Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin
Иосиф Сталин იოსებ სტალინი
Stalin in 1932
General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
In office 3 April 1922 – 16 October 1952[a]
Preceded by	Vyacheslav Molotov (as Responsible Secretary)
Succeeded by	Nikita Khrushchev (as First Secretary)
Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union[b]
In office 6 May 1941 – 5 March 1953
First Deputy	Nikolai Voznesensky Vyacheslav Molotov Nikolai Bulganin
Preceded by	Vyacheslav Molotov
Succeeded by	Georgy Malenkov
Minister of the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union[c]
In office 19 July 1941 – 3 March 1947
Premier	Himself
Preceded by	Semyon Timoshenko
Succeeded by	Nikolai Bulganin
People's Commissar for Nationalities of the Russian SFSR
In office 8 November 1917 – 7 July 1923
Premier	Vladimir Lenin
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	Office abolished
Personal details
Born	Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili 18 December [O.S. 6 December] 1878 Gori, Russian Empire
Died	5 March 1953(1953-03-05) (aged 74) Moscow, Soviet Union
Resting place	Lenin's Mausoleum, Moscow (1953–1961) Kremlin Wall Necropolis, Moscow (since 1961)
Political party	CPSU[d] (from 1912)
Other political affiliations	RSDLP (1898 – 1912; Bolshevik faction from 1903)
Spouses	Ekaterine Svanidze ​ ​ (m. 1906; died 1907)​ Nadezhda Alliluyeva ​ ​ (m. 1919; died 1932)​
Children	Yakov Dzhugashvili Vasily Stalin Artyom Sergeyev (adopted) Svetlana Alliluyeva
Parents	Besarion Jughashvili Ekaterine Geladze
Awards	Full list
Signature
Nickname	Koba
Military service
Allegiance	Soviet Russia Soviet Union
Branch	Red Army
Years of service	1918–1920
Rank	Generalissimo (from 1945)
Commands	Soviet Armed Forces (from 1941)
Battles/wars	Russian Civil War Polish–Soviet War World War II
Joseph Stalin's voice May 1945 announcement of German capitulation
Central institution membership 1917–1953: Full member, 6th–18th Politburo and 19th Presidium of CPSU 1922–1953: Full member, 11th–19th Secretariat of CPSU 1920–1952: Full member, 9th–18th Orgburo of CPSU 1912–1953: Full member, 5th–19th Central Committee of CPSU 1918–1919: Full member, 2nd Central Committee of CP(b)U Other offices held 1941–1945: Chairman, State Defence Committee of the Soviet Union 1920–1922: People's Commissar for Workers' and Peasants' Inspection of the Russian SFSR 1919–1920: People's Commissar for State Control of the Russian SFSR 1917–1918: Member of the Russian Constituent Assembly for Petrograd Metropolis
Leader of the Soviet Union ← Lenin Malenkov[e]→

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin^[f][g] (born Dzhugashvili;^[h] 18 December [O.S. 6 December] 1878 – 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1922 to 1952 and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1941 until his death. He initially governed as part of a collective leadership, but consolidated power to become a dictator by the 1930s. Stalin codified his interpretation of Marxism as Marxism–Leninism, while the totalitarian political system he established is known as Stalinism.

Born into a poor Georgian family in Gori, Russian Empire, Stalin attended the Tiflis Theological Seminary before joining the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction through bank robberies and other crimes, and edited the party's newspaper, Pravda. He was repeatedly arrested and underwent several exiles to Siberia. After the Bolsheviks seized power in the October Revolution of 1917, Stalin gained a reputation as a pragmatic administrator in the Politburo, and from 1922 used his position as General Secretary to gain control over the party bureaucracy. After Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin won the struggle to lead the country over rivals such as Leon Trotsky. Stalin's doctrine of socialism in one country became central to the party's ideology, and his five-year plans starting in 1928 led to forced agricultural collectivisation, rapid industrialisation, and a centralised command economy. The resulting upheaval contributed to a famine in 1932–1933 which killed millions, including in the Holodomor in Ukraine. Between 1936 and 1938, Stalin executed hundreds of thousands of his real and perceived political opponents in the Great Purge, after which he had absolute control of the party and state. Under his regime, an estimated 18 million people passed through the Gulag system of forced labour camps, and more than six million people, including kulaks and entire ethnic groups, were deported to remote areas of the country.

Stalin promoted Marxism–Leninism abroad through the Communist International and supported European anti-fascist movements. In 1939, his government signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany, enabling the Soviet invasion of Poland after the start of World War II later that year. Germany broke the pact by invading the Soviet Union in 1941, leading Stalin to join the Allies. The Red Army, with Stalin as its commander-in-chief, repelled the German invasion and captured Berlin in 1945, ending the war in Europe. The Soviet Union established Soviet-aligned states in Eastern Europe, and with the United States emerged as a global superpower, with the two countries entering a period of rivalry known as the Cold War. Stalin presided over post-war reconstruction and the first Soviet atomic bomb test in 1949. During these years, the country experienced another famine and a state-sponsored antisemitic campaign culminating in the "doctors' plot". In 1953, Stalin died after a stroke, and was succeeded as leader by Georgy Malenkov and later Nikita Khrushchev, who in 1956 denounced Stalin's rule and began a campaign of "de-Stalinisation".

One of the 20th century's most significant figures, Stalin has a deeply contested legacy. During his rule, he was the subject of a pervasive personality cult within the international Marxist–Leninist movement, which revered him as a champion of socialism and the working class. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Stalin has retained a degree of popularity in some of the post-Soviet states, particularly Russia and Georgia, as an economic moderniser and victorious wartime leader who transformed the Soviet Union into an industrialised superpower. Conversely, his regime has been widely condemned for overseeing mass repression and man-made famine which resulted in the suffering and deaths of millions of Soviet citizens.

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