Stalin, Joseph Vissarionovich

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin
cargo. იოსებ ბესარიონის ძე სტალინი
Joseph Stalin at the Tehran Conference
Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU (B.) - CPSU [1] October 14, 1952  - March 5, 1953
February 10, 1934  - October 14, 1952
Secretary General of the Central Committee of the CPSU (B.) April 3, 1922  - February 10, 1934
Predecessor	position established
Successor	position abolished; he himself as Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) - the CPSU; Nikita Khrushchev (as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, since 1953) [1]
1st Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR March 15, 1946  - March 5, 1953
Predecessor	the position has been renamed; he himself as chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR
Successor	George Maximilianovich Malenkov
4th Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR May 6, 1941  - March 15, 1946
Predecessor	Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov
Successor	the position has been renamed; he himself as Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR
Chairman of the State Defense Committee June 30, 1941  - September 4, 1945
Predecessor	position established
Successor	position abolished
Minister of the Armed Forces of the USSR March 15, 1946  - March 3, 1947
Predecessor	the position has been renamed; he himself as People's Commissar of the Armed Forces of the USSR
Successor	Nikolai Alexandrovich Bulganin
People's Commissar of the Armed Forces of the USSR February 25  - March 15, 1946
Predecessor	the position has been renamed; he himself as People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR
Successor	the position has been renamed; he himself as Minister of the Armed Forces of the USSR
People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR July 19, 1941  - February 25, 1946
Predecessor	Semyon Konstantinovich Timoshenko
Successor	the position has been renamed; he himself as People's Commissar of the Armed Forces of the USSR
People's Commissar of the Workers and Peasants Inspection of the RSFSR February 24, 1920  - April 25, 1922
Head of the government	Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Predecessor	position established; he himself as People's Commissar of State Control of the RSFSR
Successor	Alexander Dmitrievich Tsyurupa
People's Commissar of State Control of the RSFSR March 30, 1919  - February 7, 1920
Head of the government	Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Predecessor	Karl Ivanovich Lander
Successor	position abolished; he himself, as People's Commissar of the Workers and Peasants Inspectorate of the RSFSR
People's Commissar for Nationalities of the RSFSR October 26 ( November 8 )  1917  - July 7, 1923
Head of the government	Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Predecessor	position established
Successor	position abolished
Birth	December 6  [18],  1878 (according to the official version - December 9  [21],  1879 ) Gori , Tiflis Province , Russian Empire
Death	March 5, 1953 near dacha , Volynskoye , Kuntsevo district , Moscow region , RSFSR , USSR(1953-03-05)
Burial place	Mausoleum of Lenin (1953); Necropolis at the Kremlin wall (1961)
Birth name	Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili cargo. იოსებ ბესარიონის ძე ჯუღაშვილი
Father	Vissarion Ivanovich Dzhugashvili (c. 1850-1909)
Mother	Ekaterina Georgievna Dzhugashvili (Geladze) (1858-1937)
Spouse	1) Ekaterina Semenovna Svanidze (1885-1907) 2) Nadezhda Sergeevna Alliluyeva (1901-1932)
Children	from the 1st marriage son: Jacob (1907–1943) from the 2nd marriage son: Vasily (1921–1962) daughter: Svetlana (1926–2011) adopted son: Artyom (1921–2008)
The consignment	RSDLP / RCP (b) / VKP (b) / CPSU
Education	Tbilisi Theological Seminary (not graduated, expelled)
Relation to religion	absent ( atheist )
Autograph
Awards	See List of All Stalin Awards
Military service
Years of service	RSFSR 1918-1922, USSR 1941-1953
Affiliation	Red Army Soviet Army
Type of army
Rank	Marshal of the Soviet Union Marshal of the Soviet Union , Generalissimo of the Soviet Union (did not wear shoulder straps)
Commanded	Member of the RVSR (1918–1922), Chairman of the Military Council of the North Caucasus Military District (1918), Chairman of the Military Revolutionary Council of the Southern Front (1918), Supreme Commander of the USSR Armed Forces (since 1941), Chairman of the State Defense Committee (1941-1945), Chairman of the General Military Command (1941-1945)
Battles	Civil war in Russia , Soviet-Polish war , World War II , World War II
Place of work	True , Brdzola , Tiflis Physical Observatory

Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin (real name - Dzhugashvili , cargo. იოსებ ჯუღაშვილი ; December 6  [18],  1878 (according to the official version - December 9  [21],  1879 ), Gori , Tiflis province , Russian Empire  - March 5, 1953 , nearby dacha , Volyn , Kuntsevsky District , Moscow Region , RSFSR , USSR ) - Russianrevolutionary, Soviet political, state, military and party leader. From January 21, 1924 to March 5, 1953 - the head of the USSR ^{[2] [3]} . Marshal of the Soviet Union (1943) ^[4] . Generalissimo of the Soviet Union (1945).

Since 1895, at the age of 15, joined the underground revolutionary movement. He led the propaganda of Marxism among seminarians and workers. In 1900, he first participated in the organization of strikes and protests of workers . In 1901 he joined the RSDLP , after the split, joined the Bolsheviks . In 1904, he became one of the main organizers of the big Baku strike , the result of which was the conclusion of the first collective agreement in the Russian Empire between strikers and industrialists . In 1909-1917 he was repeatedly arrested and sent into exile., from where he also repeatedly escaped. In 1912, at the suggestion of V.I. Lenin, he was included in the Central Committee of the RSDLP . Then Joseph Dzhugashvili finally takes the pseudonym "Stalin" .

After the February Revolution he returned to Petrograd . With the return of Lenin to Russia, Stalin supported his slogan of turning the " bourgeois-democratic " February revolution into a proletarian socialist revolution. He advocated an armed uprising as opposed to Kamenev and Zinoviev . Simultaneously with the October Revolution , the Second All-Russian Congress was elected a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and Council of People's Commissars . He participated in the civil war . In 1922 onThe plenum of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) was elected a member of the Organizing Bureau and Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) , as well as the Secretary General of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) (when Lenin was in the position of Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR ).

After the death of Lenin, Stalin, defending the idea of ​​building socialism in a single country , defeated his opponents . According to various estimates, up to 1928-1933 the period of internal party struggle continued , from which Stalin emerged victorious ^{[approx. 1]} . In 1928, after the mixed results of the NEP , Stalin headed for forced industrialization , collectivization and the construction of a planned economy , which during the period of all Stalin's five-year plans ensured high growth rates of national income ^[5] .The cultural revolution contributed to the rapid increase in the literacy rate of the population, the development of education and science ^[6] . Along with this, a wave of crop failure and mass deaths from starvation , deportation of peoples , religious persecution , dispossession , mass political exile to camps and executions swept across the country .

From 1937 to 1938, the Great Terror raged in the USSR (also called the "Ezhovshchina"). During this period, the NKVD bodies of the USSR convicted 1,344,923 and executed 681,692 people ^{[7] [approx. 2]} . Ended up with the conviction and execution of N. I. Yezhov and his replacement as head of the NKVD, L. P. Beria . According to the so-called “ Stalin's lists of executions ”, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and Stalin personally sanctioned the conviction of 43,768 people, the overwhelming majority of them were members of management structures, including the NKVD and the Red Army (almost all of them were executed)^[8] . During this period, 78% of the members of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) died. The NKVD organs underwent the most severe cleaning.

After the German National Socialists came to power and the Munich Agreement was signed by Great Britain , France and Italy with Germany, as well as the signing of the Franco-German and Anglo-German non-aggression treaties, the Non-aggression Treaty between Germany and the Soviet Union was signed in 1939 (the “Pact” Molotov-Ribbentrop ”) and the secret additional protocol to it on“ the boundaries of spheres of interests ”. Based on these documents, after the German invasion of Poland and the outbreak of World War II , territories were annexed to the USSR Western Ukraine and Western Belarus , the Baltic states , Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina , as well as after presenting an ultimatum and the subsequent Soviet attack on Finland and heavy winter battles, pushed the border from Leningrad from 18 to 150 km ^{[approx. 3]} . Due to the attack on Finland, the USSR was expelled from the League of Nations in 1939 . In the Far East, armed clashes took place with Japanese troops near Lake Khasan and on the Khalkhin-Gol River , resulting in the victory of the Red Army and the conclusion of a neutrality pact between the USSR and Japan .

A year after the fall of France , on June 22, 1941, the armed forces of the Third Reich crossed the border of the USSR; the Great Patriotic War began . After 3 years and 10 months, the Soviet Union under the leadership of Stalin as the supreme commander in chief , having carried enormous material ^{[approx. 4]} and human ^{[approx. 5]} , but comparable in military terms ^{[approx. 6]} loss , came out of it as the winner. After the Axis countries were defeated by the Anti-Hitler coalition, Soviet and American troops abut each other on the Elbe in Germany in the west and 38th parallel in Korea to the east. The territory of the USSR expanded due to the annexation of the northern part of East Prussia , Transcarpathian Ukraine , Southern Sakhalin , the Kuril Islands and the Petsamo region . Countries that fell into the zone of influence of the USSR became socialist . Due to the presence of a unique atomic weapon in the United States , as well as the precedent for its use , Stalin faced new challenges - in 1946, the Cold War began .

In 1947, Stalin carried out a monetary reform with denomination and confiscation . Since consumer goods were distributed according to the card system from 1941 to 1947, the majority of the population did not have money. According to the official version, the reform was carried out with the aim of seizing counterfeit money and preventing speculators who made money from the war. After the reform, in 1948-1953. annual reductions in retail prices were carried out with a simultaneous increase in salaries .

In 1949, the first successful atomic tests were carried out (the project was supervised by L.P. Beria ). Following the United States, the Soviet Union began to increase the number of nuclear warheads , creating a guarantee of a devastating retaliatory strike in the event of an atomic war , the USSR became a superpower and one of the two poles of power .

Joseph Stalin died on March 5, 1953, according to a medical report - from a hemorrhage in the brain . After his death, the government formed three poles of power from L.P. Beria, G.M. Malenkov and N.S. Khrushchev . In June 1953, Khrushchev’s supporters arrested and subsequently shot Beria. On September 7, 1953, at the plenum of the Central Committee, Khrushchev was elected first secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU. Malenkov was removed from party positions in 1957 .

Among historians, there is debate about the role of Stalin in the history of the Soviet state. Stalin’s rule is contradictory, because it was characterized by the existence of an autocratic regime of personal power , the dominance of authoritarian-bureaucratic methods of government, excessive strengthening of the repressive functions of the state , coalescence of party and state bodies, tight state control over all aspects of society , violation of the fundamental rights and freedoms of citizens - with one side, and on the other hand - the heroism, enthusiasm and social creativity of the masses, the creation of the Stalinist model of a planned economy and, thanks to this, forced modernization of the country, victory in the Great Patriotic War ^{[5][9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15]} .

Origin

Genealogy

Joseph Dzhugashvili was born into a Georgian family (in a number of sources ^{[note 7]} there are versions about the Ossetian origin of Stalin’s ancestors) in the city of Gori in the Tiflis province and was a native of the lower class ^[16] .

During the life of Stalin and for a long time after his death, it was believed that he was born on  December  9 (21), 1879 , but later researchers ^{[17] [18]} established a different date for Joseph's birth - December 6  (18)  1878  - and the date of baptism 17  (29 ) December  1878 ^{[approx. 8]} .

Stalin had bodily defects: fused second and third fingers on his left foot, his face in smallpox ^[16] . In 1885, Joseph brought down the phaeton ^[19] , the boy was severely injured arm and leg; after that, throughout his life, his left arm did not fully extend at the elbow and therefore seemed shorter than his right.

Parents

Vissarion Ivanovich Dzhugashvili (c. 1850-1909)

Father  - Vissarion (Beso), came from the peasants of the village of Didi Lilo, Tiflis province, by profession - a shoemaker. Subject to drunkenness and fits of rage, ^[20] he severely beat Catherine and little Coco (Joseph) ^{[16][21] [22] [23]} . There was a case when a child tried to protect his mother from beating. He threw in Vissarion knife and started their heels ^[24] . According to the recollections of the son of a policeman in Gori ^[25] , another time Vissarion burst into the house where Catherine and little Coco were, and attacked them with beatings, causing a head injury to the child.

Joseph was the third son in the family, the first two ^{[approx. 9]} died in infancy. Some time after Joseph’s birth, his father’s affairs did not go well, and he washed down ^[26] . The family often changed housing. Ultimately, Vissarion left his wife, while trying to pick up his son, but Catherine did not give him away ^[26] .

When Coco was eleven years old, Vissarion "died in a drunken brawl - someone stabbed him" ^[27] . By that time, Coco himself spent a lot of time in the street company of Gori’s young bullies ^[28] . A number of researchers indicate that Vissarion Ivanovich died on August 25, 1909 in a Tiflis hospital from tuberculosis, colitis and chronic pneumonia. According to the same information, he was buried in Telavi , but the authenticity of the burial has not been established.

