Now this is the post-newsletter/podcast to what I had wrote about last week: Who was Vladimir Lenin?. Vladimir Lenin had built the foundation of what was known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR); Russia’s marxist government for most of the 20th century. It felt important to create this next newsletter/podcast because Lenin died 2 years after the creation of the USSR because his health had been compromised so he wasn’t alive to witness much of it. Nonetheless Lenin’s successor Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was healthy and able to take over. Now no background information is necessary for Stalin besides one part that I felt necessary telling due to me leaving it out in the last newlsetter. It was not arbitrary that Stalin had become the successor of Lenin. Stalin had actually joined the Bolshevik Party when it was growing and that is where he had met Lenin.
Stalin’s rise to leader of the USSR
Lenin’s health being compromised from his strokes was the casual reason for a new leader. Lenin was unable to speak and therefore govern. Eventually Stalin had stepped up and played that role. He had become secretary general in 1922. During this time period Stalin was able to use his power as general secretary to basically elect his ‘tribe’ to govern alongside him. Now in ‘24 Lenin had passed away which had helped pave the way for Stalin to start using his allies and his position in government to become leader. He had done so successfully before the end of the decade and became dictator of the USSR in 1929.
What happened with Stalin as dictator?
Now that Stalin was in control he had began looking to indoctrinate marxism at large across Russia. This was akin to what Mao Zedong had done to China when he became chairman of the CCP (see here: Who was Mao Zedong?). Stalin was eager to be an industrial powerhouse and he planned on doing so through his new economic policies. Now with the marxist economic policies, Stalin had forced collectivized agriculture. Once again the government controlled all of the farms. We saw this Play out with Lenin, Mao, and Now Stalin. The irony of it all is the logic. It is wildly incoherent and never makes sense. If you do the same thing twice and expect a different outcome you’re a halfwit. I suppose Stalin had expected a different outcome by doing the exact same thing as Lenin and Mao (regardless of Mao doing this after him). However, it didn't happen.
So what happened? After Stalin instituted the Five Year Plan (economic policy), the country had (to a degree) increased output and investments quite rapidly. Their industrial infrastructure was being built at a pace never seen before and it had happened in a short time span. Even better for Stalin he was able to laugh at the capitalists in the west (United States) because they were going through a Great Depression at the time (1933). As far as Stalin was concerned he was winning the ideological war (Marxism versus Capitalism). So life in Russia was exceptional, right?… Not so much. Attached to it was a price. A price of lives due to a lack of ethical practice. First the government took control of the farms and forced labor. They forced collectivization. This left farmers disgruntled and bitter. Some farmers refused to put up with it which ultimately had consequences. Any farmer not allowing Stalin and the USSR to steal their property and force them to work got exiled or shot. And once again, there was a famine that killed millions.
Ukrainian Famine
Under Stalin’s dictatorship in 1933, his Five Year Plan had been the causal reason for a famine that swept across Ukraine. It was a disaster. A witness, who at the time of this famine happening, was only just a little boy living with his family recounts what he witnessed. He says “It was terrible... I was right there. Some of the starving were in such a bad way that they had begun to stink already. Their feet would swell up; Their wounds would open and fester... And would drop, and then another, and so on it went”. It was truly horrific. They had gotten mostly all of their belongings taken from them, including their house (which applied to everyone else not just him and his family). They were left with little to no land, no belongings, and no food. A nightmare come to life. Estimates suggest ~3.9 - 4.5 million Ukrainians dead due to Stalins failed marxist economic policies. The deaths were mostly famine and the rest shot because they opposed Stalins plans and wouldn’t relinquish their farms. It was clear that this wasn’t an accident but rather man made. Ideologically made. As of today the Russian government in power unfortunately denies it being man/ideologically made. They deny it it was a genocide. The 370-56 vote by Russian parliament (2008) decided that the famine in the ‘30s was not genocide. However, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who was a prisoner of the Gulag in 1945 and was alive to witness the famine, and the U.S. congress as of (2017-2018) both confirm that it was genocide. The discrepancy between the two countries is futile because it is clear. It’s not subjective to say it was genocide, it merely was. To deny it is to deny the existence of the Ukrainians and many others who died at the hand of Stalin.
The Gulag
These are both lengthy, however to prevent this newsletter turning into a 2 hour read I’ve decided to decompress it slightly and leave bits and pieces out. Now after the famine caused by Stalins marxist policies, it leads us to the other plans he had in mind. One of them were to exacerbate the Gulag. As referenced earlier, a man by the name of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a prisoner of the Gulag. The Gulag as defined per Oxford languages is “a system of labor camps maintained in the Soviet Union from 1930 to 1955 in which many people died”. The Gulag had essentially been a forced labor camp that was run by a secret soviet police force who were terrifying. Not only that but Stalin had citizens spy on one another as well. With the Gulag and secret soviet police alongside mass spying among citizens, Stalin had been able to surveillance most of Russia. However Stalin didn’t create the Gulag. The Gulag was created by Lenin. However, the Gulag wasn't only for criminals and those who had been spied on. After Lenin had died and Stalin had taken over he decided to use it to imprison his political opposition and those who disagree with marxism as a sound ideology. There were allegedly 18 million prisoners in the Gulag throughout the duration of Stalin’s rule (1929 - ‘53). Not only did Stalin hold millions of prisoners, some of which had died, but he also forced labor upon them in awful working conditions. Prisoners would allegedly work 14 hour days and die from starvation and executions. If you had any political ties to anyone who even opposed Stalin to the smallest degree you became a ‘political prisoner’. It didn’t only stop with politics that is. The list of who could be put in the Gulag had no shortage. Even women and children were put in the gulag and faced it’s harsh conditions. It wasn’t until 1953 when Stalin died that the gulags began to weaken and millions were released within days.
