Anyone who has studied history knows that Joseph Stalin was a controversial figure in history, and the world's views of Stalin are mostly more disparaging than praiseworthy. As the supreme leader of the Soviet Union, Stalin consolidated and stabilized the Soviet regime with iron and bloody hands.
In the Battle of Stalingrad, he led the Soviet Red Army to fight back and defeat the German army and turn the tide of World War II. Churchill called him a "genius and tenacious commander." But he was also a ruthless "executioner", and in order to consolidate his authoritarian dictatorship, he also launched a purge campaign, which killed many innocent people.
I. Young Stalin
As a teenager, Stalin was thin and short, with pockmarks on his face, excellent grades, fond of group fights and good at making people obey. Stalin often participated in Marxist ideological debates in church middle schools, and the question "Why didn't Jesus pull out the sword" arose in his heart, realizing that God did not exist, could not be saved by faith, and had to change the embarrassing status quo by himself.
At the age of fifteen, he became silent and melancholy, determined to break with the past, remembering that "revolutionaries are doomed to perish" in the Catechism. He took the literary character "Coba", which means killing the rich and helping the poor, as his pseudonym, stopped reading, and resolutely took a road of dedication.
The naïve Stalin tried to act like a true revolutionary, wearing dirty shirts and unpolished leather shoes, wandering around workers' groups to explain Marx's teachings to the workers, making them more acceptable and understandable to the masses. And he was good at dealing with prisoners, which is why Lenin valued him. Whenever he encountered a problem, Lenin would say, "Are we going to send Comrade Stalin up there?" He is good at talking to such people. ”
At that time, Stalin often repeated Lenin's slogan, "Bloody struggle will solve the problem quickly." Lenin was Stalin's spiritual teacher, and the revolutionary Arsenidze recalled, "He worshipped Lenin, deified Lenin, took Lenin's ideas as a spiritual pillar, imitated Lenin everywhere, so much so that we jokingly call him 'Lenin's left leg'"
In preparing for the workers' movement, he increasingly became the leader of a small group of Lenin's followers in Georgia. And his tough style has been effective, even if many people are dissatisfied and cause internal divisions.
When Stalin was exiled to Siberia, he received a letter from Lenin! Trotsky therefore said very sarcastically, "This is a very ordinary circulating letter, copied by Krupska and signed by Lenin and distributed to all outsiders who worship Lenin, but this naïve Asian does not know this, and is very happy that God has discovered him." But for Stalin at that time, it was undoubtedly exciting, and he cherished it and wrote it on his resume.
Not only that, in 1907, the then Pakistani revolutionary Asad Bey talked about Stalin who was full of blood. "Koba is a stubborn and upright young man who is not demanding in life. He sent all the rest of the money to Lenin. ”
Stalin himself lived an almost civilian life, and it was not easy to send money to support Lenin's revolutionary activities. He already had a wife and a baby to take care of. Although he can only make ends meet, he still does not care about money and treats it as dung. In the last twenty-five years of his life he did not use rubles and did not pass through shops.
2. Stalin
Lenin held a meeting of Bolshevik deputies in Buguera and elected members of the Central Committee, but there was no Stalin, who was later named by Lenin to the Central Committee. The name Stalin was the new pseudonym that Lenin used when he asked him to write his articles, meaning man made of steel.
Stalin did not write memoirs, and at that time there were few comments and descriptions of Stalin, and if there were few, they were full of contempt and ridicule of Stalin. Mocking him for his eccentric personality is hard to fathom. Speaking with a strong accent, so he is silent and has no personality;
Others think that he is dull in talent and has no brains; Good at management, but not good at making decisions. In his memoirs, Leo Trotsky said, "The bureaucracy is full of mediocrity. Stalin was one of the most outstanding mediocrities in the bureaucracy. "Think he's short-sighted, mediocre, and unforesighted.
And many people think that Stalin was insignificant before 1917. Robert Sluther described Stalin as "the man who missed the revolution" and felt that Stalin was just an admirer and small henchman of Lenin, just a staff member sent to deal with emergencies when problems arose. Others suspected Stalin of being an informant of the Russian secret service, believing that it was suspicious that he could escape every time he was arrested and exiled, and handed the material to Khrushchev, who flatly denied it.
But whether others could see it or not, Stalin still gained a foothold in the ruling clique and stood at the center of power. During his reign, Stalin was determined to transform the Soviet Union from an agrarian country into an industrial country, focusing on the development of heavy industry, and collectivizing agriculture to accumulate funds for industrial development. However, the compulsory sale of grain seriously discouraged farmers, leading to a decline in production and a great famine. But it was he who consolidated the socialist regime, developed the Soviet Union into a powerful industrial country in a short time, and continued the proletarian fire. He understood that under the situation of internal and external troubles, only when a country builds socialism and firmly controls its own destiny can it meet the dawn of the future.
Stalin acted arbitrarily and cruelly, and there were many people who criticized him, but where there will be people who do not make mistakes and there is no stain. Especially in exploring the path of socialist progress, Stalin not only dared to think, but also dared to do, had the courage not to be afraid of what a thousand people pointed out, and never gave up the communist ideal. Churchill said, "He inherited a backward Russia planted by ploughers, and left behind a Soviet Union equipped with atomic weapons." His political rival Kerensky did not question his contribution to the Soviet Union: "Stalin revived Russia from the ashes, made it a great power, whitewashed Hitler, saved Russia and mankind." ”
3. Clean life
Such a respectable and fearful Stalin died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1953, and in order to liquidate Stalin's property, the Soviet government set up a special group to liquidate Stalin's property. Shockingly and unexpectedly, Stalin's assets consisted of notebooks, codexes, and more than a dozen pieces of clothing and five hats, plus five pipes, four cigarette packs, and tobacco. The deposit was only more than 900 rubles, equivalent to less than 80 yuan. In those days, it was only equivalent to half a month's wages of workers. Knowing this, everyone fell into silence and guilt. Legacy
As the leader of the Soviet Union, he was so clean and frugal that he had to silence the Soviets who tried to vent their anger. There are also records that Stalin wore a coat for fifteen years, which cannot help but be ashamed. As he said during his lifetime, "There may be a whole lot of people throwing garbage on my grave, but the winds of history will ruthlessly blow the garbage away." "No matter what the latecomers think, the mixed reputation, right or wrong, is his steel life.