Joseph Stalin

"Death is the solution to all problems. No man - no problem."

- Iosif Stalin

Joseph Stalin  or  Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin  ( 18 December 1878  – 5 March 1953) was the  de facto   leader of the Soviet Union  from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953. Among the  Bolshevik  revolutionaries who took part in the  Russian Revolution  of 1917, Stalin was appointed  General Secretary  of the party's  Central Committee  in 1922. He subsequently  managed to consolidate power  following the 1924 death of  Vladimir Lenin  through expanding the functions of his role, all the while eliminating any opposition. He held this nominal post until abolishing it in 1952, concurrently serving as the  Premier of the Soviet Union after establishing the position in 1941.



 Under Joseph Stalin's rule, the concept of " socialism in one country " became a central tenet of Soviet society. He replaced the  New Economic Policy  introduced by Lenin in the early 1920s with a highly centralised  command economy, launching a period of  industrialization  and  collectivization  that resulted in the rapid transformation of the USSR from an agrarian society into an industrial power. However, the economic changes coincided with the imprisonment of millions of people in  Soviet correctional labour camps   and the  deportation  of many others to remote areas. The initial upheaval in agriculture disrupted food production and contributed to the catastrophic  Soviet famine of 1932–1933, known as the  Holodomor  in  Ukraine. Later, in a period that lasted from 1936–39, Stalin instituted a campaign against alleged enemies of his regime called the  Great Purge, in which hundreds of thousands were executed. Major figures in the Communist Party, such as the  old Bolsheviks ,  Leon Trotsky, and several  Red Army leaders  were killed after being convicted of plotting to overthrow the government and Stalin.

 In August 1939, Stalin entered into a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany that divided their influence within Eastern Europe, but Germany later violated the agreement and launched a massive invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Despite heavy human and territorial losses, Soviet forces managed to halt the Nazi incursion after the decisive battles of Moscow and Stalingrad. After defeating the Axis powers on the Eastern Front, the Red Army captured Berlin in May 1945, effectively ending the war in Europe for theAllies. The Soviet Union subsequently emerged as one of two recognized world superpowers, the other being the  United States. The  Yalta  and  Potsdam conferences  established communist governments loyal to the Soviet Union in the  Eastern Bloc  countries as buffer states, which Stalin deemed necessary in case of another invasion. He also fostered close relations with  Mao Zedong  in  China and  Kim Il-sung  in  North Korea.

Stalin led the Soviet Union through its post-war reconstruction phase, which saw a significant rise in tension with the Western worldthat would later be known as the Cold War. During this period, the USSR became the second country in the world to successfully develop a nuclear weapon, as well as launching the Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature in response to another widespread famine and the Great Construction Projects of Communism. In the years following his death, Stalin and his regime have been condemned on numerous occasions, most notably in 1956 when his successor Nikita Khrushchev denounced his legacy and initiated a process of de-Stalinization. He remains a controversial figure today, with many regarding him as a tyrant; however, popular opinion within the Russian Federation is mixed.



(Extracted from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin)