Joseph Stalin - an outstanding revolutionary politician in history Russian Empire And Soviet Union. His activities were marked by massive repressions, which are still considered a crime against humanity today. Personality and biography of Stalin in modern society are still loudly discussed: some consider him a great ruler who led the country to victory in the Great Patriotic War, others accuse him of genocide of the people and famine, terror and violence against people.
Childhood and youth
Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich was born ( real name Dzhugashvili) December 21, 1879 in the Georgian town of Gori in a family belonging to the lower class. According to another version, Joseph Vissarionovich’s birthday fell on December 18, 1878. In any case, Sagittarius is considered his patronizing zodiac sign. In addition to the traditional hypothesis about the Georgian origin of the future leader of the nation, there is an opinion that his ancestors were Ossetians.
Embed from Getty Images Joseph Stalin as a childHe was the third but only surviving child in the family - his older brother and sister died in infancy. Soso, as the mother of the future ruler of the USSR called him, was not born healthy child, he had congenital limb defects (he had two fused toes on his left foot), and also had damaged skin on his face and back. In early childhood, Stalin had an accident - he was hit by a phaeton, as a result of which the functioning of his left hand was impaired.
In addition to congenital and acquired injuries, the future revolutionary was repeatedly beaten by his father, which once led to a serious head injury and over the years affected his psycho-emotional state Stalin. Mother Ekaterina Georgievna surrounded her son with care and guardianship, wanting to compensate the boy for the missing love of his father.
Exhausted from difficult work, wanting to earn as much money as possible to raise her son, the woman tried to raise a worthy man who was to become a priest. But her hopes were not crowned with success - Stalin grew up as a street darling and spent most of his time not in church, but in the company of local hooligans.
Embed from Getty Images Joseph Stalin in his youthAt the same time, in 1888, Joseph Vissarionovich became a student at the Gori Orthodox School, and upon graduation he entered the Tiflis Theological Seminary. Within its walls he became acquainted with Marxism and joined the ranks of underground revolutionaries.
At the seminary, the future ruler of the Soviet Union proved himself to be a gifted and talented student, as he was easily given all subjects without exception. At the same time, he became the leader of an illegal circle of Marxists, in which he was engaged in propaganda.
Stalin failed to receive a spiritual education, as he was expelled from educational institution before exams for absenteeism. After this, Joseph Vissarionovich was issued a certificate allowing him to become a teacher in primary schools. At first he made his living as a tutor, and then got a job at the Tiflis Physical Observatory as a computer-observer.
Path to power
Stalin's revolutionary activities started in the early 1900s - the future ruler of the USSR was then engaged in propaganda, thereby strengthening his own position in society. In his youth, Joseph participated in rallies, which most often ended in arrests, and worked on the creation of the illegal newspaper “Brdzola” (“Struggle”), which was published at a Baku printing house. An interesting fact of his Georgian biography is that in 1906-1907 Dzhugashvili led robbery attacks on banks in Transcaucasia.
Embed from Getty Images Joseph Stalin and Vladimir LeninThe revolutionary traveled to Finland and Sweden, where conferences and congresses of the RSDLP were held. Then he met the head of the Soviet government and famous revolutionaries Georgy Plekhanov, and others.
In 1912, he finally decided to change his surname Dzhugashvili to the pseudonym Stalin. At the same time, the man becomes the representative of the Central Committee for the Caucasus. The revolutionary receives the position of editor-in-chief of the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda, where his colleague was Vladimir Lenin, who saw Stalin as his assistant in resolving Bolshevik and revolutionary issues. As a result of this, Joseph Vissarionovich became his right hand.
Embed from Getty Images Joseph Stalin on the podiumStalin's path to power was filled with repeated exiles and imprisonments, from which he managed to escape. He spent 2 years in Solvychegodsk, then was sent to the city of Narym, and from 1913 for 3 years he was kept in the village of Kureika. Being away from the party leaders, Joseph Vissarionovich managed to maintain contact with them through secret correspondence.
Before the October Revolution, Stalin supported Lenin's plans; at an enlarged meeting of the Central Committee, he condemned the position of and, who were against the uprising. In 1917, Lenin appointed Stalin People's Commissar for Nationalities in the Council of People's Commissars.
