Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin or Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin (Russian: Ио́сиф Виссарио́нович Ста́лин, 

pronounced [ˈjosʲɪf vʲɪsɐˈrʲonəvʲɪt͡ɕ ˈstalʲɪn]; born Ioseb Besarionis Dze Jugashvili, 

Georgian: იოსებ ბესარიონის ძე ჯუღაშვილი, pronounced [iɔsɛb bɛsariɔnis d͡ze d͡ʒuɣaʃvili]; 18 

December 1878[1] – 5 March 1953), was the leader of the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until 

his death in 1953.

Among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who took part in the Russian Revolution of 1917, Stalin 

was appointed general secretary of the party's Central Committee in 1922. He subsequently 

managed to consolidate power following the 1924 death of Lenin through suppressing Lenin's 

criticisms (in the postscript of his testament) and expanding the functions of his role, all 

the while eliminating any opposition. By the late 1920s, he was the unchallenged leader of the 

Soviet Union. He remained general secretary until the post was abolished in 1952, concurrently 

serving as the Premier of the Soviet Union from 1941 onward.

Under Stalin's rule, the concept of "socialism in one country" became a central tenet of 

Soviet society. He replaced the New Economic Policy introduced by Lenin in the early 1920s 

with a highly centralised command economy, launching a period of industrialization and 

collectivization that resulted in the rapid transformation of the USSR from an agrarian 

society into an industrial power.[2] However, the economic changes coincided with the 

imprisonment of millions of people in Soviet correctional labour camps[3] and the deportation 

of many others to remote areas.[3] The initial upheaval in agriculture disrupted food 

production and contributed to the catastrophic Soviet famine of 1932–1933, known as the 

Holodomor in Ukraine. Later, in a period that lasted from 1936–39, Stalin instituted a 

campaign against alleged enemies within his regime called the Great Purge, in which hundreds 

of thousands were executed. Major figures in the Communist Party, such as the old Bolsheviks, 

Leon Trotsky, and several Red Army leaders, were killed after being convicted of plotting to 

overthrow the government and Stalin.[4] These campaigns were in addition to the existing 

political repression in the Soviet Union, which was in effect continually after the October 

Revolution.

In August 1939, Stalin entered into a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany that divided their 

influence and territory within Eastern Europe, resulting in their invasion of Poland in 

September of that year, but Germany later violated the agreement and launched a massive 

invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Despite heavy human and territorial losses, Soviet 

forces managed to halt the Nazi incursion after the decisive Battles of Moscow and Stalingrad. 

After defeating the Axis powers on the Eastern Front, the Red Army captured Berlin in May 

1945, effectively ending the war in Europe for the Allies.[5][6] The Soviet Union subsequently 

emerged as one of two recognized world superpowers, the other being the United States.[7] The 

Yalta and Potsdam conferences established communist governments loyal to the Soviet Union in 

the Eastern Bloc countries as buffer states, which Stalin deemed necessary in case of another 

invasion. He also fostered close relations with Mao Zedong in China and Kim Il-sung in North 

Korea.

Stalin led the Soviet Union through its post-war reconstruction phase, which saw a significant 

rise in tension with the Western world that would later be known as the Cold War. During this 

period, the USSR became the second country in the world to successfully develop a nuclear 

weapon, as well as launching the Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature in response to 

another widespread famine and the Great Construction Projects of Communism. In the years 

following his death, Stalin and his regime have been condemned on numerous occasions, most 

notably in 1956 when his successor Nikita Khrushchev denounced his legacy and initiated a 

process of de-Stalinization. He remains a controversial figure today, with many regarding him 

as a tyrant[8] similar to his wartime enemy Adolf Hitler; however, popular opinion within the 

Russian Federation is mixed.[9][10][11]

Ioseb aged 16 (left) and 23 (right)

Stalin was born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili (Georgian: იოსებ ბესარიონის ძე ჯუღაშვილი; 

Russian: Ио́сиф Виссарио́нович Джугашви́ли, Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, pronounced 

[d͡ʐʊɡɐˈʂvʲilʲɪ]) on 18 December 1878[1] in the town of Gori, Tiflis Governorate, Russian 

Empire (present-day Georgia). His mother was Ketevan Geladze. His father Besarion Jughashvili 

worked as a cobbler.

As a child, Ioseb was plagued with numerous health issues. He was born with two adjoined toes 

on his left foot.[12] His face was permanently scarred by smallpox at the age of 7. At age 12, 

he injured his left arm in an accident involving a horse-drawn carriage, rendering it shorter 

and stiffer than its counterpart.

Ioseb's father slid into alcoholism, which made him abusive to his family and caused his 

business to fail. When Ioseb's mother enrolled him into an Orthodox priesthood school against 

her husband's wishes, his enraged father went on a drunken rampage. He was banished from Gori 

for assaulting its police chief. He subsequently moved to Tiflis (Tbilisi), leaving his family 

behind.

When Stalin was sixteen, he received a scholarship to attend the Georgian Orthodox Tiflis 

Spiritual Seminary in Tbilisi. Although his performance had been good, he was expelled in 1899 

after missing his final exams. The seminary's records also suggest that he was unable to pay 

his tuition fees.[13] Around this time, Stalin discovered the writings of Vladimir Lenin and 

joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, a Marxist group.

Out of school, Stalin briefly worked as a part-time clerk in a meteorological office, but 

after a state crackdown on revolutionaries, he went underground and became a full-time 

revolutionary, living off donations.

When Lenin formed the Bolsheviks, Stalin eagerly joined up with him. Stalin proved to be a 

very effective organizer of men as well as a capable intellectual. Among other activities, he 

distributed propaganda, provoked strikes, staged bank robberies, and ordered assassinations. 

He was arrested and exiled to Siberia numerous times, but often escaped. His skill and charm 

won him the respect of Lenin, and he rose rapidly through the ranks of the Bolsheviks.

Stalin married his first wife, Ekaterina Svanidze, in 1906, who bore him a son. She died the 

following year of typhus. In 1911, he met his future second wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, during 

one of his many exiles in Siberia.

Revolution, Civil War, and Polish-Soviet War

Main article: Joseph Stalin in the Russian Revolution, Russian Civil War, and Polish-Soviet 

War

Role during the Russian Revolution of 1917

Prior to the revolution of 1917, Stalin played an active role in fighting the Russian 

government. Here he is shown on a 1911 information card from the files of the Russian police 

in Saint Petersburg.[14]

After returning to Petrograd from his final exile, Stalin ousted Vyacheslav Molotov and 

Alexander Shlyapnikov as editors of Pravda. He then took a position in favor of supporting 

Alexander Kerensky's provisional government. However, after Lenin prevailed at the April 1917 

Communist Party conference, Stalin and Pravda shifted to opposing the provisional government. 

At this conference, Stalin was elected to the Bolshevik Central Committee. In October 1917, 

the Bolshevik Central Committee voted in favor of an insurrection. On 7 November, from the 

Smolny Institute, Trotsky, Lenin and the rest of the Central Committee coordinated the 

insurrection against Kerensky in the 1917 October Revolution. By 8 November, the Bolsheviks 

had stormed the Winter Palace and Kerensky's Cabinet had been arrested.

Role in the Russian Civil War, 1917–1919

A group of participants in the 8th Congress of the Russian Communist Party, 1919. In the 

middle are Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, and Mikhail Kalinin.

Upon seizing Petrograd, Stalin was appointed People's Commissar for Nationalities' Affairs. 

Thereafter, civil war broke out in Russia, pitting Lenin's Red Army against the White Army, a 

loose alliance of anti-Bolshevik forces. Lenin formed a five-member Politburo, which included 

Stalin and Trotsky. In May 1918, Lenin dispatched Stalin to the city of Tsaritsyn. Through his 

new allies, Kliment Voroshilov and Semyon Budyonny, Stalin imposed his influence on the 

military.[citation needed]

Stalin challenged many of the decisions of Trotsky, ordered the killings of many 

counter-revolutionaries and former Tsarist officers in the Red Army[citation needed] and 

burned villages in order to intimidate the peasantry into submission and discourage bandit 

raids on food shipments.[citation needed] In May 1919, in order to stem mass desertions on the 

Western front, Stalin had deserters and renegades publicly executed as traitors.[15]

Role in the Polish-Soviet War, 1919–1921

After the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War, the Soviet Russia started the push 

towards a world revolution. It was part of the communist ideology to transform the whole world 

into socialist states. (Tukhachevsky: "There can be no doubt that if we had been victorious on 

the Vistula (i.e. in Poland), the revolutionary fires would have reached the entire 

continent."[16]). As a natural direction was the Western Europe, the bolsheviks had to conquer 

a newly reborn independent state of Poland. That was the beginning of what became known as the 

Polish–Soviet War. After initial succeses of Polish Army, the Bolsheviks pushed them back into 

central Poland. As the people's commisair to high command of the southern front, Stalin was 

determined to take the then Polish city of Lwów (now Lviv in Ukraine). This conflicted with 

the general strategy set by Lenin and Trotsky, which focused on the capture of Warsaw further 

north.

Tukhachevsky's forces engaged those of Polish commanders Józef Piłsudski and Władysław 

Sikorski at the pivotal Battle of Warsaw, but Stalin refused to redirect his troops from Lwów 

to help. Consequently, the four invading armies of Soviet Russia fighting for the Polish 

capital were totally routed by Poles, and the battles for both Lwów and Warsaw were lost, and 

Stalin was blamed. In August 1920, Stalin returned to Moscow, where he defended himself and 

resigned his military command. At the Ninth Party Conference on 22 September, Trotsky openly 

criticized Stalin's behavior.

Rise to power

Main article: Rise of Joseph Stalin

Stalin played a decisive role in engineering the 1921 Red Army invasion of Georgia, following 

which he adopted particularly hardline, centralist policies towards Soviet Georgia. This led 

to the Georgian Affair of 1922 and other repressions.[17][18] Stalin's actions in Georgia 

created a rift with Lenin, who believed that all the Soviet states should stand equal.

Lenin nonetheless considered Stalin to be a loyal ally, and when he got mired in squabbles 

with Trotsky and other politicians, he decided to give Stalin more power. With the help of Lev 

Kamenev, Lenin had Stalin appointed General Secretary in 1922.[19] This post enabled Stalin to 

appoint many of his allies to government positions.

Stalin and Vladimir Lenin in 1919.

Lenin suffered a stroke in 1922, forcing him into semi-retirement in Gorki. Stalin visited him 

often, acting as his intermediary with the outside world,[19] but the pair quarreled and their 

relationship deteriorated.[19] Lenin dictated increasingly disparaging notes on Stalin in what 

would become his testament. He criticized Stalin's political views, rude manners, and 

excessive power and ambition, and suggested that Stalin should be removed from the position of 

general secretary.[19] During Lenin's semi-retirement, Stalin forged an alliance with Kamenev 

and Grigory Zinoviev against Trotsky. These allies prevented Lenin's Testament from being 

revealed to the Twelfth Party Congress in April 1923[19] (after Lenin's death the testament 

was read to selected groups of deputies to the Thirteenth Party Congress in May 1924 but it 

was forbidden to be mentioned at the plenary assemblies or any documents of the Congress[20] 

).

Lenin died of a heart attack on 21 January 1924. Following Lenin's death, a power struggle 

began, which involved following seven Politburo members:[21] Nikolai Bukharin, Lev Kamenev, 

Alexei Rykov, Joseph Stalin, Mikhail Tomsky, Leon Trotsky, Grigory Zinoviev.

Again, Kamenev and Zinoviev helped to keep Lenin's Testament from going public. Thereafter, 

Stalin's disputes with Kamenev and Zinoviev intensified. Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev grew 

increasingly isolated, and were eventually ejected from the Central Committee and then from 

the Party itself.[19] Kamenev and Zinoviev were later readmitted, but Trotsky was exiled from 

the Soviet Union.

The Northern Expedition in China became a point of contention over foreign policy by Stalin 

and Trotsky. Stalin wanted the Communist Party of China to ally itself with the Nationalist 

Kuomintang, rather than attempt to implement a communist revolution. Trotsky urged the party 

to oppose the Kuomintang and launch a full-scale revolution. Stalin funded the KMT during the 

expedition.[22] Stalin countered Trotsky's criticisms by making a secret speech in which he 

said that the Kuomintang were the only ones capable of defeating the imperialists, that Chiang 

Kai-shek had funding from the rich merchants, and that his forces were to be utilized until 

squeezed for all usefulness like a lemon before being discarded.[23] However, Chiang quickly 

reversed the tables in the Shanghai massacre of 1927 by massacring the membership of the 

Communist party in Shanghai midway through the Northern Expedition.[24][25]

Stalin pushed for more rapid industrialization and central control of the economy, 

contravening Lenin's New Economic Policy (NEP). At the end of 1927, a critical shortfall in 

grain supplies prompted Stalin to push for the collectivisation of agriculture and order the 

seizure of grain hoards from kulak farmers.[19][26] Nikolai Bukharin and Premier Alexey Rykov 

opposed these policies and advocated a return to the NEP, but the rest of the Politburo sided 

with Stalin and removed Bukharin from the Politburo in November 1929. Rykov was fired the 

following year and was replaced by Vyacheslav Molotov on Stalin's recommendation.

In December 1934, the popular Communist Party boss in Leningrad, Sergei Kirov, was murdered. 

Stalin blamed Kirov's murder on a vast conspiracy of saboteurs and Trotskyites. He launched a 

massive purge against these internal enemies, putting them on rigged show trials and then 

having them executed or imprisoned in Siberian Gulags. Among these victims were old enemies, 

including Bukharin, Rykov, Kamenev and Zinoviev. Stalin made the loyal Nikolai Yezhov head of 

the secret police, the NKVD, and had him purge the NKVD of veteran Bolsheviks. With no serious 

opponents left in power, Stalin ended the purges in 1938. Yezhov was held to blame for the 

excesses of the Great Terror. He was dismissed from office and later executed.

Changes to Soviet society, 1927–1939

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Stalin vastly increased the scope and power of the state's secret police and intelligence 

agencies. Under his guiding hand, Soviet intelligence forces began to set up intelligence 

networks in most of the major nations of the world, including Germany (the famous Rote 

Kappelle spy ring), Great Britain, France, Japan, and the United States. Stalin made 

considerable use of the Communist International movement in order to infiltrate agents and to 

ensure that foreign Communist parties remained pro-Soviet and pro-Stalin.

One of the best examples of Stalin's ability to integrate secret police and foreign espionage 

came in 1940, when he gave approval to the secret police to have Leon Trotsky assassinated in 

Mexico.[27]

Cult of personality

Main article: Stalin's cult of personality

Stalin created a cult of personality in the Soviet Union around both himself and Lenin. Many 

personality cults in history have been frequently measured and compared to his. Numerous 

towns, villages and cities were renamed after the Soviet leader (see List of places named 

after Stalin) and the Stalin Prize and Stalin Peace Prize were named in his honor. He accepted 

grandiloquent titles (e.g., "Coryphaeus of Science," "Father of Nations," "Brilliant Genius of 

Humanity," "Great Architect of Communism," "Gardener of Human Happiness," and others), and 

helped rewrite Soviet history to provide himself a more significant role in the revolution of 

1917. At the same time, according to Nikita Khrushchev, he insisted that he be remembered for 

"the extraordinary modesty characteristic of truly great people."[28] Statues of Stalin depict 

him at a height and build approximating the very tall Tsar Alexander III, while photographic 

evidence suggests he was between 5 ft 5 in and 5 ft 6 in (165–168 cm).[29]

Trotsky criticized the cult of personality built around Stalin. It reached new levels during 

World War II, with Stalin's name included in the new Soviet national anthem. Stalin became the 

focus of literature, poetry, music, paintings and film that exhibited fawning devotion. He was 

sometimes credited with almost god-like qualities, including the suggestion that he 

single-handedly won the Second World War. The degree to which Stalin himself relished the cult 

surrounding him is debatable. The Finnish communist Arvo Tuominen records a sarcastic toast 

proposed by Stalin at a New Year Party in 1935 in which he said "Comrades! I want to propose a 

toast to our Patriarch, life and sun, liberator of nations, architect of socialism [he rattled 

off all the appellations applied to him in those days] – Josef Vissarionovich Stalin, and I 

hope this is the first and last speech made to that genius this evening."[30]

In a 1956 speech, Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin's cult of personality with these words: 

"It is impermissible and foreign to the spirit of Marxism-Leninism to elevate one person, to 

transform him into a superman possessing supernatural characteristics akin to those of a 

god."[citation needed]

Purges and deportations

Purges and executions

Main article: Great Purge

Left: Beria's January 1940 letter to Stalin asking permission to execute 346 "enemies of the 

CPSU and of the Soviet authorities" who conducted "counter-revolutionary, right-Trotskyite 

plotting and spying activities"

Middle: Stalin's handwriting: "за" (support).

Right: The Politburo's decision is signed by Stalin

Stalin, as head of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet 

Union, consolidated near-absolute power in the 1930s with a Great Purge of the party that was 

justified as an attempt to expel "opportunists" and "counter-revolutionary 

infiltrators".[31][32] Those targeted by the purge were often expelled from the party, however 

more severe measures ranged from banishment to the Gulag labor camps to execution after trials 

held by NKVD troikas.[31][33][34]

In the 1930s, Stalin apparently became increasingly worried about the growing popularity of 

the Leningrad party boss Sergei Kirov. At the 1934 Party Congress where the vote for the new 

Central Committee was held, Kirov received only three negative votes, the fewest of any 

candidate, while Stalin received at least over a hundred negative votes.[35][36] After the 

assassination of Kirov, which may have been orchestrated by Stalin, Stalin invented a detailed 

scheme to implicate opposition leaders in the murder, including Trotsky, Kamenev and 

Zinoviev.[37] The investigations and trials expanded.[38] Stalin passed a new law on 

"terrorist organizations and terrorist acts" that were to be investigated for no more than ten 

days, with no prosecution, defense attorneys or appeals, followed by a sentence to be executed 

"quickly."[39]

Thereafter, several trials known as the Moscow Trials were held, but the procedures were 

replicated throughout the country. Article 58 of the legal code, which listed prohibited 

anti-Soviet activities as counterrevolutionary crime, was applied in the broadest manner.[40] 

The flimsiest pretexts were often enough to brand someone an "enemy of the people", starting 

the cycle of public persecution and abuse, often proceeding to interrogation, torture and 

deportation, if not death. The Russian word troika gained a new meaning: a quick, simplified 

trial by a committee of three subordinated to NKVD -NKVD troika- with sentencing carried out 

within 24 hours.[39] Stalin's hand-picked executioner, Vasili Blokhin, was entrusted with 

carrying out some of the high profile executions in this period.[41]

Nikolai Yezhov, walking with Stalin in the top photo from the 1930s, was killed in 1940. 

Following his execution, Yezhov was edited out of the photo by Soviet censors.[42] Such 

retouching was a common occurrence during Stalin's rule.

Many military leaders were convicted of treason and a large-scale purge of Red Army officers 

followed.[43] The repression of so many formerly high-ranking revolutionaries and party 

members led Leon Trotsky to claim that a "river of blood" separated Stalin's regime from that 

of Lenin.[44] In August 1940, Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico, where he had lived in exile 

since January 1937; this eliminated the last of Stalin's opponents among the former Party 

leadership.[45]

With the exception of Vladimir Milyutin (who died in prison in 1937) and Joseph Stalin 

himself, all of the members of Lenin's original cabinet who had not succumbed to death from 

natural causes before the purge were executed.

Mass operations of the NKVD also targeted "national contingents" (foreign ethnicities) such as 

Poles, ethnic Germans, Koreans, etc. A total of 350,000 (144,000 of them Poles) were arrested 

and 247,157 (110,000 Poles) were executed.[26] Many Americans who had emigrated to the Soviet 

Union during the worst of the Great Depression were executed; others were sent to prison camps 

or gulags.[46][47] Concurrent with the purges, efforts were made to rewrite the history in 

Soviet textbooks and other propaganda materials. Notable people executed by NKVD were removed 

from the texts and photographs as though they never existed. Gradually, the history of 

revolution was transformed to a story about just two key characters: Lenin and Stalin.

