– Sergey Ivanov, Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova –
This year marks the 146th anniversary of the birth of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. The occasion could be described neutrally as “we commemorate 146 years since his birth,” as one would for a long-departed figure. However, Stalin lives on as long as his ideas remain relevant, as does his contribution to the communist movement, state-building and the development of the Soviet individual — a person of a new socio-economic order, the builder of communism.
When discussing personalities of truly global significance, whose contributions to the history of civilization are so substantial that humanity’s path might have been entirely different without them, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin stands out as one of the greats we honour and remember.
Officially, Stalin’s birthday has been celebrated on December 21 since 1929. However, according to the records in the parish church registry of the baptism of the infant Joseph (affectionately called Soso), son of shoemaker Vissarion Ivanovich Dzhugashvili from the village of Didi-Lilo in the Tiflis Governorate and day labourer Ekaterina Gavrilovna from the village of Gambareuli, the child was born on (December 6) 18, 1878. This same date is listed on Joseph Dzhugashvili’s graduation certificate from the Gori Theological School.
Nevertheless, on December 21, 1929, the country officially celebrated Joseph Stalin’s fiftieth birthday. His sixtieth birthday in 1939 was not formally observed, though newspapers were filled with congratulatory messages and praises. Stalin’s seventieth birthday in 1949 was marked with particular grandeur, including gifts, foreign delegations, a gathering at the Bolshoi Theatre and widespread reverence for the leader.
There is no definitive answer to why Stalin had two birthdays. It should be noted, however, that many revolutionaries had multiple birthdays due to their underground activities. For instance, when Joseph Dzhugashvili was arrested in Baku in 1910 as a member of the RSDLP and exiled to Siberia for five years, his year of birth in the official documents was listed as 1880.
Today, Stalin’s persona has been so heavily mythologized that historians write entire volumes attempting to debunk myths and misconceptions about this great figure, who strengthened and developed the Soviet Union and skilfully led it for 30 years.
Who spreads negative rumours about and slanders Stalin, portraying him to the world as an evil demon, a dictator, a destroyer of peoples, a propagator of terror and a perpetrator of genocide? The same forces that detest communism and its genuine advocates. It is easy to “fight” against those who can no longer defend themselves simply because they are no longer among us. The intensified propaganda of the so-called collective West — formerly known as anti-communism — fills the minds of the public with blatant lies, fabricated “evidence” of events that never happened, false memoirs of contemporaries, outright falsifications, and feverish delusions.
Read Solzhenitsyn, and you’ll get the impression that every single Soviet citizen was killed (or repressed), and that Stalin personally handed down each death sentence. Listen to Western propagandists, and you’ll come to believe that Stalin was essentially Hitler — but Russian. Beneath it all lies a simplistic logical construct: Stalin was a communist, communism is bad, therefore Stalin is bad. When you ask for this nonsense to be substantiated through formal logic, historical facts or even basic common sense, the response is often even more absurd: “Well, everyone knows that.” Many people are also unaware that the number of prisoners, including those in the Gulag system, did not exceed two per cent of the country’s population at the time. In fact, the incarceration rate today is higher than it was back then.
But what, in reality, constitutes Stalin’s greatness? Lenin and Stalin were building a state based on social equality, founded on communist principles — namely, equal access for all people to public social goods. The first step was to create these social goods themselves, because one cannot grant access to something that doesn’t exist. And Tsarist Russia was in a state of having nothing. To establish a foundation of prosperity, an entirely new economy needed to be created. For this new economy, a new kind of person needed to be cultivated — one whose consciousness would reject the corrupt imperialist slogan, “Enrich yourself!” and instead embrace creativity and constructive work.
Of course, such an approach to social relations is deeply offensive to capitalist propaganda, because in a capitalist society, life is divided between those who “own” and those who serve — a submissive, omnivorous and consumeristically indifferent mass that exchanges its labour for its own reproduction. Capitalism’s “privileged few” will never forgive the builders of communism for their contributions to civilization. That is why the leaders of the communist movement are so relentlessly vilified on the global stage.
We are all simple people — born into childhood, passing through youth and adulthood, accomplishing (or failing to accomplish) significant acts for civilization, and eventually passing away (or still living) in glory or obscurity. It cannot be said that Joseph Vissarionovich’s biography sparkles with extraordinary episodes, but his personal contribution to historical progress is undeniably unique.
