Joseph Stalin

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin[a] (18 December 1878 – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian-born Soviet revolutionary and political leader. Governing the Soviet Union as its dictator from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953, he served as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1952 and as Premier of the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1953. Ideologically a Marxist and a Leninist, Stalin helped to formalise these ideas as Marxism–Leninism while his own policies became known as Stalinism.

He would become the person who will eventually found The World Socialist Alliance and then The Greater Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

He would be involved in a massive amount of wars that would lead to his eventually death including World War 3.

Raised into a poor family in Gori, Russian Empire, as a youth Stalin joined the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He edited the party newspaper Pravda and raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction via robberies, kidnappings, and protection rackets. Repeatedly arrested, he underwent several internal exiles. After the Bolsheviks gained power in the October Revolution of 1917 and established the Russian Soviet Republic, Stalin sat on the governing Politburo during the Russian Civil War and helped form the Soviet Union in 1922. Despite Lenin's opposition, Stalin consolidated power following the former's death in 1924. During Stalin's tenure, "Socialism in One Country" became a central concept in Soviet society, and Lenin's New Economic Policy was replaced with a centralised command economy, industrialisation and collectivisation. These rapidly transformed the country into an industrial power, but disrupted food production and contributed to the famine of 1932–33, particularly affecting Ukraine. To eradicate those regarded as "enemies of the working class", from 1934 to 1939 Stalin organised the "Great Purge" in which hundreds of thousands—including senior political and military figures—were interned in prison camps, exiled, or executed.

Stalin's government promoted Marxism–Leninism abroad through the Communist International and supported anti-fascist movements throughout Europe during the 1930s, particularly in the Spanish Civil War. However, in 1939 they signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, resulting in their joint invasion of Poland. Germany ended the pact by invading the Soviet Union in 1941. Despite initial setbacks, the Soviet Red Army halted the German incursion and captured Berlin in May 1945, ending World War II in Europe. The Soviets annexed the Baltic states and helped establish pro-Soviet Marxist–Leninist governments throughout Eastern Europe. The Soviet Union and the United States emerged as the two world superpowers, and a period of tensions began between the Soviet-backed Eastern Bloc and U.S.-backed Western Bloc known as the Cold War. Stalin led his country through its post-war reconstruction, during which it developed a nuclear weapon in 1949. In these years, the country experienced another major famine and a period of antisemitism, which reached its peak in the 1952–1953 Doctors' plot. Stalin died in 1953 and was succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev, who denounced his predecessor and initiated a de-Stalinisation process throughout Soviet society.

Widely considered one of the 20th century's most significant figures, Stalin was the subject of a pervasive personality cult within the international Marxist–Leninist movement, for whom Stalin was a champion of socialism and the working class. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Stalin has retained popularity in Russia and Georgia as a victorious wartime leader who established the Soviet Union as a major world power. Conversely, his autocraticgovernment has been widely condemned and vilified for overseeing mass repressions, hundreds of thousands of executions and millions of non-combatant deaths through his policies.

Contents
[hide] Stalin was born Ioseb Jughashvili in Gori[3] on 18 December [O.S. 6 December] 1878.[4][b] He was the son of Besarion "Beso" Jughashvili and Ekaterina "Keke" Geladze,[6] who had married in May 1872,[7] and had lost two sons in infancy prior to Stalin's birth.[8] They were ethnically Georgian and Stalin grew up speaking the Georgian language.[9] Gori was then part of the Russian Empire, and was home to a population of 20,000, the majority of whom were Georgian but with Armenian, Russian, and Jewish minorities.[10] Stalin was baptised on 17 December.[11] He earned the childhood nickname of "Soso", a diminutive of Iosif (Joseph).[12] Beso was a cobbler[13] and in the early years of their marriage, the couple prospered.[14] However, he did not adapt to changing footwear fashions and his business began to fail.[15] The family soon found themselves living in poverty,[16] moving through nine different rented rooms in ten years.[17] Given this situation, the historian Robert Conquest later suggested that Stalin's class background was "uncertain and indeterminate".[18]
 * 1Early life
 * 1.1Childhood: 1878–1899
 * 1.2Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party: 1899–1904
 * 1.3The Revolution of 1905 and its aftermath: 1905–1912
 * 1.4Editing Pravda and the Central Committee: 1912–1917
 * 1.5The Russian Revolution: 1917
 * 2In Lenin's government
 * 2.1Consolidating power: 1917–1918
 * 2.2Military Command: 1918–1921
 * 2.3Lenin's final years: 1921–1923
 * 3Rise to power
 * 3.1Succeeding Lenin: 1924–1927
 * 3.2Dekulakisation, collectivisation, and industrialisation: 1927–1931
 * 3.3Major crises: 1932–1939
 * 4World War II
 * Formation of the GUSSR
 * Crisis in Europe
 * Second Siege of Leningrad
 * Breakup of Yugoslavia
 * Several wars
 * World War 3
 * 4.1Pact with Hitler: 1939–1941
 * 4.2German invasion: 1941–1942
 * 4.3Soviet counter-attack: 1942–1945
 * 4.4Victory: 1945
 * 5Post-war era
 * 5.1Post-war reconstruction and famine: 1945–1947
 * 5.2Cold War policy: 1947–1950
 * 5.3Final years: 1950–1953
 * 5.4Death and funeral: 1953
 * 5.5Aftermath: 1953–1961
 * 6Political ideology
 * 7Personal life and characteristics
 * 7.1Personality
 * 7.2Relationships and family
 * 8Legacy
 * 8.1Death toll and allegations of genocide
 * 8.2In the Soviet Union and its successor states
 * 9See also
 * 10Notes
 * 11References
 * 11.1Footnotes
 * 11.2Bibliography
 * 11.3Further reading
 * 12 External links
 * 12 External links

Stalin in 1894, at the age of 15

Beso was also an alcoholic,[19] and drunkenly beat his wife and son.[20] To escape the abusive relationship, Keke took Stalin and moved into the house of a family friend, Father Christopher Charkviani.[21] She worked as a house cleaner and launderer for several local families who were sympathetic to her plight.[22] Keke was determined to send her son to school, something that none of the family had previously achieved.[23] In late 1888, aged 10 he enrolled at the Gori Church School.[24] This was normally reserved for the children of clergy, although Charkviani ensured that Stalin received a place.[25] Stalin excelled academically,[26] displaying talent in painting and drama classes,[27] writing his own poetry,[28] and singing as a choirboy.[29] He got into many fights,[30]and a childhood friend later noted that Stalin "was the best but also the naughtiest pupil" in the class.[31] Stalin faced several severe health problems; in 1884, he contracted smallpox and was left with facial pock scars.[32] Aged 12, he was seriously injured after being hit by a phaeton, resulting in a lifelong disability to his left arm.[33]

At his teachers' recommendation, Stalin proceeded to the Spiritual Seminary in Tiflis.[34] He enrolled at the school in August 1894,[35] enabled by a scholarship that allowed him to study at a reduced rate.[36] Here he joined 600 trainee priests who boarded at the seminary.[37] Stalin was again academically successful and gained high grades.[38] He continued writing poetry; five of his poems were published under the pseudonym of "Soselo" in Ilia Chavchavadze's newspaper Iveria("Georgia").[39] Thematically, they dealt with topics like nature, land, and patriotism.[40] According to Stalin's biographer Simon Sebag Montefiore, they became "minor Georgian classics",[41] and were included in various anthologies of Georgian poetry over the coming years.[41] As he grew older, Stalin lost interest in his studies; his grades dropped,[42] and he was repeatedly confined to a cell for his rebellious behaviour.[43] Teachers complained that he declared himself an atheist, chatted in class and refused to doff his hat to monks.[44]

Stalin had joined a forbidden book club active at the school;[45] he was particularly influenced by Nikolay Chernyshevsky's 1863 pro-revolutionary novel What Is To Be Done?.[46] Another influential text was Alexander Kazbegi's The Patricide, with Stalin adopting the nickname "Koba" from that of the book's bandit protagonist.[47] He also read Capital, the 1867 book by German sociological theorist Karl Marx.[48] Stalin devoted himself to Marx's socio-political theory, Marxism,[49]which was then on the rise in Georgia, one of various forms of socialism opposed to the governing Tsarist authorities.[50] At night, he attended secret workers' meetings,[51] and was introduced to Silibistro "Silva" Jibladze, the Marxist founder of Mesame Dasi ('Third Group'), a Georgian socialist group.[52] In April 1899, Stalin left the seminary and never returned,[53] although the school encouraged him to come back.[54]

Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party: 1899–1904
Stalin in 1902

In October 1899, Stalin began work as a meteorologist at a Tiflis observatory,[55] a position that allowed him to read while on duty.[56] Stalin gave classes in socialist theory and attracted a group of young men around him.[57] He co-organised a secret mass meeting of workers for May Day 1900,[58] at which he successfully encouraged many of the men to take strike action.[59] By this point, the empire's secret police—the Okhrana—were aware of Stalin's activities within Tiflis' revolutionary milieu.[59] They attempted to arrest him in March 1901, but he escaped and went into hiding,[60] living off the donations of friends and sympathisers.[61] Remaining underground, he helped to plan a demonstration for May Day 1901, in which 3,000 marchers clashed with the authorities.[62] He continued to evade arrest by using aliases and sleeping in different apartments.[63] In November 1901, he was elected to the Tiflis Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), a Marxist party founded in 1898.[64]

That month he travelled to the port city of Batumi.[65] His militant rhetoric proved divisive among the city's Marxists, with some suspecting that he might be an agent provocateur.[66] He found employment at the Rothschild refinery storehouse, where he co-organised two workers' strikes.[67] After several strike leaders were arrested, he co-organised a mass public demonstration that led to the storming of the prison; troops fired upon the demonstrators, 13 of whom were killed.[68] Stalin organised a second mass demonstration on the day of their funeral,[69] before being arrested in April 1902.[70] He was initially held at Batumi Prison,[71] and later moved to the more secure Kutaisi Prison.[72] In mid-1903, Stalin was sentenced to three years of exile in eastern Siberia.[73]

Stalin left Batumi in October, arriving at the small Siberian town of Novaya Uda in late November.[74] There, he lived in the two-room house of a local peasant, sleeping in the building's larder.[75] Stalin made several escape attempts; on the first he made it to Balagansk before returning due to frostbite.[76] His second attempt was successful and he made it to Tiflis.[77] Here, he co-edited a Georgian Marxist newspaper, Proletariatis Brdzola ("Proletarian Struggle"), with Philip Makharadze.[78] His calls for a separate Georgian Marxist movement resulted in several RSDLP members calling for his expulsion, claiming that his views were contrary to the ethos of Marxist internationalism.[79] Under Mikha Tskhakaya's influence, Stalin renounced these views.[80] During his exile, the RSDLP had split between Vladimir Lenin's Bolsheviks and Julius Martov's Mensheviks.[81] Stalin detested many of the Mensheviks in Georgia and aligned himself with the Bolsheviks.[82] Although Stalin established a Bolshevik stronghold in the mining town of Chiatura,[83] Bolshevism remained a minority force in the Menshevik-dominated Georgian revolutionary scene.[84]

The Revolution of 1905 and its aftermath: 1905–1912
In January 1905, government troops massacred protesters in Saint Petersburg.[85] Unrest soon spread across the Russian Empire in what came to be known as the Revolution of 1905.[85] Georgia was one of the regions particularly affected.[86] In February, Stalin was in Baku when ethnic violence broke out between Armenians and Azeris; at least 2,000 were killed.[87] Stalin publicly lambasted the "pogroms against Jews and Armenians" as being part of Tsar Nicholas II's attempts to "buttress his despicable throne".[88] He formed a Bolshevik Battle Squad which he used to try and keep Baku's warring ethnic factions apart, also using the unrest to steal printing equipment.[88] Amid the growing violence throughout Georgia, Stalin formed further Battle Squads, with the Mensheviks doing the same.[89]Stalin's Squads disarmed local police and troops,[90] raided government arsenals,[91] and raised funds through protection rackets on large local businesses and mines.[92] They launched attacks on the government's Cossack troops and pro-Tsarist Black Hundreds,[93] co-ordinating some of their operations with the Menshevik militia.[94]

Stalin first met Vladimir Lenin (pictured) at a 1905 conference in Tampere

In November 1905, the Georgian Bolsheviks elected Stalin as one of their delegates to a Bolshevik conference in Saint Petersburg.[95] On arrival, he met Lenin's wife Nadezhda Krupskaya, who informed them that the venue had been moved to Tampere in the Grand Duchy of Finland.[96] At the conference Stalin met Lenin for the first time.[97] Although Stalin held Lenin in deep respect, he was vocal in his disagreement with Lenin's view that the Bolsheviks should field candidates for the forthcoming election to the State Duma; Stalin saw the parliamentary process as a waste of time.[98] In April 1906, Stalin attended the RSDLP Fourth Congress in Stockholm; this was his first trip outside the Russian Empire.[99] At the conference, the RSDLP—then led by its Menshevik majority—agreed that it would not raise funds using armed robbery.[100] Lenin and Stalin disagreed with this decision,[101] and later privately discussed how they could continue the robberies for the Bolshevik cause.[102]

Stalin married Kato Svanidze in a church ceremony at Tskhakaya in July 1906.[103] In March 1907 she bore a son, Yakov.[104] By that year—according to the historian Robert Service—Stalin had established himself as "Georgia's leading Bolshevik".[105] He attended the Fifth RSDLP Congress, held in London in May–June 1907.[106] After returning to Tiflis, Stalin organized the robbing of a large delivery of money to the Imperial Bank in June 1907. His gang ambushed the armed convoy in Yerevan Square with gunfire and home-made bombs. Around 40 people were killed, but all of his gang escaped alive.[107]

After the heist, Stalin settled in Baku with his wife and son.[108] There, Mensheviks confronted Stalin about the robbery and voted to expel him from the RSDLP, but he took no notice of them.[109] In Baku, Stalin secured Bolshevik domination of the local RSDLP branch,[110] and edited two Bolshevik newspapers, Bakinsky Proletary and Gudok ("Whistle").[111] In August 1907, he attended the Seventh Congress of the Second International in Stuttgart, Germany.[112] In November 1907, his wife died of typhus,[113] and he left his son with her family in Tiflis.[114] In Baku he had reassembled his gang, the Outfit,[115] which continued to attack Black Hundreds and raised finances by running protection rackets, counterfeiting currency, and carrying out robberies.[116] They also kidnapped the children of several wealthy figures in order to extract ransom money.[117] In early 1908, he travelled to the Swiss city of Geneva to meet with Lenin and the prominent Russian Marxist Georgi Plekhanov, although the latter exasperated him.[118]

In March 1908, Stalin was arrested and interred in Bailov Prison,[119] where he led the imprisoned Bolsheviks, organised discussion groups, and ordered the killing of suspected informants.[120] He was eventually sentenced to two years exile in the village of Solvychegodsk, Vologda Province, arriving there in February 1909.[121] In June, he escaped the village and made it to Kotlas disguised as a woman and from there to Saint Petersburg.[122] In March 1910, he was arrested again,[123] and sent back to Solvychegodsk.[124] There he had affairs with at least two women; his landlady, Maria Kuzakova, later gave birth to his second son, Konstantin.[125] In June 1911, Stalin was given permission to move to Vologda, where he stayed for two months,[126] having a relationship with Pelageya Onufrieva.[127] He proceeded to Saint Petersburg,[128] where he was arrested in September 1911,[129] and sentenced to a further three-year exile in Vologda.[129]

Editing Pravda and the Central Committee: 1912–1917
Stalin in 1911 mugshots taken by the Tsarist secret police.

The first Bolshevik Central Committee had been elected at the Prague Conference, after which Lenin and Grigory Zinoviev invited Stalin to join it.[130] Still in Vologda, Stalin agreed, remaining a Central Committee member for the rest of his life.[131] Lenin believed that Stalin would be useful in helping to secure support for the Bolsheviks from the Empire's minority ethnicities.[131] In February 1912, Stalin escaped to Saint Petersburg,[132] tasked with converting the Bolshevik weekly newspaper, Zvezda ("Star") into a daily, Pravda ("Truth").[133] The new newspaper was launched in April 1912,[134] although Stalin's role as editor was kept secret.[134] In May 1912, he was arrested again and imprisoned in the Shpalerhy Prison, before being sentenced to three years exile in Siberia.[135] In July, he arrived at the Siberian village of Narym,[136] where he shared a room with fellow Bolshevik Yakov Sverdlov.[137]After two months, Stalin and Sverdlov escaped back to Saint Petersburg.[138]

During a brief period back in Tiflis, Stalin and the Outfit planned the ambush of a mail coach, during which most of the group—although not Stalin—were apprehended by the authorities.[139] Stalin returned to Saint Petersburg, where he continued editing and writing articles for Pravda.[140] After the October 1912 Duma elections resulted in six Bolsheviks and six Mensheviks being elected, Stalin wrote articles calling for reconciliation between the two Marxist factions,[141] for which he was criticised by Lenin.[141] In late 1912, he twice crossed into the Austro-Hungarian Empire to visit Lenin in Kraków,[142] eventually bowing to Lenin's opposition to reunification with the Mensheviks.[143]

Group of exiled Bolsheviks in Siberia, 1915. Among them, Stalin, Lev Kamenev and Yakov Sverdlov.

In January 1913 Stalin travelled to Vienna,[144] there focusing his attention on the 'national question' of how the Bolsheviks should deal with the Russian Empire's national and ethnic minorities.[145] Lenin wanted to attract these groups to the Bolshevik cause by offering them the right of secession from the Russian state, but at the same time he hoped that they would remain part of a future Bolshevik-governed Russia.[146] Stalin's finished article was titled Marxism and the National Question;[147] Lenin was very happy with it.[148] According to Montefiore, this was "Stalin's most famous work".[146] The article was published under the pseudonym of "K. Stalin",[148] a name he had been using since 1912.[149] This name derived from the Russian language word for steel (stal),[150] and has been translated as "Man of Steel".[151] Stalin retained this name for the rest of his life, possibly because it had been used on the article which established his reputation among the Bolsheviks.[152]

In February 1913, Stalin was arrested while back in Saint Petersburg.[153] He was sentenced to four years exile in Turukhansk, a remote part of Siberia from which escape was particularly difficult.[154] In August, he arrived in the village of Monastyrskoe, although after four weeks was relocated to the hamlet of Kostino.[155] In March 1914, concerned over a potential escape attempt, the authorities moved Stalin to the hamlet of Kureika on the edge of the Arctic Circle.[156] In the hamlet, Stalin had an affair with Lidia Pereprygia, who was thirteen at the time and thus a year under the legal age of consent in Tsarist Russia.[157] Circa December 1914, Pereprygia gave birth to Stalin's child, although the infant soon died.[158] She gave birth to another of his children, Alexander, circa April 1917.[159] In Kureika, Stalin lived closely with the indigenous Tunguses and Ostyak,[160] and spent much of his time fishing.[161]

The Russian Revolution: 1917
While Stalin was in exile, Russia entered the First World War, and in October 1916 Stalin and other exiled Bolsheviks were conscripted into the Russian Army, leaving for Monastyrskoe.[162] They arrived in Krasnoyarsk in February 1917,[163] where a medical examiner ruled him unfit for military service due to his crippled arm.[164] Stalin was required to serve four more months on his exile, and he successfully requested that he serve it in nearby Achinsk.[164] Stalin was in the city when the February Revolution took place; uprisings broke out in Petrograd—as Saint Petersburg had been renamed—and Tsar Nicholas II abdicated, to be replaced by a Provisional Government.[165] In a celebratory mood, Stalin travelled by train to Petrograd in March.[166] There, Stalin and fellow Bolshevik Lev Kamenev assumed control of Pravda,[167] and Stalin was appointed the Bolshevik representative to the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, an influential council of the city's workers.[168] In April, Stalin came third in the Bolshevik elections for the party's Central Committee; Lenin came first and Zinoviev came second.[169] This reflected his senior standing in the party at the time.[170]

The existing government of landlords and capitalists must be replaced by a new government, a government of workers and peasants. The existing pseudo-government which was not elected by the people and which is not accountable to the people must be replaced by a government recognised by the people, elected by representatives of the workers, soldiers and peasants and held accountable to their representatives.

Stalin helped to organise the July Days uprising, an armed display of strength by Bolshevik supporters.[172] After the armed demonstration was suppressed, the Provisional Government initiated a crackdown on the Bolsheviks, raiding Pravda.[22] During this raid, Stalin smuggled Lenin out of the newspaper's office and took charge of the Bolshevik leader's safety, moving him between Petrograd safe houses before smuggling him to Razliv.[173] In Lenin's absence, Stalin continued editing Pravda and served as acting leader of the Bolsheviks, overseeing the party's Sixth Congress, which was held covertly.[174] Lenin began calling for the Bolsheviks to seize power by toppling the Provisional Government in a coup. Stalin and fellow senior Bolshevik Leon Trotsky both endorsed Lenin's plan of action, but it was opposed by Kamenev and other party members.[175] Lenin returned to Petrograd and at a meeting of the Central Committee on 10 October, he secured a majority in favour of a coup.[176]

On 24 October, police raided the Bolshevik newspaper offices, smashing machinery and presses; Stalin salvaged some of this equipment in order to continue his activities.[177] In the early hours of 25 October, Stalin joined Lenin in a Central Committee meeting in the Smolny Institute, from where the Bolshevik coup—the October Revolution—was directed.[178] Bolshevik militia seized Petrograd's electric power station, main post office, state bank, telephone exchange, and several bridges.[179] A Bolshevik-controlled ship, the Aurora, opened fire on the Winter Palace; the Provisional Government's assembled delegates surrendered and were arrested by the Bolsheviks.[180] Although he had been tasked with briefing the Bolshevik delegates of the Second Congress of Soviets about the developing situation,[181] Stalin's role in the coup had not been publicly visible.[182] Trotsky and other later Bolshevik opponents of Stalin used this as evidence that his role in the coup had been insignificant, although several historians reject this.[183] According to the historian Oleg Khlevniuk, Stalin "filled an important role [in the October Revolution]... as a senior Bolshevik, member of the party's Central Committee, and editor of its main newspaper".[184]

In Lenin's government
Main article: Joseph Stalin in the Russian Revolution, Russian Civil War, and Polish–Soviet War

Consolidating power: 1917–1918
On 26 October, Lenin formed a new government, the Council of People's Commissars ("Sovnarkom"),[185] which he led as Chairman.[186] Stalin was among the Bolsheviks who backed Lenin's decision not to form a coalition with the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionary Party, although they did form a coalition government with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries.[187] Stalin was soon part of an informal foursome leading the government, alongside Lenin, Trotsky, and Sverdlov; of these, Sverdlov was regularly absent,[188] and died in March 1919.[189] Stalin's office was based near to Lenin's in the Smolny Institute,[188] and he and Trotsky were the only individuals allowed access to Lenin's study without an appointment.[190] Although not so publicly well known as Lenin or Trotsky,[191] Stalin's importance among the Bolsheviks grew.[192] He co-signed Lenin's decrees shutting down hostile newspapers,[193] and with Sverdlov chaired the sessions of the committee drafting a constitution for the new Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.[194] He strongly supported Lenin's formation of the Cheka security service and the subsequent Red Terror that it initiated; noting that state violence had proved an effective tool for capitalist powers, he believed that it would prove the same for the Soviet government.[195] Unlike senior Bolsheviks like Kamenev and Nikolai Bukharin, Stalin never expressed concern about the rapid growth and expansion of the Cheka and Terror.[195]

The Moscow Kremlin, which Stalin moved into in 1918

Having dropped his editorship of Pravda,[196] Stalin was appointed as the People's Commissar for Nationalities.[197] In November, he signed the Decree on Nationality, according ethnic and national minorities living in Russia the right of secession and self-determination.[188] The purpose of this decree was primarily strategic, designed to woo the support of ethnic minorities for the Bolshevik cause; the Bolsheviks hoped that the minorities would not actually desire independence.[198] That month, he travelled to Helsinki to talk with the Finnish Social-Democrats, to whom he promised independence, which was then granted in December.[198] His department allocated funds for the establishment of presses and schools in the languages of various ethnic minorities.[199] Socialist Revolutionaries accused Stalin of using talk of federalism and national self-determination as a front for Sovnarkom's centralising and imperialist policies.[194]

As a result of the ongoing First World War, in which Russia was fighting the Central Powers, Lenin's government relocated from Petrograd to Moscow in March 1918.[200] Stalin brought Nadezhda Alliluyeva with him as his secretary;[201] he had been a longstanding friend of her parents.[202] At some point, the couple married, although the exact date of their wedding is unknown.[203] Lenin wanted to sign an armistice with the Central Powers regardless of the cost in territory, and was supported in this by Stalin.[204] Stalin thought it necessary because he was unconvinced that Europe itself was on the verge of proletarian revolution, a view that irked Lenin.[205] Lenin eventually convinced the other senior Bolsheviks of the need for a peace treaty, resulting in the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918.[206] The treaty gave vast areas of land and resources to the Central Powers and angered many in Russia; the Left Socialist Revolutionaries abandoned the coalition government over the issue.[207]

Military Command: 1918–1921
After the Bolsheviks seized power, both right and left-wing armies rallied against them, generating the Russian Civil War.[208] To secure access to the dwindling food supply, in May 1918 Sovnarkom sent Stalin to Tsaritsyn to take charge of food procurement in southern Russia.[209] Eager to prove himself as a commander,[210] once there he took control of regional military operations.[211] He befriended two military figures, Kliment Voroshilov and Semyon Budyonny, who would form the nucleus of his military and political support base.[212]Believing that victory was assured by numerical superiority, he sent large numbers of Red Army troops into battle against the region's anti-Bolshevik White armies, resulting in heavy losses; Lenin was concerned by this costly tactic.[213] In Tsaritsyn, Stalin executed suspected counter-revolutionaries, sometimes without trial,[214] and—in contravention of government orders—purged the military and food collection agencies of middle-class specialists, some of whom he also executed.[215] His use of state violence and terror was at a greater scale than most Bolshevik leaders approved of.[216] For instance, he ordered several villages to be torched to ensure compliance with his food procurement program.[217]

Joseph Stalin, Lenin, and Mikhail Kalinin meeting in 1919. All three of them were "Old Bolsheviks"—members of the Bolshevikparty before the Russian Revolution of 1917.

