Joseph Stalin - The Most Fearsome Dictator in History Documentary

The Man known to history as Joseph Stalin was born yev vasovic jash on the 18th of December 1878 in the Eastern Georgian town of Gori this was the 6th of December according to the old style Julian calendar which was still in operation in the Russian Empire at the time Stalin was a pen name which ysf adopted in his mid-30s his father was basaran jash v a cobbler who for a while had a thriving Business though he failed to change with the times and his shoes eventually became unfashionable miring the family in poverty yosef's mother was

yarina galad a devout Orthodox Christian who had married basaran at the age of 16 and went on to give birth to Three Sons the two oldest of which both died in infancy resulting in yadina placing much of her hopes for the future in her only surviving Son yep's parents had a tempestuous relationship and often fought when ysep was 10 Yak Catarina left basaran as as he was by this time an abusive alcoholic who would on his infrequent visits home beat his wife and son to escape her husband Yak Catarina sought the help of a family

friend named Yakov aatash who had been The Godfather of her two deceased Sons this enabled both mother and son to live in relative security for a time to get by Financially yatar undertook housework in the local area including in the house of a priest named christor charani who in 1888 helped acquire a place for ysep in the Gory church school he proved himself to be a capable student and quickly Rose to the top of his class despite this upturn in Fortune ysep narrowly survived a wave of the small pox epidemic one which left his face

pockmark a much more drastic episode occurred When he was 12 and his left arm was mangled in the wheel of a horsedrawn cart he was hospitalized for months and was left with limited use of his left arm for the rest of his life after recovering though yep sha academically he was soon recommended by his teacher to join the religious Seminary at tbli and was admitted in 1894 however having arrived to the Seminary it soon became apparent that his path lay elsewhere after young ysep declared That he did not believe in God a crucial problem for

any would be priest instead he began to read forbidden Publications such as Nikolai cherish's famous novel what is to be done and the notorious DUS Capital Bal Marx of whom he subsequently became a great admirer YB soon joined secret Socialist Workers meetings within Georgia as resentment and anger was growing here at the oppression of the Russian zaris Government by the end of the 19th century Russia had been ruled by the Zar for three and a half centuries stretching back to Ivan the Terrible who had proclaimed himself the first Zar of all Russia in the middle

of the 16th century the tars were absolutist rulers meaning that there was no tradition of a parliament or public representation in Russia the country had been ruled instead by the tars in tandem with the powerful Nobles at the Orthodox Church Russia was a great power though Ivan had expanded outwards from from the duchy of musy to conquer lands southwards to the Caspian Sea and then successes like Peter the Great and Katherine the Great had conquered large parts of Ukraine and southwards to the Caucasus the Napoleonic Wars had marked the Russian Empire's transition to great power

status and by the second half of the 19th century it was seeking to expand into the Balkans to replace the in Ottoman Empire as the main power there while a rivalry had developed in Central Asia with Britain for influence in Persia and Afghanistan despite this great power status domestically Russia was very backwards the Empire's economy was based almost entirely on agriculture and serfdom had only been abolished in 1861 tar Al alander II had attempted wide ranging reforms prior to his assassination in 1881 but his successor Alexander III was a reactionary who doubled down on autocracy

by the time Nicholas I second had come to the throne in 1894 major new movements were destabilizing the country cities like Moscow and St Petersburg were industrializing and this was leading to an flux of radical socialist and communist thought combined with new indigenous political movements like the anarchists many people within these Groups and within wider Society wanted political representation and a drastic overhaul of Russian Society to pull it firmly into the Modern Age and out of the medieval habits and traditions that it was still mired in yet SAR Nicholas II was the wrong man for

this time he was not a malicious character but he was weak willed and of limited abilities a figure who could not grasp what Russia's problems were and how he might begin to address them this was the political Social and economic backdrop against which yoseb would begin his political rise in the early 20th century in 1899 ysep began working as a meteorologist in toi his virulent opposition to the tarist autocratic government was evolving during this period and he also began giving speeches at meetings of local workers and clandestine groups that were speaking out against the political

system in Russia these inevitably attracted the attention of the tarist secret police known as the Okana he also joined the Russian Social Democratic labor party or rsdlp in 1899 a left-wing socialist movement that had been founded in 1898 and which would eventually become the Russian Communist party after he became a member yose began infiltrating workers groups in order to stir up opposition from within them to the Government he developed a reputation for being willing to use violence and illegal methods engaging in theft and criminality to help fund his own and the party's activities in Georgia

once the authorities homed in on him in 1901 he left for Batumi on the coast of the Black Sea where he again organized protests at one of which many people were shot by the local police a year later he was involved in the instigation of an attack on a local prison where Several Party leaders were being detained during which over a dozen of the attackers were killed after he organized yet another protest on the day of his comrades funerals he was arrested and sentenced in 1903 to 3 years Exile in Siberia the cold desolate region

of Russia east of the Ural Mountains yep had no intention of respecting the terms of his Exile and he soon managed managed to escape and headed back West to Tbli there he helped edit an underground newspaper which advocated for the Georgian branch of the rsdlp to split off from the Russian branches of the party and seek Georgian Independence this coincided with a split within the rsdlp after leading members of the party in Exile in Western Europe divided into the Bolshevik LED by Vladimir Lenin and the menik the bolik were the more Hardline Wing who only

wanted committed political revolutionaries joining the movement while the menik sought a wider base of support yoseb gravitated towards the Bolsheviks in 1905 during a period of revolutionary activity throughout the Russian Empire brought about by a massacre of peaceful protesters in St pet pburg by the Taris government on the 22nd of January 1905 yep established himself as the leader of a squad of Bolshevik fighters In Georgia in the period that followed he and his group effectively became a criminal gang engaging in robberies attacks on government buildings and other illicit activity still it had the desired effect

of making him one of the leading Bolsheviks in Georg Georgia and in November 1905 he was dispatched to represent the region at the party's Congress in stock Home in Sweden in the years that followed he continued his Operations as a leader of a Bolshevik gang and paramilitary unit gaining notoriety and a degree of respect amongst the Bolshevik leadership the most infamous incident during this time was his organization of the Tiff bank robbery on the 26th of junee 1907 a crime in which dozens of people were killed and a quarter of a million Rubles were stolen

