Stalin Iosif Vissarionovich is a popular Russian revolutionary. Performed political, state and military activities. For almost thirty years he was the head of the Soviet state. Chosen by Generalissimo and Marshal Soviet Union. In 1917, he showed great efforts and became People's Commissar for Nationalities Affairs in the Council of People's Commissars. Since 1922 - General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party. We are talking about the Bolsheviks. Since 1946 he became Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union.

Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich

Biography of Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich

Ruled from 1922 to 1953. The personality of Joseph Stalin is associated with mass repressions, violence and genocide of the people. Most people still believe that Stalin is a real hero and savior of the people who helped them and led the country to victory in Great Patriotic War. However, there is also such a category of the population who remember the personality of the Russian revolutionary with anger and hatred. For some time he was the editor-in-chief of the Bolshevik newspaper "Truth" and showed great success in this area.

Stalin was always tough in his activities, made clear and radical decisions, always destroyed all enemies in his path. In connection with the administration of this statesman innovations have always been developed in the country and restructuring has begun. Thanks to Joseph Stalin, the Union became the second state in the world in terms of industrial production. Unfortunately, Stalin achieved such success using very harsh methods. He took food from the peasants and sold it abroad.

Joseph Stalin as a child

Within eight years, Joseph Vissarionovich was arrested about eight times. The arrests were due to various reasons. For example, Stalin's repeated attacks on banks in order to replenish party cash desks. Almost always, the revolutionary managed to escape.

Young years of Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich

Stalin Iosif Vissarionovich was born on December 9, 1879 in the city of Gori, Tiflis province. However, there is not a single official source that could confirm the date of birth of a famous statesman. To this day, at least four alleged dates of the birth of Joseph Vissarionovich wander. Stalin's real name is Dzhugashvili. Father of a famous revolutionary Vissarion Dzhugashvili, was a shoemaker and earned a small amount of money, so he could not properly provide for his family. Moreover, he often abused alcohol. In a state of intoxication, Vissarion often beat his wife and son. In addition to Joseph, the family also had two children- a boy and a girl. However, they died in infancy. It is related to illness.

Joseph Stalin's parents

Stalin's mother Ekaterina Georgievna devoted everything free time to his son. She wanted Joseph to become a priest in the future. In 1888, young Dzhugashvili began attending the Gori Orthodox Theological School. He was accepted immediately into the second grade. A year later, the boy entered the first grade of the school. In this institution he received his education. He graduated from college in 1894 with honors. At the Gori School, Stalin became acquainted with Marxism and paid much attention to this aspect.

Autumn 1894 Stalin entered the Orthodox Tiflis Theological Seminary. During this period, Joseph began attending underground meetings of revolutionaries. His friends claimed that Stalin was distinguished by high intellectual abilities. Moreover, when he had free time, the revolutionary devoted him to self-education and development. After that, the man began to engage in revolutionary affairs. Unfortunately, he was kicked out of the seminary. The reason for this was the repeated absenteeism of classes. After that, Joseph tried to earn his living and was engaged in tutoring. Later, he visited the Tiflis Physical Observatory and got a job as an observer-computer.

In 1898, Stalin joined the first Georgian social democratic organization. There he was immediately remembered and noted for the oratorical abilities of the man. In this regard, he began to conduct propaganda in the working circles of the Marxists.

Joseph Stalin in his youth

Joseph Stalin: the path to power

Stalin began his revolutionary activities in the early 1900s. Initially, he was engaged in active propaganda. In this regard, Joseph began to be popular in society. At that time, Vladimir Lenin was the head of the Soviet government. Stalin met him and other popular revolutionaries. The man tried in every way to succeed and develop, but his attempts were unsuccessful. He was detained about eight times. Each time Stalin escaped from prison.

Soon in 1912 Iosif Dzhugashvili decided to change his last name. From that moment he became Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. Moreover, he had many nicknames that his friends called him. Among them are "Koba", "David", "Stalin" and others. In the near future, Joseph became the editor-in-chief of the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda. His friendly and partner relations with were strengthened every day. Thus, soon Stalin became the chief assistant to the head of the Soviet government. Lenin was sure that his new friend would help him solve Bolshevik and revolutionary issues.

Joseph Stalin and Vladimir Lenin

A few years later, in 1917, Lenin appointed Stalin People's Commissar for Nationalities in the Council of People's Commissars. He was delighted with the actions of Joseph Vissarionovich. The Civil War began, during which the future ruler achieved high results and was successful in all its manifestations. Moreover, he demonstrated real leadership qualities. At the end of the war, Lenin had serious health problems, he was terminally ill. Already at that time, Stalin became his deputy. His methods of struggle became more and more radical, cruel and precise. He destroyed all enemies in his path, namely, those who wanted to become chairman of the government of the Soviet Union on their way.

In 1930 Joseph completely controlled the Soviet state. This period was associated with various innovations, restructurings and changes. His reign is characterized by massive repression, violence, hunger strikes and brutality against the population. The tough revolutionary took away food from local peasants and sent them abroad. As a result, thousands of people died and suffered. Stalin received huge sums for food. He financed industrial enterprises and other institutions in his country with these funds. After a short period, the USSR became the second country in the world in terms of industrial production. Note that Joseph began the process of industrialization and mechanization of agriculture.

Joseph Stalin at the beginning of his career

Repressions of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin

From the very beginning of the rule of the country, Stalin used harsh radical methods. However, many believe that it was precisely this policy of the famous revolutionary that helped the country reach a high level and achieve such results. Moreover, such a course of events became an argument for victory in the Great Patriotic War. The process of industrialization and mechanization of agriculture began. Soon the USSR- one of the most powerful countries in the world, which is characterized by success in all areas. Among them are politics, culture, economics, education and others.

However, even today there are many opponents of Stalin. In their opinion, the policy of this revolutionary is terrible. It was filled with violence, aggression, cruelty and pain. Stalin's main method of government was dictatorship. His reign is often associated with the repression of the population, which at that time was a frequent occurrence. They touched many peoples and millions of people. Among them are Germans, Chechens, Ingush, Koreans, Crimean Tatars, Turks and many others. Dozens of nations suffered from state activities Russian revolutionary. They died in terrible agony and pain. In addition, seven states lost their national autonomy during the repressions.

Joseph Stalin and Kliment Voroshilov

Historical experts assure that Stalin's actions had a negative impact on the state of the country's defense capability, namely, on the troops during the period Great Patriotic War. Most of the marshals of the Soviet Union became repressed. At that time there were five of them, three of them suffered from repressions. Also during the reign of this politician, a brutal anti-religious campaign and mass liquidation of churches were ended.

Moreover, Joseph Stalin suppressed other categories of the population. Among them are doctors, engineers and others. Such actions seriously influenced the state of culture and science in the state.

The role of Joseph Stalin in the Great Patriotic War

At the height of the Great Patriotic War, a catastrophic situation developed in Europe. In this regard, Joseph Stalin decided to improve ties with Germany. The Russian radical revolutionary was sure that soon there would be a war with Hitler. Therefore, he considered all further actions and decided to improve the condition. Thus, Stalin planned to purchase new military weapons and other equipment in order to arm his army as much as possible.

Generalissimo Joseph Stalin

Further, the famous Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. The USSR annexed the territories of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, the Baltic States, Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. In the summer of 1941, Hitler attacked the state of the USSR. During this period, the country suffered significantly in all areas. We are talking about human losses and material losses. Further, in addition to the USSR, many states joined the opposition to Hitler. Among them are China, the United States of America, the countries of Central and Latin America and many others. Every day the number of the anti-Hitler coalition increased more and more.

Stalin did everything possible for the state to win. Thus, the victory over Nazism still happened and justice prevailed. In this regard, the USSR significantly increased its influence in Eastern Europe and East Asia. A world socialist system was also formed.

Postwar years

After the end of the war, the leader of the country, Joseph Stalin, did everything possible to develop the military-industrial complex of the state. The USSR really became one of the most powerful countries, which had a high level of development in all areas. In 1945 the system of Stalinist terror was renewed again. The totalitarian control over the population was expanded to the maximum. In February 1945, Stalin took part in the Yalta Conference of the Allied States. This procedure was dedicated to the organization of the post-war world order.

Joseph Stalin

Oddly enough, during that period, the industrial aspect developed significantly. In the early 1950s, the level of industrial production almost doubled. The standard of living of the population still remained at a low level without changes. At that time, Stalin Joseph pursued a policy of combating "cosmopolitanism". This influenced anti-Semitism. Constant purges enjoyed enormous popularity under Stalin's rule.

Stalin's personality assessments

People have been talking about Stalin's government for decades. Someone admires him as an experienced and effective leader, thanks to whom the country has reached a high level, achieved success in all areas. However, the rest remember the politics of the Russian revolutionary with fear. They are horrified by such aggression, cruelty, anger and violence.

Joseph Stalin organized the strongest army, which succeeded and did everything possible. The USSR (republic) became one of the most powerful countries in the world at that time. Stalin's competitors also expressed their opinion about his rule. According to them, his policy was characterized by a totalitarian regime and authoritarian methods of government.

Soviet leader Joseph Stalin

We are talking about the maximum control of the state over all sectors of society, about violence, mass genocides and the death of millions of people. The deportation of many peoples was also recorded. Repression and the famine of 1931-1933 and other cruel events of that period were widespread. However, despite all the negativity that Stalin presented, the Soviet Union became one of the most powerful states, which showed record results in industry, agriculture and other aspects.

Joseph Stalin carried out dozens of revolutions, which, in fact, led to a decent level among other states. Recall that the republic has become the second industrial power in the world. A well-known public and political figure often appears in various historical ratings, where he often occupies a leading position. He became a well-known personality in the field of politics, which is still talked about by millions of people.

Personal life of Joseph Stalin

As you know, Stalin tried to hide the details of his personal life as much as possible, but the facts about his family are known.

Throughout his life, Joseph Stalin had two wives. He first married on July 16, 1906 in the St. David Church in Tiflis with Ekaterina Svanidze. A year later, the couple had a son. They called him Jacob. A few months later, the wife of a famous Russian figure died of typhus. After such a loss, the man plunged headlong into the life of the state and devoted himself to political events. However, a few years later, Stalin nevertheless married again.

Joseph Stalin and Ekaterina Svanidze

Later, the Russian politician gained new love. He married a second time in 1918. Stalin's new chosen one became Nadezhda Alliluyeva. She was twenty-three years younger than her beloved. As you know, the woman is the daughter of the famous Russian revolutionary S. Ya. Alliluyev. Three years later, a son was born in marriage named Vasiliy. In the winter of 1926, a second child was born in the marriage - a daughter, who was named Svetlana. She also raised her son Stalin from her first marriage. Until that moment, Yakov lived with his grandmother, namely, with the mother of the deceased Ekaterina Svanidze.

Joseph Stalin with Nadezhda Alliluyeva

In 1932 Joseph and his wife Nadezhda had a serious conflict, after which she committed suicide. Children are orphaned. After this incident, no information about the personal life of the head of the Soviet state appeared. Moreover, a close friend of Joseph Stalin, a revolutionary, died Fedor Andreevich Sergeev. So he decided to adopt his child - Artem Sergeev.

In 1936 Stalin's grandson was born Evgeny Dzhugashvili. For twenty-five years, the grandson of the famous Russian revolutionary worked as a senior lecturer in the history of wars and military art at the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR. K.E. Voroshilov. He is a citizen of Georgia and the Russian Federation. In 2016, Evgeny Dzhugashvili passed away.

Joseph Stalin with son Vasily and daughter Svetlana

Death of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin

Stalin Iosif Vissarionovich passed away March 5, 1953. He lived in the post-war period for many years in a residence called Near Dacha. There he spent the last days of his life and died. The unconscious revolutionary was discovered by one of the guards. Joseph's body was found in the dining room. Soon medical workers arrived and diagnosed him with paralysis on the right side of the body. They provided the necessary assistance to Stalin, but within a few days he passed away.

According to doctors, death was due to severe cerebral hemorrhage. Such data was in the medical report. An examination and an autopsy were carried out, which showed that throughout his life, Joseph Vissarionovich suffered several ischemic strokes on his legs, which affected further complications. He got serious problems with the cardiovascular and nervous system.

