Joseph Stalin

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Josef Stalin (1942)Joseph Stalin Signature.svg

Josef Wissarionowitsch Stalin - Russian Иосиф Виссарионович Сталин / scientific transliteration Iosif Vissarionovič Stalin ; born as Iosseb Bessarionis dse Jughashvili Georgian იოსებ ბესარიონის ძე ჯუღაშვილი ; Russian Иосиф Виссарионович Джугашвили / wiss. Transliteration Iosif Vissarionovič Džugašvili , listen ? / i - (* December 6th July / December 18th 1878 greg. in Gori , Tbilisi Governorate , Russian Empire , todayAudio file / audio sample  Georgia ; † 5. March 1953 in Kuntsevo in Moscow ) was a communist politician of Georgian origin and dictator of the Soviet Union from 1927 to 1953. The nom de guerre Stalin , who after various interpretations for "the Steel stands", he took 1912.

From 1922 until his death in 1953 he was General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU , from 1941 Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (Head of Government), from 1946 Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and from 1941 to 1945 Supreme Commander of the Red Army - the " Generalissimo " .

During his reign, Stalin established a totalitarian dictatorship , had several million alleged and actual opponents arrested as part of political " purges ", sentenced to forced labor or executed in show and secret trials, and millions of other Soviet citizens and entire ethnic groups from occupied areas were deported to Gulag penal labor camps . Many were murdered there or died as a result of the inhumane conditions.

Under Stalin's leadership, the concept of socialism in one country became the central tenet of Soviet society. Stalin replaced the new economic policy introduced under Lenin and Trotsky in 1921 with a highly centralized command economy from 1928 and started a phase of industrialization and collectivization in connection with deculakization , which led to a rapid transformation of the USSR from an agrarian society to an industrial society . Deculacization and collectivization of agriculture contributed to famines , particularly in Ukraine , the Volga , Kuban and other parts of the Soviet Union , killing approximately six million people . In Kazakhstan the forced came sedentarisation of the nomadic population added. The resulting famine cost around 1.3 to 1.5 million human lives from 1932 to 1933.

As an important partner first of National Socialist Germany in the context of the Hitler-Stalin Pact and later of the Allies , Stalin had a strong influence on the course of the Second World War and on the post-war structure of Europe . Its regime and its interpretations of Marxism and Leninism are known as Stalinism .

In the successor states of the Soviet Union, the decades-long glorification of Stalin through a personality cult that is unique in Soviet history still has an impact today. After Stalin's death, his successor Nikita Khrushchev initiated a public account of Stalin's person and work with the de-Stalinization , which was discontinued and partially withdrawn by later governments. In March 2016, a survey by the opinion research institute Levada-Zentrum on the attitudes of the surveyed residents of Russia towards Stalin showed : 37% positive, 32% indifferent, 17% negative.

Life

Childhood and adolescence

Bessarion Jugashvili
Ketewan Geladze

Stalin was born on December 6th . / December 18,  1878 greg. Born as Iosseb Bessarionowitsch Dschugaschwili in the small Caucasian town of Gori , which at that time belonged to the Russian Empire (today: Georgia ). Due to the early death of his two older brothers in infancy, he was the only surviving child from the marriage of Bessarion Dschugashvili (1853 / 54-1909) and his wife Ketewan Geladze (1855-1937). The parents belonged to the Georgian ethnic group and were the descendants of serfs .

Although family life was initially characterized by prosperity, the young Stalin grew up in poor circumstances. The father was a self-employed shoemaker , at times employed ten workers and various apprentices. In the early 1880s, he is said to have developed into a contentious, violent alcoholic who regularly beat up his wife and son and neglected his business. In 1883, Ketewan and her son fled domestic violence to acquaintances and left her husband. A childhood friend of Stalin's later wrote: "These undeserved and terrible beatings made the boy just as hard and callous as his father." He never saw him cry. Iosseb Iremashvili , another friend of Stalin, wrote that the beatings also provoked a hatred of authorities in Stalin, as anyone who had more power than himself reminded him of his father. In 1884 his father had to give up his business and he found a job as a factory worker in Tbilisi , while his family stayed in Gori.

From then on, the young Stalin was under the influence of his strictly religious mother, who made a living as a laundress and domestic help. The ambitious Ketewan was determined to give her son a comprehensive education and her good relations with the Orthodox clergy enabled Stalin to attend the church school in Gori from September 1888. Despite the different ethnic groups in the school class, Russian , which Stalin had first had to learn, was prescribed as the language of instruction . Although Stalin regularly attracted negative attention through brawls, he was considered an extraordinarily intelligent student with excellent grades and thanks to his powers of observation he was soon able to take on the leading role in the class.

As a child, Stalin, nicknamed "Sosso" (a diminutive form of "Iosseb") by friends and acquaintances, suffered a number of health problems. When he was six years old, he contracted smallpox , which left numerous scars on his face. At the age of twelve, Stalin was involved in an accident with a carriage . The multiple broken left arm only grew shortened and crooked due to the bone disease osteomyelitis , which caused a lifelong disability. Although his childhood was not an easy one, the accounts and testimonies of that period are seldom reliable. As an adult, Stalin himself spoke without resentment about his parents and childhood.

Stalin in 1894

He left school in 1894 as the best student and was proposed to attend the Tbilisi Orthodox seminary , which was the most important higher education institution in Georgia at the time and a center of opposition to tsarism .

After Stalin completed the second year of the seminar at the age of 17, he made contact with secret Marxist circles. He went to a bookstore where he had access to revolutionary literature. In 1897 the rector of the Hermogen seminary had him locked up because he had banned books, among others. Charles Letourneau's The Literary Development of the Nations and Victor Hugo's The Workers of the Sea and 1793 had read.

Revolutionary activity before the October Revolution

Stalin in 1902
Commemorative plaque for Stalin's stay in Vienna-Meidling , which was placed there during the Soviet occupation

Stalin's life up to the October Revolution can be divided into two parts: a “wild time” - until 1908 and the period from 1909 to March 1917, during which there is little to report about Stalin. During this time, however, the important political decisions were made that lead to the fall of the tsarist autocracy in Russia .

In 1897, at the age of 18, Jughashvili was accepted into the first socialist organization in Georgia, the Messame Dassi Group (Eng. The Third Group ), led by Noe Schordania , Nikolos Tschcheidze and Irakli Tsereteli , who later became Mensheviks . The following year Stalin led a study group for workers. At this time he was already reading the works of Plekhanov and the first writings of Lenin . In 1898 he officially joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP). In 1899 he was expelled from the seminary because he had been absent from several important exams due to these political activities; Nevertheless, he received the grade "very good" for his conduct on his leaving certificate . Instead of a priest, Stalin became a professional revolutionary .

Stalin then worked as a propagandist for the RSDLP and organized strikes and demonstrations among railway workers under the code name "Koba". In April 1902 he was arrested in connection with the Batumi massacre , in which 14 people were killed, and exiled to Buryatia in Siberia in July 1903 . After he was able to escape from exile from there in January 1904 and return to Georgia, he was arrested and exiled again and again - a total of eight times -, but was able to flee again each time.

After the split in the RSDLP into Mensheviks and Bolsheviks at the 1903 party congress in London , Stalin joined the Bolshevik wing under Lenin, who believed that the political overthrow in Russia would only come about through a party led centrally by professional revolutionaries. In 1905 he met Lenin personally for the first time at the All-Russian Conference of the Bolsheviks in Tampere . During this pre-revolutionary period, when Stalin had already organized many strikes, he did not show himself to be a great theorist, but gave practical support to the largely illegal actions of the Bolsheviks.

In the following years he participated in the organization and planning of various bank robberies in order to replenish the party coffers. In the most famous raid, the raid on the Bank of Tbilisi in June 1907, which, according to secret investigations by the Ochrana, killed around 40 people, the revolutionaries stole 341,000 rubles under Stalin's planning, the equivalent of 3.86 million dollars (2017); the use of the money proved difficult, however, as the serial numbers of the notes were registered.