The next stage of the career of the future ruler of the USSR is associated with Civil War, in which the revolutionary showed professionalism and leadership skills. He participated in a number of military operations, including the defense of Tsaritsyn and Petrograd, opposed the army and.
Embed from Getty Images Joseph Stalin and Klim VoroshilovAt the end of the war, when Lenin was already mortally ill, Stalin ruled the country, while destroying opponents and contenders for the post of chairman of the government of the Soviet Union along the way. In addition, Joseph Vissarionovich showed persistence in relation to monotonous work, which was required by the post of chief of staff. To strengthen his own authority, Stalin published 2 books - “On the Foundations of Leninism” (1924) and “On Questions of Leninism” (1927). In these works, he relied on the principles of “building socialism in a single country,” not excluding the “world revolution.”
In 1930, all power was concentrated in the hands of Stalin, and as a result, upheavals and restructuring began in the USSR. This period is marked by the beginning of mass repressions and collectivization, when rural population countries were herded into collective farms and starved.
Embed from Getty Images Vyacheslav Molotov, Joseph Stalin and Nikolai YezhovAll the food taken from the peasants new leader He sold the Soviet Union abroad, and with the proceeds he developed industry, building industrial enterprises, the bulk of which were concentrated in the cities of the Urals and Siberia. Thus, in the shortest possible time, he made the USSR the second country in the world in terms of industrial production, however, at the cost of millions of lives of peasants who died of hunger.
In 1937, the peak of repression struck; at that time, purges took place not only among the citizens of the country, but also among the party leadership. During the Great Terror, 56 of the 73 people who spoke at the February-March plenum of the Central Committee were shot. Later, the leader of the action, the head of the NKVD, was killed, whose place was taken by one of Stalin’s inner circle. A totalitarian regime was finally established in the country.
Head of the USSR
By 1940, Joseph Vissarionovich became the sole ruler-dictator of the USSR. He was a strong leader of the country, had an extraordinary capacity for work, and at the same time knew how to direct people to solve necessary problems. Characteristic feature Stalin was his ability to make immediate decisions on the issues under discussion and find time to monitor all processes occurring in the country.
Embed from Getty Images CPSU Secretary General Joseph StalinThe achievements of Joseph Stalin, despite his harsh methods of rule, are still highly valued by experts. Thanks to him, the USSR won the Great Patriotic War, the country mechanized Agriculture, industrialization took place, as a result of which the Union turned into a nuclear superpower with colossal geopolitical influence throughout the world. Interestingly, the American magazine Time awarded the Soviet leader the title “Person of the Year” in 1939 and 1943.
With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War Joseph Stalin was forced to change course foreign policy. If earlier he built relations with Germany, then later he turned his attention to former countries Entente. In the person of England and France, the Soviet leader sought support against the aggression of fascism.
Embed from Getty Images Joseph Stalin, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill at the Tehran ConferenceAlong with the achievements, Stalin's reign is characterized by a lot of negative aspects, which caused horror in society. Stalinist repressions, dictatorship, terror, violence - all this is considered the main characteristic features reign of Joseph Vissarionovich. He is also accused of suppressing entire scientific directions country, accompanied by persecution of doctors and engineers, which caused disproportionate harm to the development of Soviet culture and science.
Stalin's policies are still loudly condemned throughout the world. The ruler of the USSR is accused of the mass death of people who became victims of Stalinism and Nazism. At the same time, in many cities, Joseph Vissarionovich is posthumously considered an honorary citizen and a talented commander, and many people still respect the dictator-ruler, calling him a great leader.
Personal life
The personal life of Joseph Stalin has few confirmed facts today. The dictator leader carefully destroyed all evidence of his family life and love relationships, so researchers were only able to slightly restore the chronology of the events of his biography.
Embed from Getty Images Joseph Stalin and Nadezhda AlliluyevaIt is known that Stalin first married in 1906 to Ekaterina Svanidze, who gave birth to his first child. After a year of family life, Stalin's wife died of typhus. After this, the stern revolutionary devoted himself to serving the country and only 14 years later he again decided to marry her, who was 23 years younger.
