Stalin: historical overview and political impact

Stalin's Use Of Charisma In His Taking Control Of Power In The Soviet Union

According to the historian Hiroaki Kuromiya, Joseph Stalin's tyrannical rule of the Soviet Union was not simply a horrifying episode in the history of the world, but also a great surprise to those officials who knew Stalin as a young man, during Lenin's rule of Russia. During the expansion of Lenin's control over the Soviet empire, Stalin was regarded as a nonentity, neither particularly intelligent nor a person of political might or consequence. Yet this initially obscure man orchestrated one of the bloodiest rules in the modern history of the world, through manipulation, cunning, and behind -- the scenes deceit. After solidifying his power, all of those around Stalin who still survived quaked in fear of Stalin's mighty authority. Ordinary Soviets felt forced to worship Stalin's image, lest they be taken away at night, and never return.

Stalin's charisma was not a populist charisma. He was not a great speaker or leader in the way that he delivered addresses to the masses or to the world. After he gained control, he circulated fatherly images of himself to the world and to the peasants, but it was not through cultivating his image that he secured control over the Russian seat of government. Nor did many party leaders respect him. In fact, he was mocked for his Georgian, or non-Moscow way of speaking Russian before he came to power. However, by wielding a system of political terror and party politicking, playing enemies against one another, he was able to take control of the Soviet Union from behind the scenes and make his word the law of the land.

Stalin did not use his charisma to bolster the legal system. Rather he used the arms of the state to enforce his worship as a near demigod. The law had little authority and history in the Soviet Union, as the nation had rapidly transitioned from a monarchy to an officially proletarian state, with little chance for a culture of law to take root in either the hearts of the people or in the government administration of the territory. The custom was to revere authority, rather than to respect the rights of the individual or to assume one's freedoms would be protected by the judicial system. Kangaroo courts under Stalin were the norm. Officially, in word alone, the freedoms of the individual were legally protected in the U.S.S.R. But this was a legal fiction.

Terror was the real ultimate mechanism of enforcing the will of the government, not a commandeered respect through popular charisma. People were afraid of being labeled traitors, anti-communists, or spies, so the did all they could to bow to Stalin's will. This was not true simply of citizens, but member of the ruling elite. Everyone knew that Stalin had no compunction about sending even his friends to death, if it could further solidify his hold upon power.