Uncontested Master of the Soviet Union, of 1929 in his death, Stalin is one of the emblematic characters of the XX E century. He symbolizes at the same time the fight of the Soviet people against the Nazism and seems at the same time the creator of a totalitarian mode which did not have anything to envy, as regards inhumanity, with that set up by Hitler. That one regards it as the heir to the revolution of October or, on the contrary, like his grave-digger, Stalin was at the same time one of the most adulated men and most despized of his time.

“Sosso”, as call it its close relations, attends a parochial school until the fourteen years age, then enters to the seminar of Tiflis in 1893, which cuts it of its medium of origin. Its studies coincide with one period of expansion of revolutionary propaganda in the Russian Empire. Djougachvili learns Russian, appears influenced by Georgian nationalism, which is worth its first pseudonym to him, “Koba”, of the name of a nationalist hero of novel. Its choice of the Marxism goes back at least to 1898, year of the creation of the social democrat working party of Russia (POSDR). Koba, which takes part in a circle of socialist reading, is withdrawn from the seminar the following year by his/her mother - according to its official biographers, it was excluded because of its scientific and social readings. He becomes a “professional revolutionist then”. Its first years of political work are however darkened by the extreme scarcity of the documents relating to it during this period.  

Until 1910, the field of its activities is limited to the Transcaucasia, which it leaves only for periods of imprisonment and exile, followed by escapes, or to attend with meetings and congresses of the POSDR. It makes its first weapons in the working mediums of Tiflis - that it leaves abruptly in 1901, undoubtedly excluded by his own comrades social-democrats which reproach him for calumniating the local leader -, then in Batoum, a seaport Noire by where the oil of Bakou forwarded there, it is stopped and condemned in three years of administrative exile in Siberia -, and finally in Bakou, from which it makes, with Chaoumian (the “Lénine of the Caucasus”), the center of the Bolsheviks activities in the area, activities strongly stimulated by the revolution of 1905

However, Koba runs up against Chaoumian and seeks to oust it, so much so that his/her comrades suspect it of having denounced it with the police force - as of this time, the character of the Stalin future is marked by his brutality and its facility to be carried. Decree in March 1910, it is imprisoned then condemned to five years of exile. But he escapes in spring from 1911 and goes to Saint-Pétersbourg where he is again stopped in September. In the controversies which agitate the POSDR, Koba chooses the Bolshevik fraction, undoubtedly because of her temperament, its fanaticism and its sectarianism. They are perhaps its violent attacks against the Mensheviks which are worth to him to be noticed by Lénine, unless it is not the effectiveness with which it filled its clandestine tasks, and in particular many “expropriations” which are then used to finance the party, with the great scandal of the Mensheviks.

The leader of the party

In January - February 1912, the conference of the POSDR is taken place in Prague, but Koba, which this time could not escape, does not assist to with it. It is this conference which seals the scission between Mensheviks and Bolsheviks, and reorganizes the central committee. Lénine estimates imprudent to make there elect Koba, which is absent and unknown of the majority of the delegates, but it uses of a right of co-optation however fallen in disuse since the years 1905-1906 to introduce there the Georgian, who finds himself thus directing without never to be elected. Towards mid-March, Koba escapes and returns to Saint-Pétersbourg, where it assists in his the publication of a newspaper daily Bolshevik, Pravda. But, whereas it hid at the Poletaïev deputy, it is again stopped in April. and in September escapes. Its responsibilities lead it in 1913 to Vienna, where it writes its first signed article of the name of Stalin (“the steel man”), the Marxism and the national question, in which, while defending the right of the people to have themselves, it presents a very centralist vision of the national problem in the Russian Empire. Especially, it gives a restrictive definition of the nation, which, according to him, cannot exist without territory.  

Of return to Saint-Pétersbourg, Stalin is charged to maintain the deputies Bolsheviks in the Leninist line, but in February, it is again stopped on denunciation of Malinovski, deputy Bolshevik and, at the same time, agent of Okhrana, the political police of the tsar. Stalin is exiled in Siberia with Touroukhansk, from where he will not escape any more. It is the revolution of February 1917 which brings back it to Petrograd, where it completely finds the party disorganized and cut its leaders in exile. With Kamenev, it takes in hand Pravda and censures the call of Lénine with the seizure of power; he recommends contrary a bringing together with the Mensheviks. After the return of Lénine in April, it adopts the radical new line of rupture with the provisional government, while keeping an attitude more or less doctrinary and always anxious to preserve the unit of the party. In August, at the time of the Life congress of the party Bolshevik, Stalin is confirmed like member of the central committee; in October, the day before the insurrection, it enters in Politburo - which does not play the key function then that it will have thereafter - like to the charged revolutionary military committee, under the orders of Trotski, to prepare the seizure of power.  