From 1912 onwards, according to Lenin's will, Stalin belonged to the Central Committee of the Bolsheviks and assumed the initially conspiratorial name of Stalin (the steel). In order to stay in contact with Lenin and to avoid persecution by the tsarist police, he fled to Austria-Hungary in December 1912 . There he spent a few months in Krakow and Vienna . He lived under the pseudonym Stavros Papadopoulos and pretended to be a Greek from the Caucasus. When he returned to Russia in the summer of 1913, he was arrested. Thereupon he spent the years from 1913 to 1917 in exile near Turukhansk . There are several explanations for these frequent arrests and escapes.

Stalin (standing 4th from left) in exile with Kamenev (6th left) in the village of Monastyrskoye near Turukhansk in 1915.

One possible reason was the poor organization of the tsarist police in the province. On the other hand, police work in the capital and the big cities was more circumspect: after fleeing from Vologda in September 1911, Stalin was arrested just three days after his arrival in St. Petersburg and sent back to his exile in Vologda in December. Although this time of underground and exile was later to be glorified in the Soviet Union, for the revolutionaries it actually meant a life of poverty, full of boredom and without political success.

At the end of 1916, Stalin received his draft and after a six-week journey in a reindeer sleigh was retired in Krasnoyarsk in January 1917 because of his crippled left arm.

During his last stay in exile, he met Lev Kamenev and became friends with him. After the February Revolution of 1917 he went to Petrograd . He was now part of the editorial staff of the Pravda newspaper . Grigory Zinoviev joined Stalin and Kamenev in Petrograd . This group, later referred to as the triumvirate , was to play an important role in Soviet politics in the period that followed.

Revolution and civil war

In June 1917, Stalin was elected a member of the Central Executive Committee (ZEK) at the 1st All-Russian Congress of Soviets . Along with other Bolsheviks, he initially pursued a policy of cooperation with the Provisional Government under Kerensky . When Lenin returned from exile and branded Kerensky's support as a “betrayal” of the Bolsheviks, Stalin changed course and supported Lenin. He defended Lenin's ideas at the great Bolshevik debates in September and October. However, it had very little to do with the preparation and implementation of the October Revolution . The central role in the coup was played by Leon Trotsky as head of the Military Committee of the Petrograd Soviet.

At first, the Soviet central government and the newly created Red Army were very weak. Many of the nationalities in Tsarist Russia now saw the opportunity to become self-employed and declared their independence without consulting the Soviet government. The only minority areas that joined the Soviet alliance were Tatarstan and Bashkortostan .

In the provisional first Soviet government installed on November 7th, Stalin was given the post of People's Commissar for Nationality Issues in gratitude for his loyalty . In this position, Stalin wanted to create a voluntary alliance between Russia and all minorities in the country. However, this alliance was restricted in that its members had to be "socialist". The actual task of Stalin in the next few years was to incorporate the lost territories into the Soviet Union. He changed his attitude towards the minorities and decided to use every means to reverse the independence of these states.

After the outbreak of civil war in June 1918, Stalin became a member of the Revolutionary War Council of the Red Army newly created by Trotsky. In July he was sent to Tsaritsyn as Political Commissar of the Southern Front in order to secure the only important grain-growing area there that was in the hands of the Soviet government. He relied on the help of the former Tsarist general Sytin, who had been appointed by Trotsky to command the southern front. However, he soon got into an argument with Sytin, as he had officers of the Red Army shot who had previously been officers in the Tsar's army. Stalin's command in Tsaritsyn anticipates the elements of great terror: terror against so-called counter-revolutionaries, arbitrary executions, arrests and show trials.

The city could be defended against the troops of General Krasnov , but Stalin had already left Tsaritsyn on October 20, 1919 during a critical phase of the defense; Trotsky and General Shloba and his "Brigade of Steel" were able to successfully defend the city. Tsaritsyn was renamed Stalingrad ('Stalinstadt', today's Volgograd ) in 1925 .

In March 1919, Stalin became a member of the new Interior Directory of the Soviet government. Here he had his first violent clash with his main rival Trotsky. Trotsky incorporated former officers of the tsarist army into the Red Army in order to streamline the organization of this force and thus make it more capable of fighting. Stalin resisted this approach, especially because of General Sytin, but held back in view of Trotsky's military successes.

As the commander of the southern front, Stalin concentrated on promoting the integration of the Caucasian peoples into the Soviet Union. In February 1920, the North Caucasus was annexed to the Soviet Union. This was initially done on a voluntary basis, as the North Caucasians had revolted against the “counterrevolutionary” “white” General Denikin . The Chechens revolted against Soviet power again in August of that year, and Stalin endeavored to restore the stability of Soviet rule. Stalin promised the mountain peoples the following at the congress of the peoples of the Terek region on November 17, 1920:

“Every people - the Chechens , the Ingush , the Ossetians , the Kabardines , the Balkars , [...] must have their own Soviet. [...] If the proof is given that the Sharia is necessary, then there may be the Sharia. [...] If evidence is provided that the organs of the Cheka [...] do not understand how to adapt to the way of life and the peculiarities of the population, then it is clear that appropriate changes must be made in this area as well. "

- o. A .: Spiegel Geschichte: The Russia of the Tsars (2012)

Towards the end of 1920, the entire Caucasus, with the exception of Georgia, belonged to the territory of the Soviet Union. With the help of Sergo Ordzhonikidze , a party friend from his early party career, Stalin organized the reconquest of Georgia, which was completed in February 1921.

Struggle for power

Already after the February Revolution of 1917 there was a triumvirate within the Central Committee , which was made up of Stalin, Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev . Stalin had been in exile with Kamenev; Zinoviev was close to these two in many ways and was friends with them. Shortly after the October Revolution in the same year, Lenin had initiated party expulsion proceedings against Zinoviev and Kamenev for having betrayed the Bolsheviks' secret plan to overthrow the provisional bourgeois government under Kerensky . Stalin had ensured that the expulsion from the Communist Party of Russia (Bolsheviks) was prevented. In addition, all three shared a common aversion to Leon Trotsky, Stalin's toughest adversary for the seizure of power after Lenin's death.

On December 16, 1922, Lenin withdrew from politics because of a serious illness. The triumvirate placed itself at the head of power within the Central Committee while keeping its other members, such as the supporters of Trotsky, out of power. Zinoviev acted primarily as a speaker, Kamenev chaired the meetings and Stalin concentrated on working with the party apparatus. The selection of functionaries for the central and local posts was thus in his hands. Criticism of the triumvirate was already loud during Lenin's lifetime . Lenin expressed himself in two letters to the XII. Party congress, his "political testament", about Stalin. Although Trotsky is personally the "most capable man" in the current Central Committee of the CPSU, he has an excessive self-confidence and an "excessive passion for purely administrative measures". Stalin had "by becoming Secretary General concentrated an immeasurable power in his hands," which he may not always make careful enough use of. On the other hand, Lenin criticized Trotsky for fighting against a decision by the Central Committee. In the second note he distinguishes himself more sharply from Stalin.

“Stalin is too rude, and this mistake, which is tolerable in our midst and in dealings between us Communists, cannot be tolerated in the function of General Secretary. I therefore suggest that comrades consider how they could replace Stalin and put someone else in this position who differs from Comrade Stalin in every respect only by one advantage, namely that he is more tolerant, loyal, is more polite and more attentive to the comrades, less capricious, etc. It might seem like a tiny thing. However, from the point of view of avoiding a split, and from the point of view of the relations between Stalin and Trotsky that I have described above, I believe that this is not a trifle or a trifle that can be of decisive importance. "

Anastas Mikojan , Stalin and Grigory Ordzhonikidze (Tbilisi, 1925)

After Lenin's death in early 1924, Stalin succeeded in suppressing an open argument about these last political statements by Lenin with the help of Kamenev and Zinoviev, so that although the content became known in the Soviet Union, it never had a negative effect on Stalin's later career. This letter from Lenin concerning Stalin with the quoted addendum was only published on the XIII. At the party congress in May 1924, Zinoviev read aloud to the individual delegations, while Kamenev interpreted what he had heard.