At the age of 16, Joseph graduated from the Gori Theological School and enrolled in the Tiflis Theological Seminary. During his studies, Stalin demonstrated himself to be a highly capable and gifted student, excelling in all subjects with ease. In his free time, he even wrote poetry.
It was during this period of education that Marxist ideas began to gain traction within Tsarist Russia, and they resonated deeply with his soul, his consciousness and his emerging worldview. However, due to his Marxist propaganda activities, Joseph was expelled from the seminary during his fifth year.
In 1901, Joseph Dzhugashvili became an underground revolutionary, falling out of favour with the ruling authorities and coming under the surveillance of the Tsarist secret police. Until 1913, Stalin continued his struggle against Tsarism, which resulted in his arrest and imprisonment. He spent three years in prison. Notably, in 1912, Joseph Dzhugashvili adopted the pseudonym Stalin, under which he would become known to the world.
As a committed Marxist, Joseph Dzhugashvili had more than his fair share of prison gruel.
From 1902 to 1904, after being arrested in Batumi during a meeting of an underground revolutionary group, he was imprisoned in the Batumi jail, transferred to Kutaisi, then back to Batumi, and finally exiled to the Irkutsk Province. There, he lived in the village of Novaya Uda in the Balagansk District. Two years later, Dzhugashvili escaped.
For the next four years, he continued his active revolutionary work.
On March 25, 1908, he was arrested again and held in the Bailovo detention centre on the outskirts of Baku. This was followed by exile to Solvychegodsk in the Vologda Province under police supervision for two years. However, after just seven months, Stalin escaped once more. His third arrest came in March 1910, and in June he was again exiled to Vologda under supervision. After a little over a year, he escaped yet again. Another arrest followed in St. Petersburg, and after a period of pretrial detention, he was sent back to Vologda, from where he escaped six months later. The next arrest occurred in 1912 during a charity masquerade ball at the Kalashnikov Exchange Building. The ball, held illegally, was raising funds for revolutionary activities. This time, Stalin was exiled to the Turukhansk Region, where he remained for four years until 1917.
During the February Revolution of 1917, Stalin was released from exile. After the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution, his authority within the party grew, thanks to his open and consistent support of Lenin’s ideas, his remarkable organizational and leadership talents, his grasp of Marxist theory and his extraordinary determination. These qualities became especially evident during Lenin’s illness, something that could not go unnoticed or unsupported by the Bolsheviks. It was through his actions and merit that Stalin became the rightful successor to Vladimir Ilyich’s ideas. In 1922, Joseph Vissarionovich was elected General Secretary of the Bolshevik Party’s Central Committee.
Few people know that in the first ten years of leading the party and state, Stalin faced enormous challenges. This is evidenced by the three requests he submitted to resign from his position, none of which were granted. Incidentally, Stalin’s leadership of the country and its people was never totalitarian or dictatorial. It was always collegial, meaning collective. Decisions were made at congresses. Between congresses, decisions were the responsibility of the Plenums, and between Plenums, the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People’s Commissars were the governing bodies. During wartime, Stalin’s authoritarian leadership was a natural necessity, although critics have tried to frame it as dictatorial. In truth, what kind of collegiality or democracy could one expect when the homeland was in mortal danger and on the brink of destruction? It would have been strange to hold prolonged meetings to debate whether to fight Hitlerism or not. Furthermore, during wartime, a unified chain of command is the only principle that leads to victory. And as for the personality cult? That was concocted by Khrushchev, a voluntarist.
Stalin’s major accomplishments include, at the very least, saving the USSR from destruction three times:
- In 1927 — Trotsky, who aimed to use the Russian people to fight for global domination, was removed from power.
- In 1939 — A well-organized fifth column, aiming to overthrow Stalin, dismantle socialism in the USSR and hand control of the country to Hitler, was defeated.
- In 1945 — Victory was achieved in a war initiated by global imperialism against the Soviet people and state. The goal of this war was the physical extermination of the Russian people and, along with them, other peoples of the USSR.
