Essay: Murder and leadership – Joseph Stalin

Murder and leadership are two words that should not go together, but often in history it is inevitable for those words to have gone side by side. It is estimated that during Joseph Stalin’s reign from 1922 to his death in 1953, he took the lives of around 20 to 60 million people, yet in modern day Russian society he is one of the most respected historical figures. For decades after his death his legacy there is a continuous debate about his murderous policies versus his dedication to the Soviet Union becoming a communist world superpower. While some criticize his inhumane policies during his regime others praise Stalin for his economic and world war accomplishments. Stalin may have disregarded the human rights of his citizens, but he was able to maintain the Soviet Union during a time of great turmoil, domestically and internationally, and as a result he has earned many Russians’ respect for being a great leader and an advocate for Marxist ideology. Over the years, Stalin’s popularity and respect has progressed. In a 2017 poll by the Levada Center, sixteen hundred Russians were surveyed to the top ten most outstanding people of all time and all nations. As a result, thirty eight percent named Stalin, followed by Putin at thirty four percent, in a tie with Alexander Pushkin (Filipov 1). Although this may appear alarming at first, his popularity rating is related to the focus on the respect for his accomplishments in the Soviet Union and internationally. Joseph Stalin’s leadership in Russia is increasingly depicted not as the brutal leader of forced collectivization, and merciless political purges that claimed millions of innocent lives, but as the architect of industrialization and the leader of Soviet victory in World War II. Despite the brutality of Joseph Stalin’s political purges and forced collectivization, Joseph Stalin is considered an outstanding figure in Russian history because he transformed the Soviet Union into a world power.
To begin, Stalin’s reign of mass terror is one of the most representative characteristics of the Stalinist regime, yet it is increasingly being overlooked. It began with the mysterious assassination of Sergei Kirov, a prominent Bolshevik and a potential rival of Stalin. In response his death, Stalin created a campaign against alleged anti-Soviet conspirators. This was the beginning of Stalin’s great terror. His paranoia of anti-communist threats resulted in the imprisonment and execution of millions of people. Initially, Opposing members of the Communist Party, military officers and government officials were targeted, but as the terror reached its height, educated people and ordinary citizens such as doctors, writers, intellects, students, artists and scientists, were sent to the Gulag or executed. These Gulags, or prison camps, forced prisoners to work on large-scale construction, mining and industrial projects. The type of industry depended on the camp’s location and the area’s needs. Stalin imposed quotas for the police to carry out. The Politburo issued quotas to police authorities dictating how many were to be shot and how many sent to camps. “On June 2, 1937 there was a quota of 35,000 people do be repressed in Moscow city and province where 5,000 had to be shot. Soon after each region was given a quota and nationwide 70,000 were to be executed without trial” (Pipes 60). At its height at least one and a half million people were hauled before tribunals made up if the first secretary of the regional party, the procurator and the local security police. The proceeding lasted no more than a few minutes and the defendant would be sentenced to death, hard labor, or exile despite most being innocent. This purge even Included it’s own managers. Nikolai Ezhov, who administered the mass murders as the head of the NKVD between 1936 and 1938 was eventually removed from office, jailed, and executed. At the height of the terror, 1937-1938, there was an average of 1000 executions a day (Pipes 60). This great terror lasted throughout Stalin’s leadership and plagued society with a fear that outlasted communism. Yet in recent years, Russian President Vladimir Putin has “pushed for a revised view of Stalin’s legacy that downplays his role in mass purges as simply mistakes made by a great leader” (Fillipov 1).  This understatement of Stalin’s murderous actions to a leaders mistake from paranoia contributes to Russian citizens overlooking his and focusing on his achievements. Putin has not directly supported Stalin, but has stated that “excessive demonization’ of Stalin ‘is one means of attacking the Soviet Union and Russia” (RFE/RL, and Russian Service 2), and that “ Russia’s critics use Stalin’s legacy ‘to show that today’s Russia carries on itself some kind of birthmarks of Stalinism”( RFE/RL, and Russian Service 2).
