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revolutionary attempt to build socialism, were two of the most important of such policies. Thus through a combination of the weaknesses of his opponents, the strength of his organizational power, and the attractiveness of many of the positions he espoused, Stalin was able to triumph over his more fancied rivals for leadership; he was even able to overcome the negative evaluation of him in Lenin’s so-called Testament.
Stalin’s defeat of his more prominent rivals did not mean that he was secure in the leadership of the party in the early 1930s. At the end of 1927, at Stalin’s behest the party adopted the first of a series of decisions that led to the abandonment of the moderation of the New Economic Policy and its replacement by an increasingly rapid pace of industrialization and agricultural collectivization. This produced continuing strains within the party, even when the most prominent opponents of this new course-the Right Opposition led by Nikolai Bukharin, Alexei Rykov, and Mikhail Tomsky- had been defeated in 1929. In late 1930 the Syrtsov-Lominadze group and in 1932 the Ryutin Platform were two important instances of high-ranking party members criticizing the course of economic policy, with the latter even calling for Stalin’s removal. For many within the party’s leading ranks, the gamble on forced pace industrialization and agricultural collectivization, while justifiable in terms of the achievement of the ultimate goal of a socialist society, was in practice proving to be more costly and disruptive than they had been led to believe. The reports of widespread popular opposition to collectivization raised the specter of the increased isolation of the party within the society; the trials of so-called saboteurs in 1930 and 1931 only increased this sense. They were not reassured by the increasing glorification of Stalin personally that began on his fiftieth birthday in December 1929. The cult of Stalin that thus emerged was clearly an attempt to shift the basis of political legitimacy away from the party and onto the person of Stalin.
At this time of political uncertainty, in November 1932 Stalin’s second wife, Nadezhda Allilueva who he had married in 1919, died. At the time it was announced that she had died of a heart attack, but it was widely believed that she had shot herself. There have also been rumors that Stalin himself killed her, but the truth is still not known.
In 1933 a party purge, or chistka, was announced. This was to be a bloodless affair involving a check on the performance of all party members and the expulsion of those whose perENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
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formance was found to be deficient. This was followed by similar campaigns in 1935 and 1936. Against this background of suspicion of the true beliefs and commitment of some party members, the seventeenth congress of the party was held in January-February 1934. This congress, the so-called Congress of Victors, announced the successful completion of collectivization, and although there was a significant level of public glorification of Stalin, there was also evidence of some high-level dissatisfaction with him. In December of that year, Leningrad party boss and close associate of Stalin, Sergei Kirov, was assassinated. Kirov’s death was used as an excuse to crack down on various elements including so-called Trotskyites and Zinovievites. In January 1935, Kamenev, Grigory Zinoviev, and seventeen other members of a reputed “center” were tried and convicted of moral and political responsibility for the death of Kirov, and were sentenced to imprisonment. This wave of purging tapered off by the middle of 1935. However, it surged once again in 1936, paradoxically at the time of the discussion of the new Stalin state Constitution adopted in December 1936, lasting unabated until the end of 1938. The so-called Great Terror, symbolized by the show trials of Old Bolsheviks in August 1936, January 1937, and March 1938, destroyed all semblance of opposition to Stalin and left him supreme at the apex of the party. He was now the unchallenged leader of the country, the vozhd, untrammelled by considerations of collective leadership, the absolute arbiter of the futures of all of those who worked with him in the leadership and in the country as a whole.
The personal primacy of Stalin, symbolically celebrated in a new peak of adulation at the time of his sixtieth birthday, occurred at a time of increasing international tension. In August 1939 the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact was signed, an agreement that Stalin had actively sought. The results of that pact were played out in the following two years, with Soviet territorial gains on its western border. In May 1941 Stalin became chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, or prime minister, to add to his position as General secretary. The following month, Germany attacked the Soviet Union, ushering in a new phase in Stalin’s leadership, that of the war leader.
From the time of the attack, Stalin was closely involved in organizing the defense of the Soviet Union. The long public delay in any announcement from him following the opening of hostilities led many to claim that Stalin, who had seemingly ig Josef Stalin attends a meeting commemorating the completion of the first segment of the Moscow subway system in 1935. © HULTON-DEUTSCH COLLECTION/CORBIS nored all warnings about the likelihood of German attack, had been mentally paralyzed by the attack and took no part in the initial Soviet response. However, it has now become clear that Stalin was busy in meetings during this time, participating as he did right through the war in the resolution of issues not just of civil government but of military strategy and tactics. Throughout the conflict, Stalin was closely involved in a practical capacity in directing the Soviet war effort. He was also important symbolically. By mobilizing Russian nationalism and presenting himself as its personification, Stalin became the ultimate symbol of both the Soviet populace and its armed forces. His refusal to leave
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Moscow, even when German troops were at its gates, reinforced this image. It is probable that the war ushered in the highest point of Stalin’s real, as opposed to cult-presented, popularity. Stalin became known as the Generalissimo.
With the end of the war, the Soviet Union was clearly one of the leading powers remaining and Stalin was an international figure, as symbolized by his presence at the conferences with the British and U.S. leaders in Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam. He ruled over not only the Soviet Union, but also the newly established socialist states in Eastern Europe. At home, there was a return to orthodoxy as controls were tightened once again following the relaxation of the wartime period. Stalin’s personal control remained undiminished. The leadership functioned as Stalin demanded; formal party organs were largely replaced by loose groupings of individual leaders summoned at Stalin’s whim and carrying out whatever tasks he accorded to them.
Always a suspicious man, Stalin’s sense of paranoia seems to have grown in the post-war period, something fueled by the Cold War. Although there were no purges on the scale of the 1930s, the more limited use of coercion and terror occurred in the Leningrad affair of 1949-1950, the Mingrelian case of 1951-1952, and the Doctors’ Plot of 1952-1953. As in the 1930s, such purging occurred against a backdrop of the apogee of the Stalin cult at the time of his seventieth birthday in 1949. In this period, Stalin was probably more detached from the daily process of political life than he had ever been. But this does not mean that he was any less powerful; he still set the tenor of political life, and he was in a position to be able to decide any issue he wished to decide, which is the true measure of a dictator. His colleagues, really subordinates, may have maneuvered among themselves for increased power and for particular policy positions, but none challenged his primacy. Stalin died on March 5, 1953, probably of natural causes; some have argued that some of his leadership colleagues may have poisoned him, but there has been no evidence to sustain this accusation.
Both of Stalin’s wives died at an early age, and he seems to have had difficult relations with his children. From his second marriage he had a son, Vasily (b. 1921) and a daughter Svetlana (b. 1926), both of whom outlived him. Stalin seems to have had little personal contact with either of these children or with Yakov, his son by his first marriage. Vasily joined the air force during the war and
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through his father’s patronage quickly rose to a leadership position. He subsequently became an alcoholic. Yakov was in the army and was captured by the Germans; reports suggest that Stalin refused a prisoner swap that would have returned Yakov to him. After Stalin’s death, Svetlana married a citizen of India, and when he died in 1966 she took his body to India and decided to remain abroad, returning briefly in 1984.
Stalin was the longest-serving leader of the Soviet Union and clearly left a major imprint on its development. He has been described as cruel, secretive, manipulative, opportunistic, doctrinaire, paranoid, devoid of human
