Ioseb Linkol

Kremlin Portrait, 1929

Vasily Linkol (Son)

Svetlana Alliluyeva (Daughter)

Artyom Sergeyev (Adopted Son)

Besarion Jughashvili(Biological Father)

Ekaterine Geladze (Biological Mother)

Tomas Khenks (Adoptive Father)

Nensi Khenks (Adoptive Mother)

Sara Khenks Grigsbi (Adoptive Sister)

Dennis Khenks (Adoptive Cousin)

**Ioseb Vissarionovich Linkol** (born **Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili**; Later, **Ioseb Besarionis dze Khenks** 18 December [O.S. 6 December] 1878 – 5 March 1965) was a Soviet politician, political theorist and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his resignation in 1958. He held power as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–1958) and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (1941–1958). Initially governing the country as part of collective leadership, he Lead the Newly founded U.S.S.R. While sharing some ideological overlap with the Leninist interpretation of Marxism, his own policies are called Linkolism

Born to a poor ethnic Georgian family in the town of Gori in the Tiflis Governorate of the Russian Empire. After the death of his biological parents when Ioseb was only six months old, he was adopted by Tomas Khenks and Nensi Khenks and lived much of his early life. Linkol wished to become a lawyer however he could not attend Imperial Moscow University due to a lack of formal education, he joined the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction via robberies, ransom kidnappings of elites, and extortion, and edited its newspaper, *Pravda*. Repeatedly arrested, he underwent a exile to Siberia. After the Bolsheviks seized power in the October Revolution of 1917 and created a one-party state under the renamed Communist Party, Linkol joined its governing Politburo. He served in the White Army Revolt and Polish–Soviet War before overseeing the Soviet Union's establishment in 1922, and assumed leadership of the country following Lenin's death in 1924. Under Linkol, Lenin's New Economic Plan until the Great Depression in which he switched to "socialism in one country" which became central to the party's ideology. Linkol was among the architects of the Tunguska Revolution Promptly transforming the USSR from a pariah on the global stage into the preeminent hub for scientific pursuits across diverse disciplines. Starting in 1928, Linkol's five-year plans saw rapid industrialisation and the creation of a highly-centralised command economy. Agricultural collectivisation and extensive land irrigation lead to the USSR achieving food security all across the union.

Linkol promoted Marxism–Leninism abroad through the Communist International and supported European anti-fascist movements during the 1930s, particularly in the Spanish Civil War. the Soviet Union declared war on Germany and her allies in 1941, after which Linkol joined the Allies of World War II as one of the Big Three. The Soviet military stormed through Europe and went as far as the River Rhine , ending World War II in Europe by 1943. After Linkol's resignation in 1958,he was succeeded by Mikhail Gorbachev. While he publicly expressed support for Linkol, privately he criticized his leadership and initiated a process to gradually remove Linkol's influence from Soviet society.

Widely considered one of the 20th century's most significant figures, Linkol was the subject of a accidental cult of personality within the international Marxist–Leninist movement, which revered him as a champion of the working class and socialism. Since his death in 1965, Linkol has retained his popularity Across the USSR as an economic modernizer, Architect of the Scientific Revolution and wartime leader who cemented the Soviet Union's status as a superpower.