Stalin, however, does not play of significant role in the events of October 1917, being satisfied to follow Lénine without enthusiasm. He becomes officially police chief of the people to Nationalities in the new government. The first Constitution of the Soviet federative socialist Republic of Russia, adopted in July 1918, outlines a federal structure of the old Russian Empire, while the secession of some of its old components is allowed only under the pressure of the external circumstances. In 1922, when the Ukraine, the Transcaucasia, Turkestan and Siberia are reconquered, Stalin will propose to integrate them in the existing mould (but, on the insistence of Lénine, the treaty of the Union and the new Constitution, which will come into effect in 1924, will formally place these “Soviet socialist republics” on an equal footing with the Republic of Russia).

The civil war

From 1918 to 1921, during the years of the civil war, Stalin devotes itself almost exclusively to the central committee and the military tasks; indeed, the leaders on whom Lénine and Trotski can count are far from numerous, and Stalin was the proof of his inflexible nature. The military business propels it in the very first plan among the Communist leaders: member of the council of Work and Defense, it is sent on various faces, in particular in the south, where it is characterized by an authoritarianism, a mistrust and a violence extremes, so much so that the arbitration of Lénine in the conflicts between Trotski - chief of the Red Army - and Stalin is often necessary.  

In Tsaritsyne, Stalin gets along with Vorochilov to thwart the orders of Trotski; he accumulates the military errors, and implements a pitiless policy of repression against the Socialist-revolutionists and the anarchists. Written Stalin with Lénine: “As for the hystericals, be persuaded that our hand will not tremble; with the enemies we will act as enemies.” In October 1918, Trotski however obtains from Lénine the recall of Stalin to Moscow. In 1920, it is the army of Egorov, by its indiscipline, which will be responsible for the defeat of the Red Army in Poland, and Stalin, who was the political police chief, will be made largely responsible from there by Trotski. It is however during this period that Stalin sets up a group of faithful, Caucasiens and Russian, which will accompany it in its rise with the power.  

At the beginning of 1918, Stalin opposes Trotski and Lénine on the question of the revolution in Europe, and in particular in Germany - Stalin the improbable judge -, but it finds agreement with Lénine against Trotski to accept the “infamous peace” of Brest-Litovsk. However, it is initially Trotski which carries it within the central committee on on February 17th, and one needs the resumption of the German offensive the shortly and the collapse after the Soviet army so that, on on February 22nd, the central committee adopts the position defended by Lénine and Stalin, and joins again the peace talks.  

As of this time, it is the central committee which concentrates all the powers. In March 1919, VIIIe congress of the party confirms Stalin at the central committee; the death of Sverdlov left a vacuum as for the administrative tasks, and Stalin manages little by little to recover all the responsibilities for the missing. Moreover, five members are charged by the congress with making all the urgent decisions: Lénine, Trotski, Kamenev, Boukharine and Stalin. Thus, Politburo is made up by name and Stalin remains member about it; he also enters in Orgburo, the secretariat of the central committee. Effective administrator, Stalin replaces Molotov at the position of secretary general of the Communist party in April 1922. This promotion devotes its rise of man of the apparatus, since he was moreover police chief with the working and country Inspection (Rabkrin), which supervised the whole of the economic life of the country. All these stations placed it in the middle of the new bureaucratic machinery, which it controls better and better, thanks to the play of the nominations.

The successor of Lénine

When the disease of Lénine is declared, at the end of May 1922, Stalin is already ready to take his succession. He has decisive assets, in particular a practical spirit and a real comprehension of the mechanisms of the power, per hour when its rivals, Trotski at the head, still believe in the primacy of the idea. Neither the late start of Lénine, as from December 1922, nor the successive oppositions of the elite Bolshevik can counter the rise of Stalin. Lénine, indeed, worries about the violence with which Stalin, Dzerjinski and Ordjonikidze restored the order in Georgia, of the modification in the course of the name of Tsaritsyne in Stalingrad that Stalin caused, and especially its incompatibility of character with Trotski; he writes, on on December 25th, 1922, in a note known under the name of “Will of Lénine”: “The Stalin comrade, while becoming general secretary, concentrated in his hands an immense power and I am not convinced that it can always use about it with sufficient prudence.” Then, a few days later: “. I propose to the comrades to reflect by means of moving Stalin of this station and to name in his place a man who, under all the reports, is distinguished from the Stalin comrade by a superiority, i.e. it is more patient, more honest, more polished and more attentive towards the comrades.”  