Ekaterina Georgievna Dzhugashvili (1858-1937)

Mother  - Ekaterina Georgievna  - came from a family of serf peasant (gardener) Geladze village Gambareuli , worked as a day worker . She was a burdened hard-working Puritan woman who often pounded her only surviving child, ^[20] but was boundlessly devoted to him ^{[29] [30] [31]} . Stalin's childhood friend David Machavariani said that “Kato surrounded Joseph with excessive motherly love and, like a she-wolf, protected him from everyone and everything. She exhausting themselves with work to exhaustion to make happy his minion " ^[32] . Catherine, however, according to some historians^{[ what? ]} , was disappointed that her son never became a priest ^{[20] [33]} .

The early years, becoming a revolutionary

Soso Dzhugashvili - student of the Tiflis Theological Seminary (1894)

In 1886, Ekaterina Georgievna wanted to appoint Joseph to study at the Gori Orthodox Theological School , however, since he did not know the Russian language at all, he was unable to enter. In 1886-1888, at the request of his mother, the children of the priest Christopher Charkviani undertook to teach Joseph the Russian language. As a result, in 1888, Soso did not enter the first preparatory class at the school, but immediately into the second preparatory class, in September of the following year he entered the first class of the school, which he graduated in June 1894.

Certificate of completion of I. Dzhugashvili Gori Theological College (1894)

In September 1894, Joseph passed the entrance exams and was enrolled in the Orthodox Tiflis Theological Seminary . There he first became acquainted with Marxism and, by the beginning of 1895, came into contact with underground groups of revolutionary Marxists sent by the government to Transcaucasia. Subsequently, Stalin himself recalled: “I joined the revolutionary movement from the age of 15 when I got in touch with underground groups of Russian Marxists who then lived in Transcaucasia. These groups had a great influence on me and instilled in me a taste for underground Marxist literature ” ^[34] .

According to the English historian Simon Sebag-Montefiore , Stalin was an extremely gifted student who received high marks in all subjects: mathematics, theology, Greek, Russian. Stalin liked poetry , and in his youth he himself wrote poetry in Georgian ^[35] , which attracted the attention of connoisseurs ^[36] .

In 1931, in an interview with the German writer Emil Ludwig to the question “What pushed you to the opposition? Perhaps the abuse by the parents? ” Stalin replied: “No. My parents treated me quite well. Another thing is a theological seminary, where I studied then. Out of a protest against the mocking regime and the Jesuit methods that were available in the seminary, I was ready to become and really became a revolutionary, a supporter of Marxism ... ” ^[37]

In 1898, Dzhugashvili gained the experience of a propagandist at a meeting with workers in the apartment of the revolutionary Vano Sturua and soon began to lead a working group of young railway workers ^[38] , he began to conduct classes in several working circles and even drew up a Marxist training program for them ^[36] . In August of the same year Joseph joins the Georgian Social-Democratic organization " Mesame-dashi " ^[39] ( "Third Party"). Together with V. Z. Ketskhoveli and A. G. Tsulukidze, Dzhugashvili forms the core of the revolutionary minority of this organization ^[40] , most of which were in the position of “legal Marxism” and inclined towards nationalism.

On May 29, 1899, in his fifth year of study, he was expelled from the seminary "for failing to attend exams for an unknown reason" (probably the actual reason for the exclusion was the activity of Joseph Dzhugashvili in promoting Marxism among seminarians and workers of railway workshops ^{[41] [42]} ). The certificate issued to him indicated that he had graduated from four classes and could serve as a teacher in primary public schools ^[19] .

After being expelled from the seminary, Dzhugashvili interrupted for some time by tutoring ^[36] . Among his students, in particular, was his closest childhood friend Simon Ter-Petrosyan (future revolutionary Kamo ).

Koba, member of the Marxist circle (1902)

Since the end of December 1899, Dzhugashvili was admitted to the Tiflis Physical Observatory as a computer-observer ^[36] .

On April 23, 1900, Joseph Dzhugashvili, Vano Sturua, and Zakro Chodrishvili organized a work day , which brought together 400-500 workers. At the rally, among others, Joseph himself spoke. This speech was the first appearance of Stalin before a large gathering of people. In August of that year, Dzhugashvili participated in the preparation and conduct of a major speech by the workers of Tiflis - a strike in the Main Railway Workshops. Workers-revolutionaries took part in organizing the protests of the workers: M. I. Kalinin (deported from St. Petersburg to the Caucasus), S. Ya. Alliluyev , as well as MZ Bochoridze , A. G. Okuashvili , V. F. Sturua. From August 1 to August 15, up to four thousand people took part in the strike. As a result, more than five hundred strikers were arrested.

On March 21, 1901, the police searched the physical observatory where Dzhugashvili lived and worked. However, he himself escaped arrest and moved to an illegal position, becoming a revolutionary - underground ^[36] .

The path to power

Until 1917

In September 1901, the Nina printing house , organized by Lado Ketskhoveli in Baku , began to publish the illegal newspaper Brdzola (The Struggle). The front line of the first issue belonged to twenty-two-year-old Joseph Dzhugashvili. This article is the first known political work of Stalin ^[36] .

In November 1901, he was included in the Tiflis Committee of the RSDLP, on behalf of which he was sent to Batum the same month , where he participated in the creation of the Esdeck organization ^[36] . Party nickname Coba .

After the split in 1903 of the Russian Social Democrats into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, Stalin joined the Bolsheviks ^[43] .

In 1904, he organized a grand strike of oil workers in Baku , which ended with the conclusion of a collective agreement between the strikers and industrialists.

In December 1905, a delegate from the Caucasian Union of the RSDLP at the First Conference of the RSDLP in Tammerfors ( Finland ^{[note 10]} ), where he first met V. I. Lenin .

In May 1906, a delegate from Tiflis at the IV Congress of the RSDLP in Stockholm , this was his first trip abroad.

Ekaterina Svanidze  - Stalin's first wife

On the night of July 16, 1906, Joseph Dzhugashvili married Yekaterina Svanidze in the Tiflis church of St. David . From this marriage, in 1907, the first son of Stalin, Jacob , was born . At the end of the same year, Stalin's wife died of typhus .

In 1907, Stalin was a delegate to the V Congress of the RSDLP in London .

According to some authors, Stalin was involved in the so-called. The “ Tiflis expropriation ” of the summer of 1907 ^[44] (the stolen ( expropriated ) money ^{[19] [45] was} intended for the needs of the party).

Baku, March 23, 1910.

In 1909-1911, Stalin was twice exiled in the city of Solvychegodsk, Vologda province - from February 27 to June 24, 1909 and from October 29, 1910 to July 6, 1911 ^[46] . Having escaped from exile in 1909, in March 1910, Stalin was arrested and after six months in Baku he was again transferred to Solvychegodsk. According to a number of historians, in Stalin’s exile, Stalin had an illegitimate son - Konstantin Kuzakov ^{[47] [48] [49]}. At the end of the term of exile, Stalin was in Vologda until September 6, 1911, from where, despite the ban on entering the capital, he went to St. Petersburg with the passport of his Vologda acquaintance Pyotr Chizhikov, also exiled in the past; after another arrest in St. Petersburg on December 5, 1911 he was again exiled to Vologda, from where he fled on February 28, 1912 ^[50] .

Since 1910, Stalin - the authorized party Central Committee ("Central Committee agent") in the Caucasus ^[51] .

In January 1912, at the plenum of the Central Committee of the RSDLP, held after the VI (Prague) All-Russian Conference of the RSDLP ^[42] , held that same month , at the proposal of Lenin ^[52], Stalin was co-opted in absentia to the Central Committee and the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP .

In 1912 ^[53] Joseph Dzhugashvili finally accepted the pseudonym “Stalin” ^[54] .

In April 1912 he was arrested by the police and sent to Siberian exile ^[55] . This time the place of exile was determined to be the city of Narym, Tomsk province ( Middle Ob ). Here, in addition to representatives of other revolutionary parties, there were already Smirnov , Sverdlov and some other famous Bolsheviks. Stalin spent 41 days in Narym - from July 22 to September 1, 1912 ^{[55] [56] [57]} , after which he fled from exile. He managed by steamboat across the Ob and Tomi to get unnoticed by the secret police to Tomsk, where he got on a train and checked out a fake passport to the European part of Russia. Then immediately to Switzerland , where he met with Lenin .

After escaping from the Tomsk exile, from late autumn 1912 until the spring of 1913, while working in St. Petersburg , he was one of the main employees in the first mass Bolshevik newspaper Pravda .

In March 1913, Stalin was once again arrested, imprisoned, and sent to the Turukhansk Territory of the Yenisei Province , where he remained until the end of the fall of 1916. He corresponded with Lenin in exile.

Later, Stalin's exile continued in the city of Achinsk , from where he returned to Petrograd on March 12, 1917.

February - October 1917

Having received freedom as a result of the February Revolution , Stalin returned to Petrograd . Before Lenin arrived from exile, he was one of the leaders of the Central Committee of the RSDLP and the St. Petersburg Committee of the Bolshevik Party, and was a member of the editorial board of the newspaper Pravda .

Initially, Stalin supported the Provisional Government ^[58] , on the basis that the democratic revolution is not yet completed and the overthrow of the government is not a practical task. At the All-Russian meeting of the Bolsheviks on March 28 in Petrograd, while discussing the Menshevik initiative on the possibility of reunification into a single party, Stalin noted that "unification is possible along the Zimmerwald-Kienthal line." However, after Lenin returned to Russia, Stalin supported his slogan of turning the "bourgeois-democratic" February revolution into a proletarian socialist revolution.

Stalin in the picture of V. A. Serov "Lenin proclaims Soviet power . " USSR stamp, 1954

April 14-22, he was a delegate to the I Petrograd citywide conference of the Bolsheviks. On April 24–29, at the VII All-Russian Conference of the RSDLP (b), he spoke in the debate on the report on the current situation, supported the views of Lenin, and made a report on the national question; He was elected a member of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b) ^[41] .

In May - June he participated in anti-war propaganda; was one of the organizers of the re-election of the Soviets and participated in the municipal campaign in Petrograd. June 3-24, participated as a delegate in the I All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers 'and Soldiers' Deputies ; He was elected a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and a member of the Bureau of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee from the Bolshevik faction. He also participated in the preparation of the failed demonstration, scheduled for June 10, and the demonstration on June 18 ; He published a series of articles in the newspaper "Pravda" and " Soldier's true " ^[41] .

In view of the forced departure of Lenin underground , Stalin spoke at the VI Congress of the RSDLP (b) (July-August 1917) with a report from the Central Committee. At a meeting of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b) on August 5, he was elected a member of the narrow composition of the Central Committee. In August - September, he mainly conducted organizational and journalistic work. On October 10, at a meeting of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b), he voted in favor of a resolution on armed insurrection, was elected a member of the Political Bureau, created "for the political leadership in the near future" ^[41] .

On the night of October 16, at an enlarged meeting of the Central Committee, he opposed the position of L. B. Kamenev and G. E. Zinoviev , who voted against the decision to revolt ^[41] , at the same time he was elected a member of the Military Revolutionary Center , which entered the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee ^{[ 59]} .

On October 24 (November 6), after the junkers defeated the printing house of the Pravda newspaper, Stalin secured the publication of a newspaper in which he published an editorial entitled “What do we need?” calling for the overthrow of the Provisional Government and its replacement by the Soviet Government, elected "representatives of the workers, soldiers and peasants" ^{[approx. 11]} . On the same day, Stalin and Trotsky held a meeting of the Bolsheviks, delegates of the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers 'and Soldiers' Deputies , at which Stalin made a report on the course of political events. On the night of October 25 (November 7), he participated in a meeting of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b), which determined the structure and name of the new, Soviet government ^[41] .

In the elections to the All-Russian Constituent Assembly in the Petrograd Metropolitan District, he was elected deputy from the RSDLP (b).

1917-1924

After the victory of the October Revolution, Stalin joined the Council of People's Commissars (SNK) as a people's commissioner for nationalities (back in late 1912-1913, Stalin wrote the article "Marxism and the National Question" and since that time was considered an expert on national problems).

On November 29, Stalin joined the Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b) , together with Lenin, Trotsky and Sverdlov. This body was given "the right to decide all urgent matters, but with the obligatory involvement of all members of the Central Committee who were in Smolny at that time . "

In the spring of 1918, Stalin married a second time ^{[approx. 12]} . His wife was the daughter of the Russian revolutionary S. Ya. Alliluyev  - Nadezhda Alliluyeva .