The second wife of Joseph Vissarionovich gave birth to a son and took upon herself the upbringing of Stalin’s first-born son, who until that moment lived with his maternal grandmother. In 1925, a daughter was born into the leader's family. In addition to his own children, an adopted son, the same age as Vasily, was raised in the house of the party leader. His father, revolutionary Fyodor Sergeev, was a close friend of Joseph and died in 1921.
In 1932, Stalin's children lost their mother, and he became a widower for the second time. His wife Nadezhda committed suicide amid a conflict with her husband. After this, the ruler never married again.
Embed from Getty Images Joseph Stalin with his son Vasily and daughter SvetlanaThe children of Joseph Vissarionovich gave their father 9 grandchildren, the youngest of whom, the daughter of Svetlana Alliluyeva, appeared after the death of the ruler - in 1971. Only Alexander Burdonsky, the son of Vasily Stalin, who became a theater director, became famous in his homeland Russian army. Also known is Yakov’s son, Evgeny Dzhugashvili, who published the book “My Grandfather Stalin. “He is a saint!”, and Svetlana’s son, Joseph Alliluyev, who made a career as a cardiac surgeon.
After Stalin's death, disputes arose repeatedly about the height of the head of the USSR. Some researchers attributed the leader with short stature - 160 cm, but others were based on information obtained from records and photos of the Russian secret police, where Joseph Vissarionovich was characterized as a person with a height of 169-174 cm. The leader of the Communist Party was also “attributed” with a weight of 62 kg.
Death
Joseph Stalin's death occurred on March 5, 1953. According to the official conclusion of doctors, the ruler of the USSR died as a result of a cerebral hemorrhage. After an autopsy, it was determined that he had suffered several ischemic strokes on his legs during his life, which led to serious heart problems and mental disorders.
Stalin's embalmed body was placed in the Mausoleum next to Lenin, but 8 years later at the CPSU Congress it was decided to rebury the revolutionary in a grave near the Kremlin wall. During the funeral, a stampede occurred in a crowd of thousands of people wishing to say goodbye to the leader of the nation. According to unconfirmed information, 400 people died on Trubnaya Square.
Embed from Getty Images Tombstone of Joseph Stalin at Kremlin wallThere is an opinion that his ill-wishers were involved in Stalin’s death, considering the policies of the leader of the revolutionaries unacceptable. Researchers are confident that the ruler’s “comrades-in-arms” deliberately did not allow doctors to approach him, who could put Joseph Vissarionovich back on his feet and prevent his death.
Over the years, the attitude towards Stalin’s personality was repeatedly revised, and if during the Thaw his name was banned, then later documentaries and feature films, books and articles appeared that analyzed the activities of the ruler. Repeatedly, the head of state became the main character of films such as “The Inner Circle”, “The Promised Land”, “Kill Stalin”, etc.
Memory
- 1958 – “Day One”
- 1985 – “Victory”
- 1985 – “Battle for Moscow”
- 1989 – “Stalingrad”
- 1990 – “Yakov, son of Stalin”
- 1993 – “Stalin’s Testament”
- 2000 – “In August 1944...”
- 2013 – “Son of the Father of Nations”
- 2017 – “The Death of Stalin”
- Yuri Mukhin - “The Murder of Stalin and Beria”
- Lev Balayan - “Stalin”
- Elena Prudnikova - “Khrushchev. Creators of Terror"
- Igor Pykhalov - “The Great Slandered Leader. Lies and truth about Stalin"
- Alexander Sever - "Stalin's Anti-Corruption Committee"
- Felix Chuev - “Soldiers of the Empire”
From Stalin's biography it is clear that he was an ambiguous, but bright and strong personality.
Joseph Dzhugashvili was born on December 6 (18), 1878, in the city of Gori, into a simple poor family. His father, Vissarion Ivanovich, was a shoemaker by profession. Mother , Ekaterina Georgievna, worked as a charwoman.
In 1888, Joseph became a student at the Gori Orthodox Theological School. Six years later he was enrolled in a seminary in Tiflis. As a student, Dzhugashvili became acquainted with the basics of Marxism and soon became close to underground revolutionaries.