The body of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was embalmed and placed next to the body of his good friend Vladimir Lenin. He was placed in Mausoleum. However, later at the CPSU congress the decision was changed. The embalmed body of the Russian leader was moved to the grave at Kremlin wall.

Grave of Joseph Stalin

Some historians argue that the sudden death of a Russian revolutionary could have been influenced by his competitors and ill-wishers. However, today this version is excluded.

Stalin Iosif Vissarionovich is a famous person, about whom the whole world is still talking about. It evokes both positive and negative emotions. However, the personality of this leader played a huge role in the political life of the country. His revolutionary activity characterized by cruelty, violence, totalitarian regime and aggression. During the reign of this man, a mass deportation of many peoples was carried out, the death of millions of people. But despite all these terrible nuances of that time, the USSR was still one of the most powerful powers, which had a large-scale level of industrial production and other areas. The personality of Joseph Stalin and the stories associated with his reign will be in full view for many more years.

He studied for 5 years at the Tiflis Theological Seminary. Was expelled.

The period when Stalin was in power was marked by mass repressions in 1937-1939. and 1943, sometimes directed against entire social strata and ethnic groups, the destruction of prominent figures of science and art, the persecution of the Church and religion in general, the forced industrialization of the country, which turned the USSR into a country with one of the most powerful economies in the world, collectivization, which led to the death of the country's agriculture, the mass exodus of peasants from the countryside and the famine of 1932-1933, the victory in the Great Patriotic War, the establishment of communist regimes in Eastern Europe, the transformation of the USSR into a superpower with a huge military-industrial potential, the beginning cold war. Russian public opinion regarding Stalin's personal merit or responsibility for the listed phenomena has not yet been finally formed.

Name and aliases

Stalin's real name is Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili (his name and the name of his father in Georgian sound like Ioseb and Besarion), the diminutive name is Soso. A version appeared very early, according to which the surname Dzhugashvili was not Georgian, but Ossetian (Dzugaty / Dzugaev), which was only given a Georgian form (the sound “dz” was replaced by “j”, the ending of Ossetian surnames “you” was replaced by the Georgian “shvili”) . Before the revolution, Dzhugashvili used a large number of pseudonyms, in particular, Besoshvili (Beso is a diminutive of Vissarion), Nizheradze, Chizhikov, Ivanovich. Of these, in addition to Stalin, the most famous pseudonym was "Koba" - as is usually believed (based on the opinion of Stalin's childhood friend Iremashvili), by the name of the hero of Kazbegi's novel "The Parricide", a noble robber who, according to Iremashvili, was the idol of young Soso . According to V. Pokhlebkin, the pseudonym came from the Persian king Kavad (in another spelling Kobades), who conquered Georgia and made Tbilisi the capital of the country, whose name in Georgian sounds Koba. Kavad was known as a supporter of Mazdakism, a movement that promoted early communist views. Traces of interest in Persia and Kavad are found in Stalin's speeches of 1904-07. The origin of the pseudonym "Stalin", as a rule, is associated with the Russian translation of the ancient Georgian word "dzhuga" - "steel". Thus, the pseudonym "Stalin" is a literal translation into Russian of his real name.

During the Great Patriotic War, he was usually addressed not by his first name or patronymic or military rank (“Comrade Marshal (Generalissimo) of the Soviet Union”), but simply “Comrade Stalin.”

Childhood and youth

He was born on December 6 (18), 1878 (according to the entry in the metric book of the Gori Assumption Cathedral Church) in Georgia in the city of Gori, although starting from 1929 [source?] His birthday was officially considered December 9 (21), 1879. He was the third son in family, the first two died in infancy. His native language was Georgian, Stalin learned Russian later, but always spoke with a noticeable Georgian accent. According to Svetlana's daughter, however, Stalin sang in Russian with virtually no accent.

He grew up in poverty, in the family of a shoemaker and the daughter of a serf. Father Vissarion (Beso) drank, beat his son and wife; Later, Stalin recalled how, as a child, he threw a knife at his father in self-defense and nearly killed him. Subsequently, Beso left home and wandered. The exact date of his death is unknown; Stalin's peer Iremashvili claims he was stabbed to death in a drunken brawl when Soso was 11 years old (perhaps confusing it with his brother Georgy); according to other sources, he died a natural death and much later. Stalin himself considered him alive back in 1909. Mother Ketevan (Keke) Geladze was known as a strict woman, but who passionately loved her son and sought to make him a career, which she associated with the position of a priest. According to some reports (which are mainly held by opponents of Stalin), his relationship with his mother was cool. Stalin did not come to her funeral in 1937, but only sent a wreath with an inscription in Russian and Georgian: "Dear and beloved mother from her son Joseph Dzhugashvili (from Stalin)". Perhaps his absence was due to the trial of Tukhachevsky that unfolded in those days.

In 1888, Joseph entered the Gori Theological School. In July 1894, after graduating from college, Joseph was noted as best student. His certificate contains fives in many subjects. Here is a snippet of his certificate:

A pupil of the Gori Theological School, Dzhugashvili Joseph ... entered the first grade of the school in September 1889 and, with excellent behavior (5), made progress:

By sacred history Old Testament - (5)

Best of the day

According to the Sacred History of the New Testament - (5)

According to the Orthodox Catechism - (5)

Explanation of worship with the church charter - (5)

Russian with Church Slavonic - (5)

Greek - (4) very good

Georgian - (5) excellent

Arithmetic - (4) very good

Geography - (5)

Calligraphy - (5)

Church singing:

Russian - (5)

and Georgian - (5)

In September of the same 1894, Joseph, having brilliantly passed the entrance exams, was enrolled in the Orthodox Theological Seminary in Tiflis (Tbilisi). Not having completed the full course of study, he was expelled from the seminary in 1899 (according to the official Soviet version, for promoting Marxism, according to the documents of the seminary - for failing to appear for the exam). In his youth, Soso always strove to be a leader and studied well, scrupulously doing his homework.

Memoirs of Joseph Iremashvili

Iosif Iremashvili, a friend and classmate of the young Stalin at the Tiflis Theological Seminary, was expelled from the USSR in 1922 after being released from prison. In 1932, a book of his memoirs was published in Berlin. German"Stalin and the tragedy of Georgia" (German "Stalin und die Tragoedie Georgiens"), which covered the youth of the then leader of the CPSU (b) in a negative light. According to Iremashvili, young Stalin was characterized by vindictiveness, vindictiveness, deceit, ambition and lust for power. According to him, the humiliation suffered in childhood made Stalin “cruel and heartless, like his father. He was convinced that a person to whom other people should obey should be like his father, and therefore he soon developed a deep dislike for all who were above him in position. From childhood, revenge became the goal of his life, and he subordinated everything to this goal. Iremashvili ends his characterization with the words: “It was a triumph for him to achieve victory and inspire fear.”

From the circle of reading, according to Iremashvili, the mentioned novel of the Georgian nationalist Kazbegi "The Parricide" made a special impression on the young Soso, with the hero of which - abrek Koba - he identified himself. According to Iremashvili, “Koba became a god for Coco, the meaning of his life. He would like to be the second Koba, a fighter and a hero as famous as this last one."

Before the revolution

1915 active member of the RSDLP (b)

In 1901-1902 he was a member of the Tiflis and Batumi committees of the RSDLP. After the II Congress of the RSDLP (1903) - a Bolshevik. Repeatedly arrested, exiled, fled from exile. Member of the revolution 1905-1907. In December 1905, a delegate to the 1st Conference of the RSDLP (Tammerfors). Delegate of the IV and V congresses of the RSDLP 1906-1907. In 1907-1908 he was a member of the Baku Committee of the RSDLP. At the plenum of the Central Committee after the 6th (Prague) All-Russian Conference of the RSDLP (1912), he was co-opted in absentia to the Central Committee and the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b) (he was not elected at the conference itself). Trotsky, in his biography of Stalin, believed that this was facilitated by Stalin's personal letter to V. I. Lenin, where he said that he agreed to any responsible work. In those years when the influence of Bolshevism was clearly declining, this made a great impression on Lenin.

In 1906-1907. led the so-called expropriation in Transcaucasia. In particular, on June 25, 1907, in order to raise funds for the needs of the Bolsheviks, he organized a robbery of a collection carriage in Tiflis. [source?]

In 1912-1913, while working in St. Petersburg, he was one of the main contributors to the first mass Bolshevik newspaper Pravda.

At this time, Stalin wrote, at the direction of V. I. Lenin, the work “Marxism and the National Question”, in which he expressed Bolshevik views on the ways of solving the national question and criticized the program of “cultural-national autonomy” of the Austro-Hungarian socialists. This caused an extremely positive attitude towards him from Lenin, who called him a "wonderful Georgian."

In 1913 he was exiled to the village of Kureika in the Turukhansk Territory and was in exile until 1917.

After the February Revolution he returned to Petrograd. Prior to Lenin's arrival from exile, he directed the activities of the Central Committee and the St. Petersburg Committee of the Bolshevik Party. In 1917, he was a member of the editorial board of the Pravda newspaper, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, and the Military Revolutionary Center. In relation to the Provisional Government and its policy, he proceeded from the fact that the democratic revolution was not yet completed, and the overthrow of the government was not a practical task. In view of the forced departure of Lenin into the underground, Stalin spoke at the VI Congress of the RSDLP (b) with a report of the Central Committee. Participated in the October armed uprising as a member of the party center under his leadership. After the victory of the October Revolution of 1917, he joined the Council of People's Commissars as People's Commissar for Nationalities.

Civil War

After the start of the civil war, Stalin was sent to the south of Russia as an extraordinary representative of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee for the procurement and export of grain from the North Caucasus to industrial centers. Arriving in Tsaritsyn on June 6, 1918, Stalin took power in the city into his own hands, established a regime of terror there and engaged in the defense of Tsaritsyn from the troops of Ataman Krasnov. However, the very first military measures taken by Stalin together with Voroshilov turned into defeats for the Red Army. Blaming "military experts" for these defeats, Stalin carried out mass arrests and executions. After Krasnov came close to the city and semi-blocked it, Stalin was recalled from Tsaritsyn at the decisive insistence of Trotsky. Shortly after Stalin's departure, the city fell. Lenin condemned Stalin for executions. Stalin, being absorbed in military affairs, did not forget about the development of domestic production. So, he then wrote to Lenin about sending meat to Moscow: “There are more livestock here than necessary ... It would be good to organize at least one canning factory, put up a slaughterhouse and so on ...”.

In January 1919, Stalin and Dzerzhinsky leave for Vyatka to investigate the reasons for the defeat of the Red Army near Perm and the surrender of the city to the forces of Admiral Kolchak. The Stalin-Dzerzhinsky Commission contributed to the reorganization and restoration of the combat capability of the defeated 3rd Army; however, on the whole, the situation on the Permian front was rectified by the fact that Ufa was taken by the Red Army, and Kolchak already on January 6 gave the order to concentrate forces in the Ufa direction and go on the defensive near Perm. Stalin was awarded the order Red Banner for work on the Petrograd Front. The firmness of decisions, unprecedented efficiency and a clever combination of military organizational and political activities made it possible to win many supporters.

In the summer of 1920, Stalin, sent to the Polish front, encouraged Budyonny to fail to comply with the orders of the command to transfer the 1st Cavalry Army from near Lvov to the Warsaw direction, which, according to some historians, had fatal consequences for the Red Army campaign.

1920s

RSDLP - RSDLP(b) - RCP(b) - VKP(b) - CPSU

In April 1922, the Plenum of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) elected Stalin General Secretary Central Committee. L. D. Trotsky considered G. E. Zinoviev to be the initiator of this appointment, but, perhaps, V. I. Lenin himself, who sharply changed his attitude towards Trotsky after the so-called. "discussions about trade unions" (this version was set out in the famous "Short Course on the History of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks" and was considered mandatory during Stalin's lifetime). Initially, this position meant only the leadership of the party apparatus, while Lenin, the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, formally remained the leader of the party and government. In addition, leadership in the party was considered inextricably linked with the merits of the theorist; therefore, following Lenin, Trotsky, L.B. Kamenev, Zinoviev and N.I. Bukharin were considered the most prominent "leaders", while Stalin was not seen to have either theoretical merits or special merits in the revolution.

