I chosed Joseph Stalin as my school project. But I don't know about him very well. Help me for the following: 1. His father and mother. Where did they lived? 2. Adulthood(what did he do during his adulthood). Who did he married and when? 3. What did he do? 4. The achievments he did. 5. A conclusion about him.
. You have picked one of strongest incarnation of the human condition , his name has still to this day a powerful magic , his ghost haunting million of souls . basic first 1. His father and mother. Where did they lived? Georgia is a mountainous country , full of deep valleys , swift stream and high , snow capped mountains , it has a long and glorious history , the caucasus was and is one of the most turbulent spot in the world , one keep one's own by fighting for it , feuds last for generations , enemies are all around you , the georgian men said they are proud and honorable others said they are murderous brutes in the century before stalin birth , georgia had united with tsarist russia , in fact becoming a border province His father name was vissarion ivanovitch dugashvili , he was a georgian ,cobbler by trade from the village of didi-lilo ,he moved to the town of gori , working at the adelkhanov shoe factory , his wife was kevetan georgievna born geladze , a poor orphaned peasant girl from the village of gambareuli The familly lived in gori ,where on the 6 of december 1878 joseph was born , his full name was thus joseph , vissarionnovitch dugashvili , he was the third but only living son his father was an alcoholic brute , beating him and his mother to the point of breaking bones , in the schoolyard the young joseph became famous for his uncompromising , no surrender , dirty tricks style of fighting he survived a bad case of smallpox ,a carriage accident and the permanents paternal drunken beatings through the intervention of a kind jewish neighboor , he could attend the religious orthodox high school ,the only one around his mother wanted him to be a priest , his schooling was smooth , his memory was exceptionnal , his intellect agile the school board gave him the highest marks for religion , russian , old greek, slavonic , georgian ,geography and music he got second highest on one subject only , arithmetic , in fact in later years , he often would check the figures and statistics given to him by subordinates , reading list of numbers like an expert . 2. Adulthood(what did he do during his adulthood). Who did he married and when? in the seminary of tiblis , the capital he got in serious trouble because of his stubborn nature , he left or got kicked out in may 1899, a few months before graduation he then got involved with a group of nationalist maxists intelectuals , wrote poetry and got the tsarist police on his back , made a run for it becoming a professionnal revolutionnary , gravitating in and out of jail , always to more extreme groups , his first wife was the sister of a fellow georgian bolchevick ,katherina svanidze , she was a simple soul , he was a dashing ,intense revolutionnary ,they got married in chuch in july 1906 a son ,yacob was born in march 1907 , she died in november of the same year , a friend commented that he became even harder afterward , taking the pseudonym stalin ( steely ) constantly chassed by the police ,often escaping from captivity he was in jail in siberia during the march 1917 revolution , came back in time for the october revolution he married his secretary , nadya allilueva in 1918 while in charge of the southern front , he would get a son vassily and a daughter svetlana, his headquarters was at staritsyn , to mark his success in getting the grain supply of the kuban to the starving north , the city was renamed stalingrad . nominated secretary of the party in 1922 by lenin it was a small job then ,but he controlled promotions and transferts until when he had the numbers , his enemies were plucked out , after lenin incapacitation and death ,he got trotsky down , then out from 1929 he was the sole master of the soviet union on the 7 of november 1931 ,nadya, his second wife, commited suicide 3. What did he do? during the following ten years waves of deportations , shootings , organised starvations struck various groups , even the secret police got " purged " a few times , the victims were bolcheviks politicians , peasants , ukrainians , officers ,intellectuals .... during the tenure of nikolai yezhov " the malignant dwarf "chief of the nkvd the great terror swept all before it , millions of people were disappeared ,worked and starved to death in the camps ,soljenitsin mention at roll call all the names being nearly the same , people were imprisonned by whole page of the phonebook ! yezhov got purged and replaced by a more