Winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Biography, William Taubman’s The Man and His Era is a comprehensive examination of the most complex Soviet leader. Taubman triumphs in his depiction of Nikita Khrushchev as both a man of many contradictions and a man in a committed relationship to his late vohdz. Taubman devotes nearly as many words to Josef Stalin as he does to Khrushchev. Through the vehicle of his relationship with Stalin, Taubman uncovers the inherent contradictions in Khrushchev’s policy and actions. Many consider Khrushchev to have been Stalin’s lapdog; Taubman himself even cleverly titled chapter five Stalin’s Pet. Surviving the Great Purges was neither an accident nor a small feat. Outliving nearly all his colleagues, Khrushchev attempted to reform the Soviet Union and rid it of Stalin’s “cult of personality.” Ironically, Khrushchev was not only complicit in Stalin’s cult, but curated it. Worse, by the end of the biography, Taubman implies that Khrushchev’s failures were similar to those of Stalin. Khrushchev was dismissed from the Presidium to cries of “Stalin! Stalin!” Taubman’s masterful investigation of Khrushchev’s special relationship with Stalin explicates his character and artfully carries The Man and His Era.
Many historians hold the opinion that Khrushchev, wholly uneducated and born of a poor family, survived the cut throat world of Russian politics solely through his submission to Josef Stalin. Taubman does not necessarily disagree with this theory. Stalin was cruel to Khrushchev, in one scenario even tapping his pipe against his head and pronouncing it hollow. Stalin rightfully called Khrushchev his “little Marx.” (230). Khrushchev was devoted – he readily accepted the various career positions Stalin as...
... middle of paper ...
...ly made available to the public following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, gives credibility and depth to the work. Additionally, the interviews Taubman spent nearly twenty years collecting, of friends, family, and former colleagues of Khrushchev, lend an intimate air to the biography. The Man and His Era is accessible for those unfamiliar with Soviet history, yet still a joy for the most learned due to Taubman’s attention to detail and specific dates. The connections Taubman forges to Stalin articulate interesting contradictions in Khrushchev’s character – a mercurial man who began, dedicated, and ended his career in the shadow of Josef Stalin. Taubman’s ability to humanize Khrushchev leaves the reader with a picture of a true and hopeful proletariat, but also an ultimately ineffective leader burdened with the legacy of thirty five years of dictatorship.
Tucker, Robert C. "Stalinism as Revolution from Above". Stalinism. Edited by Robert C. Tucker. New York: American Council of Learned Societies, 1999.
As relations changed between Russia and the rest of the world, so did the main historical schools of thought. Following Stalins death, hostilities between the capitalist powers and the USSR, along with an increased awareness of the atrocities that were previously hidden and ignored, led to a split in the opinions of Soviet and Western Liberal historians. In Russia, he was seen, as Trotsky had always maintained, as a betrayer of the revolution, therefore as much distance as possible was placed between himself and Lenin in the schoolbooks of the 50s and early 60s in the USSR. These historians point to Stalin’s killing of fellow communists as a marked difference between himself and his predecessor. Trotsky himself remarked that ‘The present purge draws between Bolshevism and Stalinism… a whole river of blood’[1].
In conclusion, many soviets citizens appeared to believe that Stalin’s positive contributions to the U.S.S.R. far outweigh his monstrous acts. These crimes have been down played by many of Stalin’s successors as they stress his achievements as collectivizer, industrializer, and war leader. Among those citizens who harbor feelings of nostalgia, Stalin’s strength, authority , and achievement contrast sharply with the pain and suffering of post-revolutionary Russia.
Overy, Richard. The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia. New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 2004. Print.
"Joseph Stalin." UXL Biographies. Detroit: U*X*L, 2003. Student Resources in Context. Web. 27 Mar. 2014.
When most people hear the name Joseph Stalin, they usually associate the name with a man who was part of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and was responsible for the deaths of millions of people. He was willingly to do anything to improve the power of the Soviet Union’s economy and military, even if it meant executing tens of millions of innocent people (Frankforter, A. Daniel., and W. M. Spellman 655). In chapter three of Sheila Fitzpatrick’s book, Everyday Stalinism, she argues that since citizens believed the propaganda of “a radiant future” (67), they were able to be manipulated by the Party in the transformation of the Soviet Union. This allowed the Soviet government to expand its power, which ultimately was very disastrous for the people.
With this book, a major element of American history was analyzed. The Cold War is rampant with American foreign policy and influential in shaping the modern world. Strategies of Containment outlines American policy from the end of World War II until present day. Gaddis outlines the policies of presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, including policies influenced by others such as George Kennan, John Dulles, and Henry Kissinger. The author, John Lewis Gaddis has written many books on the Cold War and is an avid researcher in the field. Some of his other works include: The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947, The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past, Surprise, Security, and the American Experience, and The Cold War: A New History. Dr. Gaddis received his PhD from the University of Texas in 1968; he currently is on a leave of absence, but he is a professor at Yale . At the University, his focus is Cold War history. Gaddis is one of the few men who have actually done a complete biography of George Kennan, and Gaddis even won a Pulitzer Prize in 2012.
