History That Doesn't Suck - 186: From Czardom to Stalinism: Building the USSR & the Ascent of Joseph Stalin

Episode Date: August 25, 2025

“Comrade Stalin, now that he is general secretary, has concentrated immense power in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of exercising this power with sufficient caution.��� This is the story of Joseph Stalin’s path to becoming the dictator of the USSR.  Ioseb (Joseph) Jughashvili, or little “Soso,” is a good student. A choir boy, in fact. But that changes as the Orthodox Georgian increasingly puts his faith in the Bolshevik branch of Russia’s Social Democrats. Under Vladimir Lenin’s leadership, Soso, now going by Joseph Stalin, becomes a true revolutionary. One who embraces violence and murder as an acceptable means to an end amid Russia’s shift from revolution to civil war. With Lenin’s passing in 1924, it’s clear that someone has to step into his shoes, and Stalin deftly outmaneuvers Leon Trotsky to be that someone. But he won’t just lead it. Stalin will remake the Soviet Union in his own image, industrializing and consolidating his power at all costs. Millions will die. Millions more disappear into the gulags, never to be seen again. This is the rise and reign of Joseph “the Man of Steel” Stalin. ____ Connect with us on HTDSpodcast.com and go deep into episode bibliographies and book recommendations join discussions in our Facebook community get news and discounts from The HTDS Gazette  come see a live show get HTDS merch or become an HTDS premium member for bonus episodes and other perks. HTDS is part of Audacy media network. Interested in advertising on the History That Doesn't Suck? Contact Audacyinc.com To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

History that doesn't suck is driven by a simple mission. To make learning legit, seriously researched history more accessible through entertaining stories. If you'd like to support the work we do and receive ad-free episodes, bonus content, and other exclusive perks, we invite you to join our membership program. Sign up today for a seven-day free trial at htDSpodcast.com slash membership, or click the link in the episode notes. It's a bit past 1 a.m. July 17th, 1918. We're deep in Russian territory, some 1,500 miles distant from St. Petersburg, or Petrograd, as it's now known, more than a thousand miles east of Moscow, just over the Ural Mountains, in the city of Yucatirnburg's two-story mansion known as the Impatyev House, where Yaakov Yeroski is waiting in his office for a phone call. He's nervous. Understandable. Loyal Bolshevik revolutionary he may be, but it's no small thing knowing you're about to kill the royal family.

Tell you what, let's leave Yaakov to his thoughts for a minute while I fill you in. As I trust to recall from episode 130, 1917 was a year of big change for Russia. In January, Tsar Nicholas II of the Romanov dynasty was on the throne, and Russia was an allied power in the Great War. By December, Russia had seen revolution, Nicholas's abdication, and Vladimir Lenin's radical Marxists, better known as Bolsheviks, emerging victorious over the provisional government to sign a ceasefire with Germany and claim authority over the nation. And yet, things have hardly stabilized in

1918. Civil war broke out between the newly ascended Bolsheviks, aka the Reds, and a mixture of anti-Bolshevik forces, ranging from Russian Empire loyalists, classical liberals, and ambitious national groups to form powers collectively dubbed the whites. In April, the Reds moved their most precious prisoners, the abdicated Tsar and his family, to a more secure and distant location. Yes, the Impatiab House here in Yucatirmburg. But now, with the whites, or more specifically, with the Czech Legion fast approaching, the commandant of the House, Yakov Yeroski has been ordered to execute the Romanovs. And once that phone rings, the dark-haired Van Dyke-bearded Commodon's task begins.

It's now 1.30 a.m. The phone's sharp trill abruptly breaks the dark morning silence. Yakovirowski answers. The flatbed truck that will haul off the bodies is on its way. Time to wake the Romanovs. About 40 minutes later, the Romanovs, and the few accompanying them, are making their way to the mansion's basement. Everyone is calm.

Yakov told them that they're being moved to another location due to safety concerns, and between that very plausible story and the commandant not rushing them as they dressed, there's just no reason to think otherwise. So, most willingly, the handsomely bearded former Tsar trudges along. He carries his 14-year-old but fragile, hemophilic son, Alexi, in his arms. Next is his German-born wife, the former Tsarina, Alexandra. Then their four daughters, the grand duchesses, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and their youngest girl, 17-year-old Anastasia, alternatively pronounced as Anastasia.

Four loyal retainers are here, too. their head cook, their head footman, Alexandra's lady-in-waiting, and the Imperial Doctor. Reaching the basement's southern end, Yakov opens a set of double doors. The group of 11 steps through to find a room measuring about 25 by 21 feet, with cream and beige-striped wallpaper,

one high-up window, and another set of double doors across the way. A single light bulb hangs from the ceiling. That's it. The room's yellow-painted pine floor is entirely barren. Alexandra complains about the lack of chairs. No problem. Yakov has two chairs brought in.

The former Zarina takes the one nearest to the window. The other is placed toward the middle of the room. Ever so gently, Nicholas places his beloved boy on it. Yakov explains that they'll wait here for their truck, which will soon take them to a new location. And with that deceitfully true statement, He takes his leave, closing the double doors behind him. The Romanoffs and their retainers soon hear a truck.

Its engine roars outside. They have no idea that it's loud idling is to help disguise the sounds that will soon be made in this very room. It's now to 15 a.m. The doors open, and Jakob Yorovovsky quickly enters, followed by nine soldiers forming two lines. The commandant now orders his prisoners, to stand as he tells them.

In view of the fact that your relatives continue their offense of against Soviet Russia, the Presidium of the Euro-Regional Soviet has decided to sentence you to death. Stunned, Nicholas answers. Lord, oh my God, oh my God, what is this? Confused, Dr. Eugene Botkin asks, So we are not going to be taken anywhere? Nicholas asks that the order be read again. It's such a shock.

They can't process this. Yakov acquiesces. He reads the order a second time. As he does, the once Tsarina crosses herself. Nicholas still can't reconcile himself to reality. He says repeatedly. What? What?

