He began his career in 1899 as a propagandist for the social democratic party. He was arrested, however in 1902 and put into prison. He escaped in 1904 from the Siberian prison and married.
In the years following, Stalin was more of a follower than a leader. ‘His contribution was practical, not theoretical’ (Microsoft Encarta 1995).
In 1907, Stalin helped organize a bank holdup to ‘raise funds’ for the Bolsheviks. Lenin promoted him in 1912 to the Bolsheviks central committee.
He then became editor of the party newspaper Pravda. During the course of 1917, Stalin made most of the party decisions, before Lenin returned from exile in April of that year. In the revolution of November 1917, Stalin was not seen as a great revolutionary, but more of a ‘grey blur’. (Microsoft Encarta 1995)
After Lenin’s death in 1924, a trio of communists comprising Stalin, Zinovyev and Kamenev lead the country. However, Stalin ousted these ‘rivals’ by clever manipulation and by his 50th birthday in 1929, Stalin was the sole dictator in communist Russia.
One of Stalin’s first schemes when he came to power was the controversial collectivization program where, in an attempt to increase agricultural production, millions of peasants were uprooted and moved cross-country.
Stalin’s name will also live in infamy for the execution of millions of his ‘enemies’. Political opposition, people who he saw as a threat and others who didn’t agree with ‘Stalinism’ either vanished or were sent to labour camps in the far reaches of the USSR. His political purges also deprived Russia of nearly all of her army generals in the late 1930’s and go a long way to explaining Russia’s terrible start to world war two, when nazi armies ploughed hundreds of miles into Soviet territory.
Stalin is seen as an important figure, however because he was able to rally Russia in it’s darkest hour, and despite terrible losses, managed to save her from Hitler’s armies. Even during the Nazi invasion in 1941, Stalin was seen making a public speech in Red Square while the German armies were only miles from Moscow. This showed to the Russian people that he was a firm leader, and where as others may have fled in worry of capture, he stayed right where he was.
Stalin also managed to dramatically increase Russia’s industrial output in his series of five-year plans, although a lot of the gains and advancement in industrial infrastructure made before the war had been destroyed by fighting with the invading German army.
The USSR had a ‘temporary’ wartime alliance with Britain and the US when fighting Germany, but when Hitler had been defeated, the alliance turned sour. The establishment of communism in virtually all eastern European countries coined the phrase ‘Iron Curtain’ and made the west suspicious of Stalin’s aims.
Stalin’s view towards the western powers had always been slightly frosty, and postwar east-west relations deteriorated rapidly, in many people’s view, due to Stalin’s aggressive and hostile foreign policy. He was suspicious of many of the western states, especially the US and the UK. He saw capitalism as evil and aggressive. Stalin played his part in the increasing of tensions in Europe between capitalist west and communist east. His blockade of Berlin in 1948 proved he was a serious leader to deal with and the US and USSR were on the brink of war. ‘His single-minded determination to prevent yet another devastating assault on the USSR from the West had much to do with the growth of the cold war’ (Microsoft Encarta 1995)
