Joseph
Stalin became the preeminent Soviet leader after the death of
Vladimir I. Lenin in 1924. From 1929 until his own death in
1953, Stalin held absolute authority. Outwardly modest and
unassuming and intellectually unimpressive, he applied a
shrewd, practical intelligence to political organization and
manipulation. Because he rarely appeared to be what he was,
Stalin was consistently underestimated by his opponents, who
usually became his victims. He brought his country to world
power status but imposed upon it one of the most ruthless
regimes in history.
For his de-emphasis on world revolution under the slogan "socialism in one country" and his moderate economic policies, the general secretary was attacked by Trotsky, who was belatedly joined by Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev By 1928, Stalin had driven this leftist opposition from its party posts. Then, whether for political or economic reasons, he adopted such leftist programs as agricultural collectivization and rapid industrialization and smashed the party's right, which was led by Nikolai Bukharin, for opposing measures that he himself had recently attacked. By the end of 1929, Stalin was the undisputed master of the USSR.
Having mastered the economic front, Stalin felt free to turn on all those who appeared to have doubted his wisdom and ability. In December 1934, Leningrad party leader Sergei Kirov (who was proving to be too popular) was assassinated, probably at the behest of Stalin, who used the murder as the pretext for arresting--within the year--virtually all major party figures as saboteurs. From 1936 to 1938 he staged the Moscow show trials, at which prominent old Bolsheviks and army officers were convicted of implausibly monstrous crimes. By 1937, Stalin's blood purge extended through every party cell in the country. By 1939 a total of 98 of the 139 central committee members elected in 1934 had been shot and 1,108 of the 1,966 delegates to the 17th Congress arrested. The secret-police reign of terror annihilated a large portion of every profession and reached down into the general population. Deaths have been estimated in the millions, including those who perished in concentration camps. At the same time, Stalin began promoting a cult of adulation that proclaimed him a genius in every field of human endeavor. By the time the terror eased in 1938, Stalin's dictatorship had become entirely personal, unrestrained by the party or any other institution.
In world affairs, Stalin began to fear the growing power of Nazi Germany. After abortive attempts to reach an accord with the Western democracies, he concluded (1939) a nonaggression treaty with Hitler. After Germany invaded Poland at the start of World War II, Stalin acted to expand Soviet influence in Europe by occupying eastern Poland and attacking Finland. The nonaggression pact with Germany, however, proved short-lived when German troops invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941.
Taking personal control of the armed forces, Stalin expended troops as easily as he had executed kulaks, but the USSR's industrial plant produced enormous quantities of sophisticated armament and weaponry. Much more so than the other principal Allied leaders, U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt or British prime minister Winston Churchill, Stalin also commanded his army directly on a day-to-day basis, impressing foreign observers tremendously with his grasp of detail. He proved a skillful negotiator at the major Allied conferences.
In 1945, Stalin was at the height of his power and prestige, regarded as his country's savior by millions of his subjects. The period between 1945 and his death in 1953, however, saw a new wave of repression and some of Stalin's worst excesses. Returned prisoners of war were incarcerated in concentration camps. New duties on peasants reduced many to the status of serfs, and his imposition of Communist regimes on Eastern European nations helped create the perilous climate of the Cold War. Stalin now turned on many of his closest associates. In early 1953 he announced that he had uncovered a plot among the Kremlin's corps of doctors; new arrests seemed imminent, and many feared another great purge. Stalin suddenly died, however, on Mar. 5, 1953.
Stalin's reputation declined in the USSR after Nikita Khrushchev revealed many of Stalin's crimes in 1956. In the post-Khrushchev period, however, notably that of Leonid Brezhnev, anti-Stalinist rhetoric was downplayed. In China and part of the Third World he was often regarded as a strong revolutionary leader who modernized his nation's economy.
With the breakup of the USSR and the opening up of the Soviet archives and KGB files in the 1990s, a wealth of new material has become available that will enable historians to piece together a more complete picture of the Soviet leader.
