Josef Stalin: Difference between revisions

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=== Stalin provides examples of: ===

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

* [[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]].

** After his biological son attempted suicide, reportedly his only response was to note with disgust, "He can't even shoot straight".

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** Amusingly, Napoleon was around 5'7", making Stalin even more of a Napoleon than Napoleon was.

* [[Man Behind the Man]]: Lots of people across Europe, esp. on the Right, thought that almost every Communist party took directions from Moscow. Turns out this was true, to the point where he was forcefully directing party policy, though not necessarily for the better (like getting his Stalinists to turn on the Troskyists in the Spanish Civil War, despite being on the same side; and telling German Communists that fighting the Nazi Party wasn't a big priority). Advised [[Mao Ze Dong]] against revolution, though probably due to the fear of having a fellow communist rule a country almost as big and powerful as Russia (this time, he was ignored).

** Stalin supported [[Mao Ze Dong|Mao's]] great rivals, the Guomingdang, from a mixture of pragmatism and the fact that their political program wasn't all that different from the

** Stalin supported [[Mao Ze Dong|Mao's]] great rivals, the Guomingdang, from a mixture of pragmatism and the fact that their political program wasn't all that different from the "socialism in one country" that he favored. He only switched horses after WWII, when Mao's Communists surged in popularity because it was believed they had played the key role in defeating the hated Japanese. However, he did from early on advise the CCP to promote Mao for his ruthless, aggrandizing and [[Chronic Backstabbing Disorder|backstabbing]] behavior, actually the very behavior they were complaining to him about.

** Interestingly enough, he actually had a policy of denouncing socialist parties in Western Europe and didn't commit as much to the Spanish Civil War as he could have (although he did nab most of their gold as payment for his services) to avoid the creation of an organized anti-communist bloc in Europe.

* [[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.

* [[The Master]]: Was often referred to as "Vozhd." Vozhd roughly translates to boss, chief, or Master.

* [[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".

* [[Modern Major-General]]: Stalin was a hopelessly inept military leader. His bungling played a large part in the Soviets getting their asses kicked in the invasion of Finland, and he completely dropped the ball when [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]] played him for an [[Unwitting Pawn]] and invaded. It was only after he turned control of the war over to his generals that the Russians started winning battles.

** 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.

** Also, Stalin's divisions of the boundaries in the Caucasus region (like giving the Armenian-populated enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan) caused several wars after the Soviet Union collapsed, and even today the conflicts haven't been settled.

* [[Not So Different]]: His rule and the tsar's rule. He even [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] it when, in a conversation with his mom, he was asked what he was like now. He replied that he was like the tsar.

* [[Over and Under the Top]] - Of the world's leading mustachioed dueling dictators, [[Adolf Hitler]] was under with that little toothbrush thing, but Stalin was waaaay over with his.

* [[Pet the Dog]] - Joseph Stalin, in addition to defeating the Nazis, also briefly ended the persecution of Christianity in Soviet Russia.

* [[Porn Stache]]

* [[Pyrrhic Victory]] - And the glorious city of [[Egopolis|Stalingrad]] has been successfully defended from the Germans... at the cost of ''[[We Have Reserves|over one million people]]''.

** Fortunately balanced out by the fact that [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]] himself was obsessed with capturing Stalingrad (and Leningrad) as a propaganda victory, leading to a failed [[Pyrrhic Villainy]] on the part of the Germans.

** Actually, Stalin knew that Hitler was obsessed with capturing Stalingrad, so he had his troops encircle the Germans rather than drive them out with a frontal assault, leading to the annihilation of the German Sixth Army. Of course, Stalin didn't actually do this until many, many of his soldiers were already dead.

*** [[Gambit Pileup|I know that you know that I know what city you'll attack...]]

* [[Recycled in Space]] - Has been described as Genghis Khan <small>WITH [[Tank Goodness|TANKS]]!</small>

* [[Removed From the Picture]]: Stalin had a tendency to erase his political rivals from photographs taken before he had them killed. The best example is [[media:soviet_censorship_8273.jpg|this photograph]], which was edited ''three times'' until Stalin was the only one left. And if you look closely, his face seems to get a little lonelier each time.

* [[The Spock]] - Played the cold, unbending, calculating card, what with [[Winston Churchill]]'s downright [[The McCoy|McCoy]]-like bouts of gentlemanly fervor and [[Franklin D Roosevelt|FDR]]'s [[The Kirk|constant need to find a happy medium]].

