Today in Sobrehistoria we are talking about a man who was one of the most important leaders of the 20th century, who led the Russian nation to become a great world superpower but who, in turn, has gone down in history as one of the greatest tyrants of history Is about Joseph Stalin.
Stalin’s life
Jossif Vissarionovich Dzhugasvili, better known as Stalinwas born in Georgia in the year 1879. The son of a poor, drunken shoemaker and a devout Orthodox Christian, he was orphaned very poorly, so he entered a seminary from which he was expelled in 1899 for his revolutionary ideas. He thus broke very soon one of his mother’s wishes, which was that he become a priest.
He immediately joined the underground struggle of russian socialists against the tsarist regime, and when the Social Democratic Party was born in 1903, the most extreme faction followed, that of the Bolsheviks, headed by Lenin. Persecuted until the Bolshevik Revolution triumphed in 1917, Jossif became known as Stalin (“man of steel”), and, because of his loyalty to Lenin, managed to rise to General Secretary of the now Communist Party in the year 1922.
The lenin’s death in 1924 he created a schism between his natural heirs to power, Trotsky (Lenin’s favourite, as he considered Stalin too cruel) and Stalin himself. But the power that he had achieved, and his alliance with Kamenev and Zinoviev helped him rise to the maximum power in the Soviet Union. He exiled Trotsky in 1926, whom he assassinated 14 years later, in 1940, and also eliminated his most possible competitors, Zinoviev and Kamenev, who years before had lent him his help.
Thus began one of the dictatorships most tyrannical and cruel known, from 1938 until his death in Moscow in 1953. But even so, he was able to turn the former USSR into a great world power and spread communism to a large part of the neighboring countries.
The centralized control of the production system was such that he ordered the collectivization of agriculture, expelled and exterminated entire towns from their land in the face of the slightest opposition to his mandates, carried out continuous purge campaigns that led to the disappearance of anyone who opposed him, annulled freedoms, and established a police regime.
And it was precisely this despotism, this tyranny that built a great power that, during the Second World War, became, together with the United States, the great winner of the war, in such a way that the world was practically divided into two poles: that of those aligned with the United States and those that remained on the other side of the iron curtain, along with the Soviet Union.
Stalin’s government or Stalinism
Stalin’s coming to power was characterized by the entry into force of Stalinism, which is based on a government of terror in which the Party controls absolutely everything and the figure of Stalin represents the sole and maximum authority.
The first thing Stalin did when he came to power was the so-called purges, that was, to clean up any remains or hints of ideas contrary to socialism that existed in all classes. In the army, up to 80%-90% of the charges were deported. Among the members of the Party itself were 139 members, of which 110 are arrested and deported and 98 are directly executed. It is estimated that in total almost 40 million Russians had to emigrate from the country during the purges.
The repressive measures of the Stalin government were relentless and eliminated any pocket of resistance to the Party. On the other hand, there was a total centralization of the economybecause it came to be totally controlled by the party. All private companies came under state control and numerous public works were undertaken thanks to the free labor force made up by the victims of the purges. Also create the five-year plans, which established economic objectives for 5 years to be met, and which were generally based on increasing agricultural production and reinvesting this surplus in industry, mainly steel, metallurgy and the arms industry. Likewise, private trade is limited until in 1932 it is definitively prohibited. Little by little, two types of markets will be distinguished: the state market, with the prices and interests imposed by the Party, and the black market.
Stalin’s role in World War 2
Stalin is key in the outcome of the Second World War since under his mandate the Russian army managed to stop the advance of the German troops and defeat him at the gates of Moscow. To do this, Stalin used the scorched earth tactic.
Until then, the battle between the Russians and the Germans had been one of great attrition. The German army advanced with difficulty but unstoppable. The Russians were slowly retreating, but not without first fighting. During that first phase of the battle between the two, the German army captured 2 million prisoners and came to occupy 40% of the Russian surface. It is then that Stalin launches a drastic strategy that requires the collaboration of all his people.
The Russian army begins to retreat, reducing everything in its path to ashes., to prevent the German army from getting supplies during its advance. Even large civil works such as bridges or the Dnieperpetrovsk dam were destroyed, to further hinder the German advance.
It was in those moments when the sign of the War began to change, something that would be confirmed with the German defeat in the battle of stalingrad, the bloodiest between both countries. From that defeat, the war was leaning more and more towards the side of the allies. However, the end of the war gave rise to another, a war in the strict sense, a more silent war, a war of misgivings and ideas between two blocs, the communist and the capitalist, which would last 40 years: The Cold War.
Other curiosities about Stalin
When his first wife died, Stalin claimed that she had been the only person who had managed to soften his heart of stone, and that since she had died, so too. any hint of affection for humanity had died in him. However, this love for his dead wife did not seem to prevent her from capturing his family in 1937, accusing them of treason against the regime.
Stalin is one of the greatest genocides in the history of humanity, and some 40 million deaths are attributed to him, even more than Hitler. However, this did not seem to prevent him from going two-time Nobel Peace Prize contender (Nobel Peace Prize!) for his contribution to the end of World War II.
He sent the wives of his closest soldiers to the gulag, due to jealousy of his second wife. In this way, Stalin killed two birds with one stone: on the one hand, he appeased his wife’s jealousy, and on the other hand, he proved the love of the soldiers for the party above even his own wives.
And to finish we leave the most curious and surprising anecdote of all. And it is that Stalin wanted to create a hybrid between human and chimpanzee. To do this, he had the help of a scientist named Ilya Ivanovich Ivanovy with the forced collaboration of 5 women and a champagne. The goal was for the chimpanzee to inseminate the women in order to (supposedly) obtain the male/chimpanzee hybrid, however, the animal died in the laboratory before the test could be carried out, and the scientist ended up being someone else. of the victims of Stalin’s purges and ended up in exile.
To finish, we leave you with a video and some links that you might find interesting to complement the information in the article.
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