in the winter of 1909 he was once again exiled to Siberia though he yet again escaped and returned To Georgia in 1912 yusep was asked by Lenin to join the Bolshevik Central Committee which he agreed to but he was then later that year arrested once again and sent into Exile as however he soon escaped and went underground in St Petersburg there he contributed to the foundation of the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda meaning truth he would be an editor and contributor to it in its first years it was whilst working on This newspaper that yusep started to

use the pseudonym Stalin meaning Steel this along with the anglicization of his first name resulted in the version of his name that the whole world knows today Joseph Stalin indeed it was the editorship of Pravda that brought Stalin to the attention of The Wider Bolshevik movement it also cemented his position as one of Lenin's right-hand men a figure who continued to live in Exile in Western Europe and relied on operatives Like Stalin to function as his eyes and ears in Russia Itself by the time of the outbreak of the first world war in the late

summer of 1914 Stalin was one of the most influential men in the Bolshevik movement he was though yet again in Exile having been sent this time to the Arctic regions of Russia by the government in 1913 when the war broke out in 194 consideration was given to forcing him To enlist in the Russian army but he was excused service owing to the disability in his left arm these were turbulent years in Stalin's personal life too by this time he had already been through one marriage back in 1905 he had been introduced by a revolutionary colleague

Alexander sanid to his sister yarina sanid Stalin married her the following year and they had a son named Yakov early in 1907 however Yak Catarina died just a few months later in November 1907 probably from typhus obtained from drinking contaminated water Stalin was deeply affected by her passing According to some reports he had contemplated taking his own life and stated at her f funeral that quote with her died my last warm feelings for Humanity this contrasts sharply with other reports that he had been physically abusive towards her Yakov was raised by Yak Catarina's wider family

thereafter now in Exile in the mid 1910s Stalin began a relationship with liia Perina a resident of the Hamlet of Kura that he was banished to Stalin was 35 years old and she was 14 she became pregnant before long and although this first pregnancy resulted in a miscarriage she later gave birth to an illegitimate child of Stalin's named Alexander by then Starling had returned to Western Russia and although he knew Of Alexander's existence they never met by the time Alexander was born Stalin had just met a 17-year-old old girl named nesa alua they married in

1919 and would have two children a boy named vili born in 1921 and a daughter swetlana born in 1926 whilst Stalin was in Exile a great wave of political change began to strike Russia the Army's disastrous performance on the Eastern Front against Germany in Late 1916 and early 1917 led to the conservative February revolution of 197 in St Petersburg which culminated in Nicholas II being forced to abdicate the Russian Throne he was then replaced by a provisional government headed by Alexander kensky but the new regime's grip over the country was still relatively weak meaning that

the influence of the farle in the sh of the Bolsheviks and other groups like the menik continued to grow Unchecked over the coming months in this environment Lenin made his way back to Russia from Switzerland while Stalin quickly slipped away from his Exile and returned to St Petersburg which had been renamed petrograd during the war over the next few months Lenin in conjunction with figures like Stalin and leant troski a Jewish Russian Bolshevik intellectual planned a revolution in petrograd they launched this on the 25th of October 1917 according to the old style calendar though it

was the 7th of November elsewhere in Europe the October Revolution resulted in the overthrow of the conservative government and the seizure of Power by the Bolsheviks in petrograd Moscow and other cities the capital of the newly created Russian Soviet federative Socialist Republic was moved back to the traditional Russian Capital Moscow from here figures like Stalin were involved in the first stages Of the Russian Civil War and also organizing peace terms with the Germans so that the Bolsheviks could exit the first world war and concentrate on consolidating their position at home in Russia a ceasefire was

agreed with Germany on the 15th of December 1917 and hostilities with the Central Powers then formally ceased with the signing of the Treaty of breos on the 3rd of March 1918 at home there was fierce resistance to the new Bolshevik government opponents of Lenin and the new Soviet style regime came from many different groups from the menik to to conservatives and Regional groups like The cacs of Ukraine and the fins who hoped to benefit from the war by winning independence from the Russian State these opponents of the regime collectively became known as the whites who

fought the Red Army of the Bolsheviks the conflict would be fought for half a decade bringing much hardship including a terrible famine in the early 1920s that killed Millions ions of Russians during it Stalin was sent to the city of Tarin present day vrad he organized the defense of this key City on the river vulga in Southwestern Russia his methods were extreme and included the mass destruction of villages in The Wider region to deprive the whites of Resources many within the Bolshevik movement disapproved of his approach years later Stalin would rename the city Stalingrad in

their campaign against the whites the Bolsheviks had started to use methods which far outweighed the repressive and brutal nature of the Taris regime it is clear that one of the most Relentless Advocates of the policy of Terror was Stalin perhaps the most famous example of the increasingly ruthless approach the Communists Employed came on the 17th of July 1918 when the former tar Nicholas II and his wife and children were executed by the Bolsheviks at Yekaterinburg where they were being held during the latter stages of the Russian Civil War Stalin was appointed to numerous commands in

which he proved to be authoritative and ruthless in dealing with deserters and was ultimately rewarded by the government with the order of the red banner for his services To the Communist cause he was also involved in the Polish Soviet War which had started when the newly reestablished Republic of Poland had sought to capitalize on the state of upheaval within Russia in order to expand its eastern Frontier by 1922 it was clear that the Civil War would end in Bolshevik Victory though fighting continued intermittently in some places into 1923 the Bolsheviks lost large parts of The

Russian Empire including Poland the Baltic Sea States and Finland though they retained control over Ukraine and the Caucasus these were formed into the Union of Soviet Socialist republics the USSR the Civil War had caused massive disruption and upheaval across Russia in response to the death dislocation and famine Lenin had made economic concessions in 1921 known as the New Economic Policy The program was a temporary drift away from communist principles in allowing private ownership of goods and Industry and a free market to operate this was undertaken in order to stabilize the war ravaged economy of Russia

however it was unpopular with many ideological purists such as Trotsky within the Soviet government who argued that the state should control all worker activity and output Stalin supported Lenin in these temporary measures an action which made Him increasingly powerful as the civil war came to an end in 1922 and 1923 he was hence able to gain election as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in April 1922 a position of considerable power within the new government which placed him in charge of party membership along with disciplinarian duties this role also gave