Yakov pulls his pistol as he calmly answers. This. The bullet slams into Nicholas's chest. blood sprays out of his khaki tunic. And then, the whole group joins in. Riddled with bullets, the 50-year-old former ruler of Russia, drops dead. This wasn't the plan.

Each executioner was supposed to aim at a different person, but as the revolutionary fervor took over, the entire squad fired at their former sovereign, hitting him and the three retainers nearby. The cook's body flies back, dead. The footman's hit several times, then ended with a headshot while the doctor, filled with bullets and deprived of his kneecaps, lies beside the dead Tsar he's still trying to save.

Maria pulls at the room's second set of doors as a bullet rips through her leg. Alexandra crosses herself as Yaakov's right-hand man, Peter Ermakov, takes careful aim and sends a bullet crashing through her skull. The executioners throw the doors open, choking on the smoke from countless rounds fired in small room, some collapse in the hallway. A few are crying. Though loyal revolutionaries, most of the men selected for this are not bloodthirsty and are sickened with the task, particularly with what remains, finishing off the doctor and killing the five Romanov children. They go back into the room. Yakoff puts his mouths are all but against the doctor's head

and administers the kudagras. As for the children, it's so vicious. Perhaps it's best. if I just leave it at this. The jewels hidden under their clothes, shield them, dragging out their debts, deflecting bullets, and bloodlusting Peter Ermicob's repeatedly plunging bayonet. They first kill sickly little Alexi,

then Patiana, Olga, Maria, and finally, Anastasia, only to find Lady-in-waiting, Anna Demandova rising. Peter's bayonet then slashes and slices her to death too. Within a total of ten minutes,

Every intended Romanoff victim, man, woman, and child is dead. Welcome to History That Doesn't Suck. I'm your professor, Greg Jackson, and I'd like to tell you a story. As Yakov-Yarov-Yarov-Yarov, yet accurately said, the trucks do take the Romanovs to their next location. The macab detail he left out, of course, is that this destination, their final destination, was unmarked graves in the nearby woods. And yes, I'm sorry to say the story I just told you, where young Anastasia met a gruesome end

is true. I love the 90s cartoon as much as the next millennial, but sadly, she, like the rest of her family and their retainers, will lie in a forgotten grave for decades before being discovered. And did the Euro-Reginal Soviet actually order their executions, or did the orders come from Vladimir Lenin? Scholars will debate this well into the next century, with opinions as strong as are different. But we'll leave it there, because even though the Romanov's tragic end provides crucial context to this episode's story, it isn't our main focus. After following the rise of fascist dictators, Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler in recent episodes, today we're ready for the story of another World War II era authoritarian from the other side of the political

spectrum. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republic's communist dictator, Joseph Stalin. We'll start by meeting Joseph as a child, little so-so as he was known, and follow him from Georgian seminary student to aspiring communist and rising Bolshevik leader during Russia's 1917 revolutions and the Red versus White Civil War. We'll then see how Vladimir Lennon's death leads to another war of sorts, as Stalin successfully edges out Leon Trotsky to take control the Bolshevik or a communist party in the 1920s. He'll then use that control to industrialize the USSR rapidly but in a way that shows little to no regard for human life as famine the Great Purge or Great Terror and forced labor camps known as Gulags claim millions of lives.

Yes, millions. Records are incomplete and estimates vary wildly, but conservatively, we're talking six to nine million dead, with some estimates at twice those numbers. Remember when I defined fascism in episode 183 and said that the far rights, fascism and the far left's communism both lead to horrific authoritarian states. They just take vastly different paths to get there. Well, we've seen the fascist path in recent episodes. Now we'll see the communist path, which will also help us understand how fascists in this era so effectively use Bolshevism or even more broadly, Marxism, as their boogeyman. Finally, before we dive in,

a word on definitions. Since I defined Marxism in detail in episode 151, I'll avoid complete repetition by giving you a broad reminder of its meaning as we come to it while encouraging you to revisit 151 if you need more. I'll also point out how Lenin's ideas develop or deviate from Marxism to give us Leninism and how Stalin's takeover evolves into Stalinism. Keep your ears tuned for those as they come. It's a lot to do. And our story begins a few decades back in Imperial Russia ruled Georgia.

Here we go. Rewind In the late 19th century, Bessarion Jugashvili and his wife, Ekaterina Galatza, or Besso and Keike, as the young couple's friends know them, are carving out a life for themselves

in the town of Gori, nestled among the rolling hills of eastern Georgia. That's Georgia the country, of course, not the U.S. state, and as for the town, it's a small but happening place. Though only home to 7,000, Gory's location puts it on key local trade routes between Persia, the Ottoman Empire, and Europe. As for its residents, a growing number of Russians have made

their homes here since Tsar Alexander I annexed Georgia into the empire almost a century back, but most in Gory remain either Armenian or Georgian. Besso and KK are the latter, and on a somewhat debated but likely December day, 1878, the Georgian couple welcomes a son, into the world, Yoseb Jogashvili. Anglicized, Yoseb is Joseph, and we'll later know him as Joseph Stalin, but right now, we'll call him by the same familiar diminutive of his name most due in these early years. So-so. With hair as dark as his bearded shoemaker fathers, so-so is the couple's third-born son. According to Georgian tradition, that makes him a gift from God, but he'll grow up as though he's an only child. Sadly,

Neither of his older siblings survived infancy. So-so will later say that his parents treated him well. In reality, both Besso and K.K. beat the child, even as KK. K.K. contradictorly dotes on him. Meanwhile, Besso is mostly uninvolved, leaving his family soon after Soso's birth. K.K. will later blame his alcoholism for his abandonment. But Besso chocks it up to industrialization,

rendering his cobbler skill set obsolete, forcing him to take on factory work. That, and he claims, KK. is having numerous affairs. Whatever the real reason for his absence, Little Soso is effectively fatherless by 1883, following his mother from one job and home to the next over the coming decade. During this time, the boy loses most of the use of his left arm. Did he have a sledding accident?

