A frightened Lozgachev asked Stalin what happened to him, but all he could get out of the Generalissimo was unintelligible responses that sounded like " Dzhh.

" Lozgachev used the bedroom telephone where he frantically called a few party officials telling them that Stalin may have had a stroke and asked them to send good doctors to the Kuntsevo residence immediately.

Voroshilov played a central role in Stalin's Great Purge of the 1930s, denouncing many of his own military colleagues and subordinates when asked to do so by Stalin.

She even asked Joseph Stalin directly why he had slaughtered so many Russians, but many of her criticisms were translated into innocuous statements instead, leading many of her conservative supporters to fear she had " gone soft " on Communism.

A British interpreter later claimed that Antonov and Joseph Stalin asked for the bombing of Dresden, but there is no mention of these requests in the official record of the conference and the claim may be Cold War propaganda.

Each leader had an agenda for the Yalta Conference: Roosevelt asked for Soviet support in the U. S. Pacific War against Japan, specifically invading Japan ; Churchill pressed for free elections and democratic governments in Eastern and Central Europe ( specifically Poland ); and Stalin demanded a Soviet sphere of political influence in Eastern and Central Europe, an essential aspect of the USSR's national security strategy.

The Polish government-in-exile in London bitterly opposed this and at the Teheran and Yalta conferences between Stalin and the western Allies, the allied leaders Roosevelt and Churchill asked Stalin to reconsider, particularly over Lwów, but he refused.

In Pravda of 30 November 1939, the day of the outbreak of the Winter War, Stalin was asked for his opinion on the report of " the speech " allegedly made " by Stalin to the Politburo on 19 August ", in which he is said to have expressed the thought that the war should go on as long as possible, so that the belligerents are exhausted.

Lange returned to the United States at the end of May, met with Free Polish London Exile Prime Minister Stanisław Mikołajczyk, who happened then to be in Washington, D. C., stressed how reasonable Joseph Stalin was prepared to be, and asked the State Department to put pressure on the exiled Poles.

Stalin first demanded unconditional surrender and asked for confirmation that Hitler was dead.

" When President Truman asked Stalin at the Potsdam Conference in August 1945 whether or not Hitler was dead, Stalin replied bluntly, ' No '.

All previous recipients were asked to return their Stalin Prizes so they could be replaced by the renamed Lenin Prize.

There is also a story that Stalin then asked Alexandrov to relocate the choir to Moscow.

However, according to Stalin biographer Robert Service, Stalin regretted allowing himself the ostentatious military title, and asked Winston Churchill to continue to refer to him as a marshal instead.

The central streets were full of the demonstrators who loudly denounced Khrushchev, demanded that Stalin be rehabilitated, his anniversary be allowed, and specifically asked Vyacheslav Molotov to defend Stalin's name.

One night, Stalin heard a performance of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23 on the radio performed by Yudina and asked for a copy.

Victor Perlo, leader of the group, asked if the material was going to " Uncle Joe " ( Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union ).

An undocumented anecdote claims that during the Yalta Conference, Winston Churchill was so impressed with the Armenian brandy Dvin given to him by Joseph Stalin that he asked for several cases of it to be sent to him each year.

Vasily Stalin asked the new Soviet leaders, Nikita Khrushchev and Georgi Malenkov, for clemency but he was considered a dangerous person and he was judged in a behind-closed-doors trial and was not allowed legal representation.

* Murphy, David E. What Stalin Knew: The Enigma of Barbarossa.

< p > In 1927, when the struggle reached an especially bitter stage, Stalin declared at a session of the Central Committee, addressing himself to the Opposition: “ Those cadres can be removed only by civil war !” What was a threat in Stalin ’ s words became, thanks to a series of defeats of the European proletariat, a historic fact.

Stalin is said to have replied: " What fool will sell us his secrets?

Stalin is said to have replied: " What fool will sell us his secrets?

What is known is that Kirov had brooked the displeasure of Joseph Stalin, the head of the Soviet Communist Party, by refusing to persecute adherents of a growing Opposition movement to Stalin's leadership.

What was originally an omitted section of the interview by Joseph Stalin himself, Professor of Montclair State University Grover Furr had finally published an English version of it.

The White Russians and the Ukrainians would say that Stalin and Molotov were far less reliable defenders of Russia than Curzon and Clemenceau.