Stalin a foothold in virtually every aspect of the governance of Russia It ensured he was able to gather information on potential enemies and he then gradually and quietly began to accumulate more and more power then in May 1922 Lenin suffered a severe stroke which left him partially paralyzed and bedridden in the months that followed Stalin tried to control access to Lenin and started taking over a range of his responsibilities soon after this Lenin began to complain to his wife about Stalin fearing his excessive ambition and the ruthlessness with which he pursued power he consequently dictated

a document that is now known as Lenin's Testament in this he urged reform within the party's ruling Elite and criticized its leaders most importantly he recommended that Stalin should be removed from his position as general secretary Lenin wanted his Testament to be read out at the 12th party Congress in April 1923 but Stalin had the document suppressed and did not allow it to be released to subordinate party members by then Lenin was almost completely incapacitated after suffering multiple further Strokes he eventually died on the 21st of January 1924 and the major figures within the Soviet

regime then began to Vie with one another for control of the Communist Party Stalin as general secretary began to position himself as one of the Leading candidates to succeed his former Master Stalin's foremost rival in this power struggle was Leon Trotsky a major communist thinker who had been responsible for forming the Red Army into a fighting force capable of winning the Civil War initially trosky seemed to be the favorite to succeed Ed Lenin as the leader of the government however in the course of 1924 and 1925 Stalin outflanked him by forming a triumvirate of more

right-leaning Soviet Leaders along with Lev kenv and gregori zinovev together they marginalized Trotsky in the mid 1920s Stalin then turned on them and used his growing control over the party apparation us to bring in other individuals to the polit bureau and the central government who supported him unflinchingly Trotsky was removed from his position as the people's commissar of military and Naval Affairs in January of 1925 then he was expelled from the Central Committee in October 1927 banished to Kazakhstan and later from the Soviet Union altogether in 19 1929 during his Exile Trotsky became the figurehead

of international socialist opposition to his old rival and went on to write numerous books and articles condemning his former comrade eventually Stalin ordered his secret services to assassinate his arch enemy which succeeded after trosky was attacked with An ice axe by a Soviet agent at his house in Mexico City after being taken to hospital he died from his injuries on the 21st of August 1940 with Trotsky out of the way Stalin Consolidated his grip on power he still faced some opposition especially from Nikolai bukharin like Trotsky bukharin was a prominent Marxist theorist who had reservations

about the kinds of policies Stalin began to pursue from 1927 onwards He managed to win some support from zenovo and kamenov and also from Lenin's Widow nades krupskaya Stalin eventually moved against them by labeling them as a new right opposition on the right of the party in any event they were never able to win over the support of a large proportion of the party zvv was soon expelled from the party like Trotsky bukharin was completely demoted nadda retained a position within the Soviet Education sector into the 1930s her position as Lenin's Widow protecting her to

a considerable degree though she died under somewhat suspicious circumstances in 1939 with some suspecting Stalin's involvement thus by 1927 Stalin was the de facto head of the Soviet Union and any remaining opposition was demoted or removed entirely from the party in 1928 and 1929 the man who had come to power as Lenin's successor was a complex figure it would be easy to dismiss him as a tyrannical power Monger who wasn't wedded to any ideology other than his own accumul ation of power this was one facet of him but there was more to his personality ideology

and psychology he was a communist or at least conceived of himself as such and was determined to create a socialist and communist state in Russia this can be viewed as distinct from the Communist Theories of the 19th century Marx fredrich Engles and others wrote wrote about theoretical socialist ideas that they imagined could be applied to Britain Germany France or Belgium in Russia figures like Stalin ran into the reality of trying to apply their theoretical Concepts in a country with a political culture of autocracy and violence stretching back centuries Stalin's desire to apply what he believed

were communist principles was Reflected in his written output he wrote and published many books and papers on communist theory in them he demonstrated a considerable knowledge of Marxist theory and a capacity to reflect on the Soviet Union's level of development towards communism he was not an intellectual in the same vein as Trotsky and this was possibly one of the reasons why he disliked his rival so much yet he was still an intelligent figure though one seemingly devoid of any ethical Restraint or moral compass in many ways as leader of the Soviet Union he was the

same as the figure who worked for the party in Georgia in the late 1800s and early 1910s a wouldbe communist who mixed revolutionary Ambitions with running a criminal gang we get a good sense of Stalin's intellectual ual and personal World from assessing his Library something which has been the subject of an extensive Recent study Stalin owned somewhere in the region of 20,000 books these were not simply volumes that he had someone working in his office accumulate and put on a shelf to make it seem to visitors that he was well read many of the books

in question contain marginal annotations by Stalin the he made as he read them and he was known to read several books every week when he died in 1953 his desk was covered with stacks of books his tastes were wide ranging Beyond the obligatory Corpus of marxist and communist writings he was an Avid Reader of the classics of Russian literature by Alexander Pushkin Leo Tolstoy and others while he was a fan of Shakespeare Victor Ugo and Daniel defo gifting his adopted son a copy of Robinson cruso his marginal annotations were often basic writing his agreements with

certain points made or at other times writing things like rubbish or gibberish When he disagreed with a point being made although his copies of Fodor Doo's books are lost we know he was a critic of his view of Russian Society in a revelatory act Stalin once underlined a quote that was attributed to genis Khan in a book in which the Mongol warlord stated that in order to establish peace of mind after a victory the defeated had to be vanquished utterly it was exactly what he had done with Trotsky and would do with his other remaining

rivals in The 1930s the foremost question confronting the Soviet Union as Stalin Consolidated his position in the mid 1920s was the country's future Economic Policy the New Economic Policy that Lenin had pursued in his last years had only ever been a temporary expedient one which most of those who oversaw it did not like and which had capitalist elements now with peace and ability restored there was room to begin Implementing ambitious policies to transform Russia's economy towards a communist one to this end in 1928 Stalin began the first 5-year plan the concept of a 5-year plan

