Answer: Stalin is a villain.
Explanation: Stalin introduced the Gulag to the Soviet Union – the country’s system of forced labor camps. This was one of the harshest forced labor camps known to man and has since been broadened to represent the entire Soviet forced labor penal system. Stalin used the Gulag to advance his agricultural collectivisation and industrial revolution plans. He held the threat of being sent to the Gulag against anyone who stood in his way. Millions of prisonerswere sent to engage in unskilled, inefficient manual labor in unsanitary environments under harsh weather conditions, in exchange for pitiful food rations. At least ten percent of those imprisoned in the Gulags died as a result of harsh labor and neglect. Stalin felt that the Soviet Union was decades behind the world’s advanced countries and was determined to bridge this gap by rapid industrialization. He launched three “Five Year Plans” in an attempt to keep his homeland from falling to a Western country. Yet, the program of collectivisation and food quotas meant to ensure factory workers had what to eat so they could help the country advance had horrific consequences. Many people of the Kulak (wealthy) class were imprisoned and sent off to engage in forced labor, while peasants simply starved to death. All in all, Stalin’s “Five Year Plans” and collectivization schemes cost the Soviet Union 6 million lives. Joseph Stalin ruled the Soviet Union with an iron fist. He was hated and feared as a dictator, governing with totalitarian control in an attempt to appease his paranoias and cling to power. Stalin knew his country was weak, poor and behind the times. As such, he adopted ideas from other well-known leaders, like Marx’s view of a classless society and Lenin’s communist aspirations, using the ideologies to justify a de facto reign of terror. He abolished freedom of the press and began executing, imprisoning and firing officials, writers and philosophers who dared speak out against him. He simultaneously denied access to information or cultural influences from the West.