Lenin highly valued Stalin's organizational skills; Stalin was considered an expert on the national question, although in last years Lenin noted in him "Great Russian chauvinism." It was on this basis (the “Georgian Incident”) that Lenin clashed with Stalin; Stalin's despotic demeanor and his rudeness towards Krupskaya caused Lenin to repent of his appointment, and in a "Letter to the Congress" Lenin declared that Stalin was too rude and should be removed from his post as general secretary.

But due to illness, Lenin retired from political activity. The supreme power in the party (and in fact in the country) belonged to the Politburo. In the absence of Lenin, it consisted of 6 people - Stalin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Bukharin and MP Tomsky, where all issues were decided by a majority of votes. Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev organized a "troika" based on opposition to Trotsky, whom they had been negative about since the civil war (frictions between Trotsky and Stalin began over the defense of Tsaritsyn and between Trotsky and Zinoviev over the defense of Petrograd, Kamenev supported almost everything Zinoviev). Tomsky, being the leader of the trade unions, had a negative attitude towards Trotsky since the time of the so-called. trade union discussions. Bukharin could become the only supporter of Trotsky, but his triumvirs began to gradually lure him over to their side.

Trotsky began to resist. He sent a letter to the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission (Central Control Commission) demanding greater democracy in the party. Soon, other oppositionists, not only the Trotskyists, sent a similar so-called to the Politburo. "Statement of the 46". The Troika then showed its power, mainly using the resources of the apparatus led by Stalin. At the XIII Conference of the RCP(b) all oppositionists were condemned. Stalin's influence greatly increased.

January 21, 1924 Lenin died. The Troika united with Bukharin, A.I. Rykov, Tomsky and V.V. Kuibyshev, forming in the Politburo (which included a member of Rykov and a candidate member of Kuibyshev) the so-called. "seven". Later, at the August plenum of 1924, this "seven" even became an official body, although secret and extra-statutory.

The XIII Congress of the RSDLP (b) turned out to be difficult for Stalin. Before the start of the congress, Lenin's widow N. K. Krupskaya handed over the Letter to the Congress. It was announced at a meeting of the Council of Elders (a non-statutory body consisting of members of the Central Committee and leaders of local party organizations). Stalin announced his resignation at this meeting for the first time. Kamenev proposed to resolve the issue by voting. The majority voted in favor of keeping Stalin in the post of general secretary, only Trotsky's supporters voted against. Then the proposal was voted that the document should be announced at closed meetings of individual delegations, while no one had the right to take notes and at the meetings of the congress it was impossible to refer to the "Testament". Thus, the "Letter to the Congress" was not even mentioned in the materials of the Congress. It was first announced by N. S. Khrushchev at the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956. Later, this fact was used by the opposition to criticize Stalin and the party (it was alleged that the Central Committee "concealed" Lenin's "testament"). Stalin himself (in connection with this letter he several times raised the question of his resignation before the plenum of the Central Committee) denied these accusations. Just two weeks after the congress, where Stalin's future victims Zinoviev and Kamenev used all their influence to keep him in office, Stalin opened fire on his own allies. First, he used a typo (“Nepmanovskaya” instead of “NEPovskaya” in a quote from Lenin by Kamenev:

I read in the newspaper the report of one of the comrades at the Thirteenth Congress (I think Kamenev), where it is written in black and white that the next slogan of our party is supposedly the transformation of "Nepman Russia" into socialist Russia. Moreover, - even worse - this strange slogan is attributed to none other than Lenin himself.

In the same report, Stalin accused Zinoviev, without naming him, of the principle of "dictatorship of the party" put forward at the Twelfth Congress, and this thesis was recorded in the resolution of the congress and Stalin himself voted for it. The main allies of Stalin in the "seven" were Bukharin and Rykov.

A new split appeared in the Politburo in October 1925, when Zinoviev, Kamenev, G. Ya. Sokolnikov and Krupskaya presented a document that criticized the party line from a "left" point of view. (Zinoviev led the Leningrad communists, Kamenev the Moscow ones, and among the working class of large cities, who lived worse than before the First World War, there was strong dissatisfaction with low wages and rising prices for agricultural products, which led to the demand for pressure on the peasantry and especially on the kulaks ). "Seven" broke up. At that moment, Stalin began to unite with the "right" Bukharin-Rykov-Tomsky, who expressed the interests of the peasantry above all. In the inner-party struggle that had begun between the "rights" and "lefts", he provided them with the forces of the party apparatus, they (namely Bukharin) acted as theoreticians. The "new opposition" of Zinoviev and Kamenev was condemned at the XIV Congress

By that time, the theory of the victory of socialism in one country had arisen. This view was developed by Stalin in the pamphlet "On Questions of Leninism" (1926) and by Bukharin. They divided the question of the victory of socialism into two parts - the question of the complete victory of socialism, i.e. about the possibility of building socialism and the complete impossibility of restoring capitalism by internal forces, and the question of final victory, i.e., the impossibility of restoration due to the intervention of the Western powers, which would be excluded only by establishing a revolution in the West.

Trotsky, who did not believe in socialism in one country, joined Zinoviev and Kamenev. The so-called. United Opposition. It was finally defeated after a demonstration organized by Trotsky's supporters on November 7, 1927 in Leningrad. At this time, including the Bukharinites, the creation of a “cult of personality” of Stalin began, who was still considered a party bureaucrat, and not a theoretical leader who could lay claim to Lenin’s legacy. Having strengthened his role as a leader, in 1929 Stalin dealt an unexpected blow to his allies, accusing them of a "right deviation" and actually starting to implement (at the same time in extreme forms) the program of the “leftists” to curtail the NEP and accelerate industrialization through the exploitation of the countryside, which has so far been the subject of condemnation. At the same time, the 50th anniversary of Stalin is celebrated on a large scale (whose date of birth was then changed, according to Stalin's critics, in order to somewhat smooth out the "excesses" of collectivization with the celebration).

1930s

Immediately after the assassination of Kirov on December 1, 1934, a rumor arose that the assassination was organized by Stalin. There are different versions of the murder from the involvement of Stalin, to everyday.

After the 20th Congress, by order of Khrushchev, a Special Commission of the Central Committee of the CPSU headed by N. M. Shvernik with the participation of the old Bolshevik Olga Shatunovskaya was created to investigate the issue. The commission interrogated over 3 thousand people and, according to the letters of O. Shatunovskaya addressed to N. Khrushchev, A. Mikoyan and A. Yakovlev, she found reliable evidence that allows us to assert that Stalin and the NKVD organized the murder of Kirov. N. S. Khrushchev also speaks of this in his memoirs). Subsequently, Shatunovskaya expressed her suspicion that documents compromising Stalin had been confiscated.

In 1990, in the course of a re-investigation conducted by the USSR Prosecutor's Office, a conclusion was made: the assassination attempt on Kirov, as well as the involvement of the NKVD and Stalin in this crime, is not contained.

A number of modern historians support the version of the murder of Kirov on Stalin's orders, others insist on the version of a lone killer.

Mass repressions in the second half of the 1930s

Politburo decision signed by Stalin obliging the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR to pass sentences to death and imprisonment in camp 457 "members of counter-revolutionary organizations" (1940)

As the historian M. Geller notes, the assassination of Kirov served as a signal for the beginning of the Great Terror. On December 1, 1934, at the initiative of Stalin, the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR adopted a resolution "On Amending the Current Criminal Procedure Codes of the Union Republics" with the following content:

Introduce the following changes to the current criminal procedure codes of the Union republics for the investigation and consideration of cases of terrorist organizations and terrorist acts against workers of the Soviet government:

1. The investigation of these cases shall be completed within no more than ten days;

2. The indictment shall be handed over to the accused one day before the trial of the case in court;

3. Cases to hear without the participation of the parties;

4. Cassation appeal against sentences, as well as filing petitions for pardon, should not be allowed;

5. The sentence to capital punishment shall be carried out immediately after the sentence is pronounced.

After that, the former party opposition to Stalin (Kamenev and Zinoviev, who allegedly acted on the instructions of Trotsky) was accused of organizing the murder. Subsequently, according to Shatunovskaya, in Stalin's archives, lists of the "Moscow" and "Leningrad" centers of the opposition, which allegedly organized the murder, were found in Stalin's archives. Orders were issued to expose the "enemies of the people" and a series of trials began.

The mass terror of the period of "Yezhovshchina" was carried out by the then authorities of the country throughout the USSR (and, at the same time, in the territories of Mongolia, Tuva and Republican Spain controlled at that time by the Soviet regime), as a rule, on the basis of previously "lowered into place" by the party authorities figures of "planned assignments" to identify people (the so-called "enemies of the people"), as well as compiled by the Chekist authorities (based on these figures) by surname lists of pre-scheduled victims of terror, the massacre of which was centrally planned by the authorities. [source?] During the “Yezhovshchina” period, the regime ruling in the USSR completely rejected even that socialist legality, which, for some reason, it considered necessary to observe, sometimes, in the period preceding the “Yezhovshchina”. During the "Yezhovshchina", torture was widely used on those arrested; sentences that were not subject to appeal (often to death) were passed without any trial, and were immediately (often even before the sentence was pronounced) carried out; all the property of the absolute majority of arrested people was immediately confiscated; relatives of the repressed were themselves subjected to the same repressions - for the mere fact of their relationship with them; The children of the repressed (regardless of their age) left without parents were also placed, as a rule, in prisons, camps, colonies, or in special "orphanages for children of enemies of the people." [source?]

In 1937-1938, the NKVD arrested about 1.5 million people, of which about 700 thousand were shot, that is, on average, 1,000 executions per day.

Historian V. N. Zemskov names a smaller number of those who were shot - 642,980 people (and at least 500,000 more who died in the camps).

As a result of collectivization, famine and purges between 1926 and 1939. the country lost according to various estimates from 7 to 13 million and even up to 20 million people.

The Second World War

German propaganda reporting Stalin's alleged flight from Moscow and propaganda coverage of the capture of his son Yakov. Autumn 1941

Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at the Yalta Conference.

During the Great Patriotic War, Stalin actively participated in hostilities in the position of Supreme Commander-in-Chief. Already on June 30, by order of Stalin, the GKO was organized. During the war, Stalin lost his son.

After the war

Portrait of Stalin on a diesel locomotive TE2-414, 1954 Central Museum of the October railway, St. Petersburg

Portrait of Stalin on a diesel locomotive TE2-414, 1954

Central Museum of the October Railway, St. Petersburg

After the war, the country embarked on a course of accelerated revival of the economy, devastated by warfare and scorched earth tactics pursued by both sides. Stalin, with harsh measures, suppressed the nationalist movement, which was actively manifested in the territories newly annexed to the USSR (the Baltic states, Western Ukraine).

In the liberated states of Eastern Europe, pro-Soviet communist regimes were established, which later formed a counterbalance to the militaristic NATO bloc from the west of the USSR. Post-war contradictions between the USSR and the USA in the Far East led to the Korean War.

The human losses did not end with the war. Only the Holodomor of 1946-1947 claimed the lives of about a million people. In total, for the period 1939-1959. population losses amounted to various estimates from 25 to 30 million people.

In the late 1940s, the great-power component of Soviet ideology (the fight against cosmopolitanism) intensified. In the early 1950s, several high-profile anti-Semitic trials were held in the countries of Eastern Europe, and then in the USSR (see the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, Doctors' Case). All Jewish educational institutions, theaters, publishing houses and mass media were closed (except for the newspaper of the Jewish Autonomous Region "Birobidzhaner Shtern" ("Birobidzhan Star")). Mass arrests and dismissals of Jews began. In the winter of 1953 there were persistent rumors about the impending deportation of the Jews; the question of whether these rumors corresponded to reality is debatable.

In 1952, according to the recollections of the participants in the October plenum of the Central Committee, Stalin tried to resign from his party duties, refusing the post of secretary of the Central Committee, but under pressure from the delegates of the plenum, he accepted this position. It should be noted that the post of General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks was formally abolished even after the 17th Party Congress, and Stalin was nominally considered one of the equal secretaries of the Central Committee. However, in the book published in 1947 “Joseph Vissarionov Stalin. Brief biography" said:

On April 3, 1922, the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Party ... elected Stalin as General Secretary of the Central Committee ... Stalin. Since then, Stalin has been permanently working in this post.

