Stalin: the Man of
Steel
Part I: Stalinist Propaganda Posters
1) What image is Stalin trying to portray of
himself?
2) CCCP was Russian for USSR; describe Stalin in
the poster with those initials.
Stalin: the Man of
- Early
Life Steel
Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili (1879-1953) was born December 18 1879 in Gori,
th
Georgia, which was then part of the Russian empire. His father was a cobbler{Shoemaker}
and violently abused his wife and child. At the age of seven Stalin came down with smallpox
and survived, but his face remained scarred for the rest of his life and other children cruelly
called him "pocky". Stalin was frequently involved in brawls with other children and ran with
gangs. He studied at a theological seminary, intended for the Priesthood, but he began to read
Marxist literature. He never graduated, instead devoting his time to the revolutionary
movement against the Russian monarchy.
- Financing the Party He spent the next 15 years as an activist and on a number
of occasions was arrested and exiled to Siberia. He
changed his name to Joseph Stalin, which means "Man of
Steel". After being marked by Russian secret police for his
activities, he became a full-time revolutionary and outlaw.
- Communist Revolution In 1917 Joseph Stalin was not
one of the decisive players in
the Bolshevik‘s seizure of
power, in the October Russian
Revolution (The Czar{a king}
and his family were removed
from power and Russia
became a Communist state).
After the revolution Stalin
advanced rapidly, he was
elected to the Bolshevik central
committee and by 1922 Stalin
was elected general secretary
of the Russian Communist
Party.
After Vladimir Lenin’s 1924
Death, there was a struggle for
leadership, but Stalin ousted
(Killed) several opposing
leaders and established his
Totalitarian Soviet regime.
In 1901 Stalin joined the Georgian Social Democratic
Party and allied himself with Vladimir Lenin and Leon
Trotsky, leaders of the Bolsheviks faction. Stalin soon rose
through the ranks of the party as an enforcer/financer.
Stalin organized the robbing of a large delivery of money
to the Imperial Bank on June 26, 1907. Stalin's gang
ambushed the armed convoy in Yerevan Square with
gunfire and homemade bombs. Around 40 people were
killed, but all of Stalin's gang managed to escape alive with
250,000 rubles (about $3.4 million dollars today)
There had been other such "Financing" but this was the
biggest and most dramatic. Formally, Lenin and his
associates had frowned upon these acts, but they,
nevertheless, accepted the proceeds to help finance the
party's work.
-The Dictator- Stalin was effectively the dictator of the
Leon Trotsky
New Soviet Union, no longer being called Russia. He
exercised total control over the public and private lives
of the Soviet citizens. Stalin summarily executed his
political enemies. He had expelled his rival Leon
Trotsky and then had him assassinated (Ice picked in
the head), while living in Mexico.
When Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s,
the Soviet Union was a vast but under-developed
country, mostly agricultural with little industry. Russians
had been through World War I, two revolutions in 1917,
civil war and famine. Stalin started aggressive industrial
and agricultural programs to improve Soviet Russia.
-Industrialization- Stalin intended to turn the economy around and make the USSR
competitive with capitalist countries. Stalin began a state-run program of rapid industrialization.
Factories were built, transport networks were developed and workers encouraged, even forced,
to work harder. They would be committed to equality in all forms, economically, socially and
educationally, so that all citizens could earn a similar salary and live a similar lifestyle. To bring
about this huge change, he acted ruthlessly. His programme of rapid industrialisation achieved
huge increases in Soviet productivity and economic growth but at great costs.
-Collectivization - To achieve the enormous feat of industrialization, Stalin had to modernize
agriculture. There had to be enough food, not only to feed the workers in towns, but also for
export. Selling grain abroad would raise the money needed to invest in industry.
Stalin decided to take control of all farms and make them much larger and more productive.
About 100 million peasants were forced to live and work the farmers were not compensated.
They were expected to work with other farmers and hand over most of their produce to the
government. The policy of collectivization was not popular with the peasants. Many refused to
give up their land or to give the government the crops that they had grown. Instead, they
preferred to slaughter their animals, burn their crops and destroy their farm machinery. Stalin
ordered the army and the KGB secret police to kill or remove them. Sometimes Stalin starved
out whole towns (The famine of 1931-33, 5 to 6 million Ukrainians starved to death).
Uncooperative peasants were sent to prison Gulags in the Urals and Siberia and worked to
death.
-Gulags- The gulag was a system of hundreds of forced labor camps, plus transit camps and
prisons, which held criminals. Increasingly gulag prisoners were political prisoners - people who
were opposed to Stalin, people accused of failing to meet their work targets and peasants sent
there during the collectivization of agriculture. Conditions in the prison camps were atrocious.
The labor was backbreaking and impossible do to the frigid Arctic weather. The hardened
criminals in the camps were put in charge of the others and they created a reign of terror where
they brutalized the rest of the prisoners. The food rations and housing were pathetically
insufficient.
-Legacy- Stalin will die in March 1953; at the age of 74.There were few worse sons, fathers,
husbands or friends than Joseph Stalin. He had very little contact with either parent, and did not
attend his mother's funeral in 1935. He charmed women, but his first wife died of tuberculosis
and the second died by an apparent suicide after a public fight with Stalin. He didn’t have any
real relationship with his illegitimate children and only tenuous relationships with his three
legitimate ones. Many of his colleagues were executed by his orders and as result of his direct
orders or as a result of his policies; it is possible that 30 to 50 million people died during Stalin’s
reign. He was hated and feared as a dictator. He was also adored. During his lifetime he was
glorified in newspapers and films, cities and streets were named after him, and statues of him
were put up around the USSR. He was seen as the man who turned an undeveloped and
divided nation into an industrial super-power.
Part II: Directions: Answer all questions below:
3) What does Joseph Stalin’s name mean?
4) Explain how Stalin was able to raise money for the party?
5) What happened to Stalin’s rival Leon Trotsky?
6) Explain how people were treated under Stalin’s Industrialization plan?
7) Explain and describe his Collectivization plan?
8) Where were people sent to be punished and How many Soviet Russians did Stalin probably
. end up killing?
Extra Credit Part III: Pretend you’re a Prisoner in a Gulag and write a Sonnet about what it was
like there.
*Sonnets are 14 line poems