Stalin transformed the
Soviet Union from an agricultural nation consisting of mostly peasants to a
global industrial and military superpower at a high cost of many lives. He has
been held responsible for varying number of deaths, up to 60,000,000 and used
terror to run the country. The killings were the result of massive purging of
anyone who he considered not loyal to him or a threat. He used gulags,
unskilled and unprepared military tactics, and collectivization as intentional
and unintentional means of genocide. He became the General Secretary of the
Soviet Communist Party in 1922. After Lenin’s death in 1924, he built alliances
within the Party, targeted potential threats to his rule and launched his
reputation for abolishing anyone who did not share his beliefs. Stalin’s rule
proved to be more repressive and ruthless than Lenin’s. Stalin proved to be a
heartless, homicidal psychopath who was driven by his need to satisfy his
fragile ego. He portrayed Lenin as the father of the nation while he was a
faithful servant who brought Lenin’s dreams to fruition.
During the Russian revolution, the
Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, seized power and eliminated the tradition of czarist
rule. The Bolsheviks became the ruling Communist Party of the Soviet
Union. During the early 1900s, Russia
appeared to be one of the most impoverished countries in Europe with a vast
number of farming peasants and a large population of poor industrial workers.
Western Europe viewed Russia as an undeveloped and destitute country.
The Industrial Revolution did not rear its
head in Russia until the turn of the 20th century. Western Europe
and the United States took the lead concerning the revolution. When Russia met
the demands of the
industrial revolution, St. Petersburg and Moscow became overcrowded. The living
conditions for the newly created Russian industrial working class were
destitute.
The population expansion, a difficult
growing season due Russia’s northern geography, and a variety of pricy wars
which started with the Crimean War led to food shortages. The famine that
occurred from 1891 to 1892 claimed the lives of approximately 400,000 people. From
1904 – 1905, Russia lost the Russian-Japanese War. This loss weakened Czar
Nicholas II and Russia’s s world standing and Russia suffered substantial
losses of soldiers, ships and capital. The educated Russians saw that the
monarchical rule of the czars hampered Russia’s social progress and scientific
advancement. Many Russians looked for answers for improving the economical and
scientific status for Russia (History.com Editors, 2022). Probably not too
surprising that at first Stalin appeared to be a hero until his actions were
looked upon with scrutiny.
Childhood and Early Years
The brutal dictator came into the world as
Losif Vissarlonovich Dzhugashvili on December 18, 1878 at the small town of
Gori, Georgia. He was born to a dysfunctional family with an abusive father.
Later he took the name of Stalin which meant “man of steel.” He grew up poor
and an only child. His father was a shoemaker and an alcoholic and his mother
was a laundress. When he was a child, he contracted smallpox which left him
with facial scars. During his teen years, he earned a scholarship to attend a
seminary in Tblisi to study for the priesthood in the Georgian Orthodox Church.
He began reading the work of Karl Marx and became interested in the
revolutionary movement against the Russian monarchy. In 1899, Stalin was
expelled for missing exams from the seminary. Stalin looked for ways to make a
statement but the unrest of the country.
He joined labor demonstrations and strikes
and became a political agitator. He turned out to be a member of the Marxist
Social Democratic movement, the Blosheviks, which was led by Vladimir Lenin. He
became involved in a variety of criminal activities which included bank
robberies, and the money taken was used to fund the Bolshevik Party. Stalin was
arrested on multiple occasions from 1902 to 1913 and ended up imprisoned and
exiled in Siberia.
He married Ekaterina Svanidze (1885 to
1907) and they had one son, Yakov. Ekaterina died from Typhus when their son
was an infant and Yakov died as a prisoner in Germany during WWII. Stalin
married his second wife Nadezhda Alliluyeva in 1918 and she was a daughter of a
Russian revolutionary. They had two children, a boy and a girl. She committed
suicide in her early 30s. Stalin also fathered other children out of wedlock.
