Josef Stalin: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''An ungainly dwarf of a man passed through gilded and marbled imperial halls, and a path opened before him; radiant, admiring glances followed him, while the ears of courtiers strained to catch his every word. And he, sure of himself and his works, obviously paid no attention to all this. His country was in ruins, hungry, exhausted. But his armies and marshals, heavy with fat and medals and drunk with vodka and victory, had already trampled half of Europe under foot, and he was convinced they would trample over the other half in the next round. He knew that he was one of the cruelest, most despotic figures in human history. But this did not worry him a bit, for he was convinced that he was carrying out the will of history.''|Milovan Djilas <ref>Yugoslav communist theorist who later got exiled from his country</ref>, Conversations With Stalin (1962) }}

 

 

Before [[Red October]], he had an interesting and colorful early life. After dropping out of an Orthodox seminary, he helped the Bolsheviks by robbing banks (for which he did time in jail) [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|and writing poetry]]. His role in [[Red October]] wasn't large at all - at least, according to [[Leon Trotsky|Trotsky.]] He was put in charge of the Bolshevik Party's newspaper and organizational matters, which were background but fairly important jobs. He may have been late for the Revolution, but it didn't end in one night.

In other words, [[History Marches On]], perhaps subverting many of the tropes listed below - specifically [[Almighty Janitor]], [[Foreshadowing]], [[From Nobody to Nightmare]], and [[Kicked Upstairs]] (subversions are noted).

 

* [[Abusive Parents|Abusive Father]] - [[Generation Xerox|Had one, and]] ''[[Generation Xerox|was]]'' [[Generation Xerox|one.]]

** To [["Well Done, Son" Guy|his biological son]]? Definitely. To his adopted son (whose father was a friend and a hero of the revolution)? See trope directly below. When said adopted son accidentally ''shot'' and nearly killed him, Stalin... [[Pet the Dog|simply decided to spend some quality time with him, teaching him how to shoot properly]].

** Upon learning that one of his sons had been made a PoW by the Nazis during WWII, he is noted as [[I Have No Son|denouncing him as being any relation]]. This was in line with Soviet policy that retreat or surrender was cowardly, so the only acceptable outcomes for a Soviet soldier were death or victory - being captured implied he surrendered, and was [[You Have Outlived Your Usefulness|no longer of any value to the revolution]]. Still, refusing to rescue or ransom PoWs (or compensate their families) is one thing - ignoring your own son (and severing ties with your daughter-in-law) is another...

** This is not ''quite'' as cold as it seems. The Germans offered to exchange Yakov for Field Marshal von Paulus, but Stalin refused. However, it is difficult to imagine Churchill or Roosevelt not doing the same thing in his shoes, and there is some evidence that Stalin was tormented by his decision afterwards, especially after Yakov was shot for trying to escape.

* [[A Father to His Men]] - Even though Stalin is widely known today as an evil mass murderer, he was loved by the common peoples of Russia up until the 80's (when Gorbachev released a whole bunch of secret documents on him). Simply put, everyone thought Stalin was the savior against [[Adolf Hitler]] and protector of the people. Any other trouble (like people vanishing without a trace) was supposed to be due to lower-level officers, not Stalin. In addition, for all his villainy, the fact that he fought [[Adolf Hitler]] in [[World War II]], who openly declared that the Russian Campaign was to be a war of annihilation, makes him tolerable enough to most people during that specific period.

** This is subverted by the rural portion of his population, who hated him with a vengeance at least until WWII.

* [[Badass Bureaucrat]]|[[Obstructive Bureaucrat]] - Whatever else you might think of him, he was a bank robber and a revolutionary, and a far more charismatic and intelligent one than his most famous sources portray him as. He used bureaucracy as a springboard to establishing a personal dictatorship and in turn to annexing most of Eastern Europe and turned Russia from the least of the Great Powers into one of Earth's only two superpowers.

* [[Badass Mustache]] - One of history's greatest.

* [[Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work]]: It is rumored when the Soviet Union was invaded by Nazi Germany, leading to Stalin's retreat, several of his generals discussed whether to eliminate him due to foreground knowledge of the invasion anyway, and Stalin responsible [[Villain Ball|for many of their best to be purged on little more than a whim]], leading to obvious problems during the war. The rumor ends with them ultimately deciding against this because: 1) Stalin was ''also'' responsible for turning the USSR into a glorious nation powerful enough to rival the U.S.A., and 2) They'd much rather keep him and probably win, then remove him and likely lose due to a weaker leader, and them being conquered by the Germans. Basically, Stalin was a ruthless dictator, but he was [[We Want Our Jerk Back|''their'' ruthless]] [[Save the Villain|dictator]].