From October 8, 1918 to July 8, 1919 and from May 18, 1920 to April 1, 1922, Stalin was a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the RSFSR . Stalin was also a member of the Revolutionary Military Councils of the Western, Southern, South-Western Fronts.

As the doctor of historical and military sciences M.A. Gareev notes , during the Civil War, Stalin gained vast experience in the military-political leadership of large masses of troops on many fronts (the defense of Tsaritsyn , Petrograd, on the fronts against Denikin, Wrangel, White Poles, etc.) ^{[ 60]} .

As many researchers note, during the defense of Tsaritsyn, there was a personal quarrel between Stalin and Voroshilov with the commander of war Trotsky. The parties accused each other; Trotsky accused Stalin and Voroshilov of disobedience, in response to receiving accusations of excessive trust in the "counter-revolutionary" military experts.

In 1919, Stalin was ideologically close to the “ military opposition, ” personally condemned by Lenin at the VIII Congress of the RCP (B.) , But never officially joined it.

Under the influence of the leaders of the Caucasian Bureau, Ordzhonikidze and Kirov, Stalin in 1921 defended the Sovietization of Georgia .

On March 24, 1921, a son was born to Stalin in Moscow - Vasily , who was raised in a family with Artyom Sergeyev , who was born in the same year , whom Stalin adopted after the death of his close friend, the revolutionary F.A. Sergeev .

Stalin, Lenin and Kalinin . 1919 year

At the Plenum of the Central Committee of the RCP (B.) On April 3, 1922, Stalin was elected to the Politburo and the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (B.) , As well as the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the RCP (B.) . Initially, this position meant only the leadership of the party apparatus, and the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR Lenin continued to be perceived as the leader of the party and government .

Since 1922, in view of his illness, Lenin has actually moved away from political activity. Inside the Politburo, Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev organized a “troika” based on opposition to Trotsky. All three party leaders at that time combined a number of key posts. Zinoviev headed the influential Leningrad Party organization, while being chairman of the Executive Committee of the Comintern. Kamenev headed the Moscow Party organization and at the same time also led the Labor and Defense Council , which brought together a number of key people's commissariats. With the departure of Lenin from political activity, it was Kamenev who most often became the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars instead. Stalin, on the other hand, united leadership at the same time as the Secretariat and the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee, also heading Rabkrin andNarkomnats .

In contrast to the "troika", Trotsky led the Red Army in key posts of the People’s Commissar and Pre-Military Council.

In September 1922, Stalin for the first time clearly showed his penchant for traditional Russian great power. According to the instructions of the Central Committee, he, as the People’s Commissar for Ethnic Affairs, prepared his proposals on regulating Moscow’s relations with the Soviet national suburbs of the former Russian Empire. Stalin proposed a plan of "autonomy" (inclusion of the outskirts of the RSFSR as autonomies), in particular, Georgia was to remain part of the Transcaucasian Republic. This plan met with fierce resistance in Ukraine, and especially in Georgia, and was rejected under the pressure of Lenin personally. The outskirts became part of the Soviet Federation on the rights of the Union republics with all the attributes of statehood, however, under the conditions of a one-party system, fictitious. The word “Russian” (“Russian”) was removed from the name of the federation itself (“USSR”),and generally geographical names.

In late December 1922 - early January 1923, Lenin dictated a “ Letter to the Congress ”, in which he gave critical characteristics to his closest party comrades in the party, including Stalin, proposing to remove him from the post of general secretary. The situation was aggravated by the fact that in the last months of Lenin's life, there was a personal quarrel between Stalin and N. Krupskaya .

The letter was announced among the members of the Central Committee on the eve of the XIII Congress of the RCP (B.) , Held in May 1924. Stalin resigned, but it was not accepted. At the congress, a letter was announced to each delegation, but at the end of the congress Stalin remained in his post.

Participation in the internal party struggle

After the XIII Congress (1924), at which Trotsky suffered a crushing defeat, Stalin attacked his former allies in the "troika". After a "literary discussion with Trotskyism" (1924), Trotsky was forced to resign from his post of pre-military council. Following this, Stalin’s bloc with Zinoviev and Kamenev completely fell apart.

At the Fourteenth Congress (December 1925), the so-called “ Leningrad opposition ”, also known as the “platform of 4”: Zinoviev, Kamenev, People’s Commissar Sokolnikov and N.K. Krupskaya (a year later left the opposition) was condemned . To fight them, Stalin chose to rely on N. I. Bukharin, one of the largest party theorists of the time .and Rykov and Tomsky close to him (later - "right deviators"). The congress itself was held in an atmosphere of noisy scandals and obstruction. The parties accused each other of various biases (Zinoviev accused the Stalin-Bukharin group of “half-Trotskyism” and “kulak bias”, especially focusing on the slogan “Enrich yourself”; in return, he received charges of “accelerodovschina” and “underestimation of the middle peasant”), used directly opposite quotes from the rich heritage of Lenin. Directly opposite accusations of purges and counter-cleanings were also used; Zinoviev was directly accused of turning into a “viceroy” of Leningrad, of having cleaned out from the Leningrad delegation all those who had the reputation of “Stalinists”.

Rykov, Skrypnik and Stalin at the XV Congress of the CPSU (B.) 1927

Kamenev’s statement that “Comrade Stalin cannot fulfill the role of the unifier of the Bolshevik headquarters” was interrupted by mass cries from the floor: “They revealed the maps!”, “We will not give you commanding heights!”, “Stalin! Stalin! "," That's where the party united! The Bolshevik headquarters must unite! "," Long live the Central Committee! Hooray!".

As Secretary General, Stalin became the supreme distributor of various posts and privileges, up to trips to sanatoriums. He widely used this circumstance to methodically seat his personal supporters in all key posts in the country and to win a solid majority at party congresses. The victory of Stalin was particularly facilitated by the " Leninist call " of 1924 and the subsequent mass recruits to the party of semi-literate workers "from the machine", taking place under the slogan of "working out the party." As researcher Voslensky M.S. notes, in his work “On the Foundations of Leninism”, Stalin “defiantly” wrote: “I dedicate the Leninist appeal.” The "recruits of the Leninist draft" for the most part were poorly versed in the complex ideological discussions of that time, and preferred to vote for Stalin. The most complicated theoretical debate unfolded when up to 75% of party members had only a lower education, many could not read and write.

In February 1926, Stalin had a daughter, Svetlana (in the future, a translator, candidate of philological sciences , memoirist ).

Trotsky, who did not share the theory put forward by Stalin, the victory of socialism in one country, in April 1926 joined Zinoviev and Kamenev. The so-called “United Opposition” was created, putting forward the slogan “we will transfer the fire to the right - against Nepman, the fist and the bureaucrat”.

In the internal party struggle of the 1920s, Stalin tried to portray the role of a “peacemaker”. At the end of 1924, he even defended Trotsky from the attacks of Zinoviev, demanding that he be expelled from the party on charges of preparing a military coup. Stalin chose to use the so-called "salami tactics": small metered strokes. His methods are clearly visible from a letter to Molotov and Bukharin dated June 15, 1926, in which Stalin was going to “fill Grisha’s face” (Zinoviev) and make him and Trotsky “renegades, like Shlyapnikov” (former leader of the “workers' opposition”, who quickly became marginalized).

In 1927, Stalin also continued to act as a "peacemaker." His allies, the future “right deviators” Rykov and Tomsky, made much more bloodthirsty statements at that time. In his speech at the Fifteenth Congress (1927), Rykov transparently hinted that the left opposition should be sent to prison, and Tomsky at the Leningrad Regional Conference of the CPSU (B.) In November 1927 stated that "in the context of the dictatorship of the proletariat, there can be two or four parties , but only on one condition: one party will be in power, and all the rest will be in prison ” ^[61] .

Kaganovich , Stalin, Postyshev , Voroshilov (1934)

In the years 1926–27, intraparty relations became especially heated. Stalin slowly but surely squeezed the opposition beyond the legal field. Among his political opponents were many people with rich experience of pre-revolutionary underground activity.

Oppositionists created an illegal printing house to publish campaign literature. On the anniversary of the October Revolution on November 7, 1927, they held a “parallel” opposition demonstration . These actions became the reason for the exclusion of Zinoviev and Trotsky from the party (November 16, 1927). In 1927, Soviet-English relations sharply worsened, and military psychosis gripped the country. Stalin considered that such a situation would be convenient for the final organizational rout of the left.

However, next year the picture changed dramatically. Under the influence of the grain procurement crisis of 1927, Stalin made a “left turn”, in practice catching Trotskyist slogans, still popular among students and radical workers dissatisfied with the negative aspects of the NEP (unemployment, sharply increased social inequality).

In 1928-1929, Stalin accused Bukharin and his allies of the "right deviation" and actually began to implement the program of the "left" to curtail the NEP and forced industrialization. Among the defeated “rightists” there were many active fighters against the so-called “Trotskyist-Zinovievsky bloc”: Rykov, Tomsky, Uglanov and Ryutin , who led the rout of the Trotskyists in Moscow, and many others. The third chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR Syrtsov also became an oppositionist .

Stalin declared 1929 the year of the “ great turning point ”. The strategic tasks of the state were declared industrialization, collectivization and the cultural revolution.

One of the last oppositions was Ryutin's group. In his 1932 programmatic work, “Stalin and the Crisis of the Proletarian Dictatorship” (better known as the “Ryutin Platform”), the author first made serious attacks on Stalin personally. It is known that Stalin took this work as incitement to terrorism, and demanded the execution. However, this proposal was then rejected by the OGPU, which sentenced Ryutin to 10 years in prison (he was shot later in 1937).

Stalin makes an official Political Report of the Central Committee at the 17th Congress of the CPSU (B.) 1934

Richard Pipes emphasizes the continuity of the Stalinist regime. For his coming to power, Stalin only used the mechanisms that already existed before him. The gradual transition to a complete ban on any inner-party opposition directly relied on the historic resolution “On party unity” of the X Congress (1921), adopted under pressure from Lenin personally. In accordance with it, the signs of factions that could become the "embryos" of new parties and lead to a split, meant the formation of separate factional bodies and even the compilation of their own factional program documents ("platforms"), different from the party ones, setting the intra-factional discipline above the party-wide one. According to Pipes, in this way Lenin transferred to the party the same regime of suppressing dissent, which was already established outside of it.

The exclusion of Zinoviev and Trotsky from the party in 1927 was made by a mechanism personally developed by Lenin in 1921 to combat the "workers' opposition" - the joint plenum of the Central Committee and Central Control Commission (party control bodies).

All of Stalin’s main competitors in the struggle for power were the same opponents of democracy as he was. Trotsky wrote in 1919–20 the work Terrorism and Communism , filled with apologetics of the most ferocious dictatorship, which he justified by the difficult conditions of the Civil War. At the 10th Congress (1921), Trotsky declared that the "workers' opposition" made a "fetish" of the slogan of "democracy", and the party intended to maintain its dictatorship on behalf of the workers, even if it "faced with the passing moods of the working masses." Finding himself in the minority, Trotsky quickly remembered democracy. The same evolution was done after him by Zinoviev, and then the "right"; being at the top of power, they eagerly gagged the opposition. Having become the opposition themselves, they immediately remembered democracy and freedom of opinion.

As the director of the secondary school in Leningrad R. Kulla wrote ^[62] :

1925 December 30. I wonder why they got into a fight? Outwardly, it is as if all because of Ilyich’s old pants: who better understands their smell; 1926 August 1 ... The world is waiting for the dictator ... The fight is only because of the personality: who is eating.

The so-called “congress of winners”, the 17th Congress of the CPSU (B.) (1934), for the first time stated that the resolution of the X Congress was implemented, and the party no longer had opposition. Many former opposition members were accepted back into the party after a public “admission of mistakes”. In an effort to maintain their posts, similar speeches at the congress were made, in particular: Zinoviev , Kamenev , Karl Radek , Bukharin , Rykov , Tomsky , Pyatakov , Preobrazhensky , Lominadze . The speeches of many congress delegates were densely filled with praises to Stalin. According to the estimates of Rogovin V.Z., the name of Stalin at the congress was used 1,500 times.

Zinoviev’s speech was filled with servile affection for Stalin personally, Kamenev called himself a “political corpse,” and Preobrazhensky spent a lot of time attacking his former comrade-in-arms Trotsky. Bukharin, who in 1928 called Stalin "Genghis Khan," at the congress already called him "Field Marshal of the proletarian forces." Somewhat apart in this row was Radek's repentant speech, densely saturated with jokes and often interrupted by laughter.

