The Russian
Memorial human rights group put together a list
of more than 2.6 million names of victims of
Stalin's mass killings. All in all, it is
believed that approx 12 million people were
murdered.
And because of the
sheer incomprehensibility of this number, let's allow
ingenious Eddie Izzard to help us grasp.
Joseph Stalin's Name
Stalin's
original name was Ioseb
Dzhugashvili, or in Russian,
Iosif Vissarionovich
Dzhugashvili. Also spelled Josif.
Stalin
derives from the Russian word stal which
means steel.
Joseph Stalin's Date of Birth
Officially,
Stalin's birth date is December 21, 1879
(December 9, 1879
old style.)
But historians found out that December 18, 1878
(December 6, 1878
old style)
was his real birthday. Nobody knows for sure why
Stalin gave different birth dates.
Joseph Stalin's Family
Stalin's
parents were peasants from Georgia. Thus, Stalin
was as Russian as Hitler was German.
(Stalin was not a Russian but a Georgian and grew up
with the Georgian language. Hitler was not a
German but an Austrian and grew up yodeling. Back to
Stalin.)
Stalin's father
was
Vissarion Ivanovich Dzhugashvili,
a shoemaker and a boozer. Vissarion was also
called Beso. He was born around 1850. Nobody
knows when he died, some say 1909, some say he
was still kicking and well in the 1930s.
Stalin's mother
was
Yekaterina Georgievna Geladze,
also spelled Ekaterina, and also called Keke.
Yekaterina was a seamstress. She also dabbled in
laundry.
Vissarion and
Yekaterina Dzhugashvili married in 1874. Stalin
was Yekaterina's first child to survive. He was
her third son.
Stalin married in 1904 or 1905. Together with
his first wife,
Ekaterina Svanidze, Stalin had a son,
YakovDzhugashvili,
also spelled Jakov, or Jacob. Yakov was born in
1907. Ekaterina died later in 1907 of pneumonia.
Yakov, in turn,
married Yulia Meltzer.
Together they also had a son,
Evgeny Dzhugashvili.
Evgeny was born in 1936. Yakov was taken
prisoner by the Germans in
WWII. He
was shot in 1943 while trying to escape. Stalin
had refused to arrange a prisoner exchange with
the Germans. Some say, Yakov grabbed the fence
of the prison camp just to provoke his getting
shot.
Together with his
second wife, Nadezhda
Alliluyeva, he had a daughter,
Svetlana Stalin.
Svetlana was born in 1926. Nadezhda killed
herself in 1932. (Or did she?)
Joseph Stalin's Early Years
Stalin
became a Marxist in his teens / early twenties.
He was busy organizing strikes and
protests. Soon, his ruthlessness attracted
police attention Stalin was arrested many times.
Joseph Stalin's Reign
The
Communist Party of the Soviet Union had Stalin
as their secretary-general from 1922 until the
end of Stalin's life.
In 1941, Stalin became premier of
the Soviet Union.
Dictator, in effect.
Stalin
collectivized the land by force. Under Stalin,
the country's industrial output soared. Human
life, on the other hand, wasn't worth a dime.
Stalin emphasized
education and fought against religion.
Major Events During Stalin's Reign
The Great Famine of 1932 -
1933.
Also called the
Ukrainian Genocide, or
Holodomor, the Great Famine
of 1932 was Stalin's strategy to terminate all
Ukrainian resistance. And it worked out for him.
The population was dead by the million and
Stalin shipped in Russians to re-populate the
area.
Historians
estimate the victims of the Great Famine to have
been between 5 and 7 million people.
The Great Purges 1937 -
1938.
The Great Purges, also called the Great Purge
(singular), the Soviet
Purges, or the
Great Terror, was Stalin's
political spring cleaning and included the
elimination of many prominent Bolshevik
revolutionaries and elite members of the Red
Army. It is estimated that over a million
"political criminals" were arrested and more
than 75% of them were executed.
Some say, the
Great Purges had already started on December 1,
1934, with the assassination of
Sergey M. Kirov.
Stalin and World War II
In May
1939, Stalin appointed
Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Molotov,
father of the famous cocktail of the same name,
for the post of People's Commissar of Foreign
Affairs. Molotov obtained a visit from Nazi
Germany's foreign minister
Ribbentrop. Together at Moscow and
with Stalin looking over their shoulder, Germany
and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression
pact on August 23, 1939. This pact is also
called the
Hitler-Stalin Pact, or the
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
MOLOTOV
SIGNING THE GERMAN-SOVIET NONAGGRESSION PACT,
RIBBENTROP EAGLE-EYEING BEHIND HIM AND STALIN
SNICKERING AWAY
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In effect, the
German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact paved the way
for Germany's invasion of Poland and thus the
outbreak of
World War II.
Hitler
was one of the few who could still surprise
Stalin. He launched
Operation Barbarossa and had his
troops attack the Soviet Union out of the blue
on June 22, 1941.
Stalin met with
Roosevelt and
Churchill at the
Yalta Conference
February 4 - 11, 1945, in which he fooled both,
the President of the United States and the Prime
Minister of Great Britain.
CHURCHILL,
ROOSEVELT, STALIN AT YALTA
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Archives
Stalin after World War II
To create a
buffer zone between the Soviet Union and the
Western European powers, and contrary to the
promises made at the Yalta Conference, Stalin
saw to it that an Eastern bloc of smaller
countries under communist regimes was
established, each one with strong ties to the
U.S.S.R.
Stalin's Death
Stalin did
not appoint a successor prior to his death.
Stalin and Marxism
Stalin's
version of Marxism is called
Stalinism.
Stalin's Legacy
It took
years after Stalin's death and even after the
collapse of the U.S.S.R., before archives were
opened and their content could be evaluated.
However, as early
as 1956 voices of criticism could be heard. See
for example
Khrushchev's
Secret Speech.
Also called the
Persian Wars, the Greco-Persian Wars were
fought for almost half a century from 492 BC -
449 BC. Greece won against enormous odds. Here
is more:
