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N0KFQ > TODAY 05.03.16 16:12l 93 Lines 4473 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 86735_N0KFQ
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Subj: Today in History - Mar 5
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Sent: 160305/1504Z 86735@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA BPQ1.4.65
1953
Joseph Stalin dies
On this day, Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union since
1924, dies in Moscow.
Like his right-wing counterpart, Hitler, who was born in Austria,
Joseph Stalin was not a native of the country he ruled with an
iron fist. Isoeb Dzhugashvili was born in 1889 in Georgia, then
part of the old Russian empire. The son of a drunk who beat him
mercilessly and a pious washerwoman mother, Stalin learned
Russian, which he spoke with a heavy accent all his life, in an
Orthodox Church-run school. While studying to be a priest at
Tiflis Theological Seminary, he began secretly reading Karl Marx
and other left-wing revolutionary thinkers. The "official"
communist story is that he was expelled from the seminary for
this intellectual rebellion; in reality, it may have been because
of poor health.
In 1900, Stalin became active in revolutionary political
activism, taking part in labor demonstrations and strikes. Stalin
joined the more militant wing of the Marxist Social Democratic
movement, the Bolsheviks, and became a student of its leader,
Vladimir Ilich Lenin. Stalin was arrested seven times between
1902 and 1913, and subjected to prison and exile.
Stalin's first big break came in 1912, when Lenin, in exile in
Switzerland, named him to serve on the first Central Committee of
the Bolshevik Party_now a separate entity from the Social
Democrats. The following year, Stalin (finally dropping
Dzugashvili and taking the new name Stalin, from the Russian word
for "steel") published a signal article on the role of Marxism in
the destiny of Russia. In 1917, escaping from an exile in
Siberia, he linked up with Lenin and his coup against the
middle-class democratic government that had supplanted the czar's
rule. Stalin continued to move up the party ladder, from
commissar for nationalities to secretary general of the Central
Committee_a role that would provide the center of his dictatorial
takeover and control of the party and the new USSR.
In fact, upon Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin began the
consolidation of his power base, conducting show trials to purge
enemies and rivals, even having Leon Trotsky assassinated during
his exile in Mexico. Stalin also abandoned Lenin's New Economic
Policy, which would have meant some decentralization of industry.
Stalin demanded_and got_absolute state control of the economy, as
well as greater swaths of Soviet life, until his totalitarian
grip on the new Russian empire was absolute.
The outbreak of World War II saw Stalin attempt an alliance with
Adolf Hitler for purely self-interested reasons, and despite the
political fallout of a communist signing an alliance with a
fascist, they signed a nonaggression pact that allowed each
dictator free reign in their respective spheres of influence.
Stalin then proceeded to annex parts of Poland, Romania, and
Finland, and occupy Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. In May 1941,
he made himself chairman of the Council of People's Commissars;
he was now the official head of the government and no longer
merely head of the party. One month later, Germany invaded the
USSR, making significant early inroads. As German troops
approached, Stalin remained in the capital, directing a
scorched-earth defensive policy and exercising personal control
over the strategies of the Red Army.
As the war progressed, Stalin sat in on the major Allied
conferences, including those in Tehran (1943) and Yalta (1945).
His iron will and deft political skills enabled him to play the
loyal ally while never abandoning his vision of an expanded
postwar Soviet Empire. In fact, after Germany's surrender in
April 1945, Stalin oversaw the continued occupation and
domination of much of Eastern Europe, despite "promises" of free
elections in those countries.
Stalin did not mellow with age; he prosecuted a reign of terror,
purges, executions, exiles to the Gulag Archipelago (a system of
forced-labor camps in the frozen north), and persecution in the
postwar USSR, suppressing all dissent and anything that smacked
of foreign, especially Western European, influence. To the great
relief of many, he died of a massive heart attack on March 5,
1953. He is remembered to this day as the man who helped save his
nation from Nazi domination_and as the mass murderer of the
century, having overseen the deaths of between 8 million and 10
million of his own people.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
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