Was Stalin murdered?

On 5 March 1953 Joseph Stalin, secretary general of the Communist Party and premier of the Soviet Union dies of stroke. He has ruled the Soviet Union since 1924, rapidly industrialized the country and collectivized the agriculture by force. Consolidating his position against opponents and possible opponents, he used police terror. After resisting the Nazi invasion in 1941 and defeating Germany, Stalin extended Soviet dominance over Eastern Europe as a buffer against future invasions. He led the Soviet Union into the Cold War and the nuclear age. In 1953 Stalin plans new purges. But in March he suddenly falls seriously ill at the Kuntsevo residence outside Moscow. No doctors are called for many hours. Conveniently for many of the leaders and people who would have been purged, Stalin dies. An editorial of Surgical Neurology International says: ”As I have written elsewhere, we now possess clinical and forensic evidence supporting the long-held suspicion that Stalin was indeed poisoned by members of his own inner circle, most likely Lavrenti Beria, and perhaps even Khrushchev, all of whom feared for their lives. But Stalin, the brutal Soviet dictator, was (and still is in some quarters of Democratic Russia) worshipped as a demigod - and his assassination would have been unacceptable to the Russian populace. So it was kept a secret until now”. The editorial is here. It Two BBC short video clips 1 and 2, and a Russia Today documentary shows what happened. I think we still need to know for sure what happened, and make all events public to the Russian and international audience to overcome myths and lay a groundwork for understanding the past and present better.

Joseph Stalin. 

Background

Stalin as born in Gori, Georgia in the Tsarist Russia in 1879 and got the name Ioseb Dzugashvili. His father was a poor cobbler, maybe of Ossetian origin, beat him when he was drunk. His mother was a washerwoman. Stalin studied at the Tbilisi Theological Seminary and learned Russian. Secretly he read Karl Marx, joined political organizations and participated in violent clashes with the police. Then he participated in Social Democratic meetings in Helsinki, Stockholm and London. From 1902-13 he was imprisoned seven times. The Social Democrats split in two wings, and finally in two different political parties. Stalin joined the last and in 1912 Lenin got him into the Central Committee. He took the name Stalin from the Russian word stal meaning steel. But in 1913 he was exiled to Siberia until 1917. After the February Revolution he resumed the position as editor of Pravda.

Rising to power
The Bolsheviks seized power in the October Revolution of 1917, and Stalin played an important role. He became a Government minister and was active in the Civil War of 1918-20 against the White anti-communist forces supported by the Western powers. Stalin’s rival Leon Trotsky was the leader of the recently formed Red Army. Stalin was a real bureaucrat and became the secretary general of the Central Committee in 1922 a position he held until his death. This post gave him the basis to later take complete power. He was also member of the Politburo and other committees. Stalin was intelligent, but not an intellectual, Trotsky and other rivals missed the difference and underestimated him. They would pay dearly.
 

Taking over Lenin, the great leader of the revolution, had been shot by an assassin in 1918. Doctors removed a bullet in 1922 but he became partially paralyzed and died in 1924. Becoming aware of Stalin’s personality Lenin wrote a “testament” calling for the removal of Stalin from the Central Committee. Stalin succeeded in downplaying the testament, and promoted a cult of Lenin. He did the same with himself, and renamed the city of Tsaritsyn to Stalingrad. He outmanoeuvred all rivals, including Trotsky who was exiled, and later assassinated in Mexico in 1940. The in 1928 a system of 5-year plans and industrialization was introduced.

Industrialisation and famine

The industrialisation was rapid and successful, though in cases where it failed, show trials were arraigned where managers were intimidated to confess crimes they never had done. Only the US had a larger industry, and the achievement is spectacular considering wars and  famine.

Farms were forcibly turned into collectives or sate farms. The peasants who opposed were arrested, exiled, put to harsh labour work in GULAG camps or shot. The failed collectivization process led to the Great Famine, Holodomor in 1932-33. Of the 6-8 million that died in the Soviet Union, 4-5 million were Ukrainians.  The traditional Ukrainian village, a key element of national culture, was destroyed. At the same time a million tons of grain was exported to the West.

 

 
Stalin’s personal life
Stalin married a Georgian girl Akaterina Svanidze in 1904. She died early, but they got a son Jacob who tried to commit suicide. Stalin called him a weakling, and when he was taken prisoner by the Germans, he refused to negotiate an exchange. Stalin remarried to Nadezdha Alliluyeva, sitting on the right on the photo below. She tried in vain to moderate him, and committed suicide in 1932. They got two children; Vasily who served in the Air force but died of alcoholism, and Svetlana  who emigrated to the US after his death. Svetlana is held by Beria on the photo below,



Great Terror

Top Communists Zinoviev and Kamenev were executed in 1936. Then followed the Great Terror with mass-arrests and executions in 1937-38. Military officers were court-martialled, industrial managers and government officials, academics, diplomats, cultural workers and others were arrested, deported to GULAG camps or killed by the state security apparatus. The Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence estimates “800.000 people executed with a shot in the head, after a parody of justice, in a matter of sixteen months”. Even though the terror was reduced, it continued. Khrushchev informed about some of the terror in his 1956 Secret speech.

