Stalin: A Biography

soviets (councils): formed; as source of power

sovkhozes (collective farms)

Sovnarkom (Council of People’s Commissars): composition; Stalin’s role in; and national question; and Gosplan’s control of economy; redesignated Council of Ministers; see also Council of Ministers

Spain: Eurocommunism in

Spandaryan, Suren

Spanish Civil War

Spanish Communist Party

specialists: Stalin’s hostility to; tried; and Stakhanovite movement; Ordzhonikidze protects

Stakhanov, Alexei

Stakhanovites

STALIN, JOSEPH

CHARACTERISTICS: reputation and image; reading; mental state; cultivates conciliatory manner; vindictiveness; rebelliousness at seminary; isolation; speechmaking; physical bravery; liking for children; as thinker and theorist; need to dominate; uncouth manner; joking and mimicry; suspects conspiracies and plots; resentment and sense of being undervalued; impatience in Sovnarkom meetings; outfaces rivals in Party meetings; conspiratorial practices; leadership qualities; flirting; gives money to beggar; lacks interests outside politics; national identity; behaviour as ruler; mental processes and moral values; multifaceted nature; smoking; personal austerity; rivalry with Hitler; remoteness from public in war; manner with colleagues and subordinates; aloofness from post-war conditions; daily routine; intellectual interests; pride in Soviet achievements; unpredictability in old age

PERSONAL LIFE: birth date; official biography (1938); baptised; rumoured illicit ancestry; childhood and upbringing; smallpox as child; schooling; works in Tbilisi shoe factory; attitude to father; injured in accident with carriage; youth in Gori; adopts name Koba; witnesses hangings in Gori; attends Tiflis Spiritual Seminary; learns Russian; singing; knowledge of ancient Greek; early poetry in Georgian; leaves Tiflis Seminary; abandons religious faith; works at Physical Observatory in Tbilisi; dress; on run in Tbilisi; in Batumi; detained in prison; journalism and writings; exiles in Siberia; appearance; courtship and marriage to Ketevan; birth of children; and death of wife Ketevan; visits Berlin; attitude to Jews; begins to write in Russian; learns Esperanto; sexual conquests and illegitimate children; moves to Vologda; adopts pseudonym Stalin; escapes to St Petersburg; in Vienna; fishing; rejected for military service; returns to Petrograd (1917); in hiding with Alliluevs in Petrograd; shaves off Lenin’s beard and moustache; edits Rabochii put; marriage to Nadezhda Allilueva; appendicitis; health problems and treatments; revisits Georgia (1921); abuses Krupskaya; Krupskaya softens attitude to; criticised for inadequate Russian; marriage relations; adopts Artem Sergeev; diet; homes and family life; holidays; hunting; improves languages and studies Marxist philosophy; unpopularity; personal security concerns; and Nadya’s suicide and funeral; builds new dacha at Kuntsevo; recreations; cultural values and reforms; socialist ideals; and films; accompanies Svetlana on Metro ride; avoids contacts with people; writing; biographies of; remains in wartime Moscow; relations with sons and daughter; sends money to former Georgian friends; ill-health in war; drinking; social life with male friends; and women; billiards playing; Western adulation of; use of nicknames; relations with Churchill and Roosevelt; exchange with Alan Brooke; and Roosevelt’s death; postwar public view of; collected works published; death; persecutes members of family; seventieth birthday celebrations; Western disparagement of; on linguistics; mistrust of medical doctors; health decline; entertaining in old age; seventy third birthday party; suffers stroke; autopsy document lost; embalmed; funeral; book collection dispersed after death; reburied below Kremlin Wall

