Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

• Иосиф Сталин

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; 18 December [O.S. 6 December] 1878 – 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician, political theorist and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953, ruling as a dictator after consolidating power in the late 1920s. He served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1952, and Chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1941 to 1953. Ideologically adhering to the Leninist interpretation of Marxism, Stalin formalised the state ideology of Marxism–Leninism, while his policies are called Stalinism.

Born to a poor ethnic Georgian family in Gori in the Russian Empire (now Georgia), Stalin initially trained to become a Russian Orthodox priest before abandoning his studies in 1899 and joining the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction via robberies, ransom kidnappings, and extortion, and edited its newspaper, Pravda. Repeatedly arrested, he underwent several internal exiles to Siberia. After the Bolsheviks seized power in the October Revolution of 1917 and created a one-party state under the renamed Communist Party, Stalin joined its governing Politburo. He served in the Russian Civil War and the Polish–Soviet War before overseeing the Soviet Union's establishment in 1922 as general secretary, a position which he used to appoint loyalists from the party's growing bureaucracy. During Lenin's illness and after his death in 1924, Stalin initially formed an alliance with Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev, which broke down in 1925. Under Stalin, "socialism in one country" became central to the party's ideology (reflecting the defeat of revolutions in Europe), and his rivals (including Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition) were expelled or capitulated. Starting in 1928, five-year plans saw rapid industrialisation and the creation of a highly-centralised command economy. Forced agricultural collectivisation contributed to severe disruptions in grain production and a famine in 1930–1933 which killed millions. From 1936 to 1938, Stalin orchestrated the Great Purge, in which more than a million were imprisoned, largely in the Gulag system of forced labour camps, and at least 700,000 executed, including many Old Bolsheviks and Red Army officers.