had originated with Trotsky who first proposed it in 1925 Stalin accepted the validity of the approach and pursued it the goal of the the first 5-year plan which would operate down to 1932 was to rapidly expand the Industrial economy of the Soviet Union at the time of the revolution in 1917 Russia had a number of cities with a considerable industrial capacity but the USSR was still a resoundingly agricultural and Rural Society heavy industry of any kind hardly existed east of the river vulga the first 5-year plan sought to expand things like steel and coal production

at a very quick rate this would be achieved by introducing efficiencies into the Agriculture sector by developing large statun Collective Farms that would require less labor to produce larger amounts of food thus freeing up rural Farmers to move to the cities and work in the new factories this was the basic Theory which underpinned the first 5-year plan if it is viewed solely from the perspective of the increase in industrial capacity across the USSR there is no doubt that the first 5-year plan was considerably successful the number of industrial Factory workers doubled from around 3 million

to 6 million while large factories and plants were established to increase production of basic Commodities like steel and iron and manufactured goods like Automobiles and tractors as well as the extraction of raw materials like coal oil and copper the Soviets were not dogmatic in how they approached this they invited industrial experts from the US and Western Europe into Russia to provide technical expertise for instance the Stalingrad tractor plant in what is now vulgargrad was built by Albert Khan Associates The Firm that had worked closely with Henry Ford in developing his automobile factories in Detroit production

and output of everything increased in the late 1920s and early 1930s there has been much emphasis placed since on Soviet propaganda and The way that it exaggerated the scale of industrial Improvement at this time but while there was a lot of propaganda there was also a substantial amount of Truth underlying the claims being made Iron production for instance doubled by 1932 another KnockOn effect was a steady increase in literacy levels Stalin's government was anxious that the workers of tomorrow would be able to take courses on things like manufacturing and increase their technical knowledge they Would

need to be able to read to do so where literacy levels in Russia were little above 20% of the population in 1900 nearly 90% of people were literate in 1940 the average visitor to Moscow Leningrad or keev in the late 1920s and early 1930s would have seen posters encouraging men and women alike to learn to read this was the positive side of the first 5-year plan and Stalin's early time in charge there was no shortage of negative elements as well while industrial productivity had expanded and Industrial policy would continue to flourish in the USSR for

decades to come the policy of farm collectivization initially led to immense suffering part of the goal here was to break the e economic power of the kulacs a class of wealthy peasants who owned extensive farms and Livestock these were perceived as opponents of the regime and individuals who had profited from the abolition of serfdom in 1861 at the expense of the average agricultural worker Stalin developed a particular ideological objection to the kulacs though his designation of who was a kulak was very loose consequently the collectivization strategy involved taking land and herds away from both wealthy

and middling farmers and forming These into huge Collective Farms where farm machinery such as that being produced at the new Stalingrad tractor Factory was introduced the scale of collectivization was huge over 50% of Russian were operating within Collective Farms by 1931 often this was achieved through coercion and violence people were forced into what were little better than labor camps many did not know what was Happening and believed that these strange bureaucrats from Moscow with their unusual ideas about a thing called communism were forcing them back into the surom that their grandfathers had been Li at

from 70 years earlier the collectivization strategy was not just difficult for those who had little option but to accept what the state dictated to them it would also end very badly in the short run often the collective Farms were being overseen by Soviet officials who had grown up in the cities of the West and who knew little about farming in some cases yields fell as as the system was introduced more worryingly Stalin and his advisers decided that the best way to facilitate the industrial program was to manage how agriculture produce was distributed in order to

favor urban communities this had catastrophic consequences between 1930 and 1933 famine struck much of the USSR the region running from Ukraine Eastward through Southwestern Russia and the Caucasus and into Kazakhstan was the epicenter of it as agricultural workers were pulled away from the new Collective farms and Stalin issued orders for the kulac to be liquidated as a social and economic class agricultural output fell dramatically even when it became clear what was happening the policy of prioritizing Urban industrial communities for grain distribution was Continued as people began starving to death in the countryside many fled into

the towns and cities the famine followed them as the supplies here were consumed it is estimated that anywhere between 4 and 9 million people died in total the death toll was especially large in Ukraine where these events are known as the hore death by hunger and Stalin Bears considerable guilt for executing policies which killed so many and for Failing to respond in a humane way once it became apparent what was happening in Ukraine and Southern Russia it was during the Hol doore in Ukraine and The Wider famine that Stalin's personal affairs took a controversial turn

he had remained married to his second wife n throughout the 1920s and his rise to absolute power their family extended beyond their two biological children in 1921 Stalin's son From his first marriage Yakov who by then was 14 years old joined them in Moscow while they also adopted arom sergeev the infant son of Fodor surv a friend of stalins and a senior bolik who died testing the AOW wagon an experimental Russian high-speed train in the summer of 1921 despite the surface image of a happy nuclear family Stalin and nadda argued frequently often owing to his

possible infidelities and frequent Prolonged absences from home she also suffered from bouts of depression and ill health all of these issues came to ah head at a celebration to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the October Revolution held in Moscow in early November 1932 at the reception Stalin and his wife flung insults at each other she had seemingly learned of the famine that was occurring in Ukraine and Southern Russia and the worsening of it by her husband's Policies Stalin was drunk and openly flirted with another woman then on the morning of the 9th of November nadeshda

was found dead having seemingly shot herself in the heart Stalin was disturbed by this turn of events and it is generally accepted that she did take her own life but the circumstances of her death were not made public it was simply noted that she had died unexpectedly Stalin's relationship with His children was strange for the rest of his life he was closest to his daughter swetlana though when she developed a teenage crush on a filmmaker named alexe Stalin had him sent into Exile in Siberia s Lana would famously defect the United States in 1967 and

only died in Wisconsin in 2011 1932 could be viewed as a a turning point in Stalin's life and rule over the Soviet Union in more ways than one as ruthless as his takeover of power had Been in the 1920s it had few casualties conversely what Stalin engaged in during the mid to late 1930s was unprecedented in how repressive and totalitarian it was from its earliest days the Soviet system had included a secret police and labor camps these were features of Russia's political culture and extended back to the 16th century when Ivan the Terrible had created

