Joseph Stalin

This article may be too long to read and navigate comfortably. When this tag was added, its readable prose size was 20,000 words. Consider splitting content into sub-articles, condensing it, or adding subheadings. Please discuss this issue on the article's talk page. (June 2023)

Joseph Stalin
Иосиф Сталин იოსებ სტალინი
Stalin in 1943
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, Tiflis Governorate, Russian Empire
Died	5 March 1953(1953-03-05) (aged 74) Moscow, Russian SFSR, 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
Alma mater	Tbilisi Spiritual Seminary
Awards	List of awards
Signature
Nicknames	Koba Soso
Military service
Allegiance	Soviet Russia Soviet Union
Branch	Red Army
Years of service	1918–1920
Rank	Generalissimus (from 1945)
Commands	Soviet Armed Forces (from 1941)
Battles/wars	Russian Civil War Polish–Soviet War World War II
Joseph Stalin's voice Announcement of German capitulation Recorded May 1945
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 1917–1918: Member of the Russian Constituent Assembly for Petrograd Metropolis 1919–1920: People's Commissar for State Control of the Russian SFSR 1920–1922: People's Commissar for Workers' and Peasants' Inspection of the Russian SFSR 1941–1945: Chairman, State Defense Committee
Leader of the Soviet Union ← Lenin Malenkov[e]→

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin^[f] (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili;^[g] 18 December [O.S. 6 December] 1878 – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian-born Soviet politician and revolutionary who was the longest-serving leader of 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. Initially governing the country as part of a collective leadership, Stalin consolidated power to become a dictator by the 1930s. Ideologically, he formalised his Leninist interpretation of Marxism as Marxism–Leninism, while the political and economic system he implemented is known as Stalinism.

Born to a poor ethnic Georgian family in Gori in the Russian Empire, Stalin attended the Tbilisi Spiritual Seminary before joining the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction via robberies, ransom kidnappings and protection rackets, and edited the party's newspaper, Pravda. He was repeatedly arrested and internally exiled to Siberia. After the Bolsheviks seized power in the October Revolution of 1917 and established a one-party state under the Communist Party, Stalin joined its governing Politburo. Serving in the Russian Civil War before overseeing the Soviet Union's establishment in 1922, he assumed leadership over the country following Lenin's death in 1924. Under Stalin, "socialism in one country" became a central tenet of the party's ideology. As a result of his Five-Year Plans, from 1928 the country underwent agricultural collectivisation and rapid industrialisation, creating a centralised command economy. Severe disruptions to food production contributed to a major famine in 1930–33, including the Holodomor in Ukraine and the Asharshylyk in Kazakhstan. To eradicate those he declared "enemies of the working class", between 1936 and 1938 Stalin orchestrated the Great Purge, in which over a million people were imprisoned, largely in the Gulag system of forced labour camps, and at least 700,000 were executed. By 1937, Stalin had absolute control over the party and government.

Stalin promoted Marxism–Leninism abroad through the Communist International and supported European anti-fascist movements during the 1930s, particularly in the Spanish Civil War. In 1939, his regime signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, enabling the Soviet invasion of Poland. Germany ended the pact by invading the Soviet Union in 1941, after which Stalin joined the Allies as one of the "Big Three". Despite huge losses, the Soviet Red Army repelled the German invasion and captured Berlin in 1945, ending World War II in Europe. The Soviet Union, which had annexed the Baltic states and territories from Finland and Romania amid the war, established Soviet-aligned governments in Central and Eastern Europe. The Soviet Union and the United States emerged as global superpowers and entered a period of tension known as the Cold War. Stalin presided over the country's post-war reconstruction and its first test of an atomic bomb in 1949. During these years, the country experienced another major famine and an antisemitic campaign which culminated in the alleged "doctors' plot". After Stalin's death in 1953, he was eventually succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev, who in 1956 denounced his rule and initiated "de-Stalinisation" of Soviet society.

Widely considered one of the 20th century's most significant figures, Stalin was the subject of a pervasive personality cult within the international Marxist–Leninist movement, which revered him as a champion of the working class and socialism. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Stalin has retained a degree of popularity in Russia and Georgia as an economic moderniser and wartime leader who cemented the Soviet Union's status as a leading world power. Conversely, his regime has been widely described as totalitarian and condemned for overseeing mass political repression and detention, extensive exploitation of forced labour, deportations of entire classes (dekulakisation) and nationalities (characterised as ethnic cleansing or genocide), hundreds of thousands of executions, and catastrophic famines that killed millions.

Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).