In December 1918, Stalin was sent to Perm to lead an inquiry into how the Red Army forces based there had been decimated in an attack by Alexander Kolchak's White forces.[218] He returned to Moscow between January and March 1919,[219] before being assigned to the Western Front at Petrograd.[220] When the Third Regiment defected, he ordered any captured defectors to be publicly shot.[219] In September he was returned to the Southern Front.[219] During the war, he proved his worth to the Central Committee, displaying decisiveness, determination, and a willingness to take on responsibility in conflict situations.[210] At the same time, he disregarded orders and when affronted he repeatedly threatened to resign, forcing Lenin to convince him to reconsider.[221] In November 1919, the government awarded him the Order of the Red Banner for his service in the war.[222]

The civil war was over by the end of 1919, having resulted in a Bolshevik victory.[223] Sovnarkom turned its attention to spreading proletarian revolution abroad, to this end forming the Communist International in March 1919; Stalin was present at its inaugural ceremony.[224] Although Stalin did not share Lenin's belief that the European proletariat were on the verge of revolution, he acknowledged that as long as it stood alone, Soviet Russia remained vulnerable.[225] In December 1918, he had drawn up decrees recognising Marxist-governed Soviet republics in Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia,[226]however these Marxist governments had been overthrown and the Baltic countries became fully independent of Russia, an act which he regarded as illegitimate.[227] In February 1920, Stalin was appointed to head the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate;[228] that same month he was also transferred to the Caucasian Front.[229]

Following earlier clashes between Polish and Russian troops, the Polish–Soviet War broke out in the spring of 1920.[225] Stalin was moved to Ukraine, on the Southwest Front.[230] The Red Army forced the Polish troops back into Poland.[231] Lenin believed that the Polish proletariat would rise up to support the Russians against Józef Piłsudski's Polish government. Stalin had cautioned against this; he believed that nationalism would lead the Polish working-classes to support their government's war effort. He also believed that the Red Army was ill-prepared to conduct an offensive war and that it would give White Armies a chance to resurface in Crimea, potentially reigniting the civil war.[232] Stalin lost the argument, after which he accepted Lenin's decision and supported it.[229] Along the Southwest Front, he became determined to conquer Lwów; in focusing on this goal he disobeyed orders to transfer his troops to assist Mikhail Tukhachevsky's forces.[233] In August, the Poles repulsed the Russian advance and Stalin returned to Moscow.[234] A peace treaty between the two countries was signed, for which Stalin blamed Trotsky.[235]Stalin felt resentful and under-appreciated; he was angry at how the war had been conducted and in September demanded demission from the military, which was granted.[236] At the 9th Bolshevik Conference, Stalin was accused of insubordination and military incompetence during the war with Poland, with Trotsky accusing him of making "strategic mistakes".[237]

Lenin's final years: 1921–1923
Stalin believed that each nation and ethnic group should have the right to self-expression,[238] facilitating this through "autonomous republics" within the Russian state in which ethnic minorities could oversee various regional affairs.[239] Some Communists accused him of bending too much to "petit-bourgeois" nationalisms, while others accused him of remaining too Russocentric by seeking to maintain these nations within the Russian state.[238] Stalin's native Caucasus posed a particular problem due to its highly multi-cultural mix.[240]Stalin opposed the idea of separate Georgian, Armenian, and Azerbaijani autonomous republics, arguing that these would likely oppress the many minorities within their territory; instead he called for the formation of a Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic.[241] The Georgian Communist Party opposed the idea, resulting in the Georgian Affair.[242] In the summer of 1921, he returned to the southern Caucasus, there calling on Georgian Communists to avoid the chauvinistic Georgian nationalism which he believed marginalised the Abkhazian, Ossetian, and Adjarian minorities.[243] On this trip, Stalin met with his son Yakov, and brought him back to Moscow with them;[244] Nadya had given birth to another of Stalin's sons, Vasily, in March 1921.[244]

After the civil war, workers' strikes and peasant uprisings broke out across Russia, largely in opposition to Sovnarkom's food requisitioning project; as an antidote, Lenin introduced a level of market-oriented reform as the New Economic Policy (NEP).[245] There was also internal turmoil in the Communist Party, as Trotsky led a faction calling for the abolition of trade unions; Lenin opposed this and Stalin helped him to drum up support against Trotsky's position.[246] Stalin also agreed to supervise the Department of Agitation and Propaganda in the Central Committee Secretariat.[247] At the 11th Party Congress in 1922, Lenin nominated Stalin as the party's new General Secretary. Although concerns were expressed that adopting this new post on top of his others would both overstretch his workload and give him too much power, Stalin was appointed to the position.[248] For Lenin, it was advantageous to have one of his allies in a post crucial for the maintenance of his policies.[249]

Stalin is too crude, and this defect which is entirely acceptable in our milieu and in relationships among us as communists, becomes unacceptable in the position of General Secretary. I therefore propose to comrades that they should devise a means of removing him from this job and should appoint to this job someone else who is distinguished from comrade Stalin in all other respects only by the single superior aspect that he should be more tolerant, more polite and more attentive towards comrades, less capricious, etc.

In May 1922, Lenin had a massive stroke and was partially paralysed.[251] Residing at his Gorki dacha, Lenin's main connection to Sovnarkom was through Stalin, who was a regular visitor.[252] Lenin twice asked Stalin to procure poison so that he may commit suicide, but Stalin never did so.[253] Despite this comradeship, Lenin disliked what he referred to as Stalin's "Asiatic" manner, and told his sister Maria that Stalin was "not intelligent".[254] Lenin and Stalin argued on the issue of foreign trade; Lenin believed that the Soviet state should have a monopoly on foreign trade, but Stalin supported Grigori Sokolnikov's view that doing so was impractical at that stage.[255] Another disagreement came over the Georgian Affair, with Lenin backing the Georgian Central Committee's desire for a Georgian Soviet Republic over Stalin's idea of a Transcaucasian one.[256]

They also disagreed on the nature of the Soviet state. Lenin called for the country to be renamed the "Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia", reflecting his desire for expansion across the two continents. Stalin believed that this would encourage independence sentiment among non-Russians, instead arguing that ethnic minorities would be content as "autonomous republics" within the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.[257] Lenin accused Stalin of "Great Russian chauvinism"; Stalin accused Lenin of "national liberalism".[258] A compromise was reached, in which the country would be renamed the "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" (USSR).[259] The USSR's formation was ratified in December 1922; although officially a federal system, all major decisions were taken by the Politburo in Moscow.[260] Their differences were not just based on policy but also became personal; Lenin was particularly angered when Stalin was rude to his wife Krupskaya during a telephone conversation.[261] In the final years of his life, Lenin dictated increasingly disparaging notes on Stalin that became his testament. He criticized Stalin's rude manners and excessive power, suggesting that Stalin should be removed from the position of General Secretary.[262]

Rise to power
Main article: Rise of Joseph Stalin

Succeeding Lenin: 1924–1927
Anastas Mikoyan, Stalin and Sergo Ordzhonikidze in Tiflis (now Tbilisi), in 1925

Lenin died in January 1924.[263] Stalin took charge of the funeral and was one of its pallbearers; against the wishes of Lenin's widow, the Politburo embalmed his corpse and placed it within a mausoleum in Moscow's Red Square.[264] It was incorporated into a growing personality cult devoted to Lenin, with Petrograd being renamed "Leningrad" that year.[265] To bolster his image as a devoted Leninist, Stalin was eager to present himself as a theorist, giving nine lectures at Sverdlov University on the "Foundations of Leninism"; it was later published as a concise overview of Lenin's ideas.[266] At the following 13th Party Congress, Lenin's Testament was read out to senior figures. Embarrassed by its contents, Stalin offered his resignation as General Secretary; this act of humility saved him and he was retained in the position.[267] In his private life, he was dividing his time between his Kremlin apartment and a dacha he had obtained at Zubalova.[268] His wife had given birth to a daughter, Svetlana, in February 1926.[269]