In light of revelations from Soviet archives, historians now estimate that nearly 700,000 

people (353,074 in 1937 and 328,612 in 1938) were executed in the course of the terror,[48] 

with the great mass of victims merely "ordinary" Soviet citizens: workers, peasants, 

homemakers, teachers, priests, musicians, soldiers, pensioners, ballerinas, beggars.[49][50] 

Many of the executed were interred in mass graves, with some of the major killing and burial 

sites being Bykivnia, Kurapaty and Butovo.[51]

Some Western experts believe the evidence released from the Soviet archives is understated, 

incomplete or unreliable.[52][53][54][55][56]

Stalin personally signed 357 proscription lists in 1937 and 1938 that condemned to execution 

some 40,000 people, and about 90% of these are confirmed to have been shot.[57] At the time, 

while reviewing one such list, Stalin reportedly muttered to no one in particular: "Who's 

going to remember all this riff-raff in ten or twenty years time? No one. Who remembers the 

names now of the boyars Ivan the Terrible got rid of? No one."[58] In addition, Stalin 

dispatched a contingent of NKVD operatives to Mongolia, established a Mongolian version of the 

NKVD troika, and unleashed a bloody purge in which tens of thousands were executed as 

"Japanese Spies." Mongolian ruler Khorloogiin Choibalsan closely followed Stalin's lead.[59]

During the 1930s and 1940s, the Soviet leadership sent NKVD squads into other countries to 

murder defectors and other opponents of the Soviet regime. Victims of such plots included 

Yevhen Konovalets, Ignace Poretsky, Rudolf Klement, Alexander Kutepov, Evgeny Miller, Leon 

Trotsky and the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) leadership in Catalonia (e.g., 

Andreu Nin).[60]

Deportations

Main article: Population transfer in the Soviet Union

1941 June deportation in Latvia

Shortly before, during and immediately after World War II, Stalin conducted a series of 

deportations on a huge scale that profoundly affected the ethnic map of the Soviet Union. It 

is estimated that between 1941 and 1949 nearly 3.3 million[61][62] were deported to Siberia 

and the Central Asian republics. By some estimates up to 43% of the resettled population died 

of diseases and malnutrition.[63]

Separatism, resistance to Soviet rule and collaboration with the invading Germans were cited 

as the official reasons for the deportations, rightly or wrongly. Individual circumstances of 

those spending time in German-occupied territories were not examined. After the brief Nazi 

occupation of the Caucasus, the entire population of five of the small highland peoples and 

the Crimean Tatars – more than a million people in total – were deported without notice or any 

opportunity to take their possessions.[64]

As a result of Stalin's lack of trust in the loyalty of particular ethnicities, ethnic groups 

such as the Soviet Koreans, the Volga Germans, the Crimean Tatars, the Chechens, and many 

Poles were forcibly moved out of strategic areas and relocated to places in the central Soviet 

Union, especially Kazakhstan in Soviet Central Asia. By some estimates, hundreds of thousands 

of deportees may have died en route.[61]

According to official Soviet estimates, more than 14 million people passed through the Gulag 

from 1929 to 1953, with a further 7 to 8 million being deported and exiled to remote areas of 

the Soviet Union (including the entire nationalities in several cases).[65]

In February 1956, Nikita Khrushchev condemned the deportations as a violation of Leninism, and 

reversed most of them, although it was not until 1991 that the Tatars, Meskhetians and Volga 

Germans were allowed to return en masse to their homelands. The deportations had a profound 

effect on the peoples of the Soviet Union. The memory of the deportations has played a major 

part in the separatist movements in the Baltic States, Tatarstan and Chechnya, even today.

Collectivization

Main article: Collectivization in the Soviet Union

Children are digging up frozen potatoes in the field of a collective farm, 1933

Stalin's regime moved to force collectivization of agriculture. This was intended to increase 

agricultural output from large-scale mechanized farms, to bring the peasantry under more 

direct political control, and to make tax collection more efficient. Collectivization brought 

social change on a scale not seen since the abolition of serfdom in 1861 and alienation from 

control of the land and its produce. Collectivization also meant a drastic drop in living 

standards for many peasants, and it faced violent reaction among the peasantry.

In the first years of collectivization it was estimated that industrial production would rise 

by 200% and agricultural production by 50%,[66] but these expectations were not realized. 

Stalin blamed this unanticipated failure on kulaks (rich peasants), who resisted 

collectivization. However, kulaks proper made up only 4% of the peasant population; the 

"kulaks" that Stalin targeted included the slightly better-off peasants who took the brunt of 

violence from the OGPU and the Komsomol. These peasants were about 60% of the population. 

Those officially defined as "kulaks", "kulak helpers", and, later, "ex-kulaks" were to be 

shot, placed into Gulag labor camps, or deported to remote areas of the country, depending on 

the charge. Archival data indicates that 20,201 people were executed during 1930, the year of 

Dekulakization.[59]

The two-stage progress of collectivization—interrupted for a year by Stalin's famous 

editorials, "Dizzy with Success"[67] and "Reply to Collective Farm Comrades"[68]—is a prime 

example of his capacity for tactical political withdrawal followed by intensification of 

initial strategies.

Famines

Main article: Soviet famine of 1932–1933

Famine in USSR, 1933. Areas of most disastrous famine marked with black.

Famine affected other parts of the USSR. The death toll from famine in the Soviet Union at 

this time is estimated at between 5 and 10 million people.[69] The worst crop failure of late 

tsarist Russia, in 1892, had caused 375,000 to 400,000 deaths.[70] Most modern scholars agree 

that the famine was caused by the policies of the government of the Soviet Union under Stalin, 

rather than by natural reasons.[71] According to Alan Bullock, "the total Soviet grain crop 

was no worse than that of 1931 ... it was not a crop failure but the excessive demands of the 

state, ruthlessly enforced, that cost the lives of as many as five million Ukrainian 

peasants." Stalin refused to release large grain reserves that could have alleviated the 

famine, while continuing to export grain; he was convinced that the Ukrainian peasants had 

hidden grain away and strictly enforced draconian new collective-farm theft laws in 

response.[72][73] Other historians hold it was largely the insufficient harvests of 1931 and 

1932 caused by a variety of natural disasters that resulted in famine, with the successful 

harvest of 1933 ending the famine.[74] Soviet and other historians have argued that the rapid 

collectivization of agriculture was necessary in order to achieve an equally rapid 

industrialization of the Soviet Union and ultimately win World War II. Alec Nove claims that 

the Soviet Union industrialized in spite of, rather than because of, its collectivized 

agriculture.[citation needed]

The USSR also experienced a major famine in 1947 as a result of war damage and severe 

droughts, but economist Michael Ellman argues that it could have been prevented if the 

government had not mismanaged its grain reserves. The famine cost an estimated 1 to 1.5 

million lives as well as secondary population losses due to reduced fertility.[75]

Ukrainian famine

Main article: Holodomor

The Holodomor famine is sometimes referred to as the Ukrainian Genocide, implying it was 

engineered by the Soviet government, specifically targeting the Ukrainian people to destroy 

the Ukrainian nation as a political factor and social entity.[76][77][78][79] While historians 

continue to disagree whether the policies that led to Holodomor fall under the legal 

definition of genocide, twenty-six countries have officially recognized the Holodomor as such. 

On 28 November 2006, the Ukrainian Parliament approved a bill declaring the Soviet-era forced 

famine an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people.[80] Professor Michael Ellman concludes 

that Ukrainians were victims of genocide in 1932–33 according to a more relaxed definition 

that is favored by some specialists in the field of genocide studies. He asserts that Soviet 

policies greatly exacerbated the famine's death toll. Although 1.8 million tonnes of grain 

were exported during the height of the starvation—enough to feed 5 million people for one 

year-the use of torture and execution to extract grain under the Law of Spikelets, the use of 

force to prevent starving peasants from fleeing the worst-affected areas, and the refusal to 

import grain or secure international humanitarian aid to alleviate conditions led to 

incalculable human suffering in the Ukraine. It would appear that Stalin intended to use the 

starvation as a cheap and efficient means (as opposed to deportations and shootings) to kill 

off those deemed to be "counterrevolutionaries," "idlers," and "thieves," but not to 

annihilate the Ukrainian peasantry as a whole. Ellman also claims that, while this was not the 

only Soviet genocide (e.g., the Polish operation of the NKVD), it was the worst in terms of 

mass casualties.[57]

Current estimates on the total number of casualties within Soviet Ukraine range mostly from 

2.2 million[81][82] to 4 to 5 million.[83][84][85]

A Ukrainian court found Josef Stalin and other leaders of the former Soviet Union guilty of 

genocide by "organizing mass famine in Ukraine in 1932–1933" in January 2010. However, the 

court "dropped criminal proceedings over the suspects' deaths".[86][87]

Industrialization

The Russian Civil War and wartime communism had a devastating effect on the country's economy. 

Industrial output in 1922 was 13% of that in 1914. A recovery followed under the New Economic 

Policy, which allowed a degree of market flexibility within the context of socialism. Under 

Stalin's direction, this was replaced by a system of centrally ordained "Five-Year Plans" in 

the late 1920s. These called for a highly ambitious program of state-guided crash 

industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture.

Stalin on building of Moscow-Volga canal. It was constructed from 1932 to 1937 by Gulag 

prisoners.

With seed capital unavailable because of international reaction to Communist policies, little 

international trade, and virtually no modern infrastructure, Stalin's government financed 

industrialization both by restraining consumption on the part of ordinary Soviet citizens to 

ensure that capital went for re-investment into industry and by ruthless extraction of wealth 

from the kulaks.

In 1933 workers' real earnings sank to about one-tenth of the 1926 level.[citation needed] 

Common and political prisoners in labor camps were forced to perform unpaid labor, and 

communists and Komsomol members were frequently "mobilized" for various construction projects. 

The Soviet Union used numerous foreign experts to design new factories, supervise 

construction, instruct workers, and improve manufacturing processes. The most notable foreign 

contractor was Albert Kahn's firm that designed and built 521 factories between 1930 and 1932. 

As a rule, factories were supplied with imported equipment.

In spite of early breakdowns and failures, the first two Five-Year Plans achieved rapid 

industrialization from a very low economic base. While it is generally agreed that the Soviet 

Union achieved significant levels of economic growth under Stalin, the precise rate of growth 

is disputed. It is not disputed, however, that these gains were accomplished at the cost of 

millions of lives. Official Soviet estimates stated the annual rate of growth at 13.9%; 

Russian and Western estimates gave lower figures of 5.8% and even 2.9%. Indeed, one estimate 

is that Soviet growth became temporarily much higher after Stalin's death.[88][89]

According to Robert Lewis, the Five-Year Plan substantially helped to modernize the previously 

backward Soviet economy. New products were developed, and the scale and efficiency of existing 

production greatly increased. Some innovations were based on indigenous technical 

developments, others on imported foreign technology.[90] Despite its costs, the 

industrialization effort allowed the Soviet Union to fight, and ultimately win, World War II.

Science

Main articles: Science and technology in the Soviet Union and Suppressed research in the 

Soviet Union

Science in the Soviet Union was under strict ideological control by Stalin and his government, 

along with art and literature. There was significant progress in "ideologically safe" domains, 

owing to the free Soviet education system and state-financed research. However, the most 

notable legacy during Stalin's time was his public endorsement of the agronomist Trofim 

Lysenko, who rejected Mendelian genetics as "bourgeois pseudoscience" and instead advocated 

Lamarckian inheritance and hybridization theories (which had been discredited by most Western 

countries by the 1920s in favor of Darwinian Evolution), that caused widespread agricultural 

destruction and major setbacks in Soviet knowledge in biology. Many scientists came out 

publicly against his views, but the majority of them, including Nikolai Vavilov (who was later 

hailed as a pioneer in modern Genetics), were imprisoned or executed. Some areas of physics 

were criticized.[91][92]

Social services

Under the Soviet government people benefited from some social liberalization. Girls were given 

an adequate, equal education and women had equal rights in employment,[26] improving lives for 

women and families. Stalinist development also contributed to advances in health care, which 

significantly increased the lifespan and quality of life of the typical Soviet citizen.[26] 

Stalin's policies granted the Soviet people universal access to healthcare and education, 

effectively creating the first generation free from the fear of typhus, cholera, and 

malaria.[26] The occurrences of these diseases dropped to record low numbers, increasing life 

spans by decades.[26]

Soviet women under Stalin were the first generation of women able to give birth in the safety 

of a hospital with access to prenatal care.[26] Education was also an example of an increase 

in the standard of living after economic development. The generation born during Stalin's rule 

was the first near-universally literate generation. Millions benefited from mass literacy 

campaigns in the 1930s, and from workers training schemes.[93] Engineers were sent abroad to 

learn industrial technology, and hundreds of foreign engineers were brought to Russia on 

contract.[26] Transport links were improved and many new railways built. Workers who exceeded 

their quotas, Stakhanovites, received many incentives for their work;[93] they could afford to 

buy the goods that were mass-produced by the rapidly expanding Soviet economy.

The increase in demand due to industrialization and the decrease in the workforce due to World 

War II and repressions generated a major expansion in job opportunities for the survivors, 

especially for women.[93]

Culture

Main article: Socialist Realism

Propaganda portrait of "Marshal Stalin", World War II

Although he was Georgian by birth, some western historians claim that Stalin became a Russian 

nationalist[94] and significantly promoted Russian history, language, and Russian national 

heroes, particularly during the 1930s and 1940s.[citation needed] There are also claims that 

he held the Russian people up as the elder brothers of the non-Russian minorities.[95]

During Stalin's reign the official and long-lived style of Socialist Realism was established 

for painting, sculpture, music, drama and literature. Previously fashionable "revolutionary" 

expressionism, abstract art, and avant-garde experimentation were discouraged or denounced as 

"formalism".

The degree of Stalin's personal involvement in general, and in specific instances, has been 

the subject of discussion.[citation needed] Stalin's favorite novel Pharaoh, shared 

similarities[citation needed] with Sergei Eisenstein's film, Ivan the Terrible, produced under 

Stalin's tutelage.

In architecture, a Stalinist Empire Style (basically, updated neoclassicism on a very large 

scale, exemplified by the Seven Sisters of Moscow) replaced the constructivism of the 1920s. 

Stalin's rule had a largely disruptive effect on indigenous cultures within the Soviet Union, 

though the politics of Korenizatsiya and forced development were possibly beneficial to the 

integration of later generations of indigenous cultures.

Religion

Main article: Religion in the Soviet Union

Raised in the Georgian Orthodox faith, Stalin became an atheist. He followed the position that 

religion was an opiate that needed to be removed in order to construct the ideal communist 

society. His government promoted atheism through special atheistic education in schools, 

anti-religious propaganda, the antireligious work of public institutions (Society of the 

Godless), discriminatory laws, and a terror campaign against religious believers. By the late 

1930s it had become dangerous to be publicly associated with religion.[96]

Stalin's role in the fortunes of the Russian Orthodox Church is complex. Continuous 

persecution in the 1930s resulted in its near-extinction as a public institution: by 1939, 

active parishes numbered in the low hundreds (down from 54,000 in 1917), many churches had 

been leveled, and tens of thousands of priests, monks and nuns were persecuted and killed. 

Over 100,000 were shot during the purges of 1937–1938.[97][98] During World War II, the Church 

was allowed a revival as a patriotic organization, and thousands of parishes were reactivated 

until a further round of suppression during Khrushchev's rule. The Russian Orthodox Church 

Synod's recognition of the Soviet government and of Stalin personally led to a schism with the 

Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia.

Just days before Stalin's death, certain religious sects were outlawed and persecuted. Many 

religions popular in ethnic regions of the Soviet Union, including the Roman Catholic Church, 

Eastern Catholic Churches, Baptists, Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism underwent ordeals similar to 

that which the Orthodox churches in other parts of the country suffered: thousands of monks 

were persecuted, and hundreds of churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, sacred monuments, 

monasteries and other religious buildings were razed. Stalin had a different policy outside 

the Soviet Union; he supported the Communist Uyghur Muslim separatists under Ehmetjan Qasim in 

the Ili Rebellion against the Anti Communist Republic of China regime. He supplied weapons to 

the Uyghur Ili army and Red Army support against Chinese forces, and helped them establish the 

Second East Turkestan Republic of which Islam was the official state religion.

Theorist

Main article: Stalinism

Stalin and his supporters have highlighted the notion that socialism can be built and 

consolidated by a country ("Socialism in One Country") as underdeveloped as Russia during the 

1920s. Indeed this might be the only means in which it could be built in a hostile 

environment.[99] 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 efforts – and that, therefore, political repression was 

necessary.

In 1936, Stalin announced that the society of the Soviet Union consisted of two 

non-antagonistic classes: workers and kolkhoz peasantry. These corresponded to the two 

different forms of property over the means of production that existed in the Soviet Union: 

state property (for the workers) and collective property (for the peasantry). In addition to 

these, Stalin distinguished the stratum of intelligentsia. The concept of "non-antagonistic 

classes" was entirely new to Leninist theory. Among Stalin's contributions to Communist 

theoretical literature were "Dialectical and Historical Materialism," "Marxism and the 

National Question", "Trotskyism or Leninism", and "The Principles of Leninism."

Calculating the number of victims

Before the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, researchers who attempted to count the number 

of people killed under Stalin's regime produced estimates ranging from 3 to 60 million.[100] 

After the Soviet Union dissolved, evidence from the Soviet archives also became available, 

containing official records of 799,455 executions 1921–53,[101] around 1.7 million deaths in 

the Gulag and some 390,000 deaths during kulak forced resettlement – with a total of about 2.9 

million officially recorded victims in these categories.[102]

Photo from 1943 exhumation of mass grave of Polish officers killed by NKVD in Katyń Forest in 

1940.

The official Soviet archival records do not contain comprehensive figures for some categories 

of victims, such as those of ethnic deportations or of German population transfers in the 

aftermath of World War II.[103] Eric D. Weitz wrote, "By 1948, according to Nicolas Werth, the 

mortality rate of the 600,000 people deported from the Caucasus between 1943 and 1944 had 

reached 25%."[104][105] Other notable exclusions from NKVD data on repression deaths include 

the Katyn massacre, other killings in the newly occupied areas, and the mass shootings of Red 

Army personnel (deserters and so-called deserters) in 1941. The Soviets executed 158,000 

soldiers for desertion during the war,[106] and the "blocking detachments" of the NKVD shot 

thousands more.[107] Also, the official statistics on Gulag mortality exclude deaths of 

prisoners taking place shortly after their release but which resulted from the harsh treatment 

in the camps.[108] Some historians also believe that the official archival figures of the 

categories that were recorded by Soviet authorities are unreliable and incomplete.[109][110] 

In addition to failures regarding comprehensive recordings, as one additional example, Robert 

Gellately and Simon Sebag Montefiore argue that the many suspects beaten and tortured to death 

while in "investigative custody" were likely not to have been counted amongst the 

executed.[26][111]

Historians working after the Soviet Union's dissolution have estimated victim totals ranging 

from approximately 4 million to nearly 10 million, not including those who died in 

famines.[112][113][114] Russian writer Vadim Erlikman, for example, makes the following 

estimates: executions, 1.5 million; gulags, 5 million; deportations, 1.7 million out of 7.5 

million deported; and POWs and German civilians, 1 million – a total of about 9 million 

victims of repression.[115]

Some have also included the deaths of 6 to 8 million people in the 1932–1933 famine among the 

victims of Stalin's repression. This categorization is controversial however, as historians 

differ as to whether the famine was a deliberate part of the campaign of repression against 

kulaks and others,[57][116][117][118][119] or simply an unintended consequence of the struggle 

over forced collectivization.[73][120][121]

Accordingly, if famine victims are included, a minimum of around 10 million deaths—6 million 

from famine and 4 million from other causes—are attributable to the regime,[122] with a number 

of recent historians suggesting a likely total of around 20 million, citing much higher victim 

totals from executions, Gulag camps, deportations and other 

causes.[123][124][125][126][127][128][129] Adding 6–8 million famine victims to Erlikman's 

estimates above, for example, would yield a total of between 15 and 17 million victims. 

