Joseph Stalin Life and Times,

Childhood and Education Born on December 21, 1879 in Gori, Georgia; his birth name was Iosif Vissarionovich Djugashvili. His parents, Vissarion and Ekaterina Djugashvili, were poor and so his family lived in a shack. His brothers and sisters all died soon after birth and so he was raised as an only child.

A Map of Georgia

A photo of Stalin’s birthplace in Gori, Georgia

Childhood and Education When he was 6 or 7, Stalin’s father – who treated Stalin very harshly – left the family to work in Tbilisi. During this time, Stalin contracted a disease called smallpox which scarred his face for life.

Tbilisi around 1900

Childhood and Education When he was ten, he started school at the Gori Church School. In 1894, he went to Tbilisi to begin his education as a priest at the Tbilisi Seminary. In 1897, Stalin became a Marxist:: “a theory and practice of socialism including the labor theory of value, dialectical materialism, the class struggle, and control the government by the working class until the establishment of a classless society.“

Stalin, circa 1894.

Childhood and Education In 1899, Stalin was expelled from the Tbilisi Seminary for revolutionary activity. Soon after this, Stalin found the writings of Vladimir Lenin and became a strong supporter, and eventually a member, of the Bolsheviks. Stalin was arrested 7 different times and sent to Siberia each time. For most of these, he was able to escape.

Beginnings of a Revolutionary In 1911, Stalin moved to St. Petersburg and became editor of a newspaper called Pravda, or The Truth, a communist newspaper. In March 1913, he was arrested for working on the newspaper and sentenced to life in Siberian exile. Between Stalin stayed in exile in Siberia with other Bolsheviks, studying ideology and discussing politics.

A young Stalin in 1902.

The Revolutions of 1917 In his previous years with the Bolsheviks, Stalin had become friends and colleagues with Lenin. In 1917, Tsar Nicholas II was overthrown and the Provisional Government allowed all previous political prisoners to return from exile. In October 1917, the Bolsheviks took power from the Provisional Government in what became known as the October Revolution.

The Revolutions of 1917 As a reward for his loyalty to Lenin, Stalin was given a top position in the new government. In the civil war ( ) that followed, Stalin was particularly brutal towards Tsarist generals and deserters (people who left the army without permission); having them shot.

A meeting of the Congress of the Russian Communist Party, Stalin is in the middle of the second row next to Lenin.

Rise to Power In 1922, Lenin was tired of the squabbling between members of the communist party. He felt Stalin was a loyal follower and wanted to give him more power. So he made Stalin the General Secretary. – This allowed Stalin to put many of his friends into positions of power within the party.

Rise to Power On May 25, 1922 Lenin had a stroke and went into semi-retirement. In this period, Stalin went to visit Lenin often and acted as an intermediary to the outside world. In this way, Stalin’s power increased rapidly.

Rise to Power When Lenin died in 1924, Stalin began eliminating any opposition to his rule. Some were exiled to Siberia, arrested or killed. By 1928, Leon Trotsky – Stalin’s main opposition to power – was banished from the USSR. By the late 1920s Stalin was in control of the Soviet Union

The Great Purge In 1934, a popular politician named Sergei Kirov was murdered. Stalin blamed his murder on Trotskyites and other trouble makers and began a massive purge on any of his enemies inside or outside of Russia.

The Great Purge Stalin targeted any old Bolsheviks who could be rivals to his rule. The NKVD, or People’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was in charge of the mass killings. By 1938, with more than 1,000,000 people killed and most of his enemies were dead – Stalin called off the purges. Nevertheless, the practice of mass arrest and exile was continued until Stalin's death in 1953

NKVD, what would become the KGB

The Great Purge’s last victim: Nikolai Yezhov, the Head of the NKVD

Population Transfer Between 1941 and 1949 more than 3 million ethnic people were transferred from European Russia to Siberia or Central Asia, including Tajikistan. Poles, Soviet Koreans, Volga Germans, and Chechens were moved in harsh conditions. Estimates say that hundreds of thousands of people died from the move of disease or malnutrition.

The Death of Iosef In 1945, Stalin suffered a heart attack from his heavy smoking, but he survived. In March 1953, Stalin went to sleep after an all night dinner and movie and never woke up. He was not discovered until 10 pm the next day. Most likely, he died of a stroke. Some argue that he was assassinated or killed himself – the truth will never really be known.

Stalin’s grave by the Kremlin Wall in Moscow

Legacy of Stalin He pushed for more industrialization and government control of the economy. Art, literature and science were all under Soviet control. Millions of people died during his reign from either purges, famine or population transfer. – Some estimates say between 3 and 60 million people in total died during his reign.

Writing Exercise and Discussion Stalin will go down in history as one the worst dictators in history, do you agree? Was he worse than Hitler? What were his intentions in killing so many people?