The downfall of the country (i.e., the USSR) was not caused by Stalin but by the party bureaucracy, which gained strength and solidified under Khrushchev’s clique. However, this bureaucracy existed even before Khrushchev came to power. From the October Revolution onward, during the formative years of socialism, the Soviet Union endured immense challenges, including internal and external enemies, the Civil War, devastation, numerous conspiracies against Soviet power and an aggressive international environment. All of this sometimes required tough governance and discipline — an approach known as command-administrative management. When such strict methods were no longer needed, the party bureaucracy was reluctant to relinquish its control. On the contrary, it actively resisted any attempts to strip it of its authority and associated privileges, even resorting to physical elimination of opponents.
The enemies of communism and other bourgeois detractors often portray the highest Soviet leadership, and Stalin himself, as a narrow-minded, self-satisfied, fanatical and ignorant collection of brutes, illiterates and tyrants. Being such themselves, they assume everyone else to be the same.
As for Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, he never stopped growing as a leader and never tired in his pursuit of perfection, both personally and as a statesman.
It is enough to read Stalin’s works, for instance, on the national question or on economics, to understand — quite literally from the first pages — that Stalin was, without exaggeration, a philosopher, a Marxist and a researcher. Many aspects of his writings on the national question remain relevant today, especially in Moldova, Georgia and the Baltic States. Nationalists in these regions are quick to invoke the concept of a “state language” — a term, incidentally, they themselves coined.
Consider, for example, Stalin’s idea that one of the defining characteristics of a nation is the shared activity and common goals of its people. Remove this shared purpose, and a nation begins to disintegrate. This is precisely what is happening today in Moldova and Romania. In Moldova, enemies of the people (the new bourgeoisie, oligarchs and specifically the Party of Action and Solidarity [PAS] as a political force) have destroyed industry and are now finishing off agriculture, thereby depriving people of their shared economic purpose. As a result, half the population now exists as a diaspora. Within a generation, their descendants may no longer belong to the Moldovan nation.
Stalin was also a known admirer of good music. After his death, a vast collection of records was discovered among his possessions. These included national anthems from various countries, with particularly valued records marked with an “X.” He also loved to read. His daily norm was approximately 300 pages, covering both fiction and scientific literature. Stalin believed that without constant reading, a person ceases to develop. The world-renowned Time magazine named Stalin “Man of the Year” twice — in 1940 and 1943. There is no doubt this recognition was well-earned.
As a statesman, Stalin understood the necessity of further developing the Soviet Union’s state system and taking communist construction to a new stage. Our parents often spoke about free salt, pepper, mustard and bread in public canteens. This is not poetic nostalgia but a fact of life at the time.
Stalin’s name is tied to some of the most remarkable pages in the history of our Motherland. Industrialization, collectivization and the cultural revolution transformed the USSR into one of the world’s leading powers. A new country emerged on the map — one that, step by step, implemented the brightest ideals of humanity, offering the world a new path: the path toward a communist economic formation.
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin passed away on March 5, 1953. When discussing his death, people often debate whether it was natural or the result of foul play. However, it is worth noting that Stalin’s death occurred after the 19th Party Congress. That Congress is seldom discussed, and yet it deserves attention. It seems that not everyone was pleased with the decisions made there — particularly the party bureaucracy.
The 19th Congress took place from October 5 to October 14, 1952. According to Stalin’s vision, this Congress was intended to serve as a pivotal moment for reforming the party and state structure in the USSR. The plan was to separate the highest levels of party and state leadership, significantly improve ideological work by relieving party bodies of economic and oversight functions, and centralize the management of the national economy in ministries and departments under the control of the Council of Ministers of the USSR.
The outcomes of the 19th Congress were such that, if the planned reforms had been implemented, the party nomenklatura would have been removed from power. After Stalin’s death, however, the Congress’ decisions were downplayed, shelved and the reforms never materialized. The Congress’ documents, along with those of the subsequent Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, were kept out of public discourse. The party bureaucracy could neither tolerate nor accept such transformations. Similarly, in 1962, it resisted the scientific developments of the academician Viktor Glushkov in the field of automated state and administrative management which, if implemented, would have rendered the nomenklatura obsolete.