Lenin found Stalin ill-mannered and
offensive but valued his loyalty. In
1912, Lenin appointed Stalin to serve on the first Central Committee of the
Bolshevik Party. At the time, Lenin was exiled to Switzerland. In November 1917,
the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia. Lenin and the Bolshevik Party founded
the Soviet Union in 1922 and Lenin was its first leader. During the years of
Lenin’s rule, Stalin continued to climb the party ladder. In 1922, Lenin
appointed him as secretary general of the Central Committee of the Communist
Party. This role enabled him to appoint his allies to government jobs and
establish a base of political support (Service, 2004).
Collectivization
After Lenin’s death in 1924, Stalin managed
to outmaneuver his rival and won the struggle for power and control of the
Communist Party. By the late 1920s he became the dictator of the Soviet Union.
He begins his reign by launching a series of five-year plans designed to
convert the Soviet Union from a peasant society to an industrial superpower. Part
of his plans involved the implementation of government control over the economy
which included taking over the country’s agriculture.
Collectivization was the termed coined to
describe what happened to many of the peasants who resided at the Soviet Union.
The process of collectivization intended to increase agricultural production by
large-scale mechanized farms established by combining small private farms.
Stalin’s goal involved government control over the peasant population and
create a system of collecting taxes from them. Soviet authorities confiscated
grain and other food sources which led to a famine that lasted from 1932 to
1934. Millions died of starvation. Stalin eliminated most of the prosperous
peasant class referred to as the “kulaks.”
During the time of the famine in Ukraine
and the Kuban region, not only the kulaks were murdered or imprisoned, all
grain sources ended up being taken from areas that did not meet the government’s
large-scale targets. The seizure also included the next year’s seed grain. The
government forced the peasants to stay in the areas without food. Sales of
train tickets ceased during that time. Barriers and obstacles were created to
stop people from fleeing the starving areas. The famine also affected other
parts of the USSR. The death toll as a result of the famine was estimated from
five to ten million people. During this same time period, the Soviet Union
exported grain.
The Gulag Calamity
The location of Stalin’s
gulags recorded the lowest temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere.
Temperatures have been known to drop to minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit. The Kolyma
area was vast and located at the most northeasterly portion of Siberia. The
area happened to be cold, with notable wind, and barren with lots of ice and
snow. The cold weather was fierce, unyielding, and deadly during the winter
months and many lost their lives to exposure. The broad area of eastern Siberia
gained notoriety during the 1850s due to the discovery of gold which led to the
communist leaders’ determination to exploit the mineral wealth to build the
socialist economy of the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union faced difficult decisions.
If they allowed the west to mine the gold by selling mineral rights that would
limit up front profits and undermine their moral position. If they employed
large-scale mechanized mining, which would depend on the purchase of expensive
equipment, the capital resources of the government, which were limited, could
not afford such expenses.
Earlier the Soviet government faced the
same dilemma during the Baltic-White Sea canal. The solution ended up being a
large number of prisoners operating as a slave labor force. The venture was met
with success, so the Soviet government decided to use the same method at Kolyma
to mine gold, forced labor.
The plan was put into action and by
November 11 of 1931, the Central Committee of the Communist Party put forth
instructions with Stalin’s signature to a variety of Soviet organizations to
order the economic development of the Kolyma region. Shipping fleets had been
contacted as a means of transporting prisoners. On November 13 the Soviet Union
set forth a decree which initiated “Dal’stroi,” the organization placed in
charge of the gulags and the transporting of prisoners. “Dal’stroi” loosely stood
for “Far Northern Construction Trust.”
On November 14, 1931, the Politburo
appointed Eduard Petrovich Berzin as the head of the new organization. The
Politburo was the highest policy making authority in Russia like Congress in
the United States. He had a long record of accomplishments which predated
Stalin’s rise to power. Berzin had been considered an intellectual, studied art
in Berlin and often made appearances at Bolshevik intellectual circles. Berzin thwarted an attempt by British
Intelligence to overthrow Lenin by working as a double agent for the Cheka,
Lenin’s secret police. Berzin also had substantial experience running
industrial enterprises within the Gulag system. His reputation and skills made
him the perfect choice for the important position. Berzin began his work to
create an industrial foundation for the Kolyma Gulag.
