Joseph Stalin's life is a study in how one person can concentrate enormous power, and at what terrible human cost. The son of a cobbler in Georgia, he rose through the Bolshevik ranks to rule the Soviet Union for nearly three decades. He drove a largely rural country through rapid industrialisation, and his Red Army played a decisive role in the defeat of Nazi Germany. But his rule also brought forced collectivisation, devastating famine, mass purges and the Gulag labour camps, in which millions died. Historians continue to debate his legacy, but few dispute that he shaped the twentieth century as much as anyone.
Key Milestones
1922: Becomes General Secretary of the Communist Party
1928: Launches the first Five-Year Plan
1936: Begins the Great Purge
1939: Signs the pact with Nazi Germany
1945: Meets Churchill and Roosevelt at Yalta
1953: Dies in Moscow
Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; 18 December 1878 – 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who ruled the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death in 1953, holding the titles of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1952 and the…
