Josefbiography

Josef Stalin's Biography

Josef Stalin was a leader that shared tthe Marxist ideology of socialism later he became the dictator of the USSR (1928-53). He was born in Gori, C Georgia, the son of a cobbler and ex-serf. He studied at tiflis Orthodox Theological Seminar, from which he was expelled in 1899. After joining a Georgian Social Democratic Organization (1898), he became active in revolutionary underground, and was twice exiled to Siberia (1902-1913). Stalin later on the revolution of October 1917 became people's commissar for nationalities in the first Soviet government and a member of the communist Party Politburo. In 1922 he became geeral secretary of the Party Central Committee, a post he held until his death, and so also occupied other key position, which enabled him to build enormous personal power in the party and government apparatus.

After Lenin's death he continued with the labor of spreading the socialism all over the country. Gradually he isolated and disgraced his political rivals, specifically Trotsky. In 1928 he launched the campaign for the collectivization of agriculture during which million of peasants perished, and the first 5 year plan for the forced industrialization of the economy. Between 1934 and 1938 he inagurated a massive purge of the party, government, armed forces, and intelligentsia in which million of so-called "enemies of the people" were imprisoned, exiled, or shot. THis practice became brutal over the time, many of the secrets organization created by the government were killing all the persons that disagree with the way government was working. In 1938 he signed the non-Aggression Pact with Hitler, which bought the Soviet Union two years respite from involvement in World War II. After the German invasion on 1941, the USSR became a member of the Grand Alliance, as war leader, assumed the tittle of "generalissimo."

Soviet Union Flag.

He took part in the conferences of Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam, which resulted in Soviet military and political control over the liberated countries of post-war (east and western Europe). From 1945 until his death he resumed his repressive measures at home, and conducted foreign policies, which contributed to the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West.

Josef Stalin

Khrushchev at the 20th Party Congress posthumously denounced him on 1956 for crimes against the Party and for building a"cult of personality." Under Gorbachev many of Stalin's victims were rehabilitated, and the whole phenomenon of "Stalinism" officially condemned by the Soviet authorities. While many regard Stalin as a brutal dictator possibly equivalent to Hitler in the scale of the terror he wreaked, others question whether the Soviet Union would have survived to win victories in World War II under more liberal leaders.

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