Joseph Stalin & Mao Tse-Tung

A detailed Summary of Joseph Stalin & Mao Tse-Tung

Josef Stalin is perhaps the most praised, reviled and recognised dictator in the modern world. His influence as such has reached across the globe, affecting leaders and citizens alike. Many of his techniques have been adopted by prominent leaders, today and in the past. One such example is fellow socialist Mao Tse-tung. Mao can fairly be regarded as the principal architect of the new China. His Marxist philosophies and strong leadership formed one of the strongest nations in the world. However, the similarities between Stalin and Tse-tung reach further than these surface facts.

With the death of Vladimir Lenin, the struggle for authority within the USSR narrowed to a contest between Trotsky, the brilliant leader of the Red Armies during the Civil War, and Stalin, general secretary of the Communist Party. Stalin eventually emerged as virtual dictator of Russia. In order to consolidate his position, he gradually built up a cult of personality around himself, one which would eventually (and literally) let him get away with murder.

According to composer Dimitri Shostakovich, Stalin was "an ordinary, shabby little man: short, fat, with reddish hair. His face was covered with pock marks and his right hand was noticeably thinner t

Mao lived very much in the shadow of the Stalin, following the path already navigated by the Man of Steel, and, as such, had similarly mixed results in his efforts. Both men achieved a near-fanatic following of worshipers. While Mao enjoyed the greater benefit from this, the two cases are almost perfectly alike in execution and results. Both achieved the industrialization their nation so needed. But while Stalin pressed on through the famine and Nazi hostilities, Mao was stopped in his tracks before reaching any real advancement. Today, much of Stalin's work has been undone, his vision scattered and the once proud nation of Russia reduced to but a wraith of what it once was, while the Republic of China has built and flourished upon the scanty foundations laid by Mao. Yet such is life.

The First Five-Year Plan called also for the transformation of Soviet agriculture from predominantly individual farms into a system of large state collective farms. The Party believed that collectivization would improve agricultural productivity and would produce grain reserves large enough to feed the growing urban labor force. The anticipated surplus was to pay for industrialization. Forced collectivization of the remaining peasants (minus the mysteriously deported kulaks), which was often fiercely resisted, resulted in a disastrous disruption of agricultural productivity and a catastrophic famine in 1932-33. Forced collectivization did help achieve Stalin's goal of rapid industrialization, but the human costs were incalculable.

Mao Tse-tung, too, had a massive personality cult, fueled principally by the PLA (People's Liberation Army). They were employed to bolster the cult and thus to produce art that would contribute to the construction of Mao's god-like image. Eventually the Army bec

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Category: History