" Pasternak became frantic, pacing around his apartment repeating over and over that he must write to Stalin to explain what he had meant and to also say that injustices were being committed in the name of the Leader.

After Stalin took political control of most of Eastern Europe and began to subvert other governments in the Balkans, Attlee's and Bevin's worst fears of Soviet intentions were realized.

At Moscow, Sun Yat-sen University Portraits of Chiang were hung on the walls ; and, in the Soviet May Day Parades that year, Chiang's portrait was to be carried along with the portraits of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and other socialist leaders.

Democracy became an important topic following Lenin's health leave ; Trotsky and Zinoviev were its main backers, but Zinoviev later changed his position when he aligned himself with Stalin.

At the 14th Party Congress ( 18 – 31 December 1925 ) Kamenev and Zinoviev were forced into the same position that Trotsky had been forced into previously ; they proclaimed that the center was usurping power from the regional branches, and that Stalin was a danger to inner-party democracy.

From then on Stalin was the undisputed leader of the Soviet Union, and other leading officials, such as Bukharin, Tomsky, and Rykov were considerably weakened.

Under Khrushchev, an investigation into the matter concluded that the Central Committee had lost its ruling function under Stalin ; from 1929 onwards all decisions in the Central Committee were taken unanimously.

Stalin had managed to turn Lenin's hierarchical model on its head ; under Lenin the Party Congress and the Central Committee were the highest decision-making organs, under Stalin the Politburo, Secretariat and the Orgburo became the most important decision-making bodies.

Almost all Germans who returned or remained were expelled as the city was annexed by the Soviet Union and ceded to Poland in spring 1945, a decision by Stalin with full consent of the western Allies in the Potsdam Conference.

Moreover, under glasnost, the people were able to learn significantly more about the doings of the administration of Joseph Stalin, including the purges and other previously classified activities.

They were totally loyal to Stalin, and realized their regime would collapse if it lost the backing of the Soviet army — as indeed happened in 1989.

After the German withdrawal, the EAM-ELAS guerrilla army effectively controlled most of Greece, but its leaders were reluctant to take control of the country, as they knew that Soviet premier Joseph Stalin had agreed that Greece would be in the British sphere of influence after the war.

Major figures in the Communist Party such as Trotsky and Red Army leaders, were killed, convicted of participating in plots to overthrow the Soviet government and Stalin.

After Stalin declared that he was going to " solve the Baltic problem ", by June 1940, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were merged into the Soviet Union, after repressions and actions therein brought about the deaths of over 160, 000 citizens of these states.

While initial talk existed of a race to Berlin by the Allies, after Stalin successfully lobbied for Eastern Germany to fall within the Soviet " sphere of influence " at Yalta, no plans were made by the Western Allies to seize the city by a ground operation.

After taking around 300, 000 Polish prisoners in 1939 and early 1940, 25, 700 Polish POWs were executed on 5 March 1940, pursuant to a note to Stalin from Lavrenty Beria, in what became known as the Katyn massacre.

Stalin introduced controversial military orders, such as Order No. 270, requiring superiors to shoot deserters on the spot while their family members were subject to arrest.

Thereafter, Stalin also conducted a purge of several military commanders that were shot for " cowardice " without a trial.

Stalin issued Order No. 227, directing that commanders permitting retreat without permission to be subject to a military tribunal, and soldiers guilty of disciplinary procedures to be forced into " penal battalions ", which were sent to the most dangerous sections of the front lines.

In June 1941, weeks after the German invasion began, Stalin also directed employing a scorched earth policy of destroying the infrastructure and food supplies of areas before the Germans could seize them, and that partisans were to be set up in evacuated areas.

Stalin also stated that the Polish government-in-exile demands for self-rule were not negotiable, such that the Soviet Union would keep the territory of eastern Poland they had already taken by invasion with German consent in 1939, and wanted the pro-Soviet Polish government installed.

The western allies, and especially Churchill, were suspicious of the motives of Stalin, who had already installed communist governments in the central European countries under his influence.

The " Doctors ' plot " was a plot outlined by Stalin and Soviet officials in 1952 and 1953 whereby several doctors ( over half of whom were Jewish ) allegedly attempted to kill Soviet officials.