Joseph Stalin's rise to power
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Joseph Stalin began his political activity after being exposed to Marxism and other left-wing political thinkers while studying at the Tbilisi Theological Seminary in Georgia.[2] After being discovered to be in possession of radical political literature, Stalin was expelled from the seminary in 1899. Following his expulsion, he devoted himself to his revolutionary activities and became a member of the anti-tsarist, Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP). When the RSDLP divided into the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions, Stalin joined the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin, whom he finally met in 1905.[3] Tasked with raising money for the Bolsheviks, Stalin resorted to criminal activity,[4] Stalin also took a leading role in the planning and execution of the 1907 Tiflis bank robbery.
Following the
In 1922, Lenin's health was rapidly deteriorating alongside his relationship with Stalin.
Stalin then pivoted to focus on his greatest concern, the rise of Trotsky. Stalin forged an alliance with fellow
With Trotsky removed from power, the alliance Stalin made with Zinoviev and Kamenev dissolved. Stalin then pivoted to form an alliance with the party's right wing forming a coalition with Bukharin, Tomsky, and Rykov, to weaken Zinoviev and Kamenev. Using his position as General Secretary, Stalin began to fill the Soviet bureaucracy with loyalists. After Lenin's death, Stalin began traveling across the USSR to deliver lectures on Leninist philosophy and began framing himself as the successor to Lenin. As the 1920s progressed, Stalin used his position to expel critics within the Communist Party and tightened his grip on the party. Stalin's alliance with the party's right wing ended when Stalin decided to proceed with the First Five Year Plan, abandoning the New Economic Policy.[16] Stalin finally defeated his opponents within the party by 1928, ending the internal power struggles. From 1929 onwards Stalin's leadership over the party and state was firmly established and he remained the undisputed leader of the USSR until his death.
Background
Before his 1913-1917 exile in Siberia, Stalin was one of the Bolshevik operatives in the Caucasus, organizing cells, spreading propaganda, and raising money through criminal activities. Stalin also formed the Outfit, a criminal gang that were involved with
In the Russian Civil War that followed, Stalin forged connections with various Red Army generals and eventually acquired military powers of his own. He brutally suppressed counter-revolutionaries and bandits. After winning the Civil War, the Bolsheviks moved to expand the Revolution into Europe, starting with Poland, which was fighting the Red Army in Ukraine. As joint commander of an army in Ukraine and later in Poland itself, Stalin's actions in the war were later criticized by many, including Leon Trotsky.
Invasion of Georgia and General Secretary
In late 1920, with the crises in society following the
Stalin played a decisive role in engineering the
Grigory Zinoviev successfully had Stalin appointed to the post of General Secretary in March 1922, with Stalin officially starting in the post on 3 April 1922. Stalin still held his posts in the Orgburo, the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate and the Commissariat for Nationalities Affairs, though he agreed to delegate his workload to subordinates. With this power, he would steadily place his supporters in positions of authority.[21]
Lenin's retirement and death
On 25 May 1922, Lenin suffered a stroke while recovering from surgery to remove a bullet lodged in his neck since a failed assassination attempt in August 1918. Severely debilitated, he went into semi-retirement and moved to his
The veracity of Lenin dictating the writing of this letter has been disputed. Historian Stephen Kotkin assesses that Krupskaya, working in tandem with Trotsky, may have written it in an effort to discredit Stalin and remove him from his role in the government. However, most historians consider the document to be an accurate reflection of Lenin's views.[24][25] Various historians have also cited Lenin's proposal to appoint Trotsky as a Vice-chairman of the Soviet Union as evidence that he intended Trotsky to be his successor as head of government.[26][27][28][29][30]
According to historian Geoffrey Roberts, none of the Soviet figures questioned the authenticity of the document at the time. He noted that Stalin himself quoted the full passage of the testament and commented that "Indeed I am rude, Comrades, to those who rudely and perfidiously destroy and split the party. I have not hidden this, and still do not".[31] The memorandum contains information criticizing Stalin's rude manners, excessive power, ambition and politics, and suggested that Stalin should be removed from the position of General Secretary. One of Lenin's secretaries showed Stalin the notes, whose contents shocked him.[21] On 9 March 1923, Lenin suffered his most debilitating stroke, which ended his political career.
During Lenin's semi-retirement, Stalin forged a
Lenin died on 21 January 1924. Stalin was given the honour of organizing his funeral. Upon Lenin's death, Stalin was officially hailed as his successor as the leader of the ruling Communist Party and of the Soviet Union itself. Against Lenin's wishes, he was given a lavish funeral and his body was embalmed and put on display. Thanks to Kamenev and Zinoviev's influence, the
According to Stalin's secretary, Boris Bazhanov, Stalin was jubilant over Lenin's death while “publicly putting on the mask of grief”.[33]
Downfall of Trotsky
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In the months following Lenin's death, Stalin's disputes with Zinoviev and Kamenev intensified. While the triumvirate remained intact throughout 1924 and the early months of 1925, Zinoviev and Kamenev did not regard Stalin highly as a revolutionary theorist, and often disparaged him in private even as they had aided him publicly against Trotsky and the
According to Rogovin, Zinoviev would later lambast Stalin with the words, “Does comrade Stalin know what gratitude is ?”, as a reminder that Kamenev and himself had saved him from political downfall with the censure of Lenin's testament during the Thirteenth Congress. Stalin responded with the words: “But of course I know, I know very well - it’s an illness that afflicts dogs”.[34]
By 1925, Trotsky's foreign policy was disgraced. All
With Trotsky mostly sidelined with a persistent illness during 1925, Zinoviev and Kamenev then formed the
In early 1926, Zinoviev and Kamenev drew closer to Trotsky and the Left Opposition, forming an alliance that became known as the United Opposition. The United Opposition demanded, among other things, greater freedom of expression within the Communist Party and less bureaucracy. In October 1926, Stalin's supporters voted Trotsky out of the Politburo.