Stalin’s indirect praise paired with the limited records available to the public results in Russian citizens overlooking Stalin’s terror. The respect for Stalin’s powerful leadership overshadows his brutal imprisonments and executions implemented during his reign.
Next, Stalin claimed the lives of many Russians through forced collectivization onto Russian peasants in his decision to fuel industrialization with collectivization. As part of Stalin’s first Five Year Plan, Stalin announced the collectivization of agriculture in 1929.  The need for collectivization was due to the Soviet Union’s industrialization where the peasants were expected to “supply the food for the industrial labor force, cities, and armed forces at rock bottom prices” (Pipes 58). This meant the liquidation of the kulak class, meaning they were to be executed or deported, as well as the abolition of private property and the concentration of the remaining peasants into collective farms. Middle and lower class peasants were obligated to work a certain amount at minimum wage on these farms for the state. Stalin would pretend that collectivization was carried out voluntarily but due to peasantry refusal to comply he resulted to imposing it through force. In resistance peasants destroyed their crops and slaughtered their wildlife so they wouldn’t have to succumb to collectivization. In response, Stalin created an artificial famine in 1932 where he shipped out all the food from entire districts and deployed the army to prevent peasants from leaving in search of food. Its estimated that 6-7 million people died (Pipes 58). Along with the famine, Stalin implemented impossible quotas for peasantry production.  He increased their starvation by implementing impossible quotas.  Soviet law required that no grain from a collective farm could be given to the members of the farm until the government’s quota was met, therefore peasants continued to lack the proper amount of food rations needed for basic nutrition. In 1932, “plans were stepped up to an unrealistic procurement quota of 45 percent of a harvest that had been much reduced by the adverse consequences of collectivization” (Livi-Bacci 746). These quotas specifically targeted the peasants in Ukraine and the North Caucasus. On average, these areas produced one-third of the harvest in the Soviet Union and about one-half of the marketed grain (Livi-Bacci 745). Despite the lack of food already, these quotas were continued to be raised. “In 1930, 32 percent of the harvest, in 1931, 38 percent, leaving the rural population with about 250 pounds of grain per capita, half the normal supply” (Livi-Bacci 745). As the famine grew, Stalin’s quotas grew as well and despite the starvation and accumulating death toll he insisted that every effort was conducted to fulfill these quotas. Stalin deliberately deprived these areas by taking away their food supply through unrealistic quotas. As a result Stalin weakened the possibility of a peasant revolt and  “by 1936, 89.6% of the peasantry were collectivized, but at the cost of at least ten million lives” (“Joseph Stalin” 3). Stalin was collectivizing these properties and forcing these mass quotas in his plan to finance the industrial revolution and solidify leadership.
