The Man of Steel

Joseph Stalin (1879-1953), statesman, premier of the Soviet Union (1922-1953), one of the central personages of the 20th Century. He is most remembered for his industrialization of the Soviet Union and for leading the Soviet Union to victory in the Second World War.

Early Life

Stalin (from Russian stal, steel) was born as in Gori, Georgia in 1879. His father worked in a factory and owned a shoe making shop. The failure of his business and his dead-end job lead him to drinking. In 1888 he abandoned his wife and Joseph, leaving them with no support and little money. To make the ends meet, Stalin's mother did other peoples laundry and cleaned their homes. Ekaterina had four children, but only Joseph survived beyond childhood. Stalin was born with a withered left hand and contracted smallpox when young, leaving him with pockmarks on his face.

Stalin was a good student and he did well at school. His family was poorer than families of other students who looked down upon him and used to bully him. However, at an early age, Stalin learned to defend himself well, something he was noted for during his whole life. Stalin's native language was Georgian and he had a Georgian accent. Throughout the Russian Empire, the school lessons were mostly in Russian, which further alienated the numerous Russian minorities. This may have been behind Stalin's later interest in linguistics and among the reasons he did not attempt to unify the language of the Soviet Union which, according to recent research, was one of the factors of its rapid disintegration.

From an early age, Stalin was fascinated with Georgian myths and folklore. He particularly liked a character called Koba, Georgian Robin Hood, a noble rogue who stole from the rich and gave to the poor. Josef took Koba as his nickname, which he kept until 1913.

 

Tiflis Theological Seminary in 1830's

The Seminary Years

In 1893, Stalin won a scholarship which allowed him to attend the Tiflis Theological Seminary. He enrolled in the seminary because his mother was deeply religious and wanted him to be a priest in the Orthodox Church. The seminary placed harsh restrictions on what students were and were not allowed to do. Some students compared the life in the Tiflis Theological Seminary to a life in prison or in the army barracks. They were forbidden to read newspapers and most non-religious books. The punishment for doing so was typically a prolonged solitary detention. However, students were allowed to move around Tiflis freely, without supervision, every day for 3 to 5 hours.

Stalin was repeatedly caught and punished for reading banned books. To protest this censorship, Stalin joined a Marxist study group which provided him with access to the reading material banned in the seminary. Eventually, Stalin became the leader of this group which even hired a scribe to provide them with a full copy of Marx Das Kapital, at that time available only in fragments. Stalin read the book twice, taking detailed notes.

In 1898 there was the landmark conference in Minsk, at which the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, the first leftist Russian Empire-wide revolutionary party was founded. This inspired Stalin to join a local Georgian Marxist Group called Mesame Dasi (Group Three). It was in Mesame Dasi that he first came into contact with the works of Lenin. At that time, Lenin was a controversial figure among Russian Marxists, but Stalin was attracted to his ideas.

In 1899 Stalin left the seminary. The reason for him doing so is not clear. According to official records he was expelled for failing to attend an examination, however the real reason might have been that he was the leader of the Marxist study group. His mother maintains that she withdrew him at the doctor's advice, as he was sick and the doctor feared that he could get tuberculosis.
 

Joseph Stalin in 1903

The Georgian Rebel

After leaving the seminary, Stalin worked at the Tiflis astronomical observatory, earning spending money by tutoring children, and writing articles for a Georgian progressive newspaper. In 1902, he was arrested after coordinating a strike at the Rothschild plant at Batumi. After spending a year-and-half in prison, Stalin was deported to Siberia from where he escaped in 1904. In 1905, Lenin invited him to visit him and his wife in Finland. After his return to Russia, Stalin was arrested several times, but each time he managed to escape. In 1912 he became editor of the Russian newspaper Pravda. However, in 1913 he was arrested again and sentenced for life to exile in Siberia. After the abdication of Czar Nicholas II, Stalin returned to his work as editor of Pravda where he became an ardent supporter of Lenin. After the October Revolution of 1917, Lenin appointed Stalin the Commissar of Nationalities.

British Invasion of Russia 1918-1922

On March 3, 1918, Vladimir Lenin negotiated the separate peace at Brest-Litovsk. Shortly afterwards, on July 23, 1918, British Armies invaded Russia. The initial goal of this intervention that lasted over four years ended with evacuation of the British troops at Vladivostok in October of 1922 was to bring Russia back into the war against Germany¹ The Great Britain and her Allies attacked Russia from the North, landing troops in Murmansk and Archangelsk, from the East, landing troops in Vladivostok and from the South, landing troops at Batumi. The coalition lead by Britain lost about 235,000 soldiers, the Red Army about 1,000,000. Joseph Stalin took part in this war which helps to explains his initial reluctance to enter the war against Germany on the side of the Great Britain two decades later.
 

