Joseph Stalin is renowned as one of the architects of the Soviet Union (USSR) during its infancy, taking the groundwork laid by Vladimir Lenin to create a powerful, industrial nation that entered the world stage with force. So, how did Stalin rise to power and change the future of the Soviet Union?
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Jetzt kostenlos anmeldenJoseph Stalin is renowned as one of the architects of the Soviet Union (USSR) during its infancy, taking the groundwork laid by Vladimir Lenin to create a powerful, industrial nation that entered the world stage with force. So, how did Stalin rise to power and change the future of the Soviet Union?
Fig. 1 This photograph of Stalin is from 1912. At this time he was making a name for himself as a loyal Bolshevik and was arrested and exiled several times for his political activism.
Joseph Stalin was born in 1878 and took control of the USSR after Lenin's death in 1924. He was born Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvili but took the name "Stalin" meaning "man of steel" in the early 20th century. He assumed absolute control of the Soviet Union in the late 1920s and ruled until his death in 1953.
Let's have a closer look at Stalin's life to see how he developed the Soviet Union.
Date | Event |
1878 | Stalin was born an only child to a poor family in Georgia. |
1899 | After being expelled from the seminary for reading Marxist texts, Stalin joined the Social Democrat party. When the party split, he sided with the more radical Bolshevik faction. A seminary is a training school for priests. Stalin went to the Tbilisi seminary in Georgia to train within the Russian Orthodox Church. Marxist texts include anything written by Karl Marx, a german philosopher and economist credited with creating a theory for the development of a communist society. |
1902-1912 | Stalin was arrested and exiled several times for political activism. |
1912 | Lenin appointed Stalin to the first Central Committee of the Bolsheviks. |
1917 | October Revolution: The Bolsheviks took control of Russia. |
1918-1921 | The Russian Civil War: The Bolsheviks won and consolidated their power with Lenin in control. |
March 1921 | Lenin introduced the New Economic Policy (NEP), a backwards step toward capitalism in order to boost Russia's economy. He also issued the Decree Against Factionalism, prohibiting opposition to the Bolshevik Party. |
December 1922 | The Declaration and Treaty on the Formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics formed the Soviet Union. Lenin appointed Stalin as General Secretary of the Central Committee. |
1924 | Lenin died after a third stroke. Stalin supervised the newly announced Lenin Enrolment programme, increasing the size of the Communist Party. |
The late 1920s | Stalin managed to oust his opponents Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Bukharin and became the sole dictator of the USSR. In 1927, Stalin discontinued the NEP. |
1928 - 1932 | Stalin issued his first five-year plan, introducing collectivisation and rapid industrialisation to the Soviet Union to boost the country's economy. Collectivisation is an agricultural policy which combined a number of small peasant farms into larger communes and encouraged community among workers to increase productivity. As the combined farms were placed under State control, the crops were sold to the government very cheaply to provide food for industrial workers in the cities. |
1934 | February: The "Congress of Victors" celebrated the success of the five-year plan. Congress voted for Sergei Kirov to take over from Stalin.December: Kirov was assassinated. Stalin issued the Emergency Decree Against Terrorism which gave the NKVD power to arrest, torture or execute without trial. This began the purge of any of Stalin's critics. The NKVD (People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs) was Stalin's secret police that operated between 1934-1943. The NKVD was responsible for carrying out the Great Purge 1936-8. |
1936 | Stalin created the new Soviet constitution, known as the 1936 Constitution. |
1936 - 1938 | The Great Purge: Stalin ordered his critics or anyone who had engaged in questionable political activity to be arrested, tortured and executed. |
1939-1945 | Second World War: The USSR had a non-aggression pact with Germany but joined the Allies after Hitler and the Nazis invaded in 1941. |
Post-WWII | The Cold War began and US-Soviet relations deteriorated. |
1953 | Stalin died after a stroke. He was succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev. |
In the fallout of Lenin's death in 1924, there was a struggle for power in the USSR. Stalin outmanoeuvred the other potential leadership candidates to assert himself at the top of the Soviet Union.
Fig. 2 Lenin and Stalin.
Lenin dictated his Testament from late 1922 into early 1923. In this, he concluded that Stalin should be removed from his role as General Secretary.
He also said that Leon Trotsky was too arrogant as head of the Red Army and that the clash between the two could lead to a splitting of the Bolshevik party.
The Red Army was the Bolshevik military force that was developed under Trotsky. Originally, the Bolshevik paramilitary force was known as the Red Guard, but after the October Revolution of 1917, the Red Guard became the Soviet government's army and was renamed the Red Army. It fought for the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War and became Russia's primary military force.
Lenin's testament also asked the party to pardon Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev's lack of support for the October Revolution. He wrote that in the same way that Trotsky's Menshevik past must not affect his leadership bid, Zinoviev and Kamenev's past decisions must also be ignored. He also mentioned that although Nikolai Bukharin was a party favourite, he did not have "fully Marxist" ideologies.
Lenin was deliberately vague in who he wanted to be appointed after his death as he preferred collective leadership rather than an individual head of state.
Lenin was particularly wary of Stalin because of his treatment of Georgia. In 1922, Lenin tasked Stalin with persuading Georgia to rejoin the Soviet Union after it had declared independence. Rather than negotiating, Stalin sent in the Red Army and the Cheka to force Georgia to rejoin. Stalin's brash actions and his power as General Secretary led Lenin not to trust him.
