Joseph Stalin

EARLY LIFE 

Joseph Stalin was born Ioseb Jughashvili on December 18, 1879 at Gory near Tbilisi in Georgia. He later adopted the name "Stalin" meaning "Man of Steel" which Lenin had given him.

Ioseb's father was Besarion "Beso" Jughashvili, a Georgian shoemaker who had been a serf. He was a drunkard with a violent temper.

Joseph Stalin 1937

His mother Ekaterina was the daughter of serfs, when she married Stalin's father. She bore her husband four children, three of whom died when very young, the fourth and last, Ioseb, survived.

Beso Jughashvili opened his own shop, but quickly went bankrupt, forcing him to work in a shoe factory in Tiflis. Rarely seeing his family and drinking heavily, Beso often beat his wife and small son.

In 1888, Stalin's father left to live in Tiflis, leaving the family without support.

Ioseb was nicknamed "Soso" (the Georgian pet name for Ioseb/Joseph, or the equivalent of the nickname "Joe" in the United States), was effectively an only child.

Ioseb was a miserable ugly youth with an inferiority complex, who never cried. One of Stalin's friends from childhood wrote, "Those undeserved and fearful beatings made the boy as hard and heartless as his father." Another of his childhood friends, Iremashvili, felt that the beatings by Stalin's father gave him a hatred of authority.

Ekaterina supported her son working as a washerwoman and seamstress and sent young Soso to school. She hoped her little boy would become a priest and was disappointed at his different choice of career.

One of the people Ekaterina did laundry and housecleaning for was a Gori Jew, David Papismedov. Papismedov gave Soso, who would help out his mother, money and books to read, and encouraged him. Decades later, Papismedov came to the Kremlin to learn what had become of little Soso. Stalin surprised his colleagues by not only receiving the elderly Jewish man, but happily chatting with him in public places.

When Soso was 12, he was struck by a carriage and hospitalized in Tiflis. When he recovered, Beso took him away to be trained at his shoe factory. Ekaterina recovered her son with the help of friends in the clergy and school system. In retaliation, Beso cut off all financial support to his family and left them to fend for themselves.

Young Soso was fascinated by Georgian folklore. The stories he read told of Georgian mountaineers who valiantly fought for Georgian independence. His favorite hero of these stories was a legendary mountain ranger named Koba. Ioseb had all of his friends call him Koba, and this name also became his first alias as a revolutionary. This meant being the strongest athlete and the brightest scholar.

EDUCATION 

At eight years old, Soso began his education at the Gori Church School. When attending school in Gori, Soso and his classmates were mostly Georgian and spoke one of the seventy Caucasian languages. However, the teachers forced them to use Russian and they mocked Soso and his classmates because of their Georgian accents.

Soso's peers, most of whom were the sons of rich priests, officials, and merchants, also ridiculed him. They made fun of his ragged school uniform and his pockmarked face. Young Ioseb learned to overcome his tormentors by intimidating them. He exploited the weaknesses of his fellow students by brutally mocking them. To avoid physical confrontation, Ioseb scorned his aggressors by accusing them of using violence as "a substitute for brains." He would then assert leadership over his peers.

Ioseb excelled in school and graduated first in his class.

Ioseb obtained a scholarship at the age of 14 to Tiflis Theological Seminary, a Russian Orthodox institution, which was considered the best teaching establishment in Georgia.

Ioseb Jughashvili n 1894, at the age of 15

In addition to the small stipend from the scholarship Ioseb was also paid for singing in the choir.

Although his mother wanted him to be priest, Ioseb attended seminary not because of any religious vocation but because it was one of the few educational opportunities available as the Tsarist government of Russia was wary of establishing a university in Georgia.

Ioseb Jughashvili was expelled from Tiflis Theological Seminary in 1899. He had fourteen times been caught reading banned books, including works by Charles Darwin, Karl Marx and Victor Hugo.

EARLY POLITICAL AND REVOLUTIONARY CAREER

Stalin's involvement with the socialist movement (or, to be more exact, the branch of it that would later grow into the communist movement) began at seminary school.

