Tales Of An Ironical And Misrepresented Historical Figure-By Harsha Sankar
Dear Citizen, September 2008
Written is a story about an ironical and misrepresented historical figure. Born in the Georgian province of Imperial Russia, he was of Ossete stock. His father, a drunken shoemaker, and his mother were grandchildren of serfs. He was nick-named Soso.
Soso suffered from smallpox. This left him pockmarked and his limbs disfigured. At thirteen he learned Russian and he excelled in the church choir. His favourite game was “War Against Russia”.
Three years after enrolling in the seminary, he was expelled for propagating Marxism. He then joined a Georgian separatist Menshevik group. An effective organizer of worker strikes and meetings, he assisted in coordinating demonstrations. This attracted the attention of exiled Nikolai Lenin and the Tsarist Secret police. For the next 15 years he would either be a fugitive or harshly imprisoned and exiled. During that time, he was expelled from the Mensheviks, joined Lenin’s hardline Bolsheviks, and later co-founded the newspaper Pravda. He changed his name five more times to elude capture. The name he eventually settled on resembled in Russian his birth name.
Freed by the overthrow of the tsar, he would play a vital role in overthrowing the democratic, socialist Mensheviks just eight months later. As a general in the Russian Civil War, he successfully defended Tsaritsyn against the “Whites” and other troops from 14 “Capitalist” nations. That city later bore his name.
After the extremely brutal war, the former priest candidate became general Secretary of the Bolshevik, now called Communist, Party. After Lenin’s death a massive power struggle began and in 1929, he became the unofficial supreme dictator. His gradual rise to power was built on the desires of many to see the new nation stay out of foreign rebel movements and also become a military and industrial power. The man who had condemned Tsarist autocracy justified his. In his view, an indisputable leader must exist for survival of the communist regime against “western Imperialist” powers and fate mandated that he fit that role.
The one-time champion of workers’ and farm labor rights began a taxation and land control process in Ukraine. Four million died of starvation for not complying and nearly all their land was seized. The head of State, the grandson of serfs, also began the biggest enslavement in history. Tens of millions of actual or suspected opponents, many of whom skilled, were sent to slave labor factories.
When the Nazis rose to power, the Soviet regime’s fears were realized. The Nazi doctrine entailed the destruction of “Judaized Communism” and the colonization of Slavic Eastern Europe. The dictator used press glorification and terror to greatly accelerate technological advancement and industrial production. To modernize the military and eliminate growing dissent, his spy network planted false information with Nazi spies that detailed the Red Army’s plot to overthrow the government. So began the Great Terror of 1938. Hundreds of thousands were secretly executed and millions more were enslaved. Yet the deceitful, crafty manipulator had most Soviets convinced he ended the purges others caused.
In June 1941, Germany and allies launched a highly trained and equipped four-million man invasion. The Georgian appealed to Russian heritage for inspiration and motivation. Despite three-fifths of the people falling under Nazi occupation, the Red Army repelled the invaders. Eighty percent of German military killed died on the “Russian Front”.
With Germany defeated, the hardly seen and rarely heard leader focused on a new enemy, the United States of America. A new wave of American leadership emerged which was very hostile to communism. The Soviet ascetic, repressing the people more ruthlessly than ever, again presided over the impossible. The totalitarian State developed atomic weapons, jet fighters, long range bombers, and recovered its manufacturing capabilities. The once “land of peasants” was now a superpower.
Its leader also evolved.The egalitarian ideologue and populist Asiatic had fully germinated into an inhumane, practical, and the most powerful Russian Nationalist and Pan-Slavic proponent ever. Yet did all the hardships and triumphs he and Russia experienced breed an omnipotent yet justifiably paranoid sensation that would possibly seal his doom? In the “Doctors Plot” he asserted that Zionist Jews, with CIA and British intelligence, had conspired with Jewish doctors to poison him and other high-ranking officials. Six weeks after extensive and irrational plans to send nearly all ethnic Jews to the slave gulags were made, the “new tsar” was dead.
Soundly denounced by his own party, his successor and chief detractor, N.Khrutschev,
summarized him best by stating “He fought barbarism with barbarism, but he was a great leader”.
This titan was born Iossif V. Djugashvili “Son of iron”. The World would know him by another name – Joseph Stalin – “Man of Steel”.
Harsha Sankar
908 Valley Ridge Road
Covington, Viginia 24426.
