Joseph Stalin: Former Premier of the Soviet Union

Joseph Stalin served as both General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union.

Born in 1878, Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvili was a Georgian revolutionary and the ruler of the Soviet Union from 1927 until 1953.

When he was in his 30s, he took the name, Joseph Stalin, from the Russian for “man of steel.”

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He served as both General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union.

After Vladimir Lenin died, Stalin eventually outmaneuvered his rivals and won control of the Communist Party. By the late 1920s, he had become dictator of the Soviet Union.

Stalin launched a series of five-year plans, which transformed the Soviet Union from a peasant society into an industrial superpower.

Initially governing the country as part of collective leadership, he consolidated power to become the Soviet Union’s de facto dictator by the 1930s.

He aligned with the United States and Britain in World War II but later engaged in a tense relationship with the West known as the Cold War.

In the 1930s, Stalin instituted the Great Purge, a series of campaigns designed to rid the Communist Party and others from those he considered a threat.

Soviet history books were rewritten to give him a prominent role in the revolution. He was the subject of flattering artwork, literature, and music, and his name became part of the Soviet national anthem.

He said it himself: One death is a tragedy, one million is a statistic. Throughout his reign, he was responsible for the death of 20 million citizens, and 20 million soldiers and civilians who died in WWII.