Stalin saw Trotsky as the main obstacle to his rise to dominance within the Communist Party,[190] and while Lenin had been ill he had forged an anti-Trotsky alliance with Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev.[270] Although Zinoviev had expressed concerned about Stalin's growing authority, he rallied behind him at the 13th Congress as a counterweight to Trotsky, who now led a party faction known as the Left Opposition.[271] The Left Opposition believed that too many concessions to capitalism had been made with the NEP; Stalin was deemed a "rightist" in the party for his support of the policy.[272] Stalin built up a retinue of his supporters in the Central Committee,[273] while the Left Opposition were gradually removed from their positions of influence.[274] He was supported in this by Bukharin, who like Stalin believed that implementing the Left Opposition's proposals would plunge the Soviet Union into instability.[275]

Leon Trotsky and Stalin bearing the coffin of Felix Dzerzhinsky on 30 July 1926

In the autumn of 1924, Stalin also removed Kamenev and Zinoviev's supporters from key positions.[275] In 1925, Kamenev and Zinoviev moved into open opposition of Stalin and Bukharin.[276] They attacked one another at the 14th Party Congress, where Stalin accused Kamenev and Zinoviev of reintroducing factionalism—and thus instability—into the party.[277] In the summer of 1926, Kamenev and Zinoviev joined with the Trotskyites to form the United Opposition against Stalin;[278] in October they agreed to stop factional activity under threat of expulsion, and later publicly recanted their views under Stalin's command.[279] The factionalist arguments continued, with Stalin threatening to resign in both December 1926 and December 1927.[280] In October 1927, Zinoviev and Trotsky were removed from the Central Committee;[281] the latter was exiled to Kazakhstan and later deported from the country in 1929.[282] Some of those United Opposition members who were repentant were later rehabilitated and allowed to return to government.[283] Stalin had established himself as the party's supreme leader,[284] although was not the head of government, a task he entrusted to key ally Vyacheslav Molotov.[285] Other important supporters on the Politburo were Voroshilov, Lazar Kaganovich, and Sergo Ordzhonikidze,[286] with Stalin ensuring that his allies ran the various state institutions.[287] According to Montefiore, at this point "Stalin was the leader of the oligarchs but he was far from a dictator".[288]

In 1924, Georgian nationalists seeking independence launched the August Uprising; it was suppressed by the Red Army.[289] In April 1925, Tsaritsyn was renamed Stalingrad.[290] In 1926, Stalin published On Questions of Leninism.[291] It was in this book that he introduced the concept of "Socialism in One Country", which he claimed was an orthodox Leninist perspective. It nevertheless clashed with established Bolshevik views that socialism could not be established in one country but could only be achieved globally through the process of world revolution.[291] In 1927, there was some argument in the party over the USSR's relationship to the situation in China. Stalin had called for the Communist Party of China, led by Mao Zedong, to ally itself with Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang (KMT) nationalists, viewing a Communist-Kuomintang alliance as the best bulwark against Japanese imperial expansionism in eastern Asia. Instead, the KMT repressed the Communists and a civil broke out between the two sides.[292]

Economic policy
We have fallen behind the advanced countries by fifty to a hundred years. We must close that gap in ten years. Either we do this or we'll be crushed. This is what our obligations before the workers and peasants of the USSR dictate to us.

By the latter half of the 1920s, the Soviet Union was still lagging behind the industrial development of Western countries,[294] and Stalin's government feared military attack from Japan, France, or the United Kingdom.[295] Many Bolsheviks, including in Komsomol, OGPU, and the Red Army, were eager to be rid of the NEP and its market-oriented approach, desiring a push towards socialism.[296] There were concerns about a growing sector of society—the 'kulaks' and the Nepmen—who had profited from the policy and become wealthier than other citizens.[294] There had also been a shortfall of grain supplies; 1927 produced only 70% of grain produced in 1926.[297] At this point, Stalin turned against the NEP, putting him on a course to the "left" even of Trotsky or Zinoviev.[298]

In early 1928 Stalin travelled to Novosibirsk, there claiming that kulaks were hoarding their grain. He ordered that the kulaks be arrested and their grain confiscated, with Stalin bringing much of the area's grain back to Moscow with him in February.[299] At his command, grain procurement squads surfaced across Western Siberia and the Urals, with violence breaking out between these squads and the peasantry.[300] Stalin announced that both kulaks and the "middle peasants" must be coerced into releasing their harvest.[301] Bukharin and several other members of the Central Committee were angry that they had not been consulted about this measure, which they deemed rash.[302] In January 1930, the Politburo approved a measure to liquidate the existence of the kulaks as a class; they were rounded up and exiled either elsewhere in their own regions, to other parts of the country, or to concentration camps.[303] Large numbers died during the journey.[304] By July 1930, over 320,000 households had been affected by the de-kulakisation policy.[303]

Aleksei Grigorievich Stakhanov with a fellow miner; Stalin's government initiated the Stakhanovite movement to encourage hard-work. It was partly responsible for a substantial rise in production during the 1930s.[305]

In 1929, the Politburo announced the mass collectivisation of agriculture,[306] establishing both kolkhozy collective farms and sovkhoz state farms.[307] Stalin stipulated that kulaks would be barred from joining these collectives.[308]Although officially voluntary, many peasants joined the collectives out of fear they would face the fate of the kulaks; others joined amid intimidation and violence from party loyalists.[309] By 1932, about 62% of households involved in agriculture were part of collectives, and by 1936 this had risen to 90%.[310] Many of the peasants who had been collectivised resented the loss of their private farmland,[311] and productivity slumped.[312] Famine broke out in many areas,[313] with the Politburo frequently ordering the distribution of emergency food relief to these regions.[314] Armed peasant uprisings against dekulakisation and collectivisation broke out in Ukraine, northern Caucasus, southern Russia, and central Asia, reaching their apex in March 1930; these were repressed by the Red Army.[315] Stalin responded to the uprisings with an article insisting that collectivisation was voluntary and blaming any violence and other excesses on local officials.[316] Bukharin expressed concerns about these policies; he regarded them as a return to Lenin's old "war communism" policy and believed that it would fail. However, by the summer of 1928 he was unable to rally sufficient support in the party to oppose the reforms.[317] In November 1929 Stalin removed him from the Politburo.[318]

Officially, the Soviet Union had replaced the irrationality and wastefulness of a market economy with a planned economy organised along a long-term, precise, and scientific framework; in reality, Soviet economics were based on ad hoc commandments issued from the centre, often to make short-term targets.[319] In 1928, the first five-year plan was launched, its main focus on boosting heavy industry;[320] it was finished a year ahead of schedule, in 1932.[321]The USSR underwent a massive economic transformation.[322] New mines were opened, new cities like Magnitogorsk constructed, and work on the White Sea-Baltic Canal begun.[322] Millions of peasants moved to the cities and became proletariat, although urban house building could not keep up with the demand.[322] Large debts were accrued while purchasing foreign-made machinery.[323] Many of the major construction projects, including the White Sea-Baltic Canal and the Moscow Metro, were constructed largely through forced labour.[324] The last elements of workers' control over industry were removed, with factory managers increasing their authority and receiving privileges and perks;[325] Stalin defended wage disparity by pointing to Marx's argument that it was necessary during the lower stages of socialism.[326] To promote the intensification of labour, a series of medals and awards as well as the Stakhanovite movement were introduced.[305] Stalin's message was that socialism was being established in the USSR while capitalism was crumbling amid the Wall Street crash.[327] His speeches and articles reflected his utopian vision of the Soviet Union rising to unparalleled heights of human development, creating a "new Soviet person".[328]

Cultural and foreign policy
Photograph taken of the 1931 demolition of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow in order to make way for the Palace of the Soviets

In 1928, Stalin declared that class war between the proletariat and their enemies would intensify as socialism developed.[329] He warned of a "danger from the right", including in the Communist Party itself.[330] The first major show trial in the USSR was the Shakhty Trial of 1928, in which several middle-class "industrial specialists" were convicted of sabotage.[331] From 1929 to 1930, further show trials were held to intimidate opposition:[332] these included the Industrial Party Trial, Menshevik Trial, and Metro-Vickers Trial.[333] Aware that the ethnic Russian majority may have concerns about being ruled by a Georgian,[334] he promoted ethnic Russians throughout the state hierarchy and made the Russian language compulsory throughout schools and offices, albeit to be used in tandem with local languages in areas with non-Russian majorities.[335] Nationalist sentiment among ethnic minorities was suppressed.[336]Conservative social policies were promoted to enhance social discipline and boost population growth; this included a focus on strong family units and motherhood, the re-criminalisation of homosexuality, restrictions placed on abortion and divorce, and the abolition of the Zhenotdel.[337]

