Is Stalin a Man or a Monster?

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History Coursework; Is Stalin a Man or a Monster?

Study Sources G and H;

•Do you trust Khrushchev’s assessments of Stalin? Use your knowledge of Stalin to explain your answer.

Source’s G and H are both sections taken out of one of Khrushchev’s speeches in 1956. The two sources, however, portray two different impressions of Stalin. For this question I am going to combine my own knowledge with background sources/ other sources to conclude if I trust Khrushchev’s assessment of Stalin.

Khrushchev:

After the Russian Revolution had ousted the Czar, Khrushchev joined the Bolshevik forces of the Red Army in the Russian civil war, serving as a political commissar. He was a dedicated communist. Khrushchev's rise to power coincided with one of the darkest periods in Soviet history: the Great Terror. During the 1930s, Stalin began a series of bloody purges to consolidate his power. The terror spread throughout the Soviet Union, and Khrushchev was part of it.

By the time Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Khrushchev was in the front line heading the communist party. He saw the devastation of war first-hand as the Germans routed the Red Army, then again as the Soviets turned back the Nazi advance.

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After the war, Khrushchev was called to Moscow, where he soon became one of Stalin's top advisers. When Stalin died in 1953, Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin won a power struggle against Stalin's successor, Georgi Malenkov, and secret police chief Lavrenti Beria. Beria was executed, and Malenkov was forced to resign. Bulganin became premier, but Khrushchev, in charge of the Communist Party, soon became the dominant figure. Khrushchev's leadership marked a crucial transition for the Soviet Union. From the beginning, Khrushchev set out to make the Soviet system more effective by curbing Stalin's worst excesses.

Both of the sources that ...

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