Perhaps a wrestling accident? Did he play and lose the local game in which kids grab the axle of passing carriages or was it simply a genetic disorder? All of the above are possible, but we'll never know. As Soso enters his tween years in the early 90s, his mother manages, through Hook and Crook, to get him into a church school and Russian language lessons. He becomes a total bookworm, and does bad luck strike again.

One account has a runaway carriage crushing the 12-year-old's legs permanently affecting his walk, though whether this is a second accident or just a second accident or just a confused retelling of his earlier arm injury is unclear. After this supposed accident, he briefly goes to live with his dad in the factory town of Tbilisi, or Tiflis, and Russian. Did his father kidnap him? Did Soso willingly go to recuperate?

Again, unclear, as is the claim that this is where Soso gets his first taste of proletariat life. That is, the life of the working man. Perhaps he joins his father and other children in a tannery where he sees long days, low wages, and lack of job security amid the odious stench of raw leather. But perhaps this is just later Soviet myth-making. In short, sources conflict. But if so-so is getting the proletarian experience here, it is brief indeed. Returning to his mother and gory only months later, she pushes past Russia's repression of Georgians and the family's lack of funds, working tirelessly to get him back in school and back on track that September. What can I say?

KK doesn't really take no for an answer. As one of Soso's classmates will later put it, quote, Joseph Stalin's severity came from his mother, close quote. Soso makes it worth her while, though. Graduating in 1894, the 15-year-old strong academic record and beautiful choral voice enable this faithful youth to continue his studies at Tiflis Theological Seminary. With a little help from his mother and others, he passes his exams.

so-so is now well on his way to becoming a man of the cloth the Georgian teens start at the seminary is a strong one he's a faith-filled and ardent student he's crushing it in the choir but the school is very strict its rigid schedule and harsh punishments for disobedience start to wear on the Georgian boy increasingly unhappy so-so turns a bit rebellious he joins underground political club which is where Soso discovers his favorite book, The Patricide by Alexander Cosbeki. He latches onto its revenge-driven protagonist, Cobah.

Coincidentally, Cobah is also the name of his uncle, who helped him get into the seminary, and has filled the role of beloved surrogate father. Later, a boyhood friend turned to exiled opponent, Yoseb Irimashvili, will write in his biography of Stalin, quote, Coba had become So Soo's God, the sense of his life. He wanted to become another Coba, as famous a fighter and hero as he. Close quote. It's true.

Soso wants that so badly he adopts Coba as a nickname, and close friends will use it with him throughout his life. In fact, decades from now, when one such friend fallen from grace, Nicolai Bukharren, writes a letter pleading for mercy in 1938, he'll open with Dear Coba. Alas, no dice, Nikolai will still be executed. Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Back at the seminary, So-So is picking up more than cool nicknames in these groups. He and his fellow students are interested in a growing Georgia nationalist movement and in politics. In 1898, he meets the cool new kid, Lado Katshoveli, who was expelled from his last school for leading a student strike.

It's Lato, who channels Soso's rebellion, toward Marxism. Ah, yes, Marxism. Now, we already defined Karl Marxist thinking quite thoroughly in episodes 130 and 151, so I'll encourage you to revisit both if you need to go deep. But in brief, Carl's historical materialism, that is, his idea that feudalism gives way to capitalism, then socialism, and eventually communism, has so-so enamored.

The 20-year-old Georgian is on board with the idea that the working class or proletes, terriot must seize the means of production, such as factories and the land itself, to usher in a new world of egalitarianism. Soso ditches his prayers to attend revolutionary meetings with Lotto. Meanwhile, in 1890, the seminary kicks him out. Is this because he's pushing Marxist propaganda as he'll later claim, or because he can't pay a fee? Yet another mystery of Soso's early life. Or should I say, Kobus' early life? A small fish in Imperial Russia's growing Marxist movement, known as the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, Soso or Koba, is nonetheless making a name for himself in more than the nickname since.

He's a capable organizer and only growing more radical, especially after Lato is reportedly shot and killed in his prison cell in August 1903. As social democrats experience a rupture that same year, Sosos or Koba's radicalization leads him to pass on the more moderate, reform-minded faction known as Mensheviks, literally translated as the minority, to join the Bolsheviks, which translates to the majority. A not always accurate name, but it pays propaganda dividends. The Bolsheviks are led by a law-trained intellectual, named Vladimir Ilyev, though we'll call this balding radical with a Van Dyke beard by his more popular pseudonym, Vladimir Lenin.

To be clear, right now this party split isn't huge. Not yet. The big question is membership. Mensheviks want a big tent. Bolsheviks prefer a small one. A third future Soviet leader we want to start tracking. It'd be spectacled intellectual with a great head of hair who answers to the alias of Leon Trotsky initially sides with the Mensheviks. But not for long. He soon settles into a non-committed middle ground, with the hope that the two sides will come back together. Lenin is beyond frustrated with Trotsky's refusal to pick between the factions. Moreover, party infighting takes a back seat amid revolutionary hopes in 1905. It begins with the Tsar's soldiers massacring demonstrators on a cold January day, known as

Bloody Sunday. The unrest spreads. Mutiny erupts on the battleship Potomkin. Russia loses its war with Japan. General strikes paralyze major cities. Notably, the first workers' council, a.k.a. Soviet, forms as a strike committee. Begrudgingly, Tsar Nicholas II issues the October manifesto promising limited civil rights and a parliament, in other words, a constitutional monarchy. That constitution happens in 1906. Nonetheless, in 1907, Nicholas undercuts the new parliament's lower house, the Duma, leading many to see the revolution as a failure. With the Tsar somewhat stabilized, Soso slash Koba, Vladimir Lennon, and Leon Trotsky, all spend much of the next decade in prison, exile, or on the run. Nonetheless, the three also come into

greater intellectual alignment. Still just a middle management organizer at this point, Koba catches Lennon's eye with his pamphlet, Marxism, and the national question. We won't sweat the details, but it's a Marxist take on the so-called national question, and Lenin loves it. This article also marks a significant moment as Soso adopts yet another pseudonym, Stalin, which roughly means man of steel. Ah, while friends will still use COBA, he's now Joseph Stalin, or just Stalin to most, like you and me. Meanwhile, Trotsky is developing his own twist on Karl Marx's idea of permanent revolution, arguing that Carl's stages of development aren't so rigid, that Russia can more or less skip the capitalist stage to jump straight to revolution.