Other attempts to curtail Stalin's power also failed. As early as 1923, for example, ZK members had secret talks in Kislovodsk , in which Zinoviev and Kamenev took part. Because of the differences of opinion among Stalin's critics, because of the intrigues and means of repression at his disposal, but also because of the often loyal or even enthusiastic attitude of many party members towards the general secretary, these activities were unsuccessful.

Stalin's opponent Trotsky also wrote to the Central Committee accusing the triumvirate of establishing a regime that was further removed from “ workers' democracy ” than “ war communism ” before 1921. He called on the old guard , the still inexperienced younger generation To make way, and saw the triumvirate shortly before the "degeneration". After the internal party differences had broken out openly, it was several years before Stalin and his supporters were able to prevail and Trotsky was expelled from the party at the end of 1927. The "traitor" was first exiled to Kazakhstan, and finally expelled from the Soviet Union in 1929.

Rykov , Kalinin , Trotsky , Kamenev , Stalin, Tomski and Bukharin (from left to right) at the funeral of Felix Dzerzhinsky in July 1926. Over 14 years later, apart from Stalin himself, only Kalinin survived the Stalinist purges .

After Lenin's death, however, the triumvirate denounced by Trotsky also disintegrated . Kamenev and Zinoviev became internal party opponents of Stalin, who in turn found support from Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin , Jan Rudsutak , Michail Frunze and Felix Dzerzhinsky . Kamenev and Zinoviev were ousted from the party in 1926.

Autonomy and Great Terror

NKVD boss Genrich Yagoda , Nikita Khrushchev (with white suit), Stalin, Andrei Andreyev and Lazar Kaganovich (right) on the balcony of the Lenin Mausoleum on Red Square

From 1927 Stalin was thus the unrestricted sole ruler in the Soviet Union. He was the head of the communist party . In the state field, he was limited to the post of Deputy Prime Minister of the USSR for a long time. Since his fiftieth birthday in 1929, he was officially called a “ Führer ” (Russian: вождь , Vožd ' ).

From 1928 on, Stalin relentlessly pushed ahead with the forced collectivization of agriculture . In doing so, he ruthlessly broke the resistance of farmers who were considered to be wealthy and whom he defamed as " kulaks ". From 1929 to 1933 he carried out the deculakization through arrests, expropriations, death sentences and deportations . The collectivization and repression against the "kulaks" were in part the causes of the Holodomor , a huge famine that was particularly dreadful on the Volga and in Ukraine. It killed around 3.5 million people in Ukraine alone.

With the first five-year plan from 1928 he pushed the industrialization of the Soviet Union .

The assassination of the Leningrad party secretary Sergei Kirov in 1934, who was regarded as Stalin's "opponent" due to his growing popularity, provided the pretext for the policy of the notorious " purges " ( Russian чистка , "Chistka"). Almost all party members who had participated as delegates at the " Party Congress of the Victors " in 1934 (at this party congress only about 3/4 of the deputies voted for Stalin in a re-election, whereas Kirov got an overwhelming majority), were in public show trials ( Moscow trials ) Sentenced to death and executed. Among them were a large number of the higher party officials and ministers in the state apparatus of the USSR.

The cornerstones of his theory of Marxism-Leninism were the development of socialism in a country and the "intensification of the class struggle " on the way to communism, with which he sought to legitimize his repression.

The three great show trials, in the course of which Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin were sentenced to death, had been exposed by the world public as a staging because of the many inconsistencies in the statements of the accused. Furthermore, a trial against the leadership of the Red Army was conducted in camera. All four trials were the prelude to general, Stalin-led "purges" designed to eliminate all opposition in the USSR. Stalin entrusted the execution to the head of the NKVD , first Genrich Jagoda and later Nikolai Jeschow . They mostly arrested those affected and shot many of them. The criminal offenses used by the secret police for “anti-Soviet behavior”, Trotskyist or other opposition to the CPSU and a large number of other alleged conspiracies were all justified with violations of Article 58 of the RSFSR 's Criminal Code , which formed the legal basis for the prosecutions.

On December 5, 1936, a new constitution, the " Stalin Constitution ", was adopted by the Soviet Congress.

During the Great Terror between September 1936 and December 1938, Stalin and his helpers shot around 750,000 of the 1.5 million people arrested, including loyal supporters of the Soviet Union. It is controversial in research to what extent these persecutions had a rational core or resulted from pure delusions of Stalin. As a result of these "purges", Stalin had absolute power in the Soviet Union after 1938. After the end of the Chistka and Nikolai Yezhov's replacement by Lavrenti Beria , the arbitrary arrests were not stopped, but most of those arrested were sentenced to up to ten years in prison. A change in the law in 1949 raised the deadline to 25 years.

During this time, the personality cult around Stalin took on ever greater proportions. This was expressed, among other things, in art (works of praise and devotion in literature and fine arts in the style of socialist realism ) and in its ubiquitous public presence.

Important employees of Stalin after the end of the Chistka Lasar Kaganowitsch , the People's Commissar for Internal Affairs (NKVD) Lavrenti Beria , Mikhail Kalinin , Kliment Voroshilov , Andrei Andreev and Andrei Zhdanov .

Hitler-Stalin Pact

Conclusion of the German-Soviet border and friendship treaty on September 28, 1939

The non-aggression pact with the Nazi state , the Hitler-Stalin Pact, concluded in Moscow on August 23, 1939 , contained a secret agreement that delimited the spheres of interest between Germany and the Soviet Union.

After the German invasion of Poland , on September 17, 1939, Eastern Poland was occupied by the Soviets . Later the Baltic States and Romanian Bessarabia , which had been assigned to the Soviet Union in the Hitler-Stalin Pact, were also occupied by the Red Army and incorporated into the Soviet Union. The new border was written into a border and friendship treaty on September 28, 1939 . On August 19, 1939, February 11, 1940, and January 10, 1941, extensive credit and trade agreements were concluded with which the German Reich gained security from the economic consequences of a new naval blockade - this in the desire to successfully wage war against Great Britain .

In Finland Stalin saw as a potential threat to the security of the Soviet state. He feared the proximity of the Finnish border to Leningrad and Finland as a possible base for air strikes by foreign powers. After the country had not been persuaded to relinquish territory by diplomatic channels, Stalin ordered the start of the winter war against Finland in November 1939 without a declaration of war . Contrary to the war plan of his chief of staff, Shaposhnikov, he initially waged the war with limited forces. This offensive, only with the troops of the Leningrad military district, failed. A second Soviet attack, now with more troops and a different focus, forced Finland in March 1940 in the Peace of Moscow to cede Karelia and other areas. After that, Stalin dropped his war goal of occupying the entire country and establishing a communist government in exile. The aggressive actions of the Soviet Union against Finland led to their expulsion from the League of Nations and outraged reactions in western countries even during the fighting .

On May 6, 1941, Stalin was appointed chairman of the Council of People's Commissars and would have held an office for the first time that would have enabled him to travel abroad in accordance with the protocol.

Second World War

The Soviet state and party leadership under JW Stalin and the General Staff were completely surprised by the German attack on June 22, 1941 at 3.15 a.m., although since the beginning of the year and even a few hours before the attack, information on immediate preparation and the Time of the impending attack. This concerned both diplomatic information channels, from the areas of existing economic relations abroad, from the areas of own border security, from military leadership areas but also from our own domestic and foreign intelligence services and their residents such as Arvid Harnack , Gerhard Kegel , Harro Schulze-Boysen , Richard Sorge and Leopold Trepper . As recently as May 1941, Stalin was firmly convinced “that Germany will never attack Russia of its own accord.” On May 5, he made this very clear in a speech to graduates of the military academy. He even threatened Soviet military leaders that "heads will roll" if they moved troops without permission. This false assumption also stemmed from the fact that the two states had had 20 years of close military cooperation for mutual benefit since 1920. Six days after the German attack, however, he cursed after a meeting of the People's Commissariat for Defense: "Lenin created our state, and we fucked it up." It was an admission of a fatal misjudgment. Stalin had been convinced that he could postpone the conflict with Germany until 1942 and had subordinated everything else to it. Ernst Topitsch, on the other hand, interprets Stalin's behavior in such a way that he expected the German attack very well, but postponed the alerting of his troops so long as not to offer Germany any "means to unleash the armed conflict", and thus the "myth of the unprovoked attack" to accomplish.