one of History's first secret police forces The Checker and secret police was set up in December 1917 and the main directorate of Correctional labor camps was founded not long after the latter became known as the Gulag an abbreviation of its name Stalin expanded his Camp system far and wide anyone who was in any way deemed a threat to the regime or Soviet principles was liable to find themselves sent to labor camps in Siberia and the frozen Arctic the very places Stalin had Been sent so regularly in his younger years the 1930s saw the system reach

a level of severity not previously seen overall between 1930 and the end of Stalin's rule in 1953 over 4 million people were sent to the gulag camps furthermore the conditions were much worse than had been the case under the tarist system of Siberian Exile Stalin survived his spells in the Frozen East and North over 1 and a half million of the people sent To the gulag camps by Stalin's government between 1930 and 1953 did not many of those who ended up in the gulag camps were victims of the Great Purge which Stalin orchestrated between 1936

and 1938 the peak of which came in 1937 this was undertaken by Stalin in an effort to cement his control over the Soviet Union though it is hard to see how he perceived that there was any real Threat to his position by the mid 1930s Beyond General discontent with elements of Soviet Economic Policy the Great Purge began with efforts to root out any possible opponents from within the senior members of the Communist political establishment it then expanded outwards to local officials and provincial party members soon the Red Army was being systematically scoured for Imaginary enemies

the final stages of the Great Purge was still underway when the Second World War began with Nikolai yof for instance a figure who had overseen many of the purges on Stalin's behalf being executed in February 1940 as his master turned on him too attempting to blame his underlings for excesses in total over a period of 2 and a/ qu years between the summer of 1936 and late 1938 upwards of 3/4 of a million people were executed and hundreds of thousands More were sent to the camps or otherwise punished an unexpected consequence of this was that

the Red Army was deprived of some of its best generals and divisional commanders just as the USSR was about to head into the largest war in human history the most notorious element of Stalin's Great Purge was the Moscow show trials these were a series of stage trials held in Moscow between 1936 and 1938 in which the Great Purge was justified by dragging Stalin's old enemies from the trotskyite faction and right opposition in the 1920s out of retirement and obscurity and placing them on trial in public in the capital amongst those that Stalin ordered to be

placed on trial in this manner were gregori zenov and Lev kenv the two figures who had aided his rise to power back in the mid 1920s and then had been violently ostracized by him from the Polit bureau as well as Nikolai bukharin many of these men made elaborate confessions when questioned on the stand the manner in which they implicated themselves shocked International observers and inspired Arthur kler to write Darkness at noon one of the great novels of the 20th century yet the motivations of those who confessed to all manner of invented crimes are hardly too

mysterious They were told by Stalin that if they played along with the trials in public he would spare their lives as soon as the trials were over they were all executed in the basement of the prison they were being detained in as the Great Purge was underway the second 5-year plan was coming to a conclusion this had been initiated straight after the first 5-year plan by Stalin and ran to 1936 7 it was followed immediately afterwards by the third 5-year plan which was interrupted in 1941 by the German invasion of the Soviet Union both of

these continued to see steady improvements in industrial productivity and by the end of the 1930s the USSR was beginning to catch up with Germany in many elements of heavy industry moreover The Agrarian catastrophes of the first 5-year plan were not repeated Stalin who had once attended a religious Seminary ordered a major attack on the Orthodox Church Through the second plan and the mass confiscation of church land incentives were introduced to encourage Factory workers to increase their productivity all of this met with considerable success the Russian economy would not have been capable of the level of

industrial productivity that allowed it to defeat the Nazis in the second world war had it been so invaded in saris times moreover the groundwork was laid in the three decades Between the mid 1920s and Stalin's death in 1953 for the excellent growth rates which the Soviet economy sustained through the 1950s and 1960s it was only in the mid 1970s when systemic issues emerged within the the economic planning of the Soviet system that the economy of the USSR began to stagnate so what did all this amount to The Peculiar mix of 5year plans that were much

more effective than many Observers would like to admit the brutal manner in which end goals justifi Draconian means the ruthless centralization of power in the hands of one person and the near total Crackdown on any political or social opposition historians in the second half of the 20th century were uncomfortable with describing this simply as communism in light of this the term stalinism was developed as early as the 1930s though Stalin himself disliked the Word and it only entered wide usage after his death essentially stalinism combined elements of Communism and leninism into a new system which

was suffused with a ruthless application of policy and a dictatorial centralization of power within stalinism the dictatorship of the proletariat which earlier communist theorists had written about became the dictatorship of Stalin and Stalin alone things like famine Mass arrests show trials ethnic cleansing Ing And mass murder were all presented as necessary evils on the road to Communism while a pervasive Cult of leadership suffused Soviet Society stalinism was communism crossed with a leadership cult that had no moral barometer stalinism would soon be pitched against the other political ideology that emerged in Europe in the interwar period

fascism had first emerged in Italy in 1922 though it is with Germany that it Will forever be Associated the Nazis had claimed power there in 1933 and had immediately set about trying to overturn the terms of the Treaty of Versa which had dismantled the German Empire in 1919 and severely curtailed Germany's strength as a European nation fascism was a complicated ideology a large number of the fascist leaders in Italy Germany and elsewhere Had previously been involved in communist movements in their countries before becoming fascists and indeed the Nazis conceived of themselves as National socialists this

early entanglement with Communism had led to a bitter rivalry and the Nazis perceived the Bolsheviks of Russia as being their main ideological enemy a legacy of the running Street battles that had been fought between German Communists and Right-wing groups in Berlin Munich and other cities back during the German Revolution of 1919 as the Nazis expanded to aggressively Annex Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939 it appeared inevitable that someday the German and the Soviets would end up at War the world was consequently shocked to learn that on the 23rd of August 1939 the Soviet foreign

minister VES Molotov who Stalin had only appointed 3 months earlier had negotiated a major diplomatic agreement with his German counterpart Yim Fon ribbon trop the molotov ribbon trop pact laid out a non-aggression agreement between the two Nations and pav the way for the Nazis to invade Poland 9 days later the molotov ribbon trop pact could just as easily have been called the Hitler Stalin pact to the rest of the world it was simply a non-aggression Agreement but secret Clauses were included and kept private these allowed for Hitler to conquer the bulk of Poland while St

