Joseph Stalin | Moscow | Russia
Soviet politician,
leader of the USSR, generalissimo of the Soviet Union, from 15 years
old propagandizing the ideas of Marxists. After the death of Lenin,
he took a leading position in the country. He built industrialization
and collectivization to build the economy, but as a result of the
Stalinist five-year plans, waves of crop failures, mass deaths from
starvation, religious persecution, political exile in the camps and
executions took place throughout the country.
In 1937-1938, the
Great Terror took place in the Soviet Union, during which 1.34
million people were convicted and more than 680 thousand people were
executed. It is known about the so-called "Stalin's death
lists", which indicate that Stalin personally authorized the
conviction of 43,768 people - almost all were shot. Mass repression
was the main form of government and society in the Stalin era. Many
peoples were deported during his reign.
Until Hitler's
attack, the Soviet Union collaborated with Nazi Germany. In the
spring of 1940, more than 21 thousand Polish prisoners were shot in
Katyn.
Stalin had more
political power than any other figure in history. He was not only a
symbol of dictatorship, but also made fundamental decisions, being
the initiator of any government measures at that time. Stalin was
inherent in personal anti-Semitism, about which his subordinates and
his relatives spoke. He created a powerful cult of self, using
corrections in biographies, the destruction of witnesses, rewriting
of history and textbooks, interventions in science, art and culture.
The first secretary
of the CPSU Central Committee, N. S. Khrushchev, at the XX CPSU
Congress in his report “On the personality cult and its
consequences”, said that Stalin “moved from the position of
ideological struggle to the path of administrative suppression, to
the path of mass repression, to the path of terror. He acted wider
and more persistently through punitive bodies, often violating all
existing moral standards and Soviet laws. ”
After these words of
Khrushchev, the process of de-Stalinization began in the USSR. The
first monument to be demolished was the monument to Stalin in
Tbilisi, then slowly the monuments were transferred from city centers
to the outskirts. In 1961, the body of Stalin was taken out of the
Mausoleum and buried. Stalingrad was renamed Volgograd.
However, from the
2010s, monuments to Stalin began to be erected in Georgia and Russia.
Two of them are in Moscow.