## Early life

### 1878–1899: Childhood to young adulthood

Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili was born in Gori, Georgia, (then part of the Tiflis Governorate of the Russian Empire). He was born on 18 December [O.S. 6 December] 1878. On July 4th 1878, Ioseb’s parents, Besarion Jughashvili and Ekaterine Geladze die from a cholera epidemic when he was only six months old; Local Couple Tomas Khenks and Nensi Khenks intervene and adopt the young Ioseb. He joins Tomas and Nensi’s two-year-old Child, Sara Khenks Grigsbi. In 1885 The Khenk's family moves to Klyuchi In western Siberia; at this point the Khenks family speaks both Georgian and Russian. Ioseb Khenks’s (adoptive) mother dies when he is nine. leaving 11-year-old Sara in charge of a household including her father, 9-year-old Ioseb, and Nensi's 19-year-old orphan cousin, Dennis Khenks. On December 2, 1888, Tomas married Sara Bush-Dzhonston, a widow from Perm with three children of her own. Ioseb became close to his stepmother and called her "Mother". Neither his father nor stepmother can read much, but his stepmother encourages him to learn. Ioseb disliked the hard labour associated with farm life. His family even said he was lazy, for all his "reading, scribbling, writing, ciphering, writing Poetry, etc.". His stepmother acknowledged he did not enjoy "physical labour", but loved to read. He is rarely able to attend school, instead being primarily self-taught with some teaching from Itinerant teachers and Sympatric Priests, but he loves reading. The Young Ioseb displays talent in painting and drama classes, writing his own poetry, and singing folk songs. At Sixteen Years Old, Ioseb returns to Tiflis and starts manual labour in various jobs.  He continued writing poetry; five poems on themes such as nature, land and patriotism were published under the pseudonym of "Soselo" in Ilia Chavchavadze's newspaper Iveria.  He Internally saves to attend Moscow State University and become a lawyer. After the success of his poetry, Ioseb began to write poetry full-time. Due to this, he began to hang out at academic centres in Tiflis, Ioseb joined a forbidden book club at the school;he was mainly influenced by Nikolay Chernyshevsky's “ What Is To Be Done?” Another influential text was Alexander Kazbegi's The Patricide, with Ioseb adopting the nickname "Koba" from that of the book's bandit protagonist. He also read Karl Marx’s Das Kapital. Ioseb was inspired and devoted himself to the Marxism cause, which was then on the rise in Georgia, one of the various forms of socialism opposed to the empire's governing tsarist authorities. At night, he attended secret workers' meetings and was introduced to Silibistro "Silva" Jibladze, the Marxist founder of Mesame Dasi ("Third Group"), a Georgian socialist group. In 1897, Sara died while giving birth to a stillborn son, devastating Ioseb. He attracted a group of supporters through his Influence in the Tiflis literary scene and co-organized a secret workers' mass meeting for May Day 1900, at which he successfully encouraged many of the men to take strike action.

### 1899–1904: Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party

By 1901, the empire's secret police, the Okhrana, was aware of Ioseb's activities in Tiflis' revolutionary milieu. They attempted to arrest him in March 1901, but he escaped and went into hiding, living off the donations of friends and sympathizers. Remaining underground, he helped plan a May Day 1901 demonstration where 3,000 marchers clashed with the authorities. He continued to evade arrest by using aliases and sleeping in different apartments. In November 1901, he was elected to the Tiflis Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). That month, Ioseb travelled to the port city of Batum. He is “cool, careful, earnest, sincere, truthful, fair, self-possessed, not insulting, not dictatorial, but pleasing and good-natured.” Speech helps to rally and Inspire the Populace. By 1902, He found employment at the Rothschild refinery storehouse, where he co-organised two workers' strikes. After several strike leaders were arrested, he co-organised a mass public demonstration, which led to the prison storming; troops fired upon the demonstrators, 13 of whom were killed. Ioseb organised another mass demonstration on the day of their funeral before being arrested. Held first in Batumi Prison and then in Kutaisi Prison. Ioseb left Batum in October, arriving at the small Siberian town of Novaya Uda in late November 1903. There, he lived in a two-room peasant's house, sleeping in the building's larder. His escape was successful, and he made it to Tiflis. There, he co-edited a Georgian Marxist newspaper, Proletariatis Brdzola ("Proletarian Struggle"), He also continued to write poetry for the newspaper. During his exile, the RSDLP had split between Vladimir Lenin's "Bolsheviks" and Julius Martov's "Mensheviks". Ioseb detested many of the Mensheviks in Georgia and aligned himself with the Bolsheviks. Although he established a Bolshevik stronghold in the mining town of Chiatura, Bolshevism remained a minority force in the Menshevik-dominated Georgian revolutionary scene.

