Early Life and Family Background
Joseph Stalin’s biography (1879–1953), the totalitarian dictator of the Soviet Union, raises the question: was he a ruthless mass murderer by nature or nurture? Or were there other factors that created this communist autocrat?
Joseph Stalin was born Josif Djugashvili to a Georgian peasant family within the Russian Empire. By the time the Russian Empire conquered Georgia in the early 1800s, the former kingdom was backward, with little industry, and rife with widespread banditry. Most peasants were poverty-stricken, illiterate, with little chance to advance their lot in life. Could this bleak region suggest nurture?
Childhood Trauma and Seminary Education
Stalin’s childhood was certainly filled with turmoil. His father was a drunken shoemaker who regularly beat Joseph and his mother. One of the few friends Stalin had noted in his memoirs that the future Soviet leader became “hard and heartless as his father … From childhood on… his thoughts of revenge became the aim to which everything was subordinated.” One could argue that nurture did have an impact on the future Soviet leader. Or was it nature? Did Stalin inherit his horrible behavioral characteristics from his father?
In contrast, Stalin’s mother was determined that her son should join the clergy, and she was able to enroll him at a theological seminary in Tiflis. Unfortunately, his experiences at the Orthodox seminary had the opposite effect on the future dictator. Although he received a good education, Stalin clashed with the priests. Many of the students bristled at the strict religious regime of the seminary education, which, in turn, caused the priests to be suspicious and monitor the students’ activities.
This would have only increased the future Soviet depot’s sense of paranoia and increased his tendency to conceal his true feelings and thoughts. Stalin’s daughter wrote that, “I am convinced that the seminary…played an immense role, setting my father’s character for the rest of his life, strengthening and intensifying inborn traits… that men were intolerant … deceiving… in order to hold them in obedience …they intrigued …[and] …lied…” Were the dictator’s negative experiences at the seminary, nurture? Stalin’s daughter did mention, “intensifying inborn traits.” Could this be nature?
The Karl Marx Influence on Stalin
While in the seminary, Stalin discovered the writing of Karl Marx. Historians point out that the Karl Marx influence on Stalin was powerful. Stalin was drawn to Marx’s arguments that capitalism was corrupt and would bounce from economic crisis to economic crisis. Class conflict was unavoidable, and the corrupt social order would be overthrown. The tone of class hatred and resentment that permeates Marx’s writings appealed to what was rapidly becoming the dark side of Stalin’s character.
Were the writings of Marx nurturing? Or did Marxist theory flip some type of psychological switch within Stalin, subsequently sending him down a sinister path? Either way, by 1899, the future dictator was expelled from the seminary, and his sole focus in life became that of a career revolutionary.
Revolutionary Agitation and Lenin
From 1900 to 1915, Joseph Stalin engaged as a revolutionary agitator, helping organize strikes and collaborating with other revolutionaries. The future Soviet leader also engaged in robbery to support revolutionary activity, while trying to dodge the Czarist secret police. Eventually, Stalin was exiled to Siberia several times. In 1915, Stalin was able to obtain some of the writings of Vladimir Lenin, which appealed to the revolutionaries. From that point forward, the future dictator of the Soviet Union would strive to join the Bolsheviks.
Geopolitical Context Before the Bolshevik Revolution, 1917
At this point, several external factors would begin to work in favor of the Russian revolutionaries. Although Czarist Russia was a huge country, economically, it was seriously backwards. The economy was dominated by a huge peasant base, which engaged in inefficient agriculture production. At the turn of the century, rapid industrialization created a pool of industrial workers who were alienated by their ill-treatment. Furthermore, the financial, business, and transportation infrastructures within the Empire were extremely inefficient. The chasm between the small group of elites that controlled political and economic power and the rest of the Empire was quite wide, and discontent was boiling beneath the surface. At this point in Russia, a metaphorical social-political gun was primed, and all that was needed was a spark.
