The Rise and Rule of Stalin
IB 20th Century Topics
Joseph (Josef) Stalin
Born: December 18,
1878
 Died: March 5, 1953
 Joseph Stalin was
leader of the Union of
Soviet Socialist
Republics (USSR) from
1924 -1953.

Timeline of Early Soviet History
Russia governed by Czar until 1917; autocratic
political system.
 Country faced heavy military losses in WWI;
popular unrest.
 Moderates lead revolution in May 1917; Czar
imprisoned.
 Bolshevik Revolution in Nov. 1917; Czar and his
family murdered; Russia withdrew from the war

Bolshevik Revolution
V. I. Lenin was the head of Soviet
government & Bolshevik Communist party
from 1917
to his death
in 1924.
 Josef Stalin was a
top administrator in
Bolshevik Party

Background on Stalin
He was born in
Georgia. The
area was
characterized by
gang wars and
street brawls
 In 1906, he
married and
had a child. She
died of typhus
in 1907.

Early Life
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He organized bank
robberies, arms deals,
and assassination
attempts and put in
prison in 1908.
He was again arrested in
1911 and exiled. He had
another son April 1912.
He created Pravda in
1912. It was a Bolshevik
newspaper. He was
caught and again exiled.
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During the Russian Civil War,
Stalin was put in the Politburo
(the executive committee for
the Communist Party). He
opposed many of Leon
Trotsky’s policies (Trotsky was
a Bolshevik Revolutionary and
Marxist Theorist).
He was sent to Tsaristyn where
he ordered the killings of
former tsarist military leaders
and counter-revolutionaries
and burned villages to
intimidate peasants.
In 1919, to stem mass
desertions on the Western
front, he had deserters and
renegades publicly executed.
1922, he is made
General Secretary.
 Lenin had a stroke in
1922. Stalin visits him
frequently and serves
as his link to the
outside world. They
argued a lot.
 Lenin did not like
Stalin’s rude manners,
ambition, politics, or
excessive power. Lenin
wanted Stalin removed.
Stalin did not let this
out.

Lenin’s Death
With Lenin’s death, (January 21, 1924) a
power struggle ensued.
 Stalin – a nationalist on the right – seized
power.

Joseph Stalin
Head of both the Communist party and
Soviet government from 1924 to 1953.
 Most interested in power and not ideology.
 By 1928, established himself as absolute
dictator.
 Increasingly paranoid & dangerous.

Stalin’s totalitarian elements

1. cult of the leader: the all-knowing and allseeing Father of the People.
The Cult of Personality

After Lenin’s death (and very much against his
wishes) a personality cult was created around his
memory, using methods such as:
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Embalming his body and putting it on public display in Red
Square
Lenin’s image appeared everywhere in posters, film,
statues
Petrograd was renamed Leningrad (St. PetersburgPetrograd (1914)-Leningrad (1924)-St. Petersburg (1991))
Stalin was an active promoter of this cult so as to
link his name with that of Lenin
 The Lenin personality cult made it easier for Stalin
to create one around himself.

Celebrations for
Stalin’s 70th birthday in
1949.
 A huge picture of
Stalin hangs over Red
Square in Moscow – as
if by magic. In fact, it
is suspended by a
balloon and then lit by
searchlights.

Stalin’s Cult of Personality
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Stalin also had a city
named in his honour – in
1923 Tsaritsyn became
Stalingrad
The slogan: ‘Stalin is the
Lenin of today’ was
officially encouraged
Stalin adopted the title
‘Vozhd’ (Great Leader)
Stalin was portrayed in
various guises: Stalin with
peasants, Stalin with
workers – all designed to
show him as an ordinary
man of the people.
Stalin liked to be portrayed, as here, as
the friend of the workers, discussing the
latest project – in this case the Dneiper
Dam.
Youth Organizations
Party youth organisations were:
The Pioneers for those under 14
Komsomol for those between 14-18;
membership shot up from 2.3m in 1929 to
10.2m in 1940.
 Young people were encouraged to report
members of their own families to the authorities
for ‘anti-Soviet’ views
 One boy, Morozov, reported his father who was
then jailed. When the boy was murdered by
members of his own family, he was made a
martyr and hero by the state.
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EDUCATION
 The 1935 Education Law
undid most of the
revolutionary ideas
introduced in the early 1920s;
 it reasserted discipline by
restoring the authority of
teachers
 Schools could only use texts
prescribed by the state
 The Short Course history of
the Communist Party became
the standard text; it
presented Stalin’s view of the
party and the Revolution.
 By 1939 94% of those townA poster from 1920: ‘You may as well
dwellers under 49 were
be blind as illiterate’. The Bolsheviks
literate; 86% in the
believed that illiteracy had been a key
countryside.
factor in maintaining the power of the
tsars.
Stalin’s totalitarian elements
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2. radical ideology
Marxism-Leninism the driving rationale for
Stalin’s power grab. But Stalin altered the
ideology to serve his personal nationalist
ambitions.

Stalinism refers to a brand of communism that is
both extremely repressive and nationalistic.
Stalin’s totalitarian elements
Stalin intertwined his own myth with the
revolutionary struggle. One current gallery
exhibit about Stalin notes:
 “Only a few photographs of Stalin exist from his
youth and the early revolutionary period. A past
was created for Stalin through works of art. He
was often cut and pasted into photographs to
create an artificial history which placed him at
the forefront of events.”