moderate director , beria !!! meanwhile the industrialisation was progressing at a whip cracking pace , wary of this new kid on the block called hitler ( he could reconise the style ) he tried to get some alliance going with the west , since nobody trusted nobody, it didn't work , he then had a stroke of genius and made a deal with his worst enemy to encourage hitler to fight a war to the west while he could sit back and count the score . this brilliant plan came crashing down with the fall of france , holland , belgium , danemark , norway ,yugoslavia and greece the battle of britain was a draw , the mediteraneen sea a soon to be axis lake , the british army was shattered , needing a complete rebuild then on the 22 of june 1941 nazi germany attacked east , destroying the soviet armies as they came on line , cutting down and capturing millions of soldiers , the world war had become the hitler versus stalin war after an initial hesitation , stalin took charge , he would be the beating heart of the soviet war effort ,attending to all aspect of goverment ,working sixteen hours solid . nobody in the soviet union had the slightest doubt who was in charge , there was fear of course but , also there was total trust that there would be no slackness , no doubts this was a war of extermination, the cost in human life irrelevant , in the first months of the war , the elder son of stalin ,yakob, a lieutnant with the 14th armored division was captured by the germans on the leningrad front , yakob stood up to the germans , while stalin refused to negotiate his exchange , he had published an order that all russian prisonners of war were to be court martialed as traitors , while not doubting his son , he made no personnal exception , later the germans shot yakob his second son vassili was more of a playboy , serving in the air force at stalingrad , everybody got the message when one of stalin henchman , malenkov, came down from moscow to abuse vassili unit for not fighting hard enought , better results were expected from the start , stalin set his demands for after the victory , those demands proved identicals from the disasters days of november 41 to the victory days of february 45 , the professionnal foreign diplomats were cajoled , bullied , by what all saw as a master negotiator he had a relationship with churchil made of total distrust and amused confrontation , with roosevelt there was more respect and an understanding of the tides of the future , still he would have double crossed him, given half the chance . the post war saw him striding half the globe . his personnal prestige cast a huge shadow , from china to prague . had he binded the war wounds , held for a rest , then maybe some good could be said of him, but it wasn't to be the terror grind restarted , there would be no spring , he died in the first week of march 1953 , unattended for hours because of his security protocol , with the body rigid , the soviet politicians were slowly starting to plot the succession , the discution got heated when suddently , one of his eyes open wide , sending a terrible glare , krutchev said all present had like a bucket of frozen water down their spine . his best epitaph was given by leonid brejnev " he was a great leader, but he made everybody too scared "
a monster in human form his best epitaph was given by leonid brejnev " he was a great leader, but he made everybody too scared " his real epitaph was that of the biggest murderer in the history of mankind. he made hitler, mao, pol pot, and any other mass murderer look like pickers. best estimates are 35 million died at his command. a meglomanic that cared for no one or nothing except his own power. he was ruthless and demanded that others be the same in support of him. he misused his peoples love for the motherland to gain and keep power. the only "truth" he carred about was what he wanted to be true. to challenge him was to die, to fail him in any way was to risk death. the world would have been a better place if he had never been born.
Re: a monster in human form . [quote="lynn1212 the world would have been a better place if he had never been born.[/quote] This , Lynn , is an unprovable statement a better world it would be for the millions of souls he extingished and their never to be children The uncomfortable fact remains that Stalin drove the people to victory. For the russian , defeat would have ment physical extermination for two hundred millions in the then USSR , in 41 there was little in the way of help Stalin involved himself with all aspect of society , holding all failings to account , his lifestyle was frugal , his workrate prodigious He was the grim leader suited for grim days , the focus for survival , then victory .