Though initially rejected by both social democratic factions, this line of thinking eventually pulls Trotsky toward the Bolsheviks. Yes, that internal rupture is complete by 1912, and by 1917, the two camps have settled like this. The Mensheviks remain closer to Karl Marx's original take. They believe capitalism must fully develop before the working class or proletariat can rise in revolution. Conversely, Vladimir Lenin's Bolsheviks believe that full capitalism is not necessary,

that economically backward Russia doesn't need to wait. Further, they contend that the proletariat won't achieve the quote-unquote class consciousness required for revolution on their own, so a professional revolutionary vanguard must lead the way. that vanguard, naturally, is them, the Bolsheviks. Both of these deviations from or further developments of Marxism. It all depends on your point of view, are core tenets of developing Leninism. In short, while the Mensheviks stick closer to Carl's more gradual and flexible path of revolution

and socialism, the Bolsheviks, who we could also call Leninists, are determined to force a Marxist revolution. Their approach is far more immediate, forceful, even violent. and largely uninterested in liberalism's concept of democracy, preferring the evolving system of workers' councils, known as Soviets. Meanwhile, revolution is here. In February 1917, or March by the Gregorian calendar, the bottled up frustrations of decades, if not a century,

a failure to modernize and repressive rule, mixed with the suffering caused by the ongoing Great War, erupt spontaneously in the capital of Petrograd, with protests and crimes. for bread and reform. As we know from this episode's opening, this February revolution leads to Tsar Nicholas II abdicating and the establishment of a liberalizing

but weak provisional government. So weak, in fact, that multiple councils, or Soviets are emerging as a parallel or dual power. This is exactly the opportunity, Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin need. With Germany assisting Lenin, all three returned to Russia from their various places of high or exile. In its April thesis, Lenin calls for the Soviets to seize power. But as the months pass and the dual power situation continues, Lenin is determined to move. This won't be like

1905. They won't let this revolution slip through their fingers. It's the evening of October 10th, or the 23rd by the Gregorian calendar, 1917. Members of the Bolshevik Central Committee, are arriving one by one at Galena Flexerman's ground floor apartment on the edge of the Russian capital of Petrograd. Galena's Menshevik husband would not approve of this gathering, but that's precisely why she convinced him to get a hotel in town tonight by feigning concern about him traveling home from work in this awful weather. What can I say? Love and revolution can be complicated. But as these Bolsheviks shed their coats and tried to warm up, let me point out two in particular. See the bespectacled man over there with the Chevron mustache, that's Leon Trotsky.

And the far more handsome one with the handlebar mustache? That's Joseph Stalin. By 10 p.m., 11 of the 21 committee members are seated around Galena's table, eating sausages. It's at this moment that the man of the hour arrives. Yes, Vladimir Lenin, a clean-shaven linen, and a curly-haired wig, that is. though having slipped back into Russia in April, the Bolshevik leader is still most unwelcome here. In fact, he spent a great deal of time hiding in Finland, hence the disguise. Lending gets right to the point, with blankets covering the window and an oil lamp casting flickering light, he declares that a sort of indifference to the question of insurrection has been noticeable.

But this is impermissible if we are issuing the slogan of the seizure of power in all Syria. Politically, the situation is fully ripe for taking power. Not everyone is convinced. Lev Kaminyev and Grigori Zinoviev, push back, warning. To proclaim an armed uprising now means to gamble not only with the fate of our party, but also with that of the Russian and international revolution. Hours pass. Heated voices rise.

Trotsky insists that any uprising must appear. here defensive. Stalin tentatively supports Lenin. Finally, at nearly three in the morning, Lenin calls for a vote. With a resolution scratched out in a simple notebook, 10 of the 12 committee members, all save Lev and Grigori, vote for an uprising. Now, who will lead as they start this second revolution of 1917? Seven men present are selected to form the Political Bureau, or Pollitt They include the dissenters, Lev Kaminyev and Grigori Zinoviev, as well as our key three. Vladimir Lennon, Leon Trotsky, and the man we've been following from the start, Joseph Stalin. This episode is brought to you by Square.

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The October Revolution, or November by the Gregorian calendar, isn't a spontaneous uprising like the February revolution against the Tsar was. No, this second revolution of 1917 is planned and executed by the Bolsheviks. Vladimir Lenin drives the messaging, while a gifted orator Leon Trotsky, who's now the head of the Petrograd's Soviet and military revolutionary committee, handles the real mechanics of the upcoming takeover. Joseph Stalin, still lower-ranked but a rising star, puts his editorial and organizational gifts to use. Two weeks after their meeting, in Galena's apartment, their red guards seize key positions in Petrograd and storm the Winter Palace, toppling the provisional government.

The timing is no accident. The Bolsheviks launched their seizure of power, just as hundreds of delegates from Soviets across Russia gather in Petrograd for the Second All-Russian Congress. Now, most of these delegates hail from the more moderate Mensheviks, or the peasant-based social revolutionaries, but with many of them leaving in protest, over the uprising, the remaining Bolsheviks and their allies have the numbers. The Bolsheviks used that dominance to claim the backing of the Soviets and legitimize October's Lenin-led revolution. Lenin is named chairman of the new Council of People's Commissars, or Sovnacom, and emerges as the leader of what will now be known, at least by its supporters, as Soviet Russia.

