Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin
Russian revolutionary and politician; successor to Lenin as ruler of the Soviet Union and head of the Communist Party (1929 to 1953).
One of the bloodiest despots in modern history,Joseph Stalin helped transform the Soviet Union into a military and industrial superpower, but at a staggering cost in human lives and suffering.
Stalin was born on December 21, 1879, in the Georgianvillage of Gori. The son of a poor shoemaker, Joseph became a professional revolutionary and at age thirty-four adopted the political name of Stalin, meaning "man of steel." A member of the Bolshevikfaction of the Russian Social-Democratic Party, Stalin played a minor role in the 1917 October Revolution and entered the new Soviet government as Commissar of Nationalities. In 1922 he became GeneralSecretary of the Communist Party, a position he later transformed into the major base of power in the Soviet state. A gifted politician, Stalin outmaneuvered his rivals to become the sole leader ofthe party and the state by 1929.
Human life had little value for Stalin, who viewed people largely as instruments for serving the needs of the state. In the late 1920s, Stalin launched a massive driveto transform Soviet industry and agriculture. To support industrialization, he ordered the collectivization of agriculture and the creation of large-scale communal farms. But collectivization soonturned into a bloody civil war that fulminated the countryside, resulting in the death and deportation of five to eight million people.
Repression was central to Stalin's leadership from thebeginning. Throughout the period from 1929 to 1953 the regime employed tactics of terror, arresting people on false charges of conspiracy and espionage, then either executing them or sentencing them to laborcamps, where they toiled in harsh, debilitating conditions. According to one scholar, over twenty-eight million Soviet citizens passed through the forced labor camps and colonies between 1929 and...