In the 5th year of his studies, he was expelled from the seminary. The certificate issued to him stated that he could apply for a position as a teacher in a public school.
Life before the revolution
Anyone who is interested in a brief biography of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin , You should know that before the revolution he served in the newspaper Pravda and was one of its most prominent employees. During his activities, Dzhugashvili was persecuted by the authorities more than once.
The work “Marxism and the National Question” gave weight to the future Generalissimo in Marxist society. After this, V.I. Lenin began to entrust him with the solution of many important issues.
During the civil war, Stalin proved himself to be an excellent military organizer. On November 29, 1922, he, along with Lenin, Sverdlov and Trotsky, entered the Bureau of the Central Committee.
When Lenin, due to illness, retired from political activity, Stalin, together with Kamenev and Zinoviev, organized the “troika”, which was in opposition to L. Trotsky. In the same year he was elected General Secretary of the Central Committee.
Against the backdrop of a difficult political struggle, at the XIII Congress of the RCP, Stalin announced that he wanted to resign. He was retained as Secretary General by a majority vote.
Having gained a foothold in power, Stalin began to pursue a policy of collectivization. Under him, heavy industry began to actively develop. Against the backdrop of the formation of collective farms and other changes, a policy of severe terror was pursued.
Role in WWII
According to some historians, Stalin was to blame for the USSR's poor preparation for war. He is also blamed for huge losses. He is believed to have ignored intelligence reports that an attack was imminent Hitler's Germany even though he was told the exact date.
At the very beginning of the Second World War, Stalin showed himself to be a bad strategist. He made illogical, incompetent decisions. According to G. K Zhukov, the situation changed after Battle of Stalingrad when a turning point occurred in the war.
In 1943, Stalin decided to create atomic bomb. In February 1945, He took part in the Yalta Conference, at which a new world order was established.
Personal life
Stalin was married twice. The first wife was E. Svanidze, the second was N. Alliluyeva. He had three children of his own and an adopted son, A.F. Sergeev.
The fate of his second wife and his own sons was tragic. The daughter of Joseph Vissarionovich, Svetlana, spent her entire life in exile.
According to A.F. Sergeev, at home Stalin was good-natured, affectionate, and joked a lot and often.
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After graduating from the Gori Theological School in 1894, Joseph studied at the Tiflis Theological Seminary, from where he was expelled for revolutionary activities in 1899. A year before, he joined the Georgian social democratic organization Mesame Dasi, and in 1901 he became a revolutionary. At the same time, Dzhugashvili received the party nickname “Stalin” (for his inner circle he had another nickname - “Koba”).
From 1902 to 1913, Stalin was arrested and expelled six times, and escaped four times.
When in 1903 (at the Second Congress of the RSDLP) the party split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, Stalin supported the Bolshevik leader Lenin and, on his instructions, began creating a network of underground Marxist circles in the Caucasus.
In 1906-1907, Joseph Stalin participated in organizing a number of expropriations in Transcaucasia. In 1907, he was one of the leaders of the Baku Committee of the RSDLP.
In 1912 he became a member of the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP. From March 1917, he participated in the preparation and conduct of the October Revolution: he was a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RSDLP(b), and was a member of the Military Revolutionary Center for the leadership of the armed uprising. In 1917-1922 he was People's Commissar for Nationalities.
During the Civil War, he carried out important assignments of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) and the Soviet government; was a member of the Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defense from the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, was a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Southern, Western and Southwestern Fronts.
When on April 3, 1922, at the Plenum of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), a new position was established - General Secretary of the Central Committee. Stalin was elected as the first General Secretary.
In the party structure, this position was of a purely technical nature. But its hidden strength lay in the fact that it was the General Secretary who appointed the lower party leaders, thanks to which Stalin formed a personally loyal majority among the middle ranks of party members. Stalin remained in this position until the end of his life (from 1922 - General Secretary of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), from December 1925 - CPSU (b), from 1934 - Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b), from 1952 - CPSU).
