Life and Accomplishments of Joseph Stalin - Essay Example

Life and Accomplishments of Joseph Stalin – A Critical Analysis Born to a cobbler father Vissarion Dzhugashvili and a religious mother Ekaterina in December of 1879, Joseph Stalin was birthed under the name Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili at Gori of Georgia as his place of birth. His father worked for village shop and shoe factory that enabled him to focus on his craftsmanship though Stalin’s dejected childhood is mostly attributed to him for the misery caused by frequent physical beatings of his son. Despite being a peasant woman, on the other hand, the mother of Stalin dreamed for him at teenage youth to aspire for priesthood so that she eventually sent him to a school of theology at Tpilisi (Tiflis) where he could study as a seminarian and serve in the ministry afterwards (Joseph Stalin Biography). Stalin, nevertheless, sought affiliation to a secret organization known as Messame Dassy whose members advocated Georgian independence from Russia. Driven by its cause, Stalin expressed his object of interest in radical activism through which he necessitated to communicate subversive political perspectives of the monarchical Russian government at the time and this led to his expulsion from school in 1899 prior to graduation. As a continuing endeavor of his young yet dynamic passion to oppose and change the system of government in Russia, Stalin fully immersed himself in the studies of communist principles, with particular devotion and credit to the views of prominent socialist figures, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Then he decided to join revolutionary underground Marxist movement in Tpilisi where his active membership to the committee of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party brought about his arrest, imprisonment, and exile to Siberia from which he managed to escape in 1904. After being caught several times and being able to evade the police authorities in corresponding number therein, Stalin thought of regarding himself as the “man of steel”, having withstood and released himself from the exile to Turukhansk, an extremely far village lying outside of the Arctic Circle. By the time he reunited with the Marxist movement in Tpilisi which split into two factions – the “hard” (supporters of Lenin), otherwise known as the ‘Bolsheviks’ and the “soft” (supporters of Martov) or the “Mensheviks”, Stalin distinguished himself with the former. Though he played no direct involvement in the October Revolution of 1917, Stalin proved useful in the Bolshevik party due to his practical yet professional application of democratic centralism, a profoundly revered ideology of Vladimir Lenin. Between 1905 and 1906, Both Lenin and Stalin initially met in the congresses of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party held in London and Sweden. During the revolution, many detested Stalin’s hostile methods of protest against the government of Russia which used to be consisted of the Romanov dynasty that reigned for 300 years until the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II through the February Revolution. Lenin, however, perceived him a loyal activist that this consequently took Stalin to earn the advantage of handling various posts in the government by Lenin’s approval. For Lenin, who designated him at the Bolsheviks’ Central Committee in 1912, his act of organizing bank robberies and money transport raids back in the years 1904-1905 must be justified as a means to help Bolsheviks raise funds for the revolution even if the Mensheviks treated it as rather an utter deviation from the true philosophy of revolutionary socialism (Joseph Stalin Biography). When Stalin emerged with growing control and power especially over matters dealt with by the Communist Party’s Central Committee where he got appointed the General Secretary in 1922, he gradually formulated agendas that would make him acquire the most suitable path toward higher order of leadership. Upon Lenin’s death in 1924, the triumvirate that constituted him, and the other two prominent Soviet politicians Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev ruled against the opposition of Kamenev’s brother-in-law Leon Trotsky of the party’s left wing and of Bukharin who represented the right wing (Joseph Stalin, 1879 – 1953). Switching between these two wings may be noted for exhibiting Stalin’s potential to govern the Central Committee via manipulative behavior after he learned that Trotsky was a huge threat to his political schemes. Russian Studies and History Professor Norman Pereira observes “In the West, Stalin has been depicted as a sinister figure ... who somehow managed to outmanoeuvre the vastly more talented and deserving Trotsky to become Lenin’s successor.” Apparently, this picture alludes Stalin’s solid attachment with what he exactly determined to achieve in politics that he could not afford to lose a bit of influence he occurred to have totally projected on all sides along with all accessible resources so as to stabilize his grounds, defeat those of his opponents, and remain in steadily increasing power. Hence, to a certain extent, colleagues and critics may have felt Stalin to possess both ambition and strategy in response to such insecure concern as to win the favor of the millions of impoverished peasants and workers who were commonly bound to cultural parochialism and whose illiteracy was shortly swayed to the notion that Stalin, as a leading figure, ought to be their role model. Majority of these people who truly struggled to obtain victory at the height of civil war as rank-and-files of the Bolshevik revolution were drawn to believe that Stalin is a man of principle whereas other leaders were readily dismissed as either insensitive intellectuals or weak administrators (Pereira). To analyze at depth, his accumulated strengths could not be pondered on the basis of sole logic without an equivalent degree of mystery since there prevailed two disputing faces of his character. While a significant aspect of his good-natured leadership affected the bulk of working class with warm levels of sensibility for an improved economy, much of his evil side openly spoke of violent command in the public that he received thrilled hatred as well particularly on account of excruciating memories of the “Great Purges” and mass murder by considerable numbers. As such, no sufficient amount of reason seems available in rendering Stalin the justice to explicate the harsh measures of imprisonment and assassinations that were especially infamous on the cases of the reputed revolutionary heads Sergey Kirov and Trotsky where nearly everyone claimed that Stalin was, with evidence, beyond match to the latter who had already employed successful leadership of the Red Army (Pereira). Moreover, the “Great Purges” of the period 1936 – 1938 further witnessed state terrorism upon large Soviet regions and heavy famines that were forced on Ukrainian population of which were reported about five million deaths. With inclusion of labor camps, land deprivations, and forced migrations, death tolls reached an appalling estimate of forty million throughout the Soviet Union, assuming all these comprised the impact of Stalin’s inevitable rise to absolute power (Joseph Stalin, 1879 – 1953). On the contrary, nonetheless, the history of Russia may not be judged as complete if it deliberately lacked the other flesh of truth about Stalin. At least for the portion of time and people who knew highly of his notable accomplishments, Stalin is a man who made incredibly possible the extensive industrialization of Russia. His statesmanship is acknowledged to have established belief on the capacity of the Soviet nation to become key player in the affairs of global economy. It was this economic goal that directed his governance to promote the policy of collectivized agriculture and lay foundation to the Five-Year Plans which launched in 1928 (Pandita). Probably the most noteworthy of all his great achievements is the victorious endeavor of putting an end to German invasion in which Hitler and his German army intended conquest of Russian territories the time both had a pact on dividing Poland between them during World War II. Additionally, the fields of healthcare and education procured opulent attention and at this stage, education for women, equal job opportunities, and gender equality at work were critical issues that had been addressed and sustained quite adequately in the flourishing years of Stalin’s rule (Pandita). Works Cited “Joseph Stalin Biography.” Encyclopedia of World Biography. 2013. Web. 22 Feb 2013. http://www.notablebiographies.com/Sc-St/Stalin-Joseph.html. Pandita, Rahul. “Accomplishments of Joseph Stalin.” Buzzle. 10 Jul 2011. Web. 22 Feb 2013. http://www.buzzle.com/articles/accomplishments-of-joseph-stalin.html. “Joseph Stalin (1879 – 1953).” Jewish Virtual Library. 2013. Web. 24 Feb 2013. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/stalin.html. Pereira, Norman. “Stalin and the Communist Party in the 1920s.” History Today. 1992. Web. 25 Feb 2013. http://www.historytoday.com/norman-pereira/stalin-and-communist-party-1920s. Read More