Despite Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin’s clear positive and progressive contributions to history, opinions about the leader and his influence on global historical processes vary among our contemporaries. This is hardly surprising, as opinions are shaped by the information available to individuals. More than 70 years have passed since Stalin’s death, and during this time, an avalanche of slander has been unleashed to tarnish his name and diminish his achievements for the people and humanity as a whole. This was inevitable, as great individuals pass on, but their enemies remain.
Counter-revolution, revanchism, capitalism, bourgeois reaction, anti-communism and similar ideologies have not disappeared. Even today, their advocates continue an unrelenting fight against any memory of the communist past and the very idea of communism.
“Who controls information controls the world.” This phrase is often misunderstood. It is not just about having information but about controlling its sources, creating it and presenting it to the world — that is where power lies. Take this example: in just six months of media bombardment about COVID-19 and its supposed threat to humanity, public perception was so thoroughly shaped that few doubted the reality of the “plague of the 21st century.” Similarly, the equally nebulous “plague of the 20th century” — AIDS — receded into the background. Another case: within six months of the February 2014 events in Kiev, the minds of many Ukrainian citizens (thankfully not all) were so manipulated that they began to genuinely believe that Russia had attacked Ukraine and occupied Crimea. The voices of five million residents of the Donbass and 2.5 million Crimeans are entirely absent from discussions on these topics. And this is the result of just six months of relentless media indoctrination. Now imagine the impact on public consciousness after 60 years of disinformation, concept manipulation, anti-propaganda and outright slander against Stalin.
The most disturbing part is that this smear campaign began with Stalin’s own supposed comrades — those closest to him in the party. With Nikita Khrushchev’s rise to power, a voluntarist with dictatorial tendencies, a deliberate dismantling of communist achievements began, along with the distortion of Stalin’s role in building the great power of the Soviet Union and the global socialist bloc. Most alarming was the emergence of a clan-based party bureaucracy, which Stalin had kept in check and which eventually morphed into the oligarchic elites of the former Soviet republics. Think about who became the leaders of the newly formed “independent” post-Soviet states. It was those who represented the party bureaucracy’s elite in the twilight days of Soviet power. A wise and prescient person once aptly described them: “Stalin’s unfinished business.”
We live in an era of rapid information flow. The sheer volume of information often overwhelms ordinary people, leaving little time or opportunity to digest and critically analyse it. Everyday concerns, work obligations, the need to make a living, excessive workloads and the lack of continuous education — including in political economy — result in people accepting ideological narratives on faith, primarily from sources of disinformation. This is how the myth of Stalin as a bloodthirsty dictator and tyrant became entrenched in popular consciousness — a myth that has no relation whatsoever to historical truth.
The collapse of the USSR unleashed an even greater flood of disinformation targeting Stalin and Lenin. The aim was clear and straightforward: to instil hatred toward the communist idea, to neutralize and isolate those who had the good fortune of living under communism. Let us remind you that socialism is a transitional phase of communism, characterized by key social elements such as collective ownership of the means of production, free health care, free education, the right to work, the right to housing, the right to life, guaranteed pensions, freedom of religion and freedom of expression. It is worth noting that in Moldova, these elements have either been entirely dismantled or are under imminent threat of elimination.
Now let’s consider how these elements developed in the USSR under Stalin. The leadership had plans to introduce a four-hour workday. While the United States was in the throes of the Great Depression, where people laboured like slaves for a piece of bread to stave off starvation — building roads in the deserts of North America amidst record unemployment and inflation — the Soviet Union eliminated unemployment entirely, closing its last labour exchange. Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin played no small role in this monumental achievement of socialist development.
The accomplishments under Stalin during his 30 years of leadership are staggering in scale. During this time, a hungry and impoverished agrarian country — where fields were ploughed with horses and illiterate peasants toiled in hardship — transformed into a powerful state with the best education and health care systems in the world. Under Stalin’s leadership, the USSR became a formidable military-industrial power. By the early 1950s, the political and economic literacy of Soviet citizens far surpassed the education levels of people in any other developed country. It is also noteworthy that the population increased by 41 million during this period. The achievements of Stalin’s era are too numerous to list fully in a single article.