After Lenin's death, Stalin declared himself the sole successor of Lenin's work and his teachings. Stalin proclaimed a course towards “building socialism in one, separate country.” He carried out accelerated industrialization of the country and forced collectivization of peasant farms. In his foreign policy activities he adhered to the class line of fighting the “capitalist encirclement” and supporting the international communist and labor movement.
By the mid-1930s, Stalin concentrated all state power in his hands and actually became the sole leader Soviet people. Old party leaders - Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Rykov and others, who were part of the anti-Stalin opposition, were gradually expelled from the party, and then physically destroyed as “enemies of the people.” In the second half of the 1930s, a regime of severe terror was established in the country, which reached its climax in 1937-1938. The search and destruction of “enemies of the people” affected not only the highest party bodies and the army, but also broad layers of Soviet society. Millions Soviet citizens they were illegally repressed on far-fetched, unsubstantiated charges of espionage, sabotage, and sabotage; exiled to camps or executed in the basements of the NKVD.
With the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War, Stalin concentrated all political and military power in his hands as Chairman of the State Defense Committee (June 30, 1941 - September 4, 1945) and Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the USSR Armed Forces. At the same time, he took the post of People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR (July 19, 1941 - March 15, 1946; from February 25, 1946 - People's Commissar of the Armed Forces of the USSR) and was directly involved in drawing up plans for military operations.
During the war, Joseph Stalin, together with US President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Churchill, initiated the creation anti-Hitler coalition. He represented the USSR in negotiations with countries participating in the anti-Hitler coalition (Tehran, 1943; Yalta, 1945; Potsdam, 1945).
After the end of the war, during which the Soviet army liberated most countries of Eastern and Central Europe, Stalin became the ideologist and practitioner of the creation of the “world socialist system,” which was one of the main factors in the emergence of “ cold war"and the military-political confrontation between the USSR and the USA.
On March 19, 1946, during the restructuring of the Soviet government apparatus, Stalin was confirmed as Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and Minister of the Armed Forces of the USSR.
After the war he was engaged in restoration National economy country destroyed by war, paying attention to increasing the defense capability of the Soviet Union and the technical re-equipment of the army and navy. He was one of the main initiators of the Soviet “atomic project”, which contributed to the transformation of the USSR into one of the two “superpowers”.
(Military Encyclopedia. Chairman of the Main Editorial Commission S.B. Ivanov. Military Publishing House. Moscow. in 8 volumes, 2004. ISBN 5 203 01875 - 8)
Joseph Stalin died on March 5, 1953 (according to the official version, from a massive cerebral hemorrhage). The sarcophagus with his body was installed in the Mausoleum next to Lenin's sarcophagus.
The XX (1956) and XXII (1961) congresses of the CPSU sharply criticized the so-called cult of personality and the activities of Stalin. By decision of the XXII Congress of the CPSU (in fact, on the initiative of Nikita Khrushchev), on October 31, 1961, Stalin’s body was reburied behind the Mausoleum near the Kremlin wall.
The material was prepared based on information from open sources
Generalissimo and sole leader of the USSR Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin truly is one of the few leaders who managed to put the country on the track of industrialization, win the Great Patriotic War, defeating Hitler, and save the whole world from an insane tyrant.
short biography
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin ( real name – Dzhugashvili) was born December 18, 1878 V locality Gori, Tiflis province, Georgia.
His father - Vissarion Ivanovich Dzhugashvili, a shoemaker from a peasant family. His mother - Ekaterina Georgievna Geladze, a charwoman from a family of serfs.
Soso's childhood
Stalin himself did not like to remember his childhood, since it was difficult for his family: after the birth of Soso (Joseph), his father began to drink and at the same time showed fits of rage, which often ended in beatings, both of his mother and of Soso himself, who stood up for mother.
Education
In 1886, Joseph's mother tried to identify her son as Orthodox theological school in Gori, but due to ignorance of the Russian language, the boy was unable to enter there.
Theological school
Subsequently, for 2 years he studied Russian. His teachers were the children of one of the local priests. Already in 1888 Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was able to pass the exams at the school, immediately entering the 2nd preparatory class.
In September 1889, he successfully passed the certification and entered the school itself and in 1894 finished it.
