The political memoirs of Vyacheslav Molotov, published in 1993, claimed that Beria had boasted to Molotov that he poisoned Stalin: " I took him out.

When Stalin claimed Latvia for the Soviet Union, Ribbentrop was forced to telephone Berlin for permission from Hitler to concede Latvia to the Soviets.

" Likewise, historian Edvard Radzinsky believes that Stalin was a real follower of Lenin, exactly as he claimed himself.

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.

However, Milovan Djilas claimed that he " drank more than Stalin " and did not note his vegetarianism despite having several banquets with him.

" However, the profound fascist / anti-fascist schism of the period described by Hobsbawm was real enough, as Yale historian Timothy Snyder notes: Nevertheless, Snyder also claimed that " The Spanish Civil War revealed that Stalin was determined, despite the Popular Front rhetoric of pluralism, to eliminate opposition to his version of socialism ", and that his determination was knowable and known even contemporaneously ( Snyder cites George Orwell's analysis of, and dismay at, communist actions in Spain ).

Some economists claimed that the Soviet Union missed the lessons of the Solow growth model, because starting in the 1930s, the Stalin government attempted to force capital accumulation through state direction of the economy.

of Sergei M. Eisenstein which copies were claimed by Joseph Stalin from the Soviet Union to be edited.

Stalin claimed that his theory of " Socialism in one country " is a further development of Leninism.

Gheorghiu-Dej made Pauker, Luca and Georgescu scapegoats for the Romanian communists ' past excesses and claimed that the Romanian party had purged its Stalinist elements even before Stalin had died.

The speech shocked delegates to the Congress, as it flew in the face of years of Soviet propaganda, which had claimed that Stalin was a wise, peaceful, and fair leader.

Stalin claimed that only a strong, pro-Soviet Government in Poland would be able to guarantee the security of the Soviet Union.

Duranty claimed “ It would be more proper to refer to the principle present during the period of Stalin ’ s reign as Stalinism ”, which Duranty viewed as a progression and integration of Marxism combined with Leninism.

Zhukov recalled this plan later but claimed either that the plan was rejected by Stalin or didn't reach the leader at all.

Timoshenko and Khruschev claimed that the danger coming from Wehrmacht's Kramatorsk group was exaggerated, and Stalin refused the withdrawal again.

Without diminishing the totalitarian nature of Stalin's regime, Steinbeck claimed that the main fear held by average Russians was not of Stalin but another World War.

Le Corbusier and Sigfried Giedion, leader of the CIAM, claimed to Stalin that the " decision of the council is a direct insult to the spirit of Revolution and the Five-year plan ... is a tragic betrayal.

Stalin claimed that Kirov's assassin, Leonid Nikolaev, was part of a larger conspiracy led by Zinoviev, Kamenev and ultimately Leon Trotsky against the Soviet government.

Frenkel himself claimed that he was whisked off to Moscow to discuss his ideas with Joseph Stalin and Lazar Kaganovich, one of Stalin's henchmen.

O ' Donnell holds that whatever remains of Hitler still existed by this date were cremated and scattered, and that any parts of the corpse the Russians claimed to have afterwards were fabricated to satisfy Stalin ( part of this theory was disproven by DNA tests of bone fragments after O ' Donnell's death ).

Rashid claimed there were other Stalin lookalikes employed by the KGB, although he never met any.

He claimed to have heard of another Stalin double who was hired to live in the dictator's dacha outside of Moscow in the late 1940s and 1950s when Stalin was dying.

Therefore I propose to the comrades that they devise a way of shifting Stalin from this position and appointing to it another man who in all other respects falls on the other side of the scale from Comrade Stalin, namely, more tolerant, more loyal, more polite and considerate of comrades, less capricious and so forth.

Trotsky and Rykov tried to reorganise the party in early 1923, by debureaucratising it, however, in this they failed, and Stalin managed to enlarge the Central Committee.

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.

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.

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.

Nikita Khrushchev wrote that Stalin hinted him to incite anti-Semitism in the Ukraine, telling him that " the good workers at the factory should be given clubs so they can beat the hell out of those Jews.

On 21 August 1939, Hitler received a message from Stalin reading " The Soviet Government has instructed me to say they agree to Herr von Ribbentrop's arrival on 23 August ".

Adenauer and his cabinet were unanimous in their rejection of the Stalin overture ; they shared the Western Allies ' suspicion about the genuineness of that offer and supported the Allies in their cautious replies.

ELAS and Yugoslavia were on good terms until 1949, when they split due to Tito's lack of allegiance to Joseph Stalin ( cf.

" According to Stalin, this would exclude Jews as they have no common territory.

Even more than earlier Moscow show trials, Bukharin's trial horrified many previously sympathetic observers as they watched allegations become more absurd than ever and the purge expand to include almost every living Old Bolshevik leader except Stalin.

In the Soviet Union, speaking to his generals in December, Stalin mentioned Hitler's references to an attack on the Soviet Union in Mein Kampf, and said they must always be ready to repulse a German attack, and that Hitler thought the Red Army would need four years to ready itself.

While Heydrich believed they had successfully deluded Stalin into executing or dismissing some 35, 000 of his officer corps, the importance of Heydrich's part is a matter of speculation and conjecture.

The Situationists were ruthlessly critical of Stalin and the Soviet Union, which they regarded as an oppressive undemocratic bureaucracy that was just as freedom-deprived as capitalist society, if not more so.

* November 28 – WWII – Tehran Conference: U. S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin meet in Tehran to discuss war strategy ( on November 30 they establish an agreement concerning a planned June 1944 invasion of Europe codenamed Operation Overlord ).

While they had initially been mutually supportive, issues arose following the ascendancy of Nikita Khrushchev to power in the Soviet Union after the death of Joseph Stalin.

Prior to the trial, Zinoviev and Kamenev had agreed to plead guilty to the false charges on the condition that they not be executed, a condition that Stalin accepted, stating " that goes without saying.

Even sympathetic observers who had stomached the earlier trials found it hard to swallow new charges as they became ever more absurd and the purge by now expanded to include virtually every living Old Bolshevik leader except Stalin.

American factory workers at the Soviet Ford GAZ plant, suspected by Stalin of being ' poisoned ' by Western influences, were dragged off with the others to Lubyanka by the NKVD in the very same Ford Model A cars they had helped build, where they were tortured ; nearly all were executed or died in labor camps.

Roosevelt, who had traveled 7, 000 miles to attend and whose health had already started deteriorating, was met by Stalin ; this being the first time that they had met.

They were not received warmly by Stalin, who doubted if they really were Marxists and not simply a group of Chinese nationalists.

They returned home disappointed when Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin said that they would repudiate some of Khrushchev's more eccentric policies, but that they had no intention of turning the clock back to the time of Stalin.