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Stalin
The Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, was born Joseph Djugashvili on December 21, 1879, in the Georgian town of Gori. His father was a poor alcoholic, shoemaker who beat his son often. His father died in a fight when the boy was only eleven years old. His mother worked diligently, hoping one day her son would become a priest. At the age of fourteen Joseph joined a seminary. Within a year he was involved in radical socialist activities. It wasn't long before he quit the seminary and became a full time revolutionary organizer. He was not very impressive academically but showed a great talent at practical organization. When the communist party split into two different groups, the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, in 1903 Joseph supported the more radical Bolsheviks and their leader, Lenin.
In 1912 Joseph joined the Bolshevik Central Committee. There he served as the editor of the Pravda, the party's newspaper. It was then he first started using the name Stalin, or Man of Steel. Stalin began to gain political influence and power. After Lenin's deathin 1924, Stalin used this influence to crush his political opponents. By 1929 he was the undisputed dictator of all of Russia.
Perhaps best known for the ruthlessness that he ruled Russia with, Stalin began to purge the country. Sergei Kirov, the Leningrad party leader, was assassinated, probably at the behest of Stalin. He used the murder as a reason for arresting within the year virtually all major party figures as conspirators. From 1936 to 1938 Stalin staged the Moscow show trials, where prominent old Bolsheviks and army officers were convicted of huge crimes they could not have possibly committed. By 1937, Stalin's purge extended through every party cell in the country. By 1939, 98 of the 139 central committee members elected in 1934 had been assassinated and 1,108 of the 1,966 delegates to the 17th Congress arrested. The secret-police annihilated large portions of every profession and even affected the general population. Deaths have been estimated in the millions. Stalin then began promoting a cult of adulation that proclaimed him a genius in every field of human endeavor. By the time the terror diminished in 1938, Stalin's dictatorship had become entirely personal, unrestrained by the party or any other institution. Between 1945 and 1953 Stalin had reached the height of power. He had achieved an unparalleled position in the country and was unchallenged by anyone else. He was considered to be the country's savior by millions of Russians. In early 1953 he announced that he had uncovered a plot among the Kremlin's corps of doctors. New arrests seemed imminent, and many feared another great purge. However, Stalin died suddenly on Mar. 5, 1953.
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