Yahoo Answers is shutting down on May 4th, 2021 (Eastern Time) and the Yahoo Answers website is now in read-only mode. There will be no changes to other Yahoo properties or services, or your Yahoo account. You can find more information about the Yahoo Answers shutdown and how to download your data on this help page.
Can anyone give me any History....?
about Stalin and Stalin's Soviet Union? I'd appreciate any books, articles or personal experience you may have on the subject. Thanks!
1 Answer
- SpellboundLv 71 decade agoFavorite Answer
What do you want to know about Stalin?
If you want a different answer ask a question & I'll do my best to answer it.
Here's an answer I gave a while ago to the question - How did Stalin rise to power?
Once the bolsheviks had seized power Stalin was promoted to General Secretary of the Party. Lenin (the leader of the Bolsheviks) was very concerned that the brutal thug who had been very useful to the party when they were an underground, illegal organisation, would prove to be a thuggish influence if given government office.
Stalin used the job of General Secretary to promote people loyal to him, to remove from the party people who were disloyal and to collect information on every party member. After Lenin's death he waited, allowing other Politburo members to state their preferred policies - he then ganged up on groups of them, using his alliances and his party contacts to destroy the opposition. His did this twice in the 1920s, destroying Trotsky and his supporters and Zinoviev and Kamanev and their supporters. This left him as the undisputed ruler by about 1928.
Once he was the undisputed leader - the Vozhd (meaning Boss) he continued to use the position of General Secretary of the Communist Part to promote loyal supporters and demote, or expel from the party those who he could not be sure about. From the mid 1930s began to use show trials - public events where the accused had to follow a script, nearly always ending in a guilty verdict, and purges - expelling great numbers from the party and arresting people arbitrarily. Fear became one of the main weapons Stalin used against the Soviet people. No-one was safe - loyal Molotov was forced to divorce his wife when she was arrested, her crime? She was Jewish! Stalin also bugged the offices of the other members of the Politburo and collected information on them.
On his way to power he was cautious and did not cause the deaths of anyone - he waited until he could destroy people without any political opposition.
The Great Purge which happened after he gained total power consumed about 2.5 million people.
In the purge he had Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin, Radek, Rykov and Tomsky (all leading old Bolsheviks) all arrested, tried and executed. He had Trotsky assassinated in Mexico in 1940, this was the last of the important old Bolsheviks he had killed.
I've got a lot of books on the subject & know of a lot of good links (and some very poor ones)
The Road to Terror by J Arch Getty & Oleg Naumov
Stalin, A Biography - Robert Service
The Soviet Union 1917 - 1991 by Martin MacCauley
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union - Leonard Shapiro
Beria, My Father - Sergo Beria
Stalin - Edvard Radzinsk