USSR

STALIN







Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili was born in Gori, Georgia on 21^st December, 1897. In 1910 he adopted the name of Joseph Stalin, meaning “a man of steel”.

He studied at a theological seminary where he began to read Marxist literature. He never graduated, instead devoting his time to the revolutionary movement against the Russian monarchy. He spent the next 15 years as an activist and on a number of occasions was arrested and exiled to Siberia.

In 1922 he was made general secretary of the Communist Party

After Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin promoted himself as his political heir. By the late 1920s, Stalin was the dictator of the Soviet Union.

Population suffered immensely during the Great Terror of the 1930s, in which Stalin purged the party of 'enemies of the people', resulting in the execution of thousands and the exile of millions to the gulag system of slave labour camps. After this, he was ill prepared for World War II, but he recovered.

After WWII the Soviet Union entered the nuclear age.

Stalin died of a stroke on March 5^th 1953.