Researcher Robert Conquest, meanwhile, has revised his original estimate of up to 30 million 

victims down to 20 million.[130] In his most recent edition of The Great Terror (2007), 

Conquest states that while exact numbers may never be known with complete certainty, the 

various terror campaigns launched by the Soviet government claimed no fewer than 15 million 

lives.[131] RJ Rummel maintains that the earlier higher victim total estimates are correct, 

although he includes those killed by the Soviet government in other Eastern European countries 

as well.[132][133]

World War II, 1939–1945

Main article: Soviet Union in World War II

Ribbentrop and Stalin at the signing of the Pact

Pact with Hitler

After a failed attempt to sign an anti-German military alliance with France and 

Britain[134][135][136] and talks with Germany regarding a potential political 

deal,[137][138][139][140] on 23 August 1939, the Soviet Union entered into a non-aggression 

pact with Nazi Germany, negotiated by Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German 

foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop.[141] Officially a non-aggression treaty only, an 

appended secret protocol, also reached on 23 August 1939, divided the whole of eastern Europe 

into German and Soviet spheres of influence.[142][143]

The eastern part of Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland and part of Romania were recognized as 

parts of the Soviet sphere of influence,[143] with Lithuania added in a second secret protocol 

in September 1939.[144] Stalin and Ribbentrop traded toasts on the night of the signing 

discussing past hostilities between the countries.[145]

Implementing the division of Eastern Europe and other invasions

On 1 September 1939, the German invasion of its agreed upon portion of Poland started World 

War II.[141] On 17 September the Red Army invaded eastern Poland and occupied the Polish 

territory assigned to it by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, followed by co-ordination with German 

forces in Poland.[146][147] Eleven days later, the secret protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop 

Pact was modified, allotting Germany a larger part of Poland, while ceding most of Lithuania 

to the Soviet Union.[148]

Planned and actual territorial changes in Eastern and Central Europe 1939–1940 (click to 

enlarge)

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.[149][150][151] 

After facing stiff resistance in an invasion of Finland,[152] an interim peace was entered, 

granting the Soviet Union the eastern region of Karelia (10% of Finnish territory).[152]

After this campaign, Stalin took actions to bolster the Soviet military, modify training and 

improve propaganda efforts in the Soviet military.[153] In June 1940, Stalin directed the 

Soviet annexation of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, proclaiming this formerly Romanian 

territory part of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. But in annexing northern Bukovina, 

Stalin had gone beyond the agreed limits of the secret protocol.[154]

Stalin and Molotov on the signing of the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact with the Empire of 

Japan, 1941

After the Tripartite Pact was signed by Axis Powers Germany, Japan and Italy, in October 1940, 

Stalin traded letters with Ribbentrop, with Stalin writing about entering an agreement 

regarding a "permanent basis" for their "mutual interests."[155] After a conference in Berlin 

between Hitler, Molotov and Ribbentrop, Germany presented Molotov with a proposed written 

agreement for Axis entry.[156] On 25 November, Stalin responded with a proposed written 

agreement for Axis entry which was never answered by Germany. Shortly thereafter, Hitler 

issued a secret directive on the eventual attempts to invade the Soviet Union.[157] In an 

effort to demonstrate peaceful intentions toward Germany, on 13 April 1941, Stalin oversaw the 

signing of a neutrality pact with Axis power Japan.[158]

On 6 May, Stalin replaced Molotov as Premier of the Soviet Union. Although Stalin had been the 

de facto head of government for a decade and a half, he had concluded relations with Nazi 

Germany had deteriorated to such an extent that he needed to deal with the problem as de jure 

head of government as well.[159]

Hitler breaks the pact

During the early morning of 22 June 1941, Adolf Hitler broke the pact by implementing 

Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of Soviet held territories and the Soviet Union that 

began the war on the Eastern Front.[160] Already in autumn 1940 Stalin received a warning of 

the Dutch communist party, via the network of the Red Orchestra, that Hitler was preparing for 

a winter war by letting construct thousands of snow landing gears for the Junkers Ju 52 

transport planes.[161] Although Stalin had received warnings from spies and his 

generals,[162][163][164][165][166] he felt that Germany would not attack the Soviet Union 

until Germany had defeated Britain.[162] In the initial hours after the German attack 

commenced, Stalin hesitated, wanting to ensure that the German attack was sanctioned by 

Hitler, rather than the unauthorized action of a rogue general.[26]

Accounts by Nikita Khrushchev and Anastas Mikoyan claim that, after the invasion, Stalin 

retreated to his dacha in despair for several days and did not participate in leadership 

decisions.[167] However, some documentary evidence of orders given by Stalin contradicts these 

accounts, leading some historians to speculate that Khrushchev's account is inaccurate.[168] 

By the end of 1941, the Soviet military had suffered 4.3 million casualties[169] and German 

forces had advanced 1,050 miles (1,690 kilometers).[170]

Soviets stop the Germans

With all the men at the Front, Moscow women dig anti-tank trenches around Moscow in 1941.

While the Germans pressed forward, Stalin was confident of an eventual Allied victory over 

Germany. In September 1941, Stalin told British diplomats that he wanted two agreements: (1) a 

mutual assistance/aid pact and (2) a recognition that, after the war, the Soviet Union would 

gain the territories in countries that it had taken pursuant to its division of Eastern Europe 

with Hitler in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. The British agreed to assistance but refused to 

agree upon the territorial gains, which Stalin accepted months later as the military situation 

deteriorated somewhat in mid-1942.[171] By December 1941, Hitler's troops had advanced to 

within 20 miles of the Kremlin in Moscow. On 5 December, the Soviets launched a 

counteroffensive, pushing German troops back 40–50 miles from Moscow, the Wehrmacht's first 

significant defeat of the war.[172]

In 1942, Hitler shifted his primary goal from an immediate victory in the East, to the more 

long-term goal of securing the southern Soviet Union to conquer oil fields vital to a 

long-term German war effort.[173] In July 1942, Hitler praised the efficiency of the Soviet 

military industry and Stalin:

Stalin, too, must command our unconditional respect. In his own way he is a hell of a fellow! 

(German: ein genialer Kerl) He knows his models, Genghiz Khan and the others, very well, and 

the scope of his industrial planning is exceeded only by our own Four Year Plan.[174]

While Red Army generals saw evidence that Hitler would shift efforts south, Stalin considered 

this to be a flanking campaign in efforts to take Moscow.[175] During the war, Time magazine 

named Stalin Time Person of the Year twice[176] and he was also one of the nominees for Time 

Person of the Century title.[citation needed]

Soviet push to Germany

The center of Stalingrad after liberation, 2 February 1943.

The Soviets repulsed the important German strategic southern campaign and, although 2.5 

million Soviet casualties were suffered in that effort, it permitted the Soviets to take the 

offensive for most of the rest of the war on the Eastern Front.[177]

The Big Three: Stalin, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and British Prime Minister 

Winston Churchill at the Tehran Conference, November 1943.

Germany attempted an encirclement attack at Kursk, which was successfully repulsed by the 

Soviets.[178] Kursk marked the beginning of a period where Stalin became more willing to 

listen to the advice of his generals. By the end of 1943, the Soviets occupied half of the 

territory taken by the Germans from 1941 to 1942.[179] Soviet military industrial output also 

had increased substantially from late 1941 to early 1943 after Stalin had moved factories well 

to the East of the front, safe from German invasion and air attack.[180]

In November 1943, Stalin met with Churchill and Roosevelt in Tehran.[181] The parties later 

agreed that Britain and America would launch a cross-channel invasion of France in May 1944, 

along with a separate invasion of southern France.[182] Stalin insisted that, after the war, 

the Soviet Union should incorporate the portions of Poland it occupied pursuant to the 

Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Germany, which Churchill opposed.[183]

In 1944, the Soviet Union made significant advances across Eastern Europe toward Germany,[184] 

including Operation Bagration, a massive offensive in Belorussia against the German Army Group 

Centre.[185]

Final victory

Victorious Soviet soldiers in Berlin, 1945.

By April 1945, Nazi Germany faced its last days with 1.9 million German soldiers in the East 

fighting 6.4 million Red Army soldiers while 1 million German soldiers in the West battled 4 

million Western Allied soldiers.[186] 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.[187][188]

On 30 April, Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide, after which Soviet forces found their 

remains, which had been burned at Hitler's directive.[189] German forces surrendered a few 

days later. 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.[190][191]

Fending off the German invasion and pressing to victory in the East required a tremendous 

sacrifice by the Soviet Union.[192] Soviet military casualties totaled approximately 35 

million (official figures 28.2 million) with approximately 14.7 million killed, missing or 

captured (official figures 11.285 million).[193] Although figures vary, the Soviet civilian 

death toll probably reached 20 million.[193] One in four Soviets was killed or wounded.[194] 

Some 1,710 towns and 70,000 villages were destroyed.[195][196] Thereafter, Stalin was at times 

referred to as one of the most influential men in human history.[197][198]

Nobel Peace Prize nominations

In 1945, he was mentioned by Halvdan Koht among seven candidates that were qualified for the 

Nobel Peace Prize. However, he did not explicitly nominate any of them. The person actually 

nominated was Cordell Hull.[199]

In 1948, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Wladislav Rieger.[200]

Human rights abuses

Part of 5 March 1940 memo from Lavrentiy Beria to Stalin proposing execution of Polish 

officers

After taking around 300,000 Polish prisoners in 1939 and early 1940,[201][202][202][203][204] 

25,700 Polish POWs were executed on 5 March 1940, pursuant to a note to Stalin from Lavrenty 

Beria,[205][206] in what became known as the Katyn massacre.[205][207][208] While Stalin 

personally told a Polish general they'd "lost track" of the officers in 

Manchuria,[209][210][211] Polish railroad workers found the mass grave after the 1941 Nazi 

invasion.[212] The massacre became a source of political controversy,[213][214] with the 

Soviets eventually claiming that Germany committed the executions when the Soviet Union retook 

Poland in 1944.[205][215] The Soviets did not admit responsibility until 1990.[216]

Stalin introduced controversial military orders, such as Order No. 270 in August 1941, 

requiring superiors to shoot deserters on the spot[217] 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.[107] Stalin issued Order No. 227 in July 1942, 

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.[218] From 1942 to 1945, 

427,910 soldiers were assigned to penal battalions.[219] The order also directed "blocking 

detachments" to shoot fleeing panicked troops at the rear.[218]

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.[168] He also 

ordered the NKVD to murder around one hundred thousand political prisoners in areas where the 

Wehrmacht approached,[220] while others were deported east.[109][221][222]

After the capture of Berlin, Soviet troops reportedly raped from tens of thousands to two 

million women,[223] and 50,000 during and after the occupation of Budapest.[224][225] Many of 

these women died or committed suicide as a result of rape. In former Axis countries, such as 

Germany, Romania and Hungary, Red Army officers generally viewed cities, villages and farms as 

being open to pillaging and looting.[226]

In the Soviet Occupation Zone of post-war Germany, the Soviets set up ten NKVD-run "special 

camps" subordinate to the gulag.[227] These "special camps" were former Stalags, prisons, or 

Nazi concentration camps such as Sachsenhausen (special camp number 7) and Buchenwald (special 

camp number 2).[228] According to German government estimates, "65,000 people died in those 

Soviet-run camps or in transportation to them."[229]

According to recent figures, of an estimated four million POWs taken by the Soviets, including 

Germans, Japanese, Hungarians, Romanians and others, some 580,000 never returned, presumably 

victims of privation or the Gulags.[230] German estimates put the actual death toll of German 

POWs in the USSR at about 1.0 million, they maintain that among those reported as missing were 

men who actually died as POW.[231] Soviet POWs and forced laborers who survived German 

captivity were sent to special "transit" or "filtration" camps to determine which were 

potential traitors.[232]

Of the approximately 4 million to be repatriated 2,660,013 were civilians and 1,539,475 were 

former POWs. Of the total, 2,427,906 were sent home and 801,152 were reconscripted into the 

armed forces. 608,095 were enrolled in the work battalions of the defense ministry. 272,867 

were transferred to the authority of the NKVD for punishment, which meant a transfer to the 

Gulag system.[232][233][234] 89,468 remained in the transit camps as reception personnel until 

the repatriation process was finally wound up in the early 1950s.[232]

Allied conferences on post-war Europe

The Big Three: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt 

and Stalin at the Yalta Conference, February 1945.

Stalin met in several conferences with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (and later 

Clement Attlee) and/or U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (and later Harry Truman) to plan 

military strategy and, later, to discuss Europe's postwar reorganization. Very early 

conferences, such as that with British diplomats in Moscow in 1941 and with Churchill and 

American diplomats in Moscow in 1942, focused mostly upon war planning and supply, though some 

preliminary postwar reorganization discussion also occurred. In 1943, Stalin met with 

Churchill and Roosevelt in the Tehran Conference. In 1944, Stalin met with Churchill in the 

Moscow Conference. Beginning in late 1944, the Red Army occupied much of Eastern Europe during 

these conferences and the discussions shifted to a more intense focus on the reorganization of 

postwar Europe.

In February 1945, at the conference at Yalta, Stalin demanded a Soviet sphere of political 

influence in Eastern Europe. Stalin eventually was convinced by Churchill and Roosevelt not to 

dismember Germany. 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. After resistance by Churchill and Roosevelt, Stalin 

promised a re-organization of the current Communist puppet government on a broader democratic 

basis in Poland.[235] He stated the new government's primary task would be to prepare 

elections.[236]

The parties at Yalta further agreed that the countries of liberated Europe and former Axis 

satellites would be allowed to "create democratic institutions of their own choice", pursuant 

to "the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will 

live."[237] The parties also agreed to help those countries form interim governments "pledged 

to the earliest possible establishment through free elections" and "facilitate where necessary 

the holding of such elections."[237] After the re-organization of the Provisional Government 

of the Republic of Poland, the parties agreed that the new party shall "be pledged to the 

holding of free and unfettered elections as soon as possible on the basis of universal 

suffrage and secret ballot."[237] One month after Yalta, the Soviet NKVD arrested 16 Polish 

leaders wishing to participate in provisional government negotiations, for alleged "crimes" 

and "diversions", which drew protest from the West.[236] The fraudulent Polish elections, held 

in January 1947 resulted in Poland's official transformation to undemocratic communist state 

by 1949.

British Prime Minister Clement Attlee, U.S. President Harry S. Truman and Joseph Stalin at the 

Potsdam Conference, July 1945.

At the Potsdam Conference from July to August 1945, though Germany had surrendered months 

earlier, instead of withdrawing Soviet forces from Eastern European countries, Stalin had not 

moved those forces. At the beginning of the conference, Stalin repeated previous promises to 

Churchill that he would refrain from a "Sovietization" of Eastern Europe.[238] Stalin pushed 

for reparations from Germany without regard to the base minimum supply for German citizens' 

survival, which worried Truman and Churchill who thought that Germany would become a financial 

burden for Western powers.[239]

In addition to reparations, Stalin pushed for "war booty", which would permit the Soviet Union 

to directly seize property from conquered nations without quantitative or qualitative 

limitation, and a clause was added permitting this to occur with some limitations.[239] By 

July 1945, Stalin's troops effectively controlled the Baltic States, Poland, Czechoslovakia, 

Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, and refugees were fleeing out of these countries fearing a 

Communist take-over. 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.

In these conferences, his first appearances on the world stage, Stalin proved to be a 

formidable negotiator. Anthony Eden, the British Foreign Secretary noted: "Marshal Stalin as a 

negotiator was the toughest proposition of all. 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. Of course the man was ruthless 

and of course he knew his purpose. He never wasted a word. He never stormed, he was seldom 

even irritated."[240]

Post-war era, 1945–1953

The Iron Curtain and the Eastern Bloc

After Soviet forces remained in Eastern and Central European countries, with the beginnings of 

communist puppet regimes in those countries, Churchill referred to the region as being behind 

an "Iron Curtain" of control from Moscow.[241][242] The countries under Soviet control in 

Eastern and Central Europe were sometimes called the "Eastern bloc" or "Soviet Bloc".

The Eastern Bloc until 1989

In Soviet-controlled East Germany, the major task of the ruling communist party in Germany was 

to channel Soviet orders down to both the administrative apparatus and the other bloc parties 

pretending that these were initiatives of its own, with deviations potentially leading to 

reprimands, imprisonment, torture and even death. Property and industry were 

nationalized.[243]

The German Democratic Republic was declared on 7 October 1949, with a new constitution which 

enshrined socialism and gave the Soviet-controlled Socialist Unity Party (SED) control. In 

Berlin, after citizens strongly rejected communist candidates in an election, in June 1948, 

the Soviet Union blockaded West Berlin, the portion of Berlin not under Soviet control, 

cutting off all supply of food and other items. The blockade failed due to the unexpected 

massive aerial resupply campaign carried out by the Western powers known as the Berlin 

Airlift. In 1949, Stalin conceded defeat and ended the blockade.

While Stalin had promised at the Yalta Conference that free elections would be held in 

Poland,[237] after an election failure in "3 times YES" elections,[244] vote rigging was 

employed to win a majority in the carefully controlled poll.[245][246][247] Following the 

forged referendum, the Polish economy started to become nationalized.[248]

In Hungary, when the Soviets installed a communist government, Mátyás Rákosi, who described 

himself as "Stalin's best Hungarian disciple"[249] and "Stalin's best pupil",[250] took power. 

Rákosi employed "salami tactics", slicing up these enemies like pieces of salami,[251] to 

battle the initial postwar political majority ready to establish a democracy.[252] Rákosi, 

employed Stalinist political and economic programs, and was dubbed the "bald murderer" for 

establishing one of the harshest dictatorships in Europe.[252][253] Approximately 350,000 

Hungarian officials and intellectuals were purged from 1948 to 1956.[252]

During World War II, in Bulgaria, the Red Army crossed the border and created the conditions 

for a communist coup d'état on the following night. The Soviet military commander in Sofia 

assumed supreme authority, and the communists whom he instructed, including Kimon Georgiev, 

took full control of domestic politics.[254]

In 1949, the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania founded the 

Comecon in accordance with Stalin's desire to enforce Soviet domination of the lesser states 

of Central Europe and to mollify some states that had expressed interest in the Marshall 

Plan,[255] and which were now, increasingly, cut off from their traditional markets and 

suppliers in Western Europe.[256] Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland had remained interested 

in Marshall aid despite the requirements for a convertible currency and market economies. In 

July 1947, Stalin ordered these communist-dominated governments to pull out of the Paris 

Conference on the European Recovery Programme. This has been described as "the moment of 

truth" in the post–World War II division of Europe.[256]

In Greece, Britain and the United States supported the anti-communists in the Greek Civil War 

and suspected the Soviets of supporting the Greek communists, although Stalin refrained from 

getting involved in Greece, dismissing the movement as premature. Albania remained an ally of 

the Soviet Union, but Yugoslavia broke with the USSR in 1948.

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.

Sino-Soviet relations

Stalin and Mao Zedong on a Chinese postage stamp. The apparent use of a Mercator projection 

grossly exaggerates the size of the Soviet Union.

In Asia, the Red Army had overrun Manchuria in the last month of the war and then also 

occupied Korea above the 38th parallel north. Mao Zedong's Communist Party of China, though 

receptive to minimal Soviet support, defeated the pro-Western and heavily American-assisted 

Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, KMT) in the Chinese Civil War.

There was friction between Stalin and Mao from the beginning. During World War II Stalin had 

supported the dictator of China, Chiang Kai-Shek, as a bulwark against Japan and had turned a 

blind eye to Chiang's mass killings of communists. He generally put his alliance with Chiang 

against Japan ahead of helping his ideological allies in China in his priorities. Even after 

the war Stalin concluded a non-aggression pact between the USSR and Chiang's KMT regime in 

China and instructed Mao and the Chinese communists to cooperate with Chiang and the KMT after 

the war. Mao did not follow Stalin's instructions though and started a communist revolution 

against Chiang. Stalin did not believe Mao would be successful so he was less than 

enthusiastic in helping Mao. The USSR continued to maintain diplomatic relations with Chiang's 

KMT regime until 1949 when it became clear Mao would win.

Stalin supported the Turkic Muslims known today as Uyghur in seeking their own state, Second 

East Turkestan Republic during the Ili Rebellion against the Republic of China. He backed the 

Uyghur Communist Muslim leader Ehmetjan Qasim against the anti Communist Chinese Kuomintang 

forces.

Stalin did conclude a new friendship and alliance treaty with Mao after he defeated Chiang. 

But there was still a lot of tension between the two leaders and resentment by Mao for 

Stalin's less than enthusiastic help during the civil war in China.

The Communists controlled mainland China while the Nationalists held a rump state on the 

island of Taiwan. The Soviet Union soon after recognized Mao's People's Republic of China, 

which it regarded as a new ally. The People's Republic claimed Taiwan, though it had never 

held authority there.

Mao at Stalin's 70th birthday celebration in Moscow, December 1949

Diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and China reached a high point with the signing 

of the 1950 Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance. Both countries provided military 

support to a new friendly state in North Korea. After various Korean border conflicts, war 

broke out with U.S.-allied South Korea in 1950, starting the Korean War.

However, not surprisingly, the relations with the Kuomintang deteriorated. In 1951, in Taiwan, 

the Chinese Muslim Kuomintang General Bai Chongxi made a speech broadcast on radio to the 

entire Muslim world calling for a war against Russia, claiming that the "imperialist ogre" 

leader Stalin was engineering World War III, and Bai also called upon Muslims to avoid the 

Indian leader Jawaharlal Nehru, accusing him of being blind to Soviet imperialism.[257][258]

North Korea and the Korean War

Contrary to America's policy which restrained armament (limited equipment was provided for 

infantry and police forces) to South Korea, Stalin extensively armed Kim Il Sung's North 

Korean army and air forces with military equipment and "advisors" far in excess of those 

required for defensive purposes in order to facilitate Kim's (a former Soviet Officer) aim of 

conquering the rest of the Korean peninsula.