Theological Seminary in Tifliss
Immediately after graduating from college, Joseph entered Tiflis Theological Seminary, where, according to his recollections, he first became acquainted with the works of Marx and began meeting with underground revolutionaries.
His passion and deep penetration into Marxism led to his being expelled from the seminary in his 5th year. The official reason was given as follows:
“...for failure to appear for exams for an unknown reason...”
Koba - revolutionary
After being expelled from the Tiflis Seminary, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin joined RSDLP(Russian Social Democratic Labor Party) and began to propagate revolutionary ideas with even greater zeal. He took his party nickname Koba- the hero of the novel “The Patricide”.
Underground worker
March 21, 1901 The police searched the physical observatory where Stalin lived and worked. He himself, however, escaped arrest and went underground, becoming underground revolutionary.
Bolshevik
When the RSDLP split into 2 camps (Bolsheviks and Mensheviks) in 1903, Joseph Vissarionovich joined the Bolsheviks. In 1904, he organized a huge strike of oil workers in Baku, which ended with the conclusion of a collective agreement between the strikers and industrialists.
Trip abroad
In 1905, Stalin was sent abroad from the Caucasian Union of the RSDLP. He first visited the Finnish Tammerfors, where he first met IN AND. Lenin. Then he visited Stockholm.
In 1907, Joseph Vissarionovich visited London as a delegate of the RSDLP. It is also known that he visited Vienna and stayed there for about one month.
For him, a poorly educated Georgian guy who did not know foreign languages, the rich abroad remained an alien, unknown capitalist world, according to the laws of which he could never live.
Stalin
While in exile from 1908 to 1912, Joseph decided to change his party nickname "Koba" to "Stalin"- strong as steel. During this period and later, he actively helped the cause of the party, met with Lenin and spoke to people.
After the 1917 revolution
After the February and October revolutions in Russia, Stalin received a post in the new government - the Council of People's Commissars, led by Vladimir Lenin. He was appointed Commissioner for Nationalities.
General Secretary of the Central Committee
In 1922, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was appointed to the post General Secretary of the Central Committee. His manner of leading the party was in the style of despotism, for which Lenin himself wanted to remove the secretary general in 1823 and even wrote a letter to the party congress.
However, Vladimir Ilyich was very ill at that time and died a year later. Stalin was allowed to read the letter from the “leader of the proletariat,” and he promised to behave more calmly.
The rise of the country and the purge of the NKVD
After Lenin's death, Stalin began to gradually put the USSR on the rails of socialism. In 1928-33. collectivization of personal peasant farms took place, which united into collective farms.
The authorities' measures to carry out collectivization led to mass resistance among peasants, since collectivization was accompanied by the “dekulakization” of everyone indiscriminately. The People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) declared all dissatisfied and dispossessed people enemies of the people and sent them to special settlements in the Gulags.
In March 1930 alone, there were 6,500 riots, eight hundred of which were suppressed using weapons. Overall during 1930 about 2.5 million peasants took part in 14 thousand protests against collectivization.
USSR before the war
The industrialization carried out by Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin in the 30s of the 20th century bore fruit: by 1940, the USSR took first place in Europe in terms of industrial production.
Metallurgy, energy, and mechanical engineering received noticeable development, and the chemical industry was created. The country now has its own aircraft, trucks and cars.
One of the strategic goals of the state was declared cultural revolution. Within its framework, since 1930, universal elementary education. In parallel with the massive construction of holiday homes, museums, and parks, an aggressive anti-religious campaign was also carried out.
The Great Patriotic War
Second World War started in 1939 and for almost two years, until June 22, 1941, it walked under the sign of the official friendship of Hitler and Stalin.
Until Hitler's attack, the Soviet Union collaborated with Nazi Germany. There is numerous documentary evidence of cooperation of various kinds, from friendship treaties and active trade to joint parades and conferences of the NKVD and the Gestapo.
Some historians blame Stalin personally USSR's unpreparedness for war and huge losses, especially in the initial period of the war.