Stalin and metro

Under Stalin, the first metro in the USSR was built. Stalin was interested in everything in the country, including construction. His former bodyguard Rybin recalls:

I. Stalin personally inspected the necessary streets, going into the courtyards, where basically the shacks that breathed incense leaned sideways and a lot of mossy sheds on chicken legs huddled. The first time he did it was during the day. Immediately a crowd gathered, which did not allow to move at all, and then ran after the car. I had to reschedule my appointments for the night. But even then, passers-by recognized the leader and accompanied him with a long tail.

As a result of long preparations, the master plan for the reconstruction of Moscow was approved. This is how Gorky Street, Bolshaya Kaluzhskaya Street, Kutuzovsky Prospekt and other beautiful highways appeared. During another trip along Mokhovaya, Stalin said to the driver Mitryukhin:

Gotta build new university named after Lomonosov, so that students study in one place, and not wander around the city.

During the construction process, on the personal order of Stalin, the Sovetskaya metro station was adapted for the underground command post of the Moscow Civil Defense Headquarters. In addition to the civilian metro, complex secret complexes were built, including the so-called Metro-2, which Stalin himself used. In November 1941, a solemn meeting on the occasion of the anniversary of the October Revolution was held in the metro at the Mayakovskaya station. Stalin arrived by train along with guards, and he did not leave the building of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command on Myasnitskaya, but went down from the basement into a special tunnel that led to the subway.

Stalin and higher education in the USSR

Stalin paid great attention to the development of Soviet science. So, according to Zhdanov's memoirs, Stalin believed that higher education three stages passed in Russia: “In the first period ... were the main source of personnel. Along with them, the workers' faculties developed only to a very slight extent. Then, with the development of the economy and trade, a large number of practitioners and businessmen were required. Now ... we should not plant new ones, but improve existing ones. You can't put the question this way: universities train either teachers or researchers. It is impossible to teach without conducting and not knowing scientific work ... now we often say: give us a sample from abroad, we will sort it out, and then we will build it ourselves.”

Stalin paid personal attention to the construction of Moscow State University. The Moscow City Committee and the Moscow City Council proposed to build a four-story town in the Vnukovo area, where there were wide fields, based on economic considerations. The President of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR Academician S. I. Vavilov and the Rector of Moscow State University A. N. Nesmeyanov proposed to build a modern ten-story building. However, at a meeting of the Politburo, which Stalin personally led, he said: “This complex is for Moscow University, and not 10-12, but 20 floors. We will instruct Komarovsky to build. To accelerate the pace of construction, it will have to be carried out in parallel with the design ... It is necessary to create living conditions by building dormitories for teachers and students. How long will students live? Six thousand? So the hostel should have six thousand rooms. Special care should be taken for family students.

The decision to build Moscow State University was supplemented by a set of measures to improve all universities, primarily in cities affected by the war. Universities were given large buildings in Minsk, Voronezh, Kharkov. Universities of a number of Union republics began to actively create and develop.

In 1949, the issue of naming the Moscow State University complex on the Lenin Hills was discussed. However, Stalin categorically opposed this proposal.

Education and science

On Stalin's orders, a profound restructuring of the entire system of the humanities was undertaken. In 1934, the teaching of history was resumed in the secondary and high school. According to the historian Yuri Felshtinsky, “Under the influence of the instructions of Stalin, Kirov and Zhdanov and the decisions of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on the teaching of history (1934-1936), dogmatism and dogmatism began to take root in historical science, the replacement of research with quotations, and the fitting of material to biased conclusions ". The same processes took place in other areas of humanitarian knowledge. In philology, the advanced "formal" school (Tynyanov, Shklovsky, Eikhenbaum, and others) was destroyed; philosophy began to be based on a primitive exposition of the foundations of Marxism in Chapter IV of the Short Course. Pluralism within Marxist philosophy itself, which existed until the end of the 1930s, became impossible after that; "philosophy" was reduced to commenting on Stalin; all attempts to go beyond the official dogma, manifested by the Lifshitz-Lukach school, were severely suppressed. The situation especially worsened in the post-war period, when massive campaigns began against the departure from the "party principle", against the "abstract academic spirit", "objectivism", as well as against "anti-patriotism", "rootless cosmopolitanism" and "belittling Russian science and Russian philosophy". ”, Encyclopedias of those years report, for example, the following about Socrates:“ other Greek. idealist philosopher, ideologist of the slave-owning aristocracy, enemy of ancient materialism.

To encourage outstanding figures in science, technology, culture and organizers of production, in 1940, awards were established annually, starting from 1941. Stalin Prizes(instead of the Lenin Prize, established in 1925, but not awarded since 1935). The development of Soviet science and technology under Stalin can be described as a takeoff. The created network of fundamental and applied research institutes, design bureaus and university laboratories, as well as prison camp design bureaus (the so-called "sharag") covered the entire front of research. Scientists have become the true elite of the country. Such names as the physicists Kurchatov, Landau, Tamm, the mathematician Keldysh, the creator of space technology Korolev, the aircraft designer Tupolev are known all over the world. In the post-war period, based on obvious military needs, most attention devoted to nuclear physics. Thus, in 1946 alone, Stalin personally signed about sixty major documents that determined the development of atomic science and technology. The result of these decisions was the creation atomic bomb, as well as the construction of the world's first nuclear power plant in Obninsk (1954) and the subsequent development of nuclear energy.

At the same time, the centralized management of scientific activity, which was not always competent, led to the restriction of directions that were considered to be contrary to dialectical materialism and therefore of no practical use. Entire areas of research, such as genetics and cybernetics, were declared "bourgeois pseudosciences." The consequence of this was the arrests and sometimes even executions, as well as the suspension of prominent Soviet scientists from teaching. According to one of the widespread points of view, the defeat of cybernetics ensured the fatal lag of the USSR from the USA in the creation of electronic computers - work on the creation of a domestic computer began only in 1952, although immediately after the war the USSR had all the scientific and technical personnel necessary for its creation. The Russian genetic school, which was considered one of the best in the world, was completely destroyed. Under Stalin, truly pseudoscientific trends enjoyed state support, such as Lysenkoism in biology and (until 1950) the new doctrine of language in linguistics, however, debunked by Stalin himself at the end of his life. Science was also affected by the struggle against cosmopolitanism and the so-called "cow-worship of the West", which had a strong anti-Semitic connotation, which had been going on since 1948.

Stalin's personality cult

Soviet propaganda created around Stalin a semi-divine halo of an infallible "great leader and teacher." Cities, factories, collective farms, military equipment. The city of Donetsk (Stalino) bore the name of Stalin for a long time. His name was mentioned in the same row with Marx, Engels and Lenin. On January 1, 1936, the first two poems glorifying I.V. Stalin, written by Boris Pasternak, appear in Izvestia. According to Korney Chukovsky and Nadezhda Mandelstam, he "simply raved about Stalin."

Poster depicting Stalin

Poster depicting Stalin

“And in those same days, at a distance behind the ancient stone wall

It is not a person who lives, but an act: an act as tall as the globe of the earth.

Fate gave him the lot of the previous gap.

He is what the most daring dream about, but no one dared before him.

Behind this fabulous deed, the way of things remained intact.

He didn't get up celestial body, not distorted, not decayed ..

In the collection of fairy tales and relics floating over Moscow by the Kremlin

Centuries have become so accustomed to it, as to the battle of the sentinel tower.

But he remained a man, and if, against the hare

He fires at the cutting areas in winter, the forest will answer him, like everyone else "

The name of Stalin is also mentioned in the anthem of the USSR, composed by S. Mikhalkov in 1944:

Through the storms the sun of freedom shone for us,

And the great Lenin lit the way for us,

We were raised by Stalin - to be loyal to the people,

Inspired us to work and deeds!

Similar in nature, but on a smaller scale, phenomena were also observed in relation to other state leaders (Kalinin, Molotov, Zhdanov, Beria, etc.), as well as Lenin.

A panel with the image of I. V. Stalin at the Narvskaya station of the St. Petersburg metro existed until 1961, then it was covered with a false wall

Khrushchev, in his famous report at the 20th Party Congress, argued that Stalin encouraged his cult in every possible way. So, Khrushchev stated that he knew for certain that, while editing his own biography prepared for publication, Stalin entered whole pages there, where he called himself the leader of the peoples, a great commander, the highest theoretician of Marxism, a brilliant scientist, etc. . In particular, Khrushchev claims that the following passage was inscribed by Stalin himself: “Skillfully fulfilling the tasks of the leader of the party and the people, having the full support of the entire Soviet people, Stalin, however, did not allow in his activities even a shadow of conceit, arrogance, narcissism.” It is known that Stalin stopped some acts of his praise. So, according to the memoirs of the author of the orders "Victory" and "Glory", the first sketches were made with the profile of Stalin. Stalin asked that his profile be replaced with the Spasskaya Tower. To Lion Feuchtwanger's remark "about the tasteless, exaggerated admiration for his personality", Stalin "shrugged his shoulders" and "excused his peasants and workers that they were too busy with other things and could not develop good taste in themselves."

After the “exposure of the cult of personality”, the phrase usually attributed to M. A. Sholokhov (but also to other historical characters) became famous: “Yes, there was a cult ... But there was a personality!”

In modern Russian culture there are also many cultural sources glorifying Stalin. For example, you can point to the songs of Alexander Kharchikov: "Stalin's March", "Stalin is our father, our Motherland is our mother", "Stalin, get up!"

Stalin and anti-Semitism

Some Jewish authors, based on the fact that under Stalin, including Jews, were subject to criminal liability, on some cases of manifestations of everyday anti-Semitism in Soviet society, and also on the fact that in some of his theoretical works Stalin mentions Zionism in the same row with other types of nationalism and chauvinism (including anti-Semitism), draw a conclusion about Stalin's anti-Semitism. Stalin himself repeatedly issued statements severely condemning anti-Semitism. Among Stalin's closest associates there were many Jews.

Stalin's role in the creation of the State of Israel

Stalin has a great merit in the creation of the State of Israel. The first official contact between the Soviet Union and the Zionists took place on February 3, 1941, when Chaim Weizmann, a world-famous scientist and head of the World Zionist Organization, came to the ambassador in London, I. M. Maisky. Weizmann made a trade offer to supply oranges in exchange for furs. The business failed, but the contacts remained. Relations between the Zionist movement and Moscow leaders had already changed after the German attack on the Soviet Union in June. The need to defeat Hitler was more important than ideological differences - before that, the attitude of the Soviet government towards Zionism was negative.

Already on September 2, 1941, Weizmann reappeared at Soviet ambassador. The head of the World Zionist Organization said that the appeal of Soviet Jews to world Jewry with an appeal to unite efforts in the fight against Hitler made a great impression on him. The use of Soviet Jews for psychological influence on world public opinion, primarily on Americans, was a Stalinist idea. At the end of 1941, a decision was made in Moscow to form the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee - along with the All-Slavic, Women's, Youth and Committee of Soviet Scientists. All these organizations were focused on educational work abroad. The Jews, at the call of the Zionists, collected and handed over to the Soviet Union 45,000,000 dollars. However the main role belonged to them in explanatory work among Americans, because at that time isolationist sentiments were strong.

After the war, the dialogue continued. The British secret services spied on the Zionists because their leaders had sympathy for the USSR. The British and American governments placed an embargo on Jewish settlements in Palestine. Great Britain sold weapons to the Arabs. The Arabs, in addition, hired Bosnian Muslims, former soldiers of the SS Volunteer Division, soldiers of Anders, Arab units in the Wehrmacht. By decision of Stalin, Israel began to receive artillery and mortars, German Messerschmitt fighters through Czechoslovakia. Basically it was a German captured weapon. The CIA offered to shoot down planes, but the politicians prudently refused this step. In general, few weapons were supplied, but they helped to maintain a high morale of the Israelis. There was also a lot of political support. According to P. Sudoplatov, before the UN vote on the division of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states in November 1947, Stalin told his subordinates: “Let's agree with the formation of Israel. This will be a pain in the ass for the Arab states, and then they will seek an alliance with us.

