scholarly journals An Analysis of why Stalin is to Blame for the German Invasion

2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Burden
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Joseph Stalin ◽  
The Soviet Union

The German invasion of the Soviet Union in June of 1941 has long been attributed to errors by Joseph Stalin, yet a revisionist position known as the Icebreaker hypothesis has also emerged alleging that Stalin is not to blame. This essay examines why the Icebreaker theory is erroneous based on its lack of concrete facts. The reasons why Operation Barbarossa was so effective are also examined, leading to the conclusion that Stalin should still shoulder most of the blame for Soviet disorganization prior to the invasion.

The Soviet Union and the Renner Government of Austria, April–November 1945

1987 ◽  
Vol 20 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 246-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harry Piotrowski
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
National Security ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Joseph Stalin ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Ideology ◽  
Soviet Foreign Policy ◽  
Red Army

When the Red Army moved through Eastern Europe in 1945, it faced the problem of creating what the men in the Kremlin called “friendly” governments. In several countries, Joseph Stalin in short order resolved the dilemma by putting into power Communists who had arrived in the van of his army. In the Western mind, Stalin represented a force inexorably driven by a logic inherent in all totalitarian systems. Stalin became the reincarnation of Hitler, a dictator who sought to impose his system on all territories under his sway—and whose appetite could not be sated. Such a view left little ambiguity in interpreting Stalin's foreign policy. It offered no room for an assessment that Soviet foreign policy was driven by a mix of motives, not only by aggression steeped in Communist ideology, but also by considerations of national security, opportunism, and compromise.

Stalin and Wheat: Collective Farms and Composite Portraits

2003 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 14-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Margolin
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Farm Workers ◽  
Single Individual ◽  
Collective Farm ◽  
Soviet Government ◽  
Joseph Stalin ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Cult Of Personality ◽  
History Of ◽  
Collective Farms

In late 1939, USSR in Construction, the Soviet propaganda magazine, published a special issue on the Stalin Collective Farm in the Ukraine. The inside front cover of the magazine contained an anonymous paean to socialist farming, attributing its success to the foresight and support of Joseph Stalin, the nation's leader. On the page flanking the euphoric opening text was a near full-page portrait of Comrade Stalin composed of multi-hued grains including millet, alfalfa, and poppy. Grain, or the absence thereof, was fundamental to the development of collective farms in the Soviet Union. By early 1929, government pressure to form large state-run farms had increased and Stalin declared war on the kulaks, or rich peasants. The kulaks responded by killing their livestock, destroying their crops, and demolishing their homesteads. Nonetheless, collectivization, backed by the Party apparatus, continued relentlessly. Needless to say, none of the resistance to collectivized agriculture was evident in USSR in Construction's depiction of life on the Stalin Collective Farm. At the end of the issue, the apparent happiness and prosperity of the workers were attributed to the virtues of socialism. In the later 1930s, with the inauguration of Stalin's "cult of personality," the nation was consistently equated with Stalin himself, hence the choice of his profile for the composite grain portrait. The seamlessness with which a multitude of grains could become a composite portrait of the nation's leader shows how successfully the Soviet government was able to rewrite the history of agricultural collectivization. The pain, loss, and resistance of the small landowners was successfully obliterated and replaced by a new narrative in which collective farm workers prospered and found happiness within a political system that was now synonymous with the beneficence of a single individual, Joseph Stalin.

Enter the Dragon

2021 ◽  
pp. 321-326
Author(s):  
William Klinger ◽  
Denis Kuljiš
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Bloc ◽  
Joseph Stalin ◽  
Soviet State ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Party Ideologue ◽  
Party Group

