Title: Known As:

Author(s): Source: Document Type: Full Text:

Stalin's grisly legacy Djugashvili, Iosif Visarionovich; Dzhugashvili, Iosif Vissarionovich; Dzhugashvili, Joseph Vissarionovich; Stalin, Joseph Soviet Dictator ( 1879 - 1953 ) Fred Bratman Scholastic Update. 123.7 (Dec. 7, 1990): p18. From General OneFile. Biography

For decades Joseph Stalin ruled with an iron fist. His ghost still haunts the Soviets. In July 1988, workers digging a trench for a gas pipeline through the forest near the Soviet city of Minsk unearthed a grisly find: thousands of human skulls and bones more than 40 years old. Each of the skulls had been shattered by bullets fired at close range. Estimates of the number of men, women, and children buried there range from 30,000 to more than 200,000. A few months later, another mass grave was discovered near the city of Kirov. This secret burial site held the remains of some 80,000 people. KILLING FIELDS Since 1988, similar killing fields have been discovered throughout the Soviet Union. Yet these dead represent only a small fraction of the 15 million people estimated to have been killed by former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. From 1924 to 1953, Stalin ruled the Soviet Union with an iron fist. During those years, Stalin transformed the Soviet Union from a backward, poverty-stricken nation into a powerful, modem industrial state. But the human cost of this achievement is nearly incalculable. In addition to those shot by Stalin's secret police-like the people buried in Minsk and Kirov-millions more perished from starvation brought on by Stalin's extremist economic policies. And an entire generation of Soviet writers, artists, and politicians disappeared into prison camps, called Gulags," never to be heard from again. For decades, the Soviet people learned little about Stalin's crimes. But now, with President Mikhail Gorbachev's approval, the Soviet Union is finally confronting the horrors of its past-in the hopes of preventing them from ever occurring again. Who was Stalin and why does his ghost still haunt the Soviet people? How did he come to power? What terrible price did the Soviets pay because of his ruthless rule-and why did they allow it to happen? "MAN OF STEEL" Joseph Stalin was born in the province of Georgia in 1879, the son of an alcoholic, unsuccessful shoemaker and a maid. He was given the name Joseph Vissarionovich Djugashvili (vee-sahree-YO-no-vitch jyu-gash-VEE-lee), but to bolster his political image he later changed it to Stalin, which in Russian means " man of steel. " The Russia of Stalin's youth was desperately poor. For centuries, the country had been ruled by a succession of absolute monarchs called Czars. The Czars' secret police crushed all dissent, leaving Russia's workers and peasants-the overwhelming majority of the country with no political voice. As a teenager, Stalin studied for the priesthood in the Georgian Orthodox Church. But like thousands of other restless Russian youths, he soon was attracted to the ideas of Karl Marx, a fiery German philosopher, who urged Europe's oppressed workers to rise up and overthrow their rulers through "Communist" revolution. EXILED TO SIBERIA Stalin's radical politics led to his expulsion from the seminary in 1899. He then plunged into revolutionary activity, organizing workers and strikes throughout Georgia. Stalin soon became a wanted man, hunted by the Czar's secret police. He went underground to avoid arrest, but the police finally caught up with him. He was exiled to Siberia-a cold, forbidding region in the far north of the country.

Two years later, in 1904, Stalin escaped-and for the first time met Vladimir 1. Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik Party, a revolutionary Communist organization that was battling to overthrow Czar Nicholas II. The two men couldn't have been more different. Lenin Was austere and intellectual. Stalin was coarse and uneducated. But the two formed a partnership, and Stalin quickly was promoted to the party's Central Committee. In- March 1917, the future of Russia took a dramatic and decisive turn. Mass riots and strikes over food shortages forced Czar Nicholas 11 to give up the throne. But most of the Bolshevik leadership were in exile thousands of miles from Moscow. Lenin was in Zurich, Switzerland. Stalin was again in Siberia. They all raced home. At first, the Bolsheviks supported the new provisional government, made up of liberal democrats and rival Marxists who believed in a slower pace of reform. But by October 1917, support for the government was cracking. The Bolsheviks pushed for more radical change and won the support of most of the workers. After a bloody 10-day uprising, the Bolsheviks seized power. Lenin became the leader of the new Communist state-the Soviet Union. Still, the Soviet Union's back was against the wall. Several of its foreign neighbors invaded, and forces still loyal to the Czar mounted a counterrevolution. From 1918 to 1920, civil war raged. But finally, the Bolsheviks gained a secure grip on power. By 1922, Stalin was plotting his rise to power. He was appointed General Secretary of the party, on the surface a dull administrative job, but one which he shrewdly turned into the most powerful job in the country. He decided appointments within the party, winning him the loyalty of new members. Lenin, now slowly dying from a brain tumor, became aware of Stalin's scheming and wrote a note urging his party colleagues to remove the "rude and abusive" Stalin from his party post. But after Lenin's death in 1924 the note was ignored, as Stalin promised to be less autocratic. BENT ON DICTATORSHIP However, Stalin soon turned against his rivals and critics, most notably Leon Trotsky, a leading Bolshevik who had warned that Stalin was bent on becoming a dictator. By 1929, Trotsky was forced to flee the Soviet Union. (Eleven years later, Trotsky was murdered in Mexico by assassins, carrying out Stalin's orders.) In 1928, Stalin embarked on a crash program to modernize the Soviet Union by moving from an economy based on agriculture to one based on heavy industry. "We are 50 or 100 years behind the advanced countries," Stalin declared. "We must make this up in 10 years. Either we do it or our enemies will crush us." Stalin's next step was to forcefully end private fanning. He insisted that state-run collective farms would prove more efficient. Farmers had to give up their land and livestock. Those who resisted were deported or shot. In protest, farmers destroyed about half of Russia's livestock and grain rather than be forced onto collective farms. That, along with the government's oppressive agricultural policies, created a manmade famine in which millions died. "GREAT PURGES" By the mid-1930s, even some of Stalin's former supporters in the Communist Party began to question his policies. Stalin's response was to launch the "Great Purges"- a series of "show trials" in which thousands of leading Bolsheviks, military commanders, and intellectuals were charged with treason. By the time the purges ended, nearly all of Lenin's old comrades had been executed. Now Stalin, and Stalin alone, became the embodiment of the party and the revolution. A giant personality cult was built around him. His picture appeared in every factory, home, and school. Meanwhile, war clouds were gathering in Europe. Nazi Germany had already invaded Austria and Czechoslovakia. In August 1939, just weeks before the formal outbreak of World War II, Stalin signed a "peace pact" with German dictator Adolf Hitler.

