Quotes About Stalin

Stalin's championship of the "Uralo-Siberian method of grain procurement," as he himself later called it, has rightly been described as a great turning-point in Russian history, since "it upset once and for all the delicate psychological balance upon which the relations between party and peasants rested. . . ."[

The prescribed harsh emergency measures, reminiscent of War Communism's forcible grain requisitions, would predictably stimulate greater peasant recalcitrance the next time around, which in turn would stimulate and justify more radical measures culminating in the mass collectivization campaign on which Stalin's sights were set; and so it went in reality in 1928–29.

Djugashvili had a way of leaving places under a cloud after some ugly incident, brought on in part by his own tendency to become embroiled with others.

Stalin elaborated the Stalinist version of building socialism into a coherent ideological doctrine.

In effect, he amalgamated his earlier Russocentric, great-power gospel of socialism in one country with the programmatic content of high-speed industrialization and collectivization; yet he was flexible on certain points or adopted a moderate tone so as to allay fears concerning the possible implications of this program. A landmark in the arguing of the case was Stalin's principal address during the Central Committee plenum of July 4–12, 1928.

The prime source of accumulation was the "scissors" between town and countryside: charging the peasant high prices for manufactured goods while paying him low ones for farm products. Avoiding Preobrazhensky's impolitic term "exploitation," Stalin called this "something on the order of 'tribute,' something on the order of a supertax.

As for the nexus (smychka) between working class and peasantry—the need to preserve which was a fundamental article of faith in the party—there existed, said Stalin, not only a "nexus through textiles" but also a "nexus through metal" or mechanization, and the latter had the advantage that it would ensure the "remaking of the peasant in the spirit of collectivism.

All this, combined with adept maneuvering in the intra-party politics of the time, explains the otherwise paradoxical fact that Stalin's political fortunes rose at the very congress which listened in hostile silence when he tried to justify his conduct in the Soviet-Polish war.

was now mainly a question of formalizing the de facto control of the party organization that Stalin had attained. This was done when the Central Committee's organs were re-elected following the Eleventh Congress.

Around 1921, however, their relationship began to show signs of strain. One contributing factor was Lenin's victory at the Tenth Congress and the resulting resolution of the intra-party conflict that had alienated him from Trotsky. These developments cleared the way for a renewal of Lenin's close ties with the man whom Stalin saw as his own arch-enemy; and rapprochement between Lenin and Trotsky could not fail to stir resentment in Stalin.

Stalin was elected a member of the Secretariat and accorded the title "general secretary" in token of his seniority in a new secretarial trio whose two other members were Molotov and Kuibyshev. The base of operations was now securely in his possession.

To neither of his two commissariats did he give the sustained and imaginative direction that agencies so innovative in design especially called for. The notion of the worker-peasant inspectorate as essentially a public force against "bureaucratism" came from Lenin, and Stalin never seems to have felt at home with

whereas Lenin had envisaged the new Central Committee members as workers, for the most part, Stalin wanted to enlarge the Central Committee with well-disposed apparatchiki so as to increase his own influence within it.

Stalin was not temperamentally well constituted for success as an organizer and administrator.

Stalin found a party machine in being. Where he differed from his predecessors in the secretaryship was in turning the position to his own political advantage. He set about building up a personal machine as an informal political reality within the official one, a Stalin empire in the party-state.

the Central Committee expanded from a size of twenty-seven members and nineteen candidates in 1922 to sixty-three members and forty-three candidates in 1925, and many of the newcomers were Stalin supporters.

During 1922 events moved swiftly toward a crisis in Lenin's relations with Stalin, who by this time felt sufficiently secure in his power base to assert views and persist in them even if they occasionally ran counter to Lenin's.

The Orgburo was shifting leading personnel around in implementing policy decisions taken in the Politburo. Lower-level personnel decisions were within the jurisdiction of the Secretariat, and the latter, through Uchraspred, was able to effect appointments and transfers in the system of party organizations throughout the country. Here was a boundless field of opportunity for empire-building by a man of Stalin's ambitions and aptitudes.

Stalin recalled in 1931—by way of explaining to the German author Emil Ludwig why he became a Marxist revolutionary—it was a "humiliating regime" based on "Jesuitical methods.

But the Stalin school of organizational work differed from the Sverdlov in one fundamental aspect that Stalin did not mention: it applied a self-serving test in selecting candidates for advancement in the party hierarchy. No longer did it suffice to give good indication that one was a person of ability, energy, and devotion to the Bolshevik cause.

Stalin, as many in the party soon began to perceive, was acting in the manner of a political boss. But we should take care not to assume that he saw himself in this light.

The maneuvers by which Stalin steered his faction to a conclusive victory over the other three are testimony to his extraordinary skill as a political strategist; they have been cited as a textbook example of the art of coalition strategy.

Lenin added a postscript on January 4, 1923, recommending Stalin's removal from the post of general secretary.

This circumstance may seem an insignificant trifle. But I think that from the point of view of preventing a split, and from the point of view of what I have written above about the relation between Stalin and Trotsky, this is no trifle, or it is a trifle that may take on decisive significance.