Stalin

Joseph Stalin was one of the worst tyrants of the 20th century. His real name Joseph Vissarionovich Dzugashvili and he was born in 1879. His father was a poor shoemaker. He died when Josef was 11. His mother was a washerwoman. Stalin was a short man. He was 5 feet 4 inches tall and he was pockmarked by smallpox. Furthermore his left arm was shorter than his right.

Stalin's mother he wanted herson to become a clergyman. Stalin studied at a seminary but he became a Marxist and he was expelled in 1899. Like all Marxists Stalin was an atheist. (Although we don't know exactly when Stalin lost his religious faith completely).

Marxism was the creation of Karl Marx (1818-1883). According to him society went through an inevitable series of stages ending in Communism. The industrial workers,he said, would inevitably rise up against the capitalists and Capitalism would be replaced by Socialism in which the state would own industry. However the state would 'wither away' leaving a classless society or Communism. Needless to say the promised utopia never materialised. Marxism was a foolish dream.

Stalin joined the Social Democratic Party, which split into Mensheviks and Bolsheviks(Communists). Stalin was a committed Communist. Yet he played only a small part in the revolution of 1917. However in 1922 Stalin was appointed Secretary General of the party.

Meanwhile in 1904 Stalin married Yekatrine Svanidze. They had a son called Yakov who later died in mysterious circumstances. Yekatrine herself died in 1907.

Following Lenin's death in 1924 the cunning and devious Stalinor Joseph Vissarionovich Dzugashvili 1879 took power. By 1928 he had made himself dictator. His main enemy Leon Trotsky (Lev Devidovich Bronstein 1879-1940) was exiled 1929. In 1940 he was assassinated in Mexico. Meanwhile Stalin soon proved to be a tyrant who murdered millions of people.

In 1919 Stalin married Nadezhda Alliluyeva. They had a son Vasili and a daughter Svetlana. However thesecond wife killed herself in 1932.

In 1929 started a series of 5 years plans. Heavy industry in Russia was to be greatly expanded.

Stalin decided that farms in the Ukraine should be collectivised. In other words peasants would be deprived of their land and livestock and made to work as farm labourers on land now owned by the state. Not surprisingly many Ukrainian peasants bitterly resisted evenslaughtering their own livestock rather than hand it over to the state. However Stalin was determined to crush the Ukrainian peasants and he caused a terrible famine in 1932-33 that took the lives of millions of innocent people. In 1932 collective farms were given completely unrealistic quotas to fill. Soviet law decreed that the peasants would not be allowed to keep any grain until they had mettheir quotas. They could not, of course meet them so Soviet officials simply confiscated all the grain they wanted leaving the peasants to starve. How many people died in this man-made famine is not known for sure but it was probably about 7 million. This horrific artificial famine is called the Holodomor.

In 1934 Stalin began a series of 'purges' in which millions of people died. The purgesare known as the Great Terror. They began when Sergei Kirov was assassinated. He was probably murdered on Stalin's orders. Nevertheless Stalin used it as an excuse to eliminate his enemies (or anyone he thought might be an enemy). Many prominent communists were put on show trials and executed. Millions of ordinary people were sent to labour camps and forced to work in appalling conditions.

In1937-38 Stalin purged the officers in the red army. About 80% of the generals and 50% of the colonels were executed. So the red army was weakened just when Russia was facing a threat from Nazi Germany.

Furthermore in the 1930s, under Stalin the churches were persecuted. Thousands of clergymen were arrested and propaganda for atheism was widespread.

Despite Stalin's terrible crimes Russian...