Liberator of the whole world from fascism
In a short period, a significant part of the territory of the USSR was occupied, millions of people found themselves behind enemy lines. With great difficulty and enormous sacrifices, the country was rebuilt on a war footing. Further development events were already determined by the commanders, although Stalin was nominally Supreme Commander.
The defeat of the Nazis and the end of the war in 1945 made a huge impression on the occupied countries of Europe. The destruction of fascism began to be associated with the name of Stalin, although they gave their lives for the victory over 28 million Soviet people. Stalin met with the heads of Great Britain and the United States, planning with them the redivision of Europe.
His name was on the lips of many leaders of Eastern European countries. In people's democracies, the Stalinist authoritarian style of one-party leadership was introduced.
After the war, a difficult restoration of the country began, accompanied by repressions and purges of “enemies of the people.”
Death of Stalin
In the evening March 5, 1953 Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin died at his official residence - Near Dacha (Volynskoye, Kuntsevo district, Moscow region). According to the medical report, death was caused by a cerebral hemorrhage.
His body was buried first in the Mausoleum, and in 1961 it was reburied in the necropolis near the Kremlin wall.
This page provides a brief biography of Stalin.
Name: Joseph Stalin (Iosif Dzhugashvili)
Date of birth: December 21, 1879
Zodiac sign: Sagittarius
Age: 73 years old
Date of death: March 5, 1953
Place of birth: Gori, Tiflis province, Russian Empire
Height: 173
Occupation: revolutionary, head of the USSR government, Generalissimo of the Soviet Union
Joseph Stalin is an outstanding revolutionary politician in the history of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, whose activities were marked by mass repressions, which are still considered a crime against humanity today. The personality and activities of Stalin in modern society are still loudly discussed - some consider him a great ruler who led the country to victory in the Great Patriotic War, others accuse him of genocide of the people and the Holodomor, terror and violence against people.
Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich (real name Dzhugashvili) was born on December 21, 1879 in the Georgian town of Gori in a family belonging to the lower class. He was the third but only surviving child in the family - his older brother and sister died in infancy. Soso, as the mother of the future ruler of the USSR called him, was not born a completely healthy child; he had congenital defects of the limbs (he had two toes fused on his left foot), and also had damaged skin on his face and back. At the age of seven, Stalin had an accident - he was hit by a phaeton, as a result of which the functioning of his left hand was impaired.
In addition to congenital and acquired injuries, the future revolutionary was repeatedly beaten by Father Vissarion, which once led to a serious head injury and over the years affected Stalin’s psycho-emotional state. Joseph Vissarionovich's mother, Ekaterina Georgievna, surrounded her son with immeasurable care and guardianship, wanting to compensate the boy for the missing love of his father. Exhausted from difficult work, in order to earn as much money as possible to raise her son, the woman tried with all her might to raise a worthy man, who, in her opinion, should have become a priest. But her hopes were not crowned with success - Stalin grew up as a street darling and spent most of his time not in church, but in the company of local hooligans.
At the same time, in 1888, Joseph Vissarionovich became a student at the Gori Orthodox School, and upon graduation he entered the Tiflis Theological Seminary. It was within the walls of the seminary that he became acquainted with Marxism and joined the ranks of underground revolutionaries. At the seminary, the future ruler of the Soviet Union proved himself to be a gifted and talented student, as he was easily given all subjects without exception. At the same time, he became the leader of an illegal circle of Marxists, in which he was actively involved in propaganda activities.
Stalin failed to graduate from the seminary, as he was expelled from the educational institution right before the exams for absenteeism. After this, Joseph Vissarionovich was issued a certificate allowing him to become a teacher in primary schools. At first he made his living as a tutor, and then got a job at the Tiflis Physical Observatory as a computer-observer.
Path to power
Stalin's revolutionary activities started in the early 1900s - the future ruler of the USSR was then engaged in active propaganda, thereby strengthening his position in society. At the same time, he met the head of the Soviet government, Vladimir Lenin, and other famous revolutionaries. The path to power of Joseph Vissarionovich was filled with repeated exiles and imprisonments, from which he always managed to escape. In 1912, he finally decided to change his surname Dzhugashvili to the pseudonym “Stalin”.
