Civilization #59: The Man of Steel

Joseph Stalin transforms from a poor Georgian high school dropout on the Russian Empire’s fringes into absolute ruler of the Soviet Union, defeating more accomplished Bolshevik rivals including Leon Trotsky despite lacking their theoretical sophistication and international prestige.

The Okhrana, Russia’s imperial secret police, deliberately sponsors extremist revolutionary groups including the People’s Will terrorist organization (founded 1879) and Vladimir Lenin’s Bolshevik faction through systematic funding and protection.

Vladimir Lenin receives critical support from both Russian imperial secret police (Okhrana) and German military intelligence, operating as an unwitting tool for multiple state actors who exploit his fanaticism for their strategic objectives.

Stalin organizes extensive criminal networks in Georgia and Baku, personally directing violence, bank robberies, counterfeiting, and kidnapping campaigns that provide the primary financial infrastructure sustaining the Bolshevik party while Lenin and Trotsky remain in exile writing theoretical works.

Lenin and Trotsky embody the “priest” mentality with unwavering ideological conviction and analytical intelligence producing books and speeches. Stalin represents the “spy” mentality with adaptable personalities, emotional intelligence, and singular focus on accumulating power rather than proving theoretical correctness.

Three key figures blocking Stalin’s path to absolute power die under mysterious circumstances: Yakov Sverdlov (Lenin’s deputy and former general secretary), Vladimir Lenin (the supreme Bolshevik authority), and Felix Dzerzhinsky (founder and chief of the Cheka secret police).

Stalin executes approximately one million party members between 1936-1938, removing three of five marshals, 13 of 15 army commanders, eight of nine admirals, 50 of 57 army corps commanders, and 154 of 186 division commanders, effectively decapitating the Red Army leadership.

Old Bolsheviks who sacrificed their families, betrayed friends, and committed countless atrocities for the revolution confess publicly to being traitors, capitalist spies, and saboteurs in Stalin’s show trials despite being innocent of specific charges.

The German military executes blitzkrieg doctrine with devastating perfection across Western Europe, crushing Poland and France within weeks, but encounters catastrophic failure when applying identical tactics to the Soviet Union’s vast territory and decentralized command structure.

Major American corporations including General Motors, ITT, Eastman Kodak, and Standard Oil invest heavily in Nazi Germany’s industrial infrastructure throughout the 1930s and even during early World War II years, providing capital, technology transfer, and organizational expertise critical for German rearmament.

Stalin identifies the single scenario among thousands of possible World War II outcomes where the Soviet Union survives and triumphs, then deliberately engineers conditions for that specific scenario despite accepting massive casualties and territorial losses that would doom any other leader.

The United States provides 17.5 million tons of military equipment, vehicles, industrial supplies, and food to the Soviet Union through Lend-Lease, a quantity roughly equal to the total tonnage American forces use during the entire war.

British geopolitical theorist Halford Mackinder develops the Heartland thesis after World War I, articulating Britain’s fundamental strategic imperative for preventing any single power from unifying the European-Asian continental landmass and rendering British naval supremacy irrelevant.

Stalin demonstrates unique capability to analyze global power dynamics and think systematically across continents while Hitler, Churchill, and Roosevelt remain constrained by Eurocentric regional perspectives blinding them to broader interdependencies and strategic opportunities.

Stalin fundamentally breaks with Lenin and Trotsky’s internationalist ideology, creating “socialism in one country” doctrine that synthesizes communist organizational methods and economic control with traditional Russian nationalism, patriotism, and cultural identity.

Stalin embodies Friedrich Nietzsche’s Ubermensch concept as a figure who warps reality through pure will and ruthless strategic vision, despite overwhelming structural constraints that should have prevented his success.

The French Revolution produces Jean-Jacques Rousseau as poet articulating the general will, Maximilien Robespierre as prophet leading through terror, and Napoleon Bonaparte as messiah consolidating through conquest. The Russian Revolution mirrors this with Karl Marx as poet defining class struggle, Vladimir Lenin as prophet wielding revolutionary violence, and Joseph Stalin as messiah consolidating through continuous purges.

Stalin achieves unprecedented absolute personal authority through the Great Purge, creating recursive layers of surveillance where spies monitor other spies in an elaborate divide-and-conquer system making his position unassailable.

Germany captures millions of Soviet soldiers during the first months of Operation Barbarossa in summer and fall 1941, creating an unexpected strategic burden rather than the anticipated advantage, as the sheer scale overwhelms German logistics and planning assumptions built on expectations of rapid Soviet collapse.

Stalin’s World War II victory enables Mao Zedong’s communist revolution by legitimizing communist ideology as a viable alternative to capitalism, reshaping Asia’s political trajectory and creating the contemporary global order.