Joseph Stalin was born 'Iosif Dzhugashvili' on 18 December 1878, in what is known today as Georgia. As the son of a cobbler and 'housemaid', Stalin's family struggled. His mother sent him to a school to study to become a priest, but he was eventually expelled. Rather than go home, Stalin went to work at the Tiflis Meteorological Observatory. Stalin soon found he had time to organize union strikes and demonstrations. This led the 'Secret Police' conducting a failed attempt to arrest him as he arrived at work. It was time for Stalin to move on and indulge himself deeper into Marxism.
Stalin joined the revolutionary political party, the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP), during the summer of 1901, and soon found himself organizing work strikes and a demonstration which left 15 dead, 54 wounded, and 500 sent to prison, including Stalin. During his imprisonment in Siberia, he contacted Vladimir Lenin.
Stalin escaped from prison in January of 1904 and returned to the 'Georgia' area where he committed a bank robbery. With 40 dead and 50 wounded during this robbery, it was not conducive to the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party's desired public image perception they wished for people to believe. This caused a party split that "would lead to a schism between the Bolsheviks (Russian for “the Majority”) led by Lenin and Stalin, and the so-called Mensheviks, (Russian for “the Minority”) led by the rest, who disapproved of such strong-arm tactics. However, among the Bolsheviks, the robbery only served to bolster Stalin’s reputation as a man of action, and his reputation among the revolutionaries was greatly enhanced as a result."
After Stalin's wife contracted typhus and passing away on December 5th, 1907, "he confided in one of his close friends at the time, 'with her died my last warm feeling for humanity.'” Stalin would see four additional 'prison' trips to Siberia, escaping his first three 'visits' before his fourth time of confinement. "Stalin was pulled out of the gulag in 1916 for conscription into the Russian army." But... Stalin's medical checkup found him unfit for military service. So, Stalin was returned to the Gulag,
After release from prison, Stalin was appointed as 'People’s Commissar for Nationalities Affairs' within the new Soviet system. "It was during this period that Lenin would form an initial Politburo consisting of five members: Lenin himself, Leon Trotsky, Lev Kamenev, Nikolai Krestinksy, and Joseph Stalin." In 1922 the Head of State, Vladimir Lenin, gave Stalin the post of General Secretary. After Lenin's death a power struggle ensued, the eventually led to Joseph Stalin's rule. Stalin set about rebuilding his Soviet Empire.
Stalin implemented the collective farming systems and "sent out teams of Government Enforcers to make sure that everyone was equally submitting their resources. Secret police would show up announced at a farmer’s house and then proceed to ransack the place in search of hidden produce. Those who did not cooperate lost everything and were sent immediately to the gulags of Siberia. As the work camps of Siberia swelled, Stalin was granted with another resource that he would use to rapidly industrialize the Soviet Union: slave labor."
WWII led to Adolf Hitler's 'National Socialist German Workers' Party' military invading Russia on June 22, 1941. After multitudes perished, the "German army decisively crushed at Stalingrad-" The Soviet Socialist Empire now joined the 'Allies' against Germany. The Soviet army liberated numerous Nazi concentration camps and extermination centers, including: Majdanek in July 1944, Auschwitz on 27 January 1945, and the concentration camps of Gross-Rosen, Sachsenhausen, Ravensbrück, Stutthoff, and Theresienstadt. Nazi Germany came to a full and unconditional surrender on May 7th, 1945.
These brief biographies can help the reader to decide if they wish to pursue the individual(s) and/or topics with more lengthy works.
- Quotes from this work:
“Everybody has a right to be stupid, but some people abuse the privilege.” —Joseph Stalin
“It’s not the people who vote that count. It’s the people who count the votes.” —Joseph Stalin
“Catch a man a fish, and you can sell it to him. Teach a man to fish, and you ruin a wonderful business opportunity.” —Karl Marx
“The death of one man is tragic, but the death of thousands is a statistic.” —Joseph Stalin