Well, sort of its leader. Lenin has always been an act now, figure it out later kind of leader. And that's exactly where he and his crew, including Trotsky and Stalin, find themselves in the wake of their power grab. With no plan in place, the Bolsheviks, still a minority party, despite the name suggesting otherwise, face immediate and widespread opposition. And yes, this is when Russia plunges into the massive bloody civil war between Lenin's red Bolsheviks and the anti-Bolshevik whites that we heard about in this episode's opening. I'll also remind you, as we learned in episode 150, that the United States plays a role in this loose ideologically conflicted coalition known as the whites. It sends troops

later in 1918. It's also worth noting that this is the year Lenin has Russia adopt the Gregorian calendar, which means that we can finally stop juggling dual dates. As the war rages, Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin, and other Bolshevik leaders, or communist leaders, as they're now rebranding the Bolshevik Party as the Communist Party, feel the ominous threat of failure hanging over their Soviet Russia from all sides. Indeed, those fears propel their quick and territorially costly exit from the Great War with the Treaty of Breslitovsk and the ruthlessness behind the Romanov's execution. Meanwhile, as they fight the whites, they're also fighting massive inefficiencies in government and production that lead to hunger and further revolts. By 1921, the secret police, aka the Cheka,

report over 100 peasant uprisings. That March, 15,000 Soviet sailors and soldiers, soldiers rise up in the Kronstadt mutiny. But to shine the light on our protagonist, or antagonist, what is Joseph Stalin up to during the Civil War? In 1918, he's commissar of the Southern Front. In this military and political role, Stalin's brutality and his future dictatorial ways become particularly evident as he seizes grain from peasant villages, suppresses revolts, and medals with battle plans. When he falls short, Stalin employs a technique that will become his trademark, blaming his failure on secret plots against him, prompting purges of his own men and using the Cheka to execute alleged counter-revolutionaries. Lenin approves. No surprise there.

Leninism accepts suppression and violent force in the name of the revolution, and right now the Cheka is repressing dissenters with arrests and executions left and right. This campaign is known as the red terror, and while its death toll is unknowable, some estimates will put the final figure in the hundreds of thousands. But Trotsky, who's built the Red Army as the Commissar of War, is not impressed with Stalin. Don't get me wrong. Trotsky's just fine with the red tear, but he and Stalin have never been big fans of one another, and now he blames the Georgian-born Bolshevik for their failures on the Southern Front. In October, he writes to Lenin, I categorically insist that Stalin must be recalled. Though removed along with his staff,

from the Southern Front, Stalin is far from down and out. He continues serving the Soviet cause as both commissar for nationalities and commissar for state control. But not so innocent so-so will never forgive Trotsky for this. Their rivalry only deepens. While the Russian Civil War isn't technically over, the writing is on the wall by late 1920 to early 1921. Foreign powers are withdrawing, and independence movements in Ukraine, Georgia, and other hopeful breakaways are failing. The Reds have this, and in December 1922, the nominally federal union of autonomous national republics known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or the USSR, becomes official. But it isn't what Lenin envisioned. As the war peters out the next year,

the death toll is estimated to be as high as 13 million. Only a fraction from combat, the rest being from famine, disease, and political violence. Some two million have fled the country. What's more, the dreams that animated the Red Revolution have proven to be just that. Dreams. The global communist uprising never materialized. Lenin's radical wartime policy, known as War Communism, which all but eliminated private property, contributed to economic collapse and mass starvation rather than utopia. He tried to counter that last year in 1921 by dialing back the socialist state

with a temporary injection of liberalizing capitalism called the New Economic Policy, or the NEP, which permits small businesses and taxes agriculture rather than requisitioning it. It proves to be a significant help, and this blend of economic pragmatism with the political repression of his nonetheless brutal revolutionary dictatorship

all further defines Leninism. That said, the mounting stress is getting to him, so much so that Lennon suffers a stroke in May 1922. More will follow. Lennon leans on the new General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party, Joseph Stalin. It's a highly bureaucratic position, agenda setting, staffing, paperwork. That might sound like small potatoes, but in an increasingly centralized state where disagreement equals dissent, with even the Orthodox Church coming under fire, and attanked.

economy, where government jobs are the surest path to steady sustenance, Stalin is quietly becoming quite powerful. He uses this role to stack the deck with loyalists who will stand by him and his growing rivalry with Trotsky. Oh, and that loyalty is important to Stalin. See, while Lenin is unquestionably the number one man, Trotsky, the guy who organized the October revolution, negotiated with the Germans, and built the Red Army, is just as evidently number two. the bald head of state's health declining fast, Stalin wants all the loyalists he can get to help push his bespectacled rival out when the time comes.

Increasingly incapacitated, particularly after a second stroke in December 1922, Lenin is nonetheless beginning to see how damaging Stalin could be. He tries to warm party leaders in a letter dated December 24th, 1922, which reads in part, Comrade Stalin, now that he is general secretary, has concentrated immense power in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of exercising this power with sufficient caution.

He adds to this warning on January 4, 1923. Stalin is too rude, and this fault becomes unsupportable in the office of the General Secretary. Therefore, I propose to the comrades to find a way to remove Stalin from that position. Lenin expresses more confidence in Trotsky, but even then he describes the late to Bolshevism revolutionary as cocky and self-assured to a fault. These notes, which will come to be called Lenin's Testament, aren't revealed until late May 1923 as Lenin is hospitalized following yet another stroke. His wife, Nadir Zedekrupsky, brings the documents to Gregori Zinoviev,

who shares them with several other senior Bolsheviks, including both Trotsky and Stalin. While some questioned the political implications or timing of the letter, its authenticity is not seriously doubted. To quote historian Oleg Klevenyuk, nobody among Lenin's comrades in arms, including Stalin himself, had any doubts about it. Close quote. The men are shocked by this testament's harsh assessment

of Soviet Russia's top men. Stalin reportedly shouts, He shit on himself and he shit on us. The small group agrees to keep it under wraps. If you're wondering why those less soiled than Stalin would go along, I'm sure his minions' dirt digging helped with the decision. They even found a pre-revolution statement in which Trotsky called Lenin, quote, malicious and morally repulsive, close quote. Ultimately, the testament is kept from the public eye, allowing Stalin to

continue consolidating power unchallenged. It truly seems Lenin doesn't want Stalin to lead the USSR. The soon-to-expire communist appears to prefer Trotsky's less centralized, vision of socialism. Alas, rendered mute by a third stroke in March 1923, there's little he can do, especially as the Central Committee is packed with Stalin loyalists. The only thing holding back Stalin's rise is Lenin's breathing, and that won't last much longer. It's 8 a.m. on Sunday, January 27, 1924. A bitter cold of sub-35 degrees Fahrenheit grips Moscow, but harsh temperatures haven't stopped the endless line of fur-clad mourners in recent days, and it won't stop them today as government officials, loved ones, and journalists, packed the trade union houses Grand Corinthian

