An undisputed leader of the Soviet Union, Stalin was one of the emblematic figures

of the 20th century. He symbolizes both the struggle of the Soviet people against the
Nazis and appears at the same time as the creator of totalitarian regime. Whether he
is regarded as the heir of the October Revolution or, on the contrary, as his grave-
digger, Stalin was at the same time one of the most adulated and despised men of
his time.
Iosif Vissarionovich Djougashvili was born on 21 December 1879 in Gori, a large
village in Georgia. He was the only son of a peasant who practiced at the same time
the trade of shoemaker. He remained deeply marked by his very rough childhood,
mainly because of the brutality of his father, Vissarion, whom he lost at the age of
eleven. His mother Ekaterina worked hard to ensure her studies. Young Stalin
entered the seminary of Tiflis in 1893, which cut him from his original environment.
His studies coincided with a period of expansion of revolutionary propaganda in the
Russian Empire ("Joseph Stalin | Premier Of Union Of Soviet Socialist Republics") . Djougashvili
learns Russian seems influenced by Georgian nationalism, which earned him his first
pseudonym, "Koba", named after a hero of the nationalist novel. His choice of
Marxism dates at least from 1898, year of the creation of the Social Democratic Party
of Russia workers (RSDLP). Koba, who participated in a socialist reading circle, was
removed from the seminary the following year. He then became a "professional
revolutionary". His early years of political work, however, were obscured by the
extreme rarity of documents concerning him during this period. Arrested in March
1910, he was imprisoned and sentenced to five years in exile. But he escaped in the
spring of 1911 and went to St. Petersburg where he has arrested again in
September. Koba supported Bolshevik faction, probably because of his
temperament, his fanaticism, and sectarianism. His responsibilities led him in 1913
in Vienna (Austria), where he wrote his first article signed the name of Stalin ( "man
of steel"), the Marxism and the National Question, in which, while upholding the right
of Peoples to self-determination, it presents a very centralist view of the national
problem in the Russian Empire. Above all, it gives a restrictive definition of the nation,
which, according to him, cannot exist without a territory.
Back in St. Petersburg, Stalin was responsible for maintaining the Bolsheviks in the
Leninist line, but in February, he has arrested again. Stalin was exiled in Siberia to
Tourukhansk, from which he could not escape. The revolution of February 1917
brought him back to Petrograd, where he found the party completely disorganized
and cut off from its leaders in exile. He takes over Pravda and censors Lenin's call for
the seizure of power.
Stalin, however, did not play a significant role in the events of October 1917, merely
following Lenin without enthusiasm. He officially became the People's Commissioner
to the Nationalities in the new government. The first constitution of the Russian
Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, adopted in July 1918, sketches a federal
structure of the former Russian Empire, while the secession of some of its former
components is only allowed under the pressure of external circumstances. In 1922,
when Ukraine, Transcaucasia, Turkestan and Siberia were occupied, Stalin proposed
to integrate them totally but at the insistence of Lenin, the Treaty of the Union and the
new Constitution, which formally placed these "Soviet Socialist Republics" on an
equal footing with the Republic of Russia. From 1918 to 1921, during the years of
the civil war, Stalin devoted himself almost exclusively to the central committee and
military tasks. At the beginning of 1918, Stalin opposed Trotsky and Lenin on the
question of the revolution in Europe, especially in Germany. From that time it was
the central committee that concentrated all powers. In March 1919, the Eighth Party
Congress confirmed Stalin to the Central Committee ("Joshep Stalin (Man Of Steel) Full
Documentary"). When Lenin's illness was declared at the end of May 1922, Stalin was
already ready to succeed. He possessed decisive assets, notably a practical spirit
and a real understanding of the mechanisms of power, at a time when his rivals,
Trotsky in mind, still believe in the primacy of the idea.
Until the death of Lenin, on January 21, 1924, the assaults of the troika - Stalin,
Zinoviev, and Kamenev - against Trotsky were relatively moderate. The attacks dealt
with economic policy but also with the most general conceptions of Bolshevism:
Stalin attacked Trotsky, who accused him of carrying out a fractional activity within
the party. Trotsky and Zinoviev were excluded from the party on 15 November 1927.
At the same time, Stalin became the guardian of an alleged Leninist orthodoxy-a
formal contradiction, however, with Lenin's conceptions of as important as the
construction of socialism in a single country, where it clearly opposed the
internationalism advocated by Lenin. During the 1930s "Stalinism" was born. It is the
combination of Stalin's absolute power, a series of social upheavals that transform
the face of the country and a profound change in the mentalities and political models
of the communist elite (Rees, 79).

It is first of all the collectivization or rather the nationalization of agriculture, a true

revolution which ends in an economic and social catastrophe but ensures the power
a certain control of the campaigns. At the same time, the industrialization of the
country was undergoing a forced march, accompanied by the disappearance of the
whole private sphere, and then by the enslavement and even subjugation of the
working classes. A voluntarist economic management mode is established, renewing
the methods of the civil war and based on a permanent mobilization and a leap
forward: the initial objectives of the first five-year plan are doubled, tripled and
quintupled according to the branches. The race for production is also reflected in the
movements of "socialist competition": workers of shock from 1929, then
Stakhanovism from 1935.
With the wave of terror that began after the assassination of Kirov on December 1,
1934, and which continued until 1938 (followed by an endemic course), the Stalinist
dictatorship took a paroxysmal turn and made a permanent threat. Stalin suspected,
purportedly not without reason, a certain dissatisfaction with the results of his policy,
and then rapidly spread to hundreds of thousands of cadres in the administrative,
military and economic fields. These years of terror cover the country with a vast
penitentiary network. Police violence and deportations in the Gulag made many
millions of victims. These convulsions of the regime were accompanied by the cult of
Stalin. Identified in the giant achievements of industrialization, he had been glorified
on his fiftieth birthday in 1929 ("Joseph Stalin: Red Terror (Biography)").