Despite Stalin’s violence in collectivization, he transformed from a peasant society into an industrial and military superpower. With the First Five Year plan, Stalin developed the Soviet Union to stronger economy and increased the working class. Between 1926 and 1932 the urban population grew from 26 million to 38.7 million. Between 1928 and 1932 the number of employed jumped from 11.5 million to 24 million (Kenez 93). Women also were integrated into the industry. Prior to the New Economic Plan, less than a quarter of the industrial workers were female, but by the end of the 1930’s women made up forty percent of the industrial workforce (Kenez 94).  Stalin’s plan built up the workforce of the Soviet Union. Stalin’s First Five-Year Plan, adopted by the party in 1928, called for rapid industrialization of the economy, with an emphasis on heavy industry. “It set goals that were unrealistic—a 250 percent increase in overall industrial development and a 330 percent expansion in heavy industry alone” (“Collectivization and Industrialization” 1).  All industry was nationalized and thousands of new industrial plants were built throughout the country. In the beginning, Stalin instituted impossibly high production figures and realistic state planning went out the window because “‘planning’ was reduced to naming target figures which had little more than propaganda significance” (Kenez 90). However, this propaganda helped encourage and increase production. In 1934 there was a fifty percent increase in industrial output with an average annual growth rate of eighteen percent, while the population of industrial workers doubled (Kenez 90). Stalin approached industrialization as a preparation for another war and in return the citizens accepted lower standards of living as sacrifice for building a modern industrial infrastructure and economy. This industrialization was beneficial to the Soviet Union and increased their economic status. Many Russians link economic stability to the Soviet Union which contributes to their respect of Joseph Stalin and his role in industrialization. This is clarified by the independent polling firm, Levada, where “the percentage of Russians who regretted the Soviet collapse has dropped below 50 percent only once since 1992: in 2012, when it hit 49 percent. In the most recent polling, about 56 percent of Russians say they regret its fall” (Taylor 1). In the survey, the majority of responders listed that “the destruction of the union’s shared economic system was the main factor — in Levada’s most recent poll, 53 percent listed it” (Taylor 1). The planned and structured economy that Joseph Stalin built offered financial stability and in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s fall, it quickly came to light that Russia’s new market economy contained less stability. This industrialization increased the Soviet Union’s economic stance but also contributed to the preparation of the Soviet Union’s strength and defense in World War II.
Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union played a strong role in World War II and helped the allied powers claim victory. This victory is a symbol of Joseph Stalin’s power and greatly contributes to his modern day appreciation and respect. Initially, Stalin had a virtual alliance with Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed a nonaggression pact with Nazi Germany on 23 August 1939. Stalin provided them with food, metals, and other scare material. Stalin even turned over some German communists who had sought refuge in the Soviet Union (Pipes 61).  Stalin ignored warnings from the Allied powers and his own intelligence services that Germans were massing troops in Poland for an attack. Then, in June 1941, Germany broke the Nazi-Soviet pact and invaded the Soviet Union.  In July 1941, Stalin reorganized the Soviet military and placed himself directly in charge of several military organizations. This allowed him complete control of the Soviet Union’s entire war effort , which was more control than any other leader in World War II. Stalin remained in Moscow where he directed the wartime policy. The Soviet Union played a very direct and personal role in the war and was subject to the major impact of the Nazi’s attack. In Ishaan Tharoor’s Washington Post article, “by one calculation, for every single American soldier killed fighting the Germans, 80 Soviet soldiers died doing the same” (Tharoor 2). The Soviet Union contributed more fighting efforts than any other country in the Allied powers. Compared to America, who lost slightly more than 400,000 soldiers and almost no civilians during World War II, The Soviet Union lost at least 11,000,000 soldiers and somewhere between 7,000,000 and 20,000,000 million civilians in World War II (Dykman 2). This contribution was essential to the victory for the Allied powers and could not be ignored during the Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam Conferences. Russian sacrifice and Stalin’s central leadership forced President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill to fully accept Soviet influence in Eastern Euro. The Red Army’s contribution to World War II and it’s leadership from Joseph Stalin, is a great source of pride and nationalism in Russia. Stalin is viewed as powerful leader whom constructed an industry and army that was the reason the Allied Powers were able to be victorious. Stalin was able to establish an gain the recognition of the Soviet Union and it’s communism system as strong world power.
Overall, Joseph Stalin’s forced collectivization and great terror are overlooked by current citizens in Russia because of Stalin’s success in industrialization and victory as an Allied power. Stalin established the communist country as a world power. He is seen as a symbol of power for nationalist pride. His crimes as a leader are increasingly being overlooked and Russians are accepting to look at the positives of his rule and their effect on Russia’s world status. Stalin’s policy put the country before it’s citizens yet he created a stronger economy and world superpower. This respect towards Stalin as a great leader are primarily born through his undeniable power as a leader and “it is easier to worship a living god than an abstract one, for his sheer power alone” (Arutunyan 1).