Column Tall. They've all come to pay their respects to the recently deceased Soviet leader lying in a glass coffin atop a red-draped platform. Yes, it's Vladimir Lennon. The combined orchestras of the Grand Opera House and Conservatory of Music play several funeral dirges, colonating with everyone in the hall joining in, singing what New York Times reporter Walter Durante calls the Bolshevik funeral march, entitled, You Fell Bitton. With the music finished, thousands of wreaths and palms are cleared away. Six pall bears, Joseph Stalin and Grigori Zinovia of the Paula Bureau and regular workers, lift the coffin. The procession passes between gray lines of troops and out of the trade union house. Paul

bearers swap out as they continue in the cold. Alongside them, countless mourners march holding portraits of Lenin and banners claiming, all around us, everywhere, Lenin is completely with us. Finally, they come to a large wooden platform erected just days ago in the ancient city's historic Red Square. Grigori Evdeckimov, a speaker with a booming voice, reportedly the loudest in Russia, shouts to the crowd, We are burying Lenin. The world's greatest genius has left us. And even with his physical death,

Lenin gives his great order. Workers of the world unite. mourners streamed past until 4 p.m. And the coffin is lowered into the vault. At this same moment, radios across the nation instruct all to... Stand up, comrades. Illich is being lowered into his grave. And that they do.

Across the nation, factory sirens, train whistles, foghorns, cannons, and rifles erupt in a death-mean salute. Then, five minutes of profound silence follows, as all of the USSR stops. A final message of mourning and hope then cuts across the radio waves. Lenin has died, but Leninism lives. It's a somber, orderly, national ceremony. striking contrast to the cold-blooded murder of the Romanovs and their burial in anonymous graves. But if Leninism lives, who leads it now? And speaking of leadership, why wasn't Leon Trotsky at the funeral? Hoping to recover his health, Trotsky was en route to a resort on the Black Sea

when he learned of Lenin's death. Stalin also sent word effectively saying, don't worry about the funeral. There's no way you'll make it in time, so stay and rest. But then the funeral was delayed. and Trotsky could have made it. Was Stalin deliberately misleading him to sabotage his image? It's hard not to see the convenience, especially with Stalin seizing the moment to control the narrative as the second Congress of Soviets opens right after the funeral. Whether he intentionally undermined Trotsky or not,

Stalin emerges as the man honoring Lenin's legacy. Frankly, his cult. Stalin renames Petrograd, Leningrad, while Lenin's body is embalmed and preserved, ultimately to be displayed for the Soviet people to venerate forever. Never a fan of ceremony or adulation, Lenin would undoubtedly roll over at his grave if he had the privacy of resting in the ground. But the thing is, Stalin's hero-worshipping, while Trotsky, is on vacation. Not a great look. Stalin also uses Trotsky's late alignment with Bolshevism in 1917 to further push the narrative that this bespectacled communists

just isn't as invested. But Stalin's assent isn't without its challenges. As the 13th Congress of the Russian Communist Party meets in May 1924, it's decided that Lenin's testament will be read aloud to the Central Committee plenum. Lenin's damning description of Stalin cuts deep, but the General Secretary deftly deflects by embracing the criticism. Well, yes, I am definitely rude. Illich proposes to you to find another person

who differs from me only in external politeness. His allies, Gregori Zinoviev and Lev Kamienev, who formed a ruling triumvirate with him, quickly leap to Stalin's defense. One voice even answers, We are not frightened by rudeness, our whole party is rude. Well then, it seems that by 1924, Stalin is clearly winning.

The infighting nonetheless continues over the next few years. The triumvirate crumbles, while Trotsky leads the left opposition, criticizing the capitalist leanings of the new economic policy and insisting that socialism must be a global movement. Stalin, meanwhile, sticks with the NEP, at least for now, and promotes his new doctrine of socialism in one country, which gives the USSR permission not to take the ideological fight to the world. It's a message that the party likes more than Trotsky's continued internationalism.

Stalin's power only grows as he out maneuvers rivals. He pushes Trotsky out of his military roles in 1925, out of the Politburo in 1926, out of the party in 1927, into internal exile in 1988, and finally has his defeated rival expelled from the USSR in 1929. One country indeed, and a country held firmly in the tightening. grip of Comrade Joseph Stalin. With Trotsky exiled and rivals sidelined, General Secretary Joseph Stalin now sits unopposed atop the Soviet state in 1928.

While Leninism and its emphasis on a disciplined revolutionary vanguard and flexible new economic policy laid the groundwork, Stalin has no intention of merely inheriting Vladimir Lenin's revolution. He means to remake the USSR in his own image, to transform the Soviet Union from an agrarian backwater into a modern industrial powerhouse. And fast, is to this end that, in October 1928, Stalin launches his first five-year plan. The plan is ambitious. In Stalin's mind, it's a revolution as much as 1917 was, one that he said, will be accomplished from above on the initiative of the state and directly supported from below by the millions of peasants it funnels vast resources into producing steel coal electricity and heavy

machinery and ends private business as entire cities seem to spring up almost overnight millions of peasants pour into new soviet factories by official accounts industrial output sores coal production nearly doubles steel surges electricity spreads But these seemingly instant cities come with a dark side, which is to say the countryside, where the state is doing away with the new economic policy to collectivize agriculture. Yes, Lenin's small business and private farm permitting NEP is still in effect at this point, and has done wonders for the USSR. But remember, communist leadership only reluctantly accepted this infusion of capitalism.