 

World War II

Stalin made a pact with Hitler in 1939 to get time to prepare the Soviet Union for the inevitable war with Germany and occupy Eastern Poland and the Baltic states. The German attack in 1941 showed how badly affected the Soviet military was from Stalin’s terror against the officer corpse. But the Red Army was defiant and learned to cope. In spite of enormous terror and destruction by the German invaders they drove them back to Berlin. The Soviet Union lost 26.6 millioin people according to Gorbachev in his speech commemorating 45th anniversary of the end of the war.

  

  

Tatars of Crimea

Deportations of different national groups followed. Here is an example that is very relevant to the Ukraine crisis of 2014. In April 1944 the Red Army reconquered Crimea from the Germans. Muslim Turkic-speaking Tatars represented 19.4% of the population. Russians constituted over 50%. In the early morning of 18 May the NKVD (forerunner of KGB) came to Tatars’ houses and gave tem 20-30 minutes to gather some personal belongings. Loaded on to cattle trains 180.014 Tatars were deported according to the Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence. Tatar men who fought in the Red Army were sent to labour camps in Siberia.

 

Cold war

Stalin annexed Eastern Poland, the Baltic states and parts of Romania and forced Finland to concede territory. The Allies accepted Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe. In 1949 the Soviet Union exploded a nuclear bomb, the second power in the world to do so. He established close relations with Mao Zedong of China. Stalin policies and the Soviet people lifted the country in spite of all the setbacks and terror, to be a superpower competing with the US. But the military spending, and focus on heavy industry was a drain on the economy and limited consumer goods to the people.

 

Doctors’ plot and Stalin dies

On 13 January 1953 Pravda wrote that 9 doctors attending Soviet leaders had been arrested. The doctors, six of them Jewish, were accused of poisoning military leaders and working for the US and UK. All supposedly confessed. Rumours emerged that a purge would follow, but that would not take place. On 5 March Stalin falls seriously ill.  A BBC documentary describe the following: Stalin had a dinner party, and after the guests left a new bodyguard Khrustalev, comes out at 6 AM telling the guards that Stalin had ordered them to go to bed. Something like this had never had happened before according to one guard. Twelve hours later, at 6 PM no movement from Stalin has been noticed. The guards get worried and one of them enters later in the evening with today’s mail. He finds Stalin on the floor in his own urine. The guards call on the director of the secret police Lavrenty Beria, asking what to do, he responds “Don’t tell anybody of comrade Stalin’s illness, and don’t call back” nothing happens. Stalin lies snoring, soaked in his own urine. The guards went back to Beria after 12 hours, saying that Stalin is ill and urging him to do something and get doctors. Finally Beria calls the new doctors, the experienced Jewish are under interrogation at this moment. They all suddenly arrive, nervous. One doctor states that Stalin has a big blood vessel and that he would have been well if it had been cleared in time. Beria then mock Stalin, but when he improves, Beria falls on his knees and kiss Stalin’s hand.  

A Russia Today documentary describe the Pravda wrote in April that the charges were false and confessions came after torture. It didn’t help two of them who died during investigation. Khrushchev said in his secret speech that Stalin personally ordered the cases to signal the start of a new purge. He intended to include members of the Politburo in the purge. Beria who had participated in Stalin’s terror was arrested, charged of being an “Imperialist agent” and executed in December 1953. Stalin’s legacy today is mixed, some Russians see him as a father-figure developing the country and leading it successfully through war. Others see him as a brutal tyrant, the most bloody in world history. He probably filled both of these, and many more roles.

Sources and more information

Encyclopædia Britannica: http://global.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/562617/Joseph-Stalin

Surgical Neurology International: http://www.surgicalneurologyint.com/article.asp?issn=2152-7806;year=2011;volume=2;issue=1;spage=161;epage=161;aulast=Faria

Russia Today: Mystery of Stalin's Death Documentaryhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0sOFFuqUPY

BBC: Stalin's final moments - Who Killed Stalin – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T75ECk5HqVo&list=PL7DFA70FF60D073F6  and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkuUcWB-EOI

I am open to your comments and proposals.

Warmly

Bjarte Bjørsvik