** You also realize that Hitler had spelled out [[Kill'Em All|exactly what he would have done to the "Slavic races"]] in ''Mein Kampf'' and pretty much anything was better.

* [[The Chessmaster]] - Stalin engineered his coming to power by abusing a [[Almighty Janitor|previously-obscure position of Secretary General]]. His job was to recruit new Party members, and, in just a few years, he formed a majority out of newcomers, personally loyal to him, and ousted the Communist old guard from power.

* [[Cult of Personality]]: Is the [[Trope Codifier]] for the modern era. His personality cults painted him as [[Large and In Charge|a giant of a man]] who earned all of his [[I Have Many Names|many grandiose titles]], whom the Soviet citizenry was ''obligated'' to love. There's a reason he's the page image for the trope.

* [[Deadpan Snarker]] - Well-known for his sardonic sense of humor

* [[Dirty Communists]]: Without a doubt, the Most Triumphant Example.

** Other sources claim that Stalin also spoke Georgian with Beria, the Georgian head of the secret police, just to keep the conversations private, no other Georgian-speakers being present in the top clique.

** Stalin was not only fond of his mother, he was also kind of scared of her too; he supposedly left the Georgian Orthodox Church relatively untouched mostly because he was afraid of the tongue-lashing he'd get from Mom (she was a devout Georgian Orthodox Christian and had, after all, wanted him to be a priest).

* [[Evil Overlord]] - One of the [[Trope Codifier|TropeCodifiers]], especially for Western audiences.

* [[Faux Affably Evil]]: Part of the secret to his success was his image, and he was good at it.

** As mentioned above he was on the Politburo from the beginning to his death, and outlasted every other member (albeit by his own design). The former is more likely.

* [[Kill'Em All]]: Punished the Old Bolsheviks, the Left Deviation, the Right Deviation, the speculators, the NEP men, the old military officers, the dissidents, the Jews, the ethnic Germans, the seditious, the saboteurs, and anyone speculated of belonging to the above. Over twenty million people went through in the Gulags, a full ''tenth'' of the Soviet population. More than a million died.

* [[Lack of Empathy]]

* [[Large and In Charge]]: Actually subverted. He wasn't as tall as paintings, statues or his [[Cult of Personality|personality cult]] in general would have you believe. He was likely around 5'6", making him a sort of [[The Napoleon|Napoleon]].

* [[Manipulative Bastard]]: Not only did he masterfully exploit the position of General Secretary to develop his power base, Stalin also proved himself a genius at keeping the rest of the Soviet leaders alternately terrified of and dependent on him. He found all sorts of ways to eavesdrop on his minions, play off their fears, and destroy anyone who he feared would become a threat to his power, whether through carefully arranged executions or brutal mass purges. They didn't call him the ''Vozhd'' ("Master") for nothing.

** There is a theory that his machinations led to the rise of Nazism and the start of Second World War, [[Spanner in the Works|derailed]] only by Hitler's last-moment attack on USSR right as it was preparing to attack ''Hitler''. If taken as true, this would be the pinnacle of Stalin's manipulation.

* [[A Million Is a Statistic]] - [[Trope Namer]], though it's a [[Beam Me Up, Scotty]] moment.

** Specifically, his biographer made it up because it, more or less, "sounded like something he could've said".

** He also surrounded himself with woefully inept military advisors. For example, his Artillery Commissar once angrily asked a subordinate [[Too Dumb to Live|what would they need artillery for]]. To be fair though, Stalin really did know that Hitler was going to invade sooner or later- his mistake was thinking it was going to be later.

*** However, he also surrounded himself [[Death World|with Russia.]] Do ''not'' invade Russia.

* [[Nietzsche Wannabe]]: If any dictator could be described as this, it was Stalin. Hitler had a vision for what he wanted the world be to like, albeit an evil one. Stalin was largely apathetic to all the millions of people he killed, his goals were gain as much power as he could and make others suffer as he did. He would've never been content, as he became very nihilistic and apathetic after his wife's death. See [[A Million Is a Statistic]].

* [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|Nice Job Breaking It Villain]] - Sending so many people to the Gulag camps ultimately worked against the Soviet Union. During WWII he killed off a lot of his experienced military officers, which was part of the reason that Germany was able to get so far.

* [[Unwitting Pawn]]: As noted above, Western luminaries like H.G. Wells and Beatrice Webb gushed about the Soviet Union. Needless to say, Stalin played each and every one of them like a fiddle.

