Joseph Stalin
Soviet dictator: collectivization, the Terror, victory over Germany
He ruled thirty years. For Jewish history there are two turns in him, and the second is the weightier. In 1947 the USSR supported the partition of Palestine and voted for a Jewish state, and through Czechoslovakia came the weapons without which Israel might not have won the war of 1948.
And then the reverse, and this is no longer politics but persecution. The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was broken up, Solomon Mikhoels was murdered in 1948 and buried as a road-accident victim; in August 1952 thirteen people were shot, among them the poets Peretz Markish, David Hofstein, Itzik Feffer and Leib Kvitko—what is called the "night of the murdered poets"; in January 1953 the "Doctors' Plot" was announced, and by every sign a mass deportation was being prepared, cut short by his death on 5 March.
His birth year: the official date is 21 December 1879, but by the Gori church register, by the seminary's certificate and by his own questionnaire of 1920 he was born on 6 (18) December 1878. He altered the year himself in 1922. 1878 stands here.
Sources
Documents of the period
- The night of the murdered poets, 12 August 1952; the Doctors' Plot, January 1953 — thirteen shot; the preparations for deportation
Scholarship
- The Gori church register; the questionnaire of 1920; the official 1879 date — the birth year was altered by him in 1922
Basis: documents and evidence.