The 1920's and 1930's
 
In 1922, Lenin nominated Stalin to the post of the General Secretary of the Communist Party. Leon Trotsky was also considered, but his candidacy was rejected in favor of Stalin. This was among the reasons for the widening rift between the Jewish and Nationalist factions of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In 1925, Stalin was able to remove Trotsky from his government post, however during the years of 1932-1934 the Jewish faction nearly succeeded to readmit Trocky to the Communist Party and to the government. Stalin eventually prevailed and purged the majority of members of the Jewish faction from the Communist Party. In 1937 Stalin was misled by the personal communication of the Czechoslovakia's President Benes about the alleged preparation of the coup d'etat by a faction of the military. President Benes received this information from his secret service which, in turn, was deceived by a German double agent. This resulted in execution of Marshal Tukhachevsky and his close associates and weakened the Red Army at the eve of the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

 

World War Two

Reliable information on the role of Premier Stalin during the Second World War comes from memoirs of Marshal George Zhukov (2002), who, during the war years, was in constant contact with Premier Stalin. According to Marshal Zhukov,

Stalin carried on major work in the organizing of strategic reserves
and the material-technical means essential for the military struggle.

After the Battle of Kursk in 1943, Premier Stalin told Zhukov: Do you remember how in old times when troops won victories they rang the church bells in honor of the soldiers? and proposed a modern substitute - artillery salute. That night for the first time there rang out over the Kremlin twelve salves from 124 guns. There were 355 to follow.

In a stark contrast to most Western leaders who prefer to send children of others to die in their wars of conquest, Stalin send his son Jacob to the front line. Jacob was captured and Germans offered his exchange for the Field Marshal Paulus. Stalin refused this offer, as he would not be able to look into the eyes of millions of Russian parents who also lost their children in the war. According to a recent discovery of a top-secret document in the British archives, Jacob was not killed by the Germans, but during a dispute with a group of British prisoners of war.

Among the accusations blaming Stalin for his conduct of the war, allegedly resulting in unnecessary deaths, is that Premier Stalin directed operations of the Red Army not by using military maps, but a globe. This propaganda story forgets to add that the globe next to the Stalin's office was two stories high. Most military operations in the Soviet Union theatre of war took place in the far north. In this region the globe provides information about the over-all military situation superior to that of maps with the Mercatorial projection, which distort areas close to the polar circle.

Western mass media glorify the military exploits of the "Greatest Generation," obscuring the fact that the so-far the largest military conflict in human history was won by the Soviet Union under the leadership of Premier Stalin. While the United States and the Great Britain bombed at night German cities populated, with men serving at the front, mostly by women and children, the Red Army was waging the decisive battles of the war.

What struck me after I immigrated to the United States were the pervasive accounts of Nazi atrocities with little attention paid to the suffering of the Soviet people and to real heroes of the World War II. While serving in the army and talking to officers who fought at the front, I listened to the objective narratives of the combat, devoid of slander of the enemy. Marshal Zhukov (2002, pp. 155-156) follows this military code of honor, describing the enemy as follows:

The fighting capacity of the German troops - soldiers and officers, were without question on a high level. The German soldier knew his business in battle and in service in the field; he was steadfast, self-assured and disciplined. However, the forces at Germany's disposal were clearly inadequate for waging simultaneous operations in the three major sectors of the Soviet-German front. In planning the invasion of the Soviet Union, Hitler and his associates intended to throw all their available forces against us, without adequate reserves. This was the miscalculation of a reckless gambler.
 

United Nation headquarters

Post-War Era

Following the victory in the Second World War, Stalin integrated socialist countries, initiated the build-up of the nuclear balance that kept peace during the second half of the 20th century, and was instrumental in establishment of the United Nations. After the socialist countries disintegrated, the ideas of the Enlightenment and of the socialist humanism were replaced by the aggressive ideology of the triumphant Judeo-Protestantism, aiming at the world domination. Within this context, the philosophy of Karl Marx is being reassessed and the roles of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Staling in the realization of the ideas of Karl Marx are undergoing profound reevaluation.

