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Dictatorship

Dictatorship

Dictatorship, in contemporary usage, refers to absolute rule by a leadership (usually one dictator) unrestricted by law, constitutions, or other social and political factors within the state. In Classical usage, dictatorship referred to magistrates in Ancient Rome that were allocated absolute power during times of emergency. Their power was neither arbitrary nor unaccountable, however, being subject to law and requiring retrospective justification. There were no such dictatorships after the beginning of the 2nd century BC, and later dictators such as Sulla and the Roman Emperors exercised power much more personally and arbitrarily. Dictatorships in the modern sense tend to exert their power without any regard to the moral or ethical consequences of their actions. They hardly ever come to power by democratic means, often being installed by a coup d'état or revolution. Often they will assert that they are using their powers, like ancient roman dictators, to deal with the enormity of some emergency, real or imagined. However, dictators and their governments rarely lay down their power once any such crisis has abated. In the lack thereof, they sometimes invent their own, such as in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. Such regimes survive out of the fear the people have for the government. Dictatorships often use armed force, propaganda, and arbitrary detention to enforce their will, and usually suppress any opinion which runs counter to their own. Dictators in single-party states, as opposed to military juntas, often create single-party states without elections, or with rigged or heavily biased ones.

Absolute power

Dictatorships rely on the absolute power which they hold over their citizens. Without it, they usually disintegrate or are completely ineffectual, such as the Bolshevik government of Russia shortly after it came to power. Modern dictatorships have used not only force and coercion, but also the mass media as tools of control. In China for instance, a communist single-party state, the government controls all news broadcast in the country, censors the internet, and often simply detains those who resist. The cultures created by many dictatorships foster what has been termed the "cult of personality", where not only is the media controlled by the state, but serves to glorify it and its leader. In Nazi Germany, a picture of Adolf Hitler appeared in nearly every building. Under Saddam Hussein, every news broadcast in Iraq began with a reference to himself. Entire art museums were filled with paintings of the leader. The underlying tendency to want absolute power and control has been termed megalomania.

The 20th century

Intrawar era

In the twentieth century, dictatorship has been an essential pillar of single-party states, military regimes, and other forms of authoritarianism. In the interwar era (between the First World War and the Second World War), fascist regimes, such as Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany, incorporated principles of dictatorship with a single-party state, mass mobilization and regimentation of social and economic activity, and arbitrary exercise of police power. The prototype of the fascist dictatorship was fashioned in Italy after 1922, and later emulated by Nazi Germany (beginning in 1933), as well as by a number of other fascist or quasi-fascist European governments during the 1930s. Fascist dictatorships were dealt a fatal blow by the defeat of the Axis Powers in World War II. Also during the interwar era, the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin fused dictatorship with single-party rule, mass mobilization, and arbitrary use of power. Stalin was the first modern dictator who created cult of personality around himself. The Soviet Union emerged victorious in the Second World War and entered a new phase after Stalin's death, by shifting from a personal dictatorship to a collective, though still authoritarian, leadership.

Postwar era

In the postwar era (that is, after the Second World War), dictatorships formed in many newly independent countries. In the case of most African or Asian former colonies, after achieving their independence in the postwar wave of decolonization, presidential regimes were gradually transformed into personal dictatorships. These regimes often proved unstable, with dictators being frequently overthrown and replaced in coups. Military dictatorships were very common, particularly in Latin America and Africa. Many of the military dictators and their senior staffs were graduates of the School of the Americas, comprised of an US military base in Costa Rica and Fort Benning, GA.

See also


- Absolute monarchy
- Totalitarianism
- Plutocracy
- Kleptocracy
- Generalissimo
- Military rule
- Military dictatorship
- Police state
- Elective dictatorship Category:Forms of government ja:独裁政治 simple:Dictatorship

Dictator

In modern usage, Dictator refers to an absolutist or autocratic ruler who governs outside the rule of law. However unlike the Roman original, they rarely use it as a title, for it is generally used by their opponents as a term of abuse for totalitarian rule, just like despot and tyrant (also unlike Antiquity). Dictators often acquire power in a coup d'état, or by suspending the existing constitution. Ordinarily democratic nations may temporarily give dictatorial power to leaders during a state of emergency. The term is normally not applied to absolute monarchs although they generally have the powers of a dictator. States without democratic institutions are often ruled by a series of dictators, taking power from each other in coups or civil wars. Latin American and African nations have undergone many dictatorships, usually by military leaders at the head of a junta. In states with democratic traditions, dictators frequently emerge in times of war, or during an economic or social crisis. Most notably, Benito Mussolini in Italy and Adolf Hitler in Germany, achieved office by democratic means and once in power gradually eroded constitutional restraints. Under Joseph Stalin, the concentration of power in the Communist Party in the Soviet Union developed into a personal dictatorship, but after his death there emerged a system of collective leadership.

Classical Rome

"Dictator" was the title of the highest chief magistrate in ancient Rome, the only one without a colleague, appointed by the Senate to rule the state in times of emergency. Roman dictators were usually experienced generals and politicians, were invested with sweeping authority over the citizens, but they were originally limited to a term of six months and lacked power over the public finances. Lucius Cornelius Sulla and Julius Caesar, however, abolished these limitations and governed without these constraints. The Romans abandoned the institution of dictatorship after Caesar's murder, when Augustus quietly consolidated similar powers as Princeps civitatis, imprecisely known as emperor. In the system of Roman Republic, a dictator rei gerendae causa was an extraordinary magistrate (without a colleague) temporarily granted significant power over the state during times of great threat to the state, as in a defensive war. The office was usually held for only 6 months or a military campaign. The ideal model was Cincinnatus, who according to legend, was plowing when called to dictatorship, saved Rome from invasion, and who afterwards returned to his labour, renouncing every honour and power, after only 3 months. Other famous dictatores were Lucius Sulla and Julius Caesar. See Roman dictator and compare with the Greek tyrannos and the later imperator. Besides such ruling dictators there also was a symbolic practice of very short senatorial mandate for a religious act considered to sacred to performed by any lesser magistrate

Modern titles


- in Poland:
  - Józef Grzegorz Chlopicki (b. 1771 - d. 1854) was dictator twice: 5 Dec 1830 - Dec 1830 and Dec 1830 - 25 Jan 1831
  - 24 Feb 1846 - 2 Mar 1846, Jan Józef Tyssowski (b. 1811 - d. 1857) was styled Dictator of the Polish Republic, also in the Cracow republic
  - 22 Jan 1863 - 10 Mar 1863 Ludwik Adam Mieroslawski (b. 1814 - d. 1878) was styled dictator and commander-in-chief of the Polish Insurrecyion (in exile to 17 Feb 1863) and was joint President of the National Government together with the chairman Executive Commission of the Central National Committee acting as Provisional National Government
  - 10 Mar 1863 - 19 Mar 1863 Marian Antoni Melchior Langiewicz (b. 1827 - d. 1887) styled dictator
  - 19 Mar 1863 - 20 Mar 1863 Executive Dictatorial Commission of three members
  - 17 Oct 1863 - 10 Apr 1864 Romuald Traugutt (b. 1826 - d. 1864) is Head of the National Government, also styled Dictator etc

