Gori - Stalin's birthplace
Georgia has an important place in both Russia's ancient and modern history.
Together with Armenia it formed an important Christian buffer against the Ottoman Empire in Tsarist times then became a hotbed of the last Tsar's Marxist opponents. It was also the birthplace of: Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili (Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin) - known fondly as 'Uncle Joe' by Australian WW2 Diggers (soldiers).
So our next tour outing was promised to be to Gori, to: 'see and explore the Joseph Stalin Museum and the house he was born in'.
Here we saw a preserved house within a protective shell in which Stalin had lived with his parents. His father had a shoemaking business in the cellar. Adjacent were carriages from his famous train.
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One of Stalin's several boyhood homes - preserved
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Initially successful in his trade, Stalin's father fell prey to that very Russian affliction: alcoholism - perhaps after losing two sons. The business failed and his father became violently abusive to both mother and child. His parents separated.
Joseph was a bright child and his mother was determined to see him educated. After attending a rough school in Gori, where as a poor kid he learned to fight, he gained a scholarship to the Tiflis (Tbilisi) Spiritual Seminary, where he excelled. But as a youth he was struck-down by the chicken pox, that scared his face for life, and when crossing the street, the carriage of a wealthy Georgian ran him over, permanently damaging his left arm.
He was thus primed for class-war and having read Karl Marx's Das Kapital became a Marxist and declared himself an atheist - religion being: the opium of the masses - much to the distress of his teachers. Yet his time in religious education would stay with him for life. Like Hitler, who also had a religious education, he became notoriously superstitious. 'Give me a boy until he is seven and I'll show you the man,' quoth Aristotle (although not a Jesuit nor even a monotheist).
In both cases their education contributed to the development of messianic visionaries who believed that the world could be reshaped to their will. Both had big personalities and became persuasive speakers able to recruit others to their cause. Hitler offered Germans and their racial cousins a Tausendjähriges (Thousand-Year) Reich and Stalin the world's working classes a Worker's Paradise.
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Images from Stalin's youth and revolutionary period
Until coming here I had taken Churchill's assessment of Stalin as an 'ignorant peasant' to be accurate - after all they had met and dealt.
But I discovered that far from being an ignorant peasant Stalin was both intelligent and highly literate. He spoke at least two languages, edited several newspapers and authored numerous books that are on display here. His biographers note that he was well-read and intellectual but also an unrepentant killer. As for being a 'peasant', like many socialist leaders he wanted to be seen as a man of the people and played and dressed the part.
Yet he was also the product of turbulent revolutionary times with bitter internecine battles between the socialists themselves. One is reminded of the still waring Communist parties we discovered in Nepal. Read more...
As a young radical Stalin co-edited a Georgian Marxist newspaper, Proletariatis Brdzola (Proletarian Struggle).
Around this time the Georgian Marxists split between Vladimir Lenin's Bolsheviks and Julius Martov's Mensheviks with the Mensheviks prevailing, to Stalin's dismay.
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My Struggle - oh sorry! That was the other one (Mein Kampf) - 'The people's flag is deepest red...' That's better!
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Stalin shared Lenin's vision of the future and how it should be structured and detested the Mensheviks ('splitters' - as satirised in Monty Python's Life of Brian) who were at that time still supported by Lenin's eventual revolutionary partner Leon Trotsky. Stalin's famous rivalry with Trotsky began as a young man in Georgia.
Soon Stalin became known to the Tsarist police as a dangerous revolutionary and was arrested then gaoled in Baku. In gaol he was a nuisance: organising the prisoners to support his cause and ordering the execution of turncoats. He was removed and exiled. He escaped from exile dressed as a woman and made it to Saint Petersburg where he became the founding editor of the newspaper Pravda (Truth). He was again arrested and again escaped.
The museum has a model of an elaborate safe house and a complex map depicting his various places of incarceration. His first child, Vasily, was born during this period to his first wife. Two more acknowledged children were born during his second marriage. He was seldom without at least one woman in his life and had at least two illegitimate children. The only child who had survived him when he died in 1953 was Svetlana, who was by then living in the United States.
The Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917 was led by Lenin and Trotsky. During the Civil War that followed Stalin was more brutally effective and moved progressively closer to Lenin. So that when Lenin died in January 1924 it was Stalin and not Trotsky who succeeded as leader.
Stalin then set about industrialising the Soviet Union, at the same time wrecking its agriculture, in part because of his doctrinal support, based on Marxist principles, for the faulty theories of Trofim Denisovich Lysenko. Read more...
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Trotsky, Stalin and Lenin (at the April 1917 conference in Moscow) - Tapestry for the true believers: Lenin and Stalin (sans Trotsky)
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Within three years of his supremacy Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party. In another two he was exiled.
In exile Trotsky mobilised international Marxists to his cause. Stalin responded by arresting prominent Trotskyites and initiated the infamous 'show trials' of 1936-37 in which dozens of former revolutionaries submissively confessed, while comically holding up their pants, in front of the international newsreel cameras. The world saw them admit to many crimes including to plotting with Trotsky to kill Stalin and several others among his leadership. They were sentenced to death and Trotsky was similarly sentenced in absentia.
Then began the Great Purge.
Wikipedia tells us that:
In July 1937, the Politburo ordered a purge of 'anti-Soviet elements' in society, targeting anti-Stalin Bolsheviks, former Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, priests, ex-White Army soldiers, and common criminals. That month, Stalin and Yezhov signed Order No. 00447, listing 268,950 people for arrest, of whom 75,950 were executed. He also initiated 'national operations', the ethnic cleansing of non-Soviet ethnic groups—among them Poles, Germans, Latvians, Finns, Greeks, Koreans, and Chinese - through internal or external exile. During these years, approximately 1.6 million people were arrested, 700,000 were shot, and an unknown number died under NKVD torture.
