Joseph Stalin
Soviet General Secretary 1922–1953, leader of the Soviet Union through WWII
Also known as: Stalin, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin
Joseph Stalin (1878–1953) was General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death, and the dominant figure of Quigley's twentieth-century Russian narrative. Quigley treats his ascendancy as the substitution of "Russian nationalist victory over Lenin's more Western rationalism" (T&H 105) for the original Bolshevik project, and the personality through whom the Soviet half of Tragedy and Hope is staged.
Consolidation of power
Quigley sketches Stalin's rise through the post-1924 succession struggle as the victory of the apparatus over the theorists. The contest "developed into a struggle of Stalin against Trotsky and, finally, of Stalin against the rest. By 1927 Stalin had won a decisive victory over Trotsky and all opposition. This victory was due very largely to his ability to control the administrative machinery of the party behind the scenes and to the reluctance of his opponents, especially Trotsky, to struggle for power" (T&H 404). The general framework Quigley applies to the Soviet trajectory — Marx, Lenin's Bolshevik triumph over the Mensheviks, then "Stalin's Russian nationalist victory over Lenin's more Western rationalism" (T&H 105) — places Stalin as the third inflection in the ideological substitution by which the Soviet Union became a national-imperial rather than internationalist project.
Diplomatic and historical placement
On the eve of the Second World War, Quigley records in The Anglo-American Establishment that Winston Churchill "in the middle of the year was begging him, at All Souls, to meet Stalin face to face in order to get an alliance" (AAE 246) — placing Stalin at the center of the failed alliance diplomacy of 1939. The horrors of his rule — "Stalin's slave-labor units" alongside "the horrors of Hitler's concentration camps" (T&H 43) — become Quigley's standard reference for the totalitarianism that the 20th century left behind. In the Weapons Systems and Political Stability essays Stalin appears as a modern analogue to ancient autocrats, illustrating Quigley's claim that exhausted populations "like the Spaniards after Franco's victory" will accept "anyone who would put a stop to the violence" (WS 441–442).
Cited in
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 43 Quigley
The horrors of Hitler's concentration camps and of Stalin's slave-labor units are chiefly responsible for this change.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 105 Quigley
Leninist Bolshevik triumph over the Mensheviks and later by Stalin's Russian nationalist victory over Lenin's more Western rationalism.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 404 Quigley
A struggle of Stalin against Trotsky and, finally, of Stalin against the rest. By 1927 Stalin had won a decisive victory over Trotsky and all opposition.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 246 Quigley
Churchill in the middle of the year was begging him, at All Souls, to meet Stalin face to face in order to get an alliance.
- weapons-systems-political-stability · p. 441 Quigley
Roman citizens of all classes were worn out by more than a generation of civil war, violence, and bloodshed, and like the Spaniards after Franco's victory, were prepared to accept as ruler anyone who would put a stop to the violence.