Robert Service - Stalin - A Biography

Rukhimovich, Moisei

Russia (post-1991): conditions; see also Soviet Union

Russian Bureau of Central Committee: differences in; Stalin admitted to; welcomes return of Lenin

Russian Empire: national question in; in First World War; popular unrest in; and sense of nationhood; see also Provisional Government

Russian language: honoured; Stalin’s views on

Russian Orthodox Church: attacked; maintains some autonomy; restrictions relaxed in war; post-war position

Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party: in Georgia; Iskra campaigns for; and ethnic considerations; Second Party Congress (Brussels and London, 1903); and popular unrest (1905); Third Party Congress (London, 1905); Fourth Party Congress (Stockholm, 1905); Fifth Party Congress (London, 1907); Bolshevik-Menshevik differences in; leaders return to Switzerland; membership numbers; Mensheviks excluded; new Central Committee formed

Russian Socialist Federal Republic

(RSFSR): Constitution; within Soviet federation; lacks own communist party; and Leningrad ambitions

Russians (ethnic): elevated; Stalin honours at war’s end

Russo-Japanese War (1904–5)

Rustaveli, Shota; Knight in the Panther’s Skin

Ryazanov, David

Rybin, A.I.

Rykov, Alexei: and Democratic State Conference; membership of Sovnarkom; Lenin proposes promoting; attacks Stalin; Stalin offers resignation to; supports Bukharin’s agrarian policy; Stalin proposes dismissing; Stalin vilifies; reprimanded; tried

Ryutin, Maremyan,

St Petersburg (sometime Petrograd; Leningrad): massacre (1905); Stalin operates in; renamed Petrograd; industrial unrest in (February 1917); Soviet; between February and October revolutions; protest demonstration (July 1917); in October Revolution; renamed Leningrad; NKVD purges in; Germans threaten and besiege; supposed conspiracy; local patriotism in

Sakhalin

Samoilov, F.

Saturn, Operation

Schmidt sisters: legacies to Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party

Schulenburg, Count Friedrich Werner von der

science: controlled by Stalin

‘scissors crisis’

Sebag-Montefiore, Simon

‘second front’

Serebryakov, Leonid

Sergeev, Artëm (Stalin’s adopted son)

Sergei, Acting Patriarch

Shakhty coal mine, Don Basin

Shamil (Islamist rebel)

Shaumyan, Stepan

Shepilov, D.T.

Shevchenko, Taras

Shlyapnikov, Alexander

Shneidorovich, Dr M.G.

Sholokhov, Mikhail

Shostakovich, Dmitri

show trials; in post-war eastern Europe

Shreider, A.

Shumyatski, Boris

Shvernik, Nikolai

Siberia: grain supplies from; see also Turukhansk District

Simonov, Konstantin

Siqueiros, David Alfaro

Sklarska Poreba, Poland

Skobelev, Mikhail

Skrypnik, Mykola

Slánsky, Rudolf

Slovakia: reparations to USSR

Smilga, Ivan

Smirnov, A.P.

Smirnov, Ivan

Smolny Institute, Petrograd

Smyrba, Hashim

Snesarev, Andrei

Sochi

Social-Federalists

socialism: as Marxist ideal

‘socialism in one country’

Socialist-Revolutionaries: ridicule Stalin; little appeal in Caucasus; leaders return to Switzerland; oppose Kerenski; and Democratic State Conference; support Provisional Government; walk out from Second Congress of Soviets; as potential rivals; arrested and sentenced

Sokolnikov, Grigori

Solomin, V.G.

