By researching Stalin we can see he had a very different personality. He started of life as the son of a poor family. He was strong willed and managed to weave his way to the top of the soviet government all because of his sneaky personality.
But saying his personality was responsible for the great purges are a debatable question. Some historians believe he did it just because he thought it was the right action for power in soviet Russia. Which is a valid point as he did want to better Russia as a country and catch up economically with other countries, so you could just see the purges as getting rid of impurities so they can reach a final target. But i believe its fully his personality that fuelled the terror of the purges. Mainly because of him becoming a very paranoid person. He believed that his physician was out to murder him, so he called for him to be killed (doctor’s plot) this fuelled the hatred towards the Jews as people believed they wanted to ruin Stalin. One of the reasons why his personality was spiralling was the suicide of his second wife. After this, his brutality increased even further. He no longer held time for people in his way, he was suspicious of everybody. An example of his evil acts was when he was working in his office. He had a pet parrot in a cage; it once imitated his voice so he reached in and killed the bird with his pipe. So this shows he had lost all patience with anybody or anything.
So overall I think Stalins personality was the reason for the terror and purges in soviet Russia.
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