Pejorative use

imperator, a satire of dictatorship regimes.]] In modern usage, the term "dictator" is generally used to describe a leader who holds an extraordinary amount of personal power, especially the power to make laws without effective restraint by a legislative assembly. It is comparable to (but not synonymous with) the ancient concept of a tyrant, although initially "tyrant," like "dictator," was not a negative term. A wide variety of leaders coming to power in a number of different kinds of regimes, such as military juntas, single-party states, and civilian governments under personal rule, have been described as dictators. In popular usage in most of the world, "dictatorship" is often associated with brutality and oppression. As a result, it is often also used as a term of abuse for political opponents; Henry Clay's dominance of the U.S. Congress as Speaker of the House and as a member of the United States Senate led to his nickname "the Dictator." The term has also come to be associated with megalomania. Many dictators create a cult of personality and have come to favor increasingly grandiloquent titles and honours for themselves. For example, Idi Amin Dada, who had been a British army lieutenant prior to Uganda's independence from Britain in October 1962, subsequently styled himself as "His Excellency President for Life Field Marshal Al Hadji Dr. Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, King of Scotland Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular." In The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin satirized not only Hitler but the institution of dictatorship itself. The association between the dictator and the military is a very common one; many dictators take great pains to emphasize their connections with the military and often wear military uniforms. In some cases, this is perfectly natural; Francisco Franco was a lieutenant general in the Spanish Army before he became Chief of State of Spain, and Noriega was officially commander of the Panamanian Defense Forces. In other cases, this is mere pretense.

"The benevolent dictator"

The benevolent dictator is a more modern version of the classical "enlightened despot," being an absolute ruler who exercises his or her political power for the benefit of the people rather than exclusively for his or her own benefit. Like many political classifications, this term suffers from its inherent subjectivity. Such leaders as Franco, Rojas Pinilla, Sadat, Tito, and Omar Torrijos have been characterized by their supporters as benevolent dictators. In the Spanish language, the word dictablanda is sometimes used for a dictatorship conserving some of the liberties and mechanisms of democracy. (The pun is that, in Spanish, dictadura is "dictatorship," dura is "hard" and blanda is "soft"). Some examples include Chile under Pinochet, or Yugoslavia under Tito. This contrasts with democradura (literally "hard democracy"), which is defined as a full formal democracy alongside limitations on constitutional freedoms and human rights abuses, frequently within the context of a civil conflict or the existence of an insurgency. Governments in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Mexico and Venezuela have at various times been considered "democradura" regimes by different critics and opposition groups, not necessarily with an academic or political consensus about the application of the term.

Dictators in game theory

In game theory and social choice theory, the notion of a dictator is formally defined as a person that can achieve any feasible social outcome he/she wishes. The formal definition yields an interesting distinction between two different types of dictators.
- The strong dictator has, for any social goal he/she has in mind (e.g. raise taxes, having someone killed, etc.), a definite way of achieving that goal. This can be seen as having explicit absolute power, like Franco in Spain.
- The weak dictator has, for any social goal he/she has in mind, and for any political scenario, a course of action that would bring about the desired goal. For the weak dictator, it is usually not enough to "give her orders", rather he/she has to manipulate the political scene appropriately. This means that the weak dictator might actually be lurking in the shadows, working within a political setup that seems to be non-dictatorial. An example of such a figure is Lorenzo the Magnificent, who controlled Renaissance Florence. Note that these definitions disregard some alleged dictators, e.g. Benito Mussolini, who are not interested in the actual achieving of social goals, as much as in propaganda and controlling public opinion. Monarchs and military dictators are also excluded from these definitions, because their rule relies on the consent of other political powers (the barons or the army).

See also


- The Generals
- Dictatorship
- List of dictators
- List of Roman dictators
- Heads of state timeline
- Junta
- Military rule
- Rule by decree Category:Heads of state Dictator Category:Titles ja:独裁者 simple:Dictator

Classical antiquity

:This article describes the ancient classical period. For the classical period in music (second half of the 18th century), see classical music era. Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, which begins roughly with the earliest recorded Greek poetry of Homer (7th century BC), and continues through the rise of Christianity and the fall of the Western Roman Empire (5th century AD), to end in the dissolution of Classical culture with the close of Late Antiquity. Such a wide sampling of history and territory covers many rather disparate cultures and periods. "Classical antiquity" typically refers to an idealized vision of later people, of what was, in Edgar Allan Poe's words, "the glory that was Greece, the grandeur that was Rome!" In the 18th and 19th centuries reverence for classical antiquity was much greater in Western Europe and the United States than it is today. Respect for the "ancients" of Greece and Rome affected politics, philosophy, sculpture, literature, theatre, education, and even architecture and sexuality. In politics, the presence of a Roman Emperor was felt to be desirable long after the empire fell. This tendency reached its peak when Charlemagne was crowned "Roman Emperor" in the year 800, an act which led to the formation of the Holy Roman Empire. The notion that an emperor is a monarch who outranks a mere king dates from this period. In this political ideal, there would always be a Roman Empire, a state whose jurisdiction extended to the entire civilised world. Epic poetry in Latin continued to be written and circulated well into the nineteenth century. John Milton and even Arthur Rimbaud got their first poetic educations in Latin. Genres like epic poetry, pastoral verse, and the endless use of characters and themes from Greek mythology left a deep mark on Western literature. In architecture, there have been several Greek Revivals, which seem more inspired in retrospect by Roman architecture than Greek. Still, one needs only to look at Washington, DC to see a city filled with large marble buildings with façades made out to look like Roman temples, with columns constructed in the classical orders of architecture. In philosophy, the efforts of St Thomas Aquinas were derived largely from the thought of Aristotle, despite the intervening change in religion from paganism to Christianity. Greek and Roman authorities such as Hippocrates and Galen formed the foundation of the practice of medicine even longer than Greek thought prevailed in philosophy. In the French theatre, tragedians such as Molière and Racine wrote plays on mythological or classical historical subjects and subjected them to the strict rules of the classical unities derived from Aristotle's Poetics. The desire to dance like a latter-day vision of how the ancient Greeks did it moved Isadora Duncan to create her brand of ballet. The Renaissance discovery of Classical Antiquity is a book by Roberto Weiss on how the renaissance was partly caused by the rediscovery of classic antiquity. "Classical antiquity," then, is the contemporary vision of Greek and Roman culture by their admirers from the more recent past. It remains a vision that many people in the twenty-first century continue to find compelling.