* [[Vampire Tropes]] : There are no mirrors in Stalin's palace. Make of that what you will.

* [[Vetinari Job Security]]: More recent analysis by Russian playwright and historian Edvard Radzinski suggests that Stalin did this at the start of [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler's]] invasion, to see what his minions would do without him as a means of testing their loyalty. The results were fairly predictable, namely that they all came grovelling to him and asking him to lead them.

* [[Villain Ball]] - The mass purges he ordered made little political or even economical sense, as at that point it had become practically impossible to oppose the government anyway. For the most part, exterminating a large percentage of the country's population [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|merely caused the national economy to break down.]]

* [[We Have Reserves]] - More or less Red Army policy for most of his time in power. During the [[Great Patriotic War]] the Soviets took absolutely ''punishing'' casualties, the most terrible in military history, but unlike the Western Allies they had no electorate to appease and unlike the Germans they could afford the losses, so the willingness to accept massive casualties continued. Stalin even had a few suitably villainous quotes [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshading]] this policy.

** Do bear in mind that Red Army operational art was very different to that of the Western Allies. The Red Army could be and certainly was sloppy and brutal with regards to casualties, but it is a vast [[Flanderisation]] to accuse it of simply drowning its opponents in blood.

** "The violent death of a large number of people was necessary before the Communist state could be established"

* [["Well Done, Son" Guy]] - Not with his own father, but with Lenin and Karl Marx. Some historians allege Stalin frequently wondered what Marx and Lenin would think of him and his efforts to live up to their legacy.

** He was also a poet in his earlier days; and later (or so the word goes) helped one of the academics he had arrested translate a Georgian epic into Russian, among other things. And he was also very fond of [[Worthy Opponent|White Guard]] war songs.

 

 

* In ''[[Animal Farm]]'', Napoleon is clearly meant to be Stalin. A scene where all the animals ducked from an explosion was changed to have Napoleon stand firm - Orwell hated Stalin, but acknowledged that his staying in Moscow when it would be far easier to leave showed that for all his monstrosity and enormous flaws, he did have some balls.

** Likewise, [[Harry Potter|Lord Voldemort]] is (according to [[Word of God|Word Of Goddess]]) a combination of both Stalin & Hitler's worst traits.

* In Arthur Koestler's novel ''[[Darkness At Noon]]'', he's referred as "Number One".

* Makes several appearances in [[Alternate History]] stories by [[Harry Turtledove]]:

** In TL-191, he's one of the leaders of the Communist fighters in Tsaritsyn (which became Stalingrad in our timeline - [[Historical In-Joke]]), being referred to by the Western media as "The Man of Steel", the literal translation of "Stalin". In the end, the Communists lose and Tsarism is reasserted.

*** Which is a fairly accurate picture of what he was really doing at the time. Stalingrad was in fact named after him BEFORE his rise to power due to his command of the city's defense and his eventual victory over the besieging Whites.

** In the short story "Joe Steele", his family emigrates to America and he becomes a dictatorial politician in the USA.

** In the ''Darkness'' series, which is basically [[WW 2]] with [[Fantasy Counterpart Culture]]s, Stalin's equivalent is the mad King Swemmel of Unkerlant, who had his twin brother Kyot (analogue of Trotsky) murdered.

* The ''[[Samurai Cat]]'' books have him and Hitler as relatively genial buddies, oddly. [[World War II]] was just a bet between them to see who could kill more Russians; the loser ended up working for the winner. {{spoiler|And they all became werewolves. Even Hitler. And, oddly, neither Tomokato nor Shiro could kill him.}} For the series being very loose with reality and history (a samurai who's heard of the Chicago Cubs ''in 16th century Japan'', while discussing their awfulness with Prohibition-era gangsters).

* In the ''[[Wild Cards]]'' superhero setting, Stalin's death is shrouded in mystery; there's a rumour that he was done in by one of his aides after turning into a vampire.

* In [[GURPS]] ''Technomancer'', Stalin did not die in 1953, he was merely put into magical stasis-sleep-type-thing [[King in the Mountain|to be awakened when Motherland will be in danger]]. He awoke in 1996, after Communism fell, and started a civil war to oust democrats and capitalists from his country.

* In the 1938 musical ''Leave it to Me!'', Stalin appears at the end of the first act to give "Comrade Alonzo" (the American ambassador) a kiss on the cheek.

* In ''[[Civilization]] IV'', Stalin is one of the possible leaders of Russia. As an AI, he's kind of a hardass, and it's hard to stay on his good side for long.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Politicians]]

[[Category:Historical Domain Character]]