COMPLETELY UNPREPARED But in June 1941, Hitler launched a massive invasion of the Soviet Union. Stalin was stunned-and completely unprepared. In less than three months half the country fell to the Nazis. Urged on by Stalin, and backed by his wartime allies, the United States and Great Britain, the Soviet army beat back the German invaders-at the terrible cost of 20 million dead. In 1945, with the war now over, Stalin seized the political opportunity to spread his control over much of Eastern Europe, setting up Communist governments throughout the region. Even so, Stalin feared that his one time allies, the U.S. and Britain, might see their win over Nazi Germany as an opportunity to invade the Soviet Union. This distrust, coupled with Stalin's expansion into Eastern Europe, led to the "Cold War." In early 1953, Stalin was again preparing another great purge of party leaders. But before he could carry it out, he suddenly died, on March 5. The Stalin era was over. The first break in the wall of silence that surrounded Stalin's crimes came in 1956, when the new Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, delivered a secret speech to a party congress revealing many of Stalin's atrocities. But Khrushchev's colleagues feared that if Stalin's legacy was uprooted, the very foundations of the Soviet system would also collapse. In time, Khrushchev was pushed from power. TELLING THE TRUTH Now, Mikhail Gorbachev has picked up where Khrushchev left off. For years, novelists, poets, and filmmakers were forbidden to tell the truth about the Stalin years. Today, Soviet citizens are lining up to buy books and see films that are filled with the harrowing tales of the bloody Stalin purges. The Soviet Union's Stormy Evolution Soviet history is filled with tumult and change. The following is a look at some of the benchmarks: 1917: Vladimir I. Lenin, father of the Soviet Communist Party, seizes power after a violent revolution, which overthrows Czar Nicholas Il. Lenin immediately abolishes the private ownership of land, putting all resources under government control. He bans all nonCommunist political parties, as well as anti-Communist publications. 1920: The Communist Red Army fights and wins a civil war against antiCommunist forces. 1924: Lenin dies. After a two-year power struggle, Joseph Stalin becomes Soviet leader. A ruthless dictator, Stalin turns the underdeveloped country into an industrial and military power. 1928: Stalin begins his first of a series of five-year plans, seizing control of nearly all farmland and combining small farms into government-run collectives. Peasants resist by destroying crops and livestock. Widespread famine results, claiming 5 million to 7 million lives. 1933-38: Stalin carries out a series of "purges," crushing opposition by arresting and executing millions of Soviet citizens. 1941-45: World War II shatters the Soviet economy and claims an estimated 20 million lives. 1946-50: The Western nations band together to stop the spread of Communism. The Cold War begins. 1953: Stalin dies. Nikita Khrushchev (KROOSH-chehf) becomes Soviet leader. 1956: Khrushchev begins a program of "de-Stalinization," in which pictures and statues of Stalin are destroyed. The

government renames cities and towns that had been named for Stalin. 1964: Khrushchev is ousted and succeeded by Leonid Brezhnev. 1982: Brezhnev dies. 1985: Mikhail Gorbachev becomes Soviet leader and begins a series of economic and social reform programs. 1989: USSR holds first multicandidate elections since 1917. 1990: Gorbachev removes Communist Party's constitutional monopoly on power; 13 of 15 republics demand independence or sovereignty. Source Citation (MLA 7th Edition) Bratman, Fred. "Stalin's grisly legacy." Scholastic Update 7 Dec. 1990: 18+. General OneFile. Web. 9 Sep. 2012. Document URL http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA9230178&v=2.1&u=23414_sjcpl&it=r&p=GPS&sw=w Gale Document Number: GALE|A9230178

Top of page