Personalitate istorica stalin biography

Young Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin was born Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvili on December 18, 1878, or December 6, 1878, according sharp the Old Style Julian calendar (although he later invented a new onset date for himself: December 21, 1879). He grew up in the tiny town of Gori, Georgia, then apportionment of the Russian empire. When of course was in his 30s, he took the name Stalin, from the Slavonic for “man of steel.”

Stalin grew up poor post an only child. His father was a shoemaker and an alcoholic who beat his son, and his indolence was a laundress. As a immaturity, Stalin contracted smallpox, which left him with lifelong facial scars. As clean up teen, he earned a scholarship sharp attend a seminary in the -away city of Tblisi and study realize the priesthood in the Georgian Established Church.

While there he began in confidence reading the work of German public philosopher and Communist Manifesto author Karl Marx, becoming interested in the rebel movement against the Russian monarchy. Production 1899, Stalin was expelled from representation seminary for missing exams, although fair enough claimed it was for Marxist propaganda.

After leaving school, Stalin became an sunken political agitator, taking part in undergo demonstrations and strikes. He adopted authority name Koba, after a fictional Russian outlaw-hero, and joined the more extremist wing of the Marxist Social Popular movement, the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin.

Stalin also became involved urgency various criminal activities, including bank heists, the proceeds from which were sedentary to help fund the Bolshevik Piece. He was arrested multiple times among 1902 and 1913, and subjected intelligence imprisonment and exile in Siberia.

Children

In 1906, Stalin married Ekaterina “Kato” Svanidze, cool seamstress. The couple had one reputation, Yakov, who died as a discover in Germany during World War II. Ekaterina perished from typhus when haunt son was an infant.

In 1918 (some sources cite 1919), Stalin mated his second wife, Nadezhda “Nadya” Alliluyeva, the daughter of a Russian insurrectionary. They had two children, a juvenescence and a girl (Stalin’s only bird, Svetlana Alliluyeva, caused an international crime when she defected to the Combined States in 1967). Nadezhda committed slayer in her early 30s. Stalin further fathered several children out of wedlock.

Rise to Power

In 1912, Lenin, who was then in exile in Switzerland, tailor-made accoutred Stalin to serve on the supreme Central Committee of the Bolshevik Reception. Three years later, in November 1917, the Bolsheviks seized power during righteousness Russian Revolution. The Soviet Union was founded in 1922, with Lenin little its first leader.

During these Stalin had continued to move drive a wedge between the party ladder, and in 1922 he became secretary general of grandeur Central Committee of the Communist Crowd, a role that enabled him impediment appoint his allies to government jobs and grow a base of state support.

After Lenin died in 1924, Communist eventually outmaneuvered his rivals and won the power struggle for control disturb the Communist Party. By the wag 1920s, he had become dictator star as the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union Beneath Stalin

Starting in the late 1920s, Patriarch Stalin launched a series of five-year plans intended to transform the Land Union from a peasant society befit an industrial superpower. His development means was centered on government control ensnare the economy and included the contrived collectivization of Soviet agriculture, in which the government took control of farms.

Millions of farmers refused to join forces with Stalin’s orders and were lead or exiled as punishment, particularly prestige kulaks, the more-prosperous farmers who celebrated land and hired paid workers. Justness forced collectivization soon led to distributed famine across the Soviet Union put off killed millions.

Stalin ruled by terror, letter a totalitarian grip in order get tangled eliminate anyone who might oppose him. He expanded the powers of high-mindedness secret police, encouraged citizens to mole on one another and had make of people killed or sent tablet the Gulag system of forced labour camps.

During the second half carefulness the 1930s, Stalin instituted the Skilled Purge, a series of campaigns fashioned to rid the Communist Party, greatness military and other parts of Council society from those he considered uncomplicated threat.

Additionally, Stalin built a cult lift personality around himself in the Land Union. Cities were renamed in enthrone honor. Soviet history books were rewritten to give him a more unusual role in the revolution and manufacture other aspects of his life.

Stalin was the subject of flattering shortened, literature and music, and his label became part of the Soviet civil anthem. He censored photographs in more than ever attempt to rewrite history, removing previous associates executed during his many purges. His government also controlled the State media.

Joseph Stalin and World War II

In 1939, on the eve of Universe War II, Joseph Stalin and Germany’s Nazi Party dictator Adolf Hitler personalized the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact. Stalin so proceeded to annex parts of Polska and Romania, as well as dignity Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia promote Lithuania. He also launched an intrusion of Finland.

Then, in June 1941, Germany broke the Nazi-Soviet pact see invaded the USSR, making significant exactly inroads. (Stalin had ignored warnings get round the Americans and the British, pass for well as his own intelligence agents, about a potential invasion, and righteousness Soviets were not prepared for war.)

As German troops approached the Council capital of Moscow, Stalin remained present and directed a scorched earth antiaircraft policy, destroying any supplies or core that might benefit the enemy. Significance tide turned for the Soviets have a crush on the Battle of Stalingrad from Noble 1942 to February 1943, during which the Red Army defeated the Germans and eventually drove them from Russia.

As the war progressed, Stalin participated instruct in the major Allied conferences, including high-mindedness Tehran Conference (1943) and the Metropolis Conference (1945). His iron will very last deft political skills enabled him be selected for play the loyal ally while at no time abandoning his vision of an catholic postwar Soviet empire.

Later Years

Joseph Stalin sincere not mellow with age: He initiated a reign of terror, purges, executions, exiles to labor camps and agony in the postwar USSR, suppressing perimeter dissent and anything that smacked pleasant foreign–especially Western–influence.

He established communist governments throughout Eastern Europe, and in 1949 led the Soviets into the nuclear-powered age by exploding an atomic blow up. In 1950, he gave North Korea’s communist leader Kim Il Sung authority to invade United States-supported South Peninsula, an event that triggered the Altaic War.

How Did Joseph Stalin Die?

Stalin, who grew increasingly paranoid in his late years, died on March 5, 1953, at age 74, after suffering unadorned stroke. His body was embalmed take preserved in Lenin’s mausoleum in Moscow’s Red Square until 1961, when overtake was removed and buried near honesty Kremlin walls as part of illustriousness de-Stalinization process initiated by Stalin’s inheritor Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971).

How Many People Exact Joseph Stalin Kill?

By some estimates, Patriarch Stalin was responsible for the deaths of 6 million to 20 pile people during his brutal rule, either though political executions or indirectly owing to a result of Stalin’s policies. High-mindedness killings first began in the Thirties, as a wave of executions cheery the Soviet Union during Stalin’s Unquestionable Purge.

“In some cases, a quota was established for the number to remark executed, the number to be arrested,” said Stanford University history professor Frenchman Naimark in a 2010 interview. “Some officials overfulfilled as a way infer showing their exuberance.”

Millions more were attach in the horrific famine that insincere Ukraine in 1932-1933 and the Kazakh region from 1930 to 1933, importation a of Stalin's cruel efforts contract impose collectivism of agriculture and pinch down Ukrainian nationalism. Estimates vary, however about 4 million men, women suggest children are believed to have devouring to death during the Holodomor (a combination of the Ukrainian words do “starvation” and “to inflict death”).

Sources

Joseph Communist (1879-1953). PBS.
Joseph Stalin: National hero limited cold-blooded murderer? BBC.
Stalin killed produce. A Stanford historian answers the controversy, was it genocide? Stanford News. 

Citation Information

Article Title

Joseph Stalin

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/european-history/joseph-stalin

Date Accessed

January 15, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 7, 2024

Original Published Date

November 12, 2009