Brisbane, Australia, October 1941

During the " Great Patriotic War ", Stalin was appointed Generalissimo of the Soviet Union (Commander in Chief of the Red Army). Through appeals to patriotism and the general anger at German aggression on the one hand and state terror on the other, he succeeded in gaining the support of large sections of the population. However, during the war there were repeated fatal misjudgments of the situation by Stalin. For example, at the beginning of the war he thought that the enemy would enter Russia via the south and accordingly had stronger troops stationed there. However , the main force of the Wehrmacht advanced over the north, i.e. the Baltic States and what is now Belarusian territory.

The Russian historian Anton Antonov-Ovsejenko judged on the basis of reports on the statements of the Soviet Marshals Alexander Yegorov and Konstantin Rokossovsky that Stalin had proven himself incapable of leading military units. In addition, the Red Army leadership secretly ignored many of his orders because they were nonsensical. Likewise, after the end of the Stalin era, Marshal Georgi Zhukov accused Stalin and the party leadership at the time of having senselessly sacrificed the lives of soldiers behind closed doors.

At first, Stalin did not react at all to the attack by the Wehrmacht on the Soviet Union. Anastas Mikoyan wrote in his memoir that Stalin did not know “what to say to the people”. Stalin was convinced that the Germans would not dare to attack directly, but only wanted to provoke. He even said that they would bomb their own cities for the purpose of provocation.

Instead of Stalin, Foreign Minister Molotov was the first to address the people of the Soviet Union and inform them of the attack by the Germans. A personal appearance by Stalin in the first days of the Great Patriotic War would have cast too much doubt on his policies in recent years, as the initial defeats were largely due to the "purges" within the Red Army. In his speech, Molotov spoke for the first time of the Patriotic War in relation to Russia's (victorious) defensive war against Napoleon .

It was not until July 3 that Stalin spoke up and gave a radio address which, in contrast to earlier speeches, lacked any pathos. Much more astonishing, however, was the content of the speech. In addition to the expected lies about the actual situation at the front, the language used by Stalin was a novelty. Instead of using “comrades” as usual, Stalin addressed his audience with the words: “Comrades! Citizens! Brothers and sisters! Fighters of our army and navy, to you I turn, my friends " (Товарищи! Граждане! Братья и сестры! Бойцы нашей армии и флота! К вам обращаюсь я, друзья мои!) . In view of the previous personality cult around Stalin, this address, which actually took place on an equal footing, was very unusual. In the months that followed, the image of Stalin and Soviet propaganda changed completely. Stalin took a back seat, Pravda only published old photos of the dictator, speeches were no longer given. Instead of ideologically motivated propaganda that was supposed to educate " new people ", there was more and more a patriotically oriented war campaign. Stalin largely disappeared from posters, films, etc., and was replaced by the ubiquitous Mother Homeland (Rodina mat ') . The personality cult around Stalin did not come to the fore again until the end of 1944, when a victory of the Red Army over the German Reich was considered certain.

Stalin with Harry Truman , Andrei Gromyko , James Byrnes and Vyacheslav Molotov .

On July 19, Stalin took over the post of People's Commissar for Defense of Semyon Tymoshenko and held it until March 3, 1947, under changing titles. Commanders who had made mistakes or failed in his eyes were demoted, arrested or shot. Many committed suicide. The commander of the Special Western Military District, Dmitri Grigoryevich Pavlov , and three other generals, whose troops had been overrun by the Wehrmacht, ordered Stalin to be shot for negligence after a trial whose judgment he had previously determined. All four had made a steep career after the bloody purge of the Red Army and were overwhelmed by a lack of experience with the situation in June 1941. Stalin's biographer Dimitri Volkogonov judged: "He, who was primarily to blame for the disaster, showed an extraordinary hardness towards those who fell victim to his miscalculations."

Terror also changed during the war . From the arbitrariness of the Great Terror of the 1930s, there was a transition to targeted terrorism against individual ethnic groups of the Soviet Union who were suspected of making pacts with the Germans. Millions of people, entire peoples and ethnic groups such as the Crimean Tatars , the Russian Germans or the Chechens were deported as potential collaborators to Kazakhstan and Central Asia , where many of the deportees died a gruesome death. The Baltic states lost around ten percent of their population.

After the Soviet victory in the Battle of Kursk (summer 1943), Stalin decided once during the entire war to go to the front. With a camouflaged train he drove to the Kalininer Front , 170 km northwest of Moscow. Since he spoke neither to officers nor to soldiers, "one can only assume that the sole purpose of this trip was to boast about it to Churchill and Roosevelt." At the Tehran Conference in 1943 and the Yalta Conference in 1945 the three laid down Victory powers - including Stalin - fixed the borders of Europe after the defeat of National Socialist Germany . As a result, several million people in Eastern Europe had to leave their homes ( displacement ).

The battle for Stalingrad had already brought the German attack to a standstill. In the summer offensive of 1944 , the Red Army then reached the Reich borders by the end of the year . A few months later, with the Battle of Berlin, the rule of National Socialism in Germany came to an end. On June 24, 1945, Stalin took from the stands of the Lenin Mausoleum from the Victory Parade , which was led by Marshal Zhukov.

Josef Stalin was nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize, once in 1945 for his efforts to end the Second World War and once in 1948.

Stalin as a warlord

Stalin's teacher in questions of strategy was Boris Michailowitsch Schaposhnikov , with whom Stalin had a special relationship of trust. He only called him by his first and father names, spoke to him without ever raising his voice, even if he did not agree with Shaposhnikov. During the war, Stalin read books on war and strategy, and he was particularly interested in books on Alexander Vasilyevich Suvorov and Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov . The judgments about Stalin's military capabilities differ widely. For the Russian historian Dmitri Antonowitsch Volkogonov , Stalin was not the “ingenious military leader” as the Soviet propaganda portrayed him. He had no professional military knowledge, never had "prognostic skills" and did not understand the "complexity of military operations". For the historian Evan Mawdsley , Stalin was "neither a military genius nor a bumbling dilettante"; but he was undoubtedly a "great warlord" and a victorious one at that. In a study for the RAND Corporation , Raymond L. Garthoff concludes that Stalin's “general strategic capabilities” are “out of discussion”. He participated in military planning with "an undisputed authority" to a "considerable extent" but never ruled against the advice of his military advisers. The then French military attaché in the French embassy in Moscow, General A. Guillaume, sees a drastic contrast between the “measured” words of Stalin and the “hoarse roar” with which Hitler wanted to drive his armies. For him, Stalin contrasted Hitler's immoderate plans with the cool reason of dialectical materialism . The air force, of which Stalin was sponsor, was his personal interest. The American General Henry H. Arnold , who met Stalin at the Tehran Conference , reports:

“Stalin surprised me with his knowledge of our planes. He knew details of their performance, their characteristics, their armament, and their armor much better than many of the senior officers in our own air force. "

Marriages and families

Ketewan Svanidze

Stalin's first wife, Ketewan Swanidze , with whom he had been married since 1906, died in 1907 of typhus and enterohemorrhagic colitis . She had worked as a seamstress for the ladies of the Russian garrison. Your brothers had studied in Germany. On the occasion of their funeral, Stalin showed concern, but he did not care about their son Jakow Dschugaschwili (called Jascha ).

From 1914 Stalin had an affair with the 13-year-old peasant girl Lidia Pereprygina. She had two children from him, the first of whom died shortly after birth. The second child was born in April 1917 and was registered with Stalin's real surname as Alexander Jughashvili.

In 1919 Stalin married Nadezhda Alliluyeva , who presumably committed suicide by shooting in 1932 . With her he had the son Vasily Iossifowitsch Stalin (1921–1962), who later became a general, and the daughter Svetlana Iossifowna Allilujewa (1926–2011), who emigrated to the USA in 1967 , leaving their children behind in the Soviet Union. Her son Josef Alliluyev, a well-known cardiologist , died in Moscow in 2008 at the age of 63 .