In October 1899, Jughashvili began work as a meteorologist at a Tiflis observatory, a position that allowed him to read while on duty.

Ioseb Jughashvili decided to change his name to Stalin in 1902, meaning “steel” in Russian, under Lenin's recommendation. He believed it would make him appear tough.

Stalin in 1902

Politically Stalin rose to the top as a committee man outwitting his rivals in tedious public meetings.

Stalin organised a bank robbery in Tiflis to provide funds for Bolsheviks in 1907. He was behind many other raids up to 1917.

Stalin was exiled to Siberia five times for his revolutionary activities beginning 1903.

In 1913, Stalin was arrested in Saint Petersburg and sentenced to four years exile in Turukhansk, a remote part of Siberia. In March 1914, concerned over a potential escape attempt, the authorities moved Stalin to the hamlet of Kureika on the edge of the Arctic Circle. In Kureika, Stalin lived closely with the indigenous Tunguses and Ostyak, and spent much of his time fishing.

After the October Revolution, Lenin made Stalin People's Commissar for Nationalties.

When Lenin was on his death bed in 1923, he left instructions that Stalin shouldn't succeed him. He wasn't sure if Stalin would use sufficient caution in being too authoritarian.

SOVIET LEADER 

Ignoring Lenin 's instruction, Stalin allied himself with Zinviev and Kamenev to form a tripartite leadership and outmanoeuvre his rival Trotsky.

By 1929 using clever organisation and sheer common sense, Stalin had made himself the sole leader. By now he was only appointing lieutenants who he could control easily.

Following the promulgation of a new law governing church-state relations, Joseph Stalin launched a campaign against Christianity. All church congregations had to be registered and they were banned from engaging in any social or charitable work or holding any meetings outside of the normal Sunday service.

Joseph Stalin introduced in 1928 a five-year plan to collectivize industry and agriculture, a scheme which finished a year ahead of schedule, in 1932, but led to much famine.

Stalin executed firstly officers who were slow in enforcing collectivization then executed those who had taken orders too literally blaming the famine on such people.

The second five-year plan had its production quotas reduced from that of the first, with the main emphasis now being on improving living conditions. However, it failed to stop the famine which peaked in the winter of 1932–33 in which between five and seven million people died.

Between 1934 and 1939 Stalin organised the "Great Purge" by which he got rid of all his enemies and the old guard. Hundreds of thousands—including senior political and military figures—were interned in prison camps, exiled, or executed.

Stalin on building of Moscow-Volga canal, which was constructed from 1932 to 1937 by Gulag prisoners.

During a Communist Party conference in 1937, following a speech by Stalin, the audience began to applaud and carried on for 11 minutes, with no-one daring to be the first to stop. The first person to stop was a paper factory director who was arrested that night and sent to prison for 10 years.

All education was free and also dramatically expanded, with many more Soviet citizens learning to read and write, and higher education expanded. The people, of course, did not have the ability to study what they wanted, but were limited to the material that Stalin and the Soviet leadership permitted.

Stalin's government placed heavy emphasis on the provision of free medical services. Campaigns were carried out against typhus, cholera, and malaria; the number of doctors was increased as rapidly as facilities and training would permit; and death and infant mortality rates steadily decreased.

Lenin would have turned in his grave at the party aristocracy Stalin created with highly differentiated wages and salaries.

When Stalin felt like helping some distant relative or old Georgian comrade fallen on hard times, he would send his secretary to rummage in the safe among dusty wads of banknotes, his unspent Deputy's salary accumulated over the decades.

After the Second World War the Stalin cult reached its zenith in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Anything Stalin said was treated as gospel. Any mention of his name would bring the audience to its feet in prolonged ovation.

Banner of Stalin in Budapest in 1949

WORLD WAR II 

In the early years of World War II, Stalin stayed neutral but signed a peace deal with Adolf Hitler.

In 1941 Hitler expectantly attacked the Soviet Union, and after early setbacks Stalin succeeded in driving the Germans back.

During World War II, Stalin cultivated an image of an avuncular, pipe smoking elder statesman.