The North Korean Army struck in the pre-dawn hours of Sunday, 25 June 1950, crossing the 38th 

parallel behind a firestorm of artillery, beginning their invasion of South Korea.[259] During 

the Korean War, Soviet pilots flew Soviet aircraft from Chinese bases against United Nations 

aircraft defending South Korea. Post–Cold War research in Soviet Archives has revealed that 

the Korean War was begun by Kim Il-sung with the express permission of 

Stalin.[260][261][262][263]

Israel

Stalin originally supported the creation of Israel in 1948. The USSR was one of the first 

nations to recognize the new country.[264] Golda Meir came to Moscow as the first Israeli 

Ambassador to the USSR that year. However, after providing war materiel for Israel through 

Czechoslovakia from 1947 to 1949, Stalin later changed his mind and came out against Israel.

Falsifiers of History

In 1948, Stalin personally edited and rewrote by hand sections of the cold war book Falsifiers 

of History.[265] Falsifiers was published in response to the documents made public in 

Nazi-Soviet Relations, 1939–1941: Documents from the Archives of The German Foreign 

Office,[266][267] which included the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and other 

secret German-Soviet relations documents.[266][268] Falsifiers originally appeared as a series 

of articles in Pravda in February 1948,[267] and was subsequently published in numerous 

languages and distributed worldwide.[269]

The book did not attempt to directly counter or deal with the documents published in 

Nazi-Soviet Relations[270] and rather, focused upon Western culpability for the outbreak of 

war in 1939.[269] It argues that "Western powers" aided Nazi rearmament and aggression, 

including that American bankers and industrialists provided capital for the growth of German 

war industries, while deliberately encouraging Hitler to expand eastward.[266] It depicted the 

Soviet Union as striving to negotiate a collective security against Hitler, while being 

thwarted by double-dealing Anglo-French appeasers who, despite appearances, had no intention 

of a Soviet alliance and were secretly negotiating with Berlin.[269] It casts the Munich 

agreement, not just as Anglo-French short-sightedness or cowardice, but as a "secret" 

agreement that was a "a highly important phase in their policy aimed at goading the Hitlerite 

aggressors against the Soviet Union."[271] The book also included the claim that, during the 

Pact's operation, Stalin rejected Hitler's offer to share in a division of the world, without 

mentioning the Soviet offers to join the Axis. Historical studies, official accounts, memoirs 

and textbooks published in the Soviet Union used that depiction of events until the Soviet 

Union's dissolution.[272]

Domestic support

Domestically, Stalin was seen as a great wartime leader who had led the Soviets to victory 

against the Nazis.

An increasingly nationalistic emphasis on Russian history and achievements became a salient 

feature of Soviet culture in the 1940s. At the end of May 1945, Stalin proposed a victory 

toast to the Soviet people, and to the virtues of the Russian majority in particular:

I should like to propose a toast to the health of our Soviet people, and in the first place, 

the Russian people. (Loud and prolonged applause and shouts of 'Hurrah.')

I drink in the first place to the health of the Russian people because it is the most 

outstanding nation of all the nations forming the Soviet Union.

I propose a toast to the health of the Russian people because it has won in this war universal 

recognition as the leading force of the Soviet Union among all the peoples of our country.

I propose a toast to the health of the Russian people not only because it is the leading 

people, but also because it possesses a clear mind, a staunch character, and patience.[273]

Stalin's military-territorial actions during World War II were supported by Russian 

nationalists inside and outside the Soviet Union (Russian exile Pavel Milyukov during Winter 

War: "I feel pity for the Finns, but I am for the Vyborg guberniya") for the recovering of the 

lands lost during the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 and most of the lands lost by the former 

Russian Empire in World War I through the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk signed by Trotsky and the 

Central Powers in 1918. Also, by 1945–1948 for the first time since the Middle Ages the 

Eastern Slavic lands and peoples were reunited in a single country, and all Slavic nations 

were outside German (with the definitive termination of the Drang nach Osten), Turkish or 

other Western European influence and under the orbit of Moscow – an old dream cherished by 

Russian nationalists and Pan-Slavists alike.[citation needed]

Various foreign scientific discoveries and inventions (such as the Wright Brothers' airplane) 

were attributed to Russians in post-war Soviet propaganda. Examples include the boiler, 

reclaimed by father and son Cherepanovs; the electric light, by Yablochkov and Lodygin; the 

radio, by Popov; and the airplane, by Mozhaysky. Stalin's internal repressive policies 

continued (including in newly acquired territories), but never reached the extremes of the 

1930s.[citation needed]

"Doctors' plot"

Main article: Doctors' plot

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.[274] The prevailing opinion of many scholars outside the Soviet Union is that 

Stalin intended to use the resulting doctors' trial to launch a massive party purge.[275] The 

plot is also viewed by many historians as an antisemitic provocation.[274] It followed on the 

heels of the 1952 show trials of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee[276] and the secret 

execution of thirteen members on Stalin's orders in the Night of the Murdered Poets.[277]

Thereafter, in a December Politburo session, Stalin announced that "Every Jewish nationalist 

is the agent of the American intelligence service. Jewish nationalists think that their nation 

was saved by the United States (there you can become rich, bourgeois, etc.). They think 

they're indebted to the Americans. Among doctors, there are many Jewish nationalists."[278] To 

mobilize the Soviet people for his campaign, Stalin ordered TASS and Pravda to issue stories 

along with Stalin's alleged uncovering of a "Doctors Plot" to assassinate top Soviet 

leaders,[279][280] including Stalin, in order to set the stage for show trials.[281]

The next month, Pravda published stories with text regarding the purported "Jewish 

bourgeois-nationalist" plotters.[282] 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."[283][284] Stalin also ordered 

falsely accused physicians to be tortured "to death".[285] Regarding the origins of the plot, 

people who knew Stalin, such as Khrushchev, suggest that Stalin had long harbored negative 

sentiments toward Jews,[274][286][287] and anti-Semitic trends in the Kremlin's policies were 

further fueled by the exile of Leon Trotsky.[274][288] In 1946, Stalin allegedly said 

privately that "every Jew is a potential spy."[274][289] At the end of January 1953, Stalin's 

personal physician Miron Vovsi (cousin of Solomon Mikhoels, who was assassinated in 1948 at 

the orders of Stalin)[277] was arrested within the frame of the plot. Vovsi was released by 

Beria after Stalin's death in 1953, as was his son-in-law, the composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg.

Some historians have argued that Stalin was also planning to send millions of Jews to four 

large newly built labor camps in Western Russia[281][290] using a "Deportation 

Commission"[291][292][293] that would purportedly act to save Soviet Jews from an enraged 

Soviet population after the Doctors Plot trials.[291][294][295] Others argue that any charge 

of an alleged mass deportation lacks specific documentary evidence.[280] Regardless of whether 

a plot to deport Jews was planned, in his "Secret Speech" in 1956, Soviet Premier Nikita 

Khrushchev stated that the Doctors Plot was "fabricated ... set up by Stalin", that Stalin 

told the judge to beat confessions from the defendants[296] and had told Politburo members 

"You are blind like young kittens. What will happen without me? The country will perish 

because you do not know how to recognize enemies."[296]

Death and Legacy

Stalin's health deteriorated towards the end of World War II. He suffered from atherosclerosis 

from his heavy smoking. He suffered a mild stroke around the time of the Victory Parade, and a 

severe heart attack in October 1945.[297]

On the early morning hours of 1 March 1953, after an all-night dinner and a movie[298] Stalin 

arrived at his Kuntsevo residence some 15 km west of Moscow centre with interior minister 

Lavrentiy Beria and future premiers Georgy Malenkov, Nikolai Bulganin and Nikita Khrushchev 

where he retired to his bedroom to sleep. At dawn, Stalin did not emerge from his room.

Stalin's grave in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis

Although his guards thought that it was odd for him not to rise at his usual time, they were 

under strict orders not to disturb him and left him alone the entire day. At around 10 p.m. he 

was discovered by Peter Lozgachev, the Deputy Commandant of Kuntsevo, who entered his bedroom 

to check up on him and recalled the scene of Stalin lying on his back on the floor of his room 

beside his bed wearing pyjama bottoms and an undershirt with his clothes soaked in stale 

urine. A frightened Lozgachev asked Stalin what happened to him, but all he could get out of 

him was unintelligible responses that sounded like "Dzhhhhh." 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.[299][300] Lavrentiy Beria was informed and arrived a few hours afterwards. The 

doctors only arrived in the early morning of 2 March when they changed Stalin's bedclothes and 

tended to him. They diagnosed him with a cerebral hemorrhage (stroke) caused by hypertension 

(high blood pressure), with stomach hemorrhage facilitating.[301] He was treated in his dacha 

with leaches, as was customary at the time[302]. On March 3 his double Felix Dadaev, Stalins 

double was called back from vacation to Moscow "to be ready to stand in for Stalin if needed", 

but he never needed to. On March 4 Stalin's illness was broadcast in the media with surprising 

detail such as pulse, blood pressure and urinalysis; for convenience the time of his stroke 

was said to be March 2 and his location as Moscow. The bedridden Stalin died on 5 March 1953, 

at the age of 74.[1]

Suggestions of Assassination

The political memoirs of Vyacheslav Molotov, published in 1993, claimed that Beria had boasted 

to Molotov that he poisoned Stalin: "I took him out." [303]

Stomach hemorrhage is usually not caused by high blood pressure, but is, along with stroke, 

consistent with overdose of warfarin, a colorless, tasteless anticoagulant drug.[304] In the 

treating physicians' final report submitted to the Central Committee in July 1953, any mention 

of the stomach hemorrhage was "deleted or vastly subordinated to other information." In 2004, 

American historian Jonathan Brent and Russia's Presidential Commission for the Rehabilitation 

of Repressed Persons executive secretary Vladimir Naumov published a book proposing that 

Beria, with the complicity of Khrushchev, slipped warfarin into Stalin's wine on the night of 

his death.[301]

Stalin's autopsy, conducted by the Soviet Ministry of Health in March, 1953 but not released 

until 2011, confirmed the cause of death as stroke resulting from high blood pressure, and 

that hypertension had caused cardiac hemorrhage (not usually caused by high blood pressure) 

and gastrointestinal hemorrhageas well. In 2011 Miguel A. Faria, President of Mercer 

University School of Medicine, retired clinical professor of neurosurgery and adjunct 

professor of medical history, interpreted the autopsy's composition as the examiners' desire 

to demonstrate for posterity, that they had fulfilled their professional duties as best they 

could by mentioning the non-cerebral hemorrhages. At the same time they would have provided 

themselves political cover by purposely attributing the hemorrhages to hypertension instead of 

poisoning by warfarin. Faria noted that when the autopsy was performed, "Stalin was worshipped 

as a demigod, and his assassination would have been unacceptable to the Russian populace." He 

also notes that Stalin experienced renal hemorrhages during his death, which is unlikely to be 

caused by high blood pressure.[304]

It has also been suggested by Jože Pirjevec that Stalin was assassinated by the order of Josip 

Broz Tito in retaliation for assassination attempts on Tito. A letter was found in Stalin's 

office from Tito that read: "Stop sending people to kill me. We've already captured five of 

them, one of them with a bomb and another with a rifle ... If you don't stop sending killers, 

I'll send one to Moscow, and I won't have to send a second."[305]

Announcement

Yuri Levitan, the announcer who during the war brought the Soviet the news of victories – but 

never of defeats – announced Stalin's death. Slowly, solemnly, with a voice brimming over with 

emotion, he read:[306]

"The Central Committee of the Communist party, the Council of Ministers and the Presidium of 

the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. announce with deep grief to the party and all workers that on 

March 5 at 9.50 p.m., Josef Visserionovich Stalin, Secretary of the Central Committee of the 

Communist party and Chairman of the Council of Ministers, died after a serious illness. The 

heart of the collaborator and follower of the genius of Lenin's work, the wise leader and 

teacher of the Communist party and of the Soviet people, stopped beating."

After a visitation of 1.5 million people, his embalmed body was laid to rest on March 9, 1953 

in Lenin's Mausoleum. On 31 October 1961 his body was removed from the mausoleum and buried in 

the Kremlin Wall Necropolis next to the Kremlin walls as part of the process of 

de-Stalinization.[307]

Aftermath

His demise arrived at a convenient time for Lavrentiy Beria and others, who feared to be swept 

away in yet another purge. It is believed that Stalin felt Beria's power was too great and 

threatened his own.[308]

After Stalin's death a power struggle for his vacant position took place between the following 

eight senior members of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the 

Soviet Union listed according to the order of precedence presented formally on 5 March 

1953:[309] Georgy Malenkov, Lavrentiy Beria, Vyacheslav Molotov, Klim Voroshilov, Nikita 

Khrushchev, Nikolai Bulganin, Lazar Kaganovich, Anastas Mikoyan.

This struggle lasted until 1958 and eventually Khrushchev won, having defeated all his 

potential rivals in the Presidium.

Reaction by successors

Grutas Park is home to a monument of Stalin, originally set up in Vilnius.

Monument to Stalin stood in Gori, Georgia until 2010 when it was demolished.[310]

The harshness with which Soviet affairs were conducted during Stalin's rule was subsequently 

repudiated by his successors in the Communist Party leadership, most notably by Nikita 

Khrushchev's repudiation of Stalinism in February 1956. In his "Secret Speech", On the 

Personality Cult and its Consequences, delivered to a closed session of the 20th Congress of 

the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev denounced Stalin for his cult of 

personality, and his regime for "violation of Leninist norms of legality".

A 1974 Soviet work describes Stalin's leadership in the following manner:

J. V. Stalin had held, since 1922, the post of General Secretary of the Communist Party 

Central Committee. He had made important contributions to the implementation of the Party's 

policy of socialist construction in the USSR, and he had won great popularity by his 

relentless fight against the anti-Leninist groups of the Trotskyites and Bukharinites. Since 

the early 1930s, however, all the successes achieved by the Soviet people in the building of 

socialism began to be arbitrarily attributed to Stalin. Already in a letter written back in 

1922 Lenin warned the Party Central Committee: "Comrade Stalin," he wrote, "having become 

general secretary, has concentrated boundless authority in his hands, and I am not sure 

whether he will always be able to exercise that authority with sufficient discretion." During 

the first few years after Lenin's death Stalin reckoned with his critical remarks. As time 

passed, however, he abused his position of General Secretary of the Party Central Committee 

more and more frequently, violating the principle of collective leadership and making 

independent decisions on important Party and state issues. Those personal shortcomings of 

which Lenin had warned manifested themselves with greater and greater insistence: his 

rudeness, capriciousness, intolerance of criticism, arbitrariness, excessive suspiciousness, 

etc. This led to unjustified restrictions of democracy, gross violations of socialist legality 

and repressions against prominent Party, government and military leaders and other people.

—A Short History of the World in Two Volumes Vol. II.[311]

Views on Stalin in the Russian Federation

Results of a controversial poll taken in 2006 stated that over 35% of Russians would vote for 

Stalin if he were still alive.[312][313] Fewer than a third of all Russians regarded Stalin as 

a "murderous tyrant";[8] however, a Russian court in 2009, ruling on a suit by Stalin's 

grandson, Yevgeny Dzhugashvili, against the newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, ruled that referring to 

Stalin as a "bloodthirsty cannibal" was not libel.[314] In a July 2007 poll 54% of the Russian 

youth agreed that Stalin did more good than bad while 46% (of them) disagreed that Stalin was 

a "cruel tyrant". Half of the respondents, aged from 16 to 19, agreed Stalin was a wise 

leader.[9]

In December 2008 Stalin was voted third in the nationwide television project Name of Russia 

(narrowly behind 13th-century prince Alexander Nevsky and Pyotr Stolypin, one of Nicholas II's 

prime ministers). The Communist Party accused the Kremlin in rigging the poll in order to 

prevent him or Lenin being given first place.[315]

On 3 July 2009, Russia's delegates walked out of an Organization for Security and Co-operation 

in Europe session to demonstrate their objections to a resolution for a remembrance day for 

the "victims of both Nazism and Stalinism".[316] Only eight out of 385 assembly members voted 

against the resolution.[316]

In a Kremlin video blog posted on 29 October 2009, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev denounced 

the efforts of people seeking to rehabilitate Stalin's image. He said the mass extermination 

during the Stalin era cannot be justified.[317]

Views on Stalin in other former Soviet states

Ukraine

In a poll taken by Kyiv International Institute of Sociology in February 2013 37% of all 

Ukrainians had "a negative attitude to the figure of Stalin" and 22% "a positive".[318] 

Positive attitudes prevailed in East Ukraine (36%) and South Ukraine (27%), and negative 

attitudes in West Ukraine (64%) and Central Ukraine (39%).[318] In the age group 18–29 years 

16% had positive feelings towards Stalin.[318]

Early 2010 a Ukrainian court convicted Stalin of genocide against the Ukrainian nation during 

the Soviet famine of 1932–1933.[319][320]

In the spring of 2010 a new monument in honor of Stalin was erected in Zaporizhia.[320] In 

late December 2010 the statue had his head cut off by unidentified vandals and the following 

New Year's Eve it was completely destroyed in an explosion.[321] On 25 February 2011 Ukrainian 

President Viktor Yanukovych stated "Ukraine will definitely not revise its negative view" on 

Stalin.[321] Ukraine and Poland unveiled a memorial (outside Kiev) to the thousands of 

Ukrainians, Poles and others killed by Stalin's secret police ahead of World War II in 

September 2012.[322]

Armenia

According to a 2012 study, 72% of Armenians do not want to live in a country led by someone 

like Stalin.[323]

Personal life

Stalin walking on a Moscow sidewalk in the late 1920s

Origin of name, nicknames and pseudonyms

Stalin's original Georgian name is transliterated as "Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili" 

(Georgian: იოსებ ბესარიონის ძე ჯუღაშვილი). The Russian transliteration of his name Ио́сиф 

Виссарио́нович Джугашви́ли is in turn transliterated to English as "Iosif Vissarionovich 

Dzhugashvili". Like other Bolsheviks, he became commonly known by one of his revolutionary 

noms de guerre, of which "Stalin" was only the last. Prior nicknames included "Koba", 

"Soselo", "Ivanov" and many others.[324]

Stalin is believed to have started using the name "K. Stalin" sometime in 1912 as a pen name.

During Stalin's reign his nicknames included:

"Uncle Joe", by western media, during and after World War II.[325][326]

"Kremlin Highlander" (Russian: кремлевский горец), in reference his Caucasus Mountains origin, 

notably by Osip Mandelstam in his Stalin Epigram.

"Vozhd"' (Russian: Вождь, "the Chieftain"), a term equivalent to the English word "Leader", or 

German "Führer".[citation needed]

Appearance

While photographs and portraits portray Stalin as physically massive and majestic (he had 

several painters shot who did not depict him "right"),[327] he was only 5.33 feet (1.62 m) 

tall.[327] (President Harry S. Truman, who stood 5.75 feet (1.75 m) himself, described Stalin 

as "a little squirt".[328]) His mustached face was pock-marked from small-pox during 

childhood. After a carriage accident in his youth, his left arm was shortened and stiffened at 

the elbow, while his right hand was thinner than his left and frequently hidden.[327] Bronze 

casts made in 1990 from plaster death mask and plaster cards of his hands clearly show a 

normal right hand and a withered left hand.[329][clarification needed] He could be charming 

and polite, mainly towards visiting statesmen.[327] In movies, Stalin was often played by 

Mikheil Gelovani and, less frequently, by Aleksei Dikiy.

Marriages and family

Ekaterina "Kato" Svanidze, Stalin's first wife

Stalin and Nadezhda Alliluyeva, Stalin's second wife

Stalin with Beria, Lakoba (obscured) and Stalin's daughter Svetlana

Stalin's son Yakov, whom he had with his first wife Ekaterina Svanidze, shot himself because 

of Stalin's harshness toward him, but survived. After this, Stalin said, "He can't even shoot 

straight."[330] Yakov served in the Red Army during World War II and was captured by the 

Germans. They offered to exchange him for Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus, who had surrendered 

after Stalingrad, but Stalin turned the offer down, stating, "You have in your hands not only 

my son Yakov, but millions of my sons. Either you free them all or my son will share their 

fate."[331] Afterwards, Yakov is said to have committed suicide, running into an electric 

fence in Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he was being held.[332] Yakov had a son 

Yevgeny, who is recently noted for defending his grandfather's legacy in Russian courts. 

