JOSEPH STALIN.INFO - EVERYTHING YOU WANT TO KNOW

The Man, The Leader, The Soviet Hero and Villain

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dec 18 1878 - died March 5, 1953) alternatively transliterated Josef Stalin, was the leader (Premier) of the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s to his death in 1953 and General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922-1953), a position which had later become that of party leader. Born Ioseb Jughashvili, Stalin became general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party in 1922. Following the death of Vladimir Lenin, he prevailed over Leon Trotsky in a power struggle during the 1920s. In the 1930s Stalin initiated the Great Purge, a campaign of political repression, persecution, and killings that reached its peak in 1937.

Stalin's rule had long lasting effects on the features that characterized the Soviet state from the era of his rule to its collapse in 1991—though Maoists, anti-revisionists and some others say he was actually the last legitimate socialist leader in the Soviet Union's history. Stalin claimed his policies were based on Marxism-Leninism but they are now often considered to represent a political and economic system called Stalinism.

Stalin replaced the New Economic Policy (NEP) of the 1920s with Five-Year Plans in 1928 and collective farming at roughly the same time. The Soviet Union was transformed from a predominantly peasant society to a major world industrial power by the end of the 1930s.

Confiscations of grain and other food by the Soviet authorities under his orders contributed to a famine between 1932 and 1934, especially in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and North Caucasus that may have resulted in millions of deaths. Many peasants resisted collectivization and grain confiscations, but were repressed, most notably peasants deemed "kulaks."

The Soviet Union under Stalin made a major contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany during WWII (known in the USSR as the Great Patriotic War, 1941–45). After the war, Stalin established the USSR as one of the two superpowers in the world, a position it maintained for nearly four decades following his death in 1953.

Stalin's rule - reinforced by a cult of personality - was characterized by state terror, mass deportations and political repression, resulting in the death of millions of Soviet citizens. Stalin fought real and alleged opponents mainly through the security apparatus, such as the NKVD. Many of his victims died in the Gulags and as the result of deportations, while others were executed. Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin's eventual successor, denounced Stalin's rule and the cult of personality in 1956, initiating the process of "de-Stalinization" which later became part of the Sino-Soviet Split.