Political Views

Party ticket number 0000002, 1927

Party ticket number 0000002, 1936

As Isaac Deutscher writes ,

The evolution that brought the former Georgian socialist into a position in which he began to be associated with "Great Russian chauvinism" is striking. It was even more than the process that turned the Corsican Bonaparte into the founder of the French Empire, or the process by which the Austrian Hitler became the most aggressive leader of German nationalism.

In his youth, Stalin preferred to join the Bolsheviks, and not the then popular Menshevism in Georgia . In the Bolshevik party of that time, there was an ideological and governing core, which, due to the persecution of the police, was located abroad. In contrast to such leaders of Bolshevism as Lenin, Trotsky or Zinoviev, who spent a significant part of their conscious lives in exile, Stalin preferred to be in Russia on illegal party work and was repeatedly expelled.

Only a few Stalin’s trips abroad before the revolution are known: Tammerfors, Finland (I Conference of the RSDLP, 1905), Stockholm (IV Congress of the RSDLP, 1906), London (V Congress of the RSDLP, 1907), Krakow and Vienna (1912-1913). Stalin always called himself a "practitioner" and was contemptuous of the environment of revolutionary emigration with its violent ideological differences. In one of his first works - the article “The Party Crisis and Our Tasks”, published in two issues of the Baku Proletarian newspaper in 1909, Stalin expressed weak criticism of the foreign leadership center divorced from the “Russian reality”.

In his letter to the Bolshevik V. S. Bobrovsky on January 24, 1911, he wrote that “Of course, the blocs heard about the foreign“ storm in a glass of water ”: Lenin - Plekhanov on the one hand and Trotsky - Martov - Bogdanov on the other. The attitude of the workers towards the first bloc, as far as I know, is favorable. But in general, the workers begin to look dismissively: “Let them climb the wall as much as they like, but in our opinion, who cares about the interests of the movement, he works, the rest will follow.” This, in my opinion, is for the best. "

Even in his youth, Stalin rejected Georgian nationalism, over time, his views began to gravitate more and more towards traditional Russian great power. As Richard Pipes writes,

He understood long ago that communism draws its main strength from the Russian people. Of the 376 thousand party members in 1922, 270 thousand, or 72%, were Russian , and of the rest, the majority were half of Ukrainians and two-thirds of Jews - Russified or assimilated. Moreover, during the civil war, and even more so, the war with Poland, there was an involuntary confusion of the concepts of communism with Russian nationalism. The most vivid manifestation of this was the “Change of Milestones” movement, which gained popularity among the conservative part of the Russian foreign countries, declaring the Soviet state the only defender of Russia's greatness and urging all its emigrants to return to their homeland ... For such a conceited politician as Stalin, more interested in tangible power from at home now, than in the future beneficence of all mankind, such a development did not seem to be a danger, but, on the contrary, a convenient combination of circumstances. From the very beginning of a party career,and with each year of his dictatorship, more and more Stalin took the position of Russian nationalism to the detriment of the interests of national minorities^[63] .

However, Stalin always positioned himself as an internationalist . In a number of his articles and speeches, he called for the struggle against “remnants of Great Russian nationalism”, and condemned the ideology of “ shift work ” (its founder N. Ustryalov was executed in 1937). Stalin’s inner circle was very international in composition; Russians , Georgians , Jews , Armenians were widely represented in it .

Only Russian communists can take on the struggle against Great-Russian chauvinism and bring it to the end ... Is it possible to deny that there are biases towards anti-Russian chauvinism? After all, the whole congress saw firsthand that local, Georgian, Bashkir , etc. chauvinism was present, that it was necessary to fight it. Russian communists cannot fight the Tatar, Georgian, Bashkir chauvinism, because if the Russian Communist takes on the difficult task of fighting Tatar or Georgian chauvinism, then this fight will be regarded as a Great Russian chauvinist against Tatars or Georgians. This would confuse the whole thing. Only Tatar, Georgian, etc. communists can fight against Tatar, Georgian, etc. chauvinism, only Georgian communists can successfully fight their Georgian nationalism or chauvinism. This is the duty of non-Russian Communists ^[64] .

The true vocation of Stalin was revealed with the appointment in 1922 to the post of head of the party apparatus. Of all the major Bolsheviks of that time, he alone found a taste for similar work, which other party leaders found “boring”: correspondence, countless personal appointments, routine clerical work. No one was jealous of this appointment. However, Stalin soon began to use his position of Secretary General to methodically place all his personal supporters in all key posts in the country.

Having declared himself as one of the candidates for the role of Lenin’s successor, Stalin soon discovered that, according to the ideas of that time, such a role requires a reputation as a major ideologist and theorist. He writes a number of works, among which one can distinguish, in particular, “On the Foundations of Leninism” (1924), “On the Issues of Leninism” (1927). Stating that "Leninism is the theory and tactics of the proletarian revolution in general, the theory and tactics of the dictatorship of the proletariat in particular," Stalin placed the Marxist doctrine of the " dictatorship of the proletariat " in the center .

The ideological research of Stalin was characterized by the dominance of the most simplified and popularized schemes demanded in the party, up to 75% of the members of which had only a lower education. In Stalin's approach, the state is a “machine." In the Organizational Report of the Central Committee at the XII Congress (1923), he called the working class "the army of the party" and described how the party controls society through a system of "drive belts". In 1921, in his sketches, Stalin called the Communist Party the “Order of the Sword-Bearers” ^[65] .

J. Boffa points out that there was nothing new in such ideas at that time, in particular, the expression "drive belts" in the same context was previously used by Lenin in 1919 and 1920.

The military command, militaristic phraseology and antidemocratic views characteristic of Stalin were quite typical of a country that went through world and civil wars. At many posts in the party were people with practical experience of command and even externally retaining a paramilitary appearance. The fact that Bolshevism came to the establishment of a sole dictatorship was also quite expected; in 1921, Martov bluntly said that in the case of Lenin’s refusal of democratization, a “military-bureaucratic dictatorship” would be established in Russia; Trotsky, as early as 1904, noted that the methods of party building used by Lenin would end in the fact that "the Central Committee replaces the party organization and, finally, the dictator replaces the Central Committee."

In 1924, Stalin developed the doctrine of " building socialism in a single country ." Without completely abandoning the idea of ​​a “ world revolution ”, this doctrine shifted its focus to Russia. By this time, the attenuation of the revolutionary wave in Europe was final. The Bolsheviks no longer had to hope for an early victory of the revolution in Germany, and the expectations of generous help related to this were dispelled. The party had to move to the organization of a full-fledged government in the country, to the solution of economic problems.

In 1928, under the influence of the grain procurement crisis of 1927 and the rising wave of peasant uprisings, Stalin put forward the doctrine of "strengthening the class struggle as socialism was built." It became an ideological justification for terror, and after the death of Stalin was soon rejected by the leadership of the Communist Party.

Researcher Mikhail Alexandrov in his work “Stalin’s Foreign Policy Doctrine” indicates that in 1928, in his speech at the November plenum of the Central Committee, Stalin praised the modernization activities of the Russian Tsar Peter the Great .

In the 1930s, Stalin promoted the prohibition of the works of the Marxist historian M.N. Pokrovsky . In 1934, Stalin opposed the publication of Engels ' work on the foreign policy of Russian tsarism, which, in particular, called the Russian diplomatic corps a "gang", and Russia itself, striving for "world domination."

In the 1940s, Stalin finally turned to Russian great power. Already in his speech on July 3, 1941, there was practically no communist rhetoric and the “brothers and sisters” turnover, unusual for a communist, was used, at the same time, explicit appeals to traditional Russian patriotism were contained. In accordance with this course, the war received the official name "Great Patriotic War", by analogy with the Patriotic War of 1812.

As early as 1935, personal military ranks were introduced in the army, in 1936 Cossack units were restored . In 1942, the institute of commissars was finally canceled in the army , and finally in 1943 the commanding and commanding staff of the Red Army began to be officially called the " officer ", and shoulder straps were restored as insignia .

During the war years, the aggressive anti-religious campaign and mass closures of churches were also stopped. Stalin was a supporter of the comprehensive expansion of the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church ; so in 1943 the government finally refused to support the motion Renovationism (which, according to the Trotsky was to play in relation to the ROC the same role as that of Protestantism in relation to the Catholic Church), undertaken considerable pressure on the Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine. At the same time, under the clear influence of Stalin, in 1943 the Russian Orthodox Church finally recognized the autocephaly of the Georgian Orthodox Church .

In 1943, Stalin dismissed the Comintern . Stalin's attitude to him was always skeptical; he called this organization a "shop", and its functionaries - useless "parasites." Although formally the Comintern was considered a world, supranational Communist Party, into which the Bolsheviks belonged only as one of the subordinates, national sections, in fact, the Comintern was always the external lever of Moscow . In the reign of Stalin, this manifested itself especially clearly.

In 1945, Stalin proclaimed a toast “ For the Russian people!” ”, Which he called“ the most outstanding nation of all the nations that make up the Soviet Union. ” In fact, the content of the toast itself was very ambiguous; researchers offer completely different interpretations of its meaning, including directly opposing ones.

At the head of the country

Collectivization. Hunger

At the Fifteenth Congress of the CPSU (B.) , Which was held from December 2 to 19, 1927, a decision was made to collectivize agricultural production in the USSR — liquidate individual peasant farms and unite them into collective farms (collective farms). Collectivization was carried out in 1928-1933 ^[66] (in the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus , as well as in Moldova, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, annexed to the USSR in 1939-1940 - after the war, in 1949-1950. )

The background for the transition to collectivization was the grain procurement crisis of 1927, exacerbated by the military psychosis that gripped the country and the mass purchase of essential goods by the population. The notion that peasants hold bread in an attempt to inflate prices for it (the so-called “kulak bread strike”) is widely spread. January 15 - February 6, 1928 Stalin personally made a trip to Siberia, during which he demanded to press “fists and speculators” as much as possible ^[67] .

In 1926-1927, the “Trotskyite-Zinovievsky bloc” widely accused the supporters of the “general line” of underestimating the so-called kulak danger, and demanded a “compulsory grain loan” at firm prices among the wealthy layers of the village. In practice, Stalin even exceeded the requirements of the “left”, the scale of the seizure of bread was significantly increased, and their weight fell on the middle peasants. This was also facilitated by the widespread falsification of statistics, which created the idea that the peasants had some fabulous hidden reserves of bread. According to the recipes of the Civil War, attempts were also made to set one part of the village on another; up to 25% of the seized bread went to the rural poor.

Collectivization was accompanied by the so-called “dispossession” (a number of historians speak of “being dispossessed” ^[68] ) - political repressions ^[69] applied administratively by local authorities on the basis of a resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of January 30, 1930 “On measures to eliminate kulak farms in areas of continuous collectivization ” ^[69] .

Map of the main regions of famine in the USSR

According to the order of the OGPU No. 44.21 of February 6, 1930, an operation began to “seize” 60 thousand fists of the “first category”. Already on the first day of the operation, the OGPU arrested about 16 thousand people, and on February 9, 1930, 25 thousand people were "seized".

In total for 1930-1931, as indicated in the certificate of the Department for Special Migrants of the Gulag of the OGPU, 381,026 families with a total number of 1,803,392 people were sent for special settlement. During 1932-1940, another 489,822 dispossessed arrived in special settlements. Hundreds of thousands of people died in exile .

The actions of the authorities to carry out collectivization led to mass resistance among the peasants. In March 1930 alone, the OGPU counted 6,500 riots, eight hundred of which were crushed with weapons. In total, during 1930, about 2.5 million peasants took part in 14 thousand oppositions against collectivization ^[70] .

The situation in the country in 1929-1932 was close to a new civil war. According to the OGPU reports, local Soviet and party workers, and in one case even the district representative of the OGPU, participated in the unrest in a number of cases. The situation was aggravated by the fact that the Red Army was, for demographic reasons, mainly peasant in composition.

On March 2, 1930, Stalin published in Pravda the article Dizziness from Success. To the issues of the collective farm movement, ”in which he blamed overly zealous performers.

In 1932, a number of regions of the USSR (Ukraine, the Volga region, the Kuban, Belarus, the South Urals, Western Siberia and Kazakhstan) were struck by famine ^[71] . According to some historians, the famine of 1932-1933 was artificial ^[72] : as A. Roginsky stated in an interview with Ekho Moskvy radio, the state had the opportunity to reduce its scope and consequences, but did not ^[72] .

At the same time, starting at least in the summer of 1932, the state provided extensive assistance to the starving regions in the form of the so-called “food loans” and “milk loans”; the grain procurement plans were repeatedly reduced, but even thwarted. In the archives there is, in particular, the cipher telegram of the secretary of the Dnepropetrovsk regional committee Khataevich dated June 27, 1933 with a request to allocate the region an additional 50 thousand pounds of bread; the document contains Stalin’s resolution: “We must give. I. St. " ^[73] .