 Death

There is emerging consensus, based on the recent Yale Medical School study, that Stalin was assassinated. This consensus is based on explication of suppressed reasons for Stalin's decision to resettle Russian Jews, marked similarities in the Stalin and Gottwald's deaths with Gottwald's death being likely the revenge for execution of Slansky, as discussed in a related article, and on the medical evidence. The opposing arguments are based, as usual, on superficially plausible, but generally fallacious reasoning, false arguments, and personal testimonies.

 

Svetlana and her father in 1935

Stalin's Family

Stalin was married twice. His first wife, Ekaterina Svanidze, bore him a son, Jacob, but died in 1907, only four years after their marriage. His second wife, Nadya Alliluyeva was Lenin's secretary. Stalin had with her two children, Vasily and Svetlana. Toward the end of his life Stalin lived with sister of Lazar Kaganovich, Rosa, who also administered capsules of warfarin, a chemical substance causing his death.
 

 Criticisms

Joseph Stalin continued the tradition of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin where the Marx formulated and Lenin implemented the theoretical structure on a new, more just society. The main economical principle of this new society was the more equitable division of wealth and the main ideological principle was based on the realistic worldview in stark contrast to the religious view of the world. To implement these principles, Stalin reduced the wealth of the rich and the power of the clergy. Subsequently, two major groups of his enemies emerged, the economic and the religious.

With the passage of time, the anguish associated with loss of the material status typically diminishes, as new wealth can be created, bank accounts replenished, and the new generation tends to forget. On the other hand, religious hate does not diminish with time. Religious books of Judaism and Christianity are replete with animosity against ancient enemies and with description of atrocities that happened thousands of years ago. Religious traditions do not forget and forgive. Religious zealots are preoccupied with contemplation of the past injustices. This distorts their perception of the ongoing events and often gets projected into apocalyptic visions of the future, saturating their cognitive systems with hate.

The ongoing criticism of Premier Stalin is continued by these two categories of people. The economy-based cabal blames him for the 1932-1933 famine in the Ukraine, which is analogous to blaming Queen Victoria for the Irish potato famine of 1845-1849. The profound animosity toward Premier Stalin is characteristic of the Christian and Jewish hate group which blame him for countless atrocities. With the passing years, their hate grows as well as the numbers of his alleged victims.

Modern Day Perceptions

After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the anti-Stalin propaganda with its absurd claims intensified. However, the comparative studies of the pre- and post communist Soviet Union (such as, e.g., summarized by Krus, 2007) and the opening of the Soviet archives, allowed for objective research which attempts to counteract the hate disseminated by the religious groups and by the pro-West media. Most people are astonished by some of the recent findings of the archival research, such as that Stalin was a caring father and wrote sensitive poetry. Recently, the on-line magazine Kvali published Stalin's poem Morning which opens with verses, evoking vivid images of the Georgian landscape:

Red buds have opened
Changing to the violet
Stirred by the light breeze
Lilies of the valley bend over the grass...

Notes
1. Some historians call this period the Civil War. However, the objective analysis of the Russia's entry to the World War I at the side of the Great Britain shows that Nicolas II entered that war not to defend Russian interests, but to further the imperial designs of the Great Britain, ruled by his relatives. Nicholas II toward the end of the war lost the support of his people, but never wavered in his support of the Great Britain. After Lenin concluded the war, the primary interest of Britain was to bring Russia back to war on her side, joining the invading armies with armies of the "white" generals.

2. The present day anti-Stalin propaganda is primarily due to the Jewish hate groups. Nowhere it can be better observed than on the Wikipedia patrolled by Jewish supremacists. As commented by a former contributor to the Wikipedia

On Wikipedia, try to discuss anything related to humanistic values, religion in general and Judaism in particular, and you will be met with dissembling, sophism, lawyerese, nonsense, BS, diversion, nitpicking, ad hominem, red herrings, false comparisons, and trivialism, along with every logical fallacy known to humankind.''

See Also
Shifting alliances
Vladimir Lenin
Wolves are closing in

References
Krus, D. J. (2007) Decline of the Enlightenment Epoch. Cruise Scientific.
Stalin, J. V.  (1913-1951) Stalin's Collected Writings. Reference Archives.
Sundquist, E. J. (1996) 'The Oxford W.E.B. Du Bois Reader. Oxford University Press.
Zhukov, G. K. (1992) From Moscow to Berlin: Marshal Zhukov's Greatest Battles. Cooper Square Press.