After all that had happened, open shadowing, friends turning away, Pasternak ’ s suicidal condition at the time, one can ... understand her: the memory of Stalin ’ s camps was too fresh, she tried to protect him.

The GULAG was reduced in size following Stalin ’ s death in 1953.

Yet, seven years after the Allies ’ Potsdam Agreement to a unified Germany, the USSR via the Stalin Note ( 10 March 1952 ) proposed German reunification and superpower disengagement from Central Europe, which the three Western Allies ( US, France, UK ) rejected.

The counter-action against Stalin aligned with Lenin ’ s advocacy of the right of self-determination for the national and ethnic groups of the former Tsarist Empire, which was a key theoretic concept of Leninism.

Lenin advised Trotsky to emphasize Stalin ’ s recent bureaucratic alignment in such matters ( e. g. undermining the anti-bureaucratic Workers ’ and Peasants ’ Inspection ), and argued to depose Stalin as General Secretary.

Despite advice to refuse “ any rotten compromise ”, Trotsky did not heed Lenin ’ s advice, and General Secretary Stalin retained power over the Communist Party and the bureaucracy of the soviet government.

After Lenin ’ s death ( 21 January 1924 ), Trotsky ideologically battled the influence of Stalin, who formed ruling blocs within the Russian Communist Party ( with Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, then with Nikolai Bukharin, and then by himself ) and so determined soviet government policy from 1924 onwards.

The ruling blocs continually denied Stalin ’ s opponents the right to organise as an opposition faction within the Party — thus, the re-instatement of democratic centralism and free speech within the Communist Party were key arguments of Trotsky ’ s Left Opposition, and the later Joint Opposition.

In the course of instituting government policy, Stalin promoted the doctrine of Socialism in One Country ( adopted 1925 ), wherein the USSR would establish socialism upon Russia ’ s economic foundations ( and support socialist revolutions elsewhere ).

In contrast, Stalin and allies proposed that alliances with capitalist political parties were essential to realising a revolution where Communists were too few ; said Stalinist practice failed, especially in the Northern Expedition portion of the Chinese Revolution ( 1925 – 1927 ), wherein it resulted in the right-wing Kuomintang ’ s massacre of the Chinese Communist Party ; nonetheless, despite the failure, Stalin ’ s policy of mixed-ideology political alliances, became Comintern policy.

The Trotskyist demands countered Stalin ’ s political dominance of the Russian Communist Party, which was officially characterised by the ‘ cult of Lenin ’, the rejection of permanent revolution, and the doctrine of Socialism in One Country.

Rather than having a specific message for any of his films, Pyryev promoted Stalin ’ s slogan “ life has become better, life has become more joyous .” Sometimes this message was in stark contrast with the reality of the time.

It became Stalin ’ s favorite film and he gave it as a gift to President Roosevelt during WWII.

Released at the height of Stalin ’ s purges, it provided escapism and a comforting illusion for the public.

This was the biggest turnover in the Soviet military since Stalin ’ s purges fifty years earlier.

" Carr argued that the Soviet Union's replacement of Foreign Minister Litvinov with Molotov on May 3, 1939 indicated not an irrevocable shift towards alignment with Germany, but rather was Stalin ’ s way of engaging in hard bargaining with the British and the French by appointing a proverbial hard man, namely Molotov, to the Foreign Commissariat.

Many of the investigations centered on the country ’ s history under communism, especially in the instance of Joseph Stalin ’ s regime of terror.

The signatories were General Secretary Joseph Stalin, President Harry S. Truman, and Prime Minister Clement Attlee, who, as a result of the British general election of 1945, had replaced Winston Churchill as the UK ’ s Conference representative.

File: Voroshilov, Molotov, Stalin, with Nikolai Yezhov. jpg | Original: Nikolai Yezhov at Stalin ’ s left.

Beria's fall also led to criticism of Stalin ; the party leadership accused Beria of using Stalin, a sick and old man, to force his own will on the Soviet Union during Stalin's last days.

In 1933, Stalin put forward the theory of aggravation of the class struggle along with the development of socialism, arguing that the further the country would move forward, the more acute forms of struggle will be used by the doomed remnants of exploiter classes in their last desperate effortsand that, therefore, political repression was necessary.

In Stalin's last year of life, one of his last major foreign policy initiatives was the 1952 Stalin Note for German reunification and Superpower disengagement from Central Europe, but Britain, France, and the United States viewed this with suspicion and rejected the offer.

Like other Bolsheviks, he became commonly known by one of his revolutionary noms de guerre, of which " Stalin " was only the last.

Stalin then turned on his former political ally, Nikolai Bukharin, who was the last real threat to his power.

Critic Graham Young claims that Maoists see Joseph Stalin as the last true socialist leader of the Soviet Union, but allows that the Maoist assessments of Stalin vary between the extremely positive and the more ambivalent.

Bukharin himself speaks of his " peculiar duality of mind " in his last plea, which led to " semi-paralysis of the will " and Hegelian " unhappy consciousness ", which presumably stemmed from the conflict between his knowledge of the reality of Stalinist rule and the threat of fascism, which led Bukharin and others to follow Stalin, who had become the personification of the Party.

