few days before the start of its showing in cinemas as a manifestation of censorship.
