Following two failed assassination attempts, Lenin, following a suggestion from a military leader named Joseph Stalin, authorized the start of the Red Terror, an execution order of former government officials under the Czar and Provisional Government, as well as the royal family. Shortly thereafter, the country dissolved into civil war between the ruling Bolsheviks and the White Guard, a loose alliance of anti-Bolshevik parties including tsarists, right-wing parties, nationalists and anti-communist left-wing parties.
Following the end of the war in , Lenin established the New Economic Policy, which allowed for private businesses and a market economy, despite its direct contradiction with Marxist ideology. He died in January of a heart attack.
As General Secretary under Lenin, he also oversaw brutal military actions throughout the civil war and led the invasion of Georgia to overthrow an unfriendly social-democratic government. In Georgia, Stalin took the lead in establishing a Bolshevik regime in the country hard-line policies that forcefully repressed any communist opposition. Over the next few years, Stalin isolated his major opponents in the Communist Party, eventually throwing them out, and became the unchallenged leader of the Soviet Union.
He officially ruled the country from However, the quick transition from agriculture to industry disrupted food supply and caused a massive famine lasting from to Simultaneously, people deemed to be political enemies began being imprisoned in labor camps or deported to remote areas of Russia.
However, when Hitler broke the pact and invaded in , the Soviet Union joined the western Allies in their battle against the Nazis. Credits: This page was curated by CES. Skip to main content. Shamberg argued that even as a relatively minor Communist leader, Stalin built up a circle of trusted supporters.
Different people comprised this inner circle during different periods of Stalin's political career—several members were killed or imprisoned during his tenure as leader of the Soviet Union—but Stalin maintained an inner circle in some form until his death in Shamberg argued that none of Stalin's rivals saw him as a likely successor to Lenin as leader of the Communist Party because of his relatively low position in the Party hierarchy and his very minor role in the October Revolution.
However, Stalin was able to come to power through the support of his inner circle. He turned the Central Committee of the Communist Party into a powerful body and gradually began to fill it with his supporters. The process of removing all potential rivals from the Central Committee was only completed in after a decade of purges, Shamberg said. Shamberg devoted special attention to the role of Georgii Malenkov, whom he knew personally during the s and s.
Malenkov, according to Shamberg, was a new addition to Stalin's inner circle in the late s. Malenkov is largely ignored in recent analyses of the Stalinist period, largely because Nikita Khrushchev—who was an intimate friend of Malenkov—wrote in his memoirs that Malenkov was a mere "errand boy" for Stalin.
Shamberg, however, argued that Malenkov was an intelligent man, a skilled manager, and played an important role in Stalin's government. Shamberg also noted that Malenkov was the first top Soviet official to recognize that nuclear war would destroy all of world civilization. In the later years of Stalin's rule, there was considerable scheming within the Communist Party to position people as potential successors for the aging dictator.
According to Shamberg, there were two major factions—the Moscow group, which included Malenkov and Lavrenti Beriia, and the St. The St. Stalin also became involved in various criminal activities, including bank heists, the proceeds from which were used to help fund the Bolshevik Party.
He was arrested multiple times between and , and subjected to imprisonment and exile in Siberia. Ekaterina perished from typhus when her son was an infant.
They had two children, a boy and a girl his only daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva , caused an international scandal when she defected to the United States in Nadezhda committed suicide in her early 30s.
Stalin also fathered several children out of wedlock. Three years later, in November , the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia. The Soviet Union was founded in , with Lenin as its first leader. During these years, Stalin had continued to move up the party ladder, and in he became secretary general of the Central Committee of the Communist Party , a role that enabled him to appoint his allies to government jobs and grow a base of political support.
After Lenin died in , Stalin eventually outmaneuvered his rivals and won the power struggle for control of the Communist Party.
By the late s, he had become dictator of the Soviet Union. Starting in the late s, Joseph Stalin launched a series of five-year plans intended to transform the Soviet Union from a peasant society into an industrial superpower. His development plan was centered on government control of the economy and included the forced collectivization of Soviet agriculture, in which the government took control of farms.
The forced collectivization also led to widespread famine across the Soviet Union that killed millions. Stalin ruled by terror and with a totalitarian grip in order to eliminate anyone who might oppose him.
He expanded the powers of the secret police, encouraged citizens to spy on one another and had millions of people killed or sent to the Gulag system of forced labor camps. During the second half of the s, Stalin instituted the Great Purge , a series of campaigns designed to rid the Communist Party, the military and other parts of Soviet society from those he considered a threat.
Additionally, Stalin built a cult of personality around himself in the Soviet Union. Cities were renamed in his honor. Soviet history books were rewritten to give him a more prominent role in the revolution and mythologize other aspects of his life. He was the subject of flattering artwork, literature and music, and his name became part of the Soviet national anthem. He censored photographs in an attempt to rewrite history, removing former associates executed during his many purges.
His government also controlled the Soviet media. Stalin then proceeded to annex parts of Poland and Romania, as well as the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. He also launched an invasion of Finland. Stalin had ignored warnings from the Americans and the British, as well as his own intelligence agents, about a potential invasion, and the Soviets were not prepared for war.
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