Needless to say many of these former Mensheviks had been Stalin's opponents back in Georgia.
As I've mentioned elsewhere, Trotsky and his wife fled to Mexico City where they moved in with the painters Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, Rivera's wife. Trotsky and Kahlo began an affair and Rivera chucked the Trotskys out. The Trotskys moved a couple of blocks away where Trotsky came under repeated attack from Stalin's agents. He survived two bungled assassination attempts before an assassin dealt him a fatal blow, with an ice-axe, in August 1940.
Of course killing Trotsky was by then a tiny drop in Stalin's already overflowing bucket.
So here we were learning about this wonderful man who built modern Russia - it was just like visiting George W Bush's Presidential Library. Read more...
As Nazi Germany gained strength, with the support of Mussolini's Fascists and Franco's Nationalists, and a Second World War loomed, Stalin secretly colluded with Hitler to invade Poland.
Initially the joint invasion of Poland went well. Germany took the linguistically Polish-dominated areas of Lublin Province and part of Warsaw Province and began rounding up Jews and Roma. The Soviet Union took Lithuania and began killing Polish dissidents and intellectuals.
Not content with these territorial gains Stalin then attempted to take Finland. But the Finns where on familiar territory; had well trained properly equipped, dedicated defenders; and an officer corps who knew what they were doing.
Although Stalin had substantially increased the size of the Red army he had simultaneously purged many of the experienced officers who posed a potential threat to his leadership. In 1938 three out of five Soviet marshals: Alexander Ilyich Yegorov; Vasily Blyukher; Tukhachevsky; were put to death, at least one beaten to death, and several thousands of the Red Army officers were arrested or shot.
He had also purged scientists and engineers who supported reactionary theories like: Darwinism and Relativity, contributing to a serious famine and subsequently injuring the war effort (see the development of RADAR on this website). When the United States, in cooperation with Britain, developed and exploded the first atom bombs he would have to hurriedly bring back dozens of scientists from exile in Siberia.
Not for the first or the last time the Russians threw untrained; incompetently led; ill-equipped; and uncommitted; troops into battle against much smaller number of superior troops and got slaughtered. Under the bloody Tsar Nicholas II who'd overruled his admirals, because he had God on his side, they'd incompetently lost an entire navy to the Japanese, who lost virtually nothing, and now the Japanese remained a problem on their Eastern border.
Hitler took note. In June 1941 he staged a surprise invasion of Russia. At first Stalin would not believe it was happening. Then among his first responses was to order the killing of around 100,000 Russian political prisoners lest they escape. The German advance was initially very fast, overrunning the Red Army, but Stalin had a secret weapon, the proclaimed atheist had a sacred icon put in a plane and flown in circles around Moscow.
Hitler for his part was equivocating, consulting his astrologer as to what to do next. Winter closed in and the German troops had no cold weather clothes or vehicles. The war bogged down for three more years.
In the meantime the United States had joined Britain and the free French against the Axis (Germany, Italy, Spain and Japan). Stalin, now desperate, turned to the allies.
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Soviet - English Negotiations 1944 with Churchill - Later with the US and FD Roosevelt
US weapons poured in and now, after years of fighting, Russia had some experienced officers. As we learn everywhere in the former Soviet Union, it was they who now rose-up and defeated Germany, not the troops landing at Normandy, as we've always been told on ANZAC day. In reality it was six of one, half a dozen of the other - one would probably not have succeeded without the other.
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How the War was won
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The Soviet Union certainly spilled the most blood. During the conflict the Soviet Union lost 8.7 million soldiers and around 19 million civilians. This was more than all the other combatants in World War II combined - the Axis powers: Germany, Italy and Japan - included.
Over 40 million Soviet deaths are attributed directly to Stalin, far surpassing Hitler's death camps. How much of this slaughter of Soviet youth and innocent civilians was a direct result of his mismanagement and paranoia?
Yet mismanagement and paranoia were not the only factors. For this man any means justified his end. Like Hitler, who dreamed of an heroic Arian Utopia, Stalin's youthful dream of a Worker's Paradise justified any sacrifice - by others.
It's many years since Stalin lost his heroic reputation in Russia. Now even this museum is beginning to revise its representation of the man. Yet many tourists are still happy to be photographed beside his statue. Would they as happily stand beside Hitler?
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After Stalin's death in March 1953 it was barely five years before he started to become anathema in the Soviet Union. In February 1956 Nikita Khrushchev, then First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union denounced Stalin as having fostered a 'leadership cult of personality', in contravention of the ideals of Communism.
There is a documentary on YouTube on Stalin's life: 'Monster: A Portrait of Stalin in Blood' - Executive producer: Alexander Ivankin - 1991 (note the year). It was written and researched in Moscow using official archival material. It's 50 minutes long, so settle in if you are interested. Watch here...
Denouncing Stalin did not go down well in Georgia where riots resulted; but to no avail - their hero was dead and now his reputation was set to go through the mud. The process of de-Stalinisation had begun and would now gain pace. In 1961 Stalingrad was renamed Volgograd. In 1962 Stalin Peak, the highest mountain in the Soviet Union became Communism Peak. The mountain is in Tajikistan (Read more...) and is now Ismoili Somoni Peak. Stalin's name would soon be erased almost everywhere - except here.
For his part Khrushchev became Premier but then himself fell from grace, soon after his sparring partner, US President Kennedy, was assassinated, to be ousted by Leonid Brezhnev who was no lover of Stalin either. The last nails in Stalin's coffin would be hammered home under Premier Gorbachev's policies of: perestroika - restructuring and glasnost - openness.