Fig. 3 Stalin in 1937.
The position of General Secretary was considered a boring, administrative role, but Stalin used it to his advantage. Let's look at how Stalin gained influence throughout the whole party with his position.
Stalin as General Secretary |
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So how exactly did Stalin deal with his opponents? The usual technique was to bring up past actions and use it against them.
Opponents | Supporting factors for leadership | Stalin's tactics |
Trotsky |
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Kamenev and Zinoviev |
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Bukharin |
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Stalin commonly cited Lenin's 1921 Decree Against Factionalism to accuse his opponents of treason and remove them from power. By the end of the 1920s, Stalin had removed his rivals for the head of the Soviet government. As leader, he secured his position through the development of Stalinism, his interpretation of Marxism-Leninism. Although Stalin had secured his rise to the top of Russia, how did he react to the immediate international developments occurring at the same time?
Factionalism
Existence of different groups within a larger group, often with conflicting ideas
Besides developing Stalinism for his domestic issues within the USSR, Stalin had to engage the Soviet Union in the global arena. Two key international oppositions to his rule were Nazi Germany and the US, as shown with the Second World War and the Cold War.
Fig. 4 This famous cartoon was published in the Washington Star in 1939 following the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact.
Stalin wanted to maintain the territories that the USSR held and when Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, the aggressive Nazi expansion policies threatened the USSR.
Initially, Stalin attempted to sign an anti-Nazi pact with Britain and France in mid-August 1939 but a deal was not made. Stalin then signed the nonaggression pact with Hitler later that month in an attempt to safeguard Soviet territories from potential Nazi invasion.
With Stalin and Hitler as allies, Germany invaded Western Poland and Stalin occupied parts of Eastern Europe to create a Soviet buffer zone.
Despite the pact, Hitler had planned his notorious Operation Barbarossa to invade the USSR to provide "living space" for Germans.
Hitler invaded the USSR in three places: Leningrad (North), Ukraine (South) and Moscow (Central West) in 1941. Stalin was caught by surprise but eventually coordinated the Red Army to counterattack and prevent the operation from succeeding.
As a result of Hitler's invasion, Stalin signed the Anglo-Soviet Alliance, switching from the Axis to the Allied powers. Stalin demonstrated himself as a competent leader with the Battle of Stalingrad in Winter 1942 and the Battle of Kursk in Summer 1943, which helped to turn the tide of WWII to the Allies' favour.
By the end of WWII, Stalin had used the Red Army to liberate much of Eastern Europe from Nazi occupation. However, he refused to leave these countries, causing tension with the Western powers. In particular, the United States was threatened by Stalin's actions and began issuing new foreign policy to intervene if other countries' freedom was threatened.
Stalin claimed to be creating a buffer zone against future German invasion, but the countries also acted as Soviet spheres of influence. The ideological battle between the US' capitalism and USSR's communism created the environment for the Cold War.
Stalin's five-year plans and his cult of personality formed the ideal propaganda throughout the USSR and globally during the Cold War.
Under Stalin's reign, the USSR was able to develop into a superpower to rival the US, engaging in the arms and space race with the US. In the USSR, Stalin's close control of propaganda and intimidation tactics helped the country's domestic growth as he competed with the US.
In 1953, Stalin suffered a stroke and died. He was succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev who attempted to reverse some of Stalin's policies of terror through a process known as destalinisation. The policy renounced Stalin's cult of personality, provided cultural freedoms, and pursued "peaceful coexistence" with the West. Khrushchev also used the policy to secure his own position as head of state and expel Stalin's supporters from the Soviet party.
Stalin died of a stroke in 1953.
Stalin was appointed General Secretary by Lenin in 1922. When Lenin died in 1924, Stalin gradually removed his rivals and became the sole dictator of the USSR in the late 1920s.
Stalin is best known for his cunning rise to power after Lenin's death, his introduction of policies such as collectivisation and rapid industrialisation, and his brutal leadership of the Great Purge in 1936-1938.
1. Stalin introduced the 5-year plans in the USSR in 1928 which aimed to revive the Russian economy through collectivisation and rapid industrialisation.
2. Stalin originally created an alliance with Hitler in 1939, but switched to the Allies during WWII after Hitler invaded the USSR in 1941.
3. Stalin died in 1953 and was succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev who attempted to reverse some of Stalin's brutal policies through a process of destalinisation.
Stalin originally joined an alliance with Hitler in 1939 with the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression pact. He subsequently invaded Eastern Poland, Lativa, Estonia, Lithuania and parts of Romania. When Hitler invaded the USSR in 1941, Stalin signed the Anglo-Soviet alliance and joined the Allies against Hitler for the remainder of the Second World War.
When did Stalin join the Bolshevik Party?
1899
When did Lenin appoint Stalin as General Secretary?
1922
Who were Stalin's rivals for leadership of the USSR after Lenin's death?
Trotsky
What method of USSR control did Lenin favour?
Collective Leadership
As General Secretary, which part of the Russian government was Stalin in charge of appointing?
Regional Secretaries
Who was in the first Triumvirate formed after Lenin's death?
Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev
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