Joseph Stalin Passes On

Joseph Stalin Passes On

On 5 March 1953, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin died of cerebral haemorrhage in Moscow, in the former Soviet Union. Stalin was a Georgian revolutionary, Marxist theoretician, Soviet statesman who ruled the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until 1953, and Generalissimo of the Soviet Red Army from June 1945 until his death. He served as both General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922 – 1952) and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (1941 – 1953).

Initially governing the country as part of a collective leadership, he consolidated power to become the Soviet Union’s de facto “ruler” by the 1930s. A devoted Communist, ideologically committed to the Leninist interpretation of Marxism, Stalin formalised these ideas as Marxism-Leninism, while his own theories and policies became known as Stalinism. Stalin believed in the need to adapt Marxism to changing circumstances, for instance in 1917, he declared that “there is dogmatic Marxism and there is creative Marxism. I stand on the ground of the latter.” Stalin believed in an inevitable “class struggle” between the world’s proletariat and the global bourgeoise in which the working classes would prove victorious and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat, regarding the Soviet Union as an example of such a state.

Born to a poor family as Ioseb Besarionis dzе Jughashvili on 18 December 1878, in Gori, now Georgia, as a youth Stalin joined the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He went on to edit the party’s newspaper, “Pravda”, and raised funds for Vladimir Lenin’s Bolshevik faction via robberies and demanding ransom from wealthy farmers and capitalists. Repeatedly arrested, he underwent several internal exiles. After the Bolsheviks had seized power during the October Revolution and created a one-party state under Lenin’s newly renamed Communist Party in 1917, Stalin joined its governing Politburo, becoming the People’s Commissar for Nationalities. He then served in the Russian Civil War before overseeing the Soviet Union’s establishment in 1922, Stalin assumed leadership over the country following Lenin’s 1924 death.

Under Stalin, socialism in one country became a central tenet of the party’s doctrine. Through the Five-Year Plans, the country underwent agricultural collectivisation and rapid industrialisation, creating a centralised command economy. This led to severe disruptions of food production that contributed to the famine of 1932 – 1933. To eradicate accused “enemies of the working class”, Stalin instituted the Great Purge, in which over a million were imprisoned and at least 700,000 were alleged to have been executed between 1934 and 1939. By 1937, he had complete personal control over the party and the state.

In 1928, Stalin introduced a “cultural revolution”, which entailed the creation of a culture for the “masses” and socialist realism, an idealised representation of life under socialism in literature and the visual arts. He oversaw a proliferation of schools, newspapers, and libraries, as well as advancement of literacy and numeracy. Socialist realism was promoted throughout the arts, while Stalin wooed prominent writers, such as Maxim Gorky, Mikhail Sholokhov and Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy. The primary official objective of socialist realism was “to depict reality in its revolutionary development”. Stalin also expressed patronage for scientists whose research fit within his preconceived interpretation of Marxism

The Soviet government under Stalin promoted Marxism-Leninism abroad through the Communist International (Comintern) and supported European anti-fascist movements during the 1930s, particularly in the Spanish Civil War. In 1939, the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, resulting in the Soviet invasion of Poland. Germany ended the pact by invading the Soviet Union in 1941. Despite initial setbacks, the Soviet Red Army repelled the German incursion in the pivotal Stalingrad Battle, leading to the ultimate capture of Berlin in 1945, thus ending World War II in Europe. The Soviets annexed the Baltic States and helped establish Soviet-aligned governments throughout Central and Eastern Europe, China, and North Korea.

The Soviet Union and the United States emerged from the World War II as global superpowers. The tensions that arose between the Soviet-backed Eastern Bloc and US-backed Western Bloc became known as the Cold War. Stalin led his country through the post-war reconstruction, during which it developed a nuclear capability in 1949. Stalin also initiated a new military build-up, with the Soviet army being expanded from 2.9 million soldiers, as it stood in 1949, to around 5.8 million by 1953. He sent Molotov as his representative to San Francisco to take part in negotiations to form the United Nations, insisting that the Soviets had a permanent place on its Security Council.

After Stalin’s death in 1953, he was eventually succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev, who denounced him and initiated the de-Stalinisation of Soviet society. Stalin left neither a designated successor nor a framework within which a peaceful transfer of power could take place. The Central Committee met on the day of his death, after which Georgy Malenkov, Lavrentiy Beria and Nikita Khrushchev emerged as the party’s dominant figures. The Central Committee restored the system of collective leadership, and measures were introduced to prevent any one member from attaining autocratic domination and reforms to the Soviet system were immediately implemented.

Considered to be one of the 20th century’s most significant figures, Stalin is still an enigmatic character within the international Marxist-Leninist movement. Nevertheless, despite his extraordinary character, he is still revered as a champion of the working class and for promoting world socialism. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Stalin has retained popularity in Russia as a victorious wartime leader who established the Soviet Union as a major world power. Historians agree that Stalin perhaps determined the course of the twentieth century more than any other individual.

Marxist-Leninists globally remain divided in their views on Stalin; some view him as Lenin’s authentic successor, while others believe he betrayed Lenin’s ideas by deviating from them. Despite the divergent views, Stalin became a champion of the World Revolutionary Process globally, and particularly in the developing world, by ensuring unswerving support for the revolutionary movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America. He emphasised in his thesis on Marxism and the National and Colonial Question that “The proletariat cannot emancipate itself unless it emancipates the oppressed peoples”. According to Stalin, “The era of liberating revolutions in the colonies and dependent countries, the era of the awakening of the proletariat in those countries, the era of its hegemony in the revolution, has begun” (Joseph Stalin).

“The Proletariat Cannot Emancipate Itself Unless It Emancipates the Oppressed Peoples.”

Sources:
Wikipedia.
Joseph Stalin, “Marxism and the National and Colonial Question”, Foreign Language Press, Paris, 2021.
BBC, “Joseph Stalin: National hero or cold-blooded murderer?”, British Broadcasting Corporation, https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/articles/zhv747h.
Wilson Center, “Stalin, Joseph (1879 – 1953)”, Wilson Center Digital Archive, https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/people/stalin-joseph.

Castro Khwela
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