Joseph Stalin

He had the Soviet secret police, the NKVD do most of the dirty work.

Holy shit did the NKVD kill a lot of people.

According to their records, they executed 300,000 people in 1937.

The guy who ran the NKVD, Beria, got blamed for most of Stalin's crimes after Stalin died.

OP here, found this interesting clip, don't know if it's genuine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un5LpUl9quw

>>1861691
Can it be argued that the head of the NKVD actually ran the Soviet Union?

Well he was poisoned so in the end it didn't really matter.

>>1861681
Stalin rose through power by controlling the hiring and firing mechanism within the communist party. All middle level bureaucrats had to be approved by Stalin. Near the end of his life, Lenin recognized that Stalin could easily abuse this power, and tried to remove him, but died too soon to do so.

After Lenin's death, Stalin capitalized on distrust against the Trotskyist faction by forming a "right wing communist" faction. After this wing silenced Trotsky and other far left communists, Stalin focused on promoting party unity by quashing dissent on the right, which involved silencing many of his former allies against Trotsky.

By 1927, Stalin had come into informal control of the Soviet Union, a position he would retain for twenty-five years. In this period, Stalin constantly moved to crush any dissent in the name of revolutionary centralism. Constant criticism by advocates of a more democratic socialism led to the abolition of collective party leadership, thus establishing Stalin as unitary leader of the Soviet Union. His dictatorial centralism culminated in the horrifying mass purge of 1937, when essentially every founding member of the Soviet Union was tried and executed for "subversion". Their true crime was attempting to criticize Stalin and his philosophy, or even just holding enough power to trigger his paranoia.

>>1861681
He started by working as a clerk. He invited himself to Lenin's funeral and gave a eulogy. He didn't invite the people he was in competition with, especially Trotsky. This eulogy led to him becoming defacto ruler of the Soviet Union and he took out and deported everyone opposed to him. He had the NKVD and the army on his side to do his work. His propaganda was also very good and many people genuinely believed in the cause. He had informants and secret police so that people would be afraid to oppose him even in private.

>>1861728
No, not at all. Beria only killed people. He didn't make plans. That's like saying Himmler ran Nazi Germany.

>>1861681
Binge and purge. Set unrealistic goals, when they fail, blame it on the underlings. Kill underlings. Rinse, repeat as nessesary. NKVD was bad ass. If they even had a file on you, or your name,you were dead. Killed and moved millions of diffrent ethnicities to wipe out nationalistic tendencies that could challenge soviet rule.

>>1861728

>Can it be argued that the head of the NKVD actually ran the Soviet Union?

No, but he had a lot of loyalty for a hired gun.

Some historians like John Arch Getty even argue that Stalin wasn't the real cunt here, but more of a mediator between different factions.

Yezhov is more to blame.

File: Ezhov[1].png (157KB, 360x490px)

157KB, 360x490px

>>1862340

>A soviet secret police official under Joseph Stalin. He was head of the NKVD from 1936 to 1938, during the most deadly period of Stalin's Great Purge. His time in office is known as the "Yezhovshchina" (Russian: Eжoвщинa),[3] a term coined during the de-Stalinization campaign of the 1950s.[note 1] After presiding over mass arrests and executions during the Great Purge, Yezhov became a victim of it himself. He was arrested, confessed under torture to a range of anti-Soviet activity, and was executed in 1940. By the beginning of World War II, his status within the Soviet Union became that of a political unperson.

Laser-guided karma in action.

>>1862340
Lol. In 34, Stalins bro, Kirov was assinated. Stalin used this excuse like Hitler used the Reichstag fire. Stalin brought in Yezhov because he shared the same views. He even went as far as to ask others of Yezhov's health on one occasion, which NEVER happened. Stalin faced no internal opposition, which led him to believe all his oppenents had gone underground. Show trials then occured. 8 high ranking generals were killed, half of the red army generals would be killed, and out of about 140 party members, 98 were shot. All in all 50k party members were shot.

Yezhov was Stalins chosen man, his will was Stalins.

Well, he estabilished a worship on him. He was superior than everyone and condemns everyone that disagrees with him. Of course that this wasn´t enough, so he estabilshes a constitution (1936) that gives him more power. Stalin also promoted a "political closure", so this didnt allowed many "revolutionary" ideais inside CCCP. He did what Marx feared that would emerge after the Revolution, that was this threteaning burocracy in of the new system.

>>1862333
Or perhaps he's wondering why someone would shoot a man, before giving him a trial

>>1862323
Reductionist garbage