Stalin was to be allowed to occupy the Eastern sections of Poland the Baltic states of Latvia Estonia and much of Lithuania as well as Finland in essence this was an agreement between the Nazi and Soviet dictators whereby they would conquer most of the lands in Eastern Europe which the German Empire and the Russian Empire had lost at the End of the first world war and in the course of the Russian Civil War the Nazis invaded Poland on the 1st of September 1939 triggering the second world war as Britain and France declared war on Germany 2

days later in response just over 2 weeks later on the 17th of September Stalin ordered his forces into Eastern Poland to make good on his claims there too it wasn't until the following year in the summer of 1940 That Stalin implemented measures to occupy the Baltic states while Soviet troops also occupied the provinces of bessarabia and Northern bukovina in the Northern parts of Romania in late June and early July 1940 Stalin had been slow in implementing the terms of the molotov ribbon throp pact when it came to the Baltic states the delay was partly because

the Nazi invasion of the low countries and France In May 1940 had provided a smoke screen for Stalin to do so more importantly he had been distracted by events elsewhere after the conquest of Eastern Poland in the Autumn of 1939 the Soviet Red Army had turned its attentions to Finland Stalin ordered his troops over the border into the country on the 30th of of November 1939 it had been expected that what became known as the winter War would be a short sharp Affair one in which the Might of the Red Army would quickly conquer Finland

a country of just 3.7 million people the Soviet dictator began to receive frustrating reports within days the fins were proving unusually resilient and were engaged in a Guerilla war that included homemade incendiary devices which they ironically named Molotov cocktails in recognition that their country was being invaded because of the molotov ribbon trop PCT the winter War would drag on until mid-march When peace terms were agreed whereby Finland seeded less than 10% of its territory to the USSR the conflict highlighted the weaknesses of the Red Army many of which which was self-inflicted the Great Purge of

the 1930s had seen many of Russia's foremost generals ousted or killed by Stalin he only had himself to blame now that his armed forces were failing to defeat small Nations like Finland on the Battlefield the deficiencies in the leadership and fighting capabilities of the Red Army would become much more serious in the summer of 1941 the molotov ribbon trop pact had established a treaty of non-aggression between Germany and the USSR for 10 years having conquered Western Europe in less than 7 weeks in May and June 1940 the Nazis had initiated the Battle of Britain but

Hitler soon grew weary of trying to bludgeon the British into Submission and turned his attention eastwards here was the real ideolog iCal foe as far as the Nazi dictator was concerned only through war with the Soviet Union would the laban's realm or living space which was so Central to Nazi political and racial ideology be made available accordingly he began preparing operation Barbarosa the invasion of the Soviet Union whereby 3 million men would invade Stalin's Nation on the 20 2nd of June 1941 a great criticism which was leveled against Stalin in his own time and ever

since concerned the lackluster manner in which he prepared for the Nazi invasion it was very peculiar he was convinced that the Germans were not going to do so for some time and ignored intelligence reports which demonstrated that millions of German military personnel were clearly being massed in Poland for the invasion of the Soviet Union it is possible there was an element of Wishful Thinking here the debacle of the winter War had dented Stalin's confidence in the Red Army and on the 13th of April 1941 he had agreed to a non-aggression pact with the Empire of

Japan an ally of Germany's in the hope that this would delay any potential Nazi offensive it didn't and on the 22nd of June 1941 operation Barbarosa commenced the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union went as badly as it Possibly could have for Stalin in the first 3 and a half months Eastern Poland and bellarus were quickly overrun and the German Army group South moved quickly into Ukraine large scale encirclements of detachments of the Red Army led to the capture of hundreds of thousands of Soviet prisoners of war in July August and September while thousands of

Russian tanks and airplanes were captured keev fell in late September by October the Race was on to capture Moscow and Leningrad before the worst of the Russian winter set in Stalin's response to all of this was not immediately good it has been argued that he suffered some sort of temporary psychological collapse following the German invasion one which meant that it was Molotov rather than Stalin who addressed the Russian people via radio shortly after the invasion to alert them to what was happening one version of events also has it that in The first weeks of the

campaign Stalin was in talks with the Bulgarian Ambassador in Moscow Ivan stamenov to see if the bulgarians would actors intermediaries to broker peace terms It is believed Stalin pondered the possibility of relinquishing Eastern Poland and much of Ukraine and bellarus to the Nazis in return for peace the veracity of this has never been 100% established as much of the evidence of such talks would have been Comprehensively destroyed in the years that followed what is clear is it while Stalin's initial reaction to the invasion by the Nazis was not ideal he quickly kicked into action within

days of the invasion he issued an order that the Red Army was to engage in scorched Earth tactics whereby crops were to be burned and everything that could be of value to the enemy was to be either destroyed or removed before the Nazis Could claim it in this he was mimicking the actions of the Russians during the Napoleonic invasion of Russia in 1812 on the 30th of June 1941 he established the State Defense committee to manage the war effort centrally with himself as Supreme Commander other measures involved mobilizing vast parts of the Soviet population to

begin working in Munitions and armaments factories while the women of Moscow were co-opted into digging defensive Earthworks around the city in the Autumn of 1941 as the months went by Stalin grew into the position of wartime leader and offered effective leadership of the Soviet Union during what became known to Russians as the Great Patriotic War his leadership was not pleasant by any means atrocities were committed against collaborators recruits to the Red Army were treated as cannon fodder and the nkvd and other security branches Conducted a Relentless propaganda war against their own people but ultimately Moscow

and Leningrad held out against the Nazi assault and more than anywhere the second world war was won by the Soviets on the Eastern Front a sign of how ruthless darling could be was the case of his own son from his first marriage Yakov was captured on the front lines in mid July 1941 when Stalin learned of this he expressed dismay that he had not killed Himself before being captured he even had yakov's wife temporarily arrested Stalin would eventually refuse to negotiate terms for the return of his son to Russia and he died at Saxon Howen