Already in 1948, a cooling in Soviet-Israeli relations began, which led to the severance of diplomatic relations with Israel on February 12, 1953 - the basis for such a step was a bomb explosion near the doors of the Soviet embassy in Tel Aviv (diplomatic relations were restored shortly after Stalin's death, but then worsened again due to military conflicts).

Stalin and the Church

Stalin's policy towards the Russian Orthodox Church was not homogeneous, but it was distinguished by consistency in pursuing the pragmatic goals of the survival of the communist regime and its global expansion. To some researchers, Stalin's attitude to religion was not entirely consistent. On the one hand, not a single atheistic or anti-church work by Stalin remained. On the contrary, Roy Medvedev cites Stalin's statement about atheistic literature as waste paper. On the other hand, on May 15, 1932, a campaign was announced in the USSR, the official goal of which was the complete eradication of religion in the country by May 1, 1937, the so-called "godless five-year plan." By 1939, the number of churches opened in the USSR numbered in the hundreds, and the diocesan structures were completely destroyed.

Some weakening of the anti-church terror took place after the arrival of L.P. Beria to the post of chairman of the NKVD, which was associated both with a general weakening of repressions and the fact that in the fall of 1939 the USSR annexed significant territories on its western borders, where there were numerous and full-blooded church structures.

On June 22, 1941, Metropolitan Sergius sent out an appeal to the dioceses “To the pastors and flock of Christ's Orthodox Church,” which did not go unnoticed by Stalin.

There are many mythical tales about Stalin's alleged recourse to the prayerful help of the Church during the war, but there are no serious documents that would confirm this. According to the oral testimony of Anatoly Vasilyevich Vedernikov, secretary of Patriarch Alexy I, in September 1941, Stalin allegedly ordered Sergius Stragorodsky to be locked up together with his cell-attendant in the Assumption Cathedral of the Kremlin, so that he would pray there before the icon of the Mother of God of Vladimir (the icon was moved there at that time). Sergius stayed in the Assumption Cathedral for three days.

In October 1941, the Patriarchy and other religious centers were ordered to leave Moscow. Orenburg was proposed, but Sergius objected and Ulyanovsk (formerly Simbirsk) was chosen. Metropolitan Sergius and his apparatus stayed in Ulyanovsk until August 1943.

According to the memoirs of the NKGB officer Georgy Karpov, on September 4, 1943, at a meeting attended by Molotov and Beria, in addition to Karpov, Stalin ordered the formation of a body for the work of interaction between the Russian Orthodox Church and the government - the Council for the Russian Orthodox Church under the Council of People's Commissars. A few hours after the meeting, in the dead of night, Metropolitans Sergius, Alexy (Simansky), Nikolai (Yarushevich) were brought to Stalin. During the conversation, a decision was made to elect a Patriarch, open churches, seminaries and a theological academy. As a residence, the Patriarch was given the building of the former German embassy. The state actually stopped supporting renovationist structures, which by 1946 were completely liquidated.

The apparent change in policy towards the ROC causes numerous disputes among researchers. Versions are expressed from Stalin's deliberate use of church circles to subjugate the people to himself, to opinions that Stalin remained a secretly believing person. The latter opinion is also confirmed by the stories of Artyom Sergeev, who was brought up in Stalin's house. And also, according to the memoirs of Stalin's bodyguard Yuri Solovyov, Stalin prayed in the church in the Kremlin, which was on the way to the cinema. Yuri Solovyov himself remained outside the church, but could see Stalin through the window.

The real reason for the temporary change in the repressive policy towards the Church lay in considerations primarily of foreign policy expediency. (See the article History of the Russian Church)

Since the autumn of 1948, after the Conference of the Heads and Representatives of the Orthodox Churches was held in Moscow, the results of which were disappointing in terms of advancing the foreign policy interests of the Kremlin, the former repressive policy was largely resumed.

Sociocultural dimensions of Stalin's personality

Assessments of Stalin's personality are contradictory. The party intelligentsia of the Leninist era put him extremely low; Trotsky, reflecting her opinion, called Stalin "the most outstanding mediocrity of our era." On the other hand, many people who communicated with him later spoke of him as a broadly and versatilely educated and extremely intelligent person. According to the English historian Simon Montefiore, who studied Stalin's personal library and reading circle, he spent a lot of time reading books, on the margins of which his notes remained: “His tastes were eclectic: Maupassant, Wilde, Gogol, Goethe, and also Zola, whom he adored. He liked poetry. (...) Stalin was an erudite person. He quoted long passages from the Bible, the works of Bismarck, the works of Chekhov. He admired Dostoevsky."

Against, Soviet historian Leonid Batkin, while recognizing Stalin's love of reading, believes, however, that he was an "aesthetically dense" reader, and at the same time remained a "practical politician." Batkin believes that Stalin had no idea “of the existence of such a ‘subject’ as art”, of a “special artistic world”, of the structure of this world, and so on. On the example of Stalin's statements on literary and cultural topics, given in the memoirs of Konstantin Simonov, Batkin concludes that "everything that Stalin says, everything that he thinks about literature, cinema, and so on, is utterly ignorant," and that the hero of the memoirs is "quite - still a primitive and vulgar type. For comparison with the words of Stalin, Batkin cites marginals - the heroes of Mikhail Zoshchenko; in his opinion, they hardly differ from Stalin's statements. In general, according to Batkin’s conclusion, Stalin brought “certain energy” of a semi-educated and average layer of people to a “pure, strong-willed, outstanding form”.

It should be noted that Batkin fundamentally refuses to consider Stalin as a diplomat, military leader, economist, as he says at the beginning of the article.

Roy Medvedev, speaking out against "often extremely exaggerated estimates of the level of his education and intellect", at the same time warns against underestimation. He notes that Stalin read a lot, and diversified, from fiction to popular science. In the article, the historian cites Stalin's words about reading: "This is my daily norm - 500 pages"; thus, Stalin read several books a day and about a thousand books a year. In the pre-war period, Stalin paid most of his attention to historical and military-technical books, after the war he switched to reading works of a political direction, such as the History of Diplomacy, Talleyrand's biography. At the same time, Stalin actively studied the works of Marxists, including the works of his comrades-in-arms, and then opponents - Trotsky, Kamenev and others. Medvedev notes that Stalin, being the culprit of the death a large number writers and the destruction of their books, at the same time patronized M. Sholokhov, A. Tolstoy and others, returns from exile E. V. Tarle, whose biography of Napoleon he treated with great interest and personally supervised its publication, stopping tendentious attacks on book. Medvedev emphasizes knowledge of the national Georgian culture, in 1940 Stalin himself makes changes to the new translation of The Knight in the Panther's Skin. .

Stalin as an orator and writer

According to L. Batkin, Stalin's oratorical style is extremely primitive. It is distinguished by “the catechistic form, endless repetitions and inversions of the same thing, the same phrase in the form of a question and in the form of an assertion, and again it is the same through a negative particle; curses and cliches of the party bureaucratic dialect; invariably meaningful, important mine, designed to hide the fact that the author has little to say; poverty of syntax and vocabulary. A.P. Romanenko and A.K. Mikhalskaya also pay attention to the lexical scarcity of Stalin's speeches and the abundance of repetitions. The Israeli scholar Mikhail Weiskopf also argues that Stalin's argument "is based on more or less hidden tautologies, on the effect of mind-boggling hammering."

The formal logic of Stalin's speeches, according to Batkin, is characterized by "chains of simple identities: A = A and B = B, this cannot be, because it can never be" - that is, there is no logic, in the strict sense of the word, in Stalin's speeches at all. Weisskopf speaks of Stalin's "logic" as a collection of logical errors: "The main features of this pseudo-logic are the use of an unproven judgment as a premise, and so on. petitio principii, that is, the hidden identity between the basis of the proof and the thesis supposedly arising from it. The tautology of Stalin's arguments (idem per idem) constantly forms the classic "circle in proof". Often there is a permutation of the so-called. strong and weak judgments, substitution of terms, errors - or rather, falsifications - associated with the ratio of the volume and content of concepts, with deductive and inductive conclusions, etc.” Weisskopf generally considers tautology as the basis of the logic of Stalin's speeches (more precisely, "the ground of the foundation," as the author puts it, paraphrasing the real words of the leader). In particular, Weiskopf cites the following examples of Stalin's "logic":

It can ruin the common cause if it is downtrodden and dark, of course, not because of its evil will, but because of its darkness.

Weisskopf finds in this phrase a petitio principii class error, stating that one of the references to "darkness" is a premise, and the other is a conclusion following from it, thus the premise and conclusion are identical.

"The words and deeds of the opposition bloc invariably come into conflict with each other. Hence the discord between deed and word."

“The misfortune of the Bukharin group lies precisely in the fact that they do not see the characteristic features of this period. Hence their blindness”

“Why is it precisely the capitalists who take the fruits of the labor of the proletarians, and not the proletarians themselves? Why do capitalists exploit proletarians and not proletarians exploit capitalists? Because the capitalists buy the labor power of the proletarians, and that is why the capitalists take away the fruits of the labor of the proletarians, that is why the capitalists exploit the proletarians, and not the proletarians of the capitalists. But why exactly are the capitalists buying the labor power of the proletarians? Why are proletarians employed by capitalists, and not capitalists by proletarians? Because the main basis of the capitalist system is private ownership of the instruments and means of production…”

However, according to Batkin, it is unlawful to make claims to Stalin's speeches in tautologies, sophisms, gross lies and idle talk, since they were not intended to convince anyone, but were of a ritual nature: in them the conclusion does not follow from reasoning, but precedes it, "that is, not a “conclusion”, of course, but “an intent and a decision. Therefore, the text is a way to make it clear, to guess about the decision, and to the same extent a way to prevent guessing.”

Georgy Khazagerov elevates Stalin's rhetoric to the traditions of solemn, homiletic (preaching) eloquence and considers it didactic-symbolic. According to the author’s definition, “the task of didactics is, based on symbolism as an axiom, to streamline the picture of the world and convey this ordered picture intelligibly. Stalinist didactics, however, took on the functions of symbolism. This was manifested in the fact that the zone of axioms grew to whole curricula, and evidence, on the contrary, was replaced by a reference to authority. V. V. Smolenenkova notes the strong impact that, with all these qualities, Stalin's speeches had on the audience. Thus, Ilya Starinov conveys the impression made on him by Stalin's speech: “We listened with bated breath to Stalin's speech. (...) Stalin talked about what worried everyone: about people, about cadres. And how convincingly he spoke! Here I first heard: “Cadres decide everything.” The words about how important it is to take care of people, to take care of them…” Cf. also an entry in the diary of Vladimir Vernadsky: “Only yesterday did we get the text of Stalin's speech, which made a huge impression. Previously listened to on the radio from the fifth to the tenth. The speech, no doubt, of a very intelligent person.”

VV Smolenenkova explains the effect of Stalin's speeches by the fact that they were quite adequate to the mood and expectations of the audience. L. Batkin also emphasizes the moment of “fascination” that arose in an atmosphere of terror and the fear and reverence generated by it for Stalin as the personification of a higher power that controlled destinies. On the other hand, in Yuli Daniel's story "Atonement" (1964), student conversations about Stalin's logic are described, which were conducted during his lifetime in the spirit of future articles by Batkin and Weisskopf: "well, you remember -" this cannot be, because this can never be”, and so on, in the same vein.

Stalin and the culture of contemporaries

Stalin was a very readable person and was interested in culture. After his death, he left a personal library consisting of thousands of books, many with personal notes in the margins. He himself told some visitors, pointing to a stack of books on his desk: "This is my daily norm - 500 pages." Up to a thousand books were produced this way a year. There is also evidence that back in the 1920s, Stalin visited the play "Days of the Turbins" by the then little-known writer Bulgakov eighteen times. At the same time, despite the difficult situation, he walked without personal protection and transport. Later, Stalin took part in the popularization of this writer. Stalin also maintained personal contacts with other cultural figures: musicians, film actors, directors. Stalin personally entered into polemics also with the composer Shostakovich. According to Stalin, his post-war musical compositions were written for political reasons - with the aim of discrediting the Soviet Union.

