Stalin, Joseph (1879–1953)

Joseph Stalin was the supreme ruler of the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. Upon his accession to power, he quickly established himself as the unequivocal leader of the state and chief ideologue of world communism. Although Stalin's legacy remains marred by controversy, his significance as a historical figure is undeniable, as [Page 1192]there have been few politicians in the history of the world who have wielded comparable power, attained such a reputation for ruthlessness, and so deeply affected the lives of millions.

Joseph Stalin was born Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili on December 21,1879, in a poor village in the Republic of Georgia. The omnipotence Stalin would enjoy throughout the latter stages of his life had its roots in his very upbringing. Soon after his father died in 1891, Stalin was sent to the seminary in the capital of Georgia, Tiflis (now known as Tbilisi). He never took to religious studies, however. A shy and self-centered teenager whose face had been permanently disfigured after a bout with smallpox, Stalin always felt inferior to his peers and, from an early age, developed a strong sense of contempt toward intellectuals, which years later would result in his merciless persecution of the Soviet intelligentsia. Driven by his lifelong desire for greatness and recognition, Stalin quickly found himself immersed in Tiflis's vibrant revolutionary life as he eagerly joined the city's burgeoning Marxist underground movement.

It did not take Stalin long to become a convinced Marxist, and he quickly rose through the party ranks. When Russian Marxism later split into two factions, he identified himself with the Bolsheviks. As loyal a Bolshevik as Stalin was (organizing Georgian and, later, Azerbaijani workers, distributing illegal literature, dodging arrests, and even robbing trains and banks), he still kept a relatively low profile within the party through the early 1900s. It was in 1913 that the young Georgian revolutionary changed his name from Dzhugashvili to Stalin (literally meaning “man of steel” in Russian), under which he became known as one of the most notorious tyrants of all time.

Although Stalin played a relatively inconspicuous role in the preparation for the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917, his zeal and obvious organizational talents drew the attention of the party leadership. After the fall of the Romanov Dynasty and the subsequent execution of the czar and his family, Stalin was appointed in 1922 to the position of general secretary of the Communist Party's Central Committee in recognition of his work as a military commissar during the Civil War (1918–1921). As general secretary, Stalin gained control over the entire party apparatus and, within months, established himself as the second most important figure in the government after Lenin. During Lenin's last illness and after his death in 1924, Stalin's power rose even further while he served as a member of the three-man committee that conducted the affairs of the party and the country.

That formation, the troika, was arguably the last instance of pluralism that Stalin allowed. His nearly paranoid obsession with keeping every affair under his personal control led to the eventual destruction of the Bolshevik party as a political organism and ruling class. Through labor camps, political repressions of the late 1930s, elimination of free thought and market enterprise, treason trials and brutal executions of Communist cadres, Stalin accomplished the creation of an elaborate, completely centralized bureaucratic mechanism for the command and control of the Soviet society.

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