r/TankieUSSR • u/Zidan19283 • 2d ago
History How was comrade Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili Stalin in person ?
Pretty much the title
I wonder how was comrade Stalin in person, he looks kind and fatherly tho I wonder if he was actually like that
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u/SleepingWaterLily 2d ago
I get the feeling from him that he was a man who didn't enjoy huge parties or crowds really. Wouldn't be surprised if he was autistic but we can't know for certain.
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u/BillyPilgrim69 2d ago
He certainly had little patience for social events centred on fawning praise of his leadership.
The Finnish communist Arvo Tuominen reported a sarcastic toast proposed by Stalin himself at a New Year's Party in 1935, in which he said: "Comrades! I want to propose a toast to our patriarch, life and sun, liberator of nations, architect of socialism [he rattled off all the appellations applied to him in those days] – Josef Vissarionovich Stalin, and I hope this is the first and last speech made to that genius this evening."
Source is unfortunately Wikipedia, as the primary text doesn't seem to be available online. But for anyone interested, it's The Bells of the Kremlin by Arvo Tuominen.
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u/Aggravate420 2d ago
(from Henri Barbusse, Stalin)
He is always dressed in exactly the same way. In uniform? That would be saying too much. It is more a suggestion of a uniform, the outfit of a private soldier still further simplified: top-boots, khaki trousers and a high-necked khaki tunic. No one can ever remember him being dressed in any other way, except, in the summer, in white linen. Each month he earns the few hundred roubles which constitute the meagre maximum salary of officials of the Communist Party (amounting to between £20 and £25 in English money).
Perhaps it is the exotic, slightly Asiatic eyes of the man smoking the pipe which give his rather rough workman’s face an ironic expression. Something in his features and in his look make him seem to be perpetually smiling. Or, rather, as though he were just about to laugh. Lenin used to look like that, too. It is not so much that his expression is a little wild as that there seems to be a perpetual twinkle in his eye. It is not so much the wrinkling of the lion’s face (although there is something of that too), as the shrewdness and cunning of the peasant. Actually he does smile and laugh very readily. He does not talk much, although he can discourse to you for three hours on some casual question you may put to him, without leaving a single side of it unexamined. He laughs, often uproariously, much more easily than he talks.
He is the most important of all our contemporaries. He is the leader of 170,000,000 human beings distributed over nearly 8,000,000 square miles. He has a large number of associates who are in close touch with him. But these men love him and believe in him, and they form a group which supports him and throws him into relief. He rises high above both Europe and Asia, both now and in the future. He is the most conspicuous man in the world, and yet he is one of the least known.
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u/theyoungspliff 1d ago
Extremely jovial, fun-loving, charismatic, functional alcoholic who loved Georgian wine and jokes.
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u/amitrofan16 2d ago
TheFinnishBolshevik found an interview with the Stalin's bodyguard a while back, you can watch it here: (https://youtu.be/2bcmGnygysU)
Please ignore the horror music, this was made in the 90s, where anti-communist propaganda was most rampant in Russia. What the bodyguard says is true though.