In total, in the USSR during this period, from various estimates, from 4 to 8 million people died of hunger. The electronic version of Encyclopedia Britannica provides a range of 6 to 8 million ^[74] . The Brockhaus Encyclopedia gives an estimate of 4-7 million ^[75] .

Famous writer M. A. Sholokhovwrote to Stalin a series of letters in which he spoke directly about the disaster that erupted in the Vyoshensky district of the North Caucasus region. As Ivnitsky notes, in response to Sholokhov’s letter of April 4, 1933, Stalin responded by telegram on April 16: “Your letter was received on the fifteenth. Thank you for message. I will do everything that is required. Report the amount of assistance needed. What is the number ?, after which he instructed Molotov to “satisfy Sholokhov’s request in its entirety,” providing 120 thousand pounds of food assistance to the Vyoshensky district and 40 thousand to Verkhnedonsky. Two weeks later, on May 6, 1933, Stalin sent a long letter to Sholokhov, in which he admitted that “sometimes our workers, wanting to curb the enemy, accidentally hit friends and get sadistic,” but at the same time also directly accused the peasants of “ Italian strike ”, in an effort to leave the city and the army without bread.According to Ivnitsky, on July 4, 1933, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution recognizing the "excesses" in the Vyoshensky district, but recognizing them in such a way that they "actually justified them." One of the most zealous performers, Pashinsky, was expelled from the party and sentenced to death, but this court decision was annulled, and Pashinsky limited himself to a severe reprimand.

According to V.V. Kondrashin , the root cause of the famine of 1932-1933 was the strengthening of the collective farm system and political regime by repressive methods associated with the nature of Stalinism and the personality of Stalin himself ^[76] .

The latest data on the exact number of deaths from starvation in Ukraine (3 million 941 thousand people) formed the accusatory part of the verdict of the Kiev Court of Appeal on January 13, 2010 in the case against the organizers of the mass famine of 1932-1933 in the Ukrainian SSR - Joseph Stalin and others representatives of the authorities of the USSR and Ukrainian SSR ^{[77] [78]} .

The famine of 1932-1933 is called^{[ who? ]} “The most terrible crime of Stalin” - the numbers of those who died from him are more than two times higher than the number of those who died in the Gulag and were executed for political reasons during the entire period of Stalin's rule. The victims of the famine were not “ class-alien ” layers of Russian society, as was the case during the Red Terror, and not representatives of the nomenclature , as will happen later in the years of the Great Terror, but the very simple workers for the sake of which social experiments were carried out by the ruling party of the Bolsheviks , led by Stalin ^[79] . In accordance with the doctrine of "initial socialist accumulation", first put forward by the great Trotskyist economist E. PreobrazhenskyIn 1925–26, the village turned into a reservoir for pumping out funds and labor from it for state needs. The situation in which the peasants found themselves as a result of collectivization forced literally millions of people to move to cities to work on industrialization construction sites. As Sheila Fitzpatrick points out, collectivization caused an unprecedented migration of the USSR population: in the late 1920s, on average, about 1 million people moved from villages to cities. per year, then in 1930 2.5 million people moved, in 1931 - 4 million. Over the period 1928-1932, about 12 million people arrived in the cities ^[80] . In the conditions of a shortage of labor caused by the first five-year period, the bulk of yesterday's peasants easily found a job.

The agrarian overpopulation traditional for Russia was destroyed. One of the results of this migration, however, was a sharp increase in the number of eaters, and, as a result, the introduction in 1929 of a card system for bread. Another result was the restoration in December 1932 of the pre-revolutionary passport system . At the same time, the state was aware that the needs of a rapidly growing industry require a massive influx of workers from the countryside. Some order in this migration was introduced in 1931 with the introduction of so-called " organized recruitment ."

The consequences for the village turned out to be generally deplorable. Despite the fact that the outcome of the collectivization of sown area increased by ¹ / ₆ , the gross harvest of grain, milk and beef production decreased, while the average yield decreased. According to S. Fitzpatrick, the village was demoralized. The prestige of peasant labor among the peasants themselves fell, the notion that a better life should go to the city spread.

The catastrophic situation of the times of the first five-year plan somewhat improved in 1933, when it was possible to collect a large crop of bread ^[81] . In 1934, the position of Stalin, shaken due to the failures of the first five-year plan, was significantly strengthened.

By the end of the 1930s. the situation in the agricultural sector has stabilized. Agricultural production began to grow steadily. Labor productivity increased due to electrification and mechanization (in 1933-1940 MTS and state farms received 573 thousand tractors and more than 230 thousand combine harvesters) - this freed more than 20 million people for the heavy industry and other sectors of the economy. The historian E. Yu. Spitsyn notes that the policy of collectivization, for all its mistakes, was completely justified, since it largely predetermined the success of the country's industrial development, and, accordingly, the victory of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War ^[82] .

Industrialization and Urban Planning

Approved by Stalin in 1928, the five-year plan for the construction of 1.5 thousand plants required huge expenses for the purchase of foreign technologies and equipment ^[83] . To finance procurement in the West, Stalin decided to increase the export of raw materials, mainly oil, furs, and grain ^[83] . The problem was complicated by the decline in cereal production. So, if in 1913 pre-revolutionary Russia exported about 10 million tons of bread, then in 1925-1926 the annual export amounted to only 2 million tons ^[84] . Stalin believed ^[83] that collective farmsmay be a means to restore grain exports, with the help of which the state was going to seize agricultural products from the village needed to finance military-oriented industrialization ^[83] .

V.Z. Rogovin points out that the export of bread was by no means the main article of the export income of the USSR. So, in 1930, the country received 883 million rubles from bread exports, oil products and timber gave 1 billion 430 million, furs and flax - up to 500 million. According to the results of 1932–33, bread gave only 8% of export income.

Industrialization and collectivization have led to enormous social changes. Millions of people moved from collective farms to cities. The USSR was embraced by grandiose migration. The number of workers and employees has increased from 9 million people. in 1928 to 23 million in 1940. The population of cities, in particular Moscow, increased sharply from 2 million to 5, Sverdlovsk from 150 thousand to 500. However, the pace of housing construction was completely insufficient to accommodate such a number of new citizens. Typical housing in the 30s remained communal apartments and barracks, and in some cases dugouts.

At the January plenary session of the Central Committee of 1933, Stalin announced that the first five-year plan had been completed in 4 years and 3 months. During the years of the first five-year plan, up to 1,500 enterprises were built, whole new industries appeared (tractor manufacturing, aviation industry, etc.). However, in practice, growth was achieved due to the industry of group A (production of capital goods), the plan for group B was not done. For a number of indicators, the plans of Group B were only 50% fulfilled, and even less. In addition, agricultural production plummeted. In particular, the number of cattle was supposed to increase by 20-30% in 1927-1932, instead it fell by half.

The euphoria of the first years of the five-year period led to storming, to unrealistic inflation of planned targets. According to Rogovin, the plan of the first five-year plan drawn up at the 16th Party Conference and the 5th Congress of Soviets was not actually implemented, not to mention the increased rates approved by the 16th Congress (1930). So, instead of 10 million tons of pig iron, 6.2 were smelted, 23.9 thousand cars were produced in 1932 instead of 100 thousand. The planned targets for the main indicators of the “A” industry were actually achieved in 1933–35, and the higher ones for cast iron , tractors and cars - in 1950, 1956 and 1957 respectively.

Official propaganda in every possible way glorified the names of the leader of the production of Stakhanov, the pilot Chkalov, the construction site of Magnitogorsk, Dneproges, Uralmash. During the second five-year period , a certain growth in housing construction and, in the framework of the cultural revolution , theaters and rest houses was outlined in the USSR . Commenting on a certain increase in the standard of living that emerged with the beginning of the Stakhanov movement, on November 17, 1935, Stalin noted that " Life has become better, life has become more fun ." Indeed, just a month before this statement, cards were canceled in the USSR. However, at the same time, the living standard of 1913 was again achieved only in the 50s (according to official statistics, the 1913 level of GDP per capita was reached in 1934).

In 1936, Soviet propaganda was also enriched with the slogan “ Thank you, Comrade Stalin, for our happy childhood!” ".

The Stalinist model of the economy ensured high rates of economic growth. So, in the years of the first and second five-year periods, the USSR’s GDP grew by 14-15% per year ^[5] . Imports dropped sharply, which was seen as the country's gaining economic independence. Unemployment has been eliminated . By the end of the second five-year period in terms of industrial production, the USSR took second place in the world, second only to the United States. By 1941  , about 9 thousand new plants were built ^[85] . According to ND Kolesov, in just 13 years, the Soviet Union managed to eliminate the backwardness that existed before Stalin's industrialization ^[86] .

At the same time, the extreme nature of industrialization construction sites, the low educational level of yesterday's peasants who arrived at them often resulted in low levels of labor protection, industrial accidents, and breakdowns of expensive equipment. Propaganda preferred to explain the accident rate by the machinations of conspiratorial pests , Stalin personally stated that "there are and will be pests, as long as we have classes, as long as there is a capitalist environment."

The low standard of living of workers gave rise to a general hostility towards relatively more privileged technical specialists. The country was overwhelmed with "special" hysteria, which found its sinister expression in the Shakhty case (1928) and a number of subsequent processes ( Case of the Industrial Party of 1930, Case of the TKP and many others).

Among the construction projects begun under Stalin was the Moscow Metro .

Destruction of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior (1931)

One of the strategic goals of the state was declared a cultural revolution . Within its framework, educational campaigns were conducted (starting back in 1920), the network of schools, technical schools, and universities was expanding. Since 1930, the country introduced universal primary education for the first time. By the end of the 30s, significant successes were achieved in the fight against illiteracy: according to the 1939 census, the percentage of literate people was 87.4% ^[87] . In parallel with the massive construction of holiday homes, museums, parks, an aggressive anti-religious campaign was also conducted. The Union of Militant Atheists (founded in 1925) declared in 1932 the so-called “ Atheist Five-Year Plan”". By order of Stalin, hundreds of churches in Moscow and other Russian cities were blown up ^[88] . In particular, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior was blown up with the aim of building the Palace of Soviets in its place .

Repressive politics

Monument to victims of political repressions in the USSR: a stone from the territory of the Solovetsky special purpose camp erected on Lubyanka Square on Memorial Day for victims of political repressions in the USSR , October 30, 1990. Photo 2006

Bolshevism had a long tradition of state terror. By the time of the October Revolution, the country had already been involved in a world war for more than three years, which greatly depreciated human life; society was used to mass deaths and the death penalty. On September 5, 1918, the Red Terror was officially declared . During the Civil War, up to 140 thousand people were executed by sentences of various emergency and extrajudicial bodies.

State repressions reduced their scope, but did not stop in the 1920s, flaring up with particularly destructive force in the period 1937-1938. After the assassination of Kirov in 1934, the course toward "reconciliation" was gradually replaced by a new course towards the most merciless repressions. In accordance with the Marxist class approach, entire groups of the population fell under suspicion, according to the principle of collective responsibility: former "kulaks", former members of various intra-party oppositions, persons of a number of Soviet nationalities of foreign nationalitiessuspected of "double loyalty" (repression along the "Polish line" was distinguished by a special scale), and even the military. Many top military leaders advanced even under Trotsky, and during the internal party discussion of 1923, the military widely supported Trotsky. Rogovin also indicates that the Red Army was predominantly peasant in composition, and dissatisfaction with the results of collectivization objectively penetrated its environment ^[89] . Finally, under certain suspicion, paradoxically, the NKVD itself was also located; Naumov emphasizes that there were sharp structural imbalances in its composition, in particular, up to 38% were people of Bolshevik origin, and only 25% of the social composition of workers and peasants ^[90] .

Stalin, Molotov, Voroshilov and Yezhov in the 1937 election.

According to the Memorial Society, for the period October 1936-November 1938, 1,710 thousand people were arrested by the NKVD bodies, 724 thousand people were executed, and besides, up to 2 million people were convicted by the courts on criminal charges ^[91] . The installation for cleaning was given by the February-March plenary session of the Central Committee of 1937; In his report “On the Shortcomings of Party Work and Measures to Eliminate Trotskyist and Other Double-Dealers,” Stalin personally called on the Central Committee to “uproot and defeat,” in accordance with his own doctrine of “aggravation of the class struggle as socialism is built.”

The so-called "Great Terror", or "Yezhovschina" of 1937-1938, resulted in the self-destruction of the Soviet leadership on an unprecedented scale; Thus, out of 73 people who spoke at the February-March plenary session of the Central Committee of 1937, 56 were shot. The absolute majority of the delegates of the XVII Congress of the CPSU (B.) And up to 78% of the composition of the Central Committee elected by this congress also perished. Despite the fact that the NKVD bodies acted as the main shock force of state terror, they themselves became a victim of the most severe purges; The main organizer of the repressions, People's Commissar Yezhov, himself became their victim.