* [[The Starscream]] - In a testament written just before his death, Lenin denounced Stalin's ambitions and tried to warn the other Soviet leaders about them. Unfortunately, Stalin managed to blunt the effect of the testament and still seized power after Lenin's death anyway.

** Also, much of the Politburo--and particularly Beria--during his reign.

** And [[Mao Ze Dong|Mao Zedong]]'s China tried to oust the Soviet Union as the most powerful Communist country during the [[Cold War]].

* [[Token Evil Teammate]] - To [[Winston Churchill]] of Great Britain and [[Franklin D Roosevelt]] and [[Harry Truman]], respectively of the United States in [[World War II]].

** Which isn't to say that America and Britain didn't do evil things as well, just that they weren't as bad Stalin's Soviet Union.

* [[The Unfettered]]

* [[Unperson]] - the [[Trope Namer]]. This is a particularly cruel punishment to give to anyone. Imagine that the [[Secret Police]] have arrested you for offending Stalin. Now imagine that not only will you be shot, but all information about you being erased from all records in the nation. [[Fate Worse Than Death|As if you never existed, and therefore you will never be remembered]]...

* [[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.

** Well, paranoid as he was he didn't want to be literally backstabbed, but it isn't as fun as suggesting he was a vampire. [[Blood Plus|Incidently...]]

* [[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.]]

* [[Villain with Good Publicity]]- he still enjoys huge support in the former USSR. In a "Greatest Russian" poll in 2008, he came second. In another, he came third.

** And there were allegations that that last poll was rigged because lots of people thought he would have come ''first''.

** He was, understandably perhaps, enormously popular with Western communists and socialists, with everyone from Beatrice Webb to H.G. Wells preaching about the wonders of the Soviet Union. (Some of these fellow travelers even managed to convince themselves that he was nothing more than an impartial chairman of the Soviet government. Given that Stalin had about 70% of the Soviet government ''murdered,'' this was quite a case of cognitive dissonance.) And of course, after the Soviet Union allied with the U.S. Stalin was known in popular culture as "Uncle Joe."

*** That's not entirely true... HG Wells, for example, was much more critical of Stalin and The USSR than most people give him credit for.

*** Another thing to keep in mind that the USSR under Stalin was by far the best potential source of funds and support for Western communists. Stalin had factories, tanks, money, materials etc. The exiled Trotsky (just to take an example), could offer them little other than his moral support. So it's pretty much evident why most Western communist parties praised Stalin.

** According to many memoirs, the mourning for his death in 1953 was widespread and sincere. His pompous funeral was attended by hundreds of thousands of grief-stricken citizens with very little state pressure involved.

*** Many of his supporters in his native country of Georgia still display pictures of him.

** It was a common lament in Soviet Russia that the gulags would be shut down "If only Comrade Stalin knew!"

*** A traditional lament in Russia: "If only the Czar knew!"

* [[Villain Song]] - Eventually a new national anthem was introduced to the USSR with a line of lyrics glorifying Stalin.

* [[Villainous BSOD]] - Went through this after he found out that [[I Lied|Hitler betrayed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact by invading]] [[Great Patriotic War|the Soviet Union]]. According to Khrushchev, [[Orcus on His Throne|he didn't attend to any leadership activities for four days]] from the shock that Hitler betrayed the Soviet Union, and that he was taken for a [[Unwitting Pawn]]. This is particularly unusual given that Soviet intelligences provided evidence Hitler ''would invade the Soviet Union''. He just ignored it.

** Of course, [[The Starscream|Khruschev and Zhukov are not exactly objective, disinterested sources]]; both of them also claimed, after 1953, that they had way better plans for winning the war and Stalin stopped them, but this seems to have been [[Blatant Lies]]. Other, more numerous, but not really any more trustworthy sources claim that Stalin got to work almost immediately after the invasion occurred.

* [[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.

* [[Wicked Cultured]]: He styled himself a patron of the arts and, while purging many intellectuals and artists, he elevated others (like [[Sergei Eisenstein]], who was a court filmmaker in all but name). Stalin's rule is the Golden Age of [[Socialist Realism]], particularly in architecture and cinema.

** He was fond of [[The Master and Margarita|Mikhail Bulgakov]], even though the latter was hardly a Socialist (or any other kind of) Realist. Critics often suspect that the character of Pilate in the [[Story Within a Story]] of ''The Master and Margarita'' is based on Stalin, particularly the scene where Pilate orders an execution without ever quite admitting that is what he is doing.

** Also had an acceptable grasp of linguistics to the extent that linguistics developed without much Soviet interference.

** 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 fiction ===