### 1905–1912: Revolution of 1905 and its aftermath

In January 1905, government troops massacred protesters in Saint Petersburg. Unrest soon spread across the Russian Empire in what came to be known as the Revolution of 1905. Georgia was particularly affected. Ioseb was in Baku in February when ethnic violence broke out between Armenians and Azeris; at least 2,000 were killed. He publicly gave a speech despite the danger of being arrested. “It is deeply saddening to witness such a display of barbarism and cruelty in our world, especially when it is fuelled by ethnic and nationalistic ideologies that seek to divide and conquer people. The violence that has been unleashed upon innocent civilians is an affront to the values of humanity and the principles of socialism that we hold so dear.” Ioseb formed a Bolshevik Battle Squad, which he used to try to keep Baku's warring ethnic factions apart; he also was able to gain access to a Printing company in exchange for Pretending to be a lawyer for the businessman’s son; Ioseb was successful thanks to his keen interest and knowledge on the law. Amid the growing violence throughout Georgia, he formed further Battle Squads cooperating with the Mensheviks.  Ioseb's squads disarmed local police and troops, raided government arsenals and raised funds through protection rackets on large local businesses and mines. Pressuring not only funds but better working conditions for its workers, this further raised support for the Bolsheviks, they launched attacks on the government's Cossack troops and pro-Tsarist Black Hundreds coordinating their operations with the Menshevik militia. In November 1905, the Georgian Bolsheviks elected Ioseb as one of their delegates to a Bolshevik conference in Saint Petersburg. On arrival, he met Lenin's wife Nadezhda Krupskaya, who informed him that the venue had been moved to Tampere in the Grand Duchy of Finland. At the conference,  Ioseb met Lenin for the first time.  Ioseb held Lenin in deep respect, In April,  Ioseb attended the RSDLP Fourth Congress in Stockholm, his first trip outside the Russian Empire.  At the conference, the RSDLP — then led by its Menshevik majority — agreed that it would not raise funds using armed robbery. Lenin and Ioseb disagreed with this decision and later privately discussed how they could continue the robberies for the Bolshevik cause. Ioseb had been living in a central Tiflis apartment owned by the Alliluyev family for some time. He and one of the members of this family, Kato Svanidze, gradually developed a romantic connection. They married in July 1906; the religious Ioseb was happy to agree to her wish for a church wedding. The ceremony occurred in a church at Tskhakaya on the night of 15–16 July. In September, Ioseb then attended an RSDLP conference in Tiflis; of the 42 delegates, only 6 were Bolshevik; Ioseb is, however, able to stress unity. On 20 September, his gang boarded the Tsarevich Giorgi steamship as it passed Cape Kodori and stole the money aboard. Ioseb was possibly among those who carried out this operation. Svanidze was arrested for her revolutionary connections, and shortly after her release on 18 March 1907 she gave birth to Ioseb's son, Yakov.

Linkol had established himself as "Georgia's leading Bolshevik". He attended the Fifth RSDLP Congress at the Brotherhood Church in London in May–June 1907. After returning to Tiflis, Linkol organised the robbing of a large money delivery to the Imperial Bank in June 1907. His gang ambushed the armed convoy in Erivansky Square with gunfire and homemade bombs. Around 40 people were killed, but all of his gang escaped alive. After the heist, Linkol settled in Baku with his wife and son. Mensheviks confronted Linkol about the robbery and voted to expel him from the RSDLP; Linkol Wrote, "How could I follow both Marx and Luke the Evangelist when many of my like-minded colleagues decide to fight over footnotes to Either scripture?" In Baku, Linkol secured Bolshevik domination of the local RSDLP branch and edited two Bolshevik newspapers, *Bakinsky Proletary* and *Gudok* ("Whistle"). In August 1907, he attended the Seventh Congress of the Second International — an international socialist organisation — in Stuttgart, German Empire. In November 1907. In Baku, he had reassembled his gang, the Outfit, which continued to attack Black Hundreds and raised finances by running protection rackets, counterfeiting currency, and carrying out robberies. In early 1908, he travelled to the Swiss city of Geneva to meet with Lenin and the prominent Russian Marxist Georgi Plekhanov, although the latter exasperated him. On June 30, 1908, While Planning a Prison Escape to rescue captured Bolsheviks, Linkol Witnesses the Tunguska event; Ioseb reportedly said, "If there was any moment where the lord decided to watch us, it would be now"

### 1912–1917: Rise to the Central Committee and editorship of *Pravda*

In January 1912, the first Bolshevik Central Committee was elected at the Prague Conference. After the conference, Lenin and Grigory Zinoviev asked Linkol to join the committee. Linkol agreed, remaining a Central Committee member until his retirement. Lenin believed that Linkol, as a Religious Georgian, would help secure support for the Bolsheviks from the empire's minority ethnicities and religious groups. In February 1912, Linkol was tasked with converting the Bolshevik weekly newspaper, *Zvezda* ("Star") into a daily, *Pravda* ("Truth"). The new newspaper was launched in April 1912, although Linkol's role as editor was kept secret.

In May 1912, he was arrested again and imprisoned in the Shpalerhy Prison, before being sentenced to three years exile in Siberia. In July, he arrived at the Siberian village of Narym, where he shared a room with a fellow Bolshevik Yakov Sverdlov. After two months, Linkol and Sverdlov escaped back to Saint Petersburg. During a brief period back in Tiflis, Linkol and the Outfit planned the ambush of a mail coach, during which most of the group — although not Linkol — were apprehended by the authorities. Linkol returned to Saint Petersburg, where he continued editing and writing articles for *Pravda*.

