Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (1878 – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet politician. He ruled the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953. Widely considered one of the 20th century’s most significant figures, Stalin was the subject of a pervasive personality cult. He was eventually succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev, who denounced him and initiated the de-Stalinisation of Soviet society.

About Joseph Stalin in brief

Summary Joseph StalinJoseph Vissarionovich Stalin (1878 – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet politician. He ruled the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953. A communist ideologically committed to the Leninist interpretation of Marxism, Stalin formalised these ideas as Marxism–Leninism, while his own policies are known as Stalinism. Widely considered one of the 20th century’s most significant figures, Stalin was the subject of a pervasive personality cult within the international Marxist–Leninist movement. He was eventually succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev, who denounced him and initiated the de-Stalinisation of Soviet society. Stalin’s government has been widely condemned for overseeing mass repressions, ethnic cleansing, deportations, hundreds of thousands of executions, and famines that killed millions. The Soviet Union and the United States emerged from the war as global superpowers. Stalin led his country through the post-war reconstruction, during which it developed a nuclear weapon in 1949. The Soviets annexed the Baltic states and helped establish Soviet-aligned governments throughout Central and Eastern Europe, China, and North Korea. Stalin was born in the Georgian town of Gori, then part of the Tiflis Governorate of the Russian Empire and home to a mix of Georgian, Armenian, Russian, and Jewish communities. His parents, Besarion Jughashvili and Ekaterine Geladze, were ethnically, and Stalin grew up speaking the Georgian language.

In 1886, they moved into the house of a friend, Christopher Charkviani. In 1888, Stalin enrolled at the Gori Church and began to send his son to school. In 1989, he was awarded the Order of the Red Star of Russia for his services to the country. He died in 1953 and is buried in the Petropavlovsk-Dnipropetrovsk, near Moscow, Russia. He is survived by his wife and two children, both of whom are now in their 80s and 90s, and a son and daughter-in-law, who are in their 70s and 80s, respectively. He had a son named Yevgeny Stalin, who was born on 18 December 1878, and baptised on 29 December. He went on to edit the party’s newspaper, Pravda, and raised funds for Vladimir Lenin’s Bolshevik faction via robberies, kidnappings, and protection rackets. As a youth, Stalin joined the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He served in the Russian Civil War before overseeing theSoviet Union’s establishment in 1922. He assumed leadership over the country following Lenin’s 1924 death. By 1937, he had complete personal control over the party and state. In 1939, it signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, resulting in the Soviet invasion of Poland. In 1941, the Soviet Red Army repelled the German incursion and captured Berlin in 1945, ending World War II in Europe. In these years, the country experienced another major famine and an antisemitic campaign peaking in the doctors’ plot.