Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin was born in Gori, Georgia, in 1878 and became a Bolshevik revolutionary. Appointed Communist Party general secretary in 1922, he built a position from which to defeat rivals after Vladimir Lenin’s death. By the 1930s he exercised dictatorial power over the Soviet party and state. A public cult of his leadership accompanied the concentration of political authority. ¹

Stalin’s drive for rapid industrialization depended on extensive state direction and the forced collectivization of agriculture. Coercive grain procurement and repression contributed to catastrophic famine in 1932–33, particularly in Ukraine and other agricultural regions. The Great Terror brought executions, imprisonment, and forced labor on a vast scale. Officials, military officers, intellectuals, peasants, and people targeted by nationality were among the victims; whole communities were later subjected to deportation. ²

In August 1939, Stalin’s government reached a nonaggression agreement with Nazi Germany. A secret protocol divided parts of Eastern Europe into prospective German and Soviet spheres of influence. Soviet forces subsequently occupied eastern Poland, and the Soviet Union attacked Finland. These actions deepened distrust in Washington, although Franklin Roosevelt maintained diplomatic relations. ^{3, 4, 5}

Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 transformed the diplomatic situation. Stalin became an ally of Britain and, after American entry into the war, the United States. American Lend-Lease deliveries supported the Soviet war effort, while disputes persisted over the timing of an invasion of Western Europe. Soviet armies bore an immense share of the fighting against Germany. ⁵

Stalin negotiated with Roosevelt and Winston Churchill at Tehran and Yalta and with Harry Truman and British leaders at Potsdam. The conferences addressed military operations, Germany’s occupation, Poland, and the organization of the postwar order. Soviet control of territory in Eastern Europe gave Stalin substantial bargaining power. Wartime cooperation nevertheless left unresolved conflicts over the governments and security arrangements that would follow victory. ⁶

The Soviet Union emerged as a major military power while Stalin maintained repression at home. The development of a Soviet atomic weapon, first tested in 1949, ended the American nuclear monopoly. Conflict with the Western powers and the division of Europe increasingly structured international politics. Stalin died on March 5, 1953, leaving a state whose industrial and military strength had been built alongside extraordinary coercion and human loss. ^{1, 2, 7}