Joseph Stalin:

(adopted name Stalin meaning "man of steel")

Communist Dictator from 1924-1953

Early on, Stalin participated in Marxist revolutionary circles and studied the works of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Lenin. Stalin played a huge role in the Russian revolution and became known as one of the leading Bolsheviks.

Lenin recognized this and issued Stalin numerous powerful positions including: the People’s Commissar for Nationalities, General Secretary of the Party Central Committee, and member of the Communist Party Politburo. With Lenin's death, two rivals were left to replace him- Stalin and Trotsky. Stalin didn't take any chances and exiled Leon Trotsky immediately.

During his years of omnipotence, he aimed above all to guarantee the security of the Soviet Union. His largest concerns, which he purued hard-corely with tunnel-vision, were imposing collectivization of agriculture and the forced industrialization of the predominantly rural country. During the Cold War period between 1945 and 1948, he issued friendly governments (communist regimes) along the western Soviet border (specifically Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia) in response to the threat of an invasion from the west. This action was seen as threatening to the U.S.- who viewed his empire as ill-gained, and his actions as efforts to impose communism on the whole of Europe. U.S. soon formed NATO as a response to Stalin’s policies. Stalin then signed a non-aggression pact with Germany to avoid conflict- his efforts were futile as Germany invaded in 1941 nonetheless. When Stalin joined the Allied Powers, 20 million Soviets had already been killed. After Stalin's quick death in 1953, the USSR officially denounced "Stalinism".

Stalin is solely responsible for the deaths by starvation of five to six million people. Millions more were killed by forced labor- all of whom died because of Stalin and his regimes' excessive paranoia, which sought to rid the nation of "enemies of the people".

"A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic." -Stalin

Citations:

Joseph stalin. (2006). Retrieved Apr. 10, 2006, from www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin.

Kennedy, D. (2002). The american pageant. 12th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.