Through a combination of ruthlessness and guile, Stalin succeeded in consolidating his power in the vast Soviet bureacracy of his early career.
Lenin's Successor
Stalin’s rise was in many ways a haunting parallel of his predecessor and fellow Bolshevik, V.I Lenin’s usurpation of power. Where Lenin left off, Stalin gladly continued, be it in his singular vision to break the Russian peasantry and jumpstart Russia’s economy, or his unflinching dedication to rid the Bolshevik Party of any members who dared challenge his policies. In deeds if not in ideology, Stalin was perhaps even more drastic in his measures to bring forth a socialist revolution, with some of the most unspeakable atrocities of the twentieth century to his credit.
The Early Days of Stalin's Career
At the time of Stalin's ascent in the Soviet government, his native Georgia was a disorganized region torn between feuding clans. Later in his career, Stalin would exploit the image of a rural everyman in his bid for power over the more aloof Trotsky, earning him the commission of General Secretary of the Politburo. Ironically, Stalin’s only formal education was through a local seminary, and one of the first insights into his later paranoia which culminated in the Terror is detailed in this stage of his life. As one scholar claims, “This boarding school’s catechismic teaching and ‘Jesuitical methods’ of ‘surveillance, spying, invasion of the inner life, the violation of people’s feelings’ repelled, but impressed [Stalin] so acutely that he spent the rest of his life refining their style and methods.”[1]
Stalin Characterized by a Singular Ruthlessness
Stalin was sent to the city of Tsaritsyn, which was in danger of falling to White Russian armies in 1918, where he was given limited military powers to enforce the distribution of grain. Upon shooting suspected counter-revolutionaries, Stalin replied to Lenin’s letter to be more "merciless and ruthless" by coldly stating, “Be assured, our hand will not tremble;”[2] chilling words indeed. This policy would embody almost every aspect of his rise to power and the unfathomable devastation he wrought on the Russian peasantry.
Stalin's Family Life
It is important to note that for all his evil tendencies, Stalin should not be viewed as a static character in a vast drama of terror. What makes him all the more disturbing is his undeniably real affection for certain members of his family, most notably his daughter Svetlana and later (after her suicide) his wife Nadya. How was this dictator able to take recreational hunting trips and go on extended vacations with family and friends while millions of citizens starved to death under his Five Year Plans? The answers could lie partly in the ideological convictions shared by most of Stalin’s most trusted henchmen; as one biographer argues, “The Party justified its ‘dictatorship’ through purity of faith. Their Scriptures were the teachings of Marxism-Leninism, regarded as ‘scientific’ truth.”[3]
[1] Simon Sebag Montefiore. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. (Phoenix: Orion Books Ltd, 2003.) , 27.
[2]Ibid., 33.