Solvychegodsk

Sorge, Richard

Sotsial-Demokrat (newspaper)

Souvarine, Boris

Soviet Union: isolation; federal structure; title adopted (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics); and threat of outside intervention; and autonomous republics; economic development; modernity in; citizens’ rights in; Constitutions: (1924); (1936); and nationhood; political patronage and cliental groups; excluded from League of Nations; foreign policy; armaments production; USA recognises; non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany (1939); Winter War with Finland; Hitler plans to attack; Germans invade (Operation Barbarossa); German conquests and advance in; wartime scorched-earth policy; wartime economic organisation and production; Western Allies support for; wartime refugees in; national anthem; patriotism emphasised; Western Allies’ supplies to; victory over Germany; post-war power; human and material losses in war; post-war regime and repressions; devaluation and economic regeneration; student unrest in; post-war relations with Western Allies; and beginnings of Cold War; and Western containment policy; develops nuclear weapons; corruption and maladministration in; hostility to West; foreign influences excluded; reforms after Stalin’s death; collapse (1991); totalitarianism in; see also Russia (post-1991)

Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies (Petrograd)

soviets (councils): formed; as source of power

sovkhozes (collective farms)

Sovnarkom (Council of People’s Commissars): composition; Stalin’s role in; and national question; and Gosplan’s control of economy; redesignated Council of Ministers; see also Council of Ministers

Spain: Eurocommunism in

Spandaryan, Suren

Spanish Civil War

Spanish Communist Party

specialists: Stalin’s hostility to; tried; and Stakhanovite movement; Ordzhonikidze protects

Stakhanov, Alexei

Stakhanovites

STALIN, JOSEPH

CHARACTERISTICS: reputation and image; reading; mental state; cultivates conciliatory manner; vindictiveness; rebelliousness at seminary; isolation; speechmaking; physical bravery; liking for children; as thinker and theorist; need to dominate; uncouth manner; joking and mimicry; suspects conspiracies and plots; resentment and sense of being undervalued; impatience in Sovnarkom meetings; outfaces rivals in Party meetings; conspiratorial practices; leadership qualities; flirting; gives money to beggar; lacks interests outside politics; national identity; behaviour as ruler; mental processes and moral values; multifaceted nature; smoking; personal austerity; rivalry with Hitler; remoteness from public in war; manner with colleagues and subordinates; aloofness from post-war conditions; daily routine; intellectual interests; pride in Soviet achievements; unpredictability in old age

PERSONAL LIFE: birth date; official biography (1938); baptised; rumoured illicit ancestry; childhood and upbringing; smallpox as child; schooling; works in Tbilisi shoe factory; attitude to father; injured in accident with carriage; youth in Gori; adopts name Koba; witnesses hangings in Gori; attends Tiflis Spiritual Seminary; learns Russian; singing; knowledge of ancient Greek; early poetry in Georgian; leaves Tiflis Seminary; abandons religious faith; works at Physical Observatory in Tbilisi; dress; on run in Tbilisi; in Batumi; detained in prison; journalism and writings; exiles in Siberia; appearance; courtship and marriage to Ketevan; birth of children; and death of wife Ketevan; visits Berlin; attitude to Jews; begins to write in Russian; learns Esperanto; sexual conquests and illegitimate children; moves to Vologda; adopts pseudonym Stalin; escapes to St Petersburg; in Vienna; fishing; rejected for military service; returns to Petrograd (1917); in hiding with Alliluevs in Petrograd; shaves off Lenin’s beard and moustache; edits Rabochii put ; marriage to Nadezhda Allilueva; appendicitis; health problems and treatments; revisits Georgia (1921); abuses Krupskaya; Krupskaya softens attitude to; criticised for inadequate Russian; marriage relations; adopts Artëm Sergeev; diet; homes and family life; holidays; hunting; improves languages and studies Marxist philosophy; unpopularity; personal security concerns; and Nadya’s suicide and funeral; builds new dacha at Kuntsevo; recreations; cultural values and reforms; socialist ideals; and films; accompanies Svetlana on Metro ride; avoids contacts with people; writing; biographies of; remains in wartime Moscow; relations with sons and daughter; sends money to former Georgian friends; ill-health in war; drinking; social life with male friends; and women; billiards playing; Western adulation of; use of nicknames; relations with Churchill and Roosevelt; exchange with Alan Brooke; and Roosevelt’s death; postwar public view of; collected works published; death; persecutes members of family; seventieth birthday celebrations; Western disparagement of; on linguistics; mistrust of medical doctors; health decline; entertaining in old age; seventy third birthday party; suffers stroke; autopsy document lost; embalmed; funeral; book collection dispersed after death; reburied below Kremlin Wall