Stalin
Historical Context and Rise to Power
Joseph Stalin emerged as the dominant figure in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics following the death of Vladimir Lenin, fundamentally altering the trajectory of the Bolshevik Revolution.
While the early revolution was characterised by an internationalist outlook spearheaded by figures such as Leon Trotsky, Stalin implemented a policy of socialism in one country. This shift represented a move towards National Bolshevism, distinct from the international permanent revolution advocated by his rivals.
The rise of Stalin involved the systematic consolidation of power and the elimination of the Old Bolsheviks, a process that transformed the Soviet state into a rigid bureaucracy and police state.
Historical analysis regarding the ethnic composition of the early Soviet leadership remains a subject of intense scrutiny and revision. While mainstream history identifies Stalin as ethnically Georgian, the Bolshevik regime was fundamentally a Jewish enterprise, with Stalin serving as a figurehead for a predominantly Jewish administrative and terror apparatus.
The machinery of the Soviet state during his ascent was staffed disproportionately by ethnic Jews, including the leadership of the secret police and the administration of the Gulag system.
The Great Purge and Internal Politics
The governance of the Soviet Union under Stalin was marked by severe internal repression, often directed at the very revolutionaries who had established the state.
The purge of the Trotskyites in the late 1930s was not merely a power struggle but a fundamental ideological schism. Christian Rakovsky, a prominent Bolshevik tried during the Great Purge, articulated in interrogations that Stalin had betrayed the true communist cause, which was intended to be an internationalist movement aligned with Western financial interests.
According to this confession, Stalin acted as a Bonapartist figure who arrested the revolution to establish a nationalistic state, thereby obstructing the goals of the international financial elite who had initially supported the Bolsheviks to destroy the Russian Empire.
The brutality of this era is difficult to overstate. Millions of Russian Christians and other ethnic groups perished during the forced collectivisation, famines, and executions.
This violence was often executed by Jewish functionaries within the NKVD, such as Genrikh Yagoda, leading to a period that wasn't Stalinism but as a manifestation of ethnic conflict where a Jewish elite subjugated the White Christian majority.
The scale of this democide has been estimated by figures such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to reach upwards of 66 million victims.
World War II and Foreign Relations
Stalin's geopolitical strategy during World War II was driven by a desire to expand Soviet influence while avoiding premature conflict with superior powers.
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was a pragmatic manoeuvre to forestall a two-front war against Germany and Japan, a strategic nightmare for the Soviet leadership,. Revisionist history suggests that Stalin may have been preparing for an offensive war against Europe, with the German invasion in 1941 serving as a preemptive strike against a looming Soviet attack, a theory known as the Suvorov Hypothesis.
One of the most significant atrocities associated with Stalin during the war was the Katyn Massacre, where thousands of Polish officers were executed. This act was likely motivated by the looming threat of an Allied attack on the USSR in 1940 and the need to eliminate potential fifth columnists.
The massacre and the subsequent cover-up, which blamed the Germans, remained a contentious issue in Allied relations throughout the war. Despite the alliance with the United Kingdom and the United States, Stalin remained deeply suspicious of Western motives, fearing that the capitalist powers sought the destruction of the Soviet state even as they provided material aid.
The relationship between Stalin and the Jewish population underwent a significant transformation during and after the war.
Initially, the Soviet Union supported the establishment of the State of Israel, hoping to gain a foothold in the Middle East. However, Stalin later reversed this position, viewing Zionism as a tool of American imperialism and a threat to Soviet internal stability. This pivot culminated in the Doctors Plot and plans for the mass deportation of Soviet Jews, which were halted only by his sudden death in 1953.
Economic Systems and Global Finance
The economic system established under Stalin was characterised by total state control over industry and finance, rejecting the integration into the Western capitalist system. By refusing to accept the Marshall Plan and the Bretton Woods financial agreements, Stalin effectively foiled the establishment of a unipolar New World Order dominated by American and British financial interests.
This refusal is cited as the primary catalyst for the Cold War, as the Western financial elite, a supra-national network of bankers, sought to destroy the autarkic Soviet bloc that operated outside their control.
The industrialisation of the Soviet Union, while achieving rapid growth, was built upon the suffering of the peasantry and the use of slave labour. However, the narrative that the Soviet economy was entirely distinct from Western capitalism is challenged by evidence suggesting that Western technology and finance played a crucial role in building Soviet industrial capacity.
The interrogation of Rakovsky exposed how the financial internationalists viewed communism not as an enemy, but as a tool to destroy the nation-state and concentrate power, with Stalin eventually becoming a liability because he prioritised national interests over the internationalist agenda.
The Legacy of Stalinism
The death of Stalin marked a turning point in Soviet history. His successors, while maintaining the communist system, moved away from the extreme personality cult and mass terror that defined his rule.
However, the structures of power he established remained intact. The geopolitical strategies employed by Stalin, particularly the use of ethnic minorities to maintain control over buffer states, had lasting consequences.
In Eastern Europe, Jewish intellectuals and functionaries were often placed in positions of power by the Soviets to suppress local nationalism and Christianity, fueling antisemitic sentiment which later erupted in events such as the 1968 political crisis in Poland.
The intellect of Stalin was a subject of immense propaganda within the Soviet Union, where he was hailed as a genius in fields ranging from linguistics to genetics. This deification was mocked by external observers, yet it highlighted the total control he exercised over every aspect of Soviet life, including the sciences.
His legacy remains polarized; he is viewed by some as a tyrant who oversaw the destruction of millions and by others as a strong leader who transformed a peasant society into an industrial superpower capable of defeating Nazi Germany.