Subtopics

Geographical:
- Ancient Greece
- Hellenistic Greece
- Ancient Rome
- Roman Britain
- Roman Iberia
- Ancient Macedonia
- Ancient Troy
- Gaul
- Germania
- Ancient history of Cyprus
- Carthage
- Roman Iron Age, for the Roman period in Scandinavia and Northern Germany
- The Balkans in classical antiquity
- Late Antiquity Topical:
- Classical architecture
- Classical orders
- Classical education

See also


- Oxyrhynchus, an archaeological site where major research on ancient texts from classical antiquity is currently being conducted. Category:Classical studies Category:Historical eras

2nd century BC

(2nd millennium BC - 1st millennium BC - 1st millennium) ----

Events


- 175 BC - Antiochus IV Epiphanes, took possession of the Syrian throne, at the murder of his brother Seleucus IV Philopator, which rightly belonged to his nephew Demetrius I Soter.
- 168 BC - Battle of Pydna - The Macedonian phalanx defeated by Romans
- 164 BC - Judas Maccabaeus, son of Mattathias of the Hasmonean family, restores the Temple in Jerusalem. Events commemorated each year by the festival of Hanukkah.
- 147 BC - Hasmonean victories restore autonomy to Judea.
- 148 BC - Rome conquers Macedonia
  - Rome destroys Carthage in the Third Punic War
  - Rome conquers Corinth
- 129 BC - collapse of the Seleucid Empire
- 113–101 BC - migration of the Cimbri and the Teutons, defeated at the battles of Aquae Sextiae and Vercellae
- Theravada Buddhism is officially introduced to Sri Lanka by the Venerable Mahinda

Significant persons


- Andriscus, last independent ruler of Macedon.
- Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the last effective ruler of the Seleucid Empire.
- Antiochus VII Sidetes, last King of a United Seleucid Empire.
- Boiorix, King of the Cimbri.
- Flaccus, musical collaborator of Terence.
- Hipparchus, considered the greatest astronomical observer.
- Jonathan Maccabaeus, leader of the Hasmonean rebellion and first autonomous ruler of Judea.
- Judas Maccabeus, leader of the Hasmonean rebellion and its first successful general.
- Lucius Aemilius Paullus Macedonicus, Roman general and politician.
- Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Roman general and politician.
- Lucius Mummius Achaicus, conqueror of Corinth.
- Marius, Roman general and politician.
- Perseus of Macedon, last King of the Antigonid dynasty.
- Plautus, Latin playwright.
- Quintus Lutatius Catulus, Roman general.
- Scipio Aemilianus Africanus, conqueror of Carthage.
- Terence, Latin playwright.
- Teutobod, King of the Teutons.
- Emperor Wu of Han, considered one of the greatest emperors throughout the History of China.
- Zhang Qian, Chinese diplomat and explorer.

Inventions, discoveries, introductions


- Silk Road between Europe and Asia
- Hipparchus discovers precession of Earth's equinoxes and compiles first trigonometric tables

Decades and years

Category:2nd century BC ko:기원전 2세기 ja:紀元前2世紀



Revolution

:This article is about revolution in the sense of a drastic change. For other meanings of the word, see revolution (disambiguation). A revolution is a relatively sudden, and absolutely drastic change (a "complete turn-around"). This may be a change in the social or political institutions over a relatively short period of time, or a major change in its culture or economy. Some revolutions are led by the majority of the populace of a nation, others by a small band of revolutionaries. Compare rebellion.

Social and political revolutions

Political revolutions are often characterised by violence, and vast changes in power structures that can often result in further, institutionalised, violence, as in the Russian and French revolutions (with the "Purges" and "the Terror", respectively). A political revolution is the forcible replacement of one set of rulers with another (as happened in France and Russia), while a social revolution is the fundamental change in the social structure of a society, such as the Protestant Reformation or the Renaissance.However, blurring the line between these two categories, most political revolutions wish to carry out social revolutions, and they have basic philosophical or social underpinnings which drive them. The most common revolutions with such underpinnings in the modern world have been liberal revolutions and communist revolutions. In contrast, a coup d'état often seeks to change nothing more than the current ruler. Some political philosophers regard revolutions as the means of achieving their goals. Most anarchists advocate social revolution as the means of breaking down the structures of government and replacing them with non-hierarchal institutions. With Marxist communists, there is a split between those who supported the Soviet Union and other so-called 'communist states' and those who were/are critical of those states (some even rejecting them as non-communist, see state capitalism), for example trotskyists. Social and political revolutions are often "institutionalized" when the ideas, slogans, and personalities of the revolution continue to play a prominent role in a country's political culture, long after the revolution's end. As mentioned, communist nations regularly institutionalize their revolutions to legitimize the actions of their governments. Some non-communist nations, like the United States, France, or Mexico also have institutionalized revolutions, and continue to celebrate the memory of their revolutionary past through holidays, artwork, songs, and other venues.

Ancient revolutions


- Fall of the Qin Dynasty in China, 206 BCE
- Great Jewish Revolt (66-70) and Bar Kokhba's revolt (132-135) against the Roman Empire.
- Popular revolt in late medieval Europe 14th - early 16th century, a series of attempted revolutions against the nobility

Liberal revolutions

(known to Marxists as bourgeois revolutions) :Some of these are Atlantic Revolutions.
- English Revolution – (1642-1653) – Commenced as a civil war between Parliament and King, culminating in the execution of Charles I and the establishment of a republican Protectorate.
- Glorious Revolution – (England in (1688) – Overthrow of King James II and establishment of a Whig-dominated Protestant constitutional monarchy.
- American Revolution – (1774-1783) – Established independence of the 13 colonies from Great Britain, creating the republic of the United States of America
- French Revolution – (1789) – Regarded as one of the most influential of all Revolutions, frequently associated with the rise of the bourgeoisie and the downfall of the aristocracy.
- Irish Rebellion – (1798) – Failed attempt to overthrow British rule in the country.
- Haitian Revolution – (1804) – Successful slave rebellion led by Jean-Jacques Dessalines. Established Haiti as the first free, black republic.
- July Revolution (1830)
- Belgian Revolution (1830)
- Rebellions of 1837 – (1837-1838) – Failed republican revolutions against British rule in Canada.
- Revolutions of 1848 – (1848) – Wave of failed liberal and republican revolutions that swept Europe.
- Taiping Rebellion – 1851 Rebellion against the Qing Dynasty and Manchu domination.
- Indian rebellion of 1857 Also called the War of Independence of 1857 and popularly known in the West as the Sepoy Mutiny, this rebellion was against British imperialism and marks the end of Mughal rule in India.
- Russian Revolution of 1905 – (1905) – Failed bourgeois-liberal revolution against Tsar Nicholas II
- Mexican Revolution – (1910) – Overthrow of dictator Porfirio Díaz, seizure of power by Institutional Revolutionary Party.
- Xinhai Revolution – (1911) – Overthrow of ruling Qing Dynasty and establishment of the Republic of China.
- February Revolution – (1917) – Liberal revolution against Tsar Nicholas II
- German Revolution – (1918) – Overthrow of the Kaiser by a workers' revolution, establishment of the Weimar Republic.