Yevgeny is married to a Georgian woman, has two sons, and grandchildren.[333]

Stalin had a son, Vasiliy, and a daughter, Svetlana, with his second wife Nadezhda Alliluyeva. 

She died in 1932, officially of illness. She may have committed suicide by shooting herself 

after a quarrel with Stalin, leaving a suicide note which according to their daughter was 

"partly personal, partly political."[334] According to A&E Biography, there is also a belief 

among some Russians that Stalin himself murdered his wife after the quarrel, which apparently 

took place at a dinner in which Stalin tauntingly flicked cigarettes across the table at her.

Vasiliy rose through the ranks of the Soviet Air Force, officially dying of alcoholism in 

1962; however, this is still in question. He distinguished himself in World War II as a 

capable airman. Svetlana emigrated to the United States in 1967. In March 2001, Russian 

Independent Television NTV interviewed a previously unknown grandson living in Novokuznetsk, 

Yuri Davydov, who stated that his father had told him of his lineage, but, was told to keep 

quiet because of the campaign against Stalin's cult of personality.[335]

Beside his suite in the Kremlin, Stalin had numerous domiciles. In 1919, he started with a 

country house near Usovo, he added dachas at Zuvalova and Kuntsevo (Blizhny dacha built by 

Miron Merzhanov). Before World War II he added the Lipki estate and 

Semyonovskaya,[disambiguation needed] and had at least four dachas in the south by 1937, 

including one near Sochi. A luxury villa near Gagri was given to him by Beria. In Abkhazia he 

maintained a mountain retreat. After the war he added dachas at Novy Afon, near Sukhumi, in 

the Valdai Hills, and at Lake Mitsa. Another estate was near Zelyony Myss on the Black Sea. 

All these dachas, estates, and palaces were staffed, well-furnished and equipped, kept safe by 

security forces, and were mainly used privately, rarely for diplomatic purposes.[336] Between 

places Stalin would travel by car or train, never by air; he flew only once when attending the 

1943 Tehran conference.

In 1967, Svetlana defected to the USA and later married William Wesley Peters and by him had a 

daughter Olga (surname now Evans).

Habits

Stalin inspecting the first ZIS, model 101

Stalin enjoyed drinking, but could keep it under control.[337] He would also often force those 

around him to join in.[337] Stalin preferred Georgian wine over Russian vodka, but usually ate 

traditional Russian food.[337]

Khrushchev reports in his memoirs that Stalin was fond of American cowboy movies.[338] He 

would often sleep until evening in his dacha, and after waking up summon high-ranking Soviet 

politicians to watch foreign movies with him in the Kremlin movie theater.[338] The movies, 

being in foreign languages, were given a running translation by Ivan Bolshakov, people's 

commissar of cinema.[338] The translations were hilarious for the audience as Ivan spoke very 

basic English.[339] His favourite films were westerns and Charlie Chaplin episodes. He banned 

any hint of nudity. When Ivan showed a film with a naked woman Stalin shouted: "Are you making 

a brothel here Bolshakov?" After a movie had ended, Stalin often invited the audience for 

dinner, even though the clock was usually past midnight.[338] In the aftermath of the war, he 

took control over all of Joseph Goebbels' films.

He could play billiards so well he did not seem to aim at the ball.[340] He could read 500 

pages a day and had a library of 20,000 volumes.[341] He loved hunting and fishing all his 

life.

Religion

Although raised in the Georgian Orthodox faith, Stalin was an atheist. Stalin had a complex 

relationship with religious institutions in the Soviet Union.[342] Historians Vladislav Zubok 

and Constantine Pleshakov have suggested that "[Stalin's] atheism remained rooted in some 

vague idea of a God of nature."[343]

During the Second World War, Stalin reopened the churches. One reason could have been to 

motivate the majority of the population who had Christian beliefs. The reasoning behind this 

is that by changing the official policy of the party and the state towards religion, the 

Church and its clergymen could be to his disposal in mobilizing the war effort. On 4 September 

1943, Stalin invited Metropolitan Sergius, Metropolitan Alexius and Metropolitan Nicholas to 

the Kremlin and proposed to reestablish the Moscow Patriarchate, which had been suspended 

since 1925, and elect the Patriarch. On 8 September 1943, Metropolitan Sergius was elected 

patriarch.

The CPSU Central Committee continued to promote atheism and the elimination of religion during 

the remainder of Stalin's lifetime after the 1943 concordat.[344] Stalin's greater tolerance 

for religion after 1943 was limited by party machinations. Whether persecutions after World 

War II were more aimed at certain sections of society over and above detractors is a disputed 

point.

Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist–Leninist) contingent at London May Day march in 

2008, carrying a banner of Stalin.

Hypotheses, rumors and misconceptions about Stalin

There are conflicting accounts of Stalin's birth, who listed his birth year in various 

documents as being in 1878 before coming to power in 1922.[1] The phrase "death of one man is 

a tragedy, death of a million is a statistic" is sometimes attributed to Stalin,[345] but was 

actually made by the German writer and pacifist Erich Maria Remarque.[citation needed] In 

addition, hypotheses and popular rumors exist about Stalin's real father.[346] Some Bolsheviks 

and others have accused Stalin of being an agent for the Okhrana.[347] It is also widely 

believed that the Red Terror was begun by Stalin and that the majority of his victims were 

Communist Party members.

Benito Mussolini

Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (Italian pronunciation: [beˈnito mussoˈlini]; 29 July 1883 – 28 April 1945) was an Italian politician, journalist, and leader of the National Fascist Party, ruling the country as Prime Minister from 1922 until his ousting in 1943. He ruled constitutionally until 1925, when he dropped all pretense of democracy and set up a legal dictatorship. Known as Il Duce ("the leader"), Mussolini was one of the key figures in the creation of fascism.[1]
Originally a member of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), Mussolini was expelled from the PSI due to his opposition to the party's stance on neutrality in World War I. Mussolini denounced the PSI, and later founded the fascist movement. Following the March on Rome in October 1922 he became the youngest Prime Minister in Italian history. After destroying all political opposition through his secret police and outlawing labor strikes,[2] Mussolini and his fascist followers consolidated their power through a series of laws that transformed the nation into a one-party dictatorship. Within five years he had established dictatorial authority by both legal and extraordinary means, aspiring to create a totalitarian state. Mussolini remained in power until he was deposed by King Victor Emmanuel III in 1943. A few months later, he became the leader of the Italian Social Republic, a German client regime in northern Italy; he held this post until his death in 1945.[3]
Since 1939, Mussolini had sought to delay a major war in Europe until at least 1942. Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, starting World War II. On 10 June 1940, Mussolini sided with Germany, though he was aware that Italy did not have the military capacity in 1940 to carry out a long war with France and the United Kingdom.[4] Mussolini believed that after the imminent French surrender, Italy could gain territorial concessions from France and then he could concentrate his forces on a major offensive in Egypt, where British and Commonwealth forces were outnumbered by Italian forces.[5] However the UK refused to accept German proposals for a peace that would involve accepting Germany's victories in Eastern and Western Europe, plans for a German invasion of the UK did not proceed, and the war continued.
On 24 July 1943, soon after the start of the Allied invasion of Italy, Mussolini was defeated in the vote at the Grand Council of Fascism, and the King had him arrested the following day. On 12 September 1943, Mussolini was rescued from prison in the Gran Sasso raid by German special forces. In late April 1945, with total defeat looming, Mussolini attempted to escape north,[6] only to be quickly captured and summarily executed near Lake Como by Italian partisans. His body was then taken to Milan where it was hung upside down at a service station for public viewing and to provide confirmation of his demise.[7]
Birthplace of Benito Mussolini in Predappio, now used as a museum.
44.10613°N 11.980451°E
Mussolini was born in Dovia di Predappio, a small town in the province of Forlì in Emilia-Romagna on 29 July 1883. In the Fascist era, Predappio was
dubbed "Duce's town", and Forlì was "Duce's city". Pilgrims went to Predappio and Forlì, to see the birthplace of Mussolini. His father Alessandro Mussolini was a blacksmith and a socialist,[8] while his mother Rosa Mussolini (née Maltoni) was a devoutly Catholic schoolteacher.[9] Owing to his father's political leanings, Mussolini was named Benito after Mexican reformist President Benito Juárez, while his middle names Andrea and Amilcare were from Italian socialists Andrea Costa and Amilcare Cipriani.[10] Benito was the eldest of his parents' three children. His siblings Arnaldo and Edvige followed.[11]
As a young boy, Mussolini would spend some time helping his father in his smithy.[12] Mussolini's early political views were heavily influenced by his father, Alessandro Mussolini, a revolutionary socialist who idolized 19th century Italian nationalist figures with humanist tendencies such as Carlo Pisacane, Giuseppe Mazzini, and Giuseppe Garibaldi.[13] His father's political outlook combined views of anarchist figures like Carlo Cafiero and Mikhail Bakunin, the military authoritarianism of Garibaldi, and the nationalism of Mazzini.[14] In 1902, at the anniversary of Garibaldi's death, Benito Mussolini made a public speech in praise of the republican nationalist.[14] The conflict between his parents about religion meant that, unlike most Italians, Mussolini was not baptized at birth and would not be until much later in life. As a compromise with his mother, Mussolini was sent to a boarding school run by Salesian monks. After joining a new school, Mussolini achieved good grades, and qualified as an elementary schoolmaster in 1901.[9]
Emigration to Switzerland and military service


Mussolini's booking photograph following his arrest by Swiss police, 1903
In 1902, Mussolini emigrated to Switzerland, partly to avoid military service.[8] He worked briefly as a stonemason in Geneva, Fribourg and Bern, but was unable to find a permanent job.
During this time he studied the ideas of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, the sociologist Vilfredo Pareto, and the syndicalist Georges Sorel. Mussolini also later credited the Marxist Charles Péguy and the syndicalist Hubert Lagardelle as some of his influences.[15] Sorel's emphasis on the need for overthrowing decadent liberal democracy and capitalism by the use of violence, direct action, the general strike, and the use of neo-Machiavellian appeals to emotion, impressed Mussolini deeply.[8]
Mussolini became active in the Italian socialist movement in Switzerland, working for the paper L'Avvenire del Lavoratore, organizing meetings, giving speeches to workers and serving as secretary of the Italian workers' union in Lausanne.[16] In 1903, he was arrested by the Bernese police because of his advocacy of a violent general strike, spent two weeks in jail, was deported to Italy, set free there, and returned to Switzerland.[17] In 1904, after having been arrested again in Geneva and expelled for falsifying his papers, he returned to Lausanne, where he attended the University of Lausanne's Department of Social Science, following the lessons of Vilfredo Pareto.[18] In December 1904, he returned to Italy to take advantage of an amnesty for desertion, for which he had been convicted in absentia.[19]
Since condition for being pardoned was serving in the army, on 30 December 1904, he joined the corps of the Bersaglieri in Forlì.[20] After serving for two years in the military (from January 1905 until September 1906), he returned to teaching.[21]
Political journalist and socialist
In February 1909,[22] Mussolini once again left Italy, this time to take the job as the secretary of the labor party in the Italian-speaking city of Trento, which at the time was part of Austria-Hungary. He also did office work for the local Socialist Party, and edited its newspaper L'Avvenire del Lavoratore (The Future of the Worker). Returning to Italy, he spent a brief time in Milan, and then in 1910 he returned to his hometown of Forli, where he edited the weekly Lotta di classe (The Class Struggle).
During this time, he published Il Trentino veduto da un Socialista (Trentino as seen by a Socialist) in the radical periodical La Voce.[23] He also wrote several essays about German literature, some stories, and one novel: L'amante del Cardinale: Claudia Particella, romanzo storico (The Cardinal's Mistress). This novel he co-wrote with Santi Corvaja, and was published as a serial book in the Trento newspaper Il Popolo. It was released in installments from 20 January to 11 May 1910[24] The novel was bitterly anticlerical, and years later was withdrawn from circulation after Mussolini made a truce with the Vatican.[8]
By now, he was considered to be one of Italy's most prominent Socialists. In September 1911, Mussolini participated in a riot, led by Socialists, against the Italian war in Libya. He bitterly denounced Italy's "imperialist war" to capture the Libyan capital city of Tripoli, an action that earned him a five-month jail term.[25] After his release he helped expel from the ranks of the Socialist party two "revisionists" who had supported the war, Ivanoe Bonomi, and Leonida Bissolati. As a result, he was rewarded the editorship of the Socialist Party newspaper Avanti! Under his leadership, its circulation soon rose from 20,000 to 100,000.[26]
In 1913, he published Giovanni Hus, il veridico (Jan Hus, true prophet), an historical and political biography about the life and mission of the Czech ecclesiastic reformer Jan Hus, and his militant followers, the Hussites. During this socialist period of his life Mussolini sometimes used the pen name "Vero Eretico" (sincere misbeliever).
While Mussolini was associated with socialism, he also was supportive of figures who opposed egalitarianism. For instance Mussolini was influenced by Nietszche's anti-Christian ideas and negation of God's existence.[27] Mussolini saw Nietzsche as similar to Jean-Marie Guyau, who advocated a philosophy of action.[27] Mussolini's use of Nietzsche made him a highly unorthodox socialist, due to Nietzsche's promotion of elitism and anti-egalitarian views.[27] Mussolini felt that socialism had faltered due to the failures of Marxist determinism and social democratic reformism, and believed that Nietzsche's ideas would strengthen socialism.[27] While associated with socialism, Mussolini's writings eventually indicated that he had abandoned Marxism and egalitarianism in favor of Nietzsche's übermensch concept and anti-egalitarianism.[27]
Expulsion from the Italian Socialist Party


Members of Italy's Arditi corps in 1918 holding daggers, a symbol of their group. The Arditi's black uniform and use of the fez, were adopted by the Mussolini in the creation of his Fascist movement.
With the outbreak of World War I a number of socialist parties initially supported the war when it began in August 1914.[28] Once the war began, Austrian, British, French, German, and Russian socialists followed the rising nationalist current by supporting their country's intervention in the war.[29] The outbreak of the war had resulted in a surge of Italian nationalism and the war was supported by a variety of political factions. One of the most prominent and popular Italian nationalist supporters of the war was Gabriele d'Annunzio who promoted Italian irredentism and helped sway the Italian public to support intervention in the war.[30] The Italian Liberal Party under the leadership of Paolo Boselli promoted intervention in the war on the side of the Allies and utilized the Società Dante Alighieri to promote Italian nationalism.[31][32] Italian socialists were divided on whether to support the war or oppose it.[33] Prior to Mussolini taking a position on the war, a number of revolutionary syndicalists had announced their support of intervention, including Alceste De Ambris, Filippo Corridoni, and Angelo Oliviero Olivetti.[34] The Italian Socialist Party decided to oppose the war after anti-militarist protestors had been killed, resulting in a general strike called Red Week.[35]
Mussolini initially held official support for the party's decision and, in an August 1914 article, Mussolini wrote "Down with the War. We remain neutral."[36] He saw the war as an opportunity, both for his own ambitions as well as those of socialists and Italians.[36] He was influenced by anti-Austrian Italian nationalist sentiments, believing that the war offered Italians in Austria-Hungary the chance to liberate themselves from rule of the Habsburgs.[36] He eventually decided to declare support for the war by appealing to the need for socialists to overthrow the Hohenzollern and Habsburg monarchies in Germany and Austria-Hungary whom he claimed had consistently repressed socialism.[36] He further justified his position by denouncing the Central Powers for being reactionary powers; for pursuing imperialist designs against Belgium and Serbia as well as historically against Denmark, France, and against Italians, since hundreds of thousands of Italians were under Habsburg rule.[34] He claimed that the fall of Hohenzollern and Habsburg monarchies and the repression of "reactionary" Turkey would create conditions beneficial for the working class.[34] While he was supportive of the Entente powers, Mussolini responded to the conservative nature of Tsarist Russia by claiming that the mobilization required for the war would undermine Russia's reactionary authoritarianism and the war would bring Russia to social revolution.[34] He claimed that for Italy the war would complete the process of Risorgimento by uniting the Italians in Austria-Hungary into Italy and by allowing the common people of Italy to be participating members of the Italian nation in what would be Italy's first national war.[34] Thus he claimed that the vast social changes that the war could offer meant that it should be supported as a revolutionary war.[34]
As Mussolini's support for the intervention solidified, he came into conflict with socialists who opposed the war. He attacked the opponents of the war and claimed that those proletarians who supported pacifism were out of step with the proletarians who had joined the rising interventionist vanguard that was preparing Italy for a revolutionary war.[37] He began to criticize the Italian Socialist Party and socialism itself for having failed to recognize the national problems that had led to the outbreak of the war.[37] He was expelled from the party due to his support of intervention.
The following excerpts are from a police report prepared by the Inspector-General of Public Security in Milan, G. Gasti, that describe his background and his position on the First World War that resulted in his ouster from the Italian Socialist Party.
The Inspector General wrote:
Regarding Mussolini
Professor Benito Mussolini, ... 38, revolutionary socialist, has a police record; elementary school teacher qualified to teach in secondary schools; former first secretary of the Chambers in Cesena, Forli, and Ravenna; after 1912 editor of the newspaper Avanti! to which he gave a violent suggestive and intransigent orientation. In October 1914, finding himself in opposition to the directorate of the Italian Socialist party because he advocated a kind of active neutrality on the part of Italy in the War of the Nations against the party's tendency of absolute neutrality, he withdrew on the twentieth of that month from the directorate of Avanti! Then on the fifteenth of November [1914], thereafter, he initiated publication of the newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia, in which he supported – in sharp contrast to Avanti! and amid bitter polemics against that newspaper and its chief backers – the thesis of Italian intervention in the war against the militarism of the Central Empires. For this reason he was accused of moral and political unworthiness and the party thereupon decided to expel him ... Thereafter he ... undertook a very active campaign in behalf of Italian intervention, participating in demonstrations in the piazzas and writing quite violent articles in Popolo d'Italia ...[26]
In his summary, the Inspector also notes:
He was the ideal editor of Avanti! for the Socialists. In that line of work he was greatly esteemed and beloved. Some of his former comrades and admirers still confess that there was no one who understood better how to interpret the spirit of the proletariat and there was no one who did not observe his apostasy with sorrow. This came about not for reasons of self-interest or money. He was a sincere and passionate advocate, first of vigilant and armed neutrality, and later of war; and he did not believe that he was compromising with his personal and political honesty by making use of every means – no matter where they came from or wherever he might obtain them – to pay for his newspaper, his program and his line of action. This was his initial line. It is difficult to say to what extent his socialist convictions (which he never either openly or privately abjure) may have been sacrificed in the course of the indispensable financial deals which were necessary for the continuation of the struggle in which he was engaged ... But assuming these modifications did take place ... he always wanted to give the appearance of still being a socialist, and he fooled himself into thinking that this was the case.[38]
Beginning of Fascism and service in World War I


