Tell me about Joseph Stalin

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A.� Joseph Stalin, the dictator who led Russia, probably killed more than Hitler. He was born Joseph Vissarionovich Djugashvili in Gori, Georgia, in 1879. < xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

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Q.� Early life

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Q.� So why the change of name

A.� Stalin means man of steel - a bit more memorable than Djugashvili.

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Q.� And how did he move up in the party

A. Unpleasantly.� The job of party secretary came up in 1922 and Stalin took it on after all the other leading Bolsheviks had turned it down. He was determined that he would succeed as leader when Lenin died.

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Q. �How

A.� Stalin used the post of general secretary to find out everything that was going on in the party and to make sure that his supporters filled all posts. His support throughout Russia rose. Meanwhile, Lenin wrote a political testament suggesting that Leon Trotsky should succeed him - and that Stalin should be removed. Neither happened. Between 1924 and 1929 Stalin managed to force most of the other leading Bolsheviks out of power. His main target was Trotsky, who fled the Soviet Union�- as Russia was by then called - in 1929. Other rivals, including Kamenev, Bukharin and Zinoviev, retired. By 1928 he had total control.

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Q.� In power, what did he do

A.� He immediately began to change agriculture and industry to catch up the efficient West. This could be achieved, he believed, only by forcing farmers and industry to modernise. All peasants were forced to join collective farms: they had to pool their machinery and livestock on large farms, which were controlled by the state. Peasants were forced to hand over their produce to the government and were either paid or had to feed themselves on what was left over. It caused a devastating famine. Richer peasants - Kulaks - burned their crops and killed their animals, rather than hand them over. Five million people starved to death in the Soviet Union in 1932-4. Agricultural production fell by 15%.

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Q.� And in industry

A.� Each business or factory was given a target it had to meet every year for five years. The targets were worked out by an organisation of 500,000 workers that just set targets for every factory and then checked how much was produced. The first Five-Year Plan was cut to four years to make people work harder. Factory managers could be executed for failing to meet targets. Workers were forced to work longer. Absenteeism became a crime. Many factories faked production figures, or ignored the quality. About 50% of all Soviet tractors made in the 1930s broke down.�

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Q.� And if you protested

A.� You ended up in a slave labour camp, or gulag. These were often in Siberia or in Northern Russia, where the winters are terrible.

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Q.� What about other politicians

A.� Sergei Kirov, the popular Communist party leader in Leningrad, was murdered in December, 1934, probably on Stalin's orders. Stalin's Purges soon followed. From 1934-8 at least 7 million people disappeared: earlier Bolshevik leaders poets, scientists, managers of industries that did not meet targets; senior officers in the Red Army and Red Navy; and millions or ordinary Soviet citizens. Show trials were held for leading Bolsheviks and they were forced to confess to crimes that they could not have committed. In the 1930s Stalin even ordered the history of Russia to be rewritten. His enemy Trotsky's name, in particularly, was blackened.

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Q.� Anything good to say about him

A.� His leadership against the Nazis was effective, if bloodthirsty. With the slogan umeraite no ne otstupaite (die, but do not retreat), he showed his steel and prevented Hitler from mastery of Europe. Stalin died in 1953.

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By Steve Cunningham