Socialist and/or Communist revolutions


- The Revolutionnary Commune of Paris – 1871
- Russian Revolution – (1917) – The most famous and influential modern revolution, culminating in the Bolshevik seizure of power and the establishment of the Soviet Union.
- German Revolution – (1919)) – Failed revolution in Germany led by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht
- Hungarian revolutions – 1919 and 1949
- Mongolia – 1921
- Spanish Revolution – 1936
- North Korea – 1948
- Chinese Revolution – (1949) – Victory of Communist-led peasant rebellion under Chairman Mao over the ruling Nationalist Party, establishment of People's Republic of China.
- Algerian Revolution – (1954 – 1962) – Revolutionary war of independence against French imperialism.
- North Vietnam – period of 1945-1954
- Cuban Revolution – (1959) – Fidel Castro-led rebellion against U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista; victory of revolutionary government of Fidel Castro.
- The Congo – 1964 and 1968
- The Zanzibar Revolution of 1964, see [http://home.globalfrontiers.com/Zanzibar/zanzibar_revolution.htm]
- Cultural Revolution – (1966-1976) Maoist led turmoil in People's Republic of China.
- South Yemen – 1967
- France, May 1968 – (1968) – Students' and workers' revolt against the Government of Charles de Gaulle.
- Libya – 1969
- Somalia – 1969
- Benin – 1972
- Ethiopia – 1974
- Carnation Revolution – (1974) in Portugal – Left-wing popular overthrow of right-wing dictatorship.
- Guinea-Bissauan Revolution – 1974
- Cambodia – 1975
- South Vietnam – 1975
- Laos – 1975
- Madagascar – 1975
- Cape Verde – 1975
- Mozambique – 1975
- Angola – 1975
- Afghanistan – 1978
- Grenada – 1979
- Nicaraguan Revolution – (1979) – Popular overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship by progressive/Marxist peasant movement.
- Burkina Faso – 1983
- Bolivarian Revolution – (1998) – Venezuela elects populist Hugo Chávez.

Eastern European anti-Communist revolutions


- Hungarian Revolution – (1956) Workers' and peasants' left-wing revolution against the imposed Communist Party-run state dictatorship, suppressed by Soviet forces.
- Singing Revolution – (1988) Bloodless overthrow of Communist Party-run state in Estonia.
- Romanian Revolution – (1989) Violent overthrow of Communist Party-run state in Romania.
- Velvet Revolution – (1989) Bloodless overthrow of Communist Party-run state in Czechoslovakia.

Islamist revolutions


- Iranian Revolution – (1979) – Popular overthrow of US-backed Shah, culminating in an Islamist cleric-led theocracy.
- Taliban – (1996) – Islamist movement in Afghanistan

Color revolutions

Note that some of these (particularly the rose and orange revolutions) only changed one government with another, and did not modify the political or economic systems of their countries. As such, they are purely political revolutions.
- Rose Revolution in Georgia (2003)
- Orange Revolution in Ukraine (2004)
- Cedar Revolution in Lebanon (2005)
- Tulip Revolution or Yellow Revolution in Kyrgyzstan (2005)

Cultural, intellectual, and philosophical revolutions


- Renaissance
- Protestant Reformation
- Scientific revolution
- Sexual revolution
- Quiet Revolution
- Consciousness Revolution

Technological revolutions

(although these revolutions always have an influence on culture)
- Agrarian Revolution
- Digital Revolution
- Neolithic Revolution
- Price revolution
- Industrial Revolution
- Second Industrial Revolution

See also


- Revolt
- Coup d'état
- List of fictional revolutions and coups
- ja:革命

Joseph Stalin

(Russian, in full: Иосиф Виссарионович Сталин (Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin), real name: Иосиф Виссарионович Джугашвили (Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili), Georgian: იოსებ ჯუღაშვილი (Ioseb Jughashvili); December 6 (OS)/December 18 (NS), 1878 – March 5, 1953) was the leader of the Soviet Union from mid-1920s to his death in 1953 and General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922-1953), a position which had later become that of party leader. Stalin became general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party in 1922 and following the death of Vladimir Lenin, he prevailed over Leon Trotsky in a power struggle during the 1920s. In the 1930s Stalin eliminated effective political opposition both within the Party and among the population (see Gulag) and consolidated his authority with the Great Purge, a period of widespread arrests and executions which reached its peak in 1937, remaining in power through World War II and until his death. Stalin molded the features that characterized the new Soviet regime; his policies, based on Marxist–Leninist ideology, are often considered to represent a political and economic system called Stalinism. Under Stalin, who replaced the New Economic Policy (NEP) of the 1920s with five year plans (introduced in 1928) and collective farming, the Soviet Union was transformed from a largely peasant society to a major world industrial power by the end of the 1930s. Since many peasants resisted collectivization, the government resorted to often violent repression against the "kulaks," resulting in millions of deaths. A hard-won victory in World War II (the Great Patriotic War, 1941–45), made possible in part through the capacity for production that was the outcome of industrialization, laid the groundwork for the formation of the Warsaw Pact and established the USSR as one of the two major world powers, a position it maintained for nearly four decades following Stalin's death in 1953. Stalin's cult of personality, his extreme concentration of power and the means of its execution defines him as a dictator. He was directly or indirectly responsible, via his policies, for tens of millions of deaths and unjust deportations to labour camps in the Soviet Union. Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin's actual successor, denounced his mass repressions and cult of personality in 1956, initiating the process of "de-Stalinization". Apparently Winston Churchill once said of Stalin: "The outside world was at liberty to wonder respectfully at the hidden meaning of his actions."

Childhood and early years

de-Stalinization.]] Stalin was born in Gori, Georgia, to a cobbler named Vissarion Jughashvili. His mother, Ekaterina Geladze, was born a serf. Their other three children died young; Joseph, nicknamed "Soso" (the Georgian pet name for Joseph), was effectively the only child. Vissarion Ivanovich Jughashvili was a former serf who, when freed, became a cobbler. He opened his own shop, but quickly went bankrupt, forcing him to work in a shoe factory in Tiflis (Archer 11). Rarely seeing his family and drinking heavily, Vissarion often beat his wife and small son. One of Stalin's friends from childhood wrote, "Those undeserved and fearful beatings made the boy as hard and heartless as his father." The same friend also wrote that he never saw him cry (Hoober 15). Another of his childhood friends, Iremashvili, felt that the beatings by Stalin's father gave him a hatred of authority. He also said that anyone with power over others reminded Stalin of his father's cruelty. One of the people for whom Ekaterina did laundry and housecleaning was a Gori Jew, David Papismedov. Papismedov gave Joseph, 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 man, but happily chatting with him in public places. In 1888, Stalin's father left to live in Tiflis, leaving the family without support. Rumors said he died in a drunken bar fight; however, others said they had seen him in Georgia as late as 1931. At the age of eight, Soso began his education at the Gori Church School. When attending school in Gori, Soso was among a very diverse group of students. Stalin and most of his classmates were Georgian and spoke mostly Georgian. However, at school they were forced to use Russian. Even when speaking in Russian, their Russian teachers mocked Stalin and his classmates because of their Georgian accents. His peers were mostly the sons of affluent priests, officials, and merchants. Although Stalin later sought to hide his Georgian origins, during his childhood he was fascinated by Georgian folklore. The stories he read told of Georgian mountaineers who valiantly fought for Georgian independence. Stalin's favorite hero of these stories was a legendary mountain ranger named Koba, which became his first alias as a revolutionary. He graduated first in his class and at age 14 he was awarded a scholarship to the Tiflis Theological Seminary, a Russian Orthodox institution which he attended from 1894 and onward. In addition to the small stipend from the scholarship he was also paid for singing in the choir. Although his mother wanted him to be a priest (even after he had become leader of the Soviet Union), he 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. Tsarist government] Stalin's involvement with the socialist movement (or, to be more exact, the branch of it that later became the communist movement) began at the seminary. During these school years, Stalin joined a Georgian Social-Democratic organization, and began propagating Marxism. Stalin was expelled from the seminary in 1899 for these actions. He worked for a decade with the political underground in the Caucasus, experiencing repeated arrests and exile to Siberia between 1902 and 1917. He adhered to Vladimir Lenin's doctrine of a strong centralist party of professional revolutionaries. His practical experience made him useful in Lenin's Bolshevik party, gaining him a place on its Central Committee in January 1912. Some historians have suggested that, during this period, Stalin was actually a Tsarist spy, who was working to infiltrate the Bolshevik party, but there are no reliable documents to substantiate this. In 1913 he adopted the name Stalin, which means "steel man" in Russian. His only significant contribution to the development of the Marxist theory at this time was a treatise, written while he was briefly in exile in Vienna, Marxism and the national question. It presents an orthodox Marxist position on this important debate. This treatise may have contributed to his appointment as People's Commissar for Nationalities Affairs after the revolution (see Lenin's article On the right of nations to self-determination[http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/self-det/] for comparison).

