Joseph Stalin

1
Joseph Stalin

2
Early Life

• From a young age Stalin was involved in rebelious
  activity, such as organising strikes.
• He was always politically minded, and had a
  talent for writing and poetry.
• He was expelled from a Georgian seminary and
  discovered Lenin, which inflenced to join the
  Bolsehviks, of which he organised Bolshevik
  militias across Georgia following the 1905
  revolution.
• He was also involed in the assasinations
  extortion, bank robberies and hold ups.

3
What formed the basis of his popularity?

• Stalin often worked behind the scenes in the
  Bolshevik party.
• He was an editor of a Bolshevik newspaper called
  Pravda.
• His position as secretary general of the partys
  Central Committee, from 1922 until his death,
  provided the power base for his dictatorship.
• Stalin was the successor of Lenin.
• Karl Marx, father of communist thought, inspired
  many of his works.

4
Influence on the Revolution

• After returning from exile to Saint Petersburg he
  took a position in favour of supporting Alexander
  Kerensky's provisional government.
• However, after Lenin prevailed at the April 1917
  Party conference, Stalin and Pravda supported
  overthrowing the provisional government.
• He smuggled Lenin to Finland and assumed
  leadership of the Bolsheviks.
• Upon seizing Petrograd, Stalin was appointed
  People's Commissar for Nationalities' Affairs.
• Stalin challenged many of the decisions of
  Trotsky, ordered the killings of many former
  Tsarist officers in the Red Army and
  counter-revolutionaries and burned villages in
  order to intimidate the peasantry into submission
  and discourage food bandit raids.

5
Rise to Power

• Stalin rose to power when he played a decisive
  role in engineering the 1921 Red Army invasion of
  Georgia.
• Lenin and Lev Kamenev helped Stalin rise to power
  by appointing him General Secretary in 1922 to
  help fight against Trotsky.
• Lenin criticized Stalin's rude manners, excessive
  power, ambition and politics, and suggested that
  Stalin should be removed from the position of
  General Secretary
• Stalin forged an alliance with Kamenev and
  Grigory Zinoviev against Trotsky so that Lenins
  Testament wouldnt be shown.
• Later he exiled Trotsky and his disputes with
  Kameney and Zinoviev increased.

6
Cult of Personality

• Stalin used mass media involving unquestionable
  flattery and praise, helping to create a
  favourable public image, increasing trust in the
  leaders, and their following.
• This is referred to as creating a cult of
  personality and are common in societies going
  through revolutionary changes

7
The Great Purge

• Great Purge was a series of campaigns of
  political repression and persecution in the
  Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin in
  19361938.
• It is often referred to as the Soviet Holocaust
  in conjunction with Soviet Famine of 1932-1933,
  in which 6-11 million peasants and kulaks were
  starved or executed.
• it involved the purge of the Communist Party and
  Government officials, repression of peasants, Red
  Army leadership, and the persecution of
  unaffiliated persons, characterized by widespread
  police surveillance, widespread suspicion of
  "saboteurs", imprisonment, and executions
• 681,692 were sentenced to death and many more
  died in GULAG labour camps.

8
The Tyrant

• Stalin's son Yakov, whom he had with his first
  wife Ekaterina Svanidze, shot himself because of
  Stalin's harshness toward him, but survived.
• After this, Stalin said "He can't even shoot
  straight"
• His second wife either committed suicide or he
  killed her after an argument.
• 25,700 Polish POWs were executed on 5 March 1940,
  pursuant to a note from to Stalin from Lavrenty
  Beria, the members of the Soviet Politburo.
• Stalin also conducted a purge of several military
  commanders that were shot for "cowardice" without
  a trial.
• Deaths under Stalin's regime is estimated to be
  up to 60 million.