William WybengaMrs. Nielson/Ms. RichardsonJoseph StalinJoseph Stalin was one of the greatest dictators ever to live. He was a cruel man while killing over 20 million men and women. His last name Stalin was derived from combining Russian stal, "steel" with "Lenin, who was the leader of the Soviet Union at the time. Stalin had a rough childhood but became a powerful dictator. During his rule he was one of the most ruthless leaders.Joseph was born in Gori, Georgia on December 21, 1879. His childhood was marked by a lot of hardship and abuse. He got smallpox during his early childhood that scarred his face permanently. Joseph's father was a brutal man and worked as a boot maker. Born in a serf's family his mother was a very religious person. She sent Joseph to a church school when he was 9 years old. Stalin was expelled from the seminary and then came across Vladimir Lenin's literature. He decided to become a Marxist revolutionary.In 1922 Stalin was elected general secretary of the central committee of the party. Toward the end of Lenin's death he wrote a letter recommending that Stalin be removed, but before any action could be taken Lenin died. Stalin joined forces with Kamenev and Grigori Zinoviev. Their goal was to take down one of the best leaders to replace Lenin. His name was Leon Trotsky. Trotsky was ousted as commissar of war. Then Stalin allied with Nikolai Bukharin. Kamenev and Zinoviev got together with Trotsky in an effort to take down Stalin. Their efforts failed and were forced to resign from the central committee of the Communist party. Stalin then decided to brake with Bukharin and engineered his rise to power.While Stalin was in power his goal was to identify the totalitarian rule of the Communist party with stability and legitimacy and make the Soviet Union a major player on the world stage. His Five Year Plan was a major part of his rule. The plan focused on strengthening the country's economy between 1928 and 1932. Stalin consolidated his power base with the Great Purges against his political and ideological opponents, most notably the old cadres and the rank and file of the Bolshevik. He put them in imprisonment camps and assassinated others.The growing danger of the war led Stalin to conciliate Hitler. However Hitler broke the pact by invading Russia when Stalin was completely unaware of this. In 1941 Germany struck with a force of three million men and 3,400 tanks, advancing in three groups. The northern group headed for Leningrad, the center group headed for Moscow, and the southern group for the Ukraine. Stalin emerged one day into Moscow's Red Square when the population was in state of near panic. His sudden appearance helped calm the situation and inspire the soldiers and militia. Joseph Stalin had two wives during his life. His first Yekaterina Svandize gave birth to their first child Yakov. In October of 1907 she died of typhus. Then in 1918 he married Nadezhda Alliluyeva. She gave birth to Vasiliy and a daughter Svetlana. Unfortunately she died too after committing suicide in 1932.Joseph Stalin was a man of strong persistence. He never did fall from power while he was alive. On March 5th 1953 he died of cerebral hemorrhage. Although he had a rugged childhood, he was a well-known dictator and still is today. He is most famous though for being one of the world's most sinful men.