concentration camp in April 1943 by then the war had turned the focus of it in the second half of 1942 had switched to the city that bore Stalin's own name Stalingrad on the vulgar River was considered the key to the oil fields of the Caucasus Hitler ordered a large assault on the city in the late summer of 1942 the belief now being that depriving the Soviets of their oil sources might be the only way to achieve victory in the war after the United States joined the conflict in December 1941 Stalin issued order number 227 on

the 28th of July 1942 in response in this he issued the famous instruction not a step back henceforth the Red Army was to hold firm and not surrender Stalingrad to the enemy one of the bloodiest military clashes in history followed during which the Germans nearly secured control over the city in September 1942 but the Red Army fought back in October and in November launched operation Uranus through this the German sixth Army was encircled with their supplies cut off and no possibility of major reinforcement the sixth Army Was Defeated at the end of January 1943 with

this Soviet Victory on the Eastern Front became something of an inevitability though it would take 2 and a half more years of bitter fighting before the Germans were pushed all the way back to B Berlin during that 2 and 1/2 year period Stalin was attending a growing number of Allied conferences and War Summits the most important were those held at Tan in Iran in late November 1943 at Yalta in the Crimea in February 1945 and at potam in Germany in the summer of 1945 after the Germans were defeated during these the postwar settlement of Europe

was debated and negotiated over between Stalin Churchill and President Roosevelt of the United States Stalin had a surprisingly good working relationship with Roosevelt he and Churchill clashed frequently the major source of tension Was the postwar status of Poland Greece and several other countries Stalin pushed for these countries which the Red Army was liberating to be spheres of Soviet influence after the war Churchill would eventually win out when it came to Greece though Poland would fall into the Soviet sphere by Dent of being wholly occupied by the Red Army in the course of the second half

of 1944 Beyond these discussions Stalin pushed consistently for the opening of New fronts by the Western allies in southern and western Europe to take some pressure off the Soviets on the Eastern front it was also agreed that the USSR would not declare war yet on the Empire of Japan but would do so within 3 months of the defeat of Nazi Germany by the time Stalin met with Churchill and Roosevelt at yelta in February 194 5 the Western allies were entering the Rin land in Western Germany while the soldiers of the Red Army were Moving towards

Berlin they encircled the city and in April the battle for the capital of the Third Reich commenced on the 30th of April Hitler took his own life and his nominated successor Joseph Gobles imitated him the following day Carl donitz the head of the German Navy the CS Marina then took over as head of a government operating from flansburg on the German Danish border he surrendered to the Western allies and the act of surrender was signed at Reams in France On the 7th of May Stalin immediately objected to this stating that it was unacceptable that the

instrument of surrender would be signed before us British and French officials in France when the Russian people had done the heavy lifting in the war he was entirely justified in this view an estimated 9 million Soviet soldiers lost their lives in the war with a further 15 to 20 million Soviet civilians on top of that whereas the combined death toll of the British French and Americans was around 1 and A2 million in light of his objections a second instrument of surrender was signed by vilhelm kitle the head of the German verak in front of Soviet

commanders in Berlin on the 8th of May it was signed at 2300 hours in the German Capital making it after midnight on the 9th of May in Moscow for this reason Victory Day is celebrated in the former countries of the Soviet Union each year on the 9th of May Stalin Oversaw the 1945 Moscow Victory Day Parade on Red Square the largest military parade ever held there on the 24th of June 1945 it involved over 40,000 Red Army soldiers the argument over the signing of the instrument of surrender was just the first of a series of

escalating confrontations between Stalin and the governments of the western allies once the war was over Stalin honored his word And declared war on the Empire of Japan in early August 1945 though he was motivated as much by a desire to claim parts of Manchuria and the Korean Peninsula as to Aid the Americans meanwhile in Europe it quickly became evident that Poland was going to be established with a pro- Soviet communist government and that it like numerous other countries in Eastern Europe and the Balkans was about to become a satellite of Stalin's Soviet Empire though ysep

bro Tito the partisan leader of the Yugoslav Communists who became ruler of the country after the war would soon steer his own line independent of Moscow the US managed to win over Greece and Turkey through extensive economic aid the main points of contention thus became Germany and Austria in the end after much wrangling Austria was allowed to steer its own path in line with the Moscow Treaty of 1943 and in 1955 became independent of both the US and Soviet camps in the Cold War through the Austrian state treaty even today it remains an outlier in

Central Europe in not being a member of NATO Germany became more contentious and in the course of 1948 Stalin ordered that rail supplies to West Berlin be prevented from passing through the Soviet spheres of occupation ultimately leading to the Berlin airlift and the division of the country into West Germany and communist East Germany in 1949 while Europe was dividing fairly evenly along pro- US and pro- Soviet camps in the aftermath of the war the situation was much more positive for Stalin and the Communist cause in the Far East Stalin had provided extensive Aid to the

Communists in the Chinese Civil War going all the way back to the mid 1920s when he had first come to power and their struggle with the Quint Tang the Chinese nationalists was just beginning as he funneled extra arms and Aid to the Communists who had emerged from the end of the second World War under the leadership of maong as much the stronger of the two factions in the Civil War the US was becoming equally reluctant to continue providing Aid to the nationalists who President Truman in Washington correctly viewed as appalling kleptocrats the Communists would emerge

Victorious from the Civil War in 1949 on the 6th of December that year Mau headed for Moscow by train 10 days later he and Stalin sat down in the Kremlin to discuss future relations between the world's most important Communist States there were were disagreements between the pair and their diplomats over the next few weeks but on the 14th of February 1950 the sinos Soviet Treaty of friendship Alliance and mutual assistance was signed it laid out the basis for cooperation between the USSR and the People's Republic of China economically and militarily at this stage Mau was

very much the junior partner and had succeeded in cutting China off from the Western Powers he scored a further Victory months later when the Korean War erupted a clash over a minor geopolitical region but one which swallowed up us resources and attentions for years to come Stalin had other reasons to feel Buoyant as the 1940s ended and the 1950s began in 1942 like many of the other major Powers involved in the second world war Stalin had ordered the development of a Soviet nuclear weapons program it ploted along making little progress in various research facilities near