Stalin desired a "cultural revolution",[338] entailing both the creation of a culture for the "masses" and the wider dissemination of previously elite culture.[339] He oversaw the proliferation of schools, newspapers, and libraries, as well as the advancement of literacy and numeracy.[340] "Socialist realism" was promoted throughout the arts,[341] while he personally wooed prominent writers, namely Maxim Gorky, Mikhail Sholokhov, and Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy.[342] He also expressed patronage for scientists whose research fitted within his preconceived interpretation of Marxism; he for instance endorsed the research of agrobiologist Trofim Lysenko despite the fact that it was rejected by the majority of his scientific peers as pseudo-scientific.[343] The government's anti-religious campaign was re-intensified,[344] with increased funding given to the League of Militant Atheists.[336] Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Buddhist clergy faced persecution.[332] Many religious buildings were demolished, most notably Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, destroyed in 1931 to make way for the (never completed) Palace of the Soviets.[345]Religion retained an influence over much of the population; in the 1937 census, 57% of respondents identified as religious.[346]

Throughout the 1920s and beyond, Stalin placed a high priority on foreign policy.[347] He personally met with a range of Western visitors, including George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells, both of whom were impressed with him.[348] Through the Communist International, Stalin's government exerted a strong influence over Marxist parties elsewhere in the world;[283] initially, Stalin left the running of the organisation largely to Bukharin.[349] At its 6th Congress in July 1928, Stalin informed delegates that the main threat to socialism came not from the right but from non-Marxist socialists and social democrats, whom he called "social fascists";[350] Stalin recognised that the social democrats were the Marxist-Leninists' main rivals for working-class support in many countries.[351] This preoccupation with opposing rival leftists concerned Bukharin, who was particularly worried by the growth of fascism and the far right across Europe.[349] After Bukharin's departure, Stalin placed the Communist International under the administration of Dmitry Manuilsky and Osip Piatnitsky.[283]

Stalin faced problems in his family life. In 1929, his son Yakov unsuccessfully attempted suicide; his failure earned Stalin's contempt.[352] His relationship with Nadya was also strained amid their arguments and her mental health problems.[352] In November 1932, after a group dinner in the Kremlin in which Stalin flirted with other women, Nadya shot herself.[353] Publicly, it was claimed that Nadya died of appendicitis; Stalin also concealed the real cause of death from his children.[354] Stalin's friends noted that he underwent a significant change following her suicide, becoming emotionally harder.[355]

Famine in Ukraine
Further information: Holodomor, Causes of the Holodomor, and Holodomor genocide question

Within the Soviet Union, there was widespread civic disgruntlement against Stalin's government.[356] Social unrest, previously restricted largely to the countryside, was increasingly evident in urban areas, prompting Stalin to ease on some of his economic policies in 1932.[357] In May 1932, he introduced a system of kolkhoz markets where peasants could trade their surplus produce.[357] At the same time, penal sanctions became more severe; at Stalin's instigation, in August 1932 a measure was introduced meaning that the theft of even a handful of grain could be a capital offense.[358] The second five-year plan had its production quotas reduced from that of the first, with the main emphasis now being on improving living conditions.[357] It therefore emphasised the expansion of housing space and the production of consumer goods.[357] Like its predecessor, this Plan was repeatedly amended to meet changing situations; there was for instance an increasing emphasis placed on armament production after Adolf Hitler became German Chancellor in 1933.[359]

Famine in the USSR, 1933. Areas of most intense famine marked with black

Such policies nevertheless failed to stop the famine which peaked in the winter of 1932–33.[360] Between five and seven million people died;[361] many resorted to cannibalising the dead to survive.[362] Worst affected were Ukraine and the North Caucuses, although the famine also impacted Kazakhstan and several Russian provinces.[362] The 1932 harvest had been a poor one,[361] and had followed several years in which lower productivity had resulted in a gradual decline in output.[361] Stalin blamed the famine on hostile elements and wreckers within the peasantry.[363] According to British historian Alan Bullock, "the total Soviet grain crop was no worse than that of 1931 ... it was not a crop failure but the excessive demands of the state, ruthlessly enforced, that cost the lives of as many as five million Ukrainian peasants." Stalin refused to release large grain reserves that could have alleviated the famine, while continuing to export grain, and he strictly enforced new draconian anti-theft laws on the collective farm.[364][365] Other historians hold the view that it was largely the insufficient harvests of 1931 and 1932 caused by a variety of natural disasters that resulted in famine, with the successful harvest of 1933 ending the famine.[366] The Ukrainian famine is sometimes referred to as the Holodomor, implying that it was engineered by the Soviet government, specifically targeting the Ukrainian people in order to destroy the Ukrainian nation as both a political factor and a social entity.[367][368] The existence of the famine was denied to foreign observers.[369]

Stalinism
In 1935–36, Stalin oversaw a new constitution; its dramatic liberal features were designed as propaganda weapons, for all power rested in the hands of Stalin and his Politburo.[370] He declared that "socialism, which is the first phase of communism, has basically been achieved in this country".[370] In 1938, The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), colloquially known as the Short Course, was released;[371] Conquest later referred to it as the "central text of Stalinism".[372] A number of authorised Stalin biographies were also published,[373] although Stalin generally wanted to be portrayed as the embodiment of the Communist Party rather than have his life story explored.[374] During the later 1930s, Stalin placed "a few limits on the worship of his own greatness".[374] By 1938, Stalin's inner circle had gained a degree of stability, containing the personalities who would remain there until Stalin's death.[375]

Foreign affairs
Seeking improved international relations, in 1934 the Soviet Union secured membership of the League of Nations, of which it had previously been excluded.[376] Stalin initiated confidential communications with Hitler in October 1933, shortly after the latter came to power in Germany.[377] Stalin admired Hitler, particularly the latter's manoeuvres to remove rivals within the Nazi Party in the Night of the Long Knives.[378] He nevertheless recognised the threat posed by fascism and sought to establish better links with the liberal democracies of Western Europe;[379] in May 1935, the Soviets signed a treaty of mutual assistance with France and Czechoslovakia.[380] At the Communist International's 7th Congress, held in July–August 1935, the Soviet government encouraged Marxist-Leninists to unite with other leftists as part of a popular front against fascism.[381] In turn, the anti-communist governments of Germany, Fascist Italy and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact of 1936.[382] When the Spanish Civil War broke out the same year, the Soviets sent 648 aircraft and 407 tanks to the left-wing Republican faction; these were accompanied by 3000 Soviet troops and 42,000 members of the International Brigades set up by the Communist International.[383] Stalin took a strong personal involvement in the Spanish situation.[384] Germany and Italy backed the Nationalist faction, which was ultimately victorious in March 1939.[385] Stalin would also give aid to the Chinese after the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in July 1937, the KMT and the Communists having formed Stalin's desired United Front.[386]

The Great Terror
Stalin on building of Moscow-Volga canal. It was constructed from 1932 to 1937 by Gulag prisoners.

Regarding state repressions, Stalin often provided conflicting signals.[387] In May 1933, he ordered the release of many criminals convicted of minor offenses from the overcrowded prisons and ordered the security services not to enact further mass arrests and deportations.[388] In September 1934, he ordered the Politburo to establish a commission to investigate any false imprisonments; however, that same month he called for the execution of workers at the Stalin Metallurgical Factory accused of spying for Japan.[387] This began to change in December 1934, when the prominent party member Sergey Kirov was murdered.[389] After the murder of Kirov, Stalin became increasingly attentive of the possibility of murder and subsequently improved his own personal security, including being heavily guarded at all times and rarely ever going out in public on his own.[390]

The killing was followed by an intensification of state repression;[391] Stalin issued a decree establishing NKVD troikas which could mete out rulings without involving the courts.[392] Just as the de-kulakisation policy had sought to rid rural areas of anti-government forces, so Stalin sought to do the same in the cities and towns. In 1935, the NKVD was ordered to expel suspected counter-revolutionaries, particularly those who had been aristocrats, landlords, or businesspeople before the October Revolution.[359] In the early months of 1935, over 11,000 people were expelled from Leningrad, to live in isolated rural areas.[359] In 1936, Nikolai Yezhov became head of the NKVD and oversaw this intensification.[393] Stalin instigated this intensification of repression, which was rooted in his own psychological compulsions and the logic of the system he had created, one which prioritised security above other considerations.[394]

In this famous image, Nikolai Yezhov is shown with Voroshilov, Molotov, and Stalin inspecting the White Sea Canal. The image was later altered to remove Yezhov completely.