Mussolini as an Italian soldier, 1917.
After being ousted by the Italian Socialist Party for his support of Italian intervention, Mussolini made a radical transformation, ending his support for class conflict and joining in support of revolutionary nationalism transcending class lines.[37] He formed the interventionist newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia and the Fasci Rivoluzionari d'Azione Internazionalista ("Revolutionary Fasci for International Action") in October 1914.[32] His nationalist support of intervention enabled him to raise funds from Ansaldo (an armaments firm) and other companies to create Il Popolo d'Italia to convince socialists and revolutionaries to support the war.[39] Further funding for Mussolini's Fascists during the war came from French sources, beginning in May 1915.[40] A major source of this funding from France is believed to have been from French socialists who sent support to dissident socialists who wanted Italian intervention on France's side.[40]
On 5 December 1914, Mussolini denounced orthodox socialism for failing to recognize that the war had made national identity and loyalty more significant than class distinction.[37] He fully demonstrated his transformation in a speech that acknowledged the nation as an entity, a notion he had rejected prior to the war, saying:
The nation has not disappeared. We used to believe that the concept was totally without substance. Instead we see the nation arise as a palpitating reality before us! ... Class cannot destroy the nation. Class reveals itself as a collection of interests—but the nation is a history of sentiments, traditions, language, culture, and race. Class can become an integral part of the nation, but the one cannot eclipse the other.[41]
The class struggle is a vain formula, without effect and consequence wherever one finds a people that has not integrated itself into its proper linguistic and racial confines—where the national problem has not been definitely resolved. In such circumstances the class movement finds itself impaired by an inauspicious historic climate.[42]
Mussolini continued to promote the need of a revolutionary vanguard elite to lead society. He no longer advocated a proletarian vanguard, but instead a vanguard led by dynamic and revolutionary people of any social class.[42] Though he denounced orthodox socialism and class conflict, he maintained at the time that he was a nationalist socialist and a supporter of the legacy of nationalist socialists in Italy's history, such as Giuseppe Garibaldi, Giuseppe Mazzini, and Carlo Pisacane.[43] As for the Italian Socialist Party and its support of orthodox socialism, he claimed that his failure as a member of the party to revitalize and transform it to recognize the contemporary reality revealed the hopelessness of orthodox socialism as outdated and a failure.[43] This perception of the failure of orthodox socialism in the light of the outbreak of World War I was not solely held by Mussolini, other pro-interventionist Italian socialists such as Filippo Corridoni and Sergio Panunzio had also denounced classical Marxism in favor of intervention.[44]
These basic political views and principles formed the basis of Mussolini's newly formed political movement, the Fasci Rivoluzionari d'Azione Internazionalista in 1914, who called themselves Fascisti (Fascists).[45] At this time, the Fascists did not have an integrated set of policies and the movement was small, ineffective in its attempts to hold mass meetings, and was regularly harassed by government authorities and orthodox socialists.[46] Antagonism between the interventionists, including the Fascists, versus the anti-interventionist orthodox socialists resulted in violence between the Fascists and socialists.[47] The opposition and attacks by the anti-interventionist revolutionary socialists against the Fascists and other interventionists were so violent that even democratic socialists who opposed the war such as Anna Kuliscioff said that the Italian Socialist Party had gone too far in a campaign of silencing the freedom of speech of supporters of the war.[47] These early hostilities between the Fascists and the revolutionary socialists shaped Mussolini's conception of the nature of Fascism in its support of political violence.[47]
Mussolini became an ally with the irredentist politician and journalist Cesare Battisti, and like him he entered the Army and served in the war. "He was sent to the zone of operations where he was seriously injured by the explosion of a grenade."[26]
The Inspector General continues:
He was promoted to the rank of corporal "for merit in war". The promotion was recommended because of his exemplary conduct and fighting quality, his mental calmness and lack of concern for discomfort, his zeal and regularity in carrying out his assignments, where he was always first in every task involving labor and fortitude.[26]
Mussolini's military experience is told in his work Diario Di Guerra. Overall, he totaled about nine months of active, front-line trench warfare. During this time, he contracted paratyphoid fever.[48] His military exploits ended in 1917 when he was wounded accidentally by the explosion of a mortar bomb in his trench. He was left with at least 40 shards of metal in his body[48] He was discharged from the hospital in August 1917 and resumed his editor-in-chief position at his new paper, Il Popolo d'Italia. He wrote there positive articles about Czechoslovak Legions in Italy.
On 25 December 1915, in Treviglio, he contracted a marriage with his fellow countrywoman Rachele Guidi, who had already borne him a daughter, Edda, at Forli in 1910. In 1915, he had a son with Ida Dalser, a woman born in Sopramonte, a village near Trento.[9][10][49] He legally recognized this son on 11 January 1916.
Creation of Fascism

Main articles: Fascism and Italian Fascism
By the time he returned from Allied service in World War I, there was very little left of Mussolini the socialist. Indeed, he was now convinced that socialism as a doctrine had largely been a failure. In 1917, Mussolini got his start in politics with the help of a £100 weekly wage from MI5, the British Security Service; this help was authorized by Sir Samuel Hoare.[50] In early 1918, Mussolini called for the emergence of a man "ruthless and energetic enough to make a clean sweep" to revive the Italian nation.[51] Much later in life Mussolini said he felt by 1919 "Socialism as a doctrine was already dead; it continued to exist only as a grudge".[52] On 23 March 1919, Mussolini reformed the Milan fascio as the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento (Italian Combat Squad), consisting of 200 members.[51]


The platform of Fasci italiani di combattimento, as published in "Il Popolo d'Italia" on 6 June 1919.
An important factor in fascism gaining support in its earliest stages was the fact that it claimed to oppose discrimination based on social class and was strongly opposed to all forms of class war.[53][54] Fascism instead supported nationalist sentiments such as a strong unity, regardless of class, in the hopes of raising Italy up to the levels of its great Roman past. The ideological basis for fascism came from a number of sources. Mussolini utilized works of Plato, Georges Sorel, Nietzsche, and the socialist and economic ideas of Vilfredo Pareto, to create fascism. Mussolini admired The Republic, which he often read for inspiration.[55] The Republic held a number of ideas that fascism promoted such as rule by an elite promoting the state as the ultimate end, opposition to democracy, protecting the class system and promoting class collaboration, rejection of egalitarianism, promoting the militarization of a nation by creating a class of warriors, demanding that citizens perform civic duties in the interest of the state, and utilizing state intervention in education to promote the creation of warriors and future rulers of the state.[56] The Republic differed from fascism in that it did not promote aggressive war but only defensive war. Also unlike fascism, it promoted very communist-like views on property. Plato was an idealist, focused on achieving justice and morality, while Mussolini and fascism were realist, focused on achieving political goals.[57]
The basic underlying idea behind Mussolini's foreign policy was that of spazio vitale (vital space), a concept in Fascism that was analogous to lebensraum in German National Socialism.[58] The concept of spazio vitale was first announced in 1919, when the entire Mediterranean, especially so-called Julian March was redefined to make it appear a unified region that had belonged to Italy from the times of the ancient Roman province of Italia,[59][60] was claimed as Italy's exclusive sphere of influence. The right to colonize the neighboring Slovene ethnic areas and Mediterranean, being inhabited by what were alleged to be less developed peoples, was justified on the grounds that Italy was suffering from overpopulation.[61]
Borrowing the idea first developed by Enrico Corradini before 1914 of the natural conflict between "plutocratic" nations like Britain and "proletarian" nations like Italy, Mussolini claimed that Italy's principle problem was that it was "plutocratic" countries like Britain that were blocking Italy from achieving the necessary spazio vitale that would let the Italian economy grow.[62] Mussolini equated a nation's potential for economic growth with territorial size, thus in his view the problem of poverty in Italy could only be solved by winning the necessary spazio vitale.[63]
Though biological racism was less prominent in Fascism than National Socialism, right from the start there was a strong racist undercurrent to the spazio vitale concept, in which Mussolini asserted there was a "natural law" for stronger peoples to subject and dominate "inferior" peoples such as the "barbaric" Slavic peoples of Yugoslavia as Mussolini claimed in a September 1920 speech, when Mussolini stated:
When dealing with such a race as Slavic - inferior and barbarian - we must not pursue the carrot, but the stick policy ... We should not be afraid of new victims ... The Italian border should run across the Brenner Pass, Monte Nevoso and the Dinaric Alps ... I would say we can easily sacrifice 500,000 barbaric Slavs for 50,000 Italians ...
—Benito Mussolini, speech held in Pula, 20 September 1920[64][65]
During the period of occupation between years 1918 and 1920, five hundred "Slav" societies (for example Sokol), and slightly smaller number of libraries ("reading rooms") had been forbidden, and specifically so later with the Law on Associations (1925), the Law on Public Demonstrations (1926) and the Law on Public Order (1926), the closure of the classical lyceum in Pazin, of the high school in Voloska (1918), the closure of the five hundred[66] Slovene and Croatian primary schools followed. One thousand "Slav" teachers were forcibly exiled to Sardinia and elsewhere to South Italy.
In the same way, Mussolini argued that Italy was right to follow an imperalist policy in Africa because all black people were "inferior" to whites.[67] Mussolini claimed that the world was divided into a hierarchy of races (stirpe), though this was justified more on cultural than on biological grounds, and that history was nothing more than a Darwinian struggle for power and territory between various "racial masses".[67] The very fact that Italy was suffering from overpopulation was seen as proving the cultural and spiritual vitality of the Italians, who were thus justified in seeking to colonize lands that Mussolini argued on a historical basis belonged to Italy anyway, which was the heir to the Roman Empire.[67] In Mussolini's thinking, demography was destiny; nations with rising populations were nations destined to conquer, and nations with falling populations were decaying powers that deserved to die.[67] Hence, the importance of natalism to Mussolini, since only by increasing the birth rate could Italy ensure its future as a great power that would win its spazio vitale be assured.[67] By Mussolini's reckoning, the Italian population had to reach 60 million to enable Italy to fight a major war—hence his relentless demands for Italian women to have more children to reach that number.[67]
Mussolini and the fascists managed to be simultaneously revolutionary and traditionalist;[68][69] because this was vastly different from anything else in the political climate of the time, it is sometimes described as "The Third Way".[70] The Fascisti, led by one of Mussolini's close confidants, Dino Grandi, formed armed squads of war veterans called Blackshirts (or squadristi) with the goal of restoring order to the streets of Italy with a strong hand. The blackshirts clashed with communists, socialists, and anarchists at parades and demonstrations; all of these factions were also involved in clashes against each other. The government rarely interfered with the blackshirts' actions, owing in part to a looming threat and widespread fear of a communist revolution. The Fascisti grew so rapidly that within two years, it transformed itself into the National Fascist Party at a congress in Rome. Also in 1921, Mussolini was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the first time.[10] In the meantime, from about 1911 until 1938, Mussolini had various affairs with the Jewish author and academic Margherita Sarfatti, called the "Jewish Mother of Fascism" at the time.[71]
March on Rome and early years in power

Further information: March on Rome
The March on Rome was a coup d'état by which Mussolini's National Fascist Party came to power in Italy and ousted Prime Minister Luigi Facta. The "march" took place in 1922 between 27–29 October. On 28 October King Victor Emmanuel III who according to the Statuto Albertino had both the executive and the Supreme military power, refused Facta's request to declare martial law, which led to Facta's resignation. The King then handed over power to Mussolini by inviting him to form a new government. Mussolini was supported by the military, the business class, and the liberal right-wing.


Italia Irredenta: regions considered Italian because of ethnic, geographic and/or historical reasons, claimed by the Fascists in the 1930s: green: Nice, Ticino, and Dalmatia; red: Malta; violet: Corsica; Savoy and Corfu were later claimed.


Mussolini and the Quadrumviri during the March on Rome in 1922: from left to right: Michele Bianchi, Emilio De Bono, Italo Balbo and Cesare Maria De Vecchi
As Prime Minister, the first years of Mussolini's rule were characterized by a right-wing coalition government composed of Fascists, nationalists, liberals, and two Catholic clerics from the Popular Party. The Fascists made up a small minority in his original governments. Mussolini's domestic goal was the eventual establishment of a totalitarian state with himself as supreme leader (Il Duce) a message that was articulated by the Fascist newspaper Il Popolo, which was now edited by Mussolini's brother, Arnaldo. To that end, Mussolini obtained from the legislature dictatorial powers for one year (legal under the Italian constitution of the time). He favored the complete restoration of state authority, with the integration of the Fasci di Combattimento into the armed forces (the foundation in January 1923 of the Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale) and the progressive identification of the party with the state. In political and social economy, he passed legislation that favored the wealthy industrial and agrarian classes (privatizations, liberalizations of rent laws and dismantlement of the unions).[10]
In 1923, Mussolini sent Italian forces to invade Corfu during the Corfu Incident. In the end, the League of Nations proved powerless, and Greece was forced to comply with Italian demands. Writing of Mussolini's foreign policy, the American historian Gerhard Weinberg said:
"If the new regime Benito Mussolini installed in 1922 on the ruins of the old glorified war as a sign of vitality and repudiated pacifism as a form of decay, the lesson drawn from the terrible battles against Austria on the Isonzo river—in which the Italians fought far better than popular imagination often allows—was that the tremendous material and technical preparations needed for modern war were simply beyond the contemporary capacity of the country. This was almost certainly a correct perception, but, given the ideology of Fascism with its emphasis on the moral benefits of war, it did not lead to the conclusion that an Italy without a big stick had best speak very, very softly. On the contrary, the new regime drew the opposite conclusion. Noisy eloquence and rabid journalism might be substituted for serious preparations for war, a procedure that was harmless enough if no one took any of it seriously, but a certain road to disaster once some outside and Mussolini inside the country came to believe that the "eight million bayonets" of the Duce's imagination actually existed."[72]
Acerbo Law
In June 1923, the government passed the Acerbo Law, which transformed Italy into a single national constituency. It also granted a two-thirds majority of the seats in Parliament to the party or group of parties that received at least 25% of the votes.[citation needed] This law applied in the elections of 6 April 1924. The national alliance, consisting of Fascists, most of the old Liberals and others, won 64% of the vote.
Squadristi violence


Socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti was murdered a few days after he openly denounced Fascist violence during the 1924 elections
The assassination of the socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti, who had requested that the elections be annulled because of the irregularities,[73] provoked a momentary crisis in the Mussolini government. Mussolini ordered a cover-up, but witnesses saw the car that transported Matteotti's body parked outside Matteotti's residence, which linked Dumini to the murder.
Mussolini later confessed that a few resolute men could have altered public opinion and started a coup that would have swept fascism away. Dumini was imprisoned for two years. On his release Dumini allegedly told other people that Mussolini was responsible, for which he served further prison time.
The opposition parties responded weakly or were generally unresponsive. Many of the socialists, liberals, and moderates boycotted Parliament in the Aventine Secession, hoping to force Victor Emmanuel to dismiss Mussolini.
On 31 December 1924, MVSN consuls met with Mussolini and gave him an ultimatum—crush the opposition or they would do so without him. Fearing a revolt by his own militants, Mussolini decided to drop all trappings of democracy.[74] On 3 January 1925, Mussolini made a truculent speech before the Chamber in which he took responsibility for squadristi violence (though he did not mention the assassination of Matteotti).[75]
Building a dictatorship


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Assassination attempts
Mussolini's influence in propaganda was such that he had little opposition to suppress. Nonetheless, he was "slightly wounded in the nose" when he was shot on 7 April 1926 by Violet Gibson, an Irish woman and daughter of Lord Ashbourne, who was subsequently deported after her arrest.[76] On 31 October 1926, 15-year-old Anteo Zamboni attempted to shoot Mussolini in Bologna. Zamboni was lynched on the spot.[77][78] Mussolini also survived a failed assassination attempt in Rome by anarchist Gino Lucetti,[79] and a planned attempt by the Italian anarchist Michele Schirru,[80] which ended with Schirru's capture and execution.[81]
Police state
At various times after 1922, Mussolini personally took over the ministries of the interior, foreign affairs, colonies, corporations, defense, and public works. Sometimes he held as many as seven departments simultaneously, as well as the premiership. He was also head of the all-powerful Fascist Party and the armed local fascist militia, the MVSN or "Blackshirts", who terrorized incipient resistances in the cities and provinces. He would later form the OVRA, an institutionalized secret police that carried official state support. In this way he succeeded in keeping power in his own hands and preventing the emergence of any rival.


A young Mussolini in his early years in power.
Between 1925 and 1927, Mussolini progressively dismantled virtually all constitutional and conventional restraints on his power, thereby building a police state. A law passed on Christmas Eve 1925 changed Mussolini's formal title from "president of the Council of Ministers" to "head of the government" (though he was still called "Prime Minister" by most non-Italian outlets). He was no longer responsible to Parliament and could only be removed by the king. While the Italian constitution stated that ministers were only responsible to the sovereign, in practice it had become all but impossible to govern against the express will of Parliament. The Christmas Eve law ended this practice, and also made Mussolini the only person competent to determine the body's agenda. Local autonomy was abolished, and podestàs appointed by the Italian Senate replaced elected mayors and councils.
All other parties were outlawed following Zamboni's assassination attempt in 1926, though in practice Italy had been a one-party state since Mussolini's 1925 speech. In the same year, an electoral law abolished parliamentary elections. Instead, the Grand Council of Fascism selected a single list of candidates to be approved by plebiscite. The Grand Council had been created five years earlier as a party body but was "constitutionalized" and became the highest constitutional authority in the state. On paper, the Grand Council had the power to recommend Mussolini's removal from office, and was thus theoretically the only check on his power. However, only Mussolini could summon the Grand Council and determine its agenda. To gain control of the South, especially Sicily, he appointed Cesare Mori as a Prefect of the city of Palermo, with the charge of eradicating the Mafia at any price. In the telegram, Mussolini wrote to Mori:
"Your Excellency has carte blanche; the authority of the State must absolutely, I repeat absolutely, be re-established in Sicily. If the laws still in force hinder you, this will be no problem, as we will draw up new laws."[82]
Mori did not hesitate to lay siege to towns, using torture, and holding women and children as hostages to oblige suspects to give themselves up. These harsh methods earned him the nickname of "Iron Prefect". In 1927 Mori's inquiries brought evidence of collusion between the Mafia and the Fascist establishment, and he was dismissed for length of service in 1929, at which time the number of murders in Palermo Province had decreased from 200 to 23. Mussolini nominated Mori as a senator, and fascist propaganda claimed that the Mafia had been defeated.[83]
Economic policy
Further information: Economy of Italy under Fascism


The inauguration of Littoria in 1932
Mussolini launched several public construction programs and government initiatives throughout Italy to combat economic setbacks or unemployment levels. His earliest, and one of the best known, was the Battle for Wheat, by which 5,000 new farms were established and five new agricultural towns (among them Littoria and Sabaudia) on land reclaimed by draining the Pontine Marshes. In Sardinia, a model agricultural town was founded and named Mussolinia, but has long since been renamed Arborea. This town was the first of what Mussolini hoped would have been thousands of new agricultural settlements across the country. The Battle for Wheat diverted valuable resources to wheat production away from other more economically viable crops. Landowners grew wheat on unsuitable soil using all the advances of modern science, and although the wheat harvest increased, prices rose, consumption fell and high tariffs were imposed.[84] The tariffs promoted widespread inefficiencies and the government subsidies given to farmers pushed the country further into debt.
Mussolini also initiated the "Battle for Land", a policy based on land reclamation outlined in 1928. The initiative had a mixed success; while projects such as the draining of the Pontine Marsh in 1935 for agriculture were good for propaganda purposes, provided work for the unemployed and allowed for great land owners to control subsidies, other areas in the Battle for Land were not very successful. This program was inconsistent with the Battle for Wheat (small plots of land were inappropriately allocated for large-scale wheat production), and the Pontine Marsh was lost during World War II. Fewer than 10,000 peasants resettled on the redistributed land, and peasant poverty remained high. The Battle for Land initiative was abandoned in 1940.
Corporatism
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He also combated an economic recession by introducing the "Gold for the Fatherland" initiative, by encouraging the public to voluntarily donate gold jewellery such as necklaces and wedding rings to government officials in exchange for steel wristbands bearing the words "Gold for the Fatherland". Even Rachele Mussolini donated her own wedding ring. The collected gold was then melted down and turned into gold bars, which were then distributed to the national banks.
Mussolini pushed for government control of business: by 1935, Mussolini claimed that three-quarters of Italian businesses were under state control. That same year, he issued several edicts to further control the economy, including forcing all banks, businesses, and private citizens to give up all their foreign-issued stocks and bonds to the Bank of Italy. In 1938, he also instituted wage and price controls.[85][citation needed] He also attempted to turn Italy into a self-sufficient autarky, instituting high barriers on trade with most countries except Germany.
In 1943 he proposed the theory of economic socialization.
Government
Main article: Italian Fascism


After taking power, Mussolini was often seen in military uniform
Mussolini's foremost priority was the subjugation of the minds of the Italian people and the use of propaganda to do so. A lavish cult of personality centered on Mussolini was promoted by the regime.