The Tehran Conference was a strategy meeting of Joseph Stalin, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in late 1943, after the Anglo-Soviet Invasion of Iran. Stalin proposed over a dinner one evening the execution of 50,000 to 100,000 German officers to prevent Germany from starting another war. Roosevelt, thinking Stalin was joking, said "49,000 would be enough." Churchill however was so enraged he stormed out of the room.

In February 1945, Stalin, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met at the Yalta Conference for the purpose of discussing Germany and Europe's postwar reorganization. Roosevelt and Churchill conceded to Stalin's demand that Germany pay the Soviet Union 20 billion dollars in reparations.

Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at the Yalta Conference, 

During the Yalta Conference Churchill saw a marble statue of a dozing lion that he fell in love with and told Stalin. He then mentioned to Stalin that he understood there was a Russian tradition of presenting the best things in the country to important visitors. "Yes indeed" responded Stalin "The best thing we have in Russia now is socialism." The lion stayed where it was.

In April 1945, the Red Army seized Berlin, Hitler committed suicide, and Germany surrendered unconditionally. Stalin was annoyed that Hitler had killed himself, having wanted to capture him alive.

With Germany defeated, Stalin switched his focus to the ongoing war with Japan, transferring half a million troops to the far east.

The end of the war saw Stalin gain control of all Eastern Europe including part of Germany. There, a series of loyal Marxist-Leninist single-party states were set up, extending his power and determining the Soviet Union's position as a superpower.

When Stalin's first son Yakov was captured, Hitler offered to trade him for Friedrich Paulus, a field marshal who led the 6th Army into Stalingrad. When Stalin heard of this, he allegedly said, "I will not trade a Marshal for a Lieutenant." His son passed away in a prison camp as a result - Yakov is said to have died running into an electric fence there.

BELIEFS 

Stalin had no time for experimental abstract, demanding Socialist realism. He said: "Sincere diplomacy is no more possible than dry water or wooden iron."

Stalin's policies and ideas as developed in the Soviet Union included rapid industrialization, the theory of socialism in one country, a centralized state, collectivization of agriculture and a cult of personality.

Stalin promoted the escalation of class conflict, utilizing state violence to forcibly purge society of alleged supporters of the bourgeoisie, whom Stalinist doctrine regarded as threats to the pursuit of the communist revolution. He said: "The rich experience of history teaches that up to now, not a single class has voluntarily made way for another class."

Despite reading the Bible in four different languages in his lifetime, Stalin tried to eradicate all religion in the Soviet Union. He said. "The communist party cannot be neutral. It stands for science and all religion is opposed to science."

Photograph below shows the 1931 demolition of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow in order to make way for the Palace of the Soviets.

Despite Stalin's efforts, religion retained an influence over much of the Soviet population; in the 1937 census, 57% of respondents identified as religious.

When Stalin visited his mother in 1935, she asked him what he did. He said "Do you remember the tsar? Well, I'm like a tsar" his mother's response was "You'd have done better to have become a priest".

Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva later became a Christian. She began to read her Bible after two relatives returned home from solitary confinement. She found it spoke to her heart. Svetlana was baptized in secret and defected from Russia whilst visiting India.

By the time of Glasnost, Church members outnumbered communist members in USSR by 10:1.

APPEARANCE AND CHARACTER 

Short of stature, Stalin was only around 5 feet 4 inches tall (163 cm), give or take an inch. This made him self-conscious as the average height of men in Russia at the turn of the 20th century rang in at just under 5 feet 8 inches (173 cm) tall.

Despite only being a little below average, Stalin went to some rather extreme lengths to hide his true stature, as well as other less literal shortcomings, from the general public.

Stalin's propensity to try to make himself appear taller was no doubt spurred on by comments such as the one United States President Harry Truman (who was approximately 5 feet 8 inches tall) made, referring to Stalin as “little squirt”.

Stalin had a withered arm, yellow teeth and pockmarked skin - not that anyone had the courage to draw attention to these deficiencies.