Son of a poverty-stricken shoemaker, raised in a backward province, Joseph Stalin had only a minimum of education. However, he had a burning faith in the destiny of social revolution and an iron determination to play a prominent role in it. His rise to power was bloody and bold, yet under his leadership, in an unexplainable twenty-nine years, Russia because a highly industrialized nation. Stalin was a despotic ruler who more than any other individual molded the features that characterized the Soviet regime and shaped the direction of Europe after World War II ended in 1945. From a young revolutionist to an absolute master of Soviet Russia, Joseph Stalin cast his shadow over the entire globe through his provocative affair in Domestic and Foreign policy.
Joseph Stalin started a sequence of five-year plans in the 1920’s planned to change the Soviet Union from a society filled with peasants into an industrialized soc...
During Stalin’s regime, the individual Russian was the center of his grand plan for better or worse. Stalin wanted all of his people to be treated the same. In the factory the top producer and the worst producer made the same pay. He wanted everyone to be treated as equals. His goal to bring the Soviet Union into the industrial age put tremendous pressure on his people. Through violence and oppression Stalin tried to maintain an absurd vision that he saw for the Soviet Union. Even as individuals were looked at as being equals, they also were viewed as equals in other ways. There was no one who could be exempt when the system wanted someone imprisoned, killed, or vanished. From the poorest of the poor, to the riches of the rich, everyone was at the mercy of the regime. Millions of individuals had fake trumped up charges brought upon them, either by the government or by others who had called them o...
Under a backdrop of systematic fear and terror, the Stalinist juggernaut flourished. Stalin’s purges, otherwise known as the “Great Terror”, grew from his obsession and desire for sole dictatorship, marking a period of extreme persecution and oppression in the Soviet Union during the late 1930s. “The purges did not merely remove potential enemies. They also raised up a new ruling elite which Stalin had reason to think he would find more dependable.” (Historian David Christian, 1994). While Stalin purged virtually all his potential enemies, he not only profited from removing his long-term opponents, but in doing so, also caused fear in future ones. This created a party that had virtually no opposition, a new ruling elite that would be unstoppable, and in turn negatively impacted a range of sections such as the Communist Party, the people of Russia and the progress in the Soviet community, as well as the military in late 1930 Soviet society.
Stalins rise as a dictator over the USSR in 1929, was a struggle for power. It was set by Lenin, in his testament, that Stalin was not to takeover control as the party leader, and to be removed from his position as General Secretary, as Stalin in Lenins eyes had lack of loyalty, tolerance, and politeness. However, different factors, such as Lenins funeral, Stalins position as General Secretary and the rise of bureaucracy, and Stalins relationship to Kamenev and Zinoviev, made it possible for Stalin to become the undisputed leader over the USSR in 1929. This essay will discuss the methods and the conditions, which helped Joseph Stalin rise to power.
This essay will concentrate on the comparison and analysis of two communist figures: Mao Zedong, leader of the Communist Party in China, and Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union. The main focus of this paper will be to explore each figure’s world view in depth and then compare and contrast by showing their differences and similarities. Joseph Stalin was a realist dictator of the early 20th century in Russia. Before he rose to power and became the leader of the Soviet Union, he joined the Bolsheviks and was part of many illegal activities that got him convicted and he was sent to Siberia (Wood, 5, 10). In the late 1920s, Stalin was determined to take over the Soviet Union (Wiener & Arnold, 1999).
Politics has always been about image. A good image leads to power, it's that simple. Sometimes it is hard to draw the line between a leader who is genuinely interested in improving the lives of his people and one that is interested in filling a few more pages of the already crowded History book. A good example of this is the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in its transition time between 1953 and 1964. The tyrannical rule of Joseph Stalin in the USSR was finally over, and the nation sought a new leader; after nearly a decade, one man, Nikita Khrushchev, rose up from the ranks with new ideas for the nation, and an extreme anti-Stalin campaign. But was he truly enraged at the way Stalin ruled or was he using this image in an attempt to capture the same power as his predecessor? The link between the two leaders goes back many years, to nearly the beginning of the communist annexation of Russia. Even today, we find ourselves asking if the politicians we vote for say they will make a reform to actually help the people, or if they say it as an empty promise in a ploy to get elected or to gain power. Was Nikita Khrushchev a man for the people, or was he simply a puppet with motives unseen to the people that pulled his strings?
Taubman, William. Stalin's American Policy: From Entente to Detente to Cold War. New York: Norton, 1982. Print.