The Great Purge
Now the Great Purge was formulated by Stalin and it was ruthless. Stalin started operation “ The Great purge” which was also known as the “Great Terror”. It was a purge of anyone who opposed Stalin politically. More importantly it was those who opposed Stalin politically in the communist party. His own political party. Not only that but it also included anyone he felt the urge to eliminate due to them being a potential threat. Estimates project upwards to 750,000 people dead from the great purge and projections of over one million who got sent to the gulag. The Great Purge lasted from 1936-1938, however, Stalin saw those who affiliated with the Bolshevik Party as threats to the USSR. Which is why many claim it wasn’t over until Stalin killed Leon Trotsky who was an ally of Lenin and played a big role in the creation of the Bolshevik party (wrote about that here: Who was Vladimir Lenin?). Now during this great purge of political opposition, history wasn’t the only thing subject to being altered either. Stalin tried ‘erasing’ people too. He had professionals re-touch photos that had his political opposition in them, whom he had been purging during this time period. For example, Nikolai Yezhov was a secret Soviet police officer. He worked directly under Stalin. He helped Stalin round up those who were threats or disloyal to torture and murder them. Unfortunately for Yezhov he too ended up being in that category and was tried for disloyalty and was later executed. Now that he was labeled a ‘traitor’ and disloyal, Stalin went to work to ‘erase’ history, which meant erasing Yezhov. Stalin had a photo with Yezhov, the alleged traitor, before he was deemed disloyal. So what did he do? He changed it. You can see here:
The Original image with Stalin and Yezhov. Now after Yezhov was deemed disloyal this same photo now looked like this:
The image above is the doctored photo that Stalin had began to use after Yezhov was considered disloyal. Yezhov wasn’t the only person to be erased from history either. There were many others that Stalin proclaimed to be ‘disloyal’ who he later deemed nonexistent just like Yezhov. One photo at a time. They vanished. All of what Stalin had done is akin to what’s happening in real time today in North Korea. The dictator Kim Jong-un of North Korea too has doctored photos. Just like his father Kim Jong-il. They both have ‘photoshopped’ history as we know it. Fortunately enough there are countries that you may reside in that don’t have censorship to the degree they do in North Korea or did during Stalin’s reign so you can know the truth.
Now after The Great Purge, WWII (1939-’45) had begun. It started with Stalin being gullible enough to believe in Adolf Hitler when he said he wouldn’t wage war against Russia. This was a mistake on behalf of Stalin for believing Hitler because that is exactly what had happened. Nonetheless, the entire war ended with Germany falling and Hitler committing suicide. Russia and other allied forces such as Britain and the U.S. accepted victory as Nazi Germany was no more. Now after WWII Russia had been trying to spread it’s political dogma elsewhere. It ended up with Stalin giving permission to the communist leader of North Korea to invade South Korea which was part in parcel why the Korean War began. The Korean War lasted from 1950-‘53, the same year Stalin had died.
Stalins Legacy
Now it may not be clear, however, Stalin was merely a byproduct of Lenin as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn meticulously stated it in his Nobel prize winning literature The Gulag Archipelago. Stalin has gone down in history as one of the most iniquitous and malevolent leaders to ever exist in all of history. It’s estimated that Stalin has murdered upwards of 9+ million people. Other estimates even go as high as 20 million. Regardless, the sheer fact that once again these are mere estimates show the atrocities that had occurred under the Stalinist era. To stress the point even more that Stalin was a monster, I find these stories to be most telling.
Up until 1932 Stalin had a wife, Nadezhda Alluyeva, who had killed herself due to Stalins abuse. However, her altered the report and made sure the cause of death reported “death due to appendicitis”. Furthermore, during WWII Stalin had his son, Yakov, fight in the war as a member of the Red Army. He had been captured by the Germans who the later proposed a deal to Stalin. They offered a prisoner swap, prisoner for prisoner. However, Stalin being as paranoid as he was, he believed his son voluntarily surrendered and therefore let him to go to a concentration camp where he later died in '43.
The utter brutality Stalin showed was just unbearable. I tell the story above because it speaks volumes to how malevolent and heartless Stalin was. He was the causal reason for his wife’s death and voluntarily let his son be over-worked and starved to death in a German concentration camp. It was appalling. Stalin had no remorse for his family members and it showed. He censored virtually everything throughout Russia as he controlled the soviet media. He murdered or imprisoned anyone who politically opposed him. And he starved millions of people and didn’t stop. Stalin stopped at nothing to push his political dogma. All of these being reasons to keep a constant vigilance of it. All being reasons as to why Stalin was a monster.
(Extra)
In more recent times, there had actually been a film created about the Ukrainian famine in 2019. It will provide more of a visual for you to see the true horrors of what had actually happened. If you’re interested the movie is called MR. JONES (trailer). It’s based on a true story of a man named Gareth Jones (a reporter) who had exposed the terrible operations Stalin had going on in Ukraine by starving the citizens and causing the famine with the marxist doctrine.