During the years of 1926 and 1927, Soviet policy toward the Chinese Revolution became the ideological line of demarcation between Stalin and the United Opposition. The Chinese Revolution began on 10 October 1911,
Trotsky wanted the Communist Party to complete an orthodox proletarian revolution and have clear class independence from the KMT. Stalin funded the KMT during the expedition.[41] Stalin countered Trotskyist criticism by making a secret speech in which he said that Chiang's right-wing Kuomintang were the only ones capable of defeating the imperialists, that Chiang Kai-shek had funding from the rich merchants, and that his forces were to be utilized until squeezed for all usefulness like a lemon before being discarded. However, Chiang quickly reversed the tables in the Shanghai massacre of April 1927 by massacring the Communist Party in Shanghai midway through the Northern Expedition.[42][43]
While the catastrophic events in China completely vindicated Trotsky's criticism of Stalin's approach towards the Chinese Revolution, this paled insignificance compared to the demoralization that the Soviet masses felt at such a big setback for socialist revolution in China, with this demoralization aiding Stalin and his allies in the Communist Party and the Soviet state. Attacks against the United Opposition increased in volatility and ferocity. Many supporters of Kamenev and Zinoviev's group, as well as most from the Workers Opposition grouping, had left the United Opposition by mid-1927, changing sides under the growing political pressure and espousing their support for Stalin. Trotsky, Kamenev, and Zinoviev grew increasingly isolated and were ejected from the Central Committee in October 1927.
On 7 November 1927, on the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, the United Opposition held a demonstration in Red Square, Moscow, along with Vladimir Lenin's widow, Nadezhda Krupskaya. On 12 November 1927, Trotsky and Zinoviev were expelled from the Communist Party itself, followed by Kamenev at the Fifteenth Party Congress in December 1927.[21] At the Congress, where Kamenev acted as the United Opposition's spokesman due to Trotsky's and Zinoviev's expulsion, the United Opposition were unable to gain the support of more than a small minority of the Communist Party, and they were expelled after the Congress declared United Opposition views to be incompatible with Communist Party membership.
While Trotsky remained firm in his opposition to Stalin after his expulsion from the Communist Party and his subsequent exile, Zinoviev and Kamenev capitulated almost immediately and called on their supporters to follow suit. They wrote open letters acknowledging their mistakes and were readmitted to the Communist Party in June 1928, after a six-month cooling-off period. They never regained their Central Committee seats, but they were given mid-level positions within the Soviet bureaucracy. Kamenev and Zinoviev were courted by Bukharin at the beginning of his short and ill-fated struggle with Stalin in the summer of 1928. This activity was soon reported to Stalin and was later used against Bukharin as proof of his factionalism. Trotsky, firmer than ever in his opposition to Stalin, was exiled to
Stalin turns on the Right
After the United Opposition was prohibited in December 1927, the
Stalin's agricultural policies were also criticized by fellow Politburo member
After 1930, open criticism of Stalin within the Communist Party was virtually non-existent, though Stalin continued to hunt for discreet dissenters.
Death of his wife
On the night of 9 November 1932, Stalin's wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, committed suicide and shot herself in her bedroom. As Stalin was sleeping in another room,[52] her death was not discovered until the next morning. To prevent a scandal, Pravda reported the cause of death as appendicitis. Stalin did not tell his children the truth, to prevent them from revealing it accidentally.
The Great Terror
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On 1 December 1934,
Spearheading Stalin's purges was a Commissar called Nikolai Yezhov, a fervent Stalinist and a believer in violent repression.[59] Nikolai Yezhov continued to expand the lists of suspects to include all the old oppositionists as well as entire nationalities, such as the Poles.[60]
Stalin distrusted the Soviet secret police – the
In June 1937,
Since his falling out with Stalin in 1928–1929, Bukharin had written an endless stream of letters of repentance and admiration to Stalin. However, Stalin knew that Bukharin's repentance was insincere, as in private Bukharin continued to criticize Stalin and seek out other opponents of Stalin (the NKVD wiretapped Bukharin's telephone). Shortly before their executions in August 1936, Kamenev and Zinoviev had denounced Bukharin as a traitor during their trial. At the December 1936 plenum of the Central Committee, Yezhov accused Bukharin and Alexei Rykov of treachery. Bukharin and Rykov confessed to conspiring against Stalin and were executed on 15 March 1938, on the same day that former NKVD chief, Yagoda, was also executed.
Stalin eventually turned on
According to Trotskyist historian
Historiography
In Western
Trotsky attributed his appointment to the position of General Secretary to the initial recommendation of Grigory Zinoviev.[76] This view has been supported by several historians.[77][78] According to Russian historian, Vadim Rogovin, Stalin's election to the position occurred after the Eleventh Party Congress (March–April 1922), in which Lenin, due to his poor health, participated only sporadically, and only attended four of the twelve sessions of the Congress.[79]
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