Personal life and death of Stalin

In 1904, Stalin married Ekaterina Svanidze, but three years later his wife died of tuberculosis. Their only son, Yakov, was taken prisoner by the Germans during World War II. According to the widespread version, reflected, in particular, in the novel by Ivan Stadnyuk "War" and the Soviet film "Liberation" (the authenticity of this story is unclear), the German side offered to exchange him for Field Marshal Paulus, to which Stalin replied: "I do not change a soldier for a field marshal ". In 1943, Yakov was shot dead in the German concentration camp Sachsenhausen while trying to escape. Yakov was married three times and had a son, Evgeny, who participated in the 1990s. in Russian politics (Stalin's grandson was on the electoral lists of the Anpilov bloc); this direct male line of the Dzhugashvili family still exists.

In 1919, Stalin married a second time. His second wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, a member of the CPSU (b), committed suicide in her Kremlin apartment in 1932 (the sudden death was officially announced) [source?]. From his second marriage, Stalin had two children: Svetlana and Vasily. His son Vasily, an officer of the Soviet air force, took part in the Great Patriotic War in command positions, after its completion he led the air defense of the Moscow Region (lieutenant general), was arrested after Stalin's death, died shortly after his release in 1960. Stalin's daughter Svetlana On March 6, 1967, Alliluyeva applied for political asylum at the United States Embassy in Delhi and moved to the United States the same year. Artyom Sergeev (the son of the deceased revolutionary Fyodor Sergeev - “Comrade Artyom”) was brought up in the Stalin family until the age of 11 years.

In addition, it is believed that in Turukhansk exile, Stalin was born illegitimate son- Konstantin Kuzakov. Stalin did not maintain relations with him.

Stalin with children from his second marriage: Vasily (left) and Svetlana (center)

According to the testimonies, Stalin beat his sons, so, for example, Yakov (whom Stalin usually called: “my fool” or “wolf cub”) more than once had to spend the night on the landing or in the apartments of neighbors (including Trotsky); N. S. Khrushchev recalled that once Stalin beat Vasily with his boots for poor progress. Trotsky believed that these scenes of domestic violence reproduced the atmosphere in which Stalin was brought up in Gori; modern psychologists agree with this opinion.. With his attitude, Stalin brought Yakov to a suicide attempt, to the news of which he reacted mockingly: “Ha, he didn’t hit!” . On the other hand, Stalin's adopted son A. Sergeev retained favorable memories of the atmosphere in Stalin's house. Stalin, according to the memoirs of Artyom Fedorovich, treated him strictly, but with love and was a very cheerful person.

Stalin died on March 5, 1953. The specific reason is still unknown. Officially, it is believed that death was the result of a cerebral hemorrhage. There is a version according to which Lavrenty Beria or N. S. Khrushchev contributed to his death without providing assistance. However, there is another version of his death, and it is very likely [source?] - Stalin was poisoned by his closest associate Beria.

At Stalin's funeral on March 9, 1953, due to huge amount people who wanted to say goodbye to Stalin, there was a stampede. The exact number of victims is still unknown, although it is estimated to be significant. In particular, it is known that one of the unidentified victims of the stampede received the number 1422; numbering was carried out only for those dead who could not be identified without the help of relatives or friends.

The embalmed body of Stalin was placed on public display in the Lenin Mausoleum, which in 1953-1961 was called the "Mausoleum of V. I. Lenin and I. V. Stalin." On October 30, 1961, the XXII Congress of the CPSU decided that "Stalin's serious violations of Lenin's precepts ... make it impossible to leave the coffin with his body in the Mausoleum." On the night of October 31 to November 1, 1961, Stalin's body was taken out of the Mausoleum and buried in a grave near the Kremlin wall. Subsequently, a monument was opened on the grave (a bust by N. V. Tomsky). Stalin became the only Soviet leader for whom a memorial service was performed by the Russian Orthodox Church.

Myths about Stalin

There are many myths about Stalin. Often they were distributed by opponents of Stalin (mainly such as L. D. Trotsky, B. G. Bazhanov, N. S. Khrushchev, and others). Sometimes they appeared on their own. So there are myths about rape; that he was an Okhrana agent; about how he only pretended to be a Marxist-Leninist/Communist, but in fact was a covert counter-revolutionary; that he was an anti-Semite and a Great Russian chauvinist/ethno-nationalist; that he was an alcoholic; that he suffered from paranoia and even about the statements of Stalin.

Alleged poems by Stalin

On December 21, 1939, on the day of the solemn celebration of Stalin's 60th birthday, the newspaper Zarya Vostoka published an article by N. Nikolaishvili "Poems of young Stalin", in which it was reported that Stalin allegedly wrote six poems. Five of them were published from June to December 1895 in the newspaper "Iberia", edited by Ilya Chavchavadze signed "I. J-shvili", the sixth - in July 1896 in the social-democratic newspaper "Keali" ("Furrow") signed "Soselo". Of these, I. J-shvili's poem "To Prince R. Eristavi" in 1907 was included, among the selected masterpieces of Georgian poetry, in the collection "Georgian Reader".

Until then, there was no news that the young Stalin wrote poetry. Iosif Iremashvili does not write about this either. Stalin himself did not confirm the version that the poems belonged to him, but he did not refute either. By the 70th anniversary of Stalin, in 1949, a book of his alleged poems was being prepared in translation into Russian (large masters were involved in the work on translations - in particular, Boris Pasternak and Arseniy Tarkovsky), but by Stalin's order, the publication was stopped.

Modern researchers note that the signatures of I. J-shvili, and even more Soselo (a diminutive of "Joseph"), cannot be the basis for attributing poems to Stalin, especially since one of I. J-shvili's poems is addressed to Prince R. Eristavi, with whom the seminarian Stalin clearly could not be familiar with. It is suggested that the author of the first five poems was a philologist, historian and archaeologist, an expert on Georgian culture Ivan Javakhishvili.

Awards

Stalin had:

* Hero title Socialist Labor (1939)

* the title of Hero of the Soviet Union (1945).

Was a cavalier:

* three orders of Lenin (1939, 1945, 1949)

* two Orders of Victory (1943, 1945)

* Order of Suvorov I degree (1943)

* three orders of the Red Banner (1919, 1939, 1944).

In 1953, immediately after the death of I.V. Stalin, four copies of the Order of Generalissimo Stalin (without the use of precious metals) were urgently made for approval by the main members of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU.

Modern opinions about Stalin

Events Stalin era were so grandiose that, naturally, they caused a huge flow of various literature. With all the diversity, there are several main directions in it.

* Liberal Democratic. The authors, proceeding from liberal and humanistic values, consider Stalin the strangler of any freedom, initiative, the creator of a totalitarian-type society, and also the perpetrator of crimes against humanity, comparable to Hitler. This assessment prevails in the West; during the era of perestroika and in the early 1990s. it prevailed in Russia as well. During the life of Stalin himself, in the left circles in the West, a different attitude was also developed towards him (in the spectrum from benevolent to enthusiastic), as the creator of an interesting social experiment; such an attitude was expressed, in particular, by Bernard Shaw, Leon Feuchtwanger, Henri Barbusse. After the revelations of the 20th Congress, Stalinism in the West disappeared as a phenomenon. [source?]

* Communist-anti-Stalinist. His adherents accuse Stalin of destroying the party, of departing from the ideals of Lenin and Marx. This approach originated in the environment of the “Leninist Guard” (F. Raskolnikov, L. D. Trotsky, N. I. Bukharin’s suicide letter, M. Ryutin “Stalin and the Crisis of the Proletarian Dictatorship”) and became dominant after the 20th Congress, and under Brezhnev was the banner of socialist dissidents (Alexander Tarasov, Roy Medvedev, Andrey Sakharov). Among the Western Left, from moderate social democrats to anarchists and Trotskyists, Stalin is usually seen as the mouthpiece of the bureaucracy and a traitor to the revolution Stalin's Soviet Union as a deformed workers' state). The categorical rejection of Stalin's authoritarianism, which perverted the principles of Marxist theory, is characteristic of the dialectical-humanistic tradition in Western Marxism, represented, in particular, by the Frankfurt School, as well as of the "new left". One of the first studies of the USSR as a totalitarian state belongs to Hannah Arendt (“The Origins of Totalitarianism”), who also identified herself (with some reservations) as a leftist. In our time, Stalin is condemned from communist positions by Trotskyists and unorthodox Marxists.

* Communist-Stalinist. Its representatives fully justify Stalin, consider him a faithful successor of Lenin. In general, they are within the official theses of the Soviet propaganda of the 1930s. As an example, we can cite the book by M. S. Dokuchaev “History remembers”.

* Nationalist-Stalinist. Its representatives, while criticizing both Lenin and the democrats, at the same time praise Stalin highly for his contribution to the strengthening of Russian imperial statehood. They consider him the undertaker of the "Russophobes"-Bolsheviks, the restorer of Russian statehood. In this direction, an interesting opinion belongs to the followers of L. N. Gumilyov (although the elements vary). In their opinion, under Stalin, during the repressions, the anti-system of the Bolsheviks perished. Also, excessive passionarity was knocked out of the ethnic system, which allowed it to get the opportunity to enter the inertial phase, the ideal of which was Stalin himself. The initial period of Stalin's rule, in which many actions of an "anti-systemic" nature were undertaken, is considered by them only as a preparation for the main action, which does not determine the main direction of Stalin's activity. One can cite as an example the articles by I. S. Shishkin “The Internal Enemy”, and V. A. Michurin “The Twentieth Century in Russia through the L.N.

opinion
hafiz 08.03.2008 04:57:37

Stalin made Russia a very developed country in all spheres of society

About I.V. Stalin
16.10.2012 11:43:08

State and political figure of a large scale. A man who possessed iron logic in reasoning and actions.

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin is one of the most controversial personalities in history. The personality of Stalin has been and will be the subject of heated discussions all the time. He is respected and criticized, loved and hated. Some consider Stalin the greatest leader who was able to create order in the country, led the people to success in the bloodiest war of our state. Others are convinced that he was a real tyrant who indiscriminately shot and raped innocent people. Modern historians argue, and will argue about this. Most likely, this is one of those cases when it is impossible to reach a compromise and unambiguously say something about this person.

Childhood and youth of the future ruler

Joseph Dzhugashvili (real name of the ruler) was born in the small Georgian town of Gori in 1879, on December 21. His family was not rich, they belonged to the lower class. His father worked as a shoemaker, and his mother was the daughter of a serf. Joseph was the third child, but he grew up alone, because his older brother and sister died when they were children. Joseph himself was not a completely healthy child. One of his defects was that the toes on his left foot had grown together. In addition, Joseph had problems with the skin of his face and back.

When little Soso (a diminutive name) was seven years old, his left hand deteriorated. He received this injury after the boy was hit by a phaeton.

Among other things, Soso's father, Vissarion, was very fond of drinking, and in a state of alcoholic intoxication beat his wife and boy more than once. Stalin noted how in one of these cases, he threw a knife at his father and almost killed him. Soon Vissarion left the family and began to wander. The date and time of his death remain a mystery to this day. Stalin's neighbor, Iosif Iremashvili, spoke of seeing Stalin's father killed in a drunken brawl. According to another version, Vissarion died a natural death.

The mother of the future ruler, Ketevan Geladze, was a strict and wise woman, but she loved her child very much and dreamed of making him a successful career. Ketevan saw her son as a priest. Stalin's mother died in 1937. Joseph could not attend the funeral, giving his opponents a reason to talk about the fact that there was a bad relationship between mother and son.

In 1888, Stalin was able to enter an Orthodox institution in the city of Gori. After graduating from college, he was enrolled in the spiritual institution of Tiflis. At this very time, he joined the ranks of the revolutionaries, having studied the teachings of Marxism. Stalin studied excellently, all subjects were given to him very easily and he never experienced problems with this. While studying at the seminary, Joseph becomes the head of the Marxist movement, actively engaged in propaganda.
Joseph could not graduate from the institution, he was expelled for absenteeism and failure to appear for tests. He was given a document allowing him to work as a tutor. For some time he had to earn money through tutoring. In early 1900 he was accepted into the observatory physical phenomena Tiflis to the place of the calculator.