Marriages and family

People's Commissar Stalin's first wife was called Ekaterina Svanidze, he married for just three years until her death in 1907. At her funeral, Stalin said that any warm feelings he had for people died with her, for only she could mend his heart. With her he had a son, Yakov Dzhugashvili, with whom he did not get along in later years. His son tried to kill himself, unsucessfully, resulting in serious injuries. Stalin was quoted to have laughed at the boy, saying, "Ha! He could not even shoot straight!" Yakov served in the Red Army and was captured by the Germans. They offered to exchange him for a German General, but Stalin turned the offer down, allegedly saying "A lieutenant is not worth a General," and Yakov is said to have died running into an electric fence in the camp where he was being held. This however, is the "official report", and to this day, his cause of death is not known. Nonetheless, there are many who believe his death was a suicide. People's CommissarHis second wife was Nadezhda Alliluyeva, who died in 1932; she may have committed suicide by shooting herself after a quarrel with Stalin, leaving a suicide note which according to their daughter was "partly personal, partly political". "Officially", she died of an illness, but other theories claim that Stalin himself killed her. It is alleged that Stalin had said "She died an enemy," at her funeral. With her, he had two children: a son, Vassili, and a daughter, Svetlana. Vassili rose through the ranks of the Soviet Air Force, but died an alcoholic death in 1962. Stalin doted on Svetlana when she was young, but she ended up defecting from the Soviet Union in 1967. Stalin's mother died in 1937; he did not attend the funeral but instead sent a wreath. Stalin is said to have remained bitter at his mother because of her forcing him to join the Tiflis Theological Seminary, and is reputed to have called her "an old whore." In March 2001, Russian Independent Television NTV discovered a previously unknown grandson living in Novokuznetsk. Yuri Davydov told NTV that his father had told him of his lineage, but, because the campaign against Stalin's cult of personality was in full swing at the time, he was told to keep quiet. Soviet dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn had mentioned a son being born to Stalin and his common law wife, Lida, in 1918 during his exile in northern Siberia.

Rise to power

Siberia In 1912 Stalin was co-opted to the Bolshevik Central Committee at the Prague Party Conference. In 1917 Stalin was editor of Pravda, the official Communist newspaper, while Lenin and much of the Bolshevik leadership were in exile. Following the February Revolution, Stalin and the editorial board took a position in favor of supporting Kerensky's provisional government and, it is alleged, went to the extent of declining to publish Lenin's articles arguing for the provisional government to be overthrown. When Lenin returned from exile, he wrote the April Theses which put forward his position. In April 1917, Stalin was elected to the Central Committee with the third highest vote total in the party and was subsequently elected to the Politburo of the Central Committee (May 1917); he held this position for the remainder of his life. According to many accounts, Stalin only played a minor role in the revolution of November 7.Other writers such as Adam Ulam stressed that each man in the Central Committee had a job he was assigned to do. The following summary of Trotsky's Role in 1917 was given by Stalin in Pravda, November 6th 1918: "All practical work in connection with the organisation of the uprising was done under the immediate direction of Comrade Trotsky, the President of the Petrograd Soviet. It can be stated with certainty that the Party is indebted primarily and principally to Comrade Trotsky for the rapid going over of the garrison to the side of the Soviet and the efficient manner in which the work of the Military Revolutionary Committee was organised." (Although this passage was quoted in Stalin's book "The October Revolution" issued in 1934, it was expunged in Stalin's Works released in 1949). Later, in 1924, Stalin himself created a myth around a so-called "Party Centre" which "directed" all practical work pertaining to the uprising, consisting of himself, Sverdlov, Dzherzhinsky, Uritsky, and Bubnov. However, no evidence was ever shown for the activity of this "centre", which was anyway, subordinate to the Military Revolutionary Council, headed by - Trotsky. During the Russian Civil War and Polish-Soviet War, Stalin was a political commissar in the Red Army at various fronts. Stalin's first government position was as People's Commissar of Nationalities Affairs (1917–23). Also, he was People's Commissar of Workers and Peasants Inspection (1919–22), a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the republic (1920–23) and a member of the Central Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets (from 1917). In April 1922, Stalin became general secretary of the ruling Communist Party, a post that he subsequently built up into the most powerful in the country. This position was an unwanted one within the party (Stalin was sometimes referred to as "Comrade Card-Index" by fellow party members) but Stalin saw its potential as a power base. The position had great influence on who joined the party. This allowed him to fill the party with his allies. Stalin's accumulation of personal power increasingly alarmed the dying Lenin, and in Lenin's Testament he famously called for the removal of the "rude" Stalin, also stating that Stalin's views were too extreme and violent. However, this document was suppressed by members of the Central Committee, many of whom were also criticised by the Bolshevik leader in the testament. After Lenin's death in January 1924, Stalin, Kamenev and Zinoviev together governed the party, placing themselves ideologically between Trotsky (on the left wing of the party) and Bukharin (on the right). During this period, Stalin abandoned the traditional Bolshevik emphasis on international revolution in favor of a policy of building "Socialism in One Country", in contrast to Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution. Stalin would soon switch sides and join with Bukharin. Together they fought a new opposition of Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev. By 1928 (the first year of the Five-Year Plans) Stalin was supreme among the leadership, and the following year Trotsky was exiled because of his intrigues. Having also outmaneuvered Bukharin's Right Opposition and now advocating collectivization and industrialization, Stalin can be said to have exercised control over the party and the country. However, as the popularity of other leaders such as Sergei Kirov and the so-called Ryutin Affair were to demonstrate, Stalin did not achieve absolute power until the Great Purge of 1936–38.