Stalin orchestrated the arrest of many former opponents in the Communist Party: denounced as Western-backed mercenaries, many were imprisoned or exiled internally.[395] The first Moscow Trial took place in August 1936; Kamenev and Zinoviev were among those accused of plotting assassinations, found guilty in a show trial, and executed.[396] The second Moscow Show Trial took place in January 1937,[397] and the third in March 1938, in which Bukharin and Rykov were accused of involvement in the alleged Trotskyite-Zinovievite terrorist plot and sentenced to death.[398] By late 1937, all remnants of collective leadership were gone from the Politburo, which was controlled entirely by Stalin.[399] There were mass expulsions from the party,[400] with Stalin commanding foreign communist parties to also purge anti-Stalinist elements.[401]During the 1930s and 1940s, NKVD groups assassinated defectors and opponents abroad;[402] in August 1940, Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico, eliminating the last of Stalin's opponents among the former Party leadership.[403] In May, this was followed by the arrest of most members of the military Supreme Command and mass arrests throughout the military, often on fabricated charges.[404] These purges replaced most of the party's old guard with younger officials who did not remember a time before Stalin's leadership and who were regarded as more personally loyal to him.[405] Party functionaries readily carried out their commands and sought to ingratiate themselves with Stalin to avoid becoming the victim of the purge.[406]

Repressions further intensified in December 1936 and remained at a high level until November 1938, a period known as the Great Purge.[394] By the latter part of 1937, the purges had moved beyond the party and were affecting the wider population.[407] In July 1937, the Politburo ordered a purge of "anti-Soviet elements" in society, affecting Bolsheviks who had opposed Stalin, former Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, priests, former soldiers in the White Army, and common criminals.[408] That month, Stalin and Yezhov signed Order No. 00447, listing 268,950 people for arrest, of whom 75,950 were executed.[409] He also initiated "national operations", the ethnic cleansing of non-Soviet ethnic groups—among them Poles, Germans, Latvians, Finns, Greeks, Koreans, and Chinese—through internal or external exile.[410] During these years, approximately 1.6 million people were arrested.[411] 700,000 were shot, and an unknown number died under NKVD torture.[411][412]

Stalin initiated all of the key decisions during the Terror, personally directing many of its operations and taking an interest in the details of their implementation.[413] His motives in doing so have been much debated by historians.[411] His personal writings from the period were—according to Khlevniuk—"unusually convoluted and incoherent", filled with claims about conspiracies and enemies encircling him.[414] He was particularly concerned at the success that right-wing forces had in overthrowing the leftist Spanish government,[415] worried that domestic anti-Stalinist elements would become a fifth column in the event of a future war with Japan and Germany.[416] The Great Terror ended when Yezhov was removed as the head of the NKVD, to be replaced by Lavrentiy Beria.[417] Yezhov was arrested in April 1939 and executed in 1940.[418] The Terror had damaged the Soviet Union's reputation abroad, particularly among previously sympathetic leftists,[419] and as the Terror wound down, so Stalin sought to deflect responsibility away from himself.[420] He later claimed that the Terror's "excesses" and "violations of law" were Yezhov's fault.[421]

World War II
Main article: Soviet Union in World War II

Pact with Hitler: 1939–1941
As a Marxist–Leninist, Stalin expected an inevitable Second World War between competing capitalist powers; as Nazi Germany annexed Austria and then part of Czechoslovakia in 1938, Stalin recognised that this war was looming. He sought to maintain Soviet neutrality in the conflict, hoping that a German war against France and the UK would leave the Soviets a dominant force in Europe.[422] Militarily, the Soviets also faced a threat from the east, with Soviet troops clashing with the expansionist Japanese in the latter part of the 1930s.[423] Stalin initiated a military build-up, with the Red Army more than doubling between January 1939 and June 1941, although in its haste to expand many of its officers were poorly trained.[424]

Stalin greeting the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop in the Kremlin, 1939

As Britain and France seemed unwilling to commit to an alliance with the Soviet Union, Stalin saw a better deal with the Germans.[425] In May 1939, Germany began negotiations with the Soviets, proposing that Eastern Europe be divided between the two powers.[426] Stalin saw this as an opportunity both for territorial expansion and temporary peace with Germany.[427] In August 1939, the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Germany, negotiated by Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop.[428] A week later, Germany invaded Poland, sparking the UK and France to declare war on it.[429] On 17 September, the Red Army entered eastern Poland, officially to restore order amid the collapse of the Polish state; this explanation was also designed so as not to anger the UK and France.[430]

Stalin suggested a territorial exchange with Germany, giving them the ethnic Polish-dominated areas of Lublin Province and part of Warsaw Province, and in return receiving Lithuania; Stalin had desired the reintegration of the three Baltic states into the Soviet Union. This was agreed in 28 September.[431] A German–Soviet Frontier Treaty was signed shortly after, in Stalin's presence.[432] The two nations continued trading, undermining the British blockade of Germany.[433]

The Red Army entered the Baltic states, which were forcibly merged into the Soviet Union in August.[434] The Soviets also claimed Finland, but the Finnish government refused their demands. The Soviets invaded Finland in November; despite their numerical inferiority, the Finns kept the Red Army at bay.[435] International opinion backed Finland, with the Soviets being expelled from the League of Nations.[436] Embarrassed by their inability to defeat the Finns, the Soviets signed an interim peace treaty, in which they received territorial concessions from Finland.[437] In June 1940, Bessarabia and northern Bukovina—parts of Romania—were also annexed into the Soviet Union.[438]The Soviet authorities sought to forestall any dissent in these new East European territories.[439] One of the most noted instances was the Katyn massacre of April and May 1940, in which around 22,000 members of the Polish armed forces, police, and intelligentsia were executed.[440]

The speed of the German victory over and occupation of France in summer 1940 took Stalin by surprise.[441] He increasingly focused on appeasement with Germany to delay any conflict with them.[442] After the Tripartite Pact was signed by Axis Powers Germany, Japan and Italy, in October 1940, Stalin approached Germany with the suggestion that it too join the Axis alliance.[443] To demonstrate peaceful intentions toward Germany, in April 1941 the Soviets signed a neutrality pact with Japan.[444] On 6 May, Stalin replaced Molotov as Premier of the Soviet Union. Although de facto head of government for a decade and a half, Stalin concluded that relations with Germany had deteriorated to such an extent that he needed to deal with the problem as de jure head of government as well.[445]

German invasion: 1941–1942
With all the men at the front, Moscow women dig anti-tank trenchesaround Moscow in 1941

In June 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union, initiating the war on the Eastern Front.[446] Despite having prior warning, Stalin was taken by surprise.[447] He formed a military Supreme Command (Stavka),[448] as well as a State Committee of Defence, which he headed as Supreme Commander.[449] The German tactic of blitzkrieg was initially highly effective; the Soviet air force in the western borderlands was destroyed within two days.[450] The German Wehrmacht pushed deep into Soviet territory;[451] soon, Ukraine, Belorussia, and the Baltic states were under German occupation.[452] Soviet refugees flooded into Moscow and Leningrad to escape the Wehrmacht,[453] although there were other Soviet citizens—namely those who were neither ethnically Russian nor Jewish—who welcomed the German Army as liberators; they soon found that the Nazis regarded them as Untermensch, fit only for economic exploitation.[452] By July, Germany's Luftwaffe was bombing Moscow,[452] and by October the Wehrmacht were amassing for a full assault on the capital.[454] Plans were made for the Soviet government to evacuate to Kuibyshev, although Stalin decided to remain in Moscow, believing that his flight would damage troop morale.[455] The German advance on Moscow was halted by the arrival of winter.[456]

Against his generals' advice, Stalin emphasised attack over defence.[457] In June 1941, he ordered a scorched earth policy of destroying infrastructure and food supplies before the Germans could seize them,[458] also commanding the NKVD to kill around 100,000 political prisoners in areas the Wehrmacht approached.[459] He purged the military command; several high-ranking figures were demoted or reassigned but a few were arrested and executed.[460]With Order No. 270, Stalin commanded soldiers risking capture to commit suicide or fight to the death, and that those who allowed themselves to be captured were traitors;[461] among those taken as a prisoner of war by the Germans was Stalin's son Yakov, who died in their custody.[462] Stalin issued Order No. 227 in July 1942, which directed that those retreating would be placed in "penal battalions" used as cannon fodder on the front lines.[463] Amid the fighting, both the German and Soviet armies disregarded the law of war set forth in the Geneva Conventions;[464] the Soviets heavily publicised Nazi massacres of communists, Jews, and Romani.[465]

The centre of Stalingrad after liberation, 2 February 1943.

