Lenin had a 'great modesty', was a 'patient educator', and displayed a 'keen and solicitous concern . Eventually, Stalin had to abandon Georgia and go to Baku, the oil-producing center on the Caspian Sea, today the capital of Azerbaijan, where the Bolsheviks had some meaningful support from the workers. A-. 2023 eNotes.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Lenin, reluctantly, recognized the Soviet takeover of Georgia. So one wouldve expected that the nationalist movement in Georgia wouldve been the most powerful. When Stalin went into the seminary he was in fact a kind of romantic Georgian nationalist. By 1930, his chief rival, Leon Trotsky, had fled the country. C. Lenin believed that Stalin would be a fair and honest leader, so he ensured Stalin's position before he died. 2023. Who are the experts?Our certified Educators are real professors, teachers, and scholars who use their academic expertise to tackle your toughest questions. Latest answer posted February 01, 2021 at 10:40:06 PM. He was about as bad as Adolf Hitler with corruption. 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, when Lenin died in 1924, Stalin succeeded him and took the reigns of power. Some of the members were socialists who introduced him to the writings of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin. Stalin had been suspicious of the West since the inception of the Soviet Union, and once the Soviet Union had entered the war, Stalin had demanded the Allies open up a second front against Germany. But given the dominance of bourgeois culture, of the hegemony, as he called it, of bourgeois ideas, its very difficult for them to gravitate spontaneously toward socialism. So he was a worker-intellectual, and Lenin promoted him for that reason. The first post-Stalin Soviet leader perceived a sharp break between the legality of Lenin's period in office and the illegality of Stalin's rule. And in certain quarters of the internet, young Stalin is regarded not as one of historys greatest monsters but one of its biggest hotties. Stalin also set in motion rapid industrialization that initially achieved huge successes, but over time cost millions of lives and vast damage to the environment. The people who count the votes decide everything. They tried a Caucasian federation. History shows that there are no invincible armies. Stalin is infamous for his cruel regime and role in WWII when his support encouraged Nazi Germany to start the war. D. Stalin suppressed Lenin's wishes that Stalin NOT follow him as leader of the Soviet Union, fearing Stalin's approach to power. I havent taken a kind of Freudian point of view, because I dont think, as a historian, I can psychoanalyze Stalin one hundred years after the fact. At this time he was an obscure lower or middle party official, on the Bolshevik central committee but still not a noted figure. 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. The second, as any of my students at Michigan, or earlier at Oberlin or the University of Chicago, would know: I have a great interest in socialism, Marxism, the labor movement, Russian social democracy, and so forth. In 1922, Stalin was appointed to the newly created office of general secretary of the Communist Party. Lets say you have a Jewish village in Ukraine somewhere, and theres a majority of Jews there, and its fairly coherent. Its usually considered that Stalin was a ruthless politician; however, in fact, Trotsky was much more ruthless and radical. Ramon Mercader, aka Frank Jackson, Aug. 31, 1940. The Levada poll (in Russian) is the highest rating for Stalin in the past 20 years - a period that has seen his portrait reappear across Russia, often with official approval. Well have a democratic coalition of the lower classes, and we can make a revolution that way.. Asatar Bair, a self . Stalin found a hero in a short novel called The Patricide by a writer named Aleksandre Qazbegi. But eventually these Georgian Marxists who later become Mensheviks, the more moderate wing of the empires Social Democratic Party linked up with these revolutionary peasants. The period known as the Great Purge eventually extended beyond the party elite to local officials suspected of counter-revolutionary activities. "Quantity has a quality all its own.". To attempt to give a simple answer to this question is tempting but not really useful. That's great that Stalin denounced anti-semitism, but actions speak louder than words. Eventually, that democratic and participatory revolution was consumed by foreign intervention, the civil war, the breakdown of the economy, and the building, by the Bolsheviks, of a centralized, authoritarian state. 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. Marxism is not a nationalist philosophy, its international and cosmopolitan, and step by step he gravitated toward the Russian social democratic movement, the movement the Georgian Marxists were propagating. By March, the tsar had abdicated the throne and was placed under house arrest. 