The Second World War at first failed to bring about the collapse of the Stalinist
regime, finally bringing it a second wind and increased power. In August 1939, Stalin,
who sought the agreement with Germany Nazi e personally negotiated with
representatives of Hitler a non-aggression pact which established the division of the
Eastern Europe. Although very attached to this agreement, Stalin took measures that
could reflect a certain distrust of his recent ally ("BBC - History - World Wars: Hitler's
Invasion Of Russia In World War Two") . In May 1941, in particular, he became head of
government. But the German attack, in June, revealed the unpreparedness of the
Soviet forces. Stalin took command of the National Defense Council, then of the
armed forces. After an initial period of disarray, he assured the effective direction of
the country and succeeded in mobilizing it. His image emerged from the defense of
Moscow in October 1941, when he delivered a speech which openly appealed to the
patriotic feelings of his subjects. The Soviet military successes allowed him to
assume the stature of a great captain. In 1943 he became a marshal, in 1945
generalissimo. In Tehran (Iran) in 1943, Yalta (Ukraine) and Potsdam (Germany) in
1945, Stalin obtained confirmation from Great Britain and the United States of his
acquisitions of 1939-1940, Eastern Europe to Soviet hegemony; He then declared
war on Japan (1945) (Roberts). After the victory, Stalin imposed Soviet domination
over most of Eastern Europe. Without losing interest in the foreign communist
parties, he subordinated even more than before any internationalist aim to Soviet
interests. He then created the Kominform (1947), imposing on the Communist parties
(especially after the rupture with Tito in 1949) the unconditional support of Soviet
policy and the adoption of the dogmatism diffused by Jdanov. The last period saw
him reign supreme over this new empire, in an openly autocratic style, and the party
congress was no longer united until 1952 ("Stalin's Wars", 117). Ideologically, the
regime was becoming more and more Russian nationalist and xenophobic, which
took among other things the form of a campaign against "cosmopolitanism" from
1948. In January 1953, the "case of the white blouses" , alleged conspiracy mounted
by Jewish doctors must give the signal to both an extensive purge and repression
Semitic . Perhaps the case is fabricated, or, more likely, it corresponds to the
conspiracy led by Beria, Khrushchev, and Molotov who seek to dismiss Stalin,
including by murdering him. The death of Stalin, which some belief to be suspicious
and which occurs on March 5, interrupted, in any case, the gear of a new purge.
Stalin's personality cult was condemned at the 20th Congress of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union (WHEATCROFT). On the night of 24-25 February 1956,
Khrushchev presented a secret report at a closed meeting where he stated: "The aim
of this report is not to make a thorough critique of the life of Stalin and his activities ...
What interests us is how the worship of Stalin's person has grown steadily, and how
this cult became at one time the source of a whole series Serious and ever more
serious perversions of Party principles, party democracy, revolutionary legality. " The
report is based on documents of Lenin and his wife Krupskaya, highlighting the
rudeness of Stalin, then shows the control methods that he employed against
opponents through the NKVD, critical role during the Second War World, and finally
illustrates his paranoia through the conspiracy of white blouses. The purpose of
Khrushchev is to show that the successes of the USSR are due essentially to the
Party, not to its late leader. The secret report is, therefore, more a denunciation of
Stalin alone than of the methods he used, and that is why the de-Stalinization begun
at the Twentieth Congress proved to be very incomplete, as the events of Berlin or
Prague a few years later.
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Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/hitler_russia_invasion_01.shtml
[Accessed 28 Nov. 2016].

Encyclopedia Britannica. (2016). Joseph Stalin | premier of Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. [online]
Available at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joseph-Stalin [Accessed 28 Nov. 2016].

YouTube. (2016). Joseph Stalin: Red Terror (Biography). [online] Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-25Ij0VBUU&feature=youtu.be [Accessed 28 Nov. 2016].

YouTube. (2016). Joshep Stalin (Man of Steel) full Documentary. [online] Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p9ulegPu6w [Accessed 28 Nov. 2016].
Rees, E. A. The Nature Of Stalin's Dictatorship. 1st ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Print.

Roberts, G. (2016). Stalin’s victory? The Soviet Union and World War II. [online] History Ireland.
Available at: http://www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary-history/stalins-victory-the-
soviet-union-and-world-war-ii/ [Accessed 28 Nov. 2016].

Google Books. (2016). Stalin's Wars. [online] Available at: https://books.google.com.ua/books?

id=xlRjy4qnH6cC&pg=PT63&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false [Accessed 28 Nov. 2016].

WHEATCROFT, S. (2016). 32. [online] Available at: http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/WCR-

German_Soviet.pdf [Accessed 28 Nov. 2016].