What Did Joseph Stalin Do?

After he took control he did massive purging of the followers and loyal officers of Lenin, and these purges involved more deaths and exiling. His death count was higher than Hitler’s and then all he ruined lives of those who were exiled or the families of the ones who died. Although some people can argue that Stalin did some good things, such as help the Allied forces defeat the Axis powers during WWII. When he helped the Allied forces, Hitler’s army was beginning to invade Russia and Stalin had the Russian army push back the invading forces all the way back to Berlin.

Not all the blame can be placed on the people though. There were many ways that Stalin kept gaining power and the people never knew about it. In 1912, Vladimir Lenin put Stalin on the central committee of the Bolshevik party. The Soviet Union was founded in 1922, giving Stalin more power. He then became the secretary of the communist party.

The camps destroyed many people’s lives and affected different ethnic groups in different ways. The Gulag destroyed the Soviet society rather than improving it, when the goal was to essentially improve the society. “Lenin ordered mass terror against wealthy kulak peasants, White Guards, and members of the clergy who would be sent to remote concentration camps which resulted in the birth of the Gulag”. The Gulag is a system of

By the late 1920s to early 1930s, he began seizing land that had been given earlier to peasants and started to organize farms. Stalin was under the impression that collective farming would increase the production of food, but the people resented being forced to work for the state. In 1929, Stalin introduced a policy aimed toward these farmers who resisted turning their land over to the Soviet state. A year later, the policy was legalized by the Soviet Central Committee.

He participated in Allied conferences and was a very strategic planner. Joseph Stalin ignited “one of the greatest political repression campaigns in the history of the Soviet Union,” (Budanovic, Nikola). However, Stalin ordered the KKVD to mass murder political prisoners (Budanovic, Nikola). This caused much controversy for many people all over the world. He was very troubled throughout his life, and some experts believe this is a direct result of living in a broken home.

The opposition first started with Trotsky when he underestimated Stalin. Additionally, Trotsky believed Stalin was mediocre and a blur whereas Lenin wanted Stalin replaced and had various doubts about him and the loyalty to the communist party. When Lenin died, the first line of opposition collapsed and soon Trotsky would fall beginning with edited photos to manipulate people into believing Stalin was more involved with Lenin than Trotsky. Also, Stalin giving the eulogy at the funeral but outmaneuvering Trotsky by telling him the wrong day of the funeral to make people believe Trotsky didn’t care about Lenin or the party. On Stalin’s way up to becoming the head of the party, he encountered Kamenev, Zinoviev, and Bukharin.

But when the five-year plan failed to work Stalin captured anyone who was “suspected of opposition” (page 804) and then sent them to long- term labor camps. Because Stalin was sending over eight million soviet people to camps and had killed over three million people, countries all over the world were beginning to fear Russia. The next dictator, Benito Mussolini, was a socialist from Italy, and wholeheartedly believed that Great War was the turning point his country needed. Italy needed a turning point seeing that they were left out of the Treaty of

Stalin’s power stems from his autocratic power and strict policies. And from these policies, Stalin damaged the Soviet Union forever. Communism has forever damaged Russia, as millions of innocents died under its rule, with millions repressed, and its political environment in shambles. Most prominent, the policies placed under the Soviet Union led to the deaths of millions of innocents. Most deaths were caused by either artificial famines, or executions.

Joseph Stalin, 1878-1953, established totalitarianism in Russia, and forever changed the nation. He used police force to gain power, and instilled fear in all of his followers. This reign of terror was known as the Blood Purges or the Great Terror. During the Blood Purges, Stalin blamed Russian citizens for crimes he committed, and imposed the worst of punishments on them. Death or being sent to a labor camp, such as Gulag, was the fate of most.

The mass numbers shared a common goal and this paved the bloody path to the power of the people. The idea of revolution was spread to the oppressed Third Estate citizens and the divisions between the estates lead to an uprising which then created the National Assembly. The partisans of the Third Estate destroyed symbols of royal power through the storming of the Bastille and the Women’s March. The French Revolution is a great example of the violent lash back tyrannized people can have on incompetent leaders.