POLITICAL LIFE: Khrushchev denounces; operates within Soviet system; opposition to; embraces Marxism in Tbilisi; suspected of being Okhrana agent; revolutionary activities in Georgia; circulates ‘Credo’ on return to Tbilisi; and national question; commitment to Bolshevism; attends Fourth Party Congress (Stockholm, 1905); in London for 1907 Party Congress; preeminence as Georgian Bolshevik; arrested in Baku and imprisoned; accused of organising armed robberies; Lenin co-opts onto Central Committee; arrested (1912) and sent to Narym District; issues proclamation (May Day 1912); Lenin praises; meets Lenin in Poland; rearrested (1913); questions Lenin’s policies; initial support for Provisional Government; denied place on Russian Bureau on return from exile; admitted to Russian Bureau; attitude to Mensheviks; follows Lenin’s leadership; attitude to First World War; elected to Central Committee at April 1917 conference; at Sixth Party Congress (1917); Party work in Petrograd; policy of ‘socialism in one country’; supports Lenin’s revolutionary policy; in Executive Committee of Petrograd Soviet; hostility with Trotski; and Kerenski’s actions against Bolsheviks; role and standing in Central Committee; activities in October Revolution; improved reputation and acceptance; Lenin favours; as People’s Commissar for Nationalities’ Affairs; helps draft RSFSR Constitution; advocates and practises state violence and dictatorship; and revolutionary activities abroad; claims full military powers in Volga region; supports separate peace in First World War; assigned to procure grain (1918); in Civil War; official appointments and activities; and war with Poland; threatens resignation; criticised at Ninth Party Conference; supports Lenin in dispute with Trotski over trade unions; Lenin asks to secure control over party apparatus; appointed General Secretary of Party; foreign policy; supports NEP; Lenin’s view of and relations with; disputes with dying Lenin; favours dominance of RSFSR over republics; and recognition of Baltic republics; and Caucasian national and ethnic settlement; and formation of autonomous republics; in Lenin’s Testament; Kamenev and Zinoviev protect and support; reports at 12th Party Congress; Zinoviev acts against; at Thirteenth Party Conference; organises and officiates at Lenin’s funeral; encourages cult of Lenin; escapes reading of Lenin’s Testament at 13th Party Congress; reports at 13th Party Congress; requests to be released from posts; builds up supporters; defeats Left Opposition; in Politburo disputes with Zinoviev and Kamenev; outlines programme and purpose; defeats United Opposition; and NEP; abandons NEP; aggressive agrarian policy; and collectivisation; forced industrialisation; organises trial of Shakhty engineers and specialists; adapts to change; radical policy changes; represses ‘anti-Soviet’ groups; proclaims patriotism; despotism in rule; title as General Secretary; mistrust of factional groups; demands capital punishment for adversaries; aims and ideals; and industrial unrest; dominates economic policy; near-exclusion at 17th Party Congress; and Kirov’s assassination; eliminates opponents; oversees new Constitution (1935–6); peasant hatred of; and Soviet patriotism; appointments and promotions of functionaries; threatens to annihilate enemies of state; comments on Lenin’s Materialism and Empiriocriticism; instigates and supervises Great Terror; cult and public image; dominance; redesignated Secretary of the Party Central Committee; attempts to eradicate political patronage; and pre-war Germany; intervenes in Spanish Civil War; ethnic deportations and executions; and foreign Communist Party activities; overtures to Nazi Germany; and war in Far East; and assassination of Trotski; receives reports from foreign sources; and non-aggression pact with Germany (1939); annexes Baltic republics; and Winter War in Finland; and German military successes in West; and German threat; surprised by German invasion of USSR; recovers control after German invasion; as Supreme Commander in war with Germany; withdraws in early days of war; wartime strategy; and German atrocities; orders no retreat at Stalingrad; co-operates with wartime commanders; and Stalingrad victory; argues for major offensive after Stalingrad; and conduct of war after Kursk; relaxes cultural rules in war; wartime concessions to Church; dissolves Comintern; wartime policy changes; encourages Slavophilia; broadcasts to nation after start of war; avoids fighting front in war; Western Allies confer with; attends conferences with Churchill and Roosevelt; demands Allies open second front; and post-war European settlement; and Warsaw Uprising; and capture of Berlin; justifies Red Army brutalities; at Potsdam Conference; knowledge of US atomic bomb; broadcasts on victory over Germany; victory celebrations (1945); view of world leaders; awareness of post-war dissatisfactions; resists post-war reform; post-war foreign policy; policy of coexistence; maintains east European territories; and Truman’s policy; and development of Soviet A-bomb; attitude to China and Mao; control of countries in eastern Europe; anti-Tito campaign; and ‘people’s democracies’ in eastern Europe; manipulates and humiliates colleagues; intelligence and information reaches; appoints ‘curators’; postwar political control; retrospective view of war; and Korean War; concern for Italy and France; excludes foreign influences; ideological motivation; succession question; purges Jews; reorganises Party structure at Nineteenth Congress; posthumous reputation; achievements assessed

WORKS: ‘Anarchism or Socialism’; ‘Dizzy with Success’; The Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR; Foundations of Leninism; History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks): A Short Course; Marxism and the National Quesion (earlier The National Question and Social-Democracy);