Further, Stalin doesn't trust that the richer peasants, known as Koolin, are providing all the grain they can for the nation. So, wanting to get these better-to-do farmers more securely under his thumb, and ideologically convinced that the state can get more out of them than the incentives of the free market, Stalin moves to seize their means of production, that is, their individual privately owned farms, and make them state-run collectives with party surveillance and quotas. He expects the farms will become more efficient, allowing many peasants to become city-dwelling factory workers, even as the sparser populated countryside provides excess grain to feed and

pay for the people working in the new primarily industrialized economy. The results are catastrophic. Peasants oppose the seizure of their land, tools, and livestock. They burn fields of slaughter animals and flat-out revolt. Party officials and secret police, like the Cheka, answer with arrests, deportations and killings, particularly targeting the Kulaks. Even as peasant, do continue to farm, they've lost any personal incentive to work and are morally defeated by impossible quotas. It's particularly bad in Ukraine. With some 4,000 rebellions here, Stalin is determined to make an example of them for the other Soviet states. Ukraine's quotas are massively increased, while the people are not permitted to leave the Soviet state. It's a recipe for famine,

and indeed, while hunger is common across the USSR, Ukraine's famine, known as the Holodomor, His downright criminal, resulting in between 3.5 and 7 million deaths. In 1933, Soviet author Mikhail Sholov writes a letter to Stalin telling him, I saw things that I will remember until I die during the night with a fierce wind, with freezing temperatures, when even the dogs hide from the cold. They expelled a woman with a baby. She spent the night wandering through the village. and asking that she and the baby be allowed inside to get warm.

No one let her in. By morning, the child had frozen to death in the mother's arms. So yes, the USSR is industrializing and rapidly. But the brutal truth is that by the end of this first five-year plan in 1932, this rapid, forced transformation is coming at an enormous and cataclysmic cost of life. Stalin's power only grows in the 1930s. In 1933, he launches a second five-year plan that builds on the first. Nonetheless, as during the Russian Civil War,

he starts to suspect there are enemies within the ranks. Traders. He needs a way to root them out. Ah, a purge. On December 1st, 1934, he gets his excuse. A popular party leader and senior Politburo member, Sergei Kirov, is shot in Kyrgyz. killed outside his office in Leningrad.

Stalin claims the murder as part of a broad conspiracy against the state. Now, many suspect that Stalin himself ordered the hit, but whether that's true or not, the powerful general secretary sets his new secret police, the people's commissariat for internal affairs, or the NKVD, the successor to the Cheka and the predecessor to the future KGB, to find anyone attempting to subvert Soviet power. The NKVD casts a wide net. Clergy, authors, academics, even Stalin's former friends and allies are rounded up. Tortured until they falsely confessed to crimes, they then disappear into the gulad,

which is a system or network of forced labor camps, mostly in remote Siberia. Prisoners build railroads, dig mines, and pour concrete for hydroelectric dams, often in brutal freezing conditions. Several million will pass through the system. many won't survive it. This campaign of repression becomes known as the Great Purge or Great Terror. And it's not done in secret.

The point isn't just to eliminate dissent. It's to broadcast what happens to those who dare to question Stalin. And the message is loud and clear. This loyalty is death. It's just past 12 noon, August 19, 1936. Three judges are seated on a platform in the center of the law. long, rectangular, red-draped October hall inside Moscow's trade union house. Before them, 16 nervous defendants wring their hands.

Among them are Lev Khamenev and Grigory Zinoviev. That's right. The two men whom we met back in 1917 that opposed the October Revolution, who later formed the triumvirate with Joseph Stalin. Well, after that alliance fell apart, they had warmed up to Leon Trotsky, and in short, they and their fellow 14th, co-defendants now stand accused of working with the fallen exile, not only to kill Sergei Kirov, but to overthrow the Soviet Union.

Serious accusations, but Lev, Grigori, and the others here have already pleaded guilty. Rumor has it that Stalin promised these men their lives in exchange for their confessions. This trial, then, is all spectacle. It's about the audience, and I don't mean the hand-picked journalists and agents in the courtroom. I'm talking about the audience beyond these walls, the Russian citizens, and to people around the world even, who will read about it in the news. This is a show trial. Over the coming days, each man is interrogated, and it's basically the same. No one puts up much of a fight.

It all wraps with the thinly mustached and stout chief prosecutor. Andri Wushinsky, delivering a closing argument in which he dramatically proclaims, I demand that dogs gone mad should be shot. Every one of them. It's now four days later, the morning of August 23rd. Each prisoner is permitted to make a final plea to the judges, but nothing will change. It's like reality TV. The phrasing might differ, but it's all a part of the script.

And now, with the scruff likely filling in his salt and peppered Van Dyke beard, former deputy premier, Lev Kamev, steps forward. to deliver his lines. For ten years, if not more, I've waged a struggle against the party, against the government of the land of Soviets, and against Stalin personally. Such was the pit contemptible treachery

into which we have fallen. His sad part played, Lev trudges back to his row and sits. But then, he suddenly shoots back to his feet. This isn't part of the script, but weakly, Leve dares to speak again, adding, I should like to say a few words to my children, standing maybe with one foot in the grave.

I want to tell them, don't look back. Go forward, together with the Soviet people, follow Stalin. The broken, former Bolshevik revolutionary, then collapses again in his seat and buries his face in his hands. Silence falls over the room as even the judges are moved. It doesn't matter, though. Of the 16 men, all but the two planted agents in the group are sentenced to execution. The next day, Grigori Zinovier, feverish and gasping for breath after torture targeting his asthma,

is led from his cell, raving, screaming, and finally dragged away to be shot. Meanwhile, Leve takes his bullet stoically, as if in a dream, But it's not just these supposed criminals dying. In the coming months and years, all of their families will either be imprisoned or executed. The Great Purge ends in 1939, not because Stalin's grip loosens, but because he simply no longer needs it,

especially his warlooms. Estimates vary, but this three-year campaign of terror has sent to some 700,000 people to the graves. Millions more are imprisoned, or enforced labor camps. So now there's simply no one left to remove. Stalin is a dictator in the full sense of the world. Indeed, brutal as Leninism was,

Stalin has remade the Soviet Union into a highly centralized totalitarian state, one defined by the suppression of dissent, forced to collectivization, rapid industrialization, and a cult of personality surrounding the supreme leader. Where Lenin envisioned socialism as an international movement, Stalin insists it can and must be built in one country. This is Stalinism, a system where absolute loyalty to the state and to Stalin himself supersedes all else, and ideology is enforced through terror. But while Stalin rules absolutely at home, Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime is gobbling up Europe.