Altering Photographs to fit the
cause…

An example of
how the picture
was altered again
and again after
each person fell
out of favor with
the regime of
Joseph Stalin.

This image
taken by the
Moscow Canal
was taken
when Nikolai
Yezhov was
water
commissar.
After he fell
from power,
he was
arrested, shot,
and his image
removed by

The background of
the original image
includes a store that
says in Russian,
"Watches, gold and
silver". The image
was then changed to
read, "Struggle for
your rights", and flag
that was a solid color
before was changed
to read, "Down with
the monarchy - long
live the Republic!"
Stalin’s totalitarian elements
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3. organization
Soviet communist party effectively solidified
Stalin’s power. Party cells operated in every
workplace & classroom, with party members
reporting on anyone who was not loyal enough.
Stalin’s totalitarian elements
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4. mass mobilization in the early years.
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5. secret police – the KGB.
The KGB (КГБ) is the common abbreviation
for the (Komitet gosudarstvennoy
bezopasnosti or Committee for State
Security).
 It was the national security agency of the
Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and its
premier internal security, intelligence, and
secret police organization during that time.

The Media
All media were controlled by the government
 Pravda was the paper of the Communist Party
 Izvestiya was the paper of the Soviets
 Radio stations conveyed the official party view

Stalin’s totalitarian elements
6. central control of all organizations.
 News media: no independent press; only
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Heavily centralized “command economy.” Stalin’s 1st
goal to create an advanced industrial economy.
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An economy where supply and price are regulated by the
government rather than market forces. Government
planners decide which goods and services are produced
and how they are distributed.
Peasants resisted; killings; exile. Severe
agricultural losses & famine. After a decade,
millions dead.
“Command Economy”
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Stalin wanted a modern industrial power

The first of Stalin’s “five year plans”
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Put ALL basic economic decisions under
government control
Government owned ALL businesses
Collectives
Under Stalin, the Government seized ALL
farm land
OR
 The Government allowed Peasants to stay
on their land if they gave it (and all
resources) to a “collective”
 The state controlled all supplies

Angry Peasants
Killed their animals, burned crops, and
destroyed tools
 Stalin responded with brutal force
 In response, some Peasants grew just
enough to feed themselves
 Famine killed 5-8 million in Ukraine alone
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Anti-Religion
Atheism was the official religion under
Stalin
 Russian Orthodox Churches were seized
and turned into offices and museums
 Priests and Religious leaders were killed
 Jewish Synagogues were seized
 Hebrew language was banned
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Kulaks
Term for the “wealthy”
peasants
 Stalin “purged” kulaks
 Over 5 million kulaks
deported to Siberia
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Art and Popular Culture
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The experimental art of
the early 1920s was
abandoned and replaced
by ‘Socialist realism’; this
was seen in all forms of
culture – art, cinema,
literature.
Socialist realism was much
more conventional,
traditional but it was
designed to convey proSoviet messages to inspire
the population to work
harder, love the leader etc.
A typical painting in the style of ‘socialist
realism’. Stalin is shown amongst the
workers, urging them to meet their
production targets. The workers look on,
impressed.
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Art, film, literature
was put in service
to the ideology.
Soviet art had to
praise noble
factory workers,
the “new Soviet
man & woman.”
Stalin’s totalitarian elements
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7. Violence & Terror. Brutality on massive
scale. Targets: political opponents & party rivals.
The Great Purge/The Great Terror
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The Great Purge/Terror was a series of
campaigns of political repression and
persecution in the Soviet Union
orchestrated by Joseph Stalin in 1934–
1938.
It involved a large-scale purge of the
Communist Party and Government
officials, repression of peasants, Red
Army leadership, and the persecution of
unaffiliated persons, characterized by
widespread police surveillance,
imprisonment, and executions.
The Great Purge

In 1934 Stalin became paranoid that
people were attempting to take his power.
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Old Bolsheviks, Activists, Army heroes,
writers, and ordinary citizens
The Gulag

Soviet system of
forced labor camps

“Corrective labor
camps”

Several million
inmates
Stalin’s totalitarian elements
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Creation of a gulag system. Gulags were slave
labor camps for critics, former capitalists, noncooperative peasants & party rivals.
Military Vacuum

The Great Purge brought about a young
loyal generation of new leaders

Most of the old military leaders were
“purged”
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Military “experience” was gone
In 1940, Leon
Trotsky was
assassinated in
Mexico City,
Mexico. He was
killed with an
ice ax by KGB
agent Ramon
Mercader.
Stalin’s totalitarian elements
Political purges from 1934 to 1936 were
called the Great Terror.
 Show trials, with coerced confessions and
summary executions, from 1936 to 1938.
 During his rule, one million direct killings
& 12 million deaths in Soviet prisons &
slave labor camps.

Stalin died March 5, 1953 of
an apparent stroke. He was
embalmed on March 9, 1953.
 He was buried in Lenin’s tomb
until 1961 when his body was
moved to outside the Kremlin
wall during “de-Stalinization.”
 Some believed he was
poisoned – possibly by Berria,
interior minister.
 2003, Russian and U.S.
investigation shows Stalin
could have ingested warfarin,
a powerful rat poison. The
cause may never be known.
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