Joseph Stalin: Life, leadership, and impact on Soviet history

Joseph Stalin charismatic leader has the power to change history. He uses his charm and convincing talent to capture people's devotion and attention and make them pursue his goals and interests. Thus he manages to give a twist, sometimes radical, to a situation in a determined era or circumstance. Usually charismatic leaders have a chance to grow and shine in a crisis situation, when society needs a change.

Stalin is considered a charismatic leader for his time. He knew how to inculcate ideas to a population, and knew how to make radical changes, that mostly worked in his favor. He had the capacity to keep his influence even after his own death, as he managed so well to impose his vision into people's minds that his followers would share his points-of-view for many generations. He took advantage of the situation of crisis to achieve power. The need for change in his society was the key to find a willing team ready to follow and promote his ideas.

When Stalin achieved power he was favored with the unstable situation his country was going through. Although he was not the first ruler that took control of Russia after the fall of the monarchy, but mostly continued ideas that Lenin had already began to develop. However the country still needed a long way to fully recover and people were still confused about their future, which helped him gain power by blinding his followers with optimistic promises and gaining their trust with new ideas for the future reconstruction of Russia. As many charismatic leaders proceed, Stalin convinced the citizens into sharing his goals and ambitions, but systematically eliminated from his way the opposition, remaining with more and more power to control the situation.

However, most of this convincing was achieved with force, as he used as great deal of fear, threatening and punishing to have the community on his side, not only by controlling their own ideas, but by using manipulation and fear in order to restrain those that might have opposed his doctrine.

The ideas that he promoted were those of a flourishing new era for Russia that will help them recover from the disasters caused by the tsarist and the wars of the turn of the century. They intended to turn the country into a great political and economical power that would match and, eventually, pass the Western countries that at the time dominated the world. Their competition was not only with the rest of Europe but with the United States as well. In order to achieve this Stalin needed extra devoted work from his people. He created new strategies to improve the industrial development of the country. To control such a massive population Stalin used clever manipulation, teaching children from school age to worship his image, devote themselves to the communist party and turning them away from the capitalist ideas, by shutting the country away from any foreign influence.

Most of this manipulation was based on fear, as he used very hard punishment for those that opposed him or were even suspects of rebelling against his ideas. Almost every family in Russia had at least one member that had been arrested or persecuted for anti-communist ideas.