This chapter considers Mikhail Suslov as the most effective and successful propaganda machine in the history of mankind that the Soviet Union produced. It details how Leonid Brezhnev left the entire ideological sphere to his party ideologue because their views on the basic political course of the regime and the strategy of the Soviet state were identical. It also discusses Brezhnev's restoration of Soviet military supremacy in the world and the tightening of control over society while ensuring continued domination over the Eastern Bloc countries. The chapter explains how Brezhnev left an indelible imprint on the Soviet politics after Joseph Stalin and analyzes why Yugoslavs perceived him as their main enemy. It recounts Marshal Zhukov's provision of army support for Nikita Khrushchev's silent coup, while the members of the “anti-party group” were sent to irrelevant positions in backwater places.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 303-310
Author(s):  
Yoram Gorlizki ◽  
Oleg Khlevniuk
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Regional Level ◽  
The Other ◽  
Local Administration ◽  
Joseph Stalin ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Regional Leaders ◽  
Changes Over Time ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Over Time

This chapter suggests how a public discursive framework can help provide a benchmark for comparing the Soviet Union with other regimes, including that of contemporary post-communist Russia. It summarizes how substate leaders and their strategies can shed light on dictatorship and on how it changes over time. It also explains that the Soviet case falls into two broad categories, one empirical and historical, the other comparative and theoretical. The chapter draws attention to a parallel act of delegation at the regional level. It also recounts how Joseph Stalin handed over power on a provisional basis to regional leaders due to his inability to penetrate the inner recesses of local administration.

Scorched Earth

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jörg Baberowski
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Total Power ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Joseph Stalin ◽  
Soviet State ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Culture Of Violence

This book, an unremitting indictment of the mad violence with which Joseph Stalin ruled the Soviet Union, depicts Stalinism as a cruel and deliberate attack on Russian society, driven by “totalitarian ambitions” and the goal of modernizing and rationalizing a backward people. The text takes a twofold approach, emphasizing Stalin's personal role and responsibility as well as the continuity he sees in Communist aims and ideology since 1917. Unlike recent apologist accounts that focus on the challenges of modernization or on the operational complexities of managing the Soviet state, this hard-hitting analysis unequivocally locates the origins of the terror in the culture of violence and the techniques of power. Detailed, well-documented, and including many new details on the workings of the Stalinist state, this work encompasses the dictator's brutal reign from his achievement of total power in 1929 to his death in 1953.

Stalin's Decrees and Soviet Trophy Brigades: Compensation, Restitution in Kind, or “Trophies” of War?

2010 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Konstantin Akinsha
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Property ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Popular Belief ◽  
Joseph Stalin ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Art Works ◽  
Red Army ◽  
To Receive ◽  
Private Collections

AbstractThe article is dedicated to the official decrees issued by Joseph Stalin in 1945 ordering the Soviet removal of cultural property from Eastern European and German territories occupied by the Red Army. As opposed to popular belief dominant today in Russia, such decrees were few. Preparation for the removal of cultural property from enemy countries had started before the fate of the war was decided. In 1943 on the request of academician Igor Grabar, the Bureau of Experts was established with the task of composing lists of so-called “eventual equivalents,” which Soviet officials wanted to receive after the war as “restitution in kind,” to compensate for the cultural losses of the USSR. The listed equivalents included art works from museums and private collections in the Axis countries. However, the projected provisions for “restitution in kind” were never approved by the Allies, in large part because during the last months of the war and immediately thereafter, the Soviet Union had already begun massive removal of cultural property from territories occupied by the Red Army. Different trophy brigades sent to the front lines were authorized or ordered to send back home whole collections of German museums and libraries. Only rarely were any of the ‘trophies’ labeled “compensation.”

scholarly journals The Holodomor of 1932–33: How and Why?

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 93
Author(s):  
Stanislav Kulʹchytsʹkyi
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
Joseph Stalin ◽  
Soviet State ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Core Concepts ◽  
The Way

The study of the Ukrainian Holodomor has reached a point where it is sufficiently voluminous that it is worthwhile to establish the core concepts and events vital to its thorough scholarly understanding.  This paper seeks to put forth one such possible outline.  It supports the position that the Holodomor is genocide; it rebuts arguments against this position; and it examines the way in which it differs from the Holocaust to which it is often compared.  By revealing the ideological and economic conditions of the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, and the motivations of Stalin’s leadership and his desire to eliminate the threat of Ukrainian nationalism to the Soviet state, this paper shows how the Holodomor was made possible, and why it took the course it did, and that it was deliberate, and different from the All-Union famine that preceded it.  It briefly surveys the main sources upon which research on the topic relies and the major works pertinent to the development of scholarship on the Holodomor.  Once the necessary components for understanding the Holodomor are determined, a coherent and truthful narrative about it can be established and the false narratives that deny the deliberate nature of the famine can be revealed.