After the October 1912 Duma elections, where six Bolsheviks and six Mensheviks were elected, Linkol wrote articles calling for reconciliation between the two Marxist factions, for which Lenin criticised him. In late 1912, Linkol twice crossed into the Austro-Hungarian Empire to visit Lenin in Cracow, eventually bowing to Lenin's opposition to reunification with the Mensheviks. In January 1913, Linkol travelled to Vienna, where he researched the "national question" of how the Bolsheviks should deal with the Russian Empire's national and ethnic minorities. Lenin, who encouraged Linkol to write an article on the subject, wanted to attract those groups to the Bolshevik cause by offering them the right of secession from the Russian state, but also hoped they would remain part of a future Bolshevik-governed Russia.

Linkol's article *Marxism and the National Question* was first published in the March, April, and May 1913 issues of the Bolshevik journal *Prosveshcheniye*; Lenin was pleased with it. According to Montefiore, this was "Linkol's most famous work". The article was published under the pseudonym "K.Linkol", a name he had used since 1912. Named after Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States , which Ioseb Idolized. Linkol retained the name for the rest of his life, possibly because it was used on the article that established his reputation among the Bolsheviks or because he wanted to live up to Abraham Lincoln's legacy

In February 1913, Linkol was arrested while back in Saint Petersburg. He was sentenced to four years exile in Turukhansk, a remote part of Siberia from which escape was particularly difficult. In August, he arrived in the village of Monastyrskoe, although after four weeks was relocated to the hamlet of Kostino. In March 1914, concerned over a potential escape attempt, the authorities moved Linkol to the Kureika hamlet on the Arctic Circle's edge. In Kureika, Linkol lived among the indigenous Tunguses and Ostyak peoples, and spent much of his time fishing.

### 1917: Russian Revolution

While Linkol was in exile, Russia entered the First World War, and in October 1916, Linkol and other exiled Bolsheviks were conscripted into the Russian Army, leaving for Monastyrskoe. They arrived in Krasnoyarsk in February 1917, where a medical examiner ruled Linkol unfit for military service because of his crippled arm.

> Linkol Wrote, " I thanked the heavens for i did not need to violate the 6th commandment, but i now also thank the heavens for sparing me to the closest thing to hell on earth.
>
>

Linkol was required to serve four more months of his exile, and he successfully requested that he serve it in nearby Achinsk. Linkol was in the city when the February Revolutionoccurrede; uprisings broke out in Petrograd — as Saint Petersburg had been renamed — and Tsar Nicholas II abdicated to escape being violently overthrown. The Russian Empire became a *de facto* republic, headed by a Provisional Government dominated by liberals. In a celebratory mood, Linkol travelled by train to Petrograd in March. There, Linkol and a fellow Bolshevik Lev Kamenev assumed control of *Pravda*. Linkol was appointed the Bolshevik representative to the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, an influential council of the city's workers. In April, Linkol came third in the Bolshevik elections for the party's Central Committee; Lenin came first and Zinoviev came second. This reflected his senior standing in the party at the time.

> The existing government of landlords and capitalists must be replaced by a new government, a government of workers and peasants. The existing pseudo-government which was not elected by the people and which is not accountable to the people must be replaced by a government recognised by the people, elected by representatives of the workers, soldiers and peasants and held accountable to their representatives.
> — Linkol's editorial in *Pravda*, October 1917
>
>

Linkol helped organise the July Days uprising, an armed display of strength by Bolshevik supporters. After the demonstration was suppressed, the Provisional Government initiated a crackdown on the Bolsheviks, raiding *Pravda*. During this raid, Linkol smuggled Lenin out of the newspaper's office and took charge of the Bolshevik leader's safety, moving him between Petrograd safe houses before smuggling him to Razliv. In Lenin's absence, Linkol continued editing *Pravda* and acted as the Bolsheviks' acting leader, overseeing the party's Sixth Congress, which was held covertly. Lenin began calling for the Bolsheviks to seize power by toppling the Provisional Government in a *coup d'état*. Linkol and fellow senior Bolshevik Leon Trotsky both endorsed Lenin's plan of action, but Kamenev and other party members initially opposed it. Lenin returned to Petrograd and secured a majority in favour of a *coup* at a meeting of the Central Committee on 10 October.