Stalin and changes in Soviet society

Industrialization

Main article: Industrialization of the USSR. The Russian Civil War had a devastating effect on the country's economy. Industrial output in 1922 was 13% of that in 1914. Under Stalin's direction, the New Economic Policy, which allowed a degree of market flexibility within the context of socialism, was replaced by a system of centrally ordained Five-Year Plans in the late 1920s. These called for a highly ambitious program of state-guided crash industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture. In spite of early breakdowns and failures, the first two Five-Year Plans achieved rapid industrialization from a very low economic base. The Soviet Union, generally ranked as the poorest nation in Europe in 1922, now industrialized at a phenomenal rate, far surpassing Germany's pace of industrialization in the 19th century and Japan's earlier in the 20th. With no seed capital, little international trade, and barely any modern industry to start with, Stalin's government financed industrialization by both restraining consumption on the part of ordinary Soviet citizens, to ensure that capital went for re-investment into industry, and by ruthless extraction of wealth from the peasantry. In 1933, worker's real earnings sank to about one-tenth of the 1926 level. There was also use of the almost free labor of prisoners in forced-labor camps and the frequent "mobilization" of communists and Komsomol members for various construction projects.

Collectivization

Main article: Collectivization in the USSR Collectivization in the USSR Stalin's regime moved to force collectivization of agriculture. This was in order to increase agricultural output from large-scale mechanized farms, to bring the peasantry under more direct political control, to make tax collection more efficient, and to provide workers for Gulags. Collectivization meant drastic social changes, on a scale not seen since the abolition of serfdom in 1861, and alienation from control of the land and its produce. Collectivization also meant a drastic drop in living standards for many peasants, and it faced widespread and often violent resistance among the peasantry. In the first years of collectivization, it was estimated that industrial and agricultural production would rise by 200% and 50%, respectively; however, agricultural production actually dropped. Stalin blamed this unexpected drop on kulaks (rich peasants), who resisted collectivization. Therefore those defined as "kulaks," "kulak helpers" and later "ex-kulaks" were to be shot, placed into Gulag labor camps, or deported to remote areas of the country, depending on the charge. The two-stage progress of collectivization — interrupted for a year by Stalin's famous editorial, "Dizzy with success"[http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/DS30.html] (Pravda, March 2, 1930), and "Reply to Collective Farm Comrades" [http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/RCFC30.html] (Pravda, April 3, 1930)— is a prime example of his capacity for tactical retreats. Many historians agree that the disruption caused by collectivization was largely responsible for major famines which caused up to 5 million deaths in 1932–33, particularly in Ukraine and the lower Volga region. (Chairman Mao Zedong of China would trigger a similar famine in 1958 to 1960 with his Great Leap Forward.) Not only rich peasants were killed. The Black Book of Communism documents that all grains were taken from areas that did not meet targets, including the next year's seed grain. It also documents that peasants were forced to remain in the starving areas, sales of train tickets were stopped, and the State Political Directorate set up barriers to prevent people from leaving the starving areas (p. 164). The Soviet Union exported grain while millions of Soviet citizens were starving to death (p. 167). Similar detailed references can be found here [http://www.overpopulation.com/faq/health/hunger/famine/soviet_famine.html].

Science

Main article: Research in the Soviet Union. Science in the Soviet Union was under strict ideological control, along with art, literature and everything else. On the positive side, there was significant progress in "ideologically safe" domains due to the free Soviet education system and state-financed research. However, in several cases the consequences of ideological pressure were dramatic, the most notable examples being the "bourgeois pseudosciences," genetics and cybernetics. In the late 1940s there were also attempts to suppress special and general relativity, as well as quantum mechanics, on grounds of "idealism." However, top Soviet physicists made it clear that without using these theories, they would be unable to create a nuclear bomb. Linguistics was the only area of Soviet academic thought to which Stalin personally and directly contributed. At the beginning of Stalin's rule, the dominant figure in Soviet linguistics was Nikolai Yakovievich Marr, who argued that language is a class construction and that language structure is determined by the economic structure of society. Stalin, who had previously written about language policy as People's Commissar for Nationalities, felt he grasped enough of the underlying issues to coherently oppose this simplistic Marxist formalism, ending Marr's ideological dominance over Soviet linguistics. Stalin's principal work discussing linguistics is a small essay, Marxism and Linguistic Questions . Although no great theoretical contributions or insights came from it, neither were there any apparent errors in Stalin's understanding of linguistics; his influence arguably relieved Soviet linguistics from the sort of ideologically driven theory that dominated genetics. Scientific research in nearly all areas was hindered by the fact that many scientists were sent to labor camps (including Lev Landau, later a Nobel Prize winner, who spent a year in prison in 1938–39) or executed (e.g. Lev Shubnikov, shot in 1937). They were persecuted for their (real or imaginary) dissident views, and seldom for "politically incorrect" research. Nevertheless, great progress was made under Stalin in some areas of science and technology. It laid the ground for the famous achievements of Soviet science in the 1950s, such as the development of the BESM-1 computer in 1953 and the launching of Sputnik in 1957. Indeed, many politicians in the United States began to fear, after the "Sputnik crisis," that their country had been eclipsed by the Soviet Union in science and in public education.

Social services

Sputnik crisis 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 declined. Education in primary schools continued to be free and was expanded, with many more Soviet citizens learning to read and write, and higher education also expanded. Stalin was the only ruler in the history of Russia and Soviet Union who established fees for secondary education in public schools. With the industrialization and heavy human losses due to the World War II and repressions the generation that survived under Stalin saw a major expansion in job opportunities, especially for women.