The Soviets allied with the United Kingdom and United States;[466] although the US joined the war against Germany in 1941, little direct assistance reached the Soviets until late 1942.[464] Responding to the invasion, the Soviets intensified their industrial enterprises in central Russia, focusing almost entirely on production for the military.[467] They achieved high levels of industrial productivity, outstripping that of Germany.[465] During the war, Stalin was more tolerant of the Russian Orthodox Church, allowing it to resume some of its activities and meeting with Patriarch Sergius in September 1943.[468] He also permitted a wider range of cultural expression, notably permitting formerly suppressed writers and artists like Anna Akhmatova and Dmitri Shostakovich to disperse their work more widely.[469] The Internationale was dropped as the country's national anthem, to be replaced with a more patriotic replacement.[470] There was an increased criticism of cosmopolitanism, particularly the idea of "rootless cosmopolitanism", an approach with particular repercussions for Soviet Jews.[471] Comintern was dissolved in 1943,[472] and Stalin encouraged foreign Marxist–Leninist parties to emphasise nationalism over internationalism to broaden their domestic appeal.[473] The Soviet government also began to increasingly promote Pan-Slavist sentiment.[473] Stalin exploited Nazi anti-Semitism, and in April 1942 he sponsored the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) to garner Jewish and foreign support for the Soviet war effort.[474]

In April 1942 Stalin overrode Stavka by ordering the Soviets' first serious counter-attack, an attempt to seize German-held Kharkov in eastern Ukraine. This attack proved unsuccessful.[475] That year, Hitler shifted his primary goal from an immediate victory in the East, to the more long-term goal of securing the southern Soviet Union to conquer oil fields vital to a long-term German war effort.[476] While Red Army generals saw evidence that Hitler would shift efforts south, Stalin considered this to be a flanking campaign in efforts to take Moscow.[477] In June 1942, the German Army attacked Stalingrad; Stalin ordered the Red Army to hold the city at all costs.[478] This resulted in the protracted Battle of Stalingrad.[479] In December 1942 he placed Konstantin Rokossovski in charge of holding the city.[480] In February 1943, the German troops attacking Stalingrad surrendered.[481] The Soviet victory marked a major turning point in the war;[482] in commemoration, Stalin declared himself Marshal of the Soviet Union.[483]

Soviet counter-attack: 1942–1945
The Big Three: Stalin, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill at the Tehran Conference, November 1943

By November 1942, the Soviets had begun to repulse the important German strategic southern campaign and, although there were 2.5 million Soviet casualties in that effort, it permitted the Soviets to take the offensive for most of the rest of the war on the Eastern Front.[484] Germany attempted an encirclement attack at Kursk, which was successfully repulsed by the Soviets.[485] By the end of 1943, the Soviets occupied half of the territory taken by the Germans from 1941 to 1942.[486] Soviet military industrial output also had increased substantially from late 1941 to early 1943 after Stalin had moved factories well to the East of the front, safe from German invasion and air attack.[487]

In Allied countries, Stalin was increasingly depicted in a positive light over the course of the war.[488] In 1941, the London Philharmonic Orchestra performed a concert to celebrate his birthday,[489] and in 1942, Time magazine named him "Man of the Year".[488] When Stalin learned that people in Western countries affectionately called him "Uncle Joe" he was initially offended, regarding it as undignified.[490] There remained mutual suspicions between Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who were together known as the "Big Three".[491] Churchill flew to Moscow to visit Stalin in August 1942 and again in October 1944.[492]Stalin scarcely left Moscow throughout the war,[493] with Roosevelt and Churchill frustrated with his reluctance to travel to meet them.[494]

In November 1943, Stalin met with Churchill and Roosevelt in Tehran, a location of Stalin's choosing.[495] There, Stalin and Roosevelt got on well, with both desiring the post-war dismantling of the British Empire.[496] At Tehran, the trio agreed that to prevent Germany rising to military prowess yet again, the German state should be broken up.[497] Roosevelt and Churchill also agreed to Stalin's demand that the German city of Konigsberg be declared Soviet territory.[497] Stalin was impatient for the UK and US to open up a Western Front to take the pressure off of the East; they eventually did so in the summer of 1944.[498] Stalin insisted that, after the war, the Soviet Union should incorporate the portions of Poland it occupied pursuant to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Germany, which Churchill opposed.[499] Discussing the fate of the Balkans, later in 1944 Churchill agreed to Stalin's suggestion that after the war, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and Yugoslavia would come under the Soviet sphere of influence while Greece would come under that of the West.[500]

Soviet soldiers in Polotsk, 4 July 1944

In 1944, the Soviet Union made significant advances across Eastern Europe toward Germany,[501] including Operation Bagration, a massive offensive in the Byelorussian SSR against the German Army Group Centre.[502] In 1944 the German armies were pushed out of the Baltic states, which were then re-annexed into the Soviet Union.[503] As the Red Army reconquered the Caucasus and Crimea, various ethnic groups living in the region—the Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingushi, Karachai, Balkars, and Crimean Tatars—were accused of having collaborated with the Germans. Using the idea of collective responsibility as a basis, Stalin's government abolished their autonomous republics and between late 1943 and 1944 deported the majority of their populations to Central Asia and Siberia.[504] Over one million people were deported as a result of the policy.[505]

In February 1945, the three leaders met at the Yalta Conference.[506] Roosevelt and Churchill conceded to Stalin's demand that Germany pay the Soviet Union 20 billion dollars in reparations, and that his country be permitted to annex Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands in exchange for entering the war against Japan.[507] An agreement was also made that a post-war Polish government should be a coalition consisting of both communist and conservative elements.[508] Privately, Stalin sought to ensure that Poland would come fully under Soviet influence.[509] The Red Army withheld assistance to Polish resistance fighters battling the Germans in the Warsaw Uprising, with Stalin believing that any victorious Polish militants could interfere with his aspirations to dominate Poland through a future Marxist government.[510] Although concealing his desires from the other Allied leaders, Stalin placed great emphasis on capturing Berlin first, believing that this would enable him to bring more of Europe under long-term Soviet control. Churchill was concerned that this was the case, and unsuccessfully tried to convince the U.S. that the Western Allies should pursue the same goal.[511]

Victory: 1945
British Prime Minister Clement Attlee, U.S. President Harry S. Trumanand Joseph Stalin at the Potsdam Conference, July 1945.

In April 1945, the Red Army seized Berlin, Hitler committed suicide, and Germany surrendered unconditionally.[512] Stalin was annoyed that Hitler was dead, having wanted to capture him alive.[513] He ordered his intelligence agencies to secretly bring Hitler's remains to Moscow, seeking to prevent any physical remains becoming a relic for Nazi sympathisers.[514] As the Red Army had conquered German territory, they discovered the extermination camps that the Nazi administration had run.[511] Many Soviet soldiers engaged in looting, pillaging, and rape, both in Germany and parts of Eastern Europe.[515] Stalin refused to punish the offenders.[511] After receiving a complaint about this from Yugoslav communist Milovan Djilas, Stalin asked how after experiencing the traumas of war a soldier could "react normally? And what is so awful in his having fun with a woman, after such horrors?"[516]

With Germany defeated, Stalin switched his focus to the ongoing war with Japan, transferring half a million troops to the far east.[517] Stalin was aware that the United States had developed nuclear weaponry, with which it intended to subdue the Japanese, and was steadfast in entering the war before he could be denied the territories promised to him.[518] On 8 August, in between the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet army invaded Japanese occupied Manchuria and defeated the Kwantung Army.[519] These events led to the Japanese surrender and the complete end of World War II.[520] Soviet forces continued to expand until they occupied all their territorial concessions, but the U.S. rebuffed Stalin's desire for the Red Army to take a role in the occupation of Japan by Allied forces.[521]

Stalin attended the Potsdam Conference in July–August 1945, alongside his new British and U.S. counterparts, Prime Minister Clement Attlee and President Harry Truman.[522] At the beginning of the conference, Stalin repeated previous promises to Churchill that he would refrain from a "Sovietization" of Eastern Europe.[523] Stalin pushed for reparations from Germany without regard to the base minimum supply for German citizens' survival, which worried Truman and Churchill who thought that Germany would become a financial burden for Western powers.[524] He also pushed for "war booty", which would permit the Soviet Union to directly seize property from conquered nations without quantitative or qualitative limitation, and a clause was added permitting this to occur with some limitations.[524] Germany was divided into four zones: Soviet, U.S., British, and French, with Berlin itself—located within the Soviet area—also subdivided thusly.[525]