Until the death of Lénine, on on January 21st, 1924, the attacks of the “troika” - Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev - against Trotski are however relatively moderate. The more so as the country is then in crisis: great famine of 1921, falls of half of the acreages between 1913 and 1922, fall of the industrial production. The attacks relate on the economic policy but also to the more general designs of the Bolchevism: Stalin justifies his policy of repression led to the Caucasus, attacks Trotski which he shows to carry out a fractional activity within the party, to have erroneous economic sights, and critical its published Lessons of October in October 1924. He manages little by little to insulate it, by sending his partisans abroad (Rakovski, Krestinski.) or in moved back areas of the USSR, or by dislocating them simply their functions; Trotski, condemned by a resolution of the central committee of January 1925, does not intervene in favor of Kamenev and Zinoviev, attacked by Stalin at the time of the XIV E congress of the party in October 1925, but agrees to be combined with them the following year, which does not prevent Stalin to carry it: Trotski and Zinoviev are excluded from the party on on November 15th, 1927, and their partisans as those of Sapronov are it at the time of the XV E congress of the Party, on on December 18th, 1928.

While playing at certain times moderation, Stalin puts his opponents in the position of “aventurists”, of destructors of the cohesion of the party, of which it is presented in the form of an only guarantor. Its company is facilitated by the fact that its opponents themselves give up using all the weapons at their disposal; thus, Trotski and Kroupskaïa go until denying the existence of the “Will” of Lénine in the name of the unit of the Party. At the same time, in his articles, joined together later under the titles of Questions of Leninism and the opposition, Stalin is made the guard of an alleged Leninist orthodoxy formal contradiction, however, with the designs of Lénine, on points as important as the construction of socialism in only one country, where he is opposed clearly to the internationalism preached by Lénine.

Great Turning and Great Terror

It is during years 1930 that what one will call soon “Stalinism” is born. It is the conjugation of the absolute power of Stalin, of a series of social upheavals which transform the face of the country and a profound change of mentalities and political models of the communist elite, which definitively cuts the Bolchevism of its European social democrat roots.  

The Stalinist “system” is born truly after the Great Turning, announced by Stalin in November 1929 and completed in 1932-1933, who drives out power the last companions of Lénine (Boukharine and “right-wing opposition”); it is initially the collectivization or rather the nationalization of agriculture, true revolution which shows an economic catastrophe and social but which ensures the power a certain control of the campaigns. It acts, at the same time, of the industrialization of the country with forced march, accompanied by a disappearance of all the private sphere, then of the enrollment, even of control, working classes. A voluntarist economic management style is set up, joining again with the methods of the civil war and being based on a permanent mobilization and an escape ahead: the initial objectives of the first five-year plan are doubled, triplets, quintuplets according to the branches. The race with the production also results in the movements of “socialist competition”: workers of shock as from 1929, then Stakhanovism as from 1935.  

On the political plan, the monolithism of the Communist party becomes total after the fall of Boukharine. With the wave of terror which starts after the assassination of Kirov on on December 1st, 1934 and which is prolonged until 1938 (prosecutor, then, an endemic course), the Stalinist dictatorship takes a paroxystic turn and makes plane a permanent threat, even on the faithful ones of the general secretary. Hundred seventeen capital executions are immediately ordered following this attack, and, in 1937, Stalin “will however reveal” that the principal assassin of Kirov was in fact Iagoda, one of his closer collaborators and the instrument of his terrorist policy as a leader of Guépéou. The purging apparently strikes above all the persons in charge of the party, of which Stalin suspects, not without reasons, a certain dissatisfaction in front of the results with its policy, then it extends quickly to hundreds from thousands from frameworks in the administrative domains, military, economic, cultural.

Great lawsuits of Moscow of 1936-1938 - of which more modest prototypes, applied to intellectuals and with Mensheviks, were already organized with the beginning of the year 1930 - are sinister productions during which the former leaders Bolsheviks confess the worst crimes, and in particular espionage with the profit of the foreign “imperialism”. These years of terror cover the country of a vast penitentiary network and devote the preeminence of the political police on the party. These police violences and the deportations in Gulag made several million victims.  

These convulsions of the mode are accompanied by the worship of Stalin. Identified with the giant achievements of industrialization, it had been glorified as of its fiftieth birthday, in 1929. To the XIV E congress of the party, known as “of the winners”, in February 1934, Stalin had become, in the description of Kirov, “more the great man of all times and all the countries”. This deification reaches its apogee in 1936 - year of the adoption of the new Constitution Soviet, known as “Stalinist” -, then at the time of sixtieth and the seventieth birthday of Stalin.  

