Joseph Stalin

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; 6 December – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian-born Russian revolutionary and politician who was the second leader of the Soviet Union from 1924 and the fourth premier of the Soviet Union from 1941 until his death in 1953. His ideas and policies turned the Soviet Union into a powerful, relatively modern country, as the largest on Earth. He formalised his Leninist interpretation of Marxism as Marxism–Leninism, while the totalitarian political system he established became known as Stalinism.

Generalissimo Joseph Stalin Marshal Vozhd HSU HSL HM
Иосиф Сталин იოსებ სტალინი
Official portrait, 1950
General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
In office 3 April 1922 – 16 October 1952
Preceded by	Vyacheslav Molotov (as Responsible Secretary)
Succeeded by	Nikita Khrushchev (as First Secretary)
2nd Leader of the Soviet Union
In office 21 January 1924 – 5 March 1953
President	Mikhail Kalinin Nikolai Shvernik
Premier	Alexei Rykov Vyacheslav Molotov Himself
Preceded by	Vladimir Lenin
Succeeded by	Georgy Malenkov
4th Premier of the Soviet Union
In office 6 May 1941 – 5 March 1953
President	Mikhail Kalinin Nikolai Shvernik
First Deputies	Nikolai Voznesensky Vyacheslav Molotov Nikolai Bulganin
Preceded by	Vyacheslav Molotov
Succeeded by	Georgy Malenkov
Minister of the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union
In office 19 July 1941 – 3 March 1947
Premier	Himself
Preceded by	Semyon Timoshenko
Succeeded by	Nikolai Bulganin
People's Commissar for Nationalities of the Russian SFSR
In office 8 November 1917 – 7 July 1923
Premier	Vladimir Lenin
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	Office abolished
Personal details
Born	Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili (1878-12-06)6 December 1878 Gori, Russian Empire (present-day Georgia)
Died	5 March 1953(1953-03-05) (aged 74) Moscow, Soviet Union
Resting place	Lenin's Mausoleum, Moscow (1953–1961) Kremlin Wall Necropolis, Moscow (since 1961)
Political party	CPSU (from 1912)
Other political affiliations	RSDLP (1898–1912) Bolshevik (faction from 1903)
Spouse(s)	Ekaterine Svanidze ​ ​ (m. 1906; died 1907)​ Nadezhda Alliluyeva ​ ​ (m. 1919; died 1932)​
Children	Yakov Dzhugashvili Vasily Stalin Artyom Sergeyev (adopted) Svetlana Alliluyeva
Parents	Besarion Jughashvili (father) Ekaterine Geladze (mother)
Alma mater	Tiflis Theological Seminary
Awards	Full list
Signature
Military service
Nickname(s)	Koba Soso
Allegiance	Soviet Russia Soviet Union
Branch	Red Army
Years of service	1918–1920
Rank	Generalissimo (from 1945)
Commands	Soviet Armed Forces (from 1941)
Battles/wars	Russian Civil War Polish–Soviet War World War II

Stalin invaded Poland on 18 September 1939. In the subsequent World War II, Stalin stayed neutral but signed a peace deal with Germany's leader Adolf Hitler. He then led a bloody war after Germany invaded the Soviet Union known as Operation Barbarossa, and after the end of the war Stalin gained control of all Eastern Europe including part of Germany. There, a series of loyal Marxist-Leninist single-party states were set up, extending his power and making the Soviet Union a superpower.

Name

Stalin was born as Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili or Iosif Dzhugashvili. He began calling himself "Stalin" in 1912.

• In Russian: Ио́сиф Виссарио́нович Ста́лин - Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin; born Джугашвили - Dzhugashvili.
• In Georgian: იოსებ ბესარიონის ძე ჯუღაშვილიი - Ioseb Jughashvili
• Joseph Stalin 

Early life

The house where Stalin was born, in Gori, Georgia

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was born in a small one room house in Gori, Georgia, on 18 December 1878. His father made and repaired shoes. His father was often drunk and used to hit his wife and his son. This resulted in Joseph getting struck by a sports carriage in January 1890, resulting in his left arm becoming shorter. Joseph had smallpox when he was young. This left his face scarred. Later, photographs were often changed to hide the scars. He was educated at the Gori church school. Joseph studied to be a priest at a seminary (school for priests) in Tbilisi. He was an active student reading many books, especially books that were not allowed by the seminary. This included books by Karl Marx. He joined a Marxist group in 1898, the Mesame Dasi, or Group Three.

Revolutionary

Stalin in 1902

Stalin left school in 1899 and got a job at the Tbilisi Physical Institute. He joined groups that were trying to start a revolution to remove the Tsar. They wanted a different type of government. The police raided his house in 1901 while hunting for people who opposed the government. Stalin escaped but went into hiding so the police could not find him. He organized anti-government activities such as May Day marches and protests. He became a Bolshevik. He supported a violent revolution, and did not support the Mensheviks. The secret police caught him in April 1902 and exiled him without trial to Siberia. He lived in the village of Novaya Uda.