Stalin was not prepared to exchange his son Yakov, who had become a German prisoner of war on July 16, 1941 , for the German Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus , who had been taken prisoner by the Soviets on January 31, 1943 , since the Soviet Soldiers Act said that the Soviet soldier had every opportunity to use to escape. In addition, Stalin declared: "You don't exchange a soldier for a general."

Yakov Dschugashvili died on the evening of April 14, 1943 in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp when he was tampering with the electrically charged camp fence, presumably with suicidal intent. It is unclear whether he was shot by security guards or died by electricity.

Yakov's daughter Galina Dschugashvili died of cancer on August 27, 2007 at the age of 69 in a Moscow hospital. Yakov's son Yevgeny Dzhugashvili , a retired colonel in the Soviet Army, died on December 22, 2016 at the age of 80 of acute heart failure in Moscow.

post war period

Stalin with Roosevelt and Churchill (seated in front, from right), during the Yalta Conference in 1945

In the negotiations with the western allies (conferences in Yalta and Potsdam ), Stalin obtained concessions that ultimately favored the rise of communist parties to power in Central and Eastern European countries and thus further expanded the sphere of influence of the USSR. The elimination of independent socialists or communists through show trials in the countries of Eastern Europe dominated by the USSR led to the sole rule of Stalinist forces there. In 1948 there was a break with Marshal Tito , who had led a partisan struggle against the Nazi German and the fascist Italian occupation in World War II and had established the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia as a socialist state independent of the Soviet Union. The Stalin-led Soviet Union came into sharp contrast to the US-led western world, and the Cold War began.

In the USSR and in the Eastern and Central European states ruled by it there was renewed purges . Clergymen, members of non-Russian peoples and numerous supposed or actual political opponents ( cosmopolitans , “Westerners”, Zionists ) were imprisoned and sometimes tortured ; many innocent people were accused of espionage or “counter-revolutionary activity”. In March 1949, the chairman of the State Planning Commission, Gosplan Nikolai Voznesensky, was expelled from the Politburo , and in October 1950 he was executed.

In the course of the Leningrad affair around 2000 functionaries of the CPSU lost their posts. Some of the leading Leningrad communists were sentenced to death. Around 200 others were detained in Gulag camps .

On March 10, 1952, Josef Stalin offered the Western powers (France, Great Britain, USA) in a note negotiations on the reunification and neutralization of Germany. This note and Stalin's replies to the responses of the Western powers are known as the Stalin Notes and sparked a domestic political debate in the Federal Republic. In the GDR they were interpreted as a sign that the Soviet Union was prepared to forego its advance in Eastern Europe in the event of foreign policy compromises.

On his 72nd birthday in 1950, Stalin was honored in the GDR as a man "whom all peace-loving people in the world look to and hope for." Such formulations corresponded to the personality cult around Stalin prevailing at the time . In almost all Soviet republics and Eastern Bloc states, some cities were named after Stalin , as well as public buildings, factories, sports facilities, streets and other things. In the schools in the GDR there was the obligatory “Stalin corner”, a mostly altar- like table with a photo of Stalin, on which pupils deposited their gifts of gratitude. Many of these honors were only revoked some time after his death and after the de-Stalinization .

death

Josef Stalin, GDR postage stamp from 1953 issued on the occasion of his death (with the wrong year of birth)

On the evening of February 28, 1953, Stalin met Lavrenti Beria , Georgi Malenkov , Nikolai Bulganin and Nikita Khrushchev for dinner with an accompanying drink at his dacha in Kunzewo . The conversation, towards the end of which Stalin severely criticized his colleagues in a long monologue, lasted until four o'clock on the morning of March 1, 1953. After saying goodbye to his guests, Stalin suffered an unnoticed stroke in his room . After Stalin did not show up in the morning and did not respond to a knock on the door, his staff did not dare to enter his room for the whole day for fear that they might be accused of an attack on the dictator. Only at 11 p.m. did the employee on duty, M. Starostin, dare to visit Stalin, who he found lying on the floor in pajama bottoms and an undershirt. Stalin was conscious but could hardly move or speak. The servants laid him on the divan on which he passed out. Malenkov appeared first, then Beria at three in the morning on March 2nd. This forbade the bodyguards and house servants to make phone calls and went away with Malenkov. At 9 o'clock Beria and Malenkov came back, accompanied by Khrushchev, a little later other politburo members and doctors appeared.

A few hours later, a government announcement was released stating that Stalin had suffered cerebral haemorrhage that affected vital parts of the brain. Stalin died on March 5, 1953 at 9:50 p.m. at the age of 74.

Some of the most respected and well-known medical professionals in the USSR had been accused in the months before his death of participating in an imaginary medical conspiracy aimed at poisoning the top Soviet political and military leadership. These suspicions were at the center of an anti-Semitic campaign that Stalin wanted to use to legitimize a purge and restructuring of the security apparatus. According to several researchers, the campaign also resulted in the deportation of Soviet Jews to Siberia. After Stalin's death, the campaign was broken off and the doctors rehabilitated. According to Vyacheslav Molotov's memoirs, published in 1991, Beria alleged to him that he had poisoned Stalin.

The testimonies of mourning among Orthodox Communists around the world have been extraordinary. More than 500 people died in the crowd during Stalin's funeral in Red Square on March 9, 1953. After the funeral ceremonies, Stalin's body was taken to the Lenin Mausoleum , which was closed to visitors for eight months. The body was embalmed during this time and then laid out next to Lenin's body in a glass coffin. In the course of de-Stalinization , Khrushchev had the dead man removed from the mausoleum on October 31, 1961 and buried in the necropolis on the Kremlin wall .

reception

People's Republic of China (1949)

Soviet Union

Stalin's grave on the Kremlin wall (1965)

After Stalin's death, a process of de-Stalinization began. On the XX. At the CPSU party congress in February 1956, Nikita Khrushchev distanced herself from Stalin in the secret speech about the personality cult and its consequences . Above all, he criticized the crimes that Stalin had committed against other communists, and not the dictatorial system as such. After Stalin's death, conditions in the labor camps improved. As a result, the Gulag was at least formally dissolved , political prisoners were released and partially rehabilitated, and the remaining German prisoners of war were released in 1955 . The censorship was noticeably relaxed, which led to lively discourses and new impulses ( thaw period ). But already with the bloody suppression of the Hungarian people's uprising in November 1956, the Moscow leadership made the limits of the de-Stalinization process clear.

On the occasion of another settlement with Stalin on the XXII. At the CPSU Congress in October 1961, his body was removed from the Lenin mausoleum and his name disappeared from the public eye. So Stalingrad got the new name Volgograd . The process of de-Stalinization was now taking place in all other Eastern bloc states as well . Streets like Stalinallee in East Berlin have been renamed and the monument there has been removed.

Bust at Stalin's grave

In economic terms, de-Stalinization was characterized by a move away from massive funding of heavy industry in favor of a policy that was more oriented towards the consumption needs of the population. As a result, the living conditions of the population improved. Soviet state socialism gradually lost its connection to the world economy without forced labor and forced high performance .

It was not until Leonid Brezhnev , who carefully tried to rehabilitate Stalin ( neo-Stalinism ), that a bust was attached to his grave on the Kremlin wall on the occasion of Stalin's 90th birthday in 1969. Under Mikhail Gorbachev, however, a fundamental criticism of Stalin began in the Soviet Union that went far beyond the criticism in the phase of de-Stalinization. Nonetheless, the term Father Stalin remained widespread in Russia during and after the Soviet era .

Russia

Every year since 2006 , the names of victims of Stalin's repression have been read out for twelve hours for twelve hours at an event organized by Memorial , “Return of Names”. The participants "united the hope that in this way the social rehabilitation of Stalin can be stopped".

The positive view of Stalin in Russia experienced an upswing - up to the status of "superstar" ( Irina Scherbakowa ) - especially from 2012 through the glorification of the Great Patriotic War . The celebrated victory over National Socialism - but according to Konstantin Kaminsky until 2012 - would not always have been directly related to an admiration for Stalin. In Yakutsk in Eastern Siberia and numerous other regions including the Crimea, at least 70 Stalin monuments were built from 2013 onwards. Those who positively relate to Stalin include veterans' associations and former mayor of Moscow Yuri Luzhkov . Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev defend Stalin's rule as a historical necessity, but before 2011 also called Stalin a criminal.