During the same period, he became editor-in-chief of the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda, where his colleague was Vladimir Lenin, who saw Stalin as his assistant in resolving Bolshevik and revolutionary issues, as a result of which Joseph Vissarionovich became his right hand.
In 1917, for special merits, Lenin appointed Stalin People's Commissar for Nationalities in the Council of People's Commissars. The next stage of the career of the future ruler of the USSR is associated with the Civil War, in which the revolutionary showed all his professionalism and leadership qualities. At the end of the war, when Lenin was already mortally ill, Stalin completely ruled the country, while destroying all opponents and contenders for the post of chairman of the government of the Soviet Union in his path.
In 1930, all power was concentrated in the hands of Stalin, and therefore enormous upheavals and restructuring began in the USSR. This period was marked by the beginning of mass repressions and collectivization, when the entire rural population of the country was herded into collective farms and starved to death. The new leader of the Soviet Union sold all the food taken from the peasants abroad, and with the proceeds he developed the industry, building industrial enterprises. Thus, he quickly made the USSR the second country in the world in terms of industrial production, although at the cost of millions of lives of peasants who died of hunger.
Head of the USSR
By 1940, Joseph Stalin became the sole ruler-dictator of the USSR. He was a strong leader of the country, had an extraordinary capacity for work, and at the same time knew how to direct people to solve problems that were important to him. A characteristic feature of Stalin was his ability to make immediate decisions on any issues under discussion and find time to control absolutely all processes taking place in the country.
The achievements of Joseph Stalin, despite his harsh methods of ruling the country, are still highly valued by historical experts. Thanks to him, the USSR deservedly won the Great Patriotic War, agriculture was actively mechanized in the country, industrialization took place, as a result of which the USSR turned into a nuclear superpower with colossal geopolitical influence throughout the world.
Along with undeniable achievements, Stalin's reign is characterized by a lot of negative aspects, which even now cause horror in society. Stalinist repressions, dictatorship, terror, violence - all these are key characteristic features of the reign of Joseph Stalin. He is also accused of suppressing entire scientific areas of the country, accompanied by persecution of doctors and engineers, which caused disproportionate harm to development national culture and science.
Stalin's policies are still loudly condemned throughout the world. The ruler of the USSR is accused of mass famine and the death of people who became victims of Stalinism and Nazism. At the same time, in many cities Joseph Vissarionovich is posthumously considered an honorary citizen and an outstanding warrior, and many soviet people they still respect the dictatorial ruler, calling him a great leader.
Personal life
The personal life of Joseph Stalin has few confirmed facts today. The dictator leader carefully destroyed all evidence of his family life and love relationships, so historians were only able to slightly restore the chronology of events.
It is known that Stalin first married in 1906 to Ekaterina Svanidze, who gave birth to his first child, Yakov. After a year of family life, Stalin's wife died of typhus. After this, the stern revolutionary completely devoted himself to serving the country and only 14 years later he again decided to marry Nadezhda Alliluyeva, who was 23 years younger than him.
The second wife of Joseph Vissarionovich gave birth to a son, Vasily, and took upon herself the upbringing of Stalin’s first-born son, who until that moment lived with his maternal grandmother. In 1925, a daughter, Svetlana, was born into Stalin's family.
In 1932, Stalin's children were orphaned, and he became a widower for the second time. His wife Nadezhda committed suicide amid a conflict with her husband. After this, Stalin never married again.
Death
Joseph Stalin's death occurred on March 5, 1953. According to the official version of doctors, the ruler of the USSR died as a result of a cerebral hemorrhage. After an autopsy, it was determined that he had suffered several ischemic strokes on his legs during his life, which led to serious heart problems and mental disorders.
Stalin's embalmed body was placed in the Mausoleum next to Lenin, but 8 years later at the CPSU Congress it was decided to rebury the revolutionary in a grave near the Kremlin wall.
There are versions that Stalin’s ill-wishers were involved in Stalin’s death, considering the policies of the leader of the revolutionaries unacceptable. Almost all historical researchers are confident that the ruler’s “comrades-in-arms” deliberately did not allow doctors to approach him, who could put Stalin back on his feet and prevent the revolutionary’s death.