During the purge, some individuals from Stalin’s inner circle also died; his personal friend A. Yenukidze was shot , and G. K. Ordzhonikidze died under completely unclear circumstances.

According to N. Werth in an interview with Ekho Moskvy radio, mass repression was the main form of government and society in the Stalin era ^{[10] [92]} .

Kaganovich L. M. gave a rather frank explanation of terror:

... because they were all members of the government. The Trotskyist government was, the Zinoviev government was, the Rykov government was, it was very dangerous and impossible. Three governments could arise from opponents of Stalin ... How could they be kept free? ... Trotsky, who was a good organizer, could lead a rebellion ... Who could believe that the old, experienced conspirators, using all the experience of Bolshevik conspiracy and the Bolshevik organization, that these people would not communicate with each other and would not make up the organization?

The most active part in the cleaning was taken by a number of people from Stalin’s inner circle, in particular, Yezhov, Molotov, Kaganovich, Zhdanov, Malenkov and many others. However, it is certain that it was Stalin who was the main “manager” of terror ^[11] . In particular, he personally wrote indictments for high-profile trials ^[11] . There are hundreds of notes made by Stalin’s hand, in which he demanded that the Chekists kill more and more ^[11] . He handed down sentences in red pencil. Opposite some names, he wrote: “Beat more.” At the bottom of numerous pages stood: “To shoot everyone” ^[11] . On some days, Stalin sentenced more than 3,000 so-called enemies of the people to execution ^[11]. According to the Memorial human rights society, personally, Stalin and his closest associates in the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks signed lists for the conviction of 43,768 people only in 1936-1938 ^{[approx. 13]} , overwhelmingly to be shot ^[93] , known as the " Stalin's shooting lists ." During the Great Terror, the head of the NKVD, Nikolai Yezhov, submitted to Stalin orders for each region to be executed or exiled to the Gulag, and Stalin determined the statistical plan of “sweeps” ^[11] . On the ground, in the districts there was a competition, who was the first to exceed this plan. And each time, when a local NKVD officer carried out an order, he asked for permission "for an extraordinary massacre"^[11] , and each time Stalin permitted ^[11] .

According to Yu. N. Zhukov, repression could have occurred without the knowledge and without the participation of Stalin. Until 1934, the historian asserts, repressions in the party did not go beyond the framework of the factional struggle and consisted of removal from high posts and transfers to non-prestigious sections of party work, that is, arrests were excluded. As for the repressions against workers, peasants and intelligentsia, Yu. N. Zhukov emphasizes that all the processes of the late 1920s, directed primarily against the intelligentsia, against the engineers, were initiated by Bukharin , who controlled the activities of the OGPU in those years and gave sanctions on all arrests, on all political processes ^[94] .

According to Arseny Roginsky, chairman of the board of the Memorial international human rights society , quoted in an interview with Ekho Moskvy radio ^[72] , 4.5–4.8 million people were convicted for political reasons during the Soviet history, about 1 of them were shot. , 1 million, the rest fell into the Gulag ; at least 6.5 million were deported (since 1920, when 9 thousand families of five Cossack villages, or 45 thousand people, were deported until the deportation of 1951-1952); approximately 4 million were deprived of voting rights (more than a million - according to the Constitution of the RSFSR of 1918, the rest - by a decree of 1925, according to which family members were included in this category); approximately 400-500 thousand were repressed on the basis of various decrees and decrees; 6-7 million perished from the famine of 1932-1933 ; 17 961 thousand people became victims of the so-called labor decrees (published on June 26, 1940, canceled in 1956). Thus, according to the Memorial organization, depending on the calculation method, from 11–12 million to 38–39 million people became victims of terror ^[72] . In another interview, he says:

... in the entire history of Soviet power, from 1918 to 1987 (the last arrests were in early 1987), according to the surviving documents, it turned out that there were 7 million 100 thousand people arrested by security agencies throughout the country. Moreover, among them were arrested not only for political issues. And quite a lot. Yes, the security agencies arrested them, but the security authorities arrested them in different years for gangsterism, smuggling, counterfeiting. And in many other "general" articles.

Roginsky relates these figures to the entire Soviet period of history (and not just to the rule of Stalin). In particular, discrimination in the form of deprivation of the so-called “unearned elements” of voting rights was carried out in accordance with the Soviet Constitutions of 1918 and 1925 , and was abolished by the “Stalinist” Constitution of 1936 .

Rogovin V.Z., referring to archival data, indicates the following number of victims of terror ^[95] :

• According to a memo submitted by the USSR Prosecutor General Rudenko , Minister of the Interior Kruglov and Minister of Justice Gorshenin in February 1954, from 1921 to February 1, 1954, 3,770,380 people were convicted of so-called "counter-revolutionary crimes," including 642 980, to detention in camps and prisons 2,369,320, to exile and deportation 765,180;
• According to data provided by KGB officers “in the early 1990s,” 3,778,234 people were repressed, of which 786,098 were executed;
• According to data provided by the archival department of the Ministry of Security of the Russian Federation in 1992, for the period 1917-1990, 3,853,900 people were convicted of state crimes, of which 827,995 to the highest degree.

As Rogovin points out, during the period 1921-1953, up to 10 million people passed through the Gulag, its number in 1838 amounted to 1882 thousand people .; the maximum number of the Gulag, for all the time of its existence, was reached in 1950, and amounted to 2561 thousand people.

From 1930 to 1953, according to various researchers, only 3.6 to 3.8 million people were arrested on political charges, of which 748 to 786 thousand were shot ^{[96] [97] [98]} .

Draft resolution of the CEC and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR "On the fight against juvenile delinquents." (With additions and notes by I. Stalin)

In April 1935, Stalin initiated a legal act according to which children from the age of twelve could be arrested and punished ^{[99] [100]} (including shooting ^[101] ) on an equal basis with adults. In a 1998 book by P. Solomon, “Soviet Justice under Stalin,” it was argued that no examples of executions of death sentences were found in the archives ^[102] ; however, according to the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper, in 2010, Echo of Moscow journalists found documents about three executed minors (one 16-year-old and two 17-year-olds) who were later rehabilitated ^[103] .

During the Stalinist repressions , torture was used on a large scale to obtain a confession ^{[104] [105] [106] [107] [108]} .

Stalin not only knew about the use of torture, but also personally ordered the use of “methods of physical influence” against “ enemies of the people ” and, on occasion, even specified what type of torture should have been used ^{[109] [110] [111]} . He first ordered after the revolution to apply torture to political prisoners; it was a measure that the Russian revolutionaries rejected until he issued an order ^[112] . Under Stalin, the methods of the NKVD with their sophistication and cruelty surpassed all the inventions of the tsarist police ^[112] . The historian Anton Antonov-Ovseenko points out: “He planned, prepared and carried out the operations to exterminate unarmed subjects. He willingly entered into technical details, he was pleased with the opportunity to directly participate in the "exposure" of enemies. The secretary general was especially pleased with the confrontations , and he repeatedly indulged himself with these truly devilish ideas ” ^[113].

Integral map Gulag camp system, which existed from 1923 to 1967, on the basis of human rights organization " Memorial "

The Gulag system was created by Stalin’s personal order ^[114] , which he regarded as an economic resource ^{[115] [116]} . In reality, the work of the Gulag prisoners was extremely ineffective, and productivity was negligible. Thus, the output per worker in the Gulag during construction and installation works was about 2 times lower than in the civilian sector ^{[117] [118]} . The Gulag did not justify the costs for itself and demanded subsidies for maintenance from the state, which were constantly growing ^[119] . The Gulag system was already in the midst of a crisis during the lifetime of Stalin, and everyone except Stalin understood this ^[120]. Several million were sentenced to all sorts of fines. Only the camp guards needed to contain about 300 thousand people, not counting the escort troops and MGB officers.

According to N. Werth in an interview with Ekho Moskvy radio, during the reign of Stalin, more than 20 million went through the Gulag ^[10] and another 6 million were deported to special villages ^[10] . At the same time, Rogovin, referring to archival data, indicates that a total of 10 million people passed through the GULAG, 1.8 million people were in special settlements on February 1, 1937, and 2.6 million on February 21, 1939. The maximum number of special settlements was reached in 1950 and amounted to about 3 million people, most of whom were representatives of peoples deported during the war ^[95] .

The years 1937-1938 saw a period of mass repression, often referred to as the " Great Terror ." The campaign was initiated and supported personally by Stalin ^[121] and caused extreme damage to the economy and military power of the Soviet Union ^[122] .

According to the leading specialist in the field of intra-party relations of the 1920s - 1930s. O. V. Khlevnyuk ,

We have every reason to consider the "Great Terror" as a series of centralized, planned and carried out on the basis of the decisions of the Politburo (actually Stalin) mass operations to destroy the "anti-Soviet elements" and "counter-revolutionary national contingents." Their goal was the elimination of the “fifth column” in the worsening international situation and the growing threat of war ... Stalin's exclusive role in organizing this surge of terror is beyond doubt and is absolutely confirmed by all documents ... Everything that is known today about the preparation and conduct of mass operations 1937-1938 ., allows us to argue that without Stalin’s orders there would simply be “great terror” ... ^[123]

According to Yu. N. Zhukov ,

Stalin began to fear that his course towards democratization, the center of which was to become the new Constitution, would fail. And being ready to hold it at any cost, even through cruel repression, he untied the hands of the NKVD ^[124] .

The first five marshals of the Soviet Union (from left to right) are sitting: Tukhachevsky (executed ^[125] ), Voroshilov , Egorov (executed); stand: Budyonny and Blucher (arrested, died in Lefortovo prison from torture ^[126] )

List of persons subject to trial by the Military Collegium of the Supreme USSR of July 26, 1938 with Stalin’s personal signature and commentary “For the execution of all 138” ^[127]

In 1937-1938, it was carried out large-scale political repression of command and officers of the Red Army and Red Navy , which stand out by researchers as one of the manifestations of the policy of " Great Terror " in the USSR. Actually, they began in the second half of 1936, but acquired the greatest scope after the arrest and conviction of MN Tukhachevsky and seven other high-ranking military men in May – June 1937; for 1937-1938 their peak occurred, and in 1939-1941, after a sharp decline, they continued with significantly lower intensity.

Historians agree that the Stalinist repressions in the Red Army caused serious damage to the country's defense ^{[128] [129]} and, among other factors, led to significant losses of Soviet troops in the initial period of World War II .

The repressed during these years included three of the five marshals of the Soviet Union, 20 commanders of the 1st and 2nd rank, 5 flagships of the fleet of the 1st and 2nd rank, 6 flagships of the 1st rank, 69 comcor, 153 divisional commanders, 247 brigades ^[130] .

There is still no consensus among historians on the extent of repression ^[131] . Experts note that the search for information on the exact number of repressed is extremely difficult, since the repression in the Red Army was carried out in the strictest confidence. As a result, exact data are still unknown ^[132] .

Role in the second world war

Prewar foreign policy

The inevitability of a new big war was quite obvious to the Bolshevik party. So, Kamenev L. B. called to expect the beginning of a new “even more monstrous, even more fatal war” in his report “On the capitalist environment” at the X Congress of the RCP (B.) In 1921. Mikhail Aleksandrov, in his work “Stalin’s Foreign Policy Doctrine,” indicates that speaking at the ECCI on May 30, 1925, Stalin also stated that “the war in Europe will begin and that they will surely wrangle there, there can be no doubt”. At the Fourteenth Congress (December 1925), Stalin expressed confidence that Germany would not put up with the conditions of the Versailles Peace Treaty.

After Hitler came to power, Stalin sharply changed traditional Soviet politics: if earlier it was aimed at an alliance with Germany against the Versailles system , and along the line of the Comintern  , at the struggle against the Social Democrats as the main enemy (the theory of “ social fascism ” is Stalin’s personal installation ^[133] ), now it consisted of creating a system of “collective security” as part of the USSR and the former Entente countries against Germany and the union of the Communists with all left forces against fascism (tactics of the “popular front”). This position was initially not consistent: in 1935, Stalin, alarmed by the German-Polish rapprochement, secretly offered Hitler a non-aggression pact, but was refused ^[134].

In his speech to graduates of military academies on May 5, 1941, Stalin summed up the rearmament of the troops that took place in the 1930s, expressed confidence that the German army was not invincible. Volkogonov D. A. interprets this speech as follows: “The leader made it clear: war is inevitable in the future. "One must be prepared for the unconditional defeat of German fascism ... The war will be fought on the territory of the enemy, and victory will be achieved with little blood."

