Biography of Stalin | Soviet politician | Sahir Studio

Stalin

Soviet politician

Biography of Stalin

Stalin (1878-1953) was a Soviet politician, the leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, between the years 1924 and 1953. He implemented the socialist regime, later named Stanilism.

Stalin is the pseudonym of Josef Vissarionovitch Djugatchvili, born in Gori, Georgia, then attached to Imperial Russia, on December 18, 1878. He was the son of a shoemaker and a seamstress.

After his first studies at the Russian Orthodox religious school in his hometown, he was sent to the seminary in the Georgian capital.

Rebelling against the discipline of the establishment he was expelled in the last year of studies, in 1899.

Militant

Josef Stalin immediately entered the revolutionary struggle. A militant of the social-democratic movement, a member of the Tbilisi clandestine committee, in 1902 he was arrested and deported to Siberia, from where he flees in 1904.

In 1905 he organized a general strike in Baku, he met Lenin at the party congress held in Finland.

Arrested again in 1908, Stalin is taken to Vologda, where he escapes the following year.

He goes to St. Petersburg, where he is elected to the central committee of the Bolshevik Communist Party. Arrested in 1910, he escapes in the middle of the following year.

In 1912, he went to Prague, Croatia and Vienna, becoming interested in the issue of nationalities, in which he would become an expert.

In 1912 he collaborates with the foundation of the party newspaper Pravda (Verdade). In 1913 he is arrested again and taken to Siberia and is released only in 1917. He receives the nickname of Stalin (man of steel) name that would be known for the rest of his life.

Russian revolution

With the outbreak of the 1917 revolution, Stalin went to St. Petersburg, the center of events, and resumed the direction of Pravda. His rivalry with Leon Trotski begins

Alongside Lenin and played an important role in the civil war, which disrupted the tsarist regime. After the movement's victory, Lenin headed the government until his death in 1924.

Succession

Soviet power was then contested by Leon Trotsky, head of the red army, and Stalin, secretary general of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).

Stalin, who preached the internal consolidation of the revolution, the structuring of a strong state and the implantation of socialism in one country, only to later try to expand the revolution to Europe, emerged victorious.

The Communist Party's bureaucratic organization gave Stalin control of the government machine.

With the support of the presidents of the Leningrad (Zinoviev) and Moscow (Kamenev) soviets, Stalin forced Trotsky to resign as war commissioner and leave the country, exiling in Turkey.

From 1928, the Soviet economy, under the command of Stalin, experienced total socialization, with the implementation of the “socialism in one country” policy, opposed to the Marxist principle of proletarian internationalism.

After obtaining the recognition of the regime by some nations, it launched the first five-year plan, in 1928, whose objective was to give priority to heavy industry and to pass to the State the control of all economic activity.

Between 1929 and 1930, the focus was on the collectivization of agriculture, where around 25 million small rural properties were forcibly transformed into state-owned collective farms, a process that led to the death of millions of peasants.

In the 1930s, heavy industry was still a priority and showed great progress. In 1933 the second plan began with the implantation of the consumer goods industry.

At the international level, the USSR joins the Society of Nations, and communists from other countries are advised to form fronts popular with social democrats and other leftists. It is the fear of rising fascism and Nazism.

Stalin pursued an intense policy of centralizing power. Using methods of extreme violence, he reaffirmed his authority by alienating all potential opponents.

In 1936, by order of Stalin, the trials, convictions, expulsions from the party and punishments began, in processes that became known as "Moscow purges".

The armed forces were not immune, and several of its main leaders were shot, on the charge of complicity with the enemy.

Second World War

Increasingly concerned with the Nazi threat, Stalin signs a mutual assistance treaty with France and 1935.

On August 23, 1939, he signed a non-aggression pact with Germany. It attaches to the eastern part of Poland. In 1940 it occupies parts of Finland and Romania.

Its aim was to form an ever-increasing cordon between the USSR and Germany.

In 1940, Trotsky, who was in exile in Mexico, but continued to oppose the Stalinist government, was then assassinated at the behest of Stalin.

On June 22, 1941, Germany launched the attack on the USSR Stalin assumed supreme command of the Soviet armed forces, with the rank of marshal, in March 1943.

That same year, he dissolved the "Komintern", the organization charged with liaising with communists from around the world.

He participated in conferences with Roosevelt and Churchill, in Teran (1943), Yalta (1945) and Potsdam (1945), laying the foundations for the development and outcome of the war.

Cold War

After the Second World War, Stalin started to attack the United States as "imperialists". In 1947 he resumed the activities of the "Kumintern", under the name "Kominform".

The divergences between the main capitalist nations and the USSR-led socialist group persisted until Stalin's death.

Stalin died in Moscow, the Soviet Union, on March 5, 1953.