more than just the war stalin committed many of his murders out side of wartime. he starved millions of his people before the war to force collectives on them. most of his crimes were commited not to defend his country but to estaplish and increase his personal power. as far as the war goes there is a good case to be made that he was responsible in no small part for hitler's war in the first place. he entered into treaties with hitler that allowed hitler to avoit the treaty restrections on his military. germany was able to design and build prototypes, test tactics, and train men and officers at hidden russian locations in violation of treaties that restricted such activities. the mutual non aggression pact between the two monsters secured hitler's eastern front and allowed him to mass armies to the west. without this it is doubtful if the attacks on the westren nations would have worked of even been launched. the two planned and carried out the invasion and division of poland as a joint exercise. [ once there stalin murdered basicly the entire polish officer corps just in case they had any ideas about defending their country.] old joe also made russia's condition much worse by destroying his own officer corps just before the war in an attempt to further secure his power. in short his tenure was a diaster for both russia and the world. he gets credit for winning a war that he was at least partly to blame for starting and which was made worse due to his actions. after the war he was responsible for establishing the iron curtain and starting the cold war with all its nasty little "wars of liberation". stalin was the largest mass murderer in history by far and his record only gets worse if you lay the actions of his minions at his feet where they belong. pol pot and his killing fields, the blood letting and camps in vietnam following the commie victory there, the mass deaths from starvation and security actions in korea, much of the genocide in africa, all the many deaths in china under the leadership of his good friend and client mao, and the founding and support of countless underground troubling groups as underground forces. without stalin many if not all of these would not have taken place. stalin may have had the virtues of his vices but his vices were so many and so horrible as to bury his virtues and he does not deserve credit for any virtues. now go ahead and tell me again how my statement about being better without him ever lived is unsuportable. it may be argued but there is lots of support for it.
As far as I can tell, the argument is that without Stalin, Russia (or the CCCP as it became) would never have been in a fit state to resist the Germans in 1941. Firstly because they would not have industrialised to the same extent, and secondly because he was jolly ruthless and also a damn good propagandist. The first argument - I do recall somebody (Stonewall, I think) refuting this, showing how much Russia was industrialising before the Commies took over, and that the trend showed that the only difference Stalin made to the proceedure was less foreign investment and more dead peasants. The second argument - well, without Stalin the Red Army would arguably be in better shape to start with... Anyway, unknowns aside, few leaders of Russia / the CCCP have not been thoroughly ruthless when necessary (and even when not...). Propaganda ability is prehaps the only unique thing Stalin had going for him, and even in that role he could be replaced by a suitable government official, like Germany's Goebbles. Heck, without Stalin's harsh rule, would the population of the Ukraine welcome the German invaders as liberators?
. I got most of my information on the early part from " stalin a biography " from robert service , for the latter parts, from personnal recollection of various readings , cross my heart I believe it to be good dope On the subject of russia winning without stalin .. during WW1 , with most of the germans busy in the west russia got beaten times and times again during WW2 with most of the fighting in the east ,and japan threatening , russia won the russian war industries produced most of the fighting gear used on the front , tsarist russia had to import a lot including most of its artillery and early armor . shooting two third of soviet generals might have been a factor of weakness at first , some were good like tukaschevsky but it got rid of a lot of dead wood from the civil war . it allowed the rise of young ones , flexible and capable of growth Hitler bemoaned that he hadn't , like stalin , done a military purge before the war the communists crimes started early ," iron felix " djerjinski the father of the GPU was deporting and shooting tens of thousands under lenin orders when stalin was still a pen pusher , He had nothing to do with the treaty of friendship linking weimar germany and soviet russia , allowing germans officers to train together with soviets ones back in the 1920ties the non-aggression pact of 1939 was a brilliant move , the western allies diplomacy got it's just desert for fumbling so much , it didn't quite work out in the end , but that was a classic . the great famine , the great terror and other purges , were his will it cost tens of millions of lives , thirty millions could be exagerated but is believable , they died in the fozzen wastes of russia , digging the white sea canal , the coal of vorkuta and the gold of the kolima , it was death by exaustion , with no hope of survival , when the war came the "zeks" were used in nkvd battallions to unmask machine-gun points and clear a path through the minefields for his contempt for human suffering he fit with other great russian rulers , peter the great and ivan grozny with wich stalin identified himself . russia has always been attacked and hold a view that a leader is the one who hold everything together , stalin was that , to a fault .
. At the end of the victorious polish campaign in 1939 , hitler visited the front , the headquarters had a grand spread , with tribune of honnor , band playing , flags flaping.... the whole official doodah ! Hitler left the official party and went to eat in a nearby field kitchen amongst soldiers . He sincerely hated the prussian officer class ,he tolerated them for a while , .......no more .
daughter IRRC there was a daughter of his living in the US a few years ago. where she is now or even if she is still alive i don't know.
