Josef Stalin has been one of the most important characters of the 20th century, even if in a very negative way. For a certain period of time
he has been adored by millions as a god, a few decades later he is likened to Hitler. Today many of the facts that were unavailable about him and his regime have
been disclosed and it is evident that he was a merciless dictator, responsible for murder and genocide.
His name Josef is often spelled in a variety of ways as Joseph, Iosef, Iiosef, Yusuf, etc. The surname Stalin is an assumed one, his original name being a common
Georgian name, Jugashvili.
Stalin was born in 1878 in a family of a Georgian shoemaker in the town of Gori in Tiflis (today's Tbilisi) prefecture. He attended the Tiflis Christian Seminary
from where he was expelled in 1899 because of failing to appear at his exams. He entered the Georgian social-democratic organization "Mesame-dasi"
and from 1903 joined the Bolshevik party. He had worked under different nicknames, including "Koba," "David," and "Stalin." In 1905 in Finland he personally
met Lenin to whom he was recommended as a talented publicist. During 1906-07 Stalin was organizing the robbery of banks (referred to as "expropriation") in order
to fund the party. In 1913 he was arrested once again and sent to Turukhansky County. After the 1917 revolution he returned to Petrograd (St. Petersburg) and
began working at the editorial board of the newspaper "Pravda."
After a few years of political and military work, in 1922 Stalin was elected as the General Secretary of the Central Committee to which Lenin has objected in a letter saying,
"Comrade Stalin became the General Secretary of the CC and now concentrates a vast amount of power in his hands; I am not sure that he will always be able to remain
subtle enough in his use of this power... ... I suggest removing Stalin from this position." As we know it today, this suggestion of Lenin was not fulfilled and Stalin remained in power.
He concentrated on eliminating opposition from around him, including people like Trotsky, and in 1929-33 implemented his "Veliky Perelom" or "Great Turning-Point," which was a
forced collectivization and industrialization, costing the lives of millions of people. Stalin established a totalitarian regime and kept it for the next decades. During the 1930-40's, under
his commandment, at least 800,000 Jewish Bolsheviks were murdered, eliminating them as a political factor in Russia.
His role in World Was II. is highly debated but it is quite possible that without his "management" millions of people would have stayed alive and the war would have ended much
earlier. He died in 1953.
Josef Stalin in 1902
Josef Stalin in power
Joseph Stalin
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Harvard University Press: Stalin
Russian names in English
