First of all, the seminary was run by the most ruthless and repressive Russian Orthodox priests who looked down on the Georgians and were intent on Russifying them. No, I do not think that Stalin was a good leader. This is the way I decided to do the book. One of the closest associates of Lenin and the leader of the October Revolution was killed in Mexico by Soviet agent Ramon Mercader. And I said, Oh, Im interested in the labor movement, Marxism, social democracy, revolution. And he said to me, Oh, good. Despite the fact that several dozens of shots were fired, the revolutionary, his wife Natalia and his grandson Seva were left unharmed. Joseph Stalin ruled the Soviet Union for more than two decades, instituting a reign of death and terror while modernizing Russia and helping to defeat Nazism. Why is the Elizabethan age called the Golden Age of England? Stalin chose not to return home, but stayed in Tiflis, devoting his time to the revolutionary movement. No man - no problem.". If I write a second volume about Stalin, Ill write about the period 1917 to the death of Lenin in 1924, about how the Soviet state was built, and how it turned from this more participatory, Paris Commune kind of ideal that you find in Lenins book State and Revolution into what eventually became a one-party state under Lenin, and eventually the Stalinist tyranny that destroyed most of the Leninist cadres in 1937. He wrote poetry, he loved singing, he loved Georgian music. Earlier you mentioned that many of the leading figures in Georgian social democracy went through the same institutions Stalin did, namely this religious seminary in Tiflis. Absolutely right. But he was not a good leader. What are the advantages and disadvantages of freedom? That was good for me. Smallpox as a child left him with lasting scars and a deformity. 2. He was good at backroom political maneuvering. Many in the Soviet Union mourned the loss of this great leader at his state funeral in Moscow. Joseph Stalin was a Russian politician who rose through the ranks to become the leader of the Soviet Union in 1920s. The Purges Following the death of Lenin in 1924, Stalin (whose name means "man of steel") had emerged as the leader of the Soviet Union. But his book is a popular book. But you see Stalin as a more important figure in the movement than these critical assessments made him out to be. Dravidian leader MK Stalin is at a seminal moment in his political career. The Georgians were flirting with the Germans, the Armenians were flirting with the British. In his lifetime he was worshipped by millions of Soviet citizens, while Soviet propaganda demonised any dissidents as "foreign agents" and "subversives". Joseph Stalin is having a bit of a moment. 3-hour delivery Pay if satisfied Get your price Then I realized, what if I actually wrote about Stalin, the most important figure in this area, and used that as what Alfred Hitchcock called a MacGuffin, a gimmick to get them pulled into the story? Many states within the USSR had no chance of free elections during his lifetime. So I just put it aside to write some other books: The Soviet Experiment, They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else: A History of the Armenian Genocide, The Revenge of the Past, a number of other things. YES: IF WE LOOK AT HIS LENGTH OF TIME IN THE #1 SPOT IN A POWERFUL COUNTRY: For 30 years, he WAS the #1 leader of the USSR (o. Danh mc . So the ideas become important. VideoRecord numbers of guide dog volunteers after BBC story. The Soviet Union became the first country in the world, at least the first major country in the world, which adopted a constitution based on national territorial autonomy for Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine, etc. The sharpest rise in support for Stalin is among the youngest group - those aged 18-30, she noted. Stalin had Trotsky assassinated in Mexico in 1940. Stalin suffered another foreign policy defeat after he encouraged North Korean Communist leader Kim Il Sung to invade South Korea, believing the United States would not interfere. Both British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt argued that such an action would result in heavy casualties. Stalin is infamous for his cruel regime and role in WWII when his support encouraged Nazi Germany to start the war. He advocated full-scale terror and dictatorship within the country, as well as spreading the fire of Revolution across the entire world. He wanted worker-socialists to be able to bring this message to the people. As you said, the book covers from his birth to the 1917 revolution, the young Stalin. A year later, Stalin came in contact with Messame Dassy, a secret organization that supported Georgian independence from Russia. About thirty years ago, I asked myself how I could get people interested in the area that Ive invested so much of my life into. It's also speculated