en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalin#Death
Soviet Unio n While the Soviet Union achieved immense economic growth under his ten ure, his policies resulted in millions of deaths. Soon after his death, his successors in the leadership of the Soviet Union repudiated his exce sses.
Joseph, nicknamed "Soso", was, effectively, an only child. Soso was often severely beaten by his f ather, usually while he was drunk; beatings were an accepted way of "tea ching lessons" to children.
Russian Orthodox institution which he attended from 1894 onward. In addition to the small stipend from the scholarship he wa s also paid for singing in the choir. Although his mother desired (even after he was leader of the Soviet Union) that he be a priest, attending a seminary was not because of any religious vocation but because it was one of the few educational opportunities available as the Czarist govern ment was wary of establishing a university in Georgia.
His only significant contribution to the development of Marxist theory at this time was a treatise written while briefly exiled in Vienna, Marxis m and the national question. It presents an orthodox Marxist position on this important debate; see Lenin's article On the right of nations to s elf-determination for comparison.
edit Marriage and Family Stalin's first wife was Ekaterina Svanidze, to whom he was married for ju st three years until her death in 1907. At her funeral, Stalin said that any warm feelings he had for people died with her, for only she could m elt his heart. With her he had a son, Yakov, with whom he did not get al ong in later years.
They offered to exchange him for a German officer of higher rank, but Stalin turned the offer down, and Yakov is said to have died r unning into an electric fence in the camp where he was being held.
Vassili rose through the ranks of the Soviet Air Force , but died an alcoholic in 1962. Stalin doted on his daughter, but she e ventually adopted the name Alliluyeva and defected from the Soviet Union in 1967.
Yuri Davydov told NTV that his father had told him of his lineage, but, because the campaign again st Stalin's cult of personality was in full swing at the time, he was to ld to keep quiet.
edit Rise to power Stalin was won over to Lenin's specific position on World War I following the latter's return from exile in April. In April, Stalin earned electi on to the Central Committee with the third highest vote total in the par ty. He served as an editor of Pravda and then earned a position leading a subcommittee of the Central Committee.
Collectivisation also meant a drastic drop in living standards for many peasants (but not all; the poorest peasants actually saw their living standards increase), and it faced widespread and often violent resistance among the peasantry. In the first years of collectivisation, agricultural production actually dropped.
labour camps or deported to remote areas of the country. It should be noted, however, that the term "kulak" soon drifted away from its original meaning and c ame to describe anyone who opposed collectivisation, which included many poor peasants.
Nikolai Yakoviev ich Marr, who argued that language is a class construction and that lang uage structure is determined by the economic structure of society. Stali n, who had previously written about language policy as People's Commissa r for Nationalities, felt he grasped enough of the underlying issues to coherently oppose this simplistic Marxist formalism, ending Marr's ideol ogical dominance over Soviet linguistics.
Although there are no great theoretical contribution s or insights that have come from it, neither are there any apparent err ors in Stalin's understanding of linguistics, and his influence arguably relieved Soviet linguistics from the sort of ideologically driven theor y that dominated genetics.
education was free and also dramatically expanded, with many more Soviet citizens learning to read and write, and higher education expanded. The generation that grew up un der Stalin also saw a major expansion in job opportunities, especially f or women.
The degree of Stalin's personal involvement in both the general and the s pecific developments has been assessed variously. His name, however, was constantly invoked during his reign in discussions of culture as in jus t about everything else; Stalin's occasional beneficence showed itself in strange ways.
Mikhail Bulgakov was driven to poverty and despair, yet, after a personal appeal to Stalin, was allowed to keep working. His play "The D ays of the Turbins", with its sympathetic treatment of an anti-Bolshevik family caught in the Civil War, was finally staged, apparently also on Stalin's intervention, and began a decades-long uninterrupted run at the Moscow Arts Theatre.
An amusin g anecdote has it that the Moskva Hotel in Moscow was built with mismatc hing side-wings because Stalin had signed off both of the two proposals submitted.
Continuous persecution in the 1930s resulted in near-extinction: by 1939 active parishes numbered in the low hundreds (down from 54,000 in 1917), many churches had been levelled, and tens of thousands of priests , monks, and nuns were dead or imprisoned. During WWII, however, the Chu rch was allowed a partial revival, as a patriotic organisation: thousand s of parishes were reactivated until a further round of suppression in K hrushchev's time.
state terrorism (deportations and political purges) are taken into account, Stalin and his colleagues were directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of millions. How many millions died under Stalin is greatly disputed.
Russian governments, most estimate s put the figure between 8 and 20 million. Comparison of the 1926-39 cen sus results suggests 5-10 million deaths in excess of what would be norm al in the period, mostly through famine in 1931-34. The 1926 census show s the population of the Soviet Union at 147 million while the 1939 censu s at 162 million. A quote popularly attributed to Stalin is "The death of one man is a trag edy.
Central Europe into the two powers' respective spheres of influence. The exact motivations behind t his pact are disputed, but it appears that neither side expected it to l ast very long.
Stalin had not expected thisat the very least, he had not expected an invasion to come so soonand the Sov iet Union was largely unprepared for this invasion. Until the last momen t, Stalin had sought to avoid any obvious defensive preparation which mi ght provoke German attack, in the hope of buying time to modernise and s trengthen his military forces. Even after the attack commenced Stalin ap peared unwilling to accept the fact and, according to some historians, w as too stunned to react appropriately for a number of days.
Victor Suvorov asserts that Stalin had be en preparing an invasion of Germany while neglecting preparations for de fensive warfare, which left Soviet forces vulnerable despite their heavy concentration near the border.
Red Army's expe rienced generals had a severely debilitating effect on the ability of th e USSR to organise defenses. Hitler's experts had expected eight weeks o f war, and early indications evidenced their prescience.
He claimed that although 350,00 0 troops had been killed by German attacks, the Germans had lost 45 mil lion soldiers (a preposterous over-estimate) and that Soviet victory was near.
Georgy Zhukov to orchestrate t he decisive Nazi defeat at Stalingrad. Stalin's shortcomings as strategist are frequently noted regarding massiv e Soviet loss of life and early Soviet defeats.
Additionally, Stalin was well aware that other European armies had utterly disintegrated when faced with Nazi military efficacy and responded effectively by subjecting his army to galvanizing terror and unrevolutionary patriotism.
In the war's opening stages, the retreating Red Army also sought to deny resources to the enemy through a scorched earth policy of destroying the infrastructure and food supplies of areas before the Germans could seiz e them. Unfortunately, this, along with abuse by German troops, caused i nconceivable starvation and suffering among the civilian population that were left behind. The Soviets bore the brunt of civilian...
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