And yet, under Stalin’s leadership, the USSR emerged victorious in five local conflicts and two major wars — against the Germans and the Japanese in 1945. Stalin’s crowning achievement was the victory over Germany in 1945. The Red Army, directed by Stalin, fought against almost all of Europe, prevailed and eliminated approximately 75 percent of the fascist forces, leaving the remainder for the USSR’s allies to finish off. Stalin stopped the advance of nazism across the globe. In essence, he saved countless peoples targeted for extermination by the fascists — Jews, Gypsies, Slavs and many others.
The rapid and qualitative industrialization of the USSR, successfully carried out by the party during the 1930s to 1950s, despite the challenges of the era and the extraordinary methods employed, laid the foundation not only for victory in the Great Patriotic War but also for the peaceful and secure life of the nation. It ensured the country’s internal prosperity, advancements in technical and military development, and the strengthening of the Soviet Union’s international influence for the subsequent 40 years of its history.
The spread of socialist ideas across the globe can be largely credited to Stalin. Dozens of countries were liberated from colonial oppression as a result. Notably, China, with Stalin’s support, was able to unify its lands, which had previously been fragmented and subjugated by various occupying powers.
One of Stalin’s greatest achievements was proving, through the example of the USSR, that building socialism within a single country was not only possible but also practical. This success was a testament to his consistency as a Leninist, as he continued and realized Lenin’s initiatives.
Programs such as GOELRO (the State Electrification Plan) laid the groundwork for industrialization. From the literacy campaign (LIKBES) arose a program for universal education. At the origins of the USSR’s atomic, space and scientific-technical progress programs was Lenin’s vision of organizing scientific activity in a young socialist state, established in the earliest years of Soviet power.
The achievements of building socialism and communism could not go unnoticed as milestones in the progress of human civilization. They were the precursors to the inevitability of the communist socio-economic formation. This is precisely why these achievements provoked — and continue to provoke — aggressive resistance from the forces of bourgeois counter-revolution, at both ideological and physical levels. Using all means available, from misinformation to outright bribery (“thirty pieces of silver”), anti-communist forces and movements have been supported in the post-Soviet space, placing their puppets in power.
For example, in the political spectacle known as the “October 20, 2024 Elections” in Moldova, which resulted in the re-election of Maia Sandu as president, we witnessed a sharp rise in societal psychological and ideological tension. Having seized virtually all institutions of freedom and democracy, turning them into tools of oppression and dictatorial control, the PAS operates in Moldova as though it answers to no laws, no people, no conscience and no god. One wonders what would have happened to the traitors of the PAS clique had they faced the so-called “Stalinist regime” they despise. Perhaps pharmacies would have run out of green antiseptic and heart medication.
Today, we observe a situation in Moldova where Stalin’s Soviet constitutional principles and democratic practices have been systematically dismantled. Human freedoms and the benefits achieved under socialism are being destroyed in a planned and deliberate manner. This trend will only intensify, as the forces backing these bourgeois puppets aim to eradicate even the memory of communist accomplishments.
In this article, we deliberately refrained from focussing on Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin’s biographical details. His biography and achievements have been extensively studied, rich with factual evidence, and documented through historical records and eyewitness accounts. What matters most is the wealth of material that allows us to “separate the wheat from the chaff.”
Never in its history had the country witnessed such monumental transformations as during Stalin’s era. The entire world watched in astonishment at the successes of the USSR. It is precisely for this reason that a diabolical task is being pursued today: to ensure that no one even remotely resembling Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, a man who dedicated his life to his people, ever comes to power again.
To achieve this vile goal, the counter-revolution seeks to slander, distort, and vilify the life and deeds of this great man. A strong personality, especially one with a communist ideology, is intolerable to national traitors and their masters — the anti-communists of all stripes and nations.
On the occasion of Stalin’s birthday, we have sought to emphasize the significance of the Lenin-Stalin legacy. In contrast to the futility of aimless existence, the lives of great individuals who set noble goals and demonstrate the paths to achieve them give history meaning and provide us with a worthy example to follow.
Stalin once said: “I know that after my death, a heap of garbage will be thrown on my grave, but the wind of history will mercilessly scatter it.” His words were prophetic. At Stalin’s grave by the Kremlin Wall, there is always a pile of fresh flowers — every day, not just on anniversaries.
Sergey Ivanov
Press Service of the Central Committee of the Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova
December 21, 2024
(Translated by NEPH from the Russian original)