Stalin has no love for Adolf, but he does love protecting Soviet interests. And to do that, he needs more time to build up his military and defenses. That's why, on August 23rd, 1939, the Nazis and Soviets meet in Moscow to sign their non-aggression pact. Called the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, in a nod to both nations respective foreign ministers, it's alternatively known as the Nazi Soviet pact, the German Soviet pact, even the Hitler-Stalin pact. So call it what you will, but the terms are simple enough. Publicly, it's agreed that neither country will attack the other or support a third party that does. Then there's the secret part.

Behind closed doors, they agree to divide Eastern Europe into spheres of influence. Most notably, they split Poland in half. The agreement is set to last 10 years with an option for renewal. The world is stunned. In the West, the pact sends shockwaves, especially among leftists who know that fascism and communism are mortal enemies. How can the USSR do business with Nazi Germany? But again, for Stalin, this is purely strategic.

The Soviet military isn't ready for war, and this deal gives him time to prepare. Only a week later, on September 1st, Adolf's Nazi war machine invades Poland from the west. While Britain and France answer with declarations of war on Germany on September 3rd, Stalin sends Soviet forces into what he sees as his part of Poland from the east on the 17th. The country is carved up as agreed. In November, the USSR invades Finland as well. But the ramifications of that campaign are a story for another day. Europe is descending rapidly into war, while Stalin's power is absolute. Between all of this, he's a busy man, and yet there's one loose end nagging at him.

Leon Trotsky is still alive. It's about 6.30 in the afternoon, August 20th, 1940. Leon Trotsky is tending to his garden and rabbits at his rented adobe home. in the Koyoa-Kan neighborhood of Mexico City. Yes, the bespectacled Bolshevik revolutionary is far from home. In fact, he's bounced around quite a bit since his exile and subsequent expulsion, living in Turkey, France, and Norway previously. No, he isn't just taken in the sights in retirement.

He's running. Trotsky being Trotsky, he hasn't stopped writing, speaking out, and publishing blistering critiques of Stalin's regime. He's even written a full and far from flattering, biography of the Soviet dictator, even if it's yet to be published. And Stalin being Stalin, he's determined to silence him. The NKVD, Stalin's secret police, has been hunting him for years. They've already tried and failed at least once, back in May, when a machine-gun-wielding

squad attacked his home. Trotsky's pulled through, but it hasn't come without its costs. One of his sons, Lev Sedov, died under suspicious circumstances in a Paris hospital, likely poisoned. Another son, Sergei, disappeared in the Soviet Union, probably executed. His wife, Natalia, has called him the last survivor of an annihilated legion. So now, as Trotsky feeds his rabbits this evening, a dark-haired, bronze-skinned 27-year-old man is strolling on. He goes by the name Jacques Bonnar, supposedly the Belgian boyfriend of Trotsky's secretary's sister. He's not someone that the tired communist

particularly likes, but one must be polite. Today, Jacques says he's brought an article that he wants Trotsky to review. Strangely that he's carrying a ring code, though, there's no chance of rain. Well, no matter, Trotsky invites him inside so he can look over the article in his study. The tired communist pulls up a chair in the sparse room and begins reading. But as he does, his guest silently slips behind him, sliding a hand into the raincoat and grabbing a hidden ice axe. Jacques then drives the ice axe into Trotsky's head with brutal force. Blood sprays across books and papers as the deeply wounded bullshit of cries and pain, astounding the still alive, and fights back, fighting deeply into his assailant's hand.

Alarms sound, alerting guards and Natalia, who rushed Trotsky to the hospital, but to no avail. he soon dies from the brain injury. Jacques Monard, as you likely guessed, is an alias. The assailant's real name is Ramon Mercadere, and he's an agent of the NKVD. Ramon will spend the next 19 years in prison, but will be honored by the USSR. More importantly, Stalin finally has what he's wanted for over 20 years. Leon Trotsky is dead. Of all the men, women, and children, who once said,

sat around the table in Galena Fleckserman's apartment two decades earlier, Joseph Stalin alone remains. The rest have fled the country, been sent to Ra and a gulag, or been killed. There's a quote often attributed to Joseph Stalin. If only one man dies of hunger, that is a tragedy. If millions die, that's only statistics. Close quote. The line appeared in a 1947 Washington Post article, and versions of it go back a ways. But there's no No solid evidence Stalin ever said it. Still, the sentiment fits disturbingly well with his legacy. By the time Stalin agreed to a non-aggression pact with Adolf Hitler and tracked down and

murdered his greatest rival, Leon Trotsky. He already had millions of deaths on his hands. Some are executed during the Great Purge or Great Terror. Others were worked to death in Gulags. Many more starved during the famines triggered by forced collectivization, especially in Ukraine's Holodomor. Long before that, Stalin killed without hesitation in the Russian Civil War. Truly, Stalin's path from a Georgian seminary to the dictatorial throne of the Soviet Union is one paved in blood.

This is far from the last time we will see the Soviet Union's dictator. Indeed, the necessities of a Second World War will soon make this enemy of Uncle Sam's enemy, is uncomfortable yet crucial friend. But we still have a lot of ground to cover before we get to those tales. and that starts with the ground that Adolf is out to take. That's right. Next time, we'll follow Adolf's blitzkrieging path from the Rhineland to Poland.

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