Jose Stalin

Joseph Stalin
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Joseph Stalin, was born in Gori, Georgia on 21st December, 1879. He was his mother's fourth child to be born in less than four years. The first three died and as Joseph was prone to bad health, his mother feared on several occasions that he would also die. Understandably, given this background, Joseph's mother was very protective towards him as a child.

Joseph Stalin

Stalin photographed ca. 1942
General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
In office
3 April 1922 – 5 March 1953
Preceded by Position created
Succeeded by Georgy Malenkov
Premier of the Soviet Union
In office
6 May 1941 – 5 March 1953
Preceded by Vyacheslav Molotov
Succeeded by Georgy Malenkov
Born 18 December 1878
Gori, Tiflis Governorate, Russian Empire
Died 5 March 1953 (aged 74)
Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Birth name Iosef Besarionis dze Jughashvili
Nationality Soviet
Georgian
Political party Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Religion None (Atheist)
Signature
Joseph Stalin was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee from 1922 until his death in 1953. In the years following Lenin's death in 1924, he rose to become the leader of the Soviet Union.
Stalin launched a command economy, replacing the New Economic Policy of the 1920s with Five-Year Plans and launching a period of rapid industrialization and economic collectivization. The upheaval in the agricultural sector disrupted food production, resulting in widespread famine, such as the catastrophic Soviet famine of 1932-1933, known in Ukraine as the Holodomor.[1]
During the late 1930s, Stalin launched the Great Purge (also known as the "Great Terror"), a campaign to purge the Communist Party of people accused of corruption, terrorism, or treachery; he extended it to the military and other sectors of Soviet society. Targets were often executed, imprisoned in Gulag labor camps or exiled. In the years following, millions of ethnic minorities were also deported.[2][3]
In 1939, the Soviet Union under Stalin signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, followed by a Soviet invasion of Poland, Finland, the Baltics, Bessarabia and northern Bukovina. After Germany violated the pact in 1941, the Soviet Union joined the Allies to play a large role in the Axis defeat, at the cost of the largest death toll for any country in the war. Thereafter, contradicting statements at allied conferences, Stalin installed communist governments in most of Eastern Europe, forming the Eastern bloc, behind what was referred to as an "Iron Curtain" of Soviet rule. This launched the long period of antagonism known as the Cold War.
Stalin made efforts to augment his public image, and a cult of personality developed around him. However, after his death, his successor, Nikita Khrushchev, denounced his legacy, initiating the period known as de-Stalinization.[4]