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. This writing became extraordinarily important later on when the Bolsheviks took power, when he became first the commissar of nationalities and eventually the autocrat of the Soviet Union. Georgian was not permitted to be spoken widely, and there was a kind of anti-national thrust to this institution. He has some of the conventional sources, but hes not interested in the intricacies of this movement, or of Stalins early psychology. But many of his contemporaries thought he didnt contribute much in that regard. Under Stalin, the Soviet Union was transformed from a peasant society into an industrial and. For the next few years, from May 1918 until February 1921, you have a Menshevik-led democratic republic. What motivated you to write this particular book? Stalin joined the group in 1898. They brought this message back, and it applied to Georgia very neatly for them. Though never a strong orator like Vladimir Lenin or an intellectual like Leon Trotsky, Stalin excelled in the mundane operations of the revolution, calling meetings, publishing leaflets and organizing strikes and demonstrations. What are some examples of his manipulation? Dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn chronicled the harsh regime in Stalin's Gulag camps, and was persecuted for it. Demonized by the western propaganda, we fought very hard against. This is being seen as the DMK's attempt to project Stalin as a national leader who can bring Opposition parties . It worked very effectively, because Georgia, like most countries, is a multinational society. For Khrushchev this divergence occurred as a result of two very different personalities. Stalin had suffered a series of minor strokes before 1953 and was generally in declining health. Most people who lived during Stalin say it was a time of rapid growth of healthcare, education, infastructure, and living standards. When the Nazi blitzkrieg struck in June 1941, the Soviet Army was completely unprepared and immediately suffered massive losses. I will not be comparing Stalin's regime to that of other totalitarian leaders, although they are some noted, but with a definition of what totalitarianism is. 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. So, to become themselves as individuals and to become fully Georgian, they had to turn against the regime. Ronald Suny is the William H. Sewell Jr. Theyre making revolution. Trotsky, can you do that? Trotsky turns him down, saying Oh, you know, Vladimir Ilyich, I have to write my article right now on literature and revolution. Stalin says, Ill do it. Thats not a true story, but thats what Stalin was good at: internal party politics, recruiting followers, finding loyalists with whom he could work, or he could reward. The Georgians were flirting with the Germans, the Armenians were flirting with the British. But in the following decades the Soviet authorities covered up the true scale of Stalin's crimes. Thats the message of What Is to Be Done?. Biography and associated logos are trademarks of A+E Networksprotected in the US and other countries around the globe. The Allies responded with the massive Berlin Airlift, supplying the city and eventually forcing Stalin to back down. After an assassination plot was uncovered, he ordered the head of the secret police to instigate a new purge of the Communist Party. The numbers of victims both in Europe, globally and in Germany due to WW2 is comparable to that of Stalin's murderous legacy of 20m. It was a strategy to gather them back into a Russian state. 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. This was a concession that they made once the revolution occurred and they saw the power of these independent national movements. Why or why not? To be fair, it needs to be noted that fear of competition was far from the only reason for Stalin to fight Trotsky. In the 1930s Stalin's communist terror engulfed the USSR, sending millions to labour camps or firing squads. Ruthless in his conduct, moderate estimates suggest that he was directly responsible for the death of 40 million people. My book is basically a scholarly book, but I tried to write it in an accessible way. eNotes Editorial, 12 Apr. Montefiore wrote a very readable book. There are obviously many differences between Georgia and those other countries, but the parallels are striking. In 1917, there was a euphoria of popular participation, committees, resolutions, and so forth. This post was originally published on this site. Pluralism denotes a diversity of views or stands rather than a single approach or method Stalin had transformed the Party in four ways: And at the moment, Im now working on learning Turkish. The revolution was made by ordinary people in 1917 first women, who then called workers into the streets. Stalin, of course, was precisely that. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. Site contains certain content that is owned A&E Television Networks, LLC. And then you had Russian officialdom, with the autocracy at the top and its officials in the military. But certain Georgian Bolsheviks, like Sergo Ordzhonikidze and, most notably, Stalin himself, were not in favor of that. It was commissioned by Lenin and it basically followed Lenins ideas. Under his leadership, the Soviet Union played a major role in the defeat of Hitler 's Germany during World War II. British parliamentary elections had replaced Prime Minister Churchill with Clement Attlee as Britain's chief negotiator. One of the closest associates of Lenin and the leader of the October Revolution was killed in Mexico by Soviet agent Ramon Mercader. He left a legacy of death and horror, even as he turned a backward Russia into a world superpower. But the reality is that he was not. Ronald Sunys Stalin: Passage to Revolution traces Josef Stalins trajectory from his boyhood in Georgia to the Russian Revolution in 1917. 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. Stalin was very good at that. This is not, in my mind, the sign of someone who is truly a good leader. Click here to find out more. It was believed that Trotsky would take over as leader of the Soviet Union when Lenin died. As you said, the book covers from his birth to the 1917 revolution, the young Stalin. Why did it take so long? He wasnt a flamboyant and eloquent orator like Trotsky. Answer: No. January 8, 2015. 2013, https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/do-you-think-stalin-was-good-leader-427444. Theyll turn into our enemies as they did in 1848 and 1871 with the Paris Commune. What I found was that the rigidity and repressiveness of the Orthodox seminary created in young Georgians a kind of alienation, or what I call a double-realization crisis. Eventually, the soldiers went over to the crowds, and you had a revolution. I learned Georgian, which is very difficult. Stalin killed millions. 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. During World War II became the Party 's leader and absolute ruler of the Soviet Union. For a time, he found work as a tutor and later as a clerk at the Tiflis Observatory. 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. All Rights Reserved. Tsarism was gone. He wasnt a sophisticated and nuanced theorist like Lenin. The social democrats can bring that message and teach workers about the need for the socialist consciousness and a revolutionary posture. But the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany is a source of national pride. So, to keep up with our latest content, simply do the following: If using any of Russia Beyond's content, partly or in full, always provide an active hyperlink to the original material. The respected Levada Center polled Russians aged 18 and above in 137 towns and cities in March. Chris Maisano is a Jacobin contributing editor and a member of Democratic Socialists of America. No, I do not think that Stalin was a good leader. 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. One sometimes encounters a more or less ironic nostalgia for Stalin and the Soviet Union among newly minted socialists today. As the tide of war slowly turned in the Allies' favor, Roosevelt and Churchill met with Stalin to discuss postwar arrangements. Accounts differ as to the reason; official school records state he was unable to pay the tuition and withdrew. Many were exiled abroad to Europe and the Americas, including presumed Lenin successor Leon Trotsky. However, once in power he was not a good leader. Educators go through a rigorous application process, and every answer they submit is reviewed by our in-house editorial team. His Red Army helped defeat Nazi Germany during World War II. From 1929 to 1 953, Stalin was the leader of the . Stalin simply had massive powers of coercion and used those powers to force people to do things unwillingly. Stalin decided not to resort to extreme measures: Trotsky was removed from his posts, expelled from the party and, in 1929, expelled from the USSR. If that's not free and fair, I don't know what is! - Joseph Stalin, The Cold War (Part 1) Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, born Ioseb Besarionis dz Jughashvili, was the ruler of the Soviet Union from 1927 to 1953. 4 U.S. Presidents Who Won the Nobel Peace Prize, Your Privacy Choices: Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads, Name: Joseph Stalin, Birth Year: 1878, Birth date: December 18, 1878, Birth City: Gori, Georgia, Birth Country: Russia. Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin were an odd trio. Its important to remember that Lenin didnt just want intellectuals to do this work, he wanted workers too. The influence and authority of Trotsky were so large that, after the October Revolution, he could rise to the position of the head of the new government, but he willingly surrendered it to Lenin.
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