Written is a story about an ironical and misrepresented historical figure. Born in the Georgian province of Imperial Russia, he was of Ossete stock. His father, a drunken shoemaker, and his mother were grandchildren of serfs. He was nick-named Soso.
Soso suffered from smallpox. This left him pockmarked and his limbs disfigured. At thirteen he learned Russian and he excelled in the church choir. His favourite game was “War Against Russia”.
Three years after enrolling in the seminary, he was expelled for propagating Marxism. He then joined a Georgian separatist Menshevik group. An effective organizer of worker strikes and meetings, he assisted in coordinating demonstrations. This attracted the attention of exiled Nikolai Lenin and the Tsarist Secret police. For the next 15 years he would either be a fugitive or harshly imprisoned and exiled. During that time, he was expelled from the Mensheviks, joined Lenin’s hardline Bolsheviks, and later co-founded the newspaper Pravda. He changed his name five more times to elude capture. The name he eventually settled on resembled in Russian his birth name.
Freed by the overthrow of the tsar, he would play a vital role in overthrowing the democratic, socialist Mensheviks just eight months later. As a general in the Russian Civil War, he successfully defended Tsaritsyn against the “Whites” and other troops from 14 “Capitalist” nations. That city later bore his name.
After the extremely brutal war, the former priest candidate became general Secretary of the Bolshevik, now called Communist, Party. After Lenin’s death a massive power struggle began and in 1929, he became the unofficial supreme dictator. His gradual rise to power was built on the desires of many to see the new nation stay out of foreign rebel movements and also become a military and industrial power. The man who had condemned Tsarist autocracy justified his. In his view, an indisputable leader must exist for survival of the communist regime against “western Imperialist” powers and fate mandated that he fit that role.
The one-time champion of workers’ and farm labor rights began a taxation and land control process in Ukraine. Four million died of starvation for not complying and nearly all their land was seized. The head of State, the grandson of serfs, also began the biggest enslavement in history. Tens of millions of actual or suspected opponents, many of whom skilled, were sent to slave labor factories.
When the Nazis rose to power, the Soviet regime’s fears were realized. The Nazi doctrine entailed the destruction of “Judaized Communism” and the colonization of Slavic Eastern Europe. The dictator used press glorification and terror to greatly accelerate technological advancement and industrial production. To modernize the military and eliminate growing dissent, his spy network planted false information with Nazi spies that detailed the Red Army’s plot to overthrow the government. So began the Great Terror of 1938. Hundreds of thousands were secretly executed and millions more were enslaved. Yet the deceitful, crafty manipulator had most Soviets convinced he ended the purges others caused.
In June 1941, Germany and allies launched a highly trained and equipped four-million man invasion. The Georgian appealed to Russian heritage for inspiration and motivation. Despite three-fifths of the people falling under Nazi occupation, the Red Army repelled the invaders. Eighty percent of German military killed died on the “Russian Front”.
With Germany defeated, the hardly seen and rarely heard leader focused on a new enemy, the United States of America. A new wave of American leadership emerged which was very hostile to communism. The Soviet ascetic, repressing the people more ruthlessly than ever, again presided over the impossible. The totalitarian State developed atomic weapons, jet fighters, long range bombers, and recovered its manufacturing capabilities. The once “land of peasants” was now a superpower.
Its leader also evolved.The egalitarian ideologue and populist Asiatic had fully germinated into an inhumane, practical, and the most powerful Russian Nationalist and Pan-Slavic proponent ever. Yet did all the hardships and triumphs he and Russia experienced breed an omnipotent yet justifiably paranoid sensation that would possibly seal his doom? In the “Doctors Plot” he asserted that Zionist Jews, with CIA and British intelligence, had conspired with Jewish doctors to poison him and other high-ranking officials. Six weeks after extensive and irrational plans to send nearly all ethnic Jews to the slave gulags were made, the “new tsar” was dead.
Soundly denounced by his own party, his successor and chief detractor, N.Khrutschev,
summarized him best by stating “He fought barbarism with barbarism, but he was a great leader”.
This titan was born Iossif V. Djugashvili “Son of iron”. The World would know him by another name – Joseph Stalin – “Man of Steel”.
Harsha Sankar
908 Valley Ridge Road
Covington, Viginia 24426.
posted by Harsha Sankar at 5:28 AM
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