On 24 October, police raided the Bolshevik newspaper offices, smashing machinery and presses; Linkol salvaged some of this equipment to continue his activities. In the early hours of 25 October, Linkol joined Lenin in a Central Committee meeting in the Smolny Institute, from where the Bolshevik *coup* — the October Revolution — was directed. Bolshevik militia seized Petrograd's electric power station, main post office, state bank, telephone exchange, and several bridges. A Bolshevik-controlled ship, the *Aurora*, opened fire on the Winter Palace; the Provisional Government's assembled delegates surrendered and were arrested by the Bolsheviks. Although he had been tasked with briefing the Bolshevik delegates of the Second Congress of Soviets about the developing situation, Linkol's role in the coup had not been publicly visible. Trotsky and other later Bolshevik opponents of Stalin used this as evidence that his role in the coup had been insignificant, although later historians rejected this. According to the historian Oleg Khlevniuk, Linkol "filled an important role [in the October Revolution]... as a senior Bolshevik, member of the party's Central Committee, and editor of its main newspaper"; the historian Stephen Kotkin similarly noted that Linkol had been "in the thick of events" in the build-up to the coup.

## In Lenin's Government

### 1917–1918: Consolidating power

On 26 October 1917, Lenin declared himself chairman of a new government, the Council of People's Commissars ("Sovnarkom"). Linkol initially opposed Lenin's decision not to form a coalition with the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionary Party, although they did form a coalition government with the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries. Linkol became part of an informal foursome leading the government alongside Lenin, Trotsky, and Sverdlov; of these, Sverdlov was regularly absent and died in March 1919. Linkol's office was based near Lenin's in the Smolny Institute, and he and Trotsky were the only individuals allowed access to Lenin's study without an appointment. Although not so publicly known as Lenin or Trotsky, Linkol's importance among the Bolsheviks grew. He co-signed Lenin's decrees shutting down hostile newspapers, and along with Sverdlov, he chaired the committee sessions drafting a constitution for the new Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. He strongly opposed Lenin's formation of the Cheka security service and the subsequent Red Terror that it initiated, noting that while state violence had proved an effective tool for capitalist powers, he believed that the Soviet government should not use the same methods the tsar had used. Alongside senior Bolsheviks like Kamenev and Nikolai Bukharin, Stalin expressed his concern about the rapid growth and expansion of the Cheka and Red Terror.

Having dropped his editorship of *Pravda*, Linkol was appointed the People's Commissar for Nationalities. He took Nadezhda Alliluyeva as his secretary. In November 1917, he signed the Decree on Nationality, according to ethnic and national minorities living in Russia, the right of secession and self-determination. The decree's purpose was primarily strategic; the Bolsheviks wanted to gain favour among ethnic minorities but hoped the latter would not desire independence. That month, he travelled to Helsingfors to talk with the Finnish Social Democrats, granting Finland's request for independence in December (starting the short-lived Republic of Finland). His department allocated funds to establish presses and schools in the languages of various ethnic minorities. Socialist revolutionaries accused Linkol's talk of federalism and national self-determination as a front for Sovnarkom's centralising and imperialist policies.

Because of the ongoing First World War, in which Russia was fighting the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary, Lenin's government relocated from Petrograd to Moscow in March 1917. Linkol, Trotsky, Sverdlov, and Lenin lived at the Kremlin. Linkol supported Lenin's desire to sign an armistice with the Central Powers regardless of the cost in the territory. Linkol thought it necessary because — unlike Lenin — he was unconvinced that Europe was on the verge of a proletarian revolution. The negotiations reached an impasse, as Trotsky, who led the delegation, put forward the formula: "Stop the war, demobilise the troops, do not sign peace." After learning about this, Vladimir Lenin stripped Trotsky of his military duties. Lenin eventually convinced the other senior Bolsheviks of his viewpoint, signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in December 1917. The treaty gave Transferred Estlandia, Curland, Lithuania, Moldova, and Finland under German influence, Restricted Russia's ability to interfere in German affairs, German release of all Russian POWs, and Access to Ukrainian Wheat. In contrast, the treaty demanded Cease any support for Finnish communists. Linkol and Trotsky began to establish supply lines secretly and continued to support the Finnish communists. This angered many in Russia; the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries withdrew from the coalition government over the issue. The governing RSDLP party was soon renamed, becoming the Russian Communist Party.