Russia devised the Northeastern Corrective
Labor Camp system also known as the Sevvostlag. The main goal of this
organization involved managing the dozens of labor camps and providing workers
for Dal’stroi which allowed it to remain an industrial enterprise without a
link to forced labor. Berzin directly
reported directly to the Soviet Union’s Security Force and the head of the
Sevvostlag organization reported to Berzin.
Once the organizations were established,
Berzin began to set up the industrial infrastructure of the Kolyma Gulag. He
arrived at the Kolyma Gulag in February 1932 by traveling on the Okhotsk Sea by
way of the Arctic transport ship Sakhalin. A small number of prisoners traveled
with him, primarily trained engineers. They have been accused of ruining some
Soviet industrial activities. The charges may have been drummed up or they may
have been framed concerning the charges in order to fill the Dal’stroi quotas
for trained engineers (Bollinger, 2003).
By 1937 Berzin managed to create a massive
industrial company. Transporting efforts supported a strong connection between
Magadan and the major gold mining sites farther north along the Kolyma River.
Approximately 80,000 forced laborers worked for the Dal’strois empire. The
moral of the prisoners during the earlier years along with the large number of
laborers increased the rate of production.
The prisoners look upon the years prior to
1937 more fondly. While the conditions happened to be difficult, the mass
cruelty and murders of later years did not surface. Few prisoners died during
the years of 1932 to 1937. Their ten-year sentences often reduced to two to
three years. Their work days consisted of four to six hours during the winter
months and ten hours during the summer months and they were provided good food
and clothing. The good pay they were given allowed them to help their families
when they returned home with their money.
Everything changed drastically at the Kolyma
camps after 1937, a prominent year of the Great Terror. During the mid-year of
1937 Stalin ordered Berzin’s organization ended. Berzin found himself arrested
and ordered to Moscow for sentencing. He did not make it to Moscow before
facing execution, blamed for seditious behavior linked to Japan. The Russians
were quick to remember Russia’s embarrassing defeat to Japan. Claims of
sedition held true for many even if they were not associated with the truth.
Stalin’s purges led to the deaths of many people he felt they lacked loyalty
and many became political prisoners.
New recruits changed Berzin’s organization.
Karp Aleksandrovich Pavlov replaced Berzin as the head of Dal’stroi and Major
Stepan N. Garanin took over the Sevvostlag camp. Garanin created a cruel and
more deadly environment at the Kolyma camps. The death toll raised
substantially. At least a third of all prisoners died or were executed each year.
The Kolyma camp became a punishment camp for traitors and other undesirables. A
death camp was created at Serpantinka for the soul purpose of prisoner
elimination. The Kolyma camp became well-known as a camp comprised of dread and
death. It was a camp that people did not leave and were sent to die. They faced
exposure to extreme weather conditions, overwork, starvation and other forms of
cruel treatment (Bollinger, 2003).
The extreme hardships dealt on the
prisoners at the Kolyma camps negatively impacted industrial production.
Trained engineers reduced to hard labor led to the destruction of heavy
equipment, ruined by untrained operators. Serious disorganization reigned while
production sunk to new levels. The actions perpetrated by the Great Terror
brought more awareness concerning the conditions at Kolyma. The literary class
ended up spending time at the Dal’stroi camps. During the early times at the
labor camps, Stalin focused mainly on purging kulaks (affluent peasants and
rural merchants). In 1940, foreign prisoners from eastern Poland, prisoners of
war, became part of the unfortunate inmates.
The Nazi Germany invasion in June 1941 led
to the deterioration of the Kolyma camps. Many prisoners faced starvation and
others were hauled off to fight on the front lines during WWII. After WWII
ended, Kolyma ended up at its original level of activity. The Russian POWs
taken by Germany were released back to Russia. For some strange reason, Stalin
considered the Russian soldiers traitors and they ended up at gulags. A
continued inflow of political prisoners mainly from eastern Europe caused the
population to rise at the Kolyma camps during the 1940s and peaking before
Stalin’s death. Soon after Stalin’s death, the Dal’stroi system began the
process of being disassembled and large numbers of prisoners were released.