In 2008, in a poll by Russian state television company Rossija 1 , Stalin was ranked third behind Alexander Nevsky and Pyotr Stolypin by a narrow margin, with slight manipulation against Stalin, after the most important figure in Russian history . In 2017, 40 percent of Russians viewed Stalin as absolutely positive. According to Irina Scherbakowa, information through television and propaganda has detached public opinion from historical facts. In surveys in 2017, 46 percent said they were positive about Stalin, compared to 28 percent in 2012. 79 percent considered the crimes of the regime to be “inexcusable” in 2012, compared with 39 percent in 2017. In autumn 2017, 46 percent of Russian youth had never heard of political repression in the 1930s and 1940s. Lev Gudkov interprets the transfiguration of Stalin not as a coincidence, but as a deliberate policy. Stalin is a symbol of a world power role. Soviet symbols such as the national anthem have been used subtly since Vladimir Putin came to power for political purposes. The high positive rating of Stalin in surveys increased again in 2019; 70 percent of Russians rate Stalin's role in the country as positive. One reason was seen in the desire for social justice , due to the strong urban-rural divide in Russia.

Warsaw Treaty States

Before the discovery of Stalin's crimes, mainly monuments were built in the various states, but numerous public institutions were also given his name, including several cities. In the GDR , the city ​​newly founded near Fürstenberg (Oder) was named Stalinstadt . In Poland Katowice was temporarily called Stalinogród , in Hungary today's Dunaújváros Sztálinváros , in Romania Brașov was called Orașul Stalin , in Bulgaria it was called Varna Stalin . All of these name changes were reversed in the late 1950s / early 1960s.

Dismissed complaint by a Stalin grandson

Stalin's grandson Yevgeny Jugashvili sued the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta , which wrote about Stalin's mass murders in 2009. In order to restore the dictator's “honor and dignity”, the grandson sued for omission and compensation for pain and suffering of 10 million rubles (€ 220,000). In October 2009 he lost the trial at Moscow's Basmanny Court, which is otherwise known for persecuting critics of the regime. Since thousands of contract killings are documented, the media are allowed to report on them. The process and how it came about was criticized in different ways; the human rights organization Memorial called its outcome a "victory of reason".

Former states of the Soviet Union

Georgia

In 2013, the University of Tbilisi conducted a survey of the population, which indicated that 45% of respondents thought positively about Stalin.

Ukraine

The Institute of Sociology in Kiev conducted a similar survey in Ukraine in February 2013. According to this, 37% of Ukrainians had a negative opinion of Stalin and 22% a positive one. The rest were neutral. Positive attitudes were 36% in Eastern Ukraine and 27% in Southern Ukraine. In western Ukraine the opposition was 64% and in central Ukraine 39%. In the 18–29 age group, 16% had a positive attitude towards Stalin.

In the spring of 2010, a Ukrainian court declared the famine between 1932 and 1933 caused by Stalin's policies to be genocide ( Holodomor ).

In the spring of 2010 a statue of Stalin was erected in Zaporizhia . In December 2010 she was blown up by strangers.

In February 2016, the Institute of Sociology in Kiev repeated the survey. According to this, 38% had a negative attitude, 26% a neutral and 17% a positive one (19% refused to answer).

Armenia

In 2012, a survey in Armenia found that 72% did not want to live in a country ruled by someone like Stalin.

Lithuania
The Stalin statue in Grutas Park

In Grūtas Park near the health resort Druskininkai there are not only many sculptures from the time of the Soviet Union but also a bronze statue of Stalin. For victims of Soviet rule, the statues symbolize fear, deportation and the death of friends and relatives, so that, in the opinion of many Lithuanians, the park belittles what happened. The entrepreneur Viliumas Malinauskas received the Ig Nobel Prize in the “Peace” category in 2001 for founding the park .

Germany

The following important information is missing from this article or section:
The entire non-Stalinist reception in history, in serious journalism and within the left is missing. - Φ ( discussion ) 13:21, Jun 17, 2014 (CEST)
Help Wikipedia by researching and pasting it .

Choirs with a portrait of Stalin on the stage, Leipzig , 1950

In Germany, the small parties Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany (MLPD) and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), founded in East Berlin in 1990, as well as the historian Kurt Gossweiler (1917-2017) refer positively to Stalin. In 1992, Sahra Wagenknecht , who at that time represented the Communist Platform in the PDS , declared in an article for the program discussion of her party that Stalin's policy "in its orientation, its goals and probably also in its approach must be regarded as a principled continuation of the Leninist". She doubted that there were historically feasible alternatives to it. In addition, she claimed that under Stalin a successful industrialization and with it the "overcoming of misery, hunger, illiteracy , semi-feudal dependencies and the sharpest capitalist exploitation" had succeeded. In response to severe public criticism of these statements, she repeatedly stated that she had in no way intended to justify or even deny Stalin's crimes. Later statements in this regard would be disregarded in the media. The German Communist Party (DKP) also praised Stalin's role in the industrialization and military defense capability of the Soviet Union, but also criticized the crimes committed during his term in office. However, the party points out that personalities such as Churchill and Albert Einstein also defended the Moscow trials.

plant

  • Law of Maximum Profit , temporary theorem of Marxism-Leninism, formulated in The Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR from 1952

Work editions

  • JW Stalin: works. 13 volumes. Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1950–1955 (Das neue Wort, Stuttgart 1951–1955). Volume 13 ends on January 31, 1934. This edition of the work was not finished after Stalin's death.
  • JW Stalin: Selected works in two volumes. Verlag Roter Morgen, Dortmund 1979, contains in the 2nd volume among other things: Marxism and the questions of linguistics, June / July 1950 .
  • JW Stalin: works. 16 volumes (volumes 1–15 + volume 17). Verlag Roter Morgen, Hamburg 1971, Dortmund 1976 and 1979. Stalin works . This edition of the KPD / ML (Red Morning) is an attempt to supplement the canceled edition from 1950 ff. From the GDR. Volume 14 runs from February 1934 to May 1, 1945, Volume 15 (Red Morning 1971) contains the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, a short course from 1938 and Volume 17 (Red Morning 1973) the years 1945–1952.
  • JW Stalin: works. Verlag Olga Benario and Herbert Baum, Offenbach 2003, ISBN 3-932636-72-4 .

Individual editions, text collections, letters

  • About dialectical and historical materialism . Full text and critical commentary by Iring Fetscher . Diesterweg, Frankfurt / Berlin / Bonn 1956.
  • The unholy alliance. Stalin's correspondence with Churchill 1941–1945. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1964.
  • Questions of Leninism. Oberbaumverlag, Berlin 1971.
  • Marxism and the national and colonial question. Rote Fahne Verlag, Cologne 1976, ISBN 3-8106-0013-X .
  • About the great October. Rote Fahne publishing house, Cologne 1977, ISBN 3-8106-0059-8 .
  • About the opposition (1921–1927). Foreign Language Literature Publishing House, Beijing 1979.
  • About the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union. Third edition: Publishing House for Foreign Language Literature, Moscow 1946.
  • On the struggle for peace: a collection of selected essays and speeches. Dietz Verlag Berlin 1954 (Library of Marxism-Leninism; 43).
  • On the questions of Leninism. A selection. Fischer library, Frankfurt / Hamburg 1970.
  • Writings on the ideology of bureaucratization. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1970, ISBN 3-499-45258-8 .
  • Stalin. Letters to Molotov. 1925-1936. Siedler, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-88680-558-1 .

literature

The RussGUS database contains well over 1000 publications relating to Stalin. Reviews of new scientific literature can be found under new publications on Stalin. In: sehepunkte , 6, 2006, No. 10.

