Joseph Stalin held an iron tight grip on his country and he was obsessed with the possibility of losing that choke hold. He imagined that everyone, from the lowest farmer to his life long friends were after his power. In his mind everyone was a suspect and everyone was to be tre

Any critique of Stalin or the Russian State was swiftly squashed. Anti-Stalinists were disposed of in very harsh ways. The real Joseph Stalin was a coward who was consumed by fear and paranoia. “The Russian gulags were Stalin’s punishment for any crime that was committed against him or the Russian state. It was a horrible way to live, but I can not do anything to save these people, I feel powerless.” This was a quote by a guard at one of the gulags (Stalin 122). The conditions were so bad that Hitler, arguably one of the most ruthless and terrible men in history, modeled his concentration camps directly after Stalin’s gulags (Stalin 122). By late 1938 over seven million people were imprisoned in the gulags. A major project that many of the gulags had for the prisoners was to dig an excessively large pit. Unfortunately once they finished this pit they would be shot and buried in it (Stalin 123). Recently some of these mass graves have been uncovered at the site of a former gulag just outside a small town in northern Russia called Vinista (Triumph 323). The total estimated deaths in the gulags alone were eight to ten million people (Triumph 323). In Russia there were a total of fifty-three major gulags and four-hundred and twenty-five minor camps. To guard these camps Stalin employed 107,000 special police. This was the reason that Stalin was able to imprison so many people. No one was safe from Stalin’s evil. Everyone was a potential threat to him and therefore a potential target of his brutality. Although he disliked the Jews and publicly stated so many times, Stalin did not limit his attacks to them. He terrorized political figures, past supporters, and common people alike (Triumph 324). The man in charge of the camps was named Beria (Triumph 324). Beria never went by his first name and nobody can specify exactly why. Stalin had some guidelines for Beria to follow. He demanded that the living conditions were to be so poor and difficult that the prisoners would live in a state of hopelessness. They were to be fed only enough to keep them working. When they no longer could work they were to be shot (Triumph 324).

Some topics in this essay:
Joseph Stalin, Sixteen” Purge, Terror” Stalin, Red Guard, Vinista Triumph, World War, , Reign Terror”, Russia Purge, Sergi Kirov, purge 2, purge trials, purge 1, 1 stalin, purge 3, joseph stalin, russian purge trials, “the reign, found guilty, russian purge, triumph 324, “the reign terror”, purge 1 stalin, obsessed possibility losing, terror 1 stalin,