Standard of Benito Mussolini.
The principles of this doctrine were laid down in the 2-part article on fascism (Giovanni Gentile wrote the first part, Mussolini the second) that appeared in 1932 in the Enciclopedia Italiana. In 1929, a concordat with the Vatican was signed, the Lateran treaties, by which the Italian state was at last recognized by the Roman Catholic Church, and the independence of Vatican City was recognized by the Italian state.
The 1929 treaty included a legal provision whereby the Italian government would protect the honor and dignity of the Pope by prosecuting offenders.[86] In 1927, Mussolini was re-baptized by a Roman Catholic priest. After 1929, Mussolini, with his anti-Communist doctrines, convinced many Catholics to actively support him.
The law codes of the parliamentary system were rewritten under Mussolini. All teachers in schools and universities had to swear an oath to defend the fascist regime. Newspaper editors were all personally chosen by Mussolini and no one who did not possess a certificate of approval from the fascist party could practice journalism. These certificates were issued in secret; Mussolini thus skillfully created the illusion of a "free press". The trade unions were also deprived of any independence and were integrated into what was called the "corporative" system. The aim (never completely achieved), inspired by medieval guilds, was to place all Italians in various professional organizations or corporations, all under clandestine governmental control.
Large sums of money were spent on highly visible public works, and on international prestige projects such as the Blue Riband ocean liner SS Rex and aeronautical achievements such as the world's fastest seaplane the Macchi M.C.72 and the transatlantic flying boat cruise of Italo Balbo, which was greeted with much fanfare in the United States when it landed in Chicago.
Role of education and youth organizations


Benito Mussolini and Fascist Blackshirt youth in 1935.
Nationalists in the years after the war thought of themselves as combating the both liberal and domineering institutions created by cabinets—such as those of Giovanni Giolitti, including traditional schooling. Futurism, a revolutionary cultural movement which would serve as a catalyst for Fascism, argued for "a school for physical courage and patriotism," as expressed by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1919. Marinetti expressed his disdain for "... the by now prehistoric and troglodyte Ancient Greek and Latin courses," arguing for their replacement with exercise modelled on those of the Arditi soldiers ("[learning] to advance on hands and knees in front of razing machine gun fire; to wait open-eyed for a crossbeam to move sideways over their heads etc."). It was in those years that the first Fascist youth wings were formed: Avanguardia Giovanile Fascista (Fascist Youth Vanguards) in 1919, and Gruppi Universitari Fascisti (Fascist University Groups) in 1922.
After the March on Rome that brought Benito Mussolini to power, the Fascists started considering ways to politicize Italian society, with an accent on schools. Mussolini assigned former ardito and deputy-secretary for Education Renato Ricci the task of "... reorganizing the youth from a moral and physical point of view." Ricci sought inspiration with Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of Scouting, meeting with him in England, as well as with Bauhaus artists in Germany. The Opera Nazionale Balilla was created through Mussolini's decree of 3 April 1926, and was led by Ricci for the following eleven years. It included children between the ages of 8 and 18, grouped as the Balilla and the Avanguardisti.
According to Mussolini: "Fascist education is moral, physical, social, and military: it aims to create a complete and harmoniously developed human, a fascist one according to our views". Mussolini structured this process taking in view the emotional side of childhood: "Childhood and adolescence alike ... cannot be fed solely by concerts, theories, and abstract teaching. The truth we aim to teach them should appeal foremost to their fantasy, to their hearts, and only then to their minds".
The "educational value set through action and example" was to replace the established approaches. Fascism opposed its version of idealism to prevalent rationalism, and used the Opera Nazionale Balilla to circumvent educational tradition by imposing the collective and hierarchy, as well as Mussolini's own personality cult.
Foreign policy
In foreign policy, Mussolini soon shifted from the anti-imperialism of his lead-up to power to an extreme form of aggressive nationalism. He dreamt of making Italy a nation that was "great, respected, and feared" throughout Europe, and indeed the world. An early example was his bombardment of Corfu in 1923. Soon after he succeeded in setting up a puppet regime in Albania and in ruthlessly consolidating Italian power in Libya, which had been loosely a colony since 1912. It was his dream to make the Mediterranean mare nostrum ("our sea" in Latin), and he established a large naval base on the Greek island of Leros to enforce a strategic hold on the eastern Mediterranean.
His first steps into foreign policy seemed to portray him as a "statesman", for he participated in the Locarno Treaties of 1925 and the attempted Four Power Pact of 1933 was Mussolini's brainchild. Following the Stresa Front against Germany in 1935, Mussolini's policy took a dramatic turning point and revealed itself once again to be that of an aggressive nature. This domino effect of war began with the Second Italo-Abyssinian War. He also disagreed with Hitler's treaties with the Soviet Union.[better source needed]
Conquest of Ethiopia
Main article: Second Italo-Abyssinian War


Il Duce standing on top of a tank.
In an effort to create an Italian Empire – or as supporters called it, the New Roman Empire[87] – Italy set its sights on Ethiopia with an invasion that was carried out rapidly. Historians are still divided about the reasons for the attack on Ethiopia in 1935. Some Italian historians such as Franco Catalano and Giorgio Rochat argue that invasion was an act of social imperialism, contending that the Great Depression had badly damaged Mussolini's prestige, and that he needed a foreign war to distract public opinion.[88] Other historians such as Pietro Pastorelli have argued that the invasion was launched as part of an expansionist program to make Italy the main power in the Red Sea area and the Middle East.[88] A middle way interpretation was offered by the American historian MacGregor Knox who argued that the war was started for both foreign and domestic reasons, being both a part of Mussolini's long-range expansionist plans and was also intended to give Mussolini a foreign policy triumph that would allow him to push the Fascist system in a more radical direction at home.[88] Italy's forces were far superior to the Abyssinian forces, especially in air power, and they were soon victorious. Emperor Haile Selassie was forced to flee the country, with Italy entering the capital Addis Ababa to proclaim an empire by May 1936, making Ethiopia part of Italian East Africa.[89]
Although all of the major European powers of the time had also colonized parts of Africa and committed atrocities in their colonies, the Scramble for Africa had finished by the beginning of the twentieth century. The international mood was now against colonialist expansion and Italy's actions were condemned. Retroactively, Italy was criticized for its use of mustard gas and phosgene against its enemies and also for its zero tolerance approach to enemy guerrillas, allegedly authorized by Mussolini.[89]


Spanish Republican poster against "the Italian invader".
When Rodolfo Graziani, the viceroy of Ethiopia, was nearly assassinated at an official ceremony, with the guerrilla bomb exploding among the people there, a very strong-handed reaction followed against the guerrillas, including those who were prisoners according to the International Red Cross.[89] The IRC also alleged that Italy bombed their tents in areas of guerrillas' military encampment; though Italy denied it had intended to, insisting that the rebels were targeted.[89] It was not until the East African Campaign's conclusion in 1941 that Italy lost its East African territories, after taking on a fourteen-nation allied force.
Spanish Civil War
Main articles: Spanish Civil War and Foreign Involvement and Corpo Truppe Volontarie
Italian military help to Nationalists against the anti-clerical and anti-Catholic atrocities committed by the Republican side worked well in Italian propaganda targeting Catholics. On 27 July 1936 the first squadron of Italian airplanes sent by Benito Mussolini arrived in Spain.[90] This active intervention in 1936–1939 on the side of Franco in the Spanish Civil War ended any possibility of reconciliation with France and Britain. As a result, his relationship with Adolf Hitler became closer, and he chose to accept the German annexation of Austria in 1938 and the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in 1939. At the Munich Conference in September 1938, he posed as a moderate working for European peace, helping Nazi Germany seize control of the Sudetenland. His "axis" with Germany was confirmed when he made the "Pact of Steel" with Hitler in May 1939, as the previous "Rome-Berlin Axis" of 1936 had been unofficial. Members of TIGR, a Slovene anti-fascist group, plotted to kill Mussolini in Kobarid in 1938, but their attempt was unsuccessful.
Axis

Rome-Berlin relations
Main articles: Rome-Berlin Axis and Pact of Steel


Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler in Munich, June 1940.


Mussolini in the company of Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, presiding over sporting events in honor of German veterans in Rome, 19 March 1938.
The relationship between Mussolini and Adolf Hitler was a contentious one early on. While Hitler cited Mussolini as an influence and expressed privately great admiration for him,[91] Mussolini had little regard for Hitler, especially after the Nazis had assassinated his friend and ally, Engelbert Dollfuss the Austrofascist dictator of Austria in 1934.
With the assassination of Dollfuss, Mussolini attempted to distance himself from Hitler by rejecting much of the racialism (particularly Nordicism and Germanicism) and antisemitism espoused by the German radical. Mussolini during this period rejected biological racism, at least in the Nazi sense, and instead emphasized "Italianizing" the parts of the Italian Empire he had desired to build.[92] He declared that the ideas of eugenics and the racially charged concept of an Aryan nation were not possible.[92]
When discussing the Nazi decree that the German people must carry a passport with either Aryan or Jewish racial affiliation marked on it, in 1934, Mussolini wondered how they would designate membership in the "Germanic race":
“ But which race? Does there exist a German race? Has it ever existed? Will it ever exist? Reality, myth, or hoax of the theorists?
Ah well, we respond, a Germanic race does not exist. Various movements. Curiosity. Stupor. We repeat. Does not exist. We don't say so. Scientists say so. Hitler says so.
”
—Benito Mussolini, 1934.[93]
When German-Jewish journalist Emil Ludwig asked about his views on race, Mussolini exclaimed:
“ Race! It is a feeling, not a reality: ninety-five percent, at least, is a feeling. Nothing will ever make me believe that biologically pure races can be shown to exist today. Amusingly enough, not one of those who have proclaimed the "nobility" of the Teutonic race was himself a Teuton. Gobineau was a Frenchman, (Houston Stewart) Chamberlain, an Englishman; Woltmann, a Jew; Lapouge, another Frenchman. ”
—Benito Mussolini, 1933.[94]
In a speech given in Bari, he reiterated his attitude toward German racism:
“ Thirty centuries of history allow us to look with supreme pity on certain doctrines which are preached beyond the Alps by the descendants of those who were illiterate when Rome had Caesar, Virgil and Augustus. ”
—Benito Mussolini, 1934.[95][96]
Mussolini's rejection of both racialism and the importance of race in 1934 during the height of his antagonism towards Hitler contradicted his own earlier statements about race, such as in 1928, when he emphasized the importance of race:
“ [When the] city dies, the nation—deprived of the young life-blood of new generations—is now made up of people who are old and degenerate and cannot defend itself against a younger people which launches an attack on the now unguarded frontiers [...] This will happen, and not just to cities and nations, but on an infinitely greater scale: the whole White race, the Western race can be submerged by other coloured races which are multiplying at a rate unknown in our race. ”
—Benito Mussolini, 1928.[97]
Though Italian Fascism varied its official positions on race from the 1920s to 1934, ideologically Italian fascism did not originally discriminate against the Italian Jewish community: Mussolini recognised that a small contingent had lived there "since the days of the Kings of Rome" and should "remain undisturbed".[98] There were even some Jews in the National Fascist Party, such as Ettore Ovazza who in 1935 founded the Jewish Fascist paper La Nostra Bandiera ("Our Flag").[99]
By 1938, the enormous influence Hitler now had over Mussolini became clear with the introduction of the Manifesto of Race. The Manifesto, which was closely modeled on the Nazi Nuremberg laws,[74] stripped Jews of their Italian citizenship and with it any position in the government or professions. Marriage between Jews and non-Jews was prohibited. Jews were not permitted to own or manage companies involved in military production, or factories that employed over one hundred people or exceeded a certain value. They could not own land over a certain value, serve in the armed forces, employ non-Jewish domestics, or belong to the Fascist party. Their employment in banks, insurance companies, and public schools was forbidden.[100]
The German influence on Italian policy upset the established balance in Fascist Italy and proved highly unpopular to most Italians, to the extent that Pope Pius XII sent a letter to Mussolini protesting against the new laws.[citation needed] Mussolini and the Italian Army in occupied regions openly opposed German efforts to deport Italian Jews to Nazi concentration camps.[101] Italy's refusal to comply with German demands of Jewish persecution influenced other countries.[101]
In September 1943 semi-autonomous militarized squads of Fascist fanatics sprouted up throughout the Republic of Salò. These squads spread terror among Jews and anti-Fascists for a year and a half. In the power vacuum that existed during the first three or four months of the occupation, the semi-autonomous bands were virtually uncontrollable. Many were linked to individual high-ranking Fascist politicians.[102] Italian Fascists, sometimes government employees but more often fanatic civilians or paramilitary volunteers, hastened to curry favor with the Nazis. Informers betrayed their neighbors, squadristi seized Jews and delivered them to the German SS, and Italian journalists seemed to compete in the virulence of their anti-Semitic diatribes.[103]
It has been widely speculated that Mussolini adopted the Manifesto of Race in 1938 for merely tactical reasons, to strengthen Italy's relations with Germany. Mussolini and the Italian military did not consistently apply the laws adopted in the Manifesto of Race.[101] In December 1943, Mussolini made a confession to Bruno Spampanato that seems to indicate that he regretted the Manifesto of Race, as Mussolini put it:
“ The Racial Manifesto could have been avoided. It dealt with the scientific abstruseness of a few teachers and journalists, a conscientious German essay translated into bad Italian. It is far from what I have said, written and signed on the subject. I suggest that you consult the old issues of Il Popolo d'Italia. For this reason I am far from accepting (Alfred) Rosenberg's myth. ”
—Benito Mussolini, 1943.[104]
Mussolini also reached out to the Muslims in his empire and in the predominantly Arab countries of the Middle East. In 1937, the Muslims of Libya presented Mussolini with the "Sword of Islam" while Fascist propaganda pronounced him as the "Protector of Islam."[105]
Munich Conference, war looming
Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini, and Italian Foreign Minister Count Ciano, as they prepared to sign the Munich Agreement

From left to right, Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini and Italian Foreign Minister Count Ciano as they prepare to sign the Munich Agreement.
Main articles: Munich Agreement and Italian invasion of Albania
By the late 1930s, Mussolini's obsession with demography led him to conclude that Britain and France were finished as powers, and that it was Germany and Italy who were destined to rule Europe if for no other reason than their demographic strength.[106] Mussolini stated his belief that declining birth rates in France were "absolutely horrifying" and that the British Empire was doomed because one-quarter of the British population was over 50.[107] As such, Mussolini believed that an alliance with Germany was preferable to an alignment with Britain and France as it was better to be allied with the strong instead of the weak.[108] The only things that held Mussolini back from full alignment with Berlin were his awareness of Italian economic and military weaknesses, which required further time to rearm, and his desire to use the Easter Accords of April 1938 as a way of splitting Britain from France.[109] A military alliance with Germany as opposed to the already existing looser political alliance with the Reich under the Anti-Comintern Pact (which had no military commitments) would end any chance of Britain implementing the Easter Accords.[110] The Easter Accords in turn were intended by Mussolini to allow Italy to take on France alone by sufficiently improving Anglo-Italian relations that London would presumably remain neutral in the event of a Franco-Italian war.[110] In turn, the Easter Accords were intended by Britain to win Italy away from Germany.
Mussolini had imperial designs on Tunisia, and had some support in that country.[111] In January 1939, the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain visited Rome, during which visit, Mussolini learned that though Britain very much wanted better relations with Italy, and was prepared to make concessions, that Britain would not sever all ties with France for the sake of an improved Anglo-Italian relationship.[112] With that, Mussolini grew more interested in the German offer of a military alliance, which first been made in May 1938.[112] The new course was not without its critics. On 21 March 1939, during a meeting of the Fascist Grand Council, Italo Balbo accused Mussolini of "licking Hitler's boots", blasted the Duce's pro-German foreign policy as leading Italy to disaster, and noted that the "opening to Britain" still existed and it was not inevitable that Italy had to ally with Germany.[113] Through many gerarchi like Balbo were not keen on closer relations with Berlin, Mussolini's control of the foreign-policy machinery meant this dissidence counted for little.[113] In April 1939, Mussolini ordered the Italian invasion of Albania. Italy defeated Albania within just five days forcing king Zog to flee, setting up a period of Albania under Italy. Until May 1939, the Axis had not been entirely official, but during that month the Pact of Steel treaty was signed outlining the "friendship and alliance" between Germany and Italy, signed by each of its foreign ministers.[114] The Pact of Steel was an offensive and defensive military alliance, though Mussolini had signed the treaty only after receiving a promise from the Germans that there would be no war for the next three years. Italy's king Victor Emanuel III was also wary of the pact, favoring the more traditional Italian allies like France, and fearful of the implications of an offensive military alliance, which in effect meant surrendering control over questions of war and peace to Hitler.[115]
Hitler was intent on invading Poland, though Galeazzo Ciano warned this would likely lead to war with the Allies. Hitler dismissed Ciano's comment, predicting that instead that Britain and the other Western countries would back down, and he suggested that Italy should invade Yugoslavia.[116] The offer was tempting to Mussolini, but at that stage world war would be a disaster for Italy as the armaments situation from building the Italian Empire thus far was lean. Most significantly, Victor Emmanuel had demanded neutrality in the dispute.[116] Thus when World War II in Europe began on 1 September 1939 with the German invasion of Poland eliciting the response of the United Kingdom and France declaring war on Germany, Italy did not become involved in the conflict.[116]
War declared


Mussolini in an official portrait.
Main article: Military history of Italy during World War II
As World War II began, Ciano and Viscount Halifax were holding secret phone conversations. The British wanted Italy on their side against Germany as it had been in World War I.[116] French government opinion was more geared towards action against Italy; they were eager to attack Italy in Libya. In September 1939, France swung to the opposite extreme, offering to discuss issues with Italy, but as the French were unwilling to discuss Corsica, Nice and Savoy, Mussolini did not answer.[116] Historian Alexander Gibson stated that Allies were certain that Italy would join the war on the Axis side, and tried to provoke Italy into fighting while she was still unprepared.[117]
So long as the Duce lives, one can rest assured that Italy will seize every opportunity to achieve its imperialistic aims.
—Adolf Hitler, late November 1939[116]
Convinced that the war would soon be over, with a German victory looking likely at that point, Mussolini decided to enter the war on the Axis side. Accordingly, Italy declared war on Britain and France on 10 June 1940.[118] Mussolini regarded the war against Britain and France as a life-or-death struggle between opposing ideologies - Fascism and "the Masonic, democratic, capitalist world"[117] - describing the war as "the struggle of the fertile and young people against the sterile people moving to the sunset; it is the struggle between two centuries and two ideas",[119] and as a "logical development of our Revolution".[117]
Italy joined the Germans in the Battle of France, fighting the fortified Alpine Line at the border. Just eleven days later, France surrendered to the Axis powers. Included in Italian-controlled France was most of Nice and other southeastern counties.[118] Meanwhile in Africa, Mussolini's Italian East Africa forces attacked the British in their Sudan, Kenya and British Somaliland colonies, in what would become known as the East African Campaign.[120] British Somaliland was conquered and became part of Italian East Africa on 3 August 1940, and there were Italian advances in Sudan and Kenya.[121]
Just over a month later, the Italian Tenth Army commanded by General Rodolfo Graziani crossed from Italian Libya into Egypt where British forces were located; this would become the Western Desert Campaign. Advances were successful, but the Italians stopped at Sidi Barrani waiting for logistic supplies to catch up. During 25 October 1940, Mussolini sent the Italian Air Corps to Belgium, where the air force took part in the Battle of Britain for around two months.[122] In October, Mussolini also sent Italian forces into Greece starting the Greco-Italian War. After initial success, this backfired as the Greek counterattack proved relentless, resulting in Italy losing one-quarter of Albania.
Events in Africa had changed by early 1941 as Operation Compass had forced the Italians back into Libya, causing high losses in the Italian Army.[123] Also in the East African Campaign, an attack was mounted against Italian forces. Despite putting up a resistance, they were overwhelmed at the Battle of Keren, and the Italian defense started to crumble with a final defeat in the Battle of Gondar. When addressing the Italian public on the events, he was completely open about the situation saying, "We call bread bread and wine wine, and when the enemy wins a battle it is useless and ridiculous to seek, as the English do in their incomparable hypocrisy, to deny or diminish it."[124] Part of his comment was in relation to earlier success the Italians had in Africa, before being defeated by an Allied force later. In danger of losing the control of all Italian possessions in North Africa, Germany finally sent the Afrika Korps to support Italy. Meanwhile Operation Marita took place in Yugoslavia to end the Greco-Italian War, resulting in an Axis victory and the Occupation of Greece by Italy and Germany.[125]
General Mario Robotti, Commander of the Italian 11th division in Slovenia and Croatia, issued an order in line with a directive received from Mussolini in June 1942: "I would not be opposed to all (sic) Slovenes being imprisoned and replaced by Italians. In other words, we should take steps to ensure that political and ethnic frontiers coincide,",[126]
Eastern Front


Mussolini addressed the crowd in Genova.
See also: Italian participation in the Eastern Front
With the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, Mussolini declared war on the Soviet Union in June 1941 and sent an army to fight there. Mussolini first learned of Barbarossa after it began on 22 June 1941, and was not asked by Hitler to involve himself. [127] Mussolini took the initiative in ordering an Italian Army Corps to head to the Eastern Front, where he hoped that Italy might score an easy victory to restore the Fascist regime's luster, which had been damaged by defeats in Greece and North Africa. Mussolini told the Council of Ministers of 5 July that his only worry was that Germany might defeat the Soviet Union before the Italians arrived.[128] At a meeting with Hitler in August, Mussolini offered and Hitler accepted the commitment of further Italian troops to fight the Soviet Union.[129] The heavy losses suffered by the Italians on the Eastern Front, where service was extremely unpopular owing to the widespread view that this was not Italy's fight, did much to damage Mussolini's prestige with the Italian people.[129] After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he declared war on the United States on 11 December 1941.[130] A piece of evidence regarding Mussolini's response to the attack on Pearl Harbor comes from the diary of his Foreign Minister Ciano:
"A night telephone call from Ribbentrop. He is overjoyed about the Japanese attack on America. He is so happy about it that I am happy with him, though I am not too sure about the final advantages of what has happened. One thing is now certain, that America will enter the conflict and that the conflict will be so long that she will be able to realize all her potential forces. This morning I told this to the King who had been pleased about the event. He ended by admitting that, in the long run, I may be right. Mussolini was happy, too. For a long time he has favored a definite clarification of relations between America and the Axis".[131]
Dismissed and arrested
Main article: 25 Luglio