At the same time, Stalin preferred to maneuver between the two main alliances of the Western powers. Taking advantage of the German clash with England and France in 1939, the USSR occupied the territories of Western Belarus and Western Ukraine and launched a war with Finland , for which he was expelled from the League of Nations in December 1939 as an aggressor. As an excuse for the demands made by Finland, the USSR stated that Germany was planning an attack on Russia, including a side attack through Finland.

Until the Hitler attack, the Soviet Union collaborated with Nazi Germany. There is numerous documentary evidence of cooperation of various kinds, from treaties of friendship and active trade to joint parades and conferences of the NKVD and the Gestapo ^[135] . Before signing the friendship treaty, Stalin told Ribbentrop ^{[136] [137]} :

However, if, contrary to expectations, Germany finds itself in a difficult situation, then she can be sure that the Soviet people will come to Germany's aid and will not allow Germany to be strangled. The Soviet Union is interested in strong Germany and will not allow Germany to be thrown to the ground ...

The Second World War began in 1939 and almost two years, until June 1941, was marked by the official friendship of Hitler and Stalin ^{[138] [139] [140]} . In December 1939, in response to congratulations on his 60th birthday, Stalin replied to Ribbentrop :

Thank you Mr. Minister. The friendship of the peoples of Germany and the Soviet Union, sealed with blood, has every reason to be long and lasting ^{[138] [139] [141]} .

52% of all exports of the Soviet Union in 1940 were directed to Germany ^[142] . Speaking at a session of the Supreme Council on August 1, 1940, Molotov said that Germany received the main support from the Soviet Union in the form of calm confidence in the east ^[142] . However, relations between the countries were not cloudless. I. Hoffman points out that in November 1940, Stalin transferred to Germany his demands for the further expansion of the Soviet zone of influence in Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary and Finland ^[143] . These demands were met by the German government extremely hostile and became one of the reasons for the attack on the USSR on June 22, 1941.

A number of historians blame Stalin personally for the unpreparedness of the Soviet Union for war and huge losses, especially in the initial period of the war, indicating that many sources called Stalin June 22, 1941 as the date of the attack ^{[11] [144]} . At the same time, the sources indicated completely different dates of the attack and different primary targets of the bombing: intelligence at the time reported that already in April 1941 Germany would attack the USSR. On June 16, 1941, V. N. Merkulov reported to Stalin the information received from an agent of the Berlin residency under the name "Petty Officer" (he was Harro Schulze-Boysen): the goals of the bombing of Moscow from German aviation should have been primarily the Svir-3 power plant and factories for the production of automobile and aviation spare parts. The Schulze-Boysen document also stated that Alfred Rosenberg, urging in his public speech to erase the name “Soviet Union” from the geographical map, urgently began selecting managers for managing future Reich commissariats in the USSR. However, based on the fact that as early as April 30, similarly from the "Petty Officer" there were reports of an impending attack in the next month and a half, and a list of the bombing targets indicated in the new report, on June 17, Stalin left a resolution of the following content ^[145] :

"T [ovary] to Merkulov. Maybe send your" source "from the headquarters of the Germans. Aviation to the fucking mother. This is not a" source ", but a disinfectant ^[146] .

After that, Merkulov refused to sign the “Calendar of Messages of the Corsican and the Petty Officer”, which contained all the key information about the actions of the German armed forces from September 1940 to June 1941. Zoya Rybkina concluded this document with a brief summary, which is often indicated as a summary of Schulze-Boysen’s authorship: “All German military activities to prepare an armed uprising against the USSR are completely over, and a strike can be expected at any time” ^{[147] [148] [146] [ 149] [145]} .

The shooting of Polish officers in Katyn

In the spring of 1940, 21,857 Polish prisoners were shot by NKVD officers of the USSR ^[150] .

On November 26, 2010, the State Duma of Russia ^[151] adopted a statement “On the Katyn tragedy and its victims”, which recognizes the shooting of Katyn as a crime committed by direct order of Stalin and other Soviet leaders, and expresses sympathy for the Polish people ^[152] . However, considering this tragedy, from the point of view of making certain decisions by Joseph Stalin, one should not forget about the death of Soviet prisoners of war in Poland from 18 to 60 thousand people in 1921-1923.

Stalin in the early days of World War II

Already at 5 hours 45 minutes on June 22, Stalin in his office in the Kremlin received the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR V.M. Molotov, the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs L.P. Beria , the People's Commissar of Defense S.K. Timoshenko , the Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR L.Z. Mehlis and Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army G.K. Zhukov . ^[153]

The day after the outbreak of war (June 23, 1941), the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, by a joint resolution ^[154] formed the Headquarters of the Main Command of the Armed Forces of the USSR , to which Stalin was included and whose chairman was appointed people's commissar of defense, Marshal of the Soviet Union S K. Timoshenko . On June 24, Stalin signed a decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR on the creation of the Evacuation Council under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR , designed to organize the evacuation of "the population, institutions, military and other cargo, equipment of enterprises and other valuables" of the western part of the USSR.

When Minsk fell on June 28 , Stalin fell into prostration ^{[155] [156] [157] [158] [159] [160] [161] [162]} . On June 29, Stalin did not come to the Kremlin, which caused great concern among his entourage. On the afternoon of June 30, his colleagues in the Politburo came to him in Kuntsevo, and, impressed by some of them, Stalin decided that they were going to arrest him ^{[163] [164]} . The participants decided to create T-bills . “ We see that Stalin did not participate in the affairs of the country a little more than a day ,” writes R. A. Medvedev ^[164] .

Military leadership

World War II, June 1941

At the beginning of the war, Stalin was a weak strategist and made many incompetent decisions ^[11] . As an example of such a decision, Dr. Simon Sibeg-Montefiore cites the situation in September 1941: although all the generals asked Stalin to withdraw troops from Kiev, he allowed the Nazis to take in a "bag" and kill a military group of five armies ^[11] .

At the same time, in the opinion of Marshal of the Soviet Union G.K. Zhukov , starting from the Battle of Stalingrad, Stalin began to prove himself to be a person "... who knows the issues of organizing front-line operations and operations of front-line groups and manages them with great knowledge of the matter, well versed in big strategic issues ” , as well as one who knows “ to find the main link in a strategic environment ” . In general, G.K. Zhukov assesses Stalin as "a worthy Supreme Commander . " In addition, G.K. Zhukov considers it necessary to pay tribute to I.V. Stalin, as an outstanding organizer in“Ensuring operations, creating strategic reserves, organizing the production of military equipment and generally creating everything necessary for warfare” ^[165] . In 1942, Time magazine called Stalin "the man of the year" ^[166] .

The first page of the list of 46 “arrested persons belonging to the NKVD of the USSR” of January 29, 1942. Resolution of Stalin: “Shoot all those named in the note. I. St. "

The initial period of the war

A week after the outbreak of the war (June 30, 1941), Stalin was appointed Chairman of the newly formed State Defense Committee .

On July 3, Stalin made a radio message to the Soviet people , beginning with the words: “Comrades, citizens, brothers and sisters, soldiers of our army and navy! I appeal to you, my friends! ” ^[167]

On July 10, 1941, the High Command Headquarters was transformed into the Supreme Command Headquarters (ICC), and Stalin was appointed chairman instead of Tymoshenko.

On July 19, 1941, Stalin replaced Tymoshenko as the People’s Commissar of Defense ^[168] .

Since August 8, 1941, Stalin was appointed by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the USSR , and the Headquarters of the Supreme Command was renamed the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command (SVKK).

July 31, 1941, Stalin received the personal representative and closest adviser to US President Franklin Roosevelt  - Harry Hopkins ^[169] . On December 16–20, in Moscow, Stalin held talks with British Foreign Minister E. Eden on the conclusion of an agreement between the USSR and Great Britain on an alliance in the war against Germany and on post-war cooperation.

On August 16, 1941, Stalin signed the Order of the Supreme High Command Headquarters No. 270, which read: “Commanders and political workers who, during the battle, tear off the insignia and deserting to the rear or surrendering to the enemy, are considered malicious deserters whose families are to be arrested as families deserters who violated the oath and betrayed their homeland ”(see: Order No. 270 ) .

During the battle of Moscow in 1941 , after declaring Moscow in a state of siege , Stalin remained in the capital ^[170] , on November 6, 1941, he spoke at a gala meeting held at the Mayakovskaya metro station , which was dedicated to the 24th anniversary of the October Revolution . In his speech, Stalin explained the unsuccessful start of the war for the Red Army, in particular, “the lack of tanks and partly aviation” ^[171] . The next day, November 7, 1941, at the direction of Stalin , a traditional military parade was held on Red Square .

On May 30, 1942, Stalin signed a decree of the GKO on the creation of the Central Headquarters of the partisan movement at the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command. September 5, 1942 issues an order "On the tasks of the partisan movement", which became a program document in the further organization of the struggle in the rear of the invaders ^[172] .

On July 28, 1942, Stalin, as people's commissar of defense, signed “ Order No. 227, ” aimed at tightening discipline in the Red Army, prohibiting the withdrawal of troops without an order from the leadership, introducing penal battalions as part of the fronts and penal companies as part of the armies, as well as barrage detachments as part of armies.

The introduction of detachments was by no means the invention of Stalin; similar methods were already used by the Bolsheviks during the Civil War. Researchers V. Krasnov and V. Daines claim that the famous Stalinist Order No. 227 actually repeated the provisions of Trotsky's Order No. 65 on the Southern Front of 11.24.1918. Order No. 65 still shakes its cruelty; he demanded the execution of not only the deserters, but also their concealers and the burning of their homes.

Fracture during the Great Patriotic War

The beginning of a radical turning point in the war, laid down in the Battle of Stalingrad, was continued during the winter offensive of the Red Army of 1943. In the Battle of Kursk, what was started near Stalingrad was completed, there was a radical change not only in the Second World War, but throughout the Second World War. On February 11, 1943, Stalin signed a GKO decree on the start of work to create an atomic bomb.

Stalin, F. D. Roosevelt and W. Churchill at the Tehran Conference

On November 25, 1943, Stalin, accompanied by the People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs of the USSR V.M. Molotov and a member of the GKO, deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR K.E. Voroshilov, travels to Stalingrad and Baku , from where he flies to Tehran by plane (for the first and only time in his life) ( Iran ). From November 28 to December 1, 1943, Stalin participated in the Tehran Conference  , the first conference of the "Big Three" during the years of World War II, the leaders of three countries: the USSR, the USA and Great Britain .

End of war

Potsdam Conference

February 4 - February 11, 1945 Stalin participates in the Yalta Conference of the Allied Powers on the establishment of a post-war world order.

A number of people emphasize the importance of the fact that it was the Soviet flag that was hoisted over the Reichstag. Candidate of Sciences Nikita Sokolov on the air of Ekho Moskvy radio explains this by the fact that the Americans and the British refused to take several large cities, including Berlin, as this could lead to great loss of life ^[173] .

At the same time, J. Boffa points out that, as opposed to General Eisenhower’s plans , “Churchill and the British generals sought at all costs to reach Berlin before the Russians arrived” :

In early April [1945], therefore, Stalin had two mutually exclusive documents in his hands: a message from Eisenhower and a report from Soviet intelligence alleging that the troops of Montgomerygetting ready to strike at Berlin. Stalin praised Eisenhower's loyalty, but nevertheless decided to resort to cunning. In response to the American general, he approved of his plans and at the same time assured him that Berlin had lost its “former strategic importance” and that the Soviet troops would therefore send only a secondary force group to take the city. In reality, he has just signed a directive on the last major offensive in this war - on the capital of Germany. In the eyes of the Soviet people, the capture of Berlin was to serve as the necessary crown of their victory. It was not only prestige. Berlin in their hands meant a guarantee that the USSR would be able to force others to reckon with their opinions when deciding on the fate of Germany. ^[174]

Researcher Kynin, G.P. the 2nd Belorussian Front did not have time to prepare for it).

In a message to President Roosevelt on April 1, 1945, Churchill bluntly stated that “... from a political point of view, we should advance in Germany as far east as possible and that if Berlin is within our reach, we should certainly take it " . General Eisenhower responded to Churchill's concern as follows: “Of course, if at any moment the resistance is suddenly broken along the entire front, we will move forward, and Lubeck and Berlin will be among our important goals.”

With the beginning of the Berlin operation by the Soviet Army on April 16, 1945, Churchill realized that the Anglo-American troops at that time physically could not break into Berlin and concentrated on occupying Lübeck in order to prevent the Soviet occupation of Denmark.

Orlando Figes, a professor of Russian history at the University of London on Discovery Civilization, disputes the widespread opinion about Stalin's merits in the victory of the Soviet people in the Second World War ^[175] , pointing to the complete unpreparedness of industry, agriculture and the country's morale for the war in 1941 ^[175] .

