Josef Stalin

Mitsu

Before Coming to Power.
. Josef Stalin joined the Bolshevik party in 1903, and had come to Lenin’s attention after staging a daring bank robbery for the Bolsheviks.
. Gained post as Part General Secretary, expelled Leon Trotsky from the Communist Party, and purged Old Bolsheviks out of the Communist party, making himself the de facto leader of Soviet Russia.
The Stalin Era (1929-1939)
1928: Launches first Five Year Plan, aiming to transform Russia from an agricultural nation into an industrial nation. Instead of consumer goods, the plan was to produce maximum capital goods such as heavy machinery and oil production.
-little provisions made in absorbing the industrial labor costs, as housing declined, and people were forced to live in pitiful conditions.
-Installed a policy of collectivization, where the Kulaks, who prospered at Lenin’s New Economic Policy, suffered because Stalin eliminated private farms and push people into collective farms. This produced widespread famine.
-Disturbed at the rapidly declining birthrate, Lenin also reversed much of the permissive social legislation and advocated complete equality for women and made divorce and abortion easy to obtain while also encouraging women to work outside the home and liberate themselves sexually. Stalin however, reversed all of those.

Stalin during WW2
.Stalin and Hitler signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler, allowing Hitler to invade Poland without Soviet interference.
. Hitler, seeing the Bolsheviks and Russians as nothing more than descendants of Jews, went through with Operation Barbarossa, in which Hitler launched a three-pronged attack on Soviet Russia, thus voiding their Non-Aggression pact. The Soviets managed to rebuke the Nazis however, thus signifying the turning point in the war.
. WW2 was known as the ‘Great Patriotic War’ to the Soviets, as 2 out of every 5 person killed was a Soviet citizen. In order to repulse the Nazi’s, Stalin enacted a plan known as ‘super-centralization’, in which Stalin directed all civil and military organizations. Experiencing a second Industrial Revolution, Stalin created 78,000 tanks and 98,000 artillery pieces.
. Women also participated in the war effort, fighting in combat as ‘Night Witches’ and working in factories. Peasants also were expected to furnish 60 percent of the army, as well as feed it.
Stalin and the Cold War:
.Winston Churchill and Stalin agree on Soviet and British spheres of influence, in which Stalin gained Romania and Bulgaria, while Churchill gained Yugoslavia and Hungary.
.At the Yalta, FDR sought help against Japan from the Soviets, eventually agreeing to Stalin’s demands, and gave Stalin possession of Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands and railroad rights in Manchuria.
. US’s violation of the Land-Lease aid before the war was over and the failure to respond the Soviet request of 6 billion dollar loan to reconstruct Western Europe exposed Western Desire to keep the USSR weakened.
.At Potsdam, Truman demanded free elections in Easter Europe, but Stalin denied him. These ideological differences lead to an ‘iron curtain’ descending in the words of Churchill, and the Cold War had begun.
. Succeed by Nikita Khrushchev.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/stalin_joseph.shtml