The Dal’stroi camps greatly contributed to
the economy of Russia during the 1930s and 1940s. The prisoners produced
agricultural goods, timber and coal but more importantly they mined gold and
other minerals from the frozen earth. The main reason for existence of Kolyma
involved gold. By the early 1940s, the prisoners mined almost two hundred
metric tons of gold each year which amounted to approximately 15 percent of the
world’s annual production. One million prisoners were transported to the camps
and about 373,000 ended up at Kolyma from 1932 to 1941 (Bollinger, 2003).
The gulag camps ended up providing the
Soviet Union with a serious boost concerning its economy. Predominantly kulaks
(wealthier peasants) filled the camps from the early stages of operation. The
early camps provided well for their inmates which included a proper diet,
clothing and pay until the Great Terror. The time when Stalin decided to not coddle
the prisoners. New leadership led to cruelty along with starvation, exposure
and overwork. The population at the camps sunk to new levels during WWII and
repopulated to its former level after the war. Soon after Stalin’s death, the
Dal’stroi camps +became a distant memory.
Shipping Tragedies
Prisoners faced a multitude of horrific
conditions while traveling to the Dal’stroi camps from severe emotional and
physical abuse, starvation and deadly shipwrecks. When the camps first opened,
Berzin faced difficulties concerning the transportation of prisoners. The
prisoners and supplies had to be transported over great distances. The rough
terrain and brutal climate did not permit much land travel. Air transport was
not readily available and as a result prisoners and supplies needed to arrive
by sea predominantly departing from the ports of Vladivostok, Nakhodka and
Vanino to Magadan. The Kolyma camps had to predominantly rely on sea-based
transportation. The required ships, built in American, Dutch and British
shipyards, moved a massive number of prisoners. Stalin’s slave ships became the
mainstay of the Kolyma transport system. The annual prisoner transport
shipments rose from forty thousand in 1937 to approximately double that number
by 1939 (Bollinger, 2003).
The reputation of the Kolyma camp involved
cruelty, harsh conditions and death especially after 1937, the year the Great
Terror began. A transfer to the Kolyma camp became equivalent to the German gas
chambers. The horribleness of the camp was overshadowed by the terrors of the
ships. Prisoners found the conditions aboard the ships unbearable and prayed to
arrive at the death camp post haste. The cramped accommodations caused a variety
of problems from death due to starvation and dehydration to a multitude of
diseases. Political prisoners on the ships faced being terrorized by common
criminals who were sent to the same destinations and the abuse may have been
encouraged by Gulag officials. Often the abuse included mass rape of women
prisoners. Men met beatings, often deadly. The transport ships served as
vehicles for intentional carnages.
“A typical slave ship was Dhzurma. Its
internal structure illustrates best how the human cargo was transported
northwards within its holds. A wooden structure had been erected around the
wall of its cargo holds, and comprised of four tiered bunks, with the floor
serving as the fifth. Each of the bunks was divided into sections to
accommodate five men in lying position. To take their places the prisoners had
to slide in legs first with their heads facing the passages to avoid
suffocation. If there were not enough places to accommodate prisoners, men had
to use passageway as they’re put up for a sea voyage lasting six to eleven days
(Bollinger, 2003).
“The sanitary arrangements consisted of two
50-gallon barrels, called ‘parashas,’ which were emptied periodically into the
sea. It was quite common for these barrels to spill, over, causing the inside
of the holds to smell with the odor of human waste. An outside latrine was also
available, but only few prisoners at a time were allowed to use it. Therefore,
the queues were always long and moved slowly. This outside arrangement was
fenced with bared wire to prevent prisoners from jumping into the sea,
especially when the ship was in Japanese territorial waters” (Bollinger, 2003, pgs.
47-48).
