was Joseph Stalin a mastermind who created the circumstances of his time?
July 21, 2010 by Socials Mastermind
Filed under social mastermind
or was he a product of the social+ cultural circumstances of his time? Once your in the company of others (by your own will), then BANG!, sacrifice your inner madness, and come off as a quiet little boy. In reality, I’m quite a party animal. I’d rather enjoy myself than enjoy myself to a lesser degree in the company of others.
He was not a mastermind, he was a brutal opportunist.
Stalin was a master manipulator. Even as a boy at the Seminary school in Tiflis (now Tbilisi) he organised his classmates into gangs. During the October Revolution he was almost invisible, and he was given fairly minor posts in the new government. But he used these minor posts to build up his support and to corrode the support for his chief rival – Trotsky.
The post which would become the most important for Stalin was thought of by Lenin and the Politburo to be fairly insignificant was that of General Secretary of the Communist Party. It was not a governmental post and it was thought that it would keep Stalin out of governmental business. Stalin used the position to fill posts with his supporters and to remove from office those whose loyalty he was unsure of.
When Lenin died he waited – he allowed all his colleagues in the Politburo to propose policies. Stalin then allied himself with those who opposed Trotsky – ganging up on Trotsky to expel him from the party and eventually the country. He then used the same tactic – patience and listening to others to see who was opposing other potential rivals – and ganging up on them destroying them. By this method he was able, by 1928, to gather all the reins of power into his hands.
So Stalin was a mastermind who created the circumstances of his time. He played the rather poor hand given to him by Lenin to claw his way to the top of the party within about 6 years.
See:
Stalin, A Biography – Robert Service