he was asked to leave due to his political views challenging the tsarist regime of Nicholas II. Theres lots of good stuff in it. Though his popularity from his successes during World War II was strong, Stalin's health began to deteriorate in the early 1950s. Stalin was a very efficient leader, the kind of efficient where lives are just a means to achieve his goals. Though he excelled in seminary school, Stalin left in 1899. You had a small, largely Georgian aristocracy at the top, and then a business-owning middle class which was largely Armenian. You mention that he was not a great theorist, but one of the key moments in his career was the publication of his writings on the national question, which raised his profile in the movement. Latest answer posted January 15, 2021 at 11:09:50 AM. He also developed a cruel streak for those who crossed him. Stalin is seen as the main figure who defeated fascism, who gets the honours for victory in the Great Patriotic War. Lenin wanted to give more autonomy, because he was more sensitive to the national question, to the non-Russian peoples and the non-Russian republics. Russian attitudes to Stalin have changed over the decades. Banner of Stalin in Budapest in 1949. What are some examples of his manipulation? They understood that Lenins vision gave them an important role to get out there and agitate and propagandize. Lenin flirted with recognizing and even making concessions to this republic. Joseph Stalin rose to power as General Secretary of the .css-47aoac{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-decoration-thickness:0.0625rem;text-decoration-color:inherit;text-underline-offset:0.25rem;color:#A00000;-webkit-transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;}.css-47aoac:hover{color:#595959;text-decoration-color:border-link-body-hover;}Communist Party in Russia, becoming a Soviet dictator after the death of Vladimir Lenin. However, further paranoia set in and Stalin soon conducted a vast reign of terror, having people arrested in the night and put before spectacular show trials. This essentially reduced the peasants back to serfs, as they had been during the monarchy. He is currently more popular in Russia now than at any time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, thanks to a rehabilitation campaign by Russian president Vladimir Putin. A path toward a different kind of socialism was thwarted and not allowed to develop. On a hot day, Mercader came dressed in a raincoat, but that didnt alert anyone such a regular he was in the house. Lenin resolved this conflict in favor of Trotsky. The Death of Stalin was one of the most acclaimed films of recent years. Many were exiled abroad to Europe and the Americas, including presumed Lenin successor Leon Trotsky. Subscribe today to get it in print! He was quite clear-minded in assessing the possible consequences of the victory of Trotskyism. On December 18, 1879, in the Russian peasant village of Gori, Georgia, Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili - later known as Joseph Stalin - was born. On December 18, 1879, in the Russian peasant village of Gori, Georgia, Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili - later known as Joseph Stalin - was born. But whats very interesting is that, in the 1890s, certain Georgian intellectuals, many of whom came out of the same religious Orthodox seminary that Stalin would go through, migrated to Poland and to Russia and came back with what was then the most progressive, Western, revolutionary, modernizing philosophy: Marxism. The second main point was that if nationalities choose to stay within the empire, they would be organized on the basis of regional autonomy, but not national, cultural, or ethnic autonomy, within the new unified and centralized state. Get the week's best stories straight to your inbox. This was an obscure, distant area, very complex to understand, and I had suffered enough to learn the languages of the area. The Russian Mensheviks wanted to ally with bourgeois liberals and were worried about scaring them off into reaction. He was more like a good slavedriver, not a good leader. The son of Besarion Jughashvili, a cobbler, and Ketevan Geladze, a washerwoman, Stalin was a frail child. Though not a significant post at the time, it gave Stalin control over all party member appointments, which allowed him to build his base. Stalin Collapses . In 1956, after Stalin's death, came a watershed moment: Communist leader Nikita Khrushchev denounced the Stalin personality cult and dictatorship, in a secret speech to the 20th Party Congress. Chennai, Mar 1 (PTI) DMK President and Chief Minister M K Stalin turned 70 on Wednesday and his party and supporters are celebrating his birthday across Tamil Nadu with fervour. Stalin in power, 1928-53: The elimination of Stalin's opponents: Between 1923 and 1928, the leadership struggle