Joseph Stalin

Early Life

• born Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili on December 12, 1879 in Gori, Georgia, Russia
• His father was an abusive drunkard
• His mother was a deeply religious domestic servant
• As a child, he only spoke Georgian and didn't learn Russian until the age of 9
• Began attending the Gori Church School in 1888 to become a priest
• physically- he was small and weedy, with a pockmarked face (the result of a childhood illness), a deformed foot (later discovered to be a left webbed foot), and a crooked arm (it had been broken and poorly set)

Education

• He excelled in religion, geography and Georgian and also took Greek and Russian
• won a scholarship to study at the Tbilisi Theological Seminary
• in 1896-1897 while he was at Seminary, Joseph began reading Marxist literature- mostly works by Vldamir Lenin
  • Marxism is the belief that a revolution by the working class would result in a classless society
• Was expelled from the Tbilisi Theological Seminary for his rebellious activities

Becoming Stalin

• He met Lenin in 1905 and became a devoted follower
• Lenin secretly believed in bank robberies to to support the Bolsheviks
  • In 1907, Stalin took part in several bank heists
• Over the years he was in and out of trouble and spent time in Siberia in exile for his pennance
• 1917- He started calling himself Joseph Stalin
  • Stalin comes from the Russian word for steel, stal

• The Bolsheviks organized the overthrow of the Russian government in 1917
• Lenin now ruled Russia and named Stalin as a member of his cabinet
  • Stalin was very active in the new government and as a result ended up with a lot of power
• After Lenin died, the party, now known as the All-Union Communist party, was headed by 5 men:
  • Joseph Stalin
  • Leon Trotsky - organized the Soviet army, know as the Red Army
  • Lev Kamenev - the Communist party boss in Moscow
  • Grigori Zinoviev - the Communist party boss in Leningrad
  • Nikolai Bukharin - Communist party's leading theorist

• Stalin eventually eliminated the other four leaders out of power by using personal rivalries and jealousy
• in 1925 he gained absolute control of the party
• cities, towns, villages and the highest mountain in the Soviet Union were named after him
• "Once in control of the Soviet Union, Stalin began to push for rapid, forced indutrialization and the collectivization of agriculture. The organization of farming around samll family farms, Stalin believed, produced uncontrollable anarchist and capitalist forces... Stalin decided to push for full and immediate action on a plan that would force farmers to abandon their individual farms and move onto state-owned 'collective' farms."

• 26,000,000 independent farmers were forced onto 250,000 independent farms
• The farms spawned 'artificial famines' and cost the lives of some 10 million Soviet people
• Despite all his success and power, Stalin still had an irrational fear of his enemies. In one attempt to preserve his power, he purged the armed forces and took the lives of most of the country's generals, marshals and admirals. This took a severe toll on the Soviet Union's ability to defend itself

by jen cline

"Joseph Stalin: 1879-1953." DISCovering World History. Gale Research, 1997. Reproduced in Student Rescource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale Group. May, 2003. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/SRC/

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