Marshal Pietro Badoglio succeeded Mussolini as Prime Minister.
By early 1942, Italy's military position had become untenable. After the defeat at El Alamein at the end of 1942, the Axis troops had to retreat to where they were finally defeated in the Tunisia Campaign in early 1943. Italy also suffered major setbacks on the Eastern Front as well. The Allied invasion of Sicily brought the war to the nation's very doorstep.[132] The Italian home front was also in bad shape as the Allied bombings were taking their toll. Factories all over Italy were brought to a virtual standstill due to a lack of raw materials, as well as coal and oil. Additionally, there was a chronic shortage of food, and what food was available was being sold at nearly confiscatory prices. Mussolini's once-ubiquitous propaganda machine lost its grip on the people; a large number of Italians turned to Vatican Radio or Radio London for more accurate news coverage. Discontent came to a head in March 1943 with a wave of labor strikes in the industrial north—the first large-scale strikes since 1925.[133] Also in March, some of the major factories in Milan and Turin stopped production to secure evacuation allowances for workers' families. The physical German presence in Italy had sharply turned public opinion against Mussolini; for example, when the Allies invaded Sicily, the majority of the public there welcomed them as liberators.[134]
Earlier in April 1943, Mussolini had begged Hitler to make a separate peace with Stalin and send German troops to the west to guard against an expected Allied invasion of Italy. Mussolini feared that with the losses in Tunisia and North Africa, the next logical step for Dwight Eisenhower's armies would be to come across the Mediterranean and attack the Italian peninsula. Within a few days of the Allied landings on Sicily in July 1943, it was obvious Mussolini's army was on the brink of collapse. This led Hitler to summon Mussolini to a meeting in northern Italy on 19 July 1943. By this time, Mussolini was so shaken from stress that he could no longer stand Hitler's boasting. His mood darkened further when that same day, the Allies bombed Rome—the first time that city had ever been the target of enemy bombing.[135]

Dismissal of Mussolini and appointment of Badoglio
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Italian radio statement announcing the dismissal of Mussolini and appointment of Badoglio, 25 July 1943.
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Some prominent members of Mussolini's government had turned against him by this point. Among them were Grandi and Ciano. With several of his colleagues close to revolt, Mussolini was forced to summon the Grand Council of Fascism on 24 July 1943: the first time that body had met since the start of the war. When he announced that the Germans were thinking of evacuating the south, Grandi launched a blistering attack on him.[132] Grandi moved a resolution asking the king to resume his full constitutional powers, in effect, a vote of no confidence in Mussolini. This motion carried by a 19–7 margin. Despite this sharp rebuke, Mussolini showed up for work the next day as usual. He allegedly viewed the Grand Council as merely an advisory body and did not think the vote would have any substantive effect.[133] That afternoon, he was summoned to the royal palace by King Victor Emmanuel III, who had been planning to oust Mussolini earlier. When Mussolini tried to tell the king about the meeting, Victor Emmanuel cut him off and told him that he was being replaced by Marshal Pietro Badoglio.[133] After Mussolini left the palace, he was arrested by Carabinieri on the king's orders.[136]


Mussolini rescued by German troops from his prison in Campo Imperatore on 12 September 1943.
By this time, discontent with Mussolini was such that when the news of his downfall was announced on the radio, there was no resistance.[133] In an effort to conceal his location from the Germans, Mussolini was moved around the country before being sent to Campo Imperatore, a mountain resort in Abruzzo where he was completely isolated.[132] Given the large Nazi presence in Italy, Badoglio announced that "the war continues at the side of our Germanic ally" in the hopes that chaos and Nazi retaliation against civilians could be avoided.[132] Even as Badoglio was keeping up the appearance of loyalty to the Axis, he dissolved the Fascist Party two days after taking over. Also, his government was negotiating an Armistice with the Allies, which was signed on 3 September 1943. Its announcement five days later threw Italy into chaos, a civil war of sorts. Badoglio and the king fled Rome, leaving the Italian Army without orders. Immediately after the Italian surrender was announced, German troops started taking over the Italian Peninsula by force as part of Operation Achse and occupied Rome on 10 September.[137] After a period of anarchy, Italy finally declared war on Nazi Germany on 13 October 1943 from Malta; thousands of troops were supplied to fight against the Germans, others refused to switch sides and had joined the Germans. The Badoglio government held a social truce with the leftist partisans for the sake of Italy and to rid the land of the Nazis.[138]
Italian Social Republic
Main article: Italian Social Republic
Only two months after Mussolini had been dismissed and arrested, he was rescued from his prison at the Hotel Campo Imperatore in the Gran Sasso raid by a special Fallschirmjäger unit on 12 September 1943; present was Otto Skorzeny.[136] The rescue saved Mussolini from being turned over to the Allies, as per the armistice.[138] Hitler had made plans to arrest the king, Crown Prince Umberto, Badoglio, and the rest of the government and restore Mussolini to power in Rome, but the government's escape south likely foiled those plans.[135]


A rain-soaked Benito Mussolini reviewing adolescent soldiers in northern Italy, late 1944
Three days following his rescue in the Gran Sasso raid, Mussolini was taken to Germany for a meeting with Hitler in Rastenberg at his East Prussian headquarters. Despite public professions of support, Hitler was clearly shocked by Mussolini's disheveled and haggard appearance as well as his unwillingness to go after the men in Rome who overthrew him. Feeling that he had to do what he could to blunt the edges of Nazi repression, Mussolini agreed to set up a new regime, the Italian Social Republic,[132] informally known as the Salò Republic because of its administration from the town of Salò where he settled in just 11 days after his rescue by the Germans. Mussolini's new regime faced numerous territorial losses: in addition to losing the Italian lands held by the Allies and Badoglio's government, the provinces of Bolzano, Belluno and Trento were placed under German administration in the Operational Zone of the Alpine Foothills, while the provinces of Udine, Gorizia, Trieste, Pola (now Pula), Fiume (now Rijeka) and Ljubljana (Lubiana) were incorporated into the German Operational Zone of the Adriatic Littoral.[139]


Mussolini inspecting fortifications, 1944
In addition, the German army occupied the Dalmatian provinces of Split (Spalato) and Kotor (Cattaro), which were subsequently annexed by the Croatian fascist regime. Italy's gains in Greece and Albania were also lost to Germany, with the exception of the Italian Aegean Islands, which remained nominally under RSI rule.[140] Mussolini opposed any territorial reductions of the Italian state and told his associates "I am not here to renounce even a square meter of state territory. We will go back to war for this. And we will rebel against anyone for this. Where the Italian flag flew, the Italian flag will return. And where it has not been lowered, now that I am here, no one will have it lowered. I have said these things to the Führer".[141]
For two years, Mussolini lived in Gargnano on Lake Garda in Lombardy. Although he insisted in public that he was in full control, he knew that he was little more than a puppet ruler under the protection of his German liberators—for all intents and purposes, the Gauleiter of Lombardy.[135] After yielding to pressures from Hitler and the remaining loyal fascists who formed the government of the Republic of Salo, Mussolini helped orchestrate a series of executions of some of the fascist leaders who had betrayed him at the last meeting of the Fascist Grand Council. One of those executed was his son-in-law, Galeazzo Ciano. As Head of State and Minister of Foreign Affairs for the Italian Social Republic, Mussolini used much of his time to write his memoirs. Along with his autobiographical writings of 1928, these writings would be combined and published by Da Capo Press as My Rise and Fall. In an interview in January 1945, a few months before he was captured and executed by Italian anti-fascist partisans, he stated flatly: "Seven years ago, I was an interesting person. Now, I am little more than a corpse." He continued:
“ Yes, madam, I am finished. My star has fallen. I have no fight left in me. I work and I try, yet know that all is but a farce ... I await the end of the tragedy and – strangely detached from everything – I do not feel any more an actor. I feel I am the last of spectators. ”
—Benito Mussolini, interviewed in early 1945 by Madeleine Mollier.[142]
Death



Cross marking the place in Mezzegra where Mussolini was shot.
File:Execution of Mussolini (1945).ogg

American newsreel coverage of the death of Mussolini in 1945
Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were stopped by communist partisans Valerio and Bellini and identified by the Political Commissar of the partisans' 52nd Garibaldi Brigade, Urbano Lazzaro, on 27 April 1945, near the village of Dongo (Lake Como), as they headed for Switzerland to board a plane to escape to Spain. During this time Claretta's brother posed as a Spanish consul.[143] After several unsuccessful attempts to take them to Como they were brought to Mezzegra. They spent their last night in the house of the De Maria family.
The next day, Mussolini and Petacci were both summarily shot, along with most of the members of their 15-man train, primarily ministers and officials of the Italian Social Republic. The shootings took place in the small village of Giulino di Mezzegra. According to the official version of events, the shootings were conducted by Colonnello Valerio, whose real name was Walter Audisio. Audisio was the communist partisan commander who was reportedly given the order to kill Mussolini by the National Liberation Committee. When Audisio entered the room where Mussolini and the other fascists were being held, he reportedly announced, "I have come to rescue you! ... Do you have any weapons?" He then had them loaded into transports and driven a short distance. Audisio ordered, "Get down"; Petacci hugged Mussolini and refused to move away from him when they were taken to an empty space. Shots were fired and Petacci fell down. Just then Mussolini opened his jacket and screamed, "Shoot me in the chest!" Audisio complied and shot him in the chest. Mussolini fell but did not die and was breathing heavily. Audisio went near and he fired one more bullet in his chest. The other members of Mussolini's entourage were also shot by firing squad later that same day towards nightfall.
Mussolini's body
On 29 April 1945, the bodies of Mussolini, Petacci, and the other executed Fascists were loaded into a moving van and trucked south to Milan. There, at 3:00 am, they were dumped on the ground in the old Piazzale Loreto. The piazza had been renamed "Piazza Quindici Martiri" in honor of 15 anti-Fascists recently executed there.[144]


The dead body of Mussolini (second from left) next to Petacci (middle) and other executed fascists in Piazzale Loreto, Milan, 1945
After being shot, kicked, and spat upon, the bodies were hung upside down on Meat hooks from the roof of an Esso gas station.[145] The bodies were then stoned by civilians from below. This was done both to discourage any Fascists from continuing the fight and as an act of revenge for the hanging of many partisans in the same place by Axis authorities. The corpse of the deposed leader became subject to ridicule and abuse. Fascist loyalist Achille Starace was captured and sentenced to death and then taken to the Piazzale Loreto and shown the body of Mussolini. Starace, who once said of Mussolini "He is a god,"[146] saluted what was left of his leader just before he was shot. The body of Starace was subsequently hung up next to the body of Mussolini.
After his death and the display of his corpse in Milan, Mussolini was buried in an unmarked grave in the Musocco cemetery, to the north of the city. On Easter Sunday 1946 his body was located and dug up by Domenico Leccisi and two other neo-Fascists.


Tomb of Mussolini in the family crypt in the cemetery of Predappio.
On the loose for months—and a cause of great anxiety to the new Italian democracy—the Duce's body was finally "recaptured" in August, hidden in a small trunk at the Certosa di Pavia, just outside Milan. Two Fransciscan brothers were subsequently charged with concealing the corpse, though it was discovered on further investigation that it had been constantly on the move. Unsure what to do, the authorities held the remains in a kind of political limbo for 10 years, before agreeing to allow them to be re-interred at Predappio in Romagna, his birthplace.
Leccisi, a fascist deputy, went on to write his autobiography, With Mussolini Before and After Piazzale Loreto. Adone Zoli, the prime minister of the day, contacted Donna Rachele, the former dictator's widow, to tell her he was returning the remains, as he needed the support of the far-right in parliament, including Leccisi himself. In Predappio the dictator was buried in a crypt (the only posthumous honor granted to Mussolini). His tomb is flanked by marble fasces, and a large idealized marble bust of him is above the tomb.[147]
Personal life

Mussolini was first married to Ida Dalser in Trento in 1914. The couple had a son one year later and named him Benito Albino Mussolini. In December 1915, Mussolini married Rachele Guidi, his mistress since 1910, and with his following political ascendency the information about his first marriage was suppressed and both his first wife and son were later persecuted.[49] With Rachele, Mussolini had two daughters, Edda (1910–1995) and Anna Maria (born 3 September 1929, Forlì, Villa Carpena – died 25 April 1968, Rome), married in Ravenna on 11 June 1960 to Nando Pucci Negri; three sons Vittorio (1916–1997), Bruno (1918–1941), and Romano (1927–2006). Mussolini had several mistresses, among them Margherita Sarfatti and his final companion, Clara Petacci. Mussolini had many brief sexual encounters with female supporters, as reported by his biographer Nicholas Farrell.[148]
Religious beliefs
Atheism and anti-clericalism
Mussolini was raised by a devoutly Catholic mother[149] and an anti-clerical father.[150] His mother Rosa had him baptized into the Roman Catholic Church, and took her children to services every Sunday. His father never attended.[149] Mussolini regarded his time at a religious boarding school as punishment, compared the experience to hell, and "once refused to go to morning Mass and had to be dragged there by force."[151]
Mussolini would become anti-clerical like his father. As a young man, he "proclaimed himself to be an atheist and several times tried to shock an audience by calling on God to strike him dead."[150] He denounced socialists who were tolerant of religion, or who had their children baptized. He believed that science had proven there was no God, and that the historical Jesus was ignorant and mad. He considered religion a disease of the psyche, and accused Christianity of promoting resignation and cowardice.[150]
Mussolini was an admirer of Friedrich Nietzsche. According to Denis Mack Smith, "In Nietzsche he found justification for his crusade against the Christian virtues of humility, resignation, charity, and goodness."[152] He valued Nietzsche's concept of the superman, "The supreme egoist who defied both God and the masses, who despised egalitarianism and democracy, who believed in the weakest going to the wall and pushing them if they did not go fast enough."[152] On his 60th birthday, Mussolini received a gift from Hitler of a complete twenty-four volume set of the works of Nietzsche.[153]
Mussolini made vitriolic attacks against Christianity and the Catholic Church, which he accompanied with provocative and blasphemous remarks about the consecrated host, and about a love affair between Christ and Mary Magdalene.[154] He believed that socialists who were Christian or who accepted religious marriage should be expelled from the party. He denounced the Catholic Church for "its authoritarianism and refusal to allow freedom of thought ..." Mussolini's newspaper, La Lotta di Classe, reportedly had an anti-Christian editorial stance.[154]
Lateran Pact
Despite making such attacks, Mussolini tried to win popular support by appeasing the Catholic majority in Italy. In 1924, Mussolini saw that three of his children were given communion. In 1925, he had a priest perform a religious marriage ceremony for himself and his wife Rachele, whom he had married in a civil ceremony 10 years earlier.[155] On 11 February 1929, he signed a concordat and treaty with the Roman Catholic Church.[156] Under the Lateran Pact, Vatican City was granted independent statehood and placed under Church law—rather than Italian law—and the Catholic religion was recognized as Italy's state religion.[157] The Church also regained authority over marriage, Catholicism could be taught in all secondary schools, birth control and freemasonry were banned, and the clergy received subsidies from the state, and was exempted from taxation.[158][159] Pope Pius XI praised Mussolini, and the official Catholic newspaper pronounced "Italy has been given back to God and God to Italy."[157]
After this conciliation, he claimed the Church was subordinate to the State, and "referred to Catholicism as, in origin, a minor sect that had spread beyond Palestine only because grafted onto the organization of the Roman empire."[156] After the concordat, "he confiscated more issues of Catholic newspapers in the next three months than in the previous seven years."[156] Mussolini reportedly came close to being excommunicated from the Catholic Church around this time.[156]
Mussolini publicly reconciled with the Pope Pius XI in 1932, but "took care to exclude from the newspapers any photography of himself kneeling or showing deference to the Pope."[156] He wanted to persuade Catholics that "[f]ascism was Catholic and he himself a believer who spent some of each day in prayer ..."[156] The Pope began referring to Mussolini as "a man sent by Providence."[154][156] Despite Mussolini's efforts to appear pious, by order of his party, pronouns referring to him "had to be capitalized like those referring to God ..."[156]
In 1938 Mussolini began reasserting his anti-clericalism. He would sometimes refer to himself as an "outright disbeliever," and once told his cabinet that "Islam was perhaps a more effective religion than Christianity" and that the "papacy was a malignant tumor in the body of Italy and must 'be rooted out once and for all', because there was no room in Rome for both the Pope and himself."[160] He publicly backed down from these anti-clerical statements, but continued making similar statements in private.
After his fall from power in 1943, Mussolini began speaking "more about God and the obligations of conscience", although "he still had little use for the priests and sacraments of the Church,".[161] He also began drawing parallels between himself and Jesus Christ.[161] Mussolini's widow, Rachele, stated that her husband had remained "basically irreligious until the later years of his life.[162] Mussolini was given a Catholic funeral in 1957.[163]
Legacy

Mussolini was survived by his wife, Rachele Mussolini, two sons, Vittorio and Romano Mussolini, and his daughters Edda, the widow of Count Ciano, and Anna Maria. A third son, Bruno, was killed in an air accident while flying a P108 bomber on a test mission, on 7 August 1941.[164] His oldest son, Benito Albino Mussolini, from his marriage with Ida Dalser, was ordered to stop declaring that Mussolini was his father and in 1935 forcibly committed to an asylum in Milan, where he was murdered on 26 August 1942 after repeated coma-inducing injections.[49] Actress Sophia Loren's sister, Anna Maria Scicolone, was formerly married to Romano Mussolini, Mussolini's son. Mussolini's granddaughter Alessandra Mussolini was a member of the European Parliament for the far right party Alternativa Sociale and currently serves in the Chamber of Deputies as a member of the ruling People of Freedom.
Mussolini's National Fascist Party was banned in the postwar Constitution of Italy, but a number of successor neo-fascist parties emerged to carry on its legacy. Historically, the strongest neo-fascist party was the Italian Social Movement (Movimento Sociale Italiano), which was declared dissolved in 1995 and replaced by the National Alliance, which distanced itself from Fascism (its leader Gianfranco Fini once declared that Fascism was "an absolute evil"). These parties were united under Silvio Berlusconi's House of Freedoms coalition and in 2009 a broad based group of right-wing parties, including Gianfranco Fini's National Alliance and Alessandra Mussolini's Azione Sociale, were merged to create The People of Freedom party led by Prime Minister Berlusconi.
In popular culture



American wartime comic advertising the government sale of low-return War Bonds by showing Mussolini, Hitler and Hirohito beaten by superheroes
Charlie Chaplin's 1940 film The Great Dictator satirizes Mussolini as "Benzino Napaloni", portrayed by Jack Oakie. In the Three Stooges' I'll Never Heil Again, Cy Schindell plays "Chizzolini", from the then topical insult of "chisler".
More serious biographical depictions include a look at the last few days of Mussolini's life in Carlo Lizzani's movie Mussolini: Ultimo atto (Mussolini: The last act, 1974) starring Rod Steiger and George C. Scott's portrayal in the 1985 television mini-series Mussolini: The Untold Story.
Another 1985 movie was Mussolini and I, in which Bob Hoskins plays the dictator (with Susan Sarandon as his daughter Edda and Anthony Hopkins as Count Ciano). Actor Antonio Banderas also played the title role in Benito in 1993, which covered his life from his school teacher days to the beginning of World War I, before his rise as dictator. Mussolini is also depicted in the films Tea with Mussolini, Lion of the Desert (also with Steiger) and the award-winning Italian film Vincere.
A Canadian television miniseries named "Il Duce Canadese", aka Il duce canadese: Le Mussolini canadien aired on CBC Television in 2004.
A comic strip ran in the British comic The Beano entitled Musso the Wop. This strip, which ran from 1940 to 1943, featured Mussolini as an arrogant buffoon.[165]
"Il Duce" is the nickname of a character played by actor Billy Connolly in the movie The Boondock Saints.
"Il Duce" is a 1985 7" single by noise rock band Big Black.
""Il Duce" Mussolini is the protagonist of Marco Bellocchio's movie Vincere!"HERO DYD