What ideas did Josesh Stalin have? Did his upbringing and events in his life influence the ideas?
Stalin was less a man of ideas than of a desire for power. He was always willing to sacrifice ideology for pragmatism. As an example of this, though he strongly disliked the Orthodox Chruch and had frequently persecuted them throughout his reign, he reinstated them during the Second World War in order to bolster the morale of the troops and to instill a sense of nationalism in them. His upbringing certainly was troubled – his father left when he was young, and he was eventually sent to become a priest. The head of the seminary was very strict, controlling and harsh, and Stalin grew to hate the seminary very much. During this time he began covertly reading Marxist literature (it was forbidden reading in the seminary), and eventually he left the school with (if I recall) only one course incomplete. This clearly influenced his actions throughout the rest of his life, but there was one other event while he was in power that seemed to flick a switch in his brain, bringing to life that monst