Comintern

Stalin had been one of the eight delegates of the Party at the time of the foundation of the International Communist (Comintern), from Friday to. Rather unobtrusive until the death of Lénine, undoubtedly partly because of its ignorance of the external questions, it ends up playing a paramount role there. He advises, with Radek and against Trotski and Zinoviev, to moderate the Germans at the time of the events of 1923, which undoubtedly contributed to the failure of this revolution, and what involved it to preach from now on the “construction of socialism in only one country”. Stalin eliminates Zinoviev from the direction of the Comintern as of October 1926. In spite of his successive errors - support in China de Jiang Jieshi which massacres thousands of Communists, imposition of the line of opposition to the “social-fascists” (Socialists) symbolized in Germany by Thälmann until the victory of the Nazis, and in France by Thorez until June 1934, non-assistance with the republicans at the time of the first phase of the Spanish civil war, then “purification” of the Spanish communist mediums and in particular of the POUM -, Stalin dictates with the Comintern, until his dissolution in 1943, his designs political and his police methods with men of apparatus who are entirely devoted to him, which contributes to the total loss of credibility of this organization.

The new autocrat

The Second world war initially failed to cause the collapse of the Stalinist mode, to finally bring a second breath and an increased power to him. In August 1939, Stalin, who sought the agreement with the Nazi Germany, personally negotiates with the representatives of Hitler a non-aggression pact which devotes the division of Eastern Europe. Although very attached to this agreement, Stalin takes measures which could translate a certain distrust with regard to its recent allied. In May 1941, in particular, he becomes chief of the government. But the German attack, in June, reveal the unpreparedness of the Soviet forces. Stalin takes the command of the Council of national defense, then armed forces; after a first period of distress, it ensures the effective direction of the country and manages to mobilize it. Its image leaves grown the defense of Moscow, in October 1941, at the time which he makes a speech which calls some openly with the patriotic feelings of its subjects. Soviet military successes enable him to allot a stature of large captain. In 1943 it is made marshal, in 1945 généralissime.  

In Teheran (1943), Yalta and Potsdam (1945), Stalin obtains from Great Britain and the United States the confirmation of his acquisitions of 1939-1940, as well as the abandonment of Eastern Europe to Soviet hegemony; he declares then the war in Japan (1945).  

The Conference of Yalta (extracted the final communique) After the victory, Stalin imposes the Soviet domination on the major part of Eastern Europe. Without ignoring the foreign Communist parties, it subordinates still more than before very aimed internationalist to the Soviet interests. It creates then Cominform (1947), imposing with the Communist parties (in particular after the rupture with Tito in 1949) the unconditional support of the Soviet policy and the adoption of the dogmatism diffused by Jdanov. The last period sees it reigning without division on this new empire, in a style openly autocratic, and the congress of the party is not joined together any more before 1952.  

On the ideological level, the mode becomes increasingly nationalist Russian and xenophobe, which takes inter alia the shape of a campaign against the “cosmopolitanism” as from 1948. In January 1953, the “business of the white blouses”, alleged plot assembled by Jewish doctors, must give the signal at the same time vast purging and of a repression anti-semite. Perhaps the business is it manufactured of all parts, or, more probably, it corresponds to the plot directed by Beria, Khrouchtchev and Molotov which seek to draw aside Stalin, including by assassinating it. The death of Stalin, that some believe suspect and who occurs on on March 5th, in any case stops the gears of a new purging.  

The worship of the personality whose Stalin had been the object was condemned at the time of the XX E congress of the Communist party of Soviet Union. In the night from Friday to, at a meeting held behind closed doors, Khrouchtchev presented a secret report, where he declares: “The goal of this report is not to carry out a thorough criticism of the life of Stalin and his activities. (...) What interests us, it is of knowing how the worship of the person of Stalin did not cease growing, how this worship became, at one exact moment, the source of a whole series of serious perversions and unceasingly more serious of the principles of the Party, of the democracy of the Party, revolutionary legality.” The report is pressed on documents of Lénine and his wife, Kroupskaïa, highlighting the coarseness of Stalin, then watch the methods of fight that this last employed against the opponents through the NKVD, criticizes its role lasting the Second world war, and finally famous its paranoia through the plot of the white blouses. The goal of Khrouchtchev is to show that the successes obtained by the USSR are due essentially to the Party, and not with its late directing. The secret report is thus more one denunciation of Stalin alone that methods which it implemented, and this is why the destalinization started at the time of the XX E congress appeared extremely incomplete, as were to show it the events of Berlin or Prague a few years later.