What Is Joseph Stalin's Legacy

Every human being leaves an impact on this world. The historical record is full of important people, leaders, thinkers, villains. However, it is rare that a person’s legacy affects as many people as the legacy of Joseph Stalin. Stalin was the tyrannical dictator of the Soviet Union from 1924 to 1953. He was supposed to be the spiritual heir of the first leader of the Soviet state, Vladimir Lenin. In reality, Stalin proved to be a very different personality who forever changed our perception of the idealistic theories developed by Karl Marx and his followers. After Stalin, our ideas of Socialism and Communism were never the same.

Throughout Stalin’s reign the Soviet people constantly lived in fear of being taken away by the secret police (NKVD) in the middle of the night, never to be seen again. This fear peaked during the “great purges” of the late 1930’s when, by some accounts, Stalin had over one million people executed, and millions more deported to forced labor camps (GULAG). This constant fear had a huge impact on the Soviet Union’s culture, industry, and society. But

Several newly independent parts of the Russian Empire, called Socialist Republics, united into a joint sovereign entity, a federative state called the Soviet Union. The civil war destroyed what remained of the Russian economy, which had started its decline with the beginning of World War 1. To help rebuild the economy, Vladimir Lenin introduced NEP (New Economic Policy.) This system abolished the government's total control over the Soviet industry and commerce, and allowed private enterprise capitalism to flourish while still conceding control over the major industries, banks, and foreign trade to the Bolshevik government. This policy allowed many Soviet citizens to open their own businesses and therefore compete with others, spurring innovation and bringing about relative