Who Was Responsible For Joseph Stalin's Death

Joseph Stalin was an instrumental figure in shaping the Russia that we know and see today. He created many new policies and changed the way many people lived their lives. Even so, there are many things that Stalin was responsible for that did not earn him quite the same amount of approval and admiration. With this in mind, we can look beyond Stalin’s death towards the rise of the Khrushchev party and a new type of leadership in the Soviet Union. It was at this time that people began to question the type of leader that Stalin was and call out some of the “mistakes” that he was responsible for during his reign (the same “mistakes” that did not earn him the admiration he desired), in part because they were now granted the liberty to do so. The

This was a process that lasted throughout the duration of Nikita Khrushchev’s term as First Secretary of the Communist Party and eventually during his reign as Premier. (Khrushchev, originally elected only the First Secretary of the Communist Party, was also unanimously voted to the position of Premier in 1958, ultimately making him the sole leader of the USSR) (Nikita KhrushchevHistory.com). However, to do this Khrushchev needed to be careful that he would not find himself as the target of an “anti-Stalinist sentiment.” To avoid becoming such a target, Khrushchev decided that the major moves towards de-Stalinization should be replaced by smaller, progressive moves and actions (Rush 59).At the same time, he also had his own personal goals in mind, including pointing out Stalin’s mistakes for his own political gain and implicating other Party members (some more than others) with Stalin’s crimes so they would no longer be working alongside of him (Rush 61). The four tools that Khrushchev used to overturn many of the things that Stalin was responsible for were his speeches, his policies and beliefs, his freeing of intellectual life, and symbolism (Gill). Together, these Khrushchev used these four tools to his advantage and over time he slowly became the new leader of Russia that everyone cited with “de-Stalinization.”

In his speeches, Nikita Khrushchev chastised Joseph Stalin and tried to belittle him as a person much as he possibly could. He made claims that Stalin was single-handedly responsible for taking Russia off of a safe course of development and putting it on one that did not yield the desired results. Taking things one step further, he also claimed that many of his opponents were at one point or another working with Stalin as he committed these “crimes” against the Russian people