“During the entire voyage, which lasted a
week, no members of the guard or the ship’s crew ever entered the prisoners’
hold. They were afraid to, especially when a large number of murderers, and
bandits were being transported… None of them took any account of what went on
below decks. As a result, during all such voyages the criminals put across a
reign of terror. If they want the clothing of any of the counterevolutionaries,
they take it from him. If he offers any resistance, he is beaten up. The old
and weak are robbed of their bread. On every transport ship a number of
prisoners die as a result of such treatment…
“In 1944 several hundred young girls came
to Kolyma. They were so-called ikazniki, sent out here for unauthorized
absences from a war factory, or for some similar minor offense.. The crimianls,
who formed the greater part of the human freight aboard this ship, had an
absolutely free hand in the hold. They broke through the wall into the room
where the female prisoners were kept and raped all the women who took their
fancy. A few male prisoners who tried to protect the women were stabbed to
death… One of the criminals, who appropriated a woman whom the leader of the
band had marked for his own, had his eyes put out with a needle. When the ship
arrived in Magadan and the prisoners were driven out of the hold, fifteen were
missing; they had been murdered by the criminals during the voyage and the
guards had not lifted a finger,” Bollinger, 2003, pg. 50).
The conditions on the ships were deplorable.
The conditions the prisoners faced due to the hazards of dangerous seas added
to their hardships. They had to travel through storm-tossed and ice-filled
seas. The massive waves often buried the prisoners. The ice-filled seas crushed
hulls, held ships hostage and caused collisions. The fire aboard ship happened
often. They were often out in the middle of Okhotsk Sea and other desolated
areas, the chance of rescue was slim.
The most catastrophic event that happened
to prisoners while aboard a ship occurred on the Dzhurma, where 12,000
prisoners did not make it to land. “One of the early – and the most tragic – of
the sailings to the Kolyma estuary as that of the steamer Dzhurma, a
large ocean liner especially equipped for shipment of Dalstroy prisoners,
sailed from Vladivostok in the summer of 1933 on its maiden voyage to Ambar
hik… and was caught in pack ice in the western part of the Sea of Chukotsk,
near Wrangel Island. We are not likely ever to learn what went on in the ship during
that terrible Artic winter, how the doomed prisoners in its hold struggled for
life, and how they died. The fully authenticated fact is that the Dzhurma, when it finally arrived in
Ambarchik, in the summer of 1934, did not land a single prisoner. It is also
further reported that on their return to Vladivostok nearly half of the crew of
the Dzhurma had to be
treated for mental disorders… The plae where the 104 members of the Chelynskin
party were waiting for deliverance was not far (no more than 200 miles)
from the wintering place of the Dzhurma and its 12,000 prisoners doomed
to death from cold and starvation. Moscow feared that in the course of saving
the heroes of the Chelyuskin American fliers might by accident uncover the
terrible secret of the Dzhurma martyrs” (Bollinger, 2003, pg. 66).
The conditions on the ships were horrendous
and what waited for them at the Kolyma camps was not much better. The prisoners
met over work conditions, starvation, abuse in many forms after Stalin
inflicted the Great Terror. If his goal was to eliminate many people who went
against his beliefs, he managed to accomplish that goal by the transporting of
prisoners and the gulags.
A Devils’ Pact
Stalin’s sworn enemy, Hitler, signed a joint
peace pact swearing off violence between the two countries, Russia and Germany.
Stalin knew it was inevitable concerning an attack by the German military. On
August 23, 1939, the two dictators signed the “Nazi-Soviet Pact” or
“Hitler-Stalin Pact,” a peace pact that stated there would be no violence
inflicted by either party. The dictators did not trust each other while the
pact was being signed and after it was signed. It appeared they came together
for a common cause. The pact had been linked to starting WWII which isolated
Poland between its two malicious neighbors.
The pact added confusion to the Western
world about how to stop Hitler in his tracks before he caused more damage and
questioned what was going on between the two dictators. They viewed the phony
war suspiciously between the two dictators while Poland was invaded and divided
between Berlin and Moscow. Stalin went on to occupy some of the Baltic states
and the Romanian province of Bessarabia. Finland was invaded by the Russian
army. Hitler invaded Scandinavia and
then France along with some of the other Low Countries such as Luxembourg,
Belgium and the Netherlands. Stalin congratulated Hitler for his malicious efforts.
