Stalin's Differences And Roles Of Mao And Joseph Stalin

Mao and Stalin were both horrific, but strategic communist leaders. During their time as leaders, they showed other countries who was in control and showed their people the power of communism. China was not ready for anything when Mao came to power. The USSR had their share of suffering, especially after the World Wars. Although Mao and Stalin lived during different times and in different countries, they share similarities in their leadership and policies, they had their differences in how they handled power, and between the two, Mao is by far the worst to date.

In China and in the USSR, Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin used similar tactics to bring about drastic change in their country. Both men wanted their country to be heavily industrialized. …show more content…
One of the areas they choose to differentiate themselves was in economics. “Stalin focused on making economic and agricultural changes to Soviet Russia, while Mao focused more on cultural changes in China. Stalin set forth three five year plans to expand industry because Russia was behind. Mao created the little red book, [which had] guidelines for the people in China to follow, which established the Mao cult.” Mao was not interested in Stalin’s rapid growth ideology, instead Mao wanted to have his people become radicalized behind their culture. It was when the people of China were built around the culture that they could move forward. Stalin was not into cultural revolutions. Stalin was more concerned with how far behind the USSR was compared to the other European countries. Russia was suffering because it lacked the industry to build weapons, technology, and transportation. Mao and Stalin did take some approaches that were the same, but which way they went was different. So while Stalin was going about his heavy industrialization, Mao thought he would try it out as well. The Great Leap Forward was Mao’s attempt at industrializing and collecting power to China. The Great Leap Forward was Mao’s attempt to separate China from Soviet style communism. He introduced communes, which were different from collectivized farms. Mao originally knew China was not ready for a move towards communism. 97% of the …show more content…
Comparing Mao’s legacy to that of Stalin’s, there is quite the difference in how effective they were at achieving what they planned to do. The Great Leap Forward happens to be the perfect example of how incapable Mao was. The movement was just a total fail. The Great Leap forward was originally aimed to rapidly transform China from an agrarian economy to a into a socialist society through a hasty industrialization and collectivization. The Great Leap however, is thought to be the sole cause of the Great Chinese Famine. Mao’s first 5 Year Plan was more or less a success. From most, it moved China a bit up the scale. Mao wanted more though, and this was the problem. The USSR went from something small and ramped right up to being superpower. Mao wanted this for China, so he came up with an idea called the Great Leap Forward. This idea was insane in many ways. For one, Mao wanted to surpass the UK in 15 years, which was a very big change from what China was to what Mao saw in the future. Mao did hold purges, but what sets him apart from Stalin was the fact that Mao accidentally caused a huge wide-spread famine and killed about 45 million people. This famine caused Mao to be “unpopular” in China. This wide spread famine did not make Mao a fan among the people, which was why he held movements such as the Cultural Revolution. Mao had less of a prevalent role in leading – he demanded