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There are the stories of his bearish manners (if he is angry or suspicious), of his bearish humor (if he is pleased); of his ability to drink 22 vodka toasts with no audible thickening or loosening of the tongue. And there are the stories of his adventures with the English language, which he does not speak. But he sometimes memorizes phrases by heart. Thus he once surprised some English and American guests by suddenly saying: "The lavatory is on the left, gentlemen." General Pat Hurley (now U.S. Ambassador to China) taught Stalin the English phrase which he sprang on Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt at Teheran. Coming into a room, where they had their heads together, Stalin loudly asked: "What the hell goes on here?"
Acme of Aristotle. But the late anecdotes, like the early ones, only scratch the surface of Stalin. The stubborn fact about Stalin's life is that, in one of the most political ages in history, he is a political animal to a degree never imagined by Aristotle. The stubborn facts of Stalin's life are political facts of world importance.
They may be dated arbitrarily from the Bolshevik Revolution, in which Stalin played an obscure but active part as a member of the Revolutionary Military Committee. They included his job as People's Commissar for Nationalities in which he first applied his program for federating Russia's national minorities—a program that had taken on new importance as Russia enveloped new European minorities. Later he asked for (and got) the one job that nobody else thought worth having—the post of Secretary General of the Russian Communist Party. Patiently he packed the Party offices with his henchmen. In a lucid moment just before his death, Lenin read a report of Communist affairs. He muttered: "The machine has got out of control."
He was seldom more mistaken. The machine had never been in firmer hands. The "best disciple of Lenin" had overtaken the master. Lenin had cherished the classic Marxist doctrine that, as socialism increases, the state will "wither away." Stalin perceived that the dynamic of socialism is toward more & more total control by the state. And he saw that the way to control the totalitarian state is to control the only legal party. Until four years ago he ruled the Soviet Union as Secretary General of the Communist Party. Then he proceeded to organize Russia into a modern socialist state.
The stubborn facts of that organization included the defeat of the Communists who opposed him, by expulsion from the party, jailing or exile; the industrialization "of Russia through successive Five Year Plans; the collectivization of the peasants; the physical liquidation of the prosperous peasants (kulaks); the starving to death (by withholding wheat) of at least 3,000,000 peasants who resisted the collectivization; the physical liquidation (in the Great Purge) of at least 1,000,000 Communists who opposed Stalin's policies.
Snapped Lady Astor: "When are you going to stop killing people?"
Said Stalin: "When it is no longer necessary."
To an English newspaperwoman who asked him about the millions of peasants who had died during the collectivization drive, Stalin answered with a question: "How many died in the Great War?"
"Over 7,500,000."