changed the nature of the Communist Party. Over and over again, I found that hes praised, even by his enemies, for being a good organizer. The new position provided Stalin with a fair amount of power, as he was able to appoint his friends to government jobs, and develop a base of political support. Iosif Stalin was the succesor of Vladimir Lenin in the Union of Soviet Socialists Republics. That didnt work. This post was originally published on this site. was stalin a fair leader. Stalinism's excesses left deep scars across Eastern Europe, where many people still revile him for communist-era brutality and intolerance. Hitler is famous for many quotes such as "Any alliance whose purpose is not the intention to wage war is senseless and useless." C. Lenin believed that Stalin would be a fair and honest leader, so he ensured Stalin's position before he died. As war clouds gathered over Europe in 1939, Stalin made a seemingly brilliant move, signing a nonaggression pact with Germany's Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party. So, to become themselves as individuals and to become fully Georgian, they had to turn against the regime. When there's no person, there's no problem.". By the time Stalin regained his resolve, German armies occupied all of the Ukraine and Belarus, and its artillery surrounded Leningrad. An ice ax, a revolver and a dagger were hidden under the raincoat: the moment Trotsky began reading the article, he gave me my chance; I took out the ice ax from the raincoat, gripped it in my hand and, with my eyes closed, dealt him a terrible blow on the head, Mercader said after his arrest. This is not, in my mind, the sign of someone who is truly a good leader. In the 1930s Stalin's communist terror engulfed the USSR, sending millions to labour camps or firing squads. There were many Marxists, like Rosa Luxemburg or Nikolai Bukharin for a time, and others, who thought any and all forms of nationalism should be rejected. So one wouldve expected that the nationalist movement in Georgia wouldve been the most powerful. January 8, 2015. Mao Zedong (L) and Josef Stalin (R) were the two most powerful leaders in the communist world at the time (two photos have been merged together to create this image) By Steven Rosenberg. Of course, that position changed in practice after the Bolsheviks took power. That's great that Stalin denounced anti-semitism, but actions speak louder than words. Instead of saying our enemies are Russians or Armenians, which is the position the nationalists took, these Marxists said our enemy is the autocracy and the oppressive regime, not the Russians per se. He made shrewd appointments and consolidated his power so that eventually nearly all members of the central command owed their position to him. But eventually, they did concede that the new state would be organized on the basis of national, cultural, territorial autonomy Armenians with their own republic, Ukrainians with theirs, and so on. Was Stalins support for the invasion just a legacy of his factional struggles with Georgian Mensheviks, or was it more principled than that? It also sheds light on the underappreciated legacy of Georgias social democrats, who played a leading role in the 1905 and 1917 revolutions and established an independent, Menshevik-led republic in 19181921. Most people who lived during Stalin say it was a time of rapid growth of healthcare, education, infastructure, and living standards. I believe in one thing only, the power of human will. This website uses cookies. Sudoplatov, the main organizer of Trotskys assassination, later recalled that Stalin explained the necessity to get rid of his former ally in such words: Trotsky has to be eliminated within a year, before inevitable war commences. A California professor was widely hounded on Twitter for praising the legacy of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, calling him "one of the great leaders" of the 20th century. However, he has found a rekindled popularity among many of Russia's young people. So there were debates within the movement, and before the revolution, Stalin fought against many of these kinds of things. By Cynthia Haven In an interview, Suny explains the specificities of the Georgian socialist movement, Stalins role in the revolution, and why Stalinism was bloody, ruthless, and the nadir of the Soviet experiment., Young Russian revolutionary and political leader Josef Stalin in 1915. Stalinism was the usurpation of power from the people, the decimation of the trade unions and the independence of ordinary people into a top-down dictatorship. So there was a clear difference between Georgian and Russian Mensheviks there. Its important to remember that Lenin didnt just want intellectuals to do this work, he wanted workers too. The revolution was made by ordinary people in 1917 first women, who then called workers into the streets. mriedel17. Atop it, additional commentary mused: A+. 