Joseph Stalin's History
Joseph Stalin was born Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvili on December
18, 1878, or December 6, 1878, according to the Old Style Julian
calendar (although he later invented a new birth date for himself:
December 21, 1879), in the small town of Gori, Georgia, then part of the Russian empire. When he was in his 30s, he took the name Stalin, from the Russian for “man of steel.”
Stalin grew up poor and an only child. His father was a shoemaker and alcoholic who beat his son, and his mother was a laundress. As a boy, Stalin contracted smallpox, which left him with lifelong facial scars. As a teen, he earned a scholarship to attend a seminary in the nearby city of Tblisi and study for the priesthood in the Georgian Orthodox Church. While there he began secretly reading the work of German social philosopher and “Communist Manifesto” author Karl Marx, becoming interested in the revolutionary movement against the Russian monarchy. In 1899, Stalin was expelled from the seminary for missing exams, although he claimed it was for Marxist propaganda. After leaving school, Stalin became an underground political agitator, taking part in labor demonstrations and strikes. He adopted the name Koba, after a fictional Georgian outlaw-hero, and joined the more militant wing of the Marxist Social Democratic movement, the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin. 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 1902 and 1913, and subjected to imprisonment and exile in Siberia. In 1906, Stalin married Ekaterina “Kato” Svanidze (1885-1907), a seamstress. The couple had one son, Yakov (1907-1943), who died as a prisoner in Germany during World War II. Ekaterina perished from typhus when her son was an infant. In 1918 (some sources cite 1919), Stalin married his second wife, Nadezhda “Nadya” Alliluyeva (1901-1932), the daughter of a Russian revolutionary. They had two children, a boy and a girl. Nadezhda committed suicide in her early 30s. Stalin also fathered several children out of wedlock. Joseph Stalin’s Rise to Power In 1912, Lenin, then in exile in Switzerland, appointed Joseph Stalin to serve on the first Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party. Three years later, in November 1917, the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia. The Soviet Union was founded in 1922, with Lenin as its first leader. During these years, Stalin had continued to move up the party ladder, and in 1922 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 1924, Stalin eventually outmaneuvered his rivals and won the power struggle for control of the Communist Party. By the late 1920s, he had become dictator of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union Under Joseph Stalin Starting in the late 1920s, 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. Millions of farmers refused to cooperate with Stalin’s orders and were shot or exiled as punishment. 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 1930s, 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. His government also controlled the Soviet media. In 1939, on the eve of World War II, Joseph Stalin and German dictator Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) signed a nonaggression pact. 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. Then, in June 1941, Germany broke the Nazi-Soviet pact and invaded the USSR, making significant early inroads. (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.) As German troops approached the Soviet capital of Moscow, Stalin remained there and directed a scorched earth defensive policy, destroying any supplies or infrastructure that might benefit the enemy. The tide turned for the Soviets with the Battle of Stalingrad, from August 1942 to February 1943, during which the Red Army defeated the Germans and eventually drove them from Russia. As the war progressed, Stalin participated in 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. By some estimates, he was responsible for the deaths of 20 million people during his brutal rule. http://www.history.com/topics/joseph-stalin |
Vladimir Putin's History
Russian leader Vladimir Putin was born in 1952 in St. Petersburg (then known as Leningrad). After graduating from Leningrad State University, Putin began his career in the KGB as an intelligence officer in 1975. Putin rose to the top ranks of the Russian government after joining President Boris Yeltsin’s administration in 1998, becoming prime minister in 1999 before taking over as president. Putin was again appointed Russian prime minister in 2008, and retained his hold on power by earning reelection to the presidency in 2012.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, he retired from the KGB with the rank of colonel, and returned to Leningrad as a supporter of Anatoly Sobchak (1937-2000), a liberal politician. On the latter’s election as mayor of Leningrad (1991), Putin became his head of external relations and first deputy mayor (1994). After Sobchak’s defeat in 1996, Putin resigned his post and moved to Moscow. In 1998 he was appointed deputy head of management in Boris Yeltsin’s presidential administration, in charge of the Kremlin’s relations with the regional governments. Shortly afterwards, he was appointed head of the Federal Security, an arm of the former KGB, and head of Yeltsin’s Security Council. In August 1999 Yeltsin dismissed his prime minister Sergey Stapashin together with his cabinet, and promoted Putin in his place. In December 1999 Yeltsin resigned as president, appointing Putin acting president until official elections were held (in early 2000). He was re-elected in 2004. In April 2005 he made a historic visit to Israel for talks with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the first visit there by any Kremlin leader. Due to term limits, Putin was forced to leave the presidency in 2008, but not before securing the office for his protege Dmitry Medvedev. With a puppet in place, Putin could win back his position at the next election. On March 4, 2012, Vladimir Putin was re-elected to the presidency, and he was inaugurated to his third term as Russia's president on May 7, 2012. Soon after taking office, he nominated Medvedev as prime minister. In December 2012, Putin signed into a law a ban on the U.S. adoption of Russian children. According to Putin, the legislation—which took effect on January 1, 2013—aimed to make it easier for Russians to adopt native orphans. The adoption ban spurred international controversy, reportedly leaving nearly 50 Russian children—who were in the final phases of adoption with U.S. citizens at the time that Putin signed the law—in legal limbo. Putin further strained relations with the United States the following year. U.S. President Barack Obama canceled a meeting with Putin that August. Obama called off his visit to Russia in reaction to Putin granting asylum to Edward Snowden. Snowden is wanted by the United States for leaking classified information from the National Security Agency. Using mass propaganda and false imprisonment of enemies, Putin has managed to stay in power for over a decade. |
Hello Ms. Bone's Honors English 2 Period 1, your mission, should you choose to accept (just kidding you don't have a choice), is to compare and contrast Joseph Stalin and Vladimir Putin. Consider both of them examples of corrupt dictators. Good luck!
*Your best choice would be to create a Venn Diagram*
*Your best choice would be to create a Venn Diagram*