Joseph Stalin

Under Stalin, the Gulag labour camp network became a pillar of political repression and certain major economic projects. Millions of prisoners passed through the camps under frequently lethal conditions.

State of the evidence

Documented

Writers, scientists and officials, particularly Jews, were targeted as "rootless cosmopolitans", lost their positions or were arrested. The official press fostered an increasingly antisemitic atmosphere.

State of the evidence

Documented

Soviet doctors were arrested and accused of murdering or plotting to murder Soviet leaders on behalf of foreign powers. The campaign fuelled a new wave of antisemitism and raised fears of wider purges.

State of the evidence

Documented

The regime dissolved the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, arrested its leading members and conducted a secret trial. In August 1952, several Yiddish intellectuals and Jewish leaders were executed following fabricated accusations of espionage and nationalism.

State of the evidence

Documented

Stalin imposed a blockade of land and river access to Berlin's Western sectors amid currency reform and conflict over Germany's future. The United States and United Kingdom organised a massive airlift until the blockade was lifted.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Directly implicated

At the 1948 session of the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Trofim Lysenko's theories were imposed as official doctrine and modern genetics was condemned. Researchers lost their positions and the discipline suffered lasting disruption.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Political responsibility

The Stalinist regime carried out mass deportations of Volga Germans, Chechens, Ingush, Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks, Karachays, Balkars and other groups, collectively accusing them of collaboration or disloyalty.

State of the evidence

Documented

Following the annexation of eastern Poland, Soviet authorities deported hundreds of thousands of Poles, military personnel, civil servants, landowners, families and other people deemed politically suspect to the interior of the USSR.

State of the evidence

Documented

Two weeks after the German attack, the Red Army entered eastern Poland in accordance with the partition envisaged in the secret German-Soviet protocol. The territories were annexed to Soviet republics.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Directly implicated

On 5 March 1940, Stalin and several Politburo members approved an NKVD proposal to execute Polish prisoners deemed enemies of Soviet power. Approximately 22,000 people were killed at several locations, including the site associated with the name Katyn.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Directly implicated

After Soviet territorial demands were rejected, the USSR attacked Finland. The League of Nations expelled the Soviet Union. Despite heavy losses, Moscow secured territory under the March 1940 peace treaty.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Directly implicated

Within the spheres of influence agreed with Germany, the USSR imposed military bases and then annexed Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and forced Romania to cede Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Directly implicated

Stalin approved the non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany and its secret protocol defining the division of parts of Eastern Europe. The text provided in particular for the partition of Poland.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Directly implicated

Following the assassination of Sergei Kirov, Stalin launched successive purges culminating in 1937–1938. Millions of people were arrested, sent to camps or executed; the terror affected party officials, administrators, military officers, intellectuals and ordinary citizens.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Directly implicated

The major public trials in Moscow portrayed Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Rykov and other former leaders as conspirators and traitors. Confessions were obtained through coercion and many of those convicted were executed.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Political responsibility

Stalin had numerous senior commanders, including Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, arrested and executed or imprisoned on charges of conspiracy and espionage.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Directly implicated

During the Great Terror, the NKVD conducted operations targeting populations deemed potentially disloyal, including the "Polish Operation", leading to tens of thousands of executions and deportations.

State of the evidence

Documented

Stalin imposed accelerated agricultural collectivisation and a campaign against the "kulaks". Millions of peasants were dispossessed; approximately one million households classified as kulaks were deported, according to archives presented by the Library of Congress.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Directly implicated

Famine struck Ukraine, the North Caucasus and the Volga region following collectivisation. In Ukraine, grain quotas were maintained or increased, reserves were seized and peasants were prevented from fleeing, resulting in millions of deaths.

State of the evidence

Documented

After Lenin's death, Stalin used his control of the party apparatus to marginalise Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin and other rivals in succession, until he became the undisputed leader of the USSR.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Directly implicated