Films and exhibitions

Movies
exhibition

Web links

Wikiquote: Josef Stalin  - Quotes
Commons : Josef Stalin  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Iossif Jugashvili is listed in the records of the Uspensky Church in Gori as being born on December 6, 1878. This date is also mentioned on his school report card, his comprehensive tsarist police card and all other preserved documents of the pre-revolutionary era. As late as 1920, Stalin himself gave December 18, 1878 as his date of birth. After he took power in 1922, the date changed without explanation to December 21 (old calendar: December 9) 1879; this was the date used and celebrated from then on in the Soviet Union.
  2. ↑ Bernd Marquardt: Universal History of the State . LIT Verlag, Vienna 2009, p. 500; Ute Becker: The Chronicle. History from the 20th century to the present day. Wissen Media Verlag, Munich 2006, p. 125.
  3. ↑ Joseph Stalin. Tabular curriculum vitae in the LeMO ( DHM and HdG ) Igal Halfin: Terror in My Soul: Communist Autobiographies on Trial. Harvard University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-674-01032-9 , p. 15 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  4. ↑ Nicolas Wert: A state against its people. In: Stéphane Courtois et al. (Ed.): The Black Book of Communism. 4th edition. Munich 1998, pp. 178-188.
  5. ↑ Simon Ertz: The Kazakh Catastrophe and Stalin's Order of Priorities, 1929-1933: Evidence from the Soviet Secret Archives , in: Stanford's Student Journal of Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies , Volume 1, Spring 2005, pp. 1-14 ( Memento of September 3, 2006 in the Internet Archive ), here p. 1. Other sources speak of 1.5 to 1.7 million fatalities and up to 42% of the population who fell victim to hunger. See Boris Barth : Genocide. Genocide in the 20th Century. History, theories, controversies . Beck, Munich 2006, (Beck'sche Reihe, vol. 1672), p. 143 , ISBN 3-406-52865-1 .
  6. ↑ ФИГУРА СТАЛИНА В ОБЩЕСТВЕННОМ МНЕНИИ РОССИИ. In: Lewada Center . March 25, 2016. Retrieved January 14, 2017 (Russian).
  7. ^ Conquest, Robert (1991), Stalin: Breaker of Nations, New York and London: Penguin, ISBN 978-0-14-016953-9
  8. ^ Montefiore, Simon Sebag (2007). Young Stalin. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 978-0-297-85068-7 .
  9. ↑ Ernst G. Jung: Small cultural history of the skin, pp. 88-89 Steinkopff-Verlag Heidelberg, 2007, ISBN 978-3-7985-1758-5 .
  10. ↑ Stephen Kotkin: Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 . Penguin, New York 2014, ISBN 978-0-14-102794-4 , pp. 27 .
  11. ^ Charles Jean Marie Letourneau (1831-1902): L'évolution littéraire dans les diverses races humaines (1894).
  12. ↑ Gerhard Prause : Geniuses in School. Legend and truth about success in life. P. 141 f .: Gerhard Prause: Geniuses in school. LIT Verlag Münster, 2007, ISBN 978-3-8258-0105-2 , p. 141 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  13. ^ Douglas Smith: Rasputin , The First Test. P. 134.
  14. ↑ Stephen Kotkin: Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 . Penguin, New York 2014, ISBN 978-0-14-102794-4 , pp. 137 f .
  15. ↑ Stephen Kotkin: Stalin. Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 . Penguin, New York 2014, ISBN 978-0-14-102794-4 , pp. 47 .
  16. ↑ Stephen Kotkin: Stalin. Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 . Penguin, New York 2014, pp. 53 .
  17. ↑ Simon Sebag Montefiore : The Young Stalin , p. 14: “Fifty lay wounded in the square. The bodies of three Cossacks, the bank officials and some passers-by lay in pieces. The censored newspapers kept casualities low, but the Okhrana's archives reveal that around fourty were killed. ”Ibid fn. 16, which proves the Ochrana files and the amount of the loot.
  18. ↑ Stephen Kotkin: Stalin. Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 . Penguin, New York 2014, ISBN 978-0-14-102794-4 , pp. 121 f .
  19. ↑ Stephen Kotkin: Stalin. Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 . Penguin, New York 2014, ISBN 978-0-14-102794-4 , pp. 117 f .
  20. ↑ Stephen Kotkin: Stalin. Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 . Penguin, New York 2014, ISBN 978-0-14-102794-4 , pp. 155 .
  21. ↑ Stephen Kotkin: Stalin: Paradoxes of Power . Penguin, New York 2014, ISBN 978-0-14-102794-4 , pp. 310 .
  22. ^ Letter to the XII. Party convention. (Testament) In: vulture-bookz.de , dictated on December 25, 1922 and January 4, 1923.
  23. ↑ This document was only published in 1956 and is therefore known in full.
  24. ↑ Manfred Hildermeier: The Soviet Union 1917-1991 (Oldenbourg outline of the story). Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2007, p. 53.
  25. ^ Manfred Zeidler , German-Soviet economic relations under the sign of the Hitler-Stalin Pact. In: Bernd Wegner (Ed.): Two ways to Moscow. From the Hitler-Stalin Pact to “ Operation Barbarossa” , Piper, Munich 1991, pp. 93–110.
  26. ↑ Anthony Upton: Finland 1939-1940. Newark, 1974, pp. 62-70.
    Carl van Dyke: The Soviet Invasion of Finland 1939-1940. London, Portland 1997, p. 8f, p. 19, p. 38f, p. 44, p. 60, p. 72, pp. 199-213.
    William Trotter: A Frozen Hell Chapel Hill 1991, p. 61.
  27. ↑ Leonid Mlechin: A Conspiracy of Ambassadors , Novaya Gazeta , May 24, 2019.
  28. ↑ Ian Kershaw: Turning Points. Key decisions in World War II. DVA, Munich 2008, p. 358 f.
  29. ↑ Bachmann / Zeisler: The German Militarism . Berlin 1983, p. 400 f.
  30. ↑ Quoted from Ian Kershaw: Turning Points. Key decisions in World War II. DVA, Munich 2008, p. 309.
  31. ↑ Ian Kershaw: Turning Points. Key decisions in World War II. DVA, Munich 2008, p. 373.
  32. ↑ Ernst Topitsch : Stalin's War . Herford 1990, p. 177 f.
  33. ↑ Anton Antonov-Ovseenko: Stalin. Portrait of a tyranny. Piper, Munich / Zurich 1983, pp. 329-332, 341.
  34. ↑ Anastas I. Mikojan: Tak bylo. Moscow 1999, p. 389.
  35. ^ Richard Overy : Russian War 1941-1945. Reinbek 2003, p. 126.
  36. ↑ Isaac Deutscher : Stalin. A political biography. Reinbek 1992, p. 590.
  37. ^ Radio address by the Chairman of the State Defense Committee JV Stalin, July 3, 1941 . 1000dokumente.de , with facsimile.
  38. ^ Dimitri Volkogonow: Stalin. Triumph and tragedy. A political portrait. Econ-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Düsseldorf / Wien 1993, pp. 572-580, the quotation p. 578.
  39. ↑ A. Beevor: The Second World War. Munich 2014, p. 554.
  40. ^ The Nomination Database for the Nobel Peace Prize, 1901–1956 .
  41. ↑ Dmitri Antonowitsch Volkogonow : Stalin. Triumph and tragedy . Düsseldorf 1993, p. 630 f. According to the report of the French military attaché in Moscow, General A. Guillaume, Stalin had already taken part in Shaposhnikov's courses in strategy in 1932. A. Guillaume: Why won the Red Army . Baden-Baden 1949, p. 165.
  42. ↑ Volkogonov: Stalin. Triumph and tragedy . Düsseldorf 1993, p. 611.
  43. ^ Evan Mawdsley : Josef Stalin . In: Stig Förster, Markus Pöhlmann, Dierk Walter (ed.): Warlords of world history . Munich 2006, p. 324 ff.
  44. ^ Raymond L. Garthoff: The Soviet Army. Essence and teaching. Cologne 1955. p. 220 ff.
  45. ↑ A. Guillaume: Why won the Red Army . Baden-Baden 1949, p. 154 ff.
  46. ^ Mawdsley: Josef Stalin . In: Förster: Warlords of World History , p. 327.
  47. ↑ Quotation from Garthoff: The Soviet Army . P. 228.