Road to Power

After Stalin was admitted to the observatory, new stage his life. He began to promote Marxism with even more activity, thanks to which the position of the future manager of the Soviet Union was strengthened. He began to engage in revolutionary affairs. In 1905, he personally met Vladimir Lenin and other influential revolutionaries. In 1912, Joseph definitely decided to change his last name and became Stalin. The origin of this pseudonym is unknown, but there is a version that this is the correct translation from Georgian into Russian of his real name. In Georgian, "dzhuga" means "steel".

Before becoming the ruler of the USSR, Stalin had to go through a lot and endure. From 1913 to 1917 he spent in exile. While in prison, Joseph often corresponded with Vladimir Ilyich. After the February Revolution, he came back to Petrograd.
Upon arrival in Petrograd, Lenin appoints Stalin to the post of People's Commissar for Nationalities. Joseph received a seat in the Council of People's Commissars. Lenin decided to appoint Stalin to this position for his article "Marxism and the national question", which greatly impressed the "leader". The future ruler gained a reputation as the chief expert on nationalities.

The next stage on the road to Stalin's rule was the Civil War. From 1918 to 1922, with a short break, Stalin was in the Revolutionary Military Council. The civil war was a great experience for the future ruler. According to one of the historians, the Civil War contributed to the development of Stalin's military-political qualities. Here he led large troops on several fronts, including the defense of Tsaritsyn and Petrograd.

Most famous historians noted that during the defense of Tsaritsyn, there were disagreements between Stalin and Voroshilov with Trotsky. Trotsky accused these two of insubordination, and the leader was dissatisfied with the great confidence in the "counter-revolutionary" military experts.
In 1922, at the next Plenum of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), Joseph Stalin was appointed General Secretary of the Party. Formally, he led only the party apparatus, and Lenin was still considered the leader of the party and the whole people.

At the same time, Lenin became seriously ill and could no longer engage in politics. In his absence, Stalin, Kamenev and Zinoviev organized the so-called "troika", the main purpose of which was to oppose Trotsky. The members of the "troika" held good positions and had influence. Trotsky was the head of the Red Army.

In September 1922, Joseph Stalin showed a penchant for Russian autocracy. He developed a plan according to which all the nearest republics were to become part of the RSFSR as autonomous ones. This action of Stalin caused indignation among almost everyone, even Lenin. Under his personal pressure, the republics became part of the union with all the possibilities of statehood.

After that, the state of Lenin's health worsened even more, and the struggle for power began. Stalin turned out to be the strongest of all the contenders. In fact, he was the ruler of the state, gradually eliminating all his opponents. In the end, he got his way and became the chairman of the government of the Soviet Union.

Already in 1930, the board was completely concentrated in the hands of Joseph Stalin. Very great anxiety and perestroika began in the Soviet Union. This time was one of the most terrible in the history of our country. There were mass repressions, collectivization, which eventually led to the death of millions of peasants. Ordinary workers were deprived of food and forced to starve. All the products that were taken from the peasants, the ruler of the USSR sold abroad. The profit earned from the products, the leader invested in the development of the industry, thereby making the Union in the shortest possible time the second country in the world in terms of industrial production. Only the price of such a rise was too high.

The years of Stalin's power

In 1940, Stalin's power was undeniable, he was the sole leader of the Soviet Union. It is no secret that under Stalin we had a totalitarian regime in our state, he was a dictator. Stalin is known, of course, for his ruling power, he was extremely efficient. The ruler knew how to make the most important decision in the shortest possible time. He managed to control absolutely all the processes that took place in the state. All actions were coordinated with him personally, he knew about everything that was happening in the USSR.

During the years of his reign at the helm of the Soviet Union, Stalin was able to achieve truly great results. Experts in the field of history highly appreciate his contribution to the development of the USSR. Despite his tough management style, he was able to lead the USSR as a winner in the Great Patriotic War, thanks to him agriculture became more active. He was able to make his state a superpower, which argued with greatness and power only with the United States. The USSR had a huge geopolitical influence in the world, and all this thanks to Joseph Vissarionovich.

However, the way in which such greatness was achieved, even now, frightens and horrifies many. The basis for governing the country for Stalin was dictatorship, violence, terror. Many accuse him of major murders of scientists and engineers, this caused great harm. scientific activity states.

Despite this, many people who grew up in the USSR deeply respect Stalin and consider him a great man, an outstanding ruler and an honorary citizen.

Personal life

Stalin at one time did everything so that no one knew about his personal life. However, historians, despite all the efforts of the ruler, still managed to restore the sequence of events. The first marriage of the ruler happened in 1906, Ekaterina Svanidze became his chosen one. She gave birth to a son, who received the name Jacob. After living with Stalin for a year, Catherine fell ill with typhus and died.

Stalin's second and last marriage happened 14 years later, in 1920. This time, Nadezhda Alliluyeva became his wife, who was able to give birth to his daughter Svetlana and son Vasily. 12 years after the marriage, Stalin turned out to be a widower twice. Nadezhda committed suicide as a result of a quarrel with her husband. This was the last marriage of the ruler.

Death of Stalin

The death of the ruler occurred in 1953, on March 5. Soviet doctors determined that the cause of death was a cerebral hemorrhage. After the autopsy, it turned out that Stalin suffered several strokes during his lifetime, which caused heart problems.

At first, Stalin's body was placed in the Mausoleum next to Lenin, but after 9 years it was decided to rebury the ruler near the Kremlin. There are many versions about the death of the ruler. Many believe that his subordinates specifically did not allow doctors to see the ruler so that they could not raise Stalin. His associates did this because they considered his policy to be wrong in governing the state.

Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin (real name: Dzhugashvili) - 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 amazing successes of the USSR in the economy, in eradicating the illiteracy of the population, 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, internal party "purges".

Regardless of the crimes committed, he remains popular among Russians: a 2017 Levada Center poll showed that most citizens consider him an outstanding head of state. In addition, he unexpectedly took a leading position according to the results of the audience voting during the 2008 TV project for the choice of the greatest hero of Russian history "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 the east of 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 got it from him, as his mother Ekaterina Georgievna Geladze called her son.

The two oldest children in their family died shortly after birth. And the surviving Soso had physical disabilities: two fingers fused on his leg, damage to the skin of his face, an arm that did not fully unbend 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. He is in early age he spent a lot of time among street brawlers, but in 1889 he was admitted to a local Orthodox school, where he demonstrated extraordinary 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 argue that the boy’s father was in fact not the official husband of his mother, but her distant relative, Prince Maminoshvili, a confidant and friend of Nikolai Przhevalsky. Others even attribute paternity to this famous traveler, outwardly very similar to Stalin. Confirmation of these assumptions is the fact that the boy was accepted into a very solid spiritual educational institution, where the path was ordered for people from poor families, as well as the periodic transfer of funds by Prince Maminoshvili to Soso's mother for raising her son.

After graduating from college at the age of 15, the young man continued his education at the theological seminary of Tiflis (now Tbilisi), where he made friends among the Marxists. In parallel with his main studies, he began to engage in self-education, studying underground literature. In 1898, he became a member of the first social democratic organization in Georgia, showed himself as a brilliant orator and began to propagate the ideas of Marxism among the workers.

Participation in the revolutionary movement

In the last year of study, Joseph was expelled from the seminary with the issuance of a document on 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, 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 a 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 congresses of the party in Sweden and in the UK. In 1912, at a party plenum in Baku, he was included in absentia into the Central Committee. In the same year, he decided to finally change his surname 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 went into exile. Released in 1917, together with Lev Kamenev (real surname Rosenfeld), he headed the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda, worked to prepare an armed uprising.

How did Stalin come to power?

After the October Revolution, Stalin became a member of the Council of People's Commissars, the Bureau of the Central Committee of the Party. During the Civil War, he also held a number of responsible posts and gained tremendous experience in political and military leadership. In 1922, he took the post of general secretary, but the general secretary in those years was not yet the head of the party.

When Lenin died in 1924, Stalin led the country, defeating the opposition, and embarked on industrialization, collectivization, and a cultural revolution. The success of Stalin's policy consisted in a competent personnel policy. “Cadres decide everything,” is a quote from Joseph Vissarionovich in a speech to graduates of the military academy in 1935. During the first years in power, he appointed more than 4 thousand party functionaries to responsible posts, thereby forming the backbone of the Soviet nomenklatura.

Joseph Stalin. How to become a leader

But above all, he eliminated competitors in the political struggle, not forgetting to take advantage of their developments. Nikolai Bukharin became the author of the concept of the national question, which the General Secretary took as the basis of 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 planted the cult of Lenin's personality, strengthened the leader's moods in society. Well, Leon Trotsky, with the support of economists close to him ideologically, developed a plan for forced industrialization.

It was the latter who became the main opponent of Stalin. Disagreements between them began long before that - back in 1918, Joseph was indignant that Trotsky, a newcomer to the party, was trying to teach him the right course. Immediately after the death of Lenin, Lev Davidovich fell into disgrace. In 1925, the plenum of the Central Committee summed up the "harm" that Trotsky's speeches had inflicted on the party. The figure was removed from the post of head of the Revolutionary Military Council, Mikhail Frunze was appointed in his place. Trotsky was expelled from the USSR, a struggle began in the country against manifestations of "Trotskyism". The fugitive settled in Mexico, but was killed in 1940 by an NKVD agent.

After Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev fell under Stalin's sights, and were finally eliminated in the course of the apparatus war.

Stalinist repressions

Stalin's methods of achieving impressive success in turning an agrarian country into a superpower - violence, terror, repression with the use of torture - cost millions of human lives.

The victims of dispossession (eviction, confiscation of property, executions), along with the kulaks, became the innocent rural population of average income, which led to the actual 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 terrible consequences. In 1932, mass famine struck Ukraine, Belarus, Kuban, the Volga region, the Southern Urals, Kazakhstan, and Western Siberia.

Researchers agree that the political repressions of the dictator, the "architect of communism" in relation to commanders Red Army, persecution of scientists, cultural figures, doctors, engineers, mass closing 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 warfare. In particular, his refusal to promptly withdraw military formations from 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 Nazi Germany in 1945, he contributed to the formation of the world socialist system, as well as to the growth of the authority of the country and its leader. The "Great Pilot" 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 veto power.

Personal life of Joseph Stalin

"Uncle Joe", as Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill called Stalin among themselves, was married twice. His first chosen one was Ekaterina Svanidze, the sister of his friend who studied 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 the firstborn Jacob. 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 taken out with great difficulty.

After the death of his mother, Jacob met his father only at the age of 14. After school, without his permission, he got married, then because of a conflict with his father, he tried to commit suicide. During the Second World War, he died in German captivity. According to one of the legends, 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 change the field marshal for a soldier.

The second time the "Locomotive of the Revolution" tied the bonds 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, the future lieutenant general of aviation, in 1926, a daughter, Svetlana, who emigrated to the United States in 1966. She married an American and took the surname Peters.

The family of Iosif Vissarionovich also brought up Artem, the son of Stalin's friend Fyodor Sergeev, who died in a railway accident.

In 1932, the "Father of Nations" was again widowed - after their next quarrel, his wife committed suicide, leaving him, according to her daughter, a "terrible" letter full of accusations. He was shocked and angry at her act, did not go to the funeral.

The leader's main hobby was reading. He loved Maupassant, Dostoyevsky, Wilde, Gogol, Chekhov, Zola, Goethe, without hesitation he quoted the Bible and Bismarck.

Death of Stalin

At the end of his life, the Soviet dictator was praised as a professional in all fields of knowledge. One word of his could decide the fate of any scientific discipline. A struggle was waged against "servile worship of the West", against "cosmopolitanism", and the exposure of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee.

Stalin's last speech (Speech at the 19th Congress of the CPSU, 1952)

In his personal life, he was lonely, rarely talked with children - he did not approve of his daughter's endless novels and his son's spree. At the dacha in Kuntsevo, he remained alone at night with the guards, who usually could enter him only after a call.

Svetlana, who came on December 21 to congratulate her father on his 73rd birthday, later noted that he did not look well and, apparently, did not feel well, as he suddenly quit smoking.

On the evening of Sunday, March 1, 1953, the assistant commandant entered the leader with mail received at 22 o'clock, and saw him lying on the floor. Transferring him, along with the guards who came running to help, to the sofa, he informed the top leadership of the party about what had happened. At 9 am on March 2, a group of doctors diagnosed the patient with paralysis on the right side of the body. The time for his possible rescue was lost, and on March 5 he died of a cerebral hemorrhage.

