JOSEPH STALIN. HISTORY OF RUSSIA AND THE SOVIET UNION. FREE ESSAY SAMPLE

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The career of Stalin was rather fast and straight-forward. In 1922 was elected the general secretary of the central committee of the All-Russian communist-Bolshevik party. His rude force and approaches attracted many and Stalin got additional support from the masses. His approach to politics was so forceful that even dying Lenin (the founding father of soviet communism-Leninism) in his last writing wrote about the need to remove rude Stalin from power. The document was rejected and Stalin continue to build his career to the most powerful post in the Soviet Union (Radzinsky, 79).

As Stalin obtained additional power, he effectively used the soviet secret police and intelligence (called Cheka and then GRU or KGB) as an effective and powerful tool for state-sanctioned murders. It is under his rule Soviet spies entered Germany, Japan, Great Britain, France and the USA. As Stalin saw now difference between state-sanctioned murders for political purposes, secret service, intelligence and communist goals, he set up NKVD organization to oversee all other communist parties around the world and assure that they remain pro-Stalin (Service, 57).

In the USSR, Stalin initiated Industrialization in an attempt to revitalize the Soviet Economy destroyed by the WWI. The NEP (New Economic Policy) initiated by Lenin was replaced by 5-Year Plans of Stalin starting in late 1920s. Stalin managed to build a strong industrial Soviet economy in the absence of capital, with little international trade and no modern infrastructure. His approach called for drastic restraining of consumption of ordinary villagers and other soviet citizens. Under his policies all wealth in the country went directly into the industry and special militia squads would find most affluent citizens (called "kulak") and stripped them of finances for the good of the nation. As a result, in the early 1930s the wages of workers were only about 10% of that of the late 1920s. Stalin made use of unpaid labor as provided by numerous prisoners, communists and Komsomol members organized by the state to build large projects and work on small "Subotnik" projects.

Collectivization of agriculture was another project of Stalin under which all land became national and peasants had to unite into collective farms. This meant drastic social changes in the country and left many peasants without means of existence. In the first few years of collectivization, industrial production would rise by some 180%, while agricultural production fell. Stalin blamed the rich peasants "kulaks" for resisting collectivization and sabotaging the soviet regime, despite the fact that kulaks accounted for only a fraction of the total peasants. The secret police and komsomol would search these kulaks and either kill them or place them in labor camps/prisons. The areas that could not meet the plan, would be penalized by having all their grains and seed grains removed from the population. The deprived population was forced to stay in the area and starve. During the period 1932-1934 more than 6 million people in Ukraine and Russia died from famine.

Stalin controlled science, art, literature and education labeling those as either ideologically safe or ideologically dangerous topics. In ideologically safe areas, the soviets had made much progress due to the free education system and state-sponsored research. Other areas called pseudo-sciences were completely abandoned. For instance, Stalin wanted to abandon the general relativity theory and quantum mechanics and only after the soviet engineers made it clear that without these sciences they would never make a nuclear bomb, these sciences were allowed in the country. It was Stalin's contribution to science that the soviet Union launched the first man in space, the artificial satellite and create a computer, second after Great Britain (Montefiore, 132).

In the social sphere, Stalin had also made arguable progress. On one hand soviet females got equal rights in everything be it education or employment. On the other hand after multi-million losses due to famines, Soviet Union women as a labor force. So despite having equal rights in everything a woman now after finishing her work had to return to her routine house duties. The improvements of healthcare freed the Soviet Union from Cholera, Malaria and Typhus. The life expectancy under Stalin increased as females now were given an opportunity to give birth in hospitals with proper prenatal care. Stalin and his communist regime did everything possible to increase the population destroyed by world wars, famines and labor camps.

In art Stalin favored only Socialist Realism and wanted the pictures and sculptures of soviet man being everywhere. The church was nearly removed from the country yet again revived during the WWII as a patriotic organization after the soviet secret service managed to recruit the head of the Russian orthodox church (Montefiore, 144).

Under Stalin massive purges, deportations and political murders were common. During or after the WWII, Stalin moved more than 3 million people into Central Asia, thus mixing the ethical map of the USSR. His idea was to mix the nations in a way so that none could build up opposition base on national qualities.

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