* 1945-July 17-August 2 Potsdam Conference ; President Harry S. Truman meets with Stalin and British Prime Minister Clement Attlee ; tells Stalin of atomic bomb ; gives Japan last warning to surrender ; Germany ( and Austria ) divided into 4 zones of occupation

On that same day Stalin left his autograph on the last page of this work by Gorky: " Эта штука сильнее чем " Фауст " Гёте ( любовь побеждает смерть )"( " This piece is stronger than Goethe's Faust ( love defeats death )".

In spite of Lenin's opinion that the NEP should last several decades at least, until universal literacy was accomplished, in 1928, after only nine years of NEP, Lenin's successor, Stalin, eventually introduced full central planning ( although a variant of public planning had been the idea of the Left Opposition, which Stalin purged from the Party ), re-nationalized much of the economy, and from the late 1920s onwards introduced a policy of rapid industrialization.

The lyrics present great similarities, all having mentions to Vladmir Lenin ( and, in their initial versions, to Joseph Stalin ), to the guiding role of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and to the brotherhood of the Soviet peoples, including a specific reference to the friendship of the Russian people ( the Estonian and Karelo-Finnish anthems were apparently an exception to this last rule ).

He attended his last meeting of the Executive Committee of the Comintern in 1926, the same year in which he confronted Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin face-to-face.

In his last work " Ernste Gesänge " ( Serious Songs ) written between spring 1961 and August 1962, Eisler worked on his depression, taking up the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union with its demise of the Stalin cult, as a sign of hope for a future enabling to " live without fear ".

It has been rumoured that Lenin, also on his deathbed at the time and worried about the rising Stalin, provided funds for this last venture of Martov.

Alexandrov founded the Alexandrov Ensemble, and spent many years as its director, in which role he first gained favor with Joseph Stalin, the country's ruler during the last two decades of Alexandrov's life.

" Joseph Stalin, whose last name means " man of steel ", was given the code name " GLYPTIC ," meaning " an image carved out of stone.

Third Plenary Assembly of the World Jewish Congress, Geneva, Switzerland, 4 – 11 August 1953In 1953, the World Jewish Congress condemned the indictment in Moscow of Jewish doctors as alleged conspirators against the Soviet Union leadership, the so-called Doctors ' plot, and called a leadership meeting in Zurich, Switzerland, which was canceled at the last minute due to the death of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

In May 1948 Kádár visited the Soviet Union, and for the first and last time in his life he saw Joseph Stalin with his own eyes.

In 1944 and 1945, the last two years of the Second World War the award ceremonies for the Stalin Prize were not held.

Stalin asked, " What were Tukhachevsky's last words?

Despite the Soviets ' possession of Hitler's remains, Stalin did not believe that his old nemesis was actually dead, a belief that remained for years after the war.

Indeed, after something like thirty years ' experience of international conferences of one kind and another, if I had to pick a team for going into a conference room, Stalin would be my first choice.

In the first post war years Tito was widely considered a communist leader very loyal to Moscow, indeed, he was often viewed as second only to Stalin in the Eastern Bloc.

Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (; ; 29 March 1899 – 23 December 1953 ) was a Soviet politician, Marshal of the Soviet Union and state security administrator, chief of the Soviet security and secret police apparatus ( NKVD ) under Joseph Stalin during World War II, and Deputy Premier in the postwar years ( 1946 – 1953 ).

Stalin gave it absolute priority and the project was completed in under five years in no small part due to Soviet espionage against the West organized by Beria's NKVD.

With Stalin nearing 70, the post-war years were dominated by a concealed struggle for succession among his supporters.

The 2003 unsealing of the Soviet archives of his case revealed large amounts of evidence from " dozens " of victims of his sexual assaults that Stalin had been collecting for years prior to his death.

Within five years of Vladmir Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin completed his rise to power in the Soviet Union.

In 1953, Stalin died of a stroke, ending his 29 years of influence and rule over the Soviet Union.

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.

When disillusioned American citizens living in the Soviet Union thronged the gates of the U. S. embassy in Moscow to plead for new U. S. passports to leave USSR ( Stalin had taken their original U. S. passports for ' registration ' purposes years before ), none were issued.

Stalin allowed Chiang Ching-kuo to return to China with his Belarusian wife and two children in April 1937 after living in the USSR for 12 years.

His father disappeared under Stalin and his mother spent years in the gulag.

She spent much of the next years trying to ensure his release, to this end, and for the first time, she published overtly propagandist poetry, “ In Praise of Peace ,” in the magazine Ogoniok, openly supporting Stalin and his regime.

Khrushchev attacked Stalin, both over the purges of the 1930s and the defeats of the early years of World War II, which he blamed on Stalin's over-trusting attitude to Hitler and the purges of the Red Army.

Molotov and his associates were denounced as " the Anti-Party Group " but, notably, were not subject to the physical repressions that marked the Stalin years.

However, Allied land forces would not be capable of invading the mainland of Europe for years, even as Joseph Stalin pressed for the western allies to alleviate pressure on the Eastern front.

Two years later, when Churchill and Stalin formed an alliance against Hitler, the Kresy Poles were released from the Gulags in Siberia, formed the Anders Army and marched to Persia to create the II Corps ( Poland ) under British high command.

No other crime of the Stalin years so captivated Western intellectuals as the trial and execution of Bukharin, who was a Marxist theorist of international standing.

The couple married in 1919, when Stalin was already a 41-year-old widower and father of one son, born to his first wife, who died of typhus years earlier.

* Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is sentenced to eight years in a labour camp for criticism of Stalin.