Moscow down to 1945 what changed matters was when the US dropped its two nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 as soon as this happened Stalin informed His security forces that the development of a nuclear weapon was now a priority until such time as the USSR had a comparable weapon it was vulnerable he appointed laen Bara the head of the Soviet Security Services during the war to head up the reinvigorated program over the next 3 years barrier over saw the development of an implosion type nuclear weapon similar to the bomb that the Americans

had dropped on Nagasaki they were aided by the fact That Stalin spiring in the US headed by Ethel and Julius Rosenberg had acquired Intelligence on the Manhattan Project there the Soviets tested their first nuclear weapon rds1 or first lightning at a sight in Kazakhstan on the 29 of August 1949 Stalin was said to have been immensely pleased when he received news of the successful test an even playing field had at least temporarily been achieved in the Cold War though he would Live long enough to see the Americans gain the Competitive Edge with the detonation of

the first Hydrogen Bomb in 1952 as successful as the late 1940s and early 1950s were for Stalin in terms of the accelerating Cold War he was never satisfied with developments and remained a paranoid figure resorting to Terror tactics were he felt appropriate towards the end of the war in 1944 he had engaged in the forc Transplantation of hundreds of thousands of Chens from the northern caucuses to Siberia and other parts of Russia falsely claiming that they had collaborated extensively with the Germans this act of ethnic cleansing was followed by another major Soviet famine in 1946

and 1947 one which killed at least 1 million people in this case the cause of the famine was poor weather and the Damage inflicted on the Soviet economy by the Germans but Stalin compounded the problem through a poorly conceived rationing system and the appointment of Gori malenkov a figure with little or no knowledge of agricultural Affairs to head up the relief program in the early 1950s Stalin's atrocities included a purging of Georgia through the mingran affair where he believed barrier's influence had become too great he was also largely responsible for a Nationwide Purge of Jewish

doctors and other professionals from their positions after he became convinced that his own Jewish Physicians were trying to kill him and other leading Soviet officials that Stalin's paranoia and wroth had turned towards Russia's doctors is indicative of his growing health problems he was suffering from a of issues ones which led him to employ a team of doctors and also to spend several months of every year at his data In abazia in the Caucasus he was also increasingly reclusive once the war celebrations and other events commemorating the conflict had been concluded in 1945 he only gave

a handful of public speeches for the remainder of his life he also decided to get rid of the polit bureau and replace it with a new presidium in 1952 given his behavior those closest to him must have been glad when the old Leader was found face down on the floor on the 1st of March 1953 he had suffered a major cerebral hemorrhage he died 4 days later on the 5th of March in Moscow at 74 years of age after what by all accounts was a painful death his State funeral was held 3 days later and

he was interred in Lenin's melum alongside his predecessor who before his own end had tried to warn the Bolshevik leadership about his successor flaws once a consensus had Developed in the years that followed about how catastrophic elements of Stalin's Reign had been a decision was taken to remove his remains from the melum in 1961 and they were buried in the Kremlin wall necropolis Stalin's death ushered in a period of uncertainty in the Soviet Union a dedicated Tyrant until the very end he had made no clear plans for how the succession should occur and his Dictatorial

approach was such that there was no obvious successor the foreign minister Molotov had seemed like a natural Heir for much of the 1940s but he had fallen out of favor at the end of the 1940s thus power devolved to a committee of members of the presidium including Bara malankov and Lazar kaganovich eventually after months of wrangling Nikita Kristof a figure who Had governed Ukraine for many years is emerged as the new de facto leader of the Soviet Union he began the gradual process of D stalinization in the mid1 1950s he ordered investigations into the purges

of the 1930s and the excessive behavior of Stalin as ruler then on the 25th of February 1956 he gave a closed speech to the 20th party Congress in which he denounced Stalin's excesses and the Bloodshed of his time as head of the USSR a year later he expelled Molotov malankov and kaganovich from the central leadership and banished them to remote parts of the Soviet Union excising the unreformed stalinists from the party a more public program of dest stalinization followed in the Years thereafter with staling being renamed as vulgarr in 1961 as the decades have gone

by and Particularly so since the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s the full extent of Stalin's crimes has been made public the British American historian Robert Conquest once stated that no one shaped the course of the 20th century and the lives of more people within it than did Joseph Stalin there is a lot of truth to this Stalin ruled the Soviet Union for three decades in which the country emerged from the chaos of the Russian Civil War to become one of the two Global superpowers his legacy was the Cold War that outlasted

him for nearly 40 years it would not have been possible had it not been for the enormous industrial and economic gains which occurred in Soviet Society through Stalin's 5-year plans though they came at a terrible price for the victims of the hollida Moore and the state Terror which Stalin employed to acquire Complete control over Russian Society it was also Stalin more so than any figure other than Winston Churchill who led the Allied victory over Nazi Germany if the Soviets had not held firm in the autumn and winter of 1941 under Stalin's leadership the history of

the 20th century could have been very different yet these substantial facts aside there is also no denying that Stalin was an appalling dictator a man so steeped in Bloodshed That none of his achievements were not colored by his tyrannical behavior in total when the Great per the show trials the ethnic cleansing the Hol deore of the early 1930s and the general attrition that characterized Soviet life under his rule are all taken into account Stalin was directly responsible for the deaths of upwards of 15 million people some unintentionally and many intentionally this makes him one of

the Foremost Mass murderers in his history eclipsed only in the modern world by his enemy and his ally Adolf Hitler and madong in many ways Stalin could be said to be the most successful dictator in history as every enemy Who Rose against him was defeated or held in check and it could be said that the only enemy that finally vanquished him was death itself what do you think of Joseph Stalin was he genuinely a communist who believed that the brutal policies he oversaw were The only means of securing the future of the Soviet Union and

its path towards communism or should he be described primarily as a power hungry dictator and was he the crucial figure in the Allied victory over the Nazis dur during the second world war please let us know in the comment section and in the meantime thank you very much for watching thank you for watching people profiles documentaries Please Subscribe if you haven't already and don't forget To hit the Bell icon to get notifications so you never miss an upload if you would like to watch our video with no adverts of any kind listen to audio podcast

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