He looked personable enough with his big grin and mustache but like other despotic leaders of the 20th century - Lenin, Hitler etc - Stalin sported facial hair.

In his old age, Stalin had grey hair and grizzled mustache and had only three of his teeth left by the time of his death.

Stalin had a red star tattooed on his chest.

Not interested in fashion, when he died Stalin's only private clothing was found to be "some uniforms, a pair of embroided left boots and a patched sheepskin coat."

Stalin was not a natural speaker. Not naturally eloquent with a tendency to meander, he retained a Georgian accent all his life.

Stalin would intimidate people at his office by shouting "Why are you looking at me that way! Well? Why don't you look me in the eyes?."

Stalin was described by Lenin as "coarse" and he was impolite to Lenin's wife, Krupskaya. Khrushchev was even more critical saying he was "capricious, irritable and brutal." However, Stalin could turn into an Uncle Joe figure when necessary. He charmed Franklin Roosevelt into liking and trusting him.

MARRIAGE AND FAMILY 

Joseph Stalin married his first wife Ekaterina "Kato" Svanidze, in 1906. A deeply religious woman, she softened his stony heart but they were married for just 18 months before she died of typhus in 1907.

Ekaterina's death sent Stalin into a deep grief. At her funeral, Stalin said that any warm feelings he had for people died with her, for only she could melt his heart.

Later, secret policemen arrived at the funeral, looking for Stalin (at the time a wanted fugitive); he was forced to flee the service early by jumping the graveyard's fence.

Years later, several of Ekaterina family members were executed during Stalin's purges.

With Ekaterina Stalin had a son, Yakov Dzhugashvili, with whom he did not get along in later years.

Joseph Stalin was so harsh to Yakov, that he shot himself in a failed attempt to commit suicide. Stalin's response to finding out he would survive was "He can't even shoot straight."

Stalin first met the intellectual Nadezhda Alliluyeva as a child when her father, Sergei Alliluyev, sheltered him after one of his escapes from Siberian exile during 1911.

Nadezhda became a committed Bolshevik and she and Stalin committed atrocities together.

After the revolution, Nadezhda worked as a confidential code clerk in Lenin's office. She eschewed fancy dress, make-up, and other trappings that she felt un-befitting for a proper Bolshevik.

The 40-year-old Stalin married 17-year-old Nadezhda in 1919.

Stalin and his second wife Nadezhda Alliluyeva

By the early 1930s, the headstrong Nadezhda was unhappy about the government's collectivization policies on the peasantry. One evening in 1932 at their house at Voroshilov, Nadezhda spoke bitterly to her husband about famines in the Soviet Union and the moral blow to the country which this cruel policy had created. Stalin in front of a lot of people burst into vulgar abuse of his wife.

Nadezhda allegedly committed suicide aged 30 by shooting herself that evening. Stalin's drunken brutality had driven her to end it all.

Nadezhda left a suicide note which according to their daughter was "partly personal, partly political." Officially, she died of an illness.

Nadezhda and Joseph had two children together: a son Vassili, born in 1921 and Svetlana, their daughter, born 1926.

Vassili rose through the ranks of the Soviet Air Force, and became a fighter pilot (C.O. of 32 GIAP) at Stalingrad, but died an alcoholic in 1962.

Stalin doted on Svetlana when she was young, but when still a schoolgirl, she met in 1942 a Jewish film producer and war correspondent Alexei Kapler. Her anti-semitic father tore up the unfortunate Jew's letters to her, accused him of being a British spy and had him arrested and exiled for ten years.

On March 6, 1967, 41-year-old Svetlana Alliluyeva - defected at the U.S. embassy in New Delhi, India, where she publicly denounced Communism and “embraced God, America and apple pie.”

1970 Svetlana Alliluyeva

Several historians, including Alexander Solzhenitsyn, had mentioned a son, Alexander, being born to Stalin and his teenage common law wife, Lidia Pereprygia, in 1917 during his exile in northern Siberia.

PERSONAL LIFE 

After attaining supreme power, Stalin spent much of his time at the Kremlin. He had a four roomed Kremlin flat and an office in the Kremlin where his faithful secretary, Poskrebyshev had the days paperwork ready.