The spark almost occurred in 1904, when the Empire of Japan suddenly attacked the Russian Empire. The Russo-Japanese War from 1904–1905 ended with the Russian Empire being humiliated by the isle nation. The short war caused economic chaos, and it sparked rebellion, which was brutally suppressed in 1905. Russian revolutionaries were caught flat-footed, and they could not exploit the chaos. The trigger on the metaphorical gun was pulled, but it was a misfire. Next time, there would not be a misfire. The chaos of the First World War would be the opportunity that allowed the Bolsheviks to seize power at the end of 1917.
World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution 1917
In 1914, the First World War broke out between the European powers, which included the Russian Empire. As with the Russo-Japanese War, the Russian Army performed poorly, and on the home front, economic chaos rocked the Empire’s economy. In February 1917, a cross section of Russian society forced the abdication of the Czar, Nicholas II. After ousting the czar, the Russian Provisional Government assumed power, but nothing improved.
The Bolsheviks were one of the many revolutionary groups involved with the Provisional Government, and they were certainly the most radical. The leader of the Bolsheviks, Vladimir Lenin, returned to Russia from exile in April 1917. Between November 6–7, 1917, the Bolshevik Revolution 1917 seized power in Russia. From this point forward, the Bolshevik power grab excluded all other groups from governance, monopolizing political and economic power.
Russian Civil War 1918–1922 and Stalin’s Role
The Bolshevik seizure of power plunged the former Czarist Empire into a bloody Russian Civil War, 1918-1922. The war and famine that followed killed well over nine million people. The Bolsheviks’ use of terror and mass murder, coupled with the disorganized nature of their opponents, paved the way for communist victory.
From this point forward, the Bolsheviks controlled Russia, and in 1922, most of what had been the former Czarist empire now became the United Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR). For Stalin’s part, he had been active during the Bolshevik seizure of power and the Russian Revolution, but he was by no means a key decision-maker. Lenin and other Bolsheviks were critical in winning the civil war and consolidating power. The future Soviet leader’s winning strategy lay in the fact that he made himself indispensable; he accepted any administrative task assigned to him. Stalin, the ultimate schemer, began consolidating power within the Soviet bureaucracy, described as the “organs of the state.”
Stalin’s Rise to Power
After the death of Lenin in 1924, Stalin’s path was clear to assume leadership of the USSR. As he consolidated power, the future Soviet leader cultivated a group of loyal supporters that understood their personal advancement, and possibly their survival, depended on unwavering support. They understood that Stalin’s talent lay in his instinctive grasp of how bureaucratic power could be transmuted into political power.
From this power base, he was able to launch the forced Collectivization in the Soviet Union, initiate the Stalin Great Terror, and fill the prison system (GULAG) with political prisoners. Stalin had no qualms about tens of millions dying because of his actions.
Stalin and the Great Terror
It could be argued that the dark nature of Stalin was already in place when he condemned millions to an early grave. By the 1930s, the Great Terror Stalin, also known as Stalin and the Great Terror, began. His purges eliminated rivals, intellectuals, and ordinary people, sending them to execution or slave labor camps.
The Debate: Nature vs. Nurture
So, was Stalin’s wicked character a product of nurture? He was abused as a child. His seminary education alienated him, while the Karl Marx influence on Stalin left an indelible mark. He approved of brutality during the Russian Civil War, 1918-1922 and built his power through Collectivization in the Soviet Union and the Stalin Great Terror.
Or was it nature? Did his cruelty come from within, intensified by circumstances?
Comparison with Hitler and the Nazis
In contrast, Adolf Hitler served in the German Army during World War One and experienced brutal frontline fighting for several years. The horrors of trench warfare shaped him, while Stalin never fought in a war firsthand. Hitler’s childhood was authoritarian but not abusive like Stalin’s. He failed as an artist and turned to politics.
Meanwhile, Nazi SS leaders like Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Himmler, architects of the Holocaust, had no traumatic childhoods or combat experience. Was rhetoric alone, like Nazi propaganda or Marxist ideology, enough to fuel mass murder?
To Sum It Up
When compared, were Stalin’s experiences similar or dissimilar to the Nazis’? Was there some profound flaw in his psychological makeup, or was he simply a product of his environment? Nature versus nurture, you decide.