After the autopsy, it was discovered that Stalin had previously suffered several ischemic strokes on his legs, which provoked disruptions in the functioning of the cardiovascular system and mental disorders.

Death of Joseph Stalin. End of an Era

The news of the death of the Soviet leader shocked the country. The coffin with his body was placed in the Mausoleum next to Lenin. During the farewell to the deceased, a stampede arose in the crowd, which cost the lives of many. In 1961, he was reburied near the Kremlin wall (after the CPSU congresses condemned the revealed violations of the “Leninist precepts”).

Joseph Stalin is an outstanding revolutionary politician in the history of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. His activities were marked by mass repressions, which are still considered a crime against humanity today. The personality and biography of Stalin in modern society are still loudly discussed: some consider him a great ruler who led the country to victory in the Great Patriotic War, others accuse him of the genocide of the people and the Holodomor, terror and violence against people.

Childhood and youth

Stalin Iosif Vissarionovich was born (real name Dzhugashvili) on December 21, 1879 in the Georgian town of Gori in a family belonging to the lower class. According to another version, the birthday of Joseph Vissarionovich fell on December 18, 1878. In any case, Sagittarius is considered to be the patronizing sign of the zodiac. In addition to the traditional hypothesis about the Georgian origin of the future leader of the nation, there is an opinion that Ossetians were his ancestors.

Embed from Getty Images Joseph Stalin as a child

He was the third, but the only surviving child in the family - his older brother and sister died in infancy. Soso, as the mother of the future ruler of the USSR called, was not born quite healthy child, he had congenital defects of the limbs (he had fused two fingers on his left foot), and also had damaged skin on his face and back. In early childhood, Stalin had an accident - he was hit by a phaeton, as a result of which the functioning of his left hand was disrupted.

In addition to congenital and acquired injuries, the future revolutionary was repeatedly beaten by his father, which once led to a serious head injury and, over the years, affected Stalin's psycho-emotional state. Mother Ekaterina Georgievna surrounded her son with care and guardianship, wanting to compensate the boy for the missing love of his father.

Exhausted at hard work, wanting to earn as much money as possible to raise her son, the woman tried to raise a worthy person who was to become a priest. But her hopes were not crowned with success - Stalin grew up as a street minion and spent most of his time not in church, but in the company of local hooligans.

Embed from Getty Images Young Joseph Stalin

At the same time, in 1888, Joseph Vissarionovich became a student of the Gori Orthodox School, and after graduating he entered the Tiflis Theological Seminary. Within its walls he got acquainted with Marxism and joined the ranks of underground revolutionaries.

In the seminary, the future ruler of the Soviet Union showed himself to be a gifted and talented student, since he was easily given all subjects without exception. Then he became the head of an illegal circle of Marxists, in which he was engaged in propaganda.

Stalin failed to get a spiritual education, as he was expelled from educational institution before exams for absenteeism. After that, Joseph Vissarionovich was issued a certificate allowing him to become a teacher in elementary schools. At first, he earned a living by tutoring, and then got a job at the Tiflis Physical Observatory as a computer observer.

Path to power

Stalin's revolutionary activity started in the early 1900s - the future ruler of the USSR was then engaged in propaganda, which strengthened his own position in society. In his youth, Joseph participated in rallies, which most often ended in arrests, worked on the creation of an illegal newspaper "Brdzola" ("Struggle"), which was published in the Baku printing house. An interesting fact of his Georgian biography is that in 1906-1907 Dzhugashvili led robbery attacks on the banks of the Transcaucasus.

Embed from Getty Images Joseph Stalin and Vladimir Lenin

The revolutionary traveled to Finland and Sweden, where conferences and congresses of the RSDLP were held. Then he met with the head of the Soviet government and the famous revolutionaries Georgy Plekhanov, and others.

In 1912, he finally decided to change the name Dzhugashvili to the pseudonym Stalin. Then the man becomes authorized by the Central Committee for the Caucasus. The revolutionary receives the post of editor-in-chief of the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda, where Vladimir Lenin became his colleague, who saw Stalin as his assistant in solving Bolshevik and revolutionary issues. As a result of this, Joseph Vissarionovich became his right hand.

Embed from Getty Images Josef Stalin on the podium

Stalin's path to power was filled with repeated exile and imprisonment, from which he managed to escape. He spent 2 years in Solvychegodsk, then was sent to the city of Narym, and from 1913 he was kept in the village of Kureika for 3 years. Being away from the leaders of the party, Joseph Vissarionovich managed to keep in touch with them through secret correspondence.

Before the October Revolution, Stalin supported Lenin's plans; at an enlarged meeting of the Central Committee, he condemned the position and those who were against the uprising. In 1917, Lenin appointed Stalin People's Commissar for Nationalities in the Council of People's Commissars.

The next stage in the career of the future ruler of the USSR is connected with civil war in which the revolutionary showed professionalism and leadership qualities. He participated in a number of military operations, including the defense of Tsaritsyn and Petrograd, opposed the army and.

Embed from Getty Images Joseph Stalin and Klim Voroshilov

At the end of the war, when Lenin was already mortally ill, Stalin ruled the country, while destroying opponents and contenders for the post of chairman of the government of the Soviet Union on his way. In addition, Iosif Vissarionovich showed perseverance in relation to monotonous work, which was required by the post of apparatus manager. To strengthen his own authority, Stalin published 2 books - "On the Foundations of Leninism" (1924) and "On the Questions of Leninism" (1927). In these works, he relied on the principles of "building socialism in a single country", not excluding the "world revolution".

In 1930, all power was concentrated in the hands of Stalin, in connection with which turmoil and perestroika began in the USSR. This period is marked by the beginning of mass repressions and collectivization, when the rural population of the country was driven to collective farms and starved.

Embed from Getty Images Vyacheslav Molotov, Joseph Stalin and Nikolai Yezhov

The new leader of the Soviet Union sold all the food taken from the peasants abroad, and with the proceeds he developed the industry by building industrial enterprises, most of which were concentrated in the cities of the Urals and Siberia. Thus, in the shortest possible time, he made the USSR the second country in the world in terms of industrial production, however, at the cost of millions of lives of peasants who died of starvation.

In 1937, the peak of repressions broke out, at that time there were sweeps not only among the citizens of the country, but also among the leadership of the party. During the Great Terror, 56 out of 73 people who spoke at the February-March plenum of the Central Committee were shot. Later, the leader of the action was destroyed - the head of the NKVD, whose place was taken by, who was part of Stalin's inner circle. The totalitarian regime was finally established in the country.

Head of the USSR

By 1940, Joseph Vissarionovich became the sole ruler-dictator of the USSR. He was a strong leader of the country, had an extraordinary capacity for work, while being able to direct people to solve the necessary tasks. characteristic feature Stalin was his ability to make immediate decisions on issues under discussion and find time to control all the processes taking place in the country.

Embed from Getty Images General Secretary of the CPSU Joseph Stalin

The achievements of Joseph Stalin, despite his tough method of government, are still highly appreciated by experts. Thanks to him, the USSR won the Great Patriotic War, agriculture was mechanized in the country, industrialization took place, as a result of which the Union turned into a nuclear superpower with colossal geopolitical influence throughout the world. Interestingly, the American magazine Time in 1939 and 1943 awarded the title of "Person of the Year" to the Soviet leader.

With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Joseph Stalin was forced to change the course of foreign policy. If earlier he built relations with Germany, then later he turned his attention to the former countries of the Entente. In the person of England and France, the Soviet leader sought support against the aggression of fascism.

Embed from Getty Images Josef Stalin, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill at the Tehran Conference

Along with the achievements, Stalin's rule is characterized by a mass of negative aspects, which caused horror in society. Stalinist repressions, dictatorship, terror, violence - all this is considered the main characteristic features reign of Joseph Vissarionovich. He is also accused of suppressing entire scientific directions country, accompanied by the persecution of doctors and engineers, which caused disproportionate harm to the development of Soviet culture and science.

Stalin's policy is still loudly condemned throughout the world. The ruler of the USSR is accused of mass death of people who became victims of Stalinism and Nazism. At the same time, in many cities, Joseph Vissarionovich is posthumously considered an honorary citizen and a talented commander, and many people still respect the dictator ruler, calling him a great leader.

Personal life

The personal life of Joseph Stalin has few confirmed facts today. The leader-dictator carefully destroyed all evidence of his family life and love relationships, so the researchers were only able to slightly restore the chronology of the events of his biography.

Embed from Getty Images Joseph Stalin and Nadezhda Alliluyeva

It is known that the first time Stalin married in 1906 to Ekaterina Svanidze, who gave birth to his first child. After a year of family life, Stalin's wife died of typhus. After that, the stern revolutionary devoted himself to serving the country, and only after 14 years again decided to marry, who was 23 years younger.

The second wife of Joseph Vissarionovich gave birth to a son and took over the upbringing of Stalin's first child, who until that moment had lived with his maternal grandmother. In 1925, a daughter was born in the leader's family. In addition to his own children, an adopted son, the same age as Vasily, was brought up in the house of the party leader. His father, the revolutionary Fyodor Sergeev, was a close friend of Joseph, died in 1921.

In 1932, Stalin's children lost their mother, and he became a widower for the second time. His wife Nadezhda committed suicide amid a conflict with her husband. After that, the ruler never married again.

Embed from Getty Images Joseph Stalin with his son Vasily and daughter Svetlana

The children of Joseph Vissarionovich gave their father 9 native grandchildren, the youngest of whom, the daughter of Svetlana Alliluyeva, appeared after the death of the ruler - in 1971. At home, only Alexander Burdonsky, the son of Vasily Stalin, became famous, who became the director of the theater Russian army. Also known is the son of Yakov, Yevgeny Dzhugashvili, who published the book “My grandfather Stalin. “He is a saint!”, and the son of Svetlana, Iosif Alliluyev, who made a career as a cardiac surgeon.

After Stalin's death, disputes arose repeatedly about the growth of the head of the USSR. Some researchers attributed short stature to the leader - 160 cm, but others were based on information obtained from records and photos of the Russian secret police, where Iosif Vissarionovich was characterized as a person with a height of 169-174 cm. The leader of the Communist Party was also "attributed" weight 62 kg.

Death

The death of Joseph Stalin came on March 5, 1953. According to the official conclusion of doctors, the ruler of the USSR died as a result of a brain hemorrhage. After the autopsy, it was found that he suffered several ischemic strokes on his legs during his life, which led to serious heart problems and mental disorders.

The embalmed body of Stalin was placed in the Mausoleum next to Lenin, but after 8 years at the Congress of the CPSU, it was decided to rebury the revolutionary in a grave near the Kremlin wall. During the funeral, a crowd of thousands wishing to say goodbye to the leader of the nation was stampeded. According to unconfirmed information, 400 people died on Trubnaya Square.

Embed from Getty Images Gravestone monument to Joseph Stalin at the Kremlin wall

There is an opinion that his ill-wishers were involved in the death of Stalin, who consider the policy of the leader of the revolutionaries unacceptable. The researchers are sure that the “comrades-in-arms” of the ruler deliberately did not let doctors near him, who could put Joseph Vissarionovich on his feet and prevent his death.

Over the years, the attitude towards the personality of Stalin was repeatedly revised, and if during the thaw his name was banned, then later documentaries and feature films, books and articles appeared that analyzed the activities of the ruler. Repeatedly, the head of state became the main character of films such as "Inner Circle", "Promised Land", "Kill Stalin", etc.

Memory

• 1958 - "Day One"
• 1985 - "Victory"
• 1985 - "Battle for Moscow"
• 1989 - "Stalingrad"
• 1990 - "Jakov, son of Stalin"
• 1993 - "Stalin's Testament"
• 2000 - "In August 44th ..."
• 2013 - "Son of the Father of Nations"
• 2017 - "Death of Stalin"

• Yuri Mukhin - "The Murder of Stalin and Beria"
• Lev Balayan - "Stalin"
• Elena Prudnikova - “Khrushchev. Creators of terror"
• Igor Pykhalov - “The great slandered Leader. Lies and truth about Stalin
• Alexander Sever - "Stalin's Anti-Corruption Committee"
• Felix Chuev - "Soldiers of the Empire"