  48. ↑ Oleg V. Khlevniuk: Stalin: new biography of a dictator . Yale University Press, London 2015, ISBN 978-0-300-16388-9 , pp. 30 .
  49. ↑ Stephen Kotkin: Stalin. Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 . Allen Lane, London 2014, ISBN 978-0-7139-9944-0 , pp. 155 .
  50. ↑ Simon Sebag Montefiore: Young Stalin . Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 2007, ISBN 978-0-297-85068-7 , pp. 282-293 .
  51. ^ Robert Service: Stalin: a biography . Macmillan, London 2004, ISBN 0-333-72627-8 , pp. 107 .
  52. ↑ Stalin's grandson died in Moscow. In: Märkische Oderzeitung , November 3, 2008, p. 4.
  53. ↑ Historical Notes: The Death of Stalin's Son . In: Time Magazine , March 1, 1968.
  54. ↑ Shoot it . In: Der Spiegel . No. 9 , 1969, p. 74-75 ( online ).
  55. ↑ Thomas Cushing: Stalin's son felt rejected . In: Der Spiegel . No. 13 , 1968, p. 92-95 ( online ).
  56. ↑ JV Stalin - 72 years . In: Motor vehicle technology 12/1951, p. 273.
  57. ↑ Stefan Trinks: The dictator roars in the zoo. Offerings for the altar of the great Führer: An exhibition in Hohenschönhausen illuminates the Stalin cult in Germany. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of February 6, 2018, p. 12.
  58. ↑ Testimony from Dmitri Wolkogonow: Autopsy for an Empire. The Seven Leaders Who Built the Soviet Regime. (English translation of the Russian original) ( limited preview in Google Book search)
  59. ^ Matthias Vetter: Conspiracy of the Kremlin doctors . In: Wolfgang Benz (Ed.) Handbook of Antisemitism , Vol. 4: Events, Decrees, Controversies . de Gruyter Saur, Berlin / New York 2011, ISBN 978-3-598-24076-8 , p. 417; David R. Shearer and Vladimir Khaustov: Stalin and the Lubianka. A Documentary History of the Political Police and Security Organs in the Soviet Union, 1922–1953. Yale University Press, New Haven / London 2014, ISBN 978-0-300-21071-2 , p. 307 (both accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  60. ^ Edvard Radzinsky : Stalin. The First In-depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia's Secret Archives . Doubleday, New York 1996, p. 560 with further references; Timothy Snyder : Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin . CH Beck, Munich 2011, p. 370.
  61. ↑ Felix Tschujew : Сто сорок бесед с Молотовым . Terra, Moscow 1991, ISBN 5-85255-042-6 . (Translation into English: Felix Chuev: Molotov Remembers: Inside Kremlin Politics . Edited by Albert Resis. Ivan R. Dee, Chicago 1993, ISBN 1-56663-027-4 .)
  62. ^ Maximilien Rubel: Josef W. Stalin , Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek 1975, p. 124.
  63. ↑ Grave of Josef Stalin.
  64. ↑ Ludmila Lutz-Auras: To Stalin, Victory and Fatherland! Politicization of the collective memory of World War II in Russia . Dissertation, University of Rostock. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2012, p. 128.
  65. ↑ Moscow: Names of Stalin Victims Read Out Publicly , RBTH, November 1, 2016
  66. ↑ a b The October Revolution 100 years on: 'Russia hasn't dealt with the past' , dw, October 24, 2017
  67. ↑ Konstantin Kaminsky: / Stalin 2.0. Stalin cult in the Russian media of the 21st century. In: Forum for Eastern European History of Ideas and Contemporary History 16 (2012), pp. 165–188.
  68. ↑ Russia: New Stalin monument unveiled in Siberia. In: Spiegel Online . May 8, 2013. Retrieved June 9, 2018 .
  69. ^ Stefan Creuzberger : Stalinism and culture of remembrance . In: Federal Agency for Civic Education : From Politics and Contemporary History , Issue 49–50 / 2011, November 30, 2011.
  70. ↑ Johannes Voswinkel: Stalin for everyone. In: The time . May 3, 2010, accessed February 17, 2015 .
  71. ↑ Stalin voted third greatest Russian of all time. In: Spiegel Online . December 28, 2008, accessed February 17, 2015 .
  72. ↑ Смейся, палач! (German: "Lachen, Henker!"), Nowaja Gaseta, March 5, 2018.
  73. ↑ Why it is socially acceptable again in Russia to venerate Stalin . In: NZZ, October 24, 2017: Putin spoke out about Stalin in 2009 in the sense that he condemned the repression of that time, but at the same time gave the dictator absolution: “Whatever one may say - victory was achieved. Nobody today can throw a stone at those who led the country to this victory. "
  74. ↑ Stalin for Justice , Novaya Gazeta, April 18, 2019.
  75. ↑ Manfred Quiring: Stalin's grandson fails with injunction. In: The world . October 14, 2009, accessed February 17, 2015 .
  76. ↑ “ Georgia divided over Stalin 'local hero' status in Gori ”. BBC News. March 5, 2013.
  77. ↑ a b Ставлення населення України до постаті Йосипа Сталіна Attitude population Ukraine to the figure of Joseph Stalin , Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (March 1, 2013) (Ukrainian)
  78. ↑ Ukraine court finds Bolsheviks guilty of Holodomor genocide ( Memento from January 16, 2010 in the Internet Archive ), RIA Novosti (January 13, 2010)
    Yushchenko brings Stalin to court over genocide , RT (January 14, 2010)
    Yushchenko Praises Guilty Verdict Against Soviet Leaders For Famine , Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (January 14, 2010)
  79. ↑ a b Springtime for Stalin by Timothy D. Snyder , The New York Review of Books (May 26, 2010)
  80. ↑ Ukraine stands by its view of Stalin as villain - president (Update 1) , RIA Novosti (February 25, 2011)
  81. ↑ About Stalin positive about 1/5 less Ukrainian , Ukrayinska Pravda (March 4, 2015) (Ukrainian)
  82. ^ Democrats who love Stalin. Civilnet , April 3, 2013, accessed April 3, 2013 .
  83. ↑ Grutas Park and Druskininkai , lithauen-vilnius.de
  84. ↑ Homepage of the park
  85. ↑ Georges Hausemeier: Greetings from Father Stalin: The history park of Grutas in Lithuania , in: FAZ, February 25, 2010
  86. ↑ http://www.planet-wissen.de/kultur/baltische_staat/litauen/pwiediesowjetischevergangenheit100.html
  87. ↑ Sandra Voglreiter: Grutas Park in Lithuania: Stalin in the petting zoo. In: Spiegel Online . May 9, 2007. Retrieved June 9, 2018 .
  88. ↑ http://www.improbable.com/ig/ig-pastwinners.html
  89. ^ Sahra Wagenknecht : Marxism and opportunism - struggles in the socialist movement yesterday and today. (Weißenseer Blätter, 4/1992, pp. 12-26).
  90. ↑ Christoph Jünke : The long shadow of Stalinism: Socialism and democracy yesterday and today. ISP, 2007, ISBN 978-3-89900-126-6 , p. 113.
  91. ↑ Hans-Dieter Schütt (Ed.): Too young to be true: Conversations with Sahra Wagenknecht. Dietz, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-320-01874-4 , p. 40.
  92. ↑ Robert Steigerwald : No negative, no positive Stalin cult . Article in the UZ , 2013. ( news.dkp.suhail.uberspace.de ), accessed on December 27, 2020
predecessor Office successor
- 1st Secretary or General Secretary of the CPSU
1922–1953 		Georgi Malenkov
Vyacheslav Molotov Prime Minister of the Soviet Union
1941–1953 		Georgi Malenkov
personal data
SURNAME Stalin, Joseph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES იოსებ ბესარიონის ძე ჯუღაშვილი (Georgian); Iosseb Bessarionis dze Jughashvili (Georgian); Иосиф Виссарионович Джугашвили (Russian); Iossif Wissarionowitsch Dschugaschwili (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Soviet politician, dictator (1927–1953)
DATE OF BIRTH December 18, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Gori
DATE OF DEATH March 5, 1953
PLACE OF DEATH Kunzewo near Moscow