Subjugation

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jörg Baberowski
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Total Power ◽  
Joseph Stalin ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Rapid Industrialization ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

This chapter describes Stalinism as a dictatorship of subjugation. It argues that Stalinism was a war against its own people that respected no boundaries, whose violence arose not from ideas but from situations and their possibilities. It shows how the atmosphere of total arbitrariness and uncertainty ruling the Soviet Union at this time allowed Joseph Stalin to live out his fantasies of total power and sate his lust for violence. The Bolsheviks' crusade against old Russia opened the floodgates of unabated violence. In the chaos created by the campaigns of the Cultural Revolution, by the collectivization of agriculture, and by the rapid industrialization every violent act could be justified by invoking higher purposes and ideals. This chapter examines Stalin's war against religion and the peasants as well as the birth of the Gulag.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Yoram Gorlizki ◽  
Oleg Khlevniuk
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Power Sharing ◽  
Joseph Stalin ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Supreme Leader ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Modern Era

This chapter explains what dictatorship is and how it works and analyzes how countries move from one form of dictatorship to another. It also looks at the most important dictatorships of the modern era in a new perspective. This chapter focuses on the personal dictatorship that formed in the Soviet Union from the 1930s that center on the supreme leader, Joseph Stalin. It talks about substate dictators that were nested in Stalin's statewide dictatorship. It also builds on recent developments in the theory of dictatorship, such as the distinction between the dictator's problem of controlling threats from the masses, the problem of authoritarian control, and the problem of authoritarian power sharing.

Substate Dictatorship

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoram Gorlizki ◽  
Oleg Khlevniuk
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Regional Level ◽  
Power Sharing ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Joseph Stalin ◽  
Trust Networks ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Regional Leaders

How do local leaders govern in a large dictatorship? What resources do they draw on? This book examines these questions by looking at one of the most important authoritarian regimes of the twentieth century. Starting in the early years after the Second World War and taking the story through to the 1970s, the book charts the strategies of Soviet regional leaders, paying particular attention to the forging and evolution of local trust networks. The book begins with an explanation of what dictatorship is and how it works, and it analyzes how countries move from one form of dictatorship to another. It also looks at the most important dictatorships of the modern era in a new perspective. It focuses on the personal dictatorship that formed in the Soviet Union from the 1930s that center on the supreme leader, Joseph Stalin, and talks about substate dictators that were nested in Stalin's statewide dictatorship. The book builds on recent developments in the theory of dictatorship, such as the distinction between the dictator's problem of controlling threats from the masses, the problem of authoritarian control, and the problem of authoritarian power sharing. It discusses the challenges that substate leaders faced after the war and the party-based tools they used to forge networks. The book moves on to examine the stabilization of hierarchies and the changing balance between co-optation and political exclusion after the war, and explores the various ways in which substate leaders responded to new impulses at a regional level. It looks at the succession struggle in Moscow and its effects on the environment in which substate leaders operated. The book's conclusion suggests how a public discursive framework can help provide a benchmark for comparing the Soviet Union with other regimes, including that of contemporary post-communist Russia. It summarizes how substate leaders and their strategies can shed light on dictatorship and on how it changes over time. It also explains that the Soviet case falls into two broad categories, one empirical and historical, the other comparative and theoretical. The chapter draws attention to a parallel act of delegation at the regional level. It also recounts how Joseph Stalin handed over power on a provisional basis to regional leaders due to his inability to penetrate the inner recesses of local administration.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document