He soon escaped from Siberia. This led to many later claims that he was a police spy. The arrest of another Bolshevik, Stephan Shaumyan, a rival of Stalin, increased these beliefs. At the end of 1905, he went to a meeting in Finland and met Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Lenin was not what Stalin had expected. The government arrested and exiled Stalin several times in the next ten years. This increased his power in the Bolshevik party and he was elected to the Central Committee of the party in 1912. He was promoted to a position at St.Petersburg.

Secretary

Stalin (right side) with Lenin (left side) in 1922

Stalin was a member of the Bolshevik Party, but did not do much in the Russian Revolution of 1917. He was writing and editing Pravda, the party newspaper. He had a number of organizational jobs in the Communist Party. In 1922 he became General Secretary. He was able to give jobs to people he liked in the Communist Party. These supporters helped him become the leader after Vladimir Lenin died in 1924.

Food and agriculture

Stalin tried to collectivize farms. Collectivization meant taking the land from owners of all farms and joining it into large farms run by the government. Communist officials then let farmers work the new farms and told them to turn the harvest over to the government.

Collectivization did not work well. There was a famine 1932–33, in which millions died. Because farmers were not paid much money, and whatever they grew went to the state, the workers did not try their best. The best farming worked on very small bits of land given to the peasants to grow what they liked. On these pieces of land, farmers could keep what they grew. In 1938 these parts of land were 4% of Soviet farmland. However, they grew 20% of its produce.

There was a second great famine in the Soviet Union in 1946–1947. The conditions were caused by drought, made worse by the devastation caused by World War II. The grain harvest in 1946 totalled 39.6 million tons - barely 40% of the yield in 1940.

Mass executions

Mass graves of victims killed during Stalin's rule in Belarus

To eliminate "enemies of the working class", Stalin instituted the "Great Purge". Over a million people were imprisoned and at least 700,000 executed between 1934 and 1939. Those executed included most of the generals in the Red Army, whom Stalin saw as a threat to his rule. This greatly weakened the army in the early months of the Wehrmacht's offensive against the Soviet Union in 1941.

World War II

Stalin Giving a speech to the Red Army during the 1941 October Revolution Parade

Stalin with Churchill and Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference in February 1945

Stalin cooperated with Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. They signed a mutual non-aggression pact. However, Hitler hated communism. After invading and neutralising France, Germany attacked the Soviet Union. After the Operation Barbarossa invasion, the USSR began working with the Western Allies to defeat Germany. In the end, Germany lost, but the USSR had more casualties than any other country during the war.

When World War II was over, the Soviet army occupied many countries in Europe, such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and parts of Germany. They imposed Marxism-Leninism on these countries. This was done against the wishes, and over the protests, of the American and British governments.

Stalin continued to rule over the Soviet Union until he died. He also militarized Russia by focusing the country's time and energy towards weapons, vehicles, and the armed forces.

Death

Stalin's Funeral in Moscow on March 9

In his later years, Stalin faced various health issues, including cardiovascular problems, high blood pressure, and a series of strokes. His health deteriorated, leading to his death on March 5, 1953, officially attributed to a stroke.

Led by Lavrentiy Beria, the leading group in the Kremlin were Vyacheslav Molotov and Georgy Malenkov and Nikita Krushchev. Much later, Krushchev began a process of "De-Stalinization", which meant taking apart much of the political system that Stalin made. Stalin was denounced as a tyrant. After outsmarting and defeating his rivals, Krushchev established a personal control over the government comparable to Stalin's own. Krushchev is himself a fascinating figure in Soviet history. His attempts to expand Soviet influence ended with the Cuban missile crisis.

Conspiracy theory

In 2003 a group of Russian and American historians claimed that Stalin had been poisoned with powerful rat poison warfarin, possibly by the men who took over the government after Stalin died. Bear in mind, however, that Stalin was in his mid-seventies when he died, and modern pharmacology was in the future (statins etc.). Those facts make it likely that his death was natural.

Legacy

Museum of Stalin in his hometown of Gori

Stalin is a controversial figure in history. Many historians see him as a ruthless dictator, though some praise him as the Father of the Soviet State. Stalin has been criticized for his role in the Holodomor. A recent poll in Russia (2008) listed him as the third most popular person in Russian history. In 2006, a poll stated that almost half the adults in Russia thought Joseph Stalin was a good person. At over 29 years, he was Russia's longest serving Ruler throughout the 20th Century and his record remains unbroken till date.

Related pages

• Vladimir Lenin
• Leon Trotsky

References

Preceded by Post created Previous party leader: Vladimir Lenin	General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party 1922–1953	Succeeded by Nikita Krushchev
Preceded by Vyacheslav Molotov	Prime Minister of the Soviet Union 1941–1953	Succeeded by George Malenkov