Culture and religion

It was during Stalin's reign that the official and long-lived style of Socialist Realism was established for painting, sculpture, music, drama and literature. Previously fashionable "revolutionary" expressionism, abstract art, and avant-garde experimentation were discouraged or denounced as "formalism." Careers were made and broken, some more than once. Famous figures were not only repressed, but often persecuted, tortured and executed, both "revolutionaries" (among them Isaac Babel, Vsevolod Meyerhold) and "non-conformists" (for example, Osip Mandelstam). A minority, both representing the "Soviet man" (Arkady Gaidar) and remnants of the older pre-revolutionary Russia (Konstantin Stanislavski), thrived. A number of former emigrés returned to the Soviet Union, among them Alexei Tolstoi in 1925, Alexander Kuprin in 1936, and Alexander Vertinsky in 1943. It is of note that Anna Akhmatova was subjected to several cycles of suppression and rehabilitation, but was never herself arrested, although her first husband, poet Nikolai Gumilev, had been shot in 1921, and her son, historian Lev Gumilev, spent two decades in the Gulag. The degree of Stalin's personal involvement in general and specific developments has been assessed variously. His name, however, was constantly invoked during his reign in discussions of culture as in just about everything else; and in several famous cases, his opinion was final. Stalin's occasional beneficence showed itself in strange ways. For example, Mikhail Bulgakov was driven to poverty and despair; yet, after a personal appeal to Stalin, he was allowed to continue working. His play, The Days of the Turbines, with its sympathetic treatment of an anti-Bolshevik family caught up in the Civil War, was finally staged, apparently also on Stalin's intervention, and began a decades-long uninterrupted run at the Moscow Arts Theater. Bulgakov was relatively fortunate - in the vast majority of cases, appeals had little effect and the slightest displeasure caused to others or guilt by any association was tantamount to a harsh sentence, if not death. Some insights into Stalin's political and esthetic thinking might perhaps be gleaned by reading his favorite novel, Pharaoh, by the Polish writer Bolesław Prus, a historical novel on mechanisms of political power. Similarities have been pointed out between this novel and Sergei Eisenstein's film, Ivan the Terrible, produced under Stalin's tutelage. In architecture, a Stalinist Empire Style (basically, updated neoclassicism on a very large scale, exemplified by the seven skyscrapers of Moscow) replaced the constructivism of the 1920s. An amusing anecdote has it that the Moskva Hotel in Moscow was built with mismatched side wings because Stalin had mistakenly signed off on both of the two proposals submitted, and the architects had been too afraid to clarify the matter. (This was actually just a joke: the hotel had been built by two independent teams of architects that had different visions of how the hotel should look.) Stalin's role in the fortunes of the Russian Orthodox Church is complex. Continuous persecution in the 1930s resulted in its near-extinction: by 1939, active parishes numbered in the low hundreds (down from 54,000 in 1917), many churches had been levelled, and tens of thousands of priests, monks and nuns were dead or imprisoned. During World War II, however, the Church was allowed a partial revival, as a patriotic organization: thousands of parishes were reactivated, until a further round of suppression in Khrushchev's time. The Church Synod's recognition of the Soviet government and of Stalin personally led to a schism with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia that remains not fully healed to the present day. Just days before Stalin's death, certain religious sects were outlawed and persecuted. Stalin's rule had a largely disruptive effect on the numerous indigenous cultures that made up the Soviet Union. The politics of the Korenization and forced development of Cultures National by Form, Socialist by their substance was arguably beneficial to later generations of indigenous cultures in allowing them to integrate more easily into Russian society. However, the unification of the cultures evident from the second half of the Stalin citation, was very harmful. The political repressions and purges had even more devastating repercussions on the indigenous cultures than on the urban ones, since the cultural elite of the indigenous culture was often not very numerous. The traditional lives of many peoples in the Siberian, Central Asian and Caucasian provinces was upset and large populations were displaced and scattered in order to prevent nationalist uprisings. Many religions popular in the ethnic regions of the Soviet Union including Roman Catholic Church, Uniats, Baptists, Islam, Buddhism underwent the same or worse ordeals as the Orthodox church in other parts: thousands of monks were tortured and executed, and hundreds of churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, sacred monuments, monasteries and so on were razed.

Purges and deportations

The purges

Main article: Great Purge Stalin, as head of the Politburo, consolidated near-absolute power in the 1930s that started with a Great Purge of his political and ideological opponents (real or merely suspected), culminating not only in the extermination of the majority of the original Bolshevik Central Committee, and of over half of the largely pliant delegates of the 17th Party Congress in January 1934, but also of huge swathes of the population. Measures ranged from imprisonment in Gulag labor camps to execution after a show trial or summary trial by NKVD troikas. Some argue that a motive for the purge was a feeling that the Party needed to be unified in the face of anticipated conflict with Nazi Germany; others believe that it was motivated only by Stalin's desire to consolidate his own power. Several trials known as the Moscow Trials were held, but the procedures were replicated throughout the country. There were four key trials during this period: the Trial of the Sixteen (August 1936); Trial of the Seventeen (January 1937); the trial of Red Army generals, including Marshal Tukhachevsky (June 1937); and finally the Trial of the Twenty One (including Bukharin) in March 1938. Trotsky's August 1940 assassination in Mexico, where he had lived in exile since 1936, eliminated the last of Stalin's opponents among the former Party leadership. Only three members of the "Old Bolsheviks" (Lenin's Politburo) now remained in Politburo —Stalin himself, "the all-Union Chieftain" (всесоюзный староста) Mikhail Kalinin, and Chairman of Sovnarkom Vyacheslav Molotov. The repression of so many formerly high-ranking revolutionaries and party members led Leon Trotsky to claim that a "river of blood" separated Stalin's regime from that of Lenin. In contrast, Solzhenitsyn is among those who argued that Stalin only continued the political repressions that had started under Lenin's regime, such as labor camps and express executions of political opponents. No segment of society was left untouched during the purges. Article 58 of the legal code, listing prohibited "anti-Soviet activities", was applied in the broadest manner. Initially, the execution lists for the enemies of the people were confirmed by the Politburo. Over time the procedure was greatly simplified and delegated down the line of command. People would inform on others arbitrarily, to attempt to redeem themselves, or to gain small retributions. The flimsiest pretexts were often enough to brand someone an "Enemy of the People", starting the cycle of public persecution and abuse, often proceeding to interrogation, torture and deportation, if not death. Nadezhda Mandelstam, the widow of the poet Osip Mandelstam and one of the key memoirists of the Purges, recalls being shouted at by Akhmatova, also a famous Russian poet: "Don't you understand? They are arresting people for nothing now?" The Russian word troika gained a new meaning: a quick, simplified trial by a committee of three subordinated to NKVD. Towards the end of the purge, the Politburo relieved NKVD head Nikolai Yezhov, from his position for overzealousness. He was subsequently executed. Some historians such as Amy Knight and Robert Conquest postulate that Stalin had Yezhov and his predecessor, Yagoda, removed in order to deflect blame from himself.

Deportations

Main article: Population transfer in the Soviet Union Shortly before, during and immediately after World War II, Stalin conducted a series of deportations on a huge scale which profoundly affected the ethnic map of the Soviet Union. Over 1.5 million people were deported to Siberia and the Central Asian republics. Separatism, resistance to Soviet rule and collaboration with the invading Germans were cited as the main official reasons for the deportations. The following ethnic groups were deported completely or partially: Ukrainians, Poles, Koreans, Volga Germans, Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Karachays, Meskhetian Turks, Finns, Bulgarians, Greeks, Armenians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians. Large numbers of Kulaks, regardless of their nationality, were resettled to Siberia and Central Asia. In February 1956, Nikita Khrushchev condemned the deportations as a violation of Leninist principles, and reversed most of them, although it was not until as late as 1991 that the Tatars, Meskhs and Volga Germans were allowed to return en masse to their homelands. The deportations had a profound effect on the peoples of the Soviet Union. The memory of the deportations played a major part in the separatist movements in the Baltic republics, Tatarstan and Chechnya.

Death toll

It is generally agreed by historians that if famines, prison and labor camp mortality, and state terrorism (deportations and political purges) are taken into account, Stalin and his colleagues were directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of millions. How many millions died under Stalin is greatly disputed. Comparison of the 1926–37 census results suggests 5–10 million deaths in excess of what would be normal in the period, mostly through famine in 1931–34. The 1926 census shows the population of the Soviet Union at 147 million and in 1937 another census found a population of between 162 and 163 million. This was 14 million less than the projected population value and was suppressed as a "wrecker's census" with the census takers severely punished. A census was taken again in 1939, but its published figure of 170 million has been generally attributed directly to the decision of Stalin (see also Demographics of the Soviet Union). Note that the figure of 14 million does not have to imply 14 million additional deaths, since as many as 3 million may be births that never took place due to reduced fertility and choice. Since "the margin of error" with regard to the number of Stalin's victims is virtually impossible to narrow down to a universally accepted figure, various historians have come up with extremely varying [http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm#Stalin estimates of the number of victims], with the most likely figure of 20 million. A quote popularly attributed to Stalin is "A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic." (Possibly said in response to Churchill at the Potsdam Conference in 1945).