2013, https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/do-you-think-stalin-was-good-leader-427444. The hero of the story is Koba, a ferocious outlaw who lives in the mountains and takes revenge on those who have committed injustices against the people. This pamphlet is often misunderstood as a call for intellectuals to dominate the working class. The social democrats can bring that message and teach workers about the need for the socialist consciousness and a revolutionary posture. Joseph Stalin is having a bit of a moment. 39 terms. The death of Joseph Stalin leaves the Soviet Union without a leader. Any resistance was met with swift and lethal response; millions of people were exiled to the labor camps of the Gulag or were executed. Thats the message of What Is to Be Done?. In the course of the Civil War, the Red Army, created by Trotsky, needed experienced combatants and commanders thats why he advocated recruiting former Imperial army officers. He adopted the most advanced, modern, and progressive philosophy that was available in Georgia, and eventually turned his back on his own country. Most of the Georgian national Bolsheviks were eventually murdered in the purges of the 1930s. Answer: No. At first, he had people removed from power through bureaucratic shuffling and denunciations. But Stalin still wanted everyone in the Communist Party and Soviet government to bend to his will. On the night of February 28th, he watched a film at the Kremlin, then returned to his dacha, where he met with several prominent subordinates including Beria, head of the NKVD (secret police) and Khrushchev, who would eventually succeed Stalin. Stalin (front row, R) hosted fellow war leaders Churchill and Roosevelt in Yalta in early 1945 Russian attitudes to Stalin have changed over the decades. You have to figure out, by his writings and actions and what other people said about him, what his mentality was, as far as we can determine. What motivated you to write this particular book? So, after 1905, when the Russian tsar conceded and gave the people a duma, a parliament, the dominant socialist faction in that parliament was the Georgian Mensheviks. Despite the fact that Trotsky was chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council, Stalin didnt obey his orders and sent letters to Lenin, demanding to grant him military authority: If Trotsky will, without thinking twice, grant mandates left and right then we can confidently say that, in the North Caucasus, everything will fall apart in a months time Ram it into his head For the good of the cause, I need military authority I wont be stopped by the fact that Trotsky hasnt issued me any papers. Trotsky, in turn, demanded Stalin be dismissed. Karl Kautsky, the great theorist of German social democracy, came to the country and wrote a book called Georgia: A Social-Democratic Peasant Republic, praising this democratic experiment. At the first of these meetings, in Tehran, Iran, in late 1943, the recent victory in Stalingrad put Stalin in a solid bargaining position. Explanation: No, Stalin was not a fair leader. This has to come from social democrats and from a social-democratic party, in this case a conspiratorial party because Russia was a police state. From 1929 to 1 953, Stalin was the leader of the . And in certain quarters of the internet, young Stalin is regarded not as one of historys greatest monsters but one of its biggest hotties. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Stalin cut a cake and laid wreaths at the samadhis of former Chief Ministers M Karunanidhi and CN Annadurai on the Marina beachfront . Secondly, they were being challenged not only by social and class prejudices but by the ethnic prejudices promoted by the regime. And they were against capitalism and the bourgeoisie, not the Armenians per se. His father was a shoemaker. Why did the Bolsheviks overthrow it, and what role did Stalin play in the decision? What is Stalin's famous quote about death? Stalin would have been a good mafia boss, or corporate CEO. No way.. Stalin had suffered a series of minor strokes before 1953 and was generally in declining health. After Lenin's death, in 1924, Stalin set out to destroy the old party leadership and take total control. Stalin was called off from the front to Moscow, but, soon after, he was appointed as a member of the Revolutionary Military Council. Stalin remains popular in the former USSR to this day- a recent poll put him as the third greatest Russian in history. So they shifted what could have been a more ethnically oriented opposition into a kind of class or social opposition. Those are the two things that led me to take on this topic. 1917 first women, who gets the honours for victory in the 1930s have changed over decades. 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