The Psychology and Life of the Monster: Joseph Stalin
Understanding: How or Why did he become so Evil?
Stalin was one of the most (if not the most) powerful and evil people to exist.
During the war with the Germans, Stalin declined a trade of gaining one soldier in exchange for releasing a few captured generals.
Which makes sense… until you realise the soldier Stalin declined was his very own son; he had no value for human life, not even that of his son!
He created a famine which wiped out millions of his own citizens. He murdered his own party members, even those belonging to his inner circle!
What made him such a monster? Why did he kill? What made him so evil? How did he become so powerful?
That’s what we’ll be exploring in this article. We’ll also look at some of his tactics to power along the way.
Stalin’s Childhood
If you want to analyse someone, it all starts with their childhood; their impressionable years.
Stalin was born into a poor family. His father was an alcoholic. His family was dysfunctional.
When he was ten he was forced by his father to work in a shoe factory and was punished when he didn’t.
Soon enough his mother put him into theological seminary to become a priest. He got a good education and his marks were just as good.
But things then took the opposite direction.
His marks began to drop, He read Marx, got interested in communism, became an atheist, grew long hair in an act of rebellion, and refused to bow to monks.
Not surprisingly, he wanted to dedicate himself to the revolution and was kicked out of seminary.
The Revolution and The Bolsheviks
Soon after seminary, Stalin organised an uprising in the region of Batumi, an oil terminal with several workers.
In the uprising, police fire killed fifty people! It was the first time he saw blood and murder. He didn’t find it troubling, but revealing. Violence is the key to progress, is the way Stalin saw it.
Stalin’s efforts were recognised by Lenin (who was the leader of the revolution) who saw him as extremely loyal and dedicated to the cause.
Stalin was different from the other leaders, he was ready to do the dirty on-ground work while most of the elite leaders lived in distant comfortable safe places.
He also adopted the name of Koba, a hero from a Georgian novel, who was a mobster who organised brothels, robbed banks and did piracy.
Stalin Stops Trusting People
Stalin by then was among the most wanted people.
He decided to live with Malinovsky (at the time the leader of the Bolsheviks in the Duma/parliament) thinking it would be safe there.
Malonowsky invited Stalin for dinner, and Stalin came, but it was a huge mistake.
In reality, Malinovsky was a Tsarist secret agent, and the dinner was a trap. Stalin was sent into exile.
He stops trusting people after that, grows more bitter because his comrades don’t come to rescue him and even encounters wolves there which would end up haunting him for the rest of his life; he would draw doodles of wolves.
Stalins Power Moves
Stalin was given a comparatively boring post of General Secretary, while Lenin gave Stalin’s ‘competition’ the more prestigious posts.
But Stalin realized that this boring administrative post was the key to becoming the most powerful man in Russia.
The general secretary would send invites, decide the agenda, and organize meetings.
When Lenin died Stalin sent Leon Trotsky — the intellectual who would have otherwise succeded Lenin — the wrong date for the funeral. Stalin then delivered the eulogy for Lenin and then sent his people to meetings, so that the majority opinion would be in favour of him.
He then succeeded Lenin.
Trotsky (the intellectual who would’ve succeeded Lenin) was then exiled and later assassinated, and Stalin didn’t stop at Trotsky he killed anyone whom he saw as a threat to his power.
A guy named Kirov was the closest Stalin had to a friend at that time, and Stalin even gave him the post of Stalingrad party boss, but Kirov was charismatic and was getting popular, he saw him as a threat and killed him.
He also killed thousands of other party leaders.
He however couldn’t just kill them like that, so he tortured them and blackmailed & them with their families to get false confessions out of them so that he could justify killing them.
You can see his paranoia, inferiority complex and willingness to do anything for power.
Stalin was creating an identity. In fact Stalin is not the name he was born with, it's an identity he undertook; it means man of steel in Russian.
Stalin made the Russian youth shaped by his propaganda, so much so that they had to love Stalin more than they loved their parents. He succeded in making children betray their own parents.
He used several Machiavellian strategies (Machiavelli was a dark philosopher and diplomat) to secure power — would send different groups into conflict with one another and maintained loyalty through fear.
Stalin’s Body’s Impact on Him
Stalin was a short man of 5’4. Being short impacted him hugely. He even wore height-boosting shoes to look taller.
He suffered from the Napoleon complex, also known as Napoleon syndrome and short man syndrome, it's a condition when short people try to compensate for their short height with domineering behaviour.
Napoleon, Churchill, Mussolini, and Lenin were all short(guys don’t mess with your short friends).
It was not just his height but one of his arms was shorter than the other and he also had small marks on his face from smallpox. He made sure these marks were removed from photos of himself.
Clearly these physical ‘deformities’ if that’s what you want to call, negatively affected Stalint throughout his life.
Stalin’s Family
He got married and had a kid and shortly after he got a kid his wife died.
Stalin was devastated, he said “This creature softened my heart of stone. She died and with her died my last warm feelings for humanity.”
Things didn’t go well with his second wife either.
One night his second wife got up from the dinner table very upset.
She heard about Stalin’s collectivisation and the famine which eliminated millions. She wrote a letter condemning Stalin’s actions and then well took the only way out; she took her own life.
Stalins reaction? He was unphased or not, he was furious, and he saw her as an enemy after it. No one was allowed to tell Stalin he was wrong, that's the kind of person he was.
Lenin on Stalin’s Character
Even Lenin begins to dislike Stalin —
Stalin is too coarse and this defect, although quite tolerable in our midst and in dealing among us Communists, becomes intolerable in a Secretary-General. That is why I suggest that the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post. — Lenin
He wanted to remove Stalin from the post of General Secretary, But this decision was overruled by Stalin with the help of his supporters in the Politburo.
Stalin had a bad temper and was rude. Lenin even demanded an apology when he verbally abused his wife.
Stalin’s Diagnosis, Paranoia and Therapy
“paranoiac”
That was the one word said by a renowned psychiatrist when called to asses Stalin's condition.
Stalin definitely suffered from paranoid personality disorder.
Psychoanalytically we probably could say Stalin developed his paranoia because of his violent father.
He probably suffered from malignant narcissistic syndrome with an extreme lack of empathy, elements of sadism and paranoid tendencies.
Stalin had this huge ego and defensive self-esteem. He became a demigod, he saw religion as competition lol. He wanted his picture to replace God’s image.
He had a huge inferiority complex. He had this huge belief he was number one, and couldn't stand anyone better than him.
Clearly, he was a sadist and a psychopath, he enjoyed killing people. When he would sign the killing of people he would write down words like ‘scum’ ‘prostitute’, ‘deserves it’ etc. next to their names.
Summary
Underneath a firm façade of power, Stalin found himself struggling with what he believed to be depression; feelings of inferiority, and paranoia.
He had a horrible childhood with a violent father and poverty.
Attended seminary and instead of becoming a priest, became a rebel.
He had to show he was the best, no one could be better than him. Power was everything to him, even if it meant killing millions to get it.
That summarizes perhaps one of the most feared, evil and powerful people in history.
Credits:
https://file.scirp.org/pdf/PSYCH_2013091614084923.pdf
Epic documentary I got half the info from: watch it here
Check this out-
Ever Wondered:What Makes People Kill? These Studies Explain it All
Would you take an innocent life? I would hope you’d say no (like most people would). ‘What makes people kill innocents?’ ‘How can anyone kill?’ I’ve been thinking about these kinds of questions, and this is what this article is about. I think it's important to understand the minds of killers and see what got them to do it.
Commendable....Amazing Presentation and break-down of Stalin's story in interesting form.