Deportation of peoples

In the USSR, many nations were subjected to total deportation, among them: Koreans , Germans , Ingrian Finns , Karachais , Kalmyks , Chechens , Ingush , Balkars , Crimean Tatars and Meskhetian Turks . Seven of them - Germans, Karachais, Kalmyks, Ingush, Chechens, Balkars and Crimean Tatars - lost their national autonomies.

Many other ethnic, ethno-confessional and social categories of Soviet citizens were deported to the USSR: Cossacks , “ fists ” of various nationalities, Poles , Azerbaijanis , Kurds , Chinese , Russians , Iranians , Iranian Jews , Ukrainians , Moldovans , Lithuanians , Latvians , Estonians , Greeks , Bulgarians , Armenians , Kabardians , Khemshin Armenians ,Armenians - “ Dashnaks ”, Turks , Tajiks and others ^[176] .

Postwar years

Socio-economic policy. The development of the military-industrial complex

Stalin on the podium with Mao Zedong , Bulganin , Ulbricht and Tsedenbal , December 21, 1949

December 14, 1947, Stalin signed the Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks No. 4004 “On the implementation of monetary reform and the abolition of cards for food and industrial goods” ^[177] . The monetary reform was carried out in the form of a denomination . It was of a confiscatory nature (monetary reforms in the countries of Europe in 1944-1948 ^[178] had a similar character ) and eliminated the consequences of the war in monetary circulation. Then, in 1948-1953, there was an annual decline in retail prices for consumer goods ^[85]. Reduced prices have somewhat improved the standard of living of the Soviet people. In 1952, the cost of bread was 39% of the price of the end of 1947, milk - 72%, meat - 42%, sugar - 49%, butter - 37%. As noted at the XIX Congress of the CPSU , at the same time, the price of bread increased by 28% in the USA, by 90% in England, in France - more than doubled; the cost of meat in the USA increased by 26%, in England - by 35%, in France - by 88% ^[179] . If in 1948 real wages were on average 20% lower than the pre-war level, then in 1952 they already exceeded the pre-war level by 25% and almost reached the level of 1928 ^[180] .

The USSR reached the pre-war level in most economic indicators already in 1948, after which the rapid growth of GDP continued. In the late 1940s - 1950s, the Soviet economy was already developing predominantly along an intensive path. This was largely due to the prevailing features of the Stalinist model of a centralized economy, in particular, its focus on increasing labor productivity and reducing the cost of production ^{[181] [85]} . From 1939 to the mid-50s. there was a unique method of increasing labor efficiency (MPE), which was a combination of moral and material incentives for workers and activated innovation in production, the implementation of the achievements of science and technology ^[182] .

On October 20, 1948, a resolution was adopted by the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks No. 3960 “On the plan of field-afforestation, the introduction of grass crop rotation, the construction of ponds and reservoirs to ensure high sustainable yields in the steppe and forest-steppe regions of the European part of the USSR” ^[183] , which went down in history as the Stalinist plan for the transformation of nature . An integral part of this grandiose plan was the large-scale construction of industrial power plants and canals, which were called the Great Communist construction projects .

In the year of Stalin's death, the average calorie content of the daily diet of an agricultural worker was 17% lower than the level of 1928 ^[184] . According to the secret information of the Central Statistical Administration , the pre-revolutionary level of nutrition by the number of calories per day was achieved only in the late 50s and early 60s ^[185] .

Despite the difficulties of the postwar years, the Stalinist government increased funding from the state budget for education and science. In the years of the fourth five-year plan, the number of research institutes increased by almost a third, and academies of sciences were created in Kazakhstan, Latvia, and Estonia. Since 1951, seven-year school education has become compulsory ^[186] .

On July 24, 1945, in Potsdam, Truman informed Stalin that the United States "now has weapons of extraordinary destructive power . " According to Churchill's memoirs, Stalin smiled, but did not become interested in the details. From this Churchill concluded that Stalin did not understand anything and was not up to date ^[187] . That same evening, Stalin ordered Molotov to speak with Kurchatov to speed up work on the nuclear project. On August 20, 1945, to manage the atomic project, GKO created a Special Committee with extraordinary powers , headed by L.P. Beria . An executive body was created under the Special Committee - the First Main Directorate under the SNK of the USSR (PSU). Stalin's directive obliged PSU to ensure the creation ofatomic bombs , uranium and plutonium , in 1948. On January 25, 1946, Stalin first met with the developer of the atomic bomb, Academician I.V. Kurchatov; Present at the meeting: Chairman of the Special Committee on the Use of Atomic Energy L.P. Beria , People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs V.M. Molotov , Chairman of the USSR State Planning Commission N.A. Voznesensky , Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars G.M. Malenkov , People's Commissar for Foreign Trade A. I. Mikoyan , Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks A. A. Zhdanov , President of the USSR Academy of Sciences S. I. Vavilov , Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences S. V. Kaftanov. In 1946, Stalin signed about sixty documents that determined the development of atomic science and technology, the result of which was the successful test of the first Soviet atomic bomb on August 29, 1949 at the training ground in the Semipalatinsk region of the Kazakh SSR and the construction of the world's first nuclear power plant in Obninsk (1954) .

Death

Stalin died in his official residence, the Near Country , where he permanently resided in the post-war period. On March 1, 1953, one of the guards found him lying on the floor of a small dining room. On the morning of March 2, doctors arrived at the Near Summer Cottage and diagnosed paralysis of the right side of the body. On March 5 at 21:50, Stalin died ^[188] . According to a medical report, death occurred as a result of a brain hemorrhage .

Tombstone of I.V. Stalin at the Kremlin wall . 2011 year

The medical history and autopsy results show that Stalin had several ischemic strokes (lacunar, but probably also atherothrombotic), which, according to the president of the World Federation of Neurologists V. Khachinski, led not only to vascular cognitive impairment , but also to progressive disorder psyche ^[189] .

There are numerous versions that suggest the unnaturalness of death and the involvement of Stalin’s entourage in it. According to the historian I. I. Chigirin , N. S. Khrushchev should be considered a conspirator-killer ^[190] . Other historians consider L.P. Beria , N.A. Bulganin and G.M. Malenkov to be involved in the death of Stalin . Almost all researchers agree that Stalin's associates contributed (not necessarily intentionally) to his death, not rushing to call for medical help.

The embalmed body of Stalin was placed in the Mausoleum of Lenin , 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 ruled that "Stalin’s serious violations of the Leninist covenants ... make it impossible to leave the tomb 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 ^[191] .

Stalin's personality ratings

Positive

In the obituary on the death of JV Stalin in the newspaper Manchester Guardian of March 6, 1953, his truly historic achievement is the transformation of the Soviet Union from an economically backward country to the level of the second industrialized country in the world.

In 1956, the phrase about a plow and a nuclear reactor was included in the article "Stalin" in the British Encyclopedia ^[192] .

May Day in London , May 1, 2009

A number of historians and economists note that in the late 1920s. in the field of economic policy, Stalin chose the strategically correct path of forced industrialization , and harsh methods of industrialization and collectivization were forced, because they were necessary for the survival of the Soviet state in the historical conditions of that time (after all, there were real military threats that periodically arose around the perimeter of Soviet borders ^[193] ) As a result, in just over ten years in the industrial development, the lag behind the developed countries of the West was radically reduced, and in absolute terms, the USSR became the second economy in the world (after the United States). Industrialization has become one of the key factors in the victory of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War, and also brought the country out of "Malthusian trap . " Created in the late 1920s. The Stalinist model of the economy (Stalin himself was its main architect) lasted three decades (until the end of the 1950s) and throughout its entire course demonstrated high economic growth rates, which, according to a number of economists ( Valentin Katasonov , Grigory Khanin , etc. ) can be called a "Soviet economic miracle." Moreover, in the last period of the Stalinist model (from the end of the 1940s to the end of the 1950s), due to an increase in the efficiency of economic policy, the transition from extensive to intensive economic growth began ^{[85] [181]} .

According to the English historian Simon Sebag-Montefiore , Stalin had outstanding intellectual abilities: for example, he could read Plato in the original. When Stalin came to power, the historian continues, he always wrote his speeches and articles in a clear and often sophisticated style ^[35] .

According to Simon Sebag-Montefiore, the myth of the ignorant Stalin was created by Trotsky . In fact, Stalin’s library totaled 20,000 volumes, he spent many hours reading books every day, making notes on their fields and keeping a catalog of them. At the same time, Stalin's tastes regarding reading were eclectic: Maupassant , Wilde , Gogol , Goethe , Zola . In addition, he liked poetry (in his youth he himself wrote poetry in Georgian). Stalin was an erudite person - he quoted the Bible , the works of Bismarck , the works of Chekhov , admired Dostoevsky , considering him a wonderful psychologist^[35] .

The English writer Charles Snow also characterized Stalin's educational level rather highly:

“One of many interesting circumstances related to Stalin: he was much more educated in the literary sense than any of the statesmen contemporary to him. In comparison, Lloyd George and Churchill  are wonderfully poorly-read people. Like, however, Roosevelt ” ^[194] .

Negative

1989, rally in Kurapaty , Belarus .

Some historians believe that Stalin established a personal dictatorship ^{[195] [196] [197]} ; others suggest that until the mid-1930s, the dictatorship was collective in nature ^[198] . According to the historian O. V. Khlevnyuk ^[199] , the Stalinist dictatorship was an extremely centralized regime, based primarily on powerful party-state structures , terror and violence , as well as on the mechanisms of ideological manipulation of society, the selection of privileged groupsand pragmatic strategies. According to R. Hingley , a professor at Oxford University , for a quarter of a century before his death, Stalin had more political power than any other figure in history ^[200] . He was not just a symbol of the regime, but a leader who made fundamental decisions and was the initiator of all any significant government measures ^[199] . Each member of the Politburo had to confirm his agreement with the decisions adopted by Stalin, while at the same time, Stalin transferred responsibility for their implementation to those accountable to him ^[201] .

Some politicians, scholars of science, culture and art, historians, sociologists, as well as the Moscow Patriarchate ^[202] are of the opinion that the victory did not take place thanks to, but contrary to Stalin. An open letter from 25 figures of Soviet science, literature, and art speaks of Stalin’s responsibility for being unprepared for war ^[203] . In an open letter dated April 20, 2010, veterans also criticized Stalin, describing his collusion with Hitler as “criminal” ^{[204] [205]} . At the same time, other veterans proposed to note Stalin's merits in the war years with the help of videos and posters ^[206] . According to the English historian Simon Sebag-Montefiore, at the beginning of the war, Stalin "made incompetent decisions. Their name is Legion. The most egregious of them: in September 1941, when all the generals were begging him to withdraw troops from Kiev, he allowed the Nazis to take in a “bag” and kill a military group of five armies. Only at the end of the war did Stalin become a military strategist and was able to lead his country to victory. But at what price! " ^[35]

According to Yu. Levada , Stalin was rude, uneducated, shortsighted, completely devoid of moral criteria and doubts. His printed works are characterized by primitiveness of arguments, polemical devices, and language ^[207] .

Under Stalin, whole scientific directions were suppressed and prohibited, and bullying was organized against many prominent scientists, engineers, and doctors ^[208] , which inflicted tremendous damage on Russian science and culture ^[208] . In some cases, these campaigns contained elements of anti-Semitism ^[209] . To one degree or another, ideological interference affected such disciplines as: physics ^[210] , chemistry ^[211] , astronomy ^[212] , linguistics ^{[208] [213]} , statistics ^[214] , literary criticism ^[208] , philosophy ^[215] , sociology ^[216] , demography^[217] , economics ^[208] , genetics ^[218] , pedology ^[219] , history ^[220] and cybernetics. The leading demographers of TsUNHU ^{[217] [221]} were shot after Stalin did not like ^{[222] [223] [224] the} results of the 1937 census , which showed large population losses from starvation ^[225] compared with the estimated number. As a result, until the mid-1950s, no one knew at all how many people live in the Soviet Union ^[225] .

Doctor of Historical Sciences Gennady Kostyrchenko claims that Stalin was inherent in personal anti-Semitism , the manifestations of which were noted even in the pre-revolutionary period, in the 1920s in the fight against the Trotskyist opposition ^[226] . There is some evidence of Stalin's personal anti-Semitism, which manifested itself in the early years of his political activity. In particular, according to the complaint of Jacob Sverdlov , who had been exiled together with Stalin before the revolution, the court of honor of the exiles rendered Stalin a censure for anti-Semitism ^[227] . In addition to Sverdlov, Stalin's anti-Semitism was noted in his memoirs by his daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva ^[228] , his former secretary Boris Bazhanovand a number of other persons who knew him closely ^[227] . The Polish general Vladislav Anders wrote about this in his memoirs ^[229] .