The Nazis and Soviets traded secrets, blueprints, technology and materials to fine
tune each other’s war machines. Countries such as the United States watched
with a careful eye. It appeared the two countries were in it together to defeat
the democratic world. France and Britain toyed with a plan to attack the Soviet
Union in 1940. A multitude of countries felt ill at ease while they tried to
get to the bottom of the dictators’ plans.
Other countries believed Stalin wanted to
bide his time with the pact while he prepared his defenses against a preeminent
attack by Hitler. Another goal may have been to exploit Hitler’s hostility to
lead to the fall of the West and the capitalists’ regime. He despised
capitalism.
The Nazis had little moral compass left
after launching the Holocaust. The Soviets followed suit by incredibly
horrendous acts of persecution, torture and murder such as the 22,000 Polish
Army officers and officials massacred in Katyn by Soviet Russia in 1940. Both
Stalin and Hitler politically cleansed those under their command. However, much
to the world’s dismay, Hitler’s crimes have been well-known while Stalin’s
scarcely made front page news.
The Pact had a long-lasting effect on many
countries in Europe. The pact contained approximately 280 words, seven short
paragraphs and only lasted 22 months. As a result of the pact, boundaries of
specific countries were altered by German and Soviet ministers. Horrible
memories of the Soviet and German occupation have fueled resistance movements. The
protests in the Baltic states on the fiftieth anniversary of the pact’s signing
in 1989 fueled the process of the USSR’s termination. At the time of the pact’s
existence many countries watched carefully to see what the two malevolent dictators
had in store for the rest of the world (Moorhouse, 2014).
World War II
WWII played out differently for Stalin. He
started his reign of terror by occupying countries near Russia and then sat waiting
for Hitler’s first move. He thought he had more time before Germany attacked
Russia because of the peace pact and did not take heed to warnings given to him
by his central intelligence agents. The Red Army, ill prepared for Germany’s
attack in June of 1941, lost many soldiers. Stalin realized he was not prepared
to lead an army and had to quickly line up generals and other military
officials. During one of his purges, he had many of the more experienced
generals and other military officials murdered at an earlier date. When the
Russian military operated at full capacity the German military faced a fierce opponent.
The German forces weren't prepared for the
long, cold winters and were unable to maintain supplies. The tenacity of the
Russian people made the German's utilize too many resources which helped the
Allied Forces in other areas such as Western Europe. Stalin gave the Russian
troops a warning that they were not to surrender under any circumstances and if
they did they would be treated as traitors and end up at the gulags. Stalin
practiced the “scorched earth” policy of destroying the food supply in certain
areas before the Germans could seize them. This move caused unimaginable
starvation and anguish for the civilian population who was left behind. The
Russians ended up winning the war against Germany (DeJonge, 1986).
Stalin’s End of Life and Legacy
On March 1, 1953, after Stalin
enjoyed a dinner with an interior minister and future premiers, he collapsed in
his room due to a stroke. His right side was paralyzed. The cause of death was
noted as a cerebral hemorrhage. His body was laid to rest in Lenin’s Mausoleum
until October 1, 1961. His body was removed from the Mausoleum and buried near
the Kremlin walls as a result of the de-Stalinization process.
The Soviet Union was
transformed from an agricultural country to a nuclear superpower under Stalin’s
rule at a high cost of human life. The industrialization in Russia ended up
being moderately successful. The United States added to their progress by the
supplies provided under the Lend Lease Plan which aided in the country to
defend itself against the Axis invasion in WWII. Stalin ended up responsible
for the initial military disasters and massive human casualties during WWII.
Stalin eliminated many of Russia’s military officers during his purges,
especially the senior ones. He also rejected intelligence warnings of the
German attack.
Stalin’s strong negotiation skills along
with his political, social and economic polices and his intelligence network
led the USSR to becoming a superpower. The ruthlessness of his leadership was condemned
by many people in Russia and the country experienced a denunciation of
Stalinism. His successors, however, continued to follow Stalin’s basic
principles in which the political control of the Communist Party completely
ruled over the country’s economy and suppressed dissent (DeJonge, 1986).