World War II

Potsdam Conference] After declining Franco-British missions to Moscow in hopes that the USSR would enter a treaty of Polish defense with them, Stalin began to negotiate a non-aggression pact with Hitler's Germany. In his speech on August 19, 1939, Stalin prepared his comrades for the great turn in Soviet policy, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany. Officially a non-aggression treaty only, it had a 'secret' annex according to which Central Europe was divided into the two powers' respective spheres of influence. The exact motivations behind this pact are disputed, but it appears that neither side expected it to last very long. On September 1 1939, the German invasion of Poland started World War II. According to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact [popularly known as the Hitler-Stalin Pact], Eastern Poland was in the Soviet sphere of influence. Hence, Stalin decided to intervene and on September 17 the Red Army invaded Poland as well. Germany and the Soviet Union agreed to modify the spheres of influences slightly and Poland was divided between these two states. According to the 'secret' annex of the pact, the Soviets were promised a slice of Poland, the annexation of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, and an undisturbed military advance on Finland, which the Soviets acted on almost immediately. In November, 1939, Stalin sent troops over the Finnish border provoking war. The Winter War between the Soviet Union and Finland proved to be more difficult than Stalin and the Red Army was prepared for, and the Soviets sustained high casualties. The Soviets finally prevailed in March, 1940, but their inferior army had been revealed to the rest of the world, including Germany. In June 1941, Hitler broke the pact and invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. Stalin had not expected this — or at the very least, he had not expected an invasion to come so soon — and the Soviet Union was largely unprepared for this invasion. Until the last moment, Stalin had sought to avoid any obvious defensive preparation which might provoke German attack, in the hope of buying time to modernize and strengthen his military forces. Even after the attack commenced, Stalin appeared unwilling to accept the fact and, according to some historians, was too stunned to react appropriately for a number of days. A controversial theory put forward by Viktor Suvorov asserts that Stalin had been preparing an invasion of Germany while neglecting preparations for defensive warfare, which left Soviet forces vulnerable despite their heavy concentration near the border. Such speculations are difficult to substantiate, as information on the Soviet Army from 1939 to 1941 remains classified, but it is known that the Soviets had advanced and detailed warnings of the German invasion through their extensive foreign intelligence agents, such as Richard Sorge. The Nazis initially made huge advances, capturing and killing millions of Soviet troops. The 1937–38 execution of many of the Red Army's experienced generals had a severely debilitating effect on the ability of the USSR to organize defences. Hitler's experts had expected eight weeks of war, and early indications evidenced their prescience. In response on November 6 1941, Stalin addressed the Soviet Union for only the second time during his three-decade rule (the first time was earlier that year on July 2). He claimed that although 350,000 troops had been killed by German attacks, the Germans had lost 4.5 million soldiers (an inflated figure) and that Soviet victory was near. The Soviet Red Army did put up fierce resistance, but during the war's early stages was largely ineffective against the better-equipped and trained German forces, until the invaders were halted and then driven back in December 1941 in front of Moscow. Stalin then worked with independent-minded Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov to orchestrate the decisive German defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad. Battle of Stalingrad, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Stalin at the Yalta Conference.]] Stalin met in several conferences with Churchill and/or Roosevelt in Moscow, Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam to plan military strategy (Truman taking the place of the deceased Roosevelt).
In these conferences, his first appearances on the world stage, Stalin proved to be a formidable negotiator. Anthony Eden, the British Foreign Secretary noted:
"Marshal Stalin as a negotiator was the toughest proposition of all. Indeed, after something like thirty years' experience of international conferences of one kind and another, if I had to pick a team for going into a conference room, Stalin would be my first choice. Of course the man was ruthless and of course he knew his purpose. He never wasted a word. He never stormed, he was seldom even irritated." His shortcomings as strategist are frequently noted regarding massive Soviet loss of life and early Soviet defeats. (In his autobiography Khrushchev claimed that Stalin tried to conduct tactical decisions using a world globe.) Yet Stalin did rapidly move Soviet industrial production east of the Volga river, far from Luftwaffe-reach, to sustain the Red Army's war machine with astonishing success. Additionally, Stalin was well aware that other European armies had utterly disintegrated when faced with Nazi military efficacy and responded effectively by subjecting his army to galvanizing terror and unrevolutionary patriotism. Stalin's Order No. 227 of July 27 1942 illustrates the ruthlessness with which he sought to stiffen army resolve: all those who retreated or otherwise left their positions without orders to do so were to be summarily shot. Other orders declared that the families of those who surrendered were subject to NKVD terror. Barrier forces of NKVD were soon set up in the rear to machine-gun anyone who retreated. The surrendered Soviet soldiers were declared traitors and sent to the Gulag after their release from POW camps. POW camp, 1943. Time had named Stalin Man of the Year the first time for the year 1939.]] In the war's opening stages, the retreating Red Army also sought to deny resources to the enemy through a scorched earth policy of destroying the infrastructure and food supplies of areas before the Germans could seize them. Unfortunately, this, along with abuse by German troops, caused inconceivable starvation and suffering among the civilian population that were left behind. The Soviet Union bore the brunt of civilian and military losses in World War II. Approximately 7 million Red Army personnel and 20 million civilians died. The Nazis considered Slavs to be "sub-human," and many people believe the Nazis killed Slavs as an ethnically targeted genocide. This concept of Slavic inferiority was also the reason why Hitler did not accept into his army many Russians who wanted to fight the Stalinist regime until 1944, when the war was lost for Germany. In the Soviet Union, World War II left a huge deficit of men of the wartime fighting-age generation. To this day the war is remembered very vividly in Russia, Belarus, and other parts of the former Soviet Union as the Great Patriotic War, and May 9, Victory Day, is one of Russia's biggest national holidays.

Post-war era

May 9]] Following World War II, the Red Army occupied much of the territory that had been formerly held by the Axis countries: there were Soviet occupation zones in Germany and Austria. Hungary and Poland were under practical military occupation, despite the fact that the latter was formally an Allied country. Soviet-friendly governments were established in Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and homegrown communist regimes existed in Yugoslavia and Albania. Finland retained formal independence, but was politically isolated and economically dependent on the Soviet Union. Greece, Italy and France were under the strong influence of local communist parties, which were at the very least friendly towards Moscow. Stalin hoped that the withdrawal of the Americans from Europe would lead to Soviet hegemony over the whole continent. The foundation of Trizonia and American help for the anti-communist side in the Greek Civil War changed the situation. East Germany was proclaimed a separate country in 1949, ruled by German communists. Moreover, Stalin made a decision to switch to direct control over his satellites in Central Europe: all of the countries were to be ruled by local communist parties that tried to implement the Soviet template locally. In 1948 this decision led to the establishment of Stalinist governments in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, later called the "Communist Bloc". Communist Albania remained an ally, but Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito broke with the USSR. Stalin viewed

Military junta

: military dictatorship

Bolshevik

on the Pathfinder Mural in New York City and on the cover of the book Lenin’s Final Fight published by Pathfinder. From left: Zinoviev, Bukharin, Trotsky, Lenin, Radek ]] A Bolshevik ("Большеви́к", derived from the