The rise of Stalin in the USSR

Often times in history, one person in particular becomes remembered as the icon
of a movement or an event. For example, most people think of George Washington
first when they think of the American Revolution, or Rosa Parks or Martin Luther
King when they think of the mid-20th century civil rights movement. When it comes
to the 20th century's Soviet Union, the person most people think of is Joseph
Stalin, the brutal dictator who ruled over the early Soviet Union for nearly three
decades.
Revolution
Stalin was born in 1878 in what is today Georgia, but was then part of the Russian
Empire. Though originally a student at the local seminary for the Georgian
Orthodox Church, Stalin was expelled in 1899 and soon after became active in the
Marxist underground in Russia. For this activity Stalin was imprisoned multiple
times in the first decade of the 20th century, even spending a period in exile in
Siberia. Undeterred by this experience, Stalin continued to rise through the ranks
of the fledgling Bolshevik Party, becoming a key figure in the Russian government
after the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.
Stalin was a key aide to Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik Party. When the
Soviet Union was instituted in 1922, Stalin was installed as Secretary General to

the Central Committee of the Communist Party. After Lenin's death in 1924, Soviet
and communist leadership was in limbo. Through complex and often backroom
political maneuvering, Stalin won out against his rivals within the party by 1928,
many of whom he soon imprisoned and/or exiled.
Stalin in Power

Soon after assuming full control of the Soviet government, Stalin set out to build
Russia into an economic and industrial giant. He considered Russia 50 years
behind the rest of the world in terms of industry and technology, and he resolved
to close this gap through a forced and rapid modernization process.
However, in order to force such a wholesale transformation of the economy, Stalin
needed total control of the Soviet economy. Fortunately, the Marxist principles
Stalin's Communist Party expounded called for precisely the command economy
Stalin needed. Under Stalin, the Soviet government assumed control of what few
industrial complexes it didn't already own, but the most violent upheaval to the
Soviet economy was Stalin's forced collectivization of agriculture.

At the time of Stalin's rise to power, the Soviet Union was still a predominantly
farming-based society. In order to create a labor pool for Russian industry and
have direct control over the Soviet food supply, Stalin seized ownership of millions
of farms. Those farmers who resisted were forced into exile or summarily executed.
This brutal treatment was not restricted to uncooperative farmers; Stalin
maintained a firm grip on power through terrorizing millions of Soviets and even
Communist Party members. A secret police force roamed the Soviet countryside
and cities rooting out 'enemies of the revolution' who were exiled or imprisoned for
the smallest action or offhand comment that could be construed as anti-Soviet or
anti-communist.
In the late 1930s, for example, Stalin instituted the Great Purge, which he claimed
was to rid the Communist Party of subversive and foreign agents, but in reality
targeted thousands of Stalin's political enemies and rivals. Correspondingly, the
fabled Soviet Gulag prison camp system expanded enormously in the 1930s, where
those imprisoned were often worked to death or simply executed.
With totalitarian control over the Soviet economy and people, Stalin's regime began
its modernization projects through instituting a series of Five Year Plans. The Five
Year Plans set relatively outrageous goals for everything - from total goals for each
sector of the economy to individual expected outputs from each factory. Most of
these goals were impossible to meet, and factory and government officials often
fudged the numbers to meet their quotas. Conditions in these factories were
terrible for the workers, who were often paid in food rations and were worked to
the bone.