Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili

1. Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili …the most feared, powerful, and ruthless man of WWII

2. Famine Rules Russia • “What’s the use of construction when you have destroyed all that’s best in Russia?”  • The result of the 5 year plan left Russia with tragic ruin of agriculture • Destroyed the bread supplier of Russia leading to unemployment, death “It is terrible.  We have no bread. We have to go all the way to Moscow to get bread and then they will only give us four pounds, which costs three roubles (six shillings nominally).  How can a poor man live?” 

3. Famine continued… • Ordered collectivization of farms • When peasants resisted, ordered state seize their land and possessions • Created famine to show Kulaks to liquidate them and obtain land through force • Killed some 3 million kulaks through death by starvation

4. The Purges • 1936-1938 Great Purges • Millions of Russians arrested and more than a million executed • Until 1950, held labor camps with at least 8 million prisoners • Death rate of 10%

5. The Gulags of the Purges • Used to persecute “anti-revolutionists” • Many deaths due to intentional starvation of prisoners, diseases, overwork, and torture • Political enemies sent to die • 7 million sent to gulags during Great Purge • As many as 1 million died in Gulags

6. Stalin’s Wars • Almost all the world's major wars between 1939 and 1953 can be attributed to Stalin and his totalitarian system. Stalin focused not only on ruining his people’s lives but all the world • Civil War: played important administrative role in military matters and took credit for effectively defeating the White Army at Tsaritsyn • Supported the Popular Front government in Spain, sent large quantities of Soviet tanks and aircrafts to the Republicans. •  estimated 850 Soviet advisers, pilots, technical personnel and interpreters took part • -Secret war with Norway and Denmark. Germany invaded Norway and Denmark on April 9, 1940.

7. Katyn Massacre • Also known as the Forest Massacre • Mass execution of Polish citizens ordered by Soviet authorities in 1940 • An number of executed persons: 21,768 • Polish POWs and prisoners were murdered in Katyn forest, Kalinin, and Kharkiv prisons • Around 8,000 of the victims were officers taken prisoner during the 1939 invasion of Poland • The rest were Polish citizens who had been arrested for allegedly being intelligence agents, gendarmes, spies, saboteurs, landowners, factory owners, and officials • All of these Polish people, as well as Jews Ukrainians, Georgians, and Belarusian intelligentsia of Polish citizenship were shot in Katyn forest on the orders of Joseph Stalin

8. The Moscow Trials/Show Trials • Public trials designed to intimidate population • Condemned intimidated/tortured into confessing to false confessions of crimes against the regime; subsequently sentenced to death or imprisonment • 3 separate trials, all involving senior Communist Party Leaders, held 1936-1938; forced into confessing crimes against Stalin; all were executed or died in labor camps

9. “The Forgotten Holocaust” • Murdered seven million Ukrainians • Sent two million more to concentration camps • At the end of WWII, Stalin’s gulag held 5.5 million prisoners, 23% of them Ukrainians and 6% Baltic peoples • War II, Stalin's gulag held 5.5 million prisoners, 23% of them Ukrainians and 6% Baltic peoples. • The two million people were the USSR’s Muslim peoples: Chechens, Ingush, Crimean Tatars, Tajiks, Bashkirs and Kazaks. The Chechen independence fighters who today are branded as "terrorists" by the U.S. and Russia are the grandchildren of survivors of Soviet concentration camps.

10. Forgotten Holocaust… • 1932 declared war on his own people • Ukraine was sealed off-all food supplies and livestock confiscated • NKVD death squads executed "anti-party elements”-the same as Eichmann’s quota of 10,00 deaths a week 80% of Ukrainian intellectuals were shot. • Winter of 1932-33 25,000 Ukrainians per day died of starvation, cold or were short • Cannibalism became common- The entire Ukraine looked like a giant Bergen-Belsen death camp.

11. Five Year Plan Ruthless industrialization • Ruthless industrialization Increased industrial production 300-600% by taking profits from agricultural sector (left farmers out to dry) • Said ‘no sacrifice could be too great in producing iron and steel’ • 18 hour work days for miners with low pay (if paid at all) • failure to comply w/ quotas lead to great fines or firing; any wages decreased 50% between 1928-1940

12. Five Year Plan Collectivization • Takeover/management of private farms by Stalin’s government • Used to deal with 1928 grain shortage problems and to distribute profits to industry to facilitate industrialization • 5 million people starved to death, 1929-1932 Virtually all private land eliminated by 1938 • Millions of lives shattered by collectivization - tore apart families and the fabric of village life

13. The huge number of Russian troops taken prisoner in the first eighteen months of the war convinced Stalin that many of them must have been traitors who had deserted at the first opportunity. Any soldier who had been a prisoner was henceforth suspect... All such, whether generals, officers, or ordinary soldiers, were sent to special concentrationcamps where the NKVD investigated them... Twenty percent were sentenced to death or twenty-five years in camps; only 15 to 20 percent were allowed to return to their homes. The remainder were condemned to shorter sentences (five to ten years), to exile in Siberia, and forced labor - or were killed or died on the way home. -Alan Bullock