Stalin's private residence for the last two decades of his life was The Kuntsevo Dacha near the former town of Kuntsevo (then Moscow Oblast, now part of Moscow's Fili district).

According to Khrushchev's autobiography, Stalin frequently engaged in all night partying, with his aides, after which he would sleep all day and expect them to stay up and run the country.

Stalin drunk mixed wine and vodka and he could apparently drink anyone under the table.

When working Stalin liked to refresh himself with glasses of tea spiked with spoonfuls of brandy.

After a late night banquet, Stalin typically retired to bed at 4.00 in the morning with a carafe or two of neat vodka.

HOBBIES AND INTERESTS 

Stalin was a big film buff. His favorite stars were Spencer Tracy, James Cagney, Clark Gable and John Wayne, but he disliked on-screen nudity and banned all kissing from Soviet movies.

According to Khrushchev, Stalin, "used to like cowboy movies from America. He used to curse them and give them their proper ideological evaluation but then immediately order new ones."

Stalin's favorite book was Pharaoh, the fourth and last major novel by the Polish writer Bolesław Prus (1847–1912). The story is set in the Egypt of 1087–85 BC.

Stalin used sport for propaganda purposes to inspire his people, but he took no exercise himself.

HEALTH 

As a child, Stalin survived an acute attack of smallpox and a poisoned arm which remained stiff all his life. In his later life, his withered arm and indeed many of his other limbs became arthritic, probably caused by his long exiles in icy Siberia.

As a adult, Stalin was covered in scars from his childhood smallpox. He had official photos portray his face as smooth and fresh with well maintained hair by heavily editing and retouching the pictures.

Not only did the pockmarked Soviet dictator suffer extreme pain from his arthritis but he also endured chronically painful teeth. His ivories gradually rotted away causing him great discomfort.

Stalin was highly suspicious of doctors and had many Kremlin doctors arrested and tortured. So few doctors were available after Stalin suffered a stroke that, one imprisoned doctor claimed he was mid-interrogation when his captors suddenly started asking for medical advice instead.

All this pain made Stalin intolerant and bad tempered and contributed to his ruthless and bloodthirsty suppression of any group whom he thought was opposing him.

LAST YEARS, DEATH AND LEGACY 

Due to popular discontent new purges led to hundreds of thousands being executed on accusations of treason or sabotage between 1950 and 1953. One of Stalin's last atrocities was the "Doctors Plot" of January 1953 which resulted in the arrest prominent Jewish Doctors on charges of medical murders of Kremlin officials. After his death this was revealed as a hoax.

On March 1, 1953, after an all-night dinner with interior minister Lavrenty Beria and future premiers Georgi Malenkov, Nikolai Bulganin and Nikita Khrushchev at his Volynskoe dacha, Stalin collapsed, having probably suffered a stroke that paralyzed the right side of his body. Stalin's staff found him semi-conscious on the bedroom floor.

Stalin's staff were so afraid of him that no one called a doctor until hours after he had a stroke. They feared he might recover and execute anyone who had acted outside of his orders. Leeches were applied to Stalin on his deathbed but to no avail.

As Joseph Stalin lay dying, he suddenly sat up in bed, clenched his fist towards heaven and fell back on his pillow before expiring. His last gesture on the Earth was to clench his fist towards God.

Stalin died on March 5, 1953, at the age of 73, and was buried four days later. Officially, the cause of death was listed as a cerebral hemorrhage.

His body was preserved in Lenin's Mausoleum until October 31, 1961, when de-Stalinisation was taking place in the Soviet Union. Stalin's body was then buried by the Kremlin walls in a non-descript grave.

The character Koba from the 2010s reboot of Planet of the Apes is named after Joseph Stalin, who also used "Koba" as his nickname. The name originally comes from a character in the 1882 Georgian novel, The Patricide, which inspired Stalin.

According to George Bernard Shaw, it was Stalin's ruthless form of socialism, which probably prevented the spread of communism in Western Europe "We should have had socialism but for the Socialists," he said.