Joseph Stalin

Stalin was born on 18 December [O.S. 6 December] 1878 into a Georgian family in Gori, a city in the Tiflis Governorate of the Russian Empire. His birth name was Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili (Russified as Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili). His parents were Besarion Jughashvili and Ekaterine Geladze; Stalin was their third child and the only one to survive past infancy. After Besarion's shoemaking workshop went into decline, the family fell into poverty, and he became an alcoholic who beat Ekaterine and Stalin. The two left the home by 1883, moving through nine different rented rooms. In 1888, Stalin enrolled at the Gori Church School, where he excelled. Stalin faced health problems: an 1884 smallpox infection left him with facial scars, and at age 12, he was seriously injured when he was struck by a phaeton, causing a lifelong disability in his left arm.

In 1894, Stalin enrolled as a trainee Russian Orthodox priest at the Tiflis Theological Seminary, enabled by a scholarship. He initially achieved high grades, but lost interest in his studies. Stalin became influenced by Nikolay Chernyshevsky's pro-revolutionary novel What Is to Be Done?, and Alexander Kazbegi's The Patricide, with Stalin adopting the nickname "Koba" from its bandit protagonist. After reading Das Kapital, he focused on Karl Marx's philosophy of Marxism, which was on the rise as a variety of socialism opposed to the Tsarist authorities. He began attending secret workers' meetings and left the seminary in April 1899.

During October 1899, Stalin worked as a meteorologist at the Tiflis observatory. He attracted a group of socialist supporters, and co-organised a secret workers' meeting where he convinced many to strike on May Day 1900. The empire's secret police, the Okhrana, became aware of Stalin's activities and attempted to arrest him in March 1901, but he went into hiding during which he lived off donations from friends. He helped plan a demonstration in Tiflis on May Day 1901, at which 3,000 marchers clashed with the authorities. Stalin was elected to the Tiflis Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), a Marxist party founded in 1898, in November 1901.

That month, he travelled to Batumi. His militant rhetoric proved divisive among the city's Marxists, some of whom suspected that he was an agent provocateur. …

On 26 October 1917, Lenin declared himself chairman of the new government, the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom). Stalin supported Lenin's decision not to form a coalition with the Socialist Revolutionary Party. He became part of an informal leadership group alongside Lenin, Trotsky, and Sverdlov, and his importance within the Bolshevik ranks grew. Stalin's office was near Lenin's in the Smolny Institute, and he and Trotsky had direct access to Lenin without an appointment. Stalin co-signed Lenin's decrees shutting down hostile newspapers, and co-chaired the committee drafting a constitution for the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. He supported Lenin's formation of the Cheka security service and the Red Terror, arguing that state violence was an effective tool for capitalist powers. Unlike some Bolsheviks, Stalin never expressed concern about the Cheka's rapid expansion and the Red Terror.

Having left his role as Pravda editor, Stalin was appointed the People's Commissar for Nationalities. He appointed Nadezhda Alliluyeva as his secretary, and married her in early 1919. In November 1917, he signed the Decree on Nationality, granting ethnic minorities the right to secession and self-determination. He travelled to Helsinki to meet with the Finnish Social Democrats, and granted Finland's request for independence from Russia in December. Due to the threats posed by the First World War, in March 1918 the government relocated from Petrograd to the Moscow Kremlin. Stalin supported Lenin's desire to sign an armistice with the Central Powers; Stalin thought this necessary because he—unlike Lenin—was unconvinced that Europe was on the verge of proletarian revolution. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed in March 1918, ceding vast territories and angering many; the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries withdrew from the coalition government. The Bolsheviks were renamed the Russian Communist Party.

In May 1918, during the intensifying Russian Civil War, Sovnarkom sent Stalin to Tsaritsyn to take charge of food procurement in Southern Russia. Eager to prove himself as a commander, he took control of regional military operations and befriended Kliment Voroshilov and Semyon Budyonny, who later formed the core of his military support base. …

Upon Lenin's death in January 1924, Stalin took charge of the funeral and was a pallbearer. To bolster his image as a devoted Leninist amid his growing personality cult, Stalin gave nine lectures at Sverdlov University on the Foundations of Leninism, later published in book form. At the 13th Party Congress in May 1924, Lenin's Testament was read only to the leaders of the provincial delegations. Embarrassed by its contents, Stalin offered his resignation as General Secretary; this act of humility saved him, and he was retained in the post.

As General Secretary, Stalin had a free hand in making appointments to his own staff, and implanted loyalists throughout the party. Favouring new members from proletarian backgrounds to "Old Bolsheviks", who tended to be middle-class university graduates, he ensured that he had loyalists dispersed across the regions. Stalin had much contact with young party functionaries, and the desire for promotion led many to seek his favour. Stalin also developed close relations with key figures in the secret police: Felix Dzerzhinsky, Genrikh Yagoda, and Vyacheslav Menzhinsky. His wife gave birth to a daughter, Svetlana, in February 1926.

In the wake of Lenin's death, a power struggle emerged to become his successor: alongside Stalin was Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Nikolai Bukharin, Alexei Rykov, and Mikhail Tomsky. Stalin saw Trotsky—whom he personally despised—as the main obstacle to his dominance, and during Lenin's illness had formed an unofficial triumvirate (troika) alongside Kamenev and Zinoviev. Although Zinoviev was concerned about Stalin's growing power, he rallied behind him at the 13th Congress as a counterweight to Trotsky, who now led a faction known as the Left Opposition. Trotsky's supporters believed that the NEP conceded too much to capitalism, and they called Stalin a "rightist" for his support of the policy. Stalin built up a retinue of his supporters within the Central Committee as the Left Opposition were marginalised.

In late 1924, Stalin moved against Kamenev and Zinoviev, removing their supporters from key positions. In 1925, the two moved into open opposition to Stalin and Bukharin and launched an unsuccessful attack on their faction at the 14th Party Congress in December. Stalin accused Kamenev and Zinoviev of reintroducing factionalism, and thus instability. …

As a Marxist–Leninist, Stalin considered conflict between competing capitalist powers inevitable; after Nazi Germany annexed Austria and then part of Czechoslovakia in 1938, he recognised a major war was looming. He sought to maintain Soviet neutrality, hoping that a German war against France and the United Kingdom would lead to Soviet dominance in Europe. The Soviets faced a threat from the east, with Soviet troops clashing with the expansionist Japanese in the latter part of the 1930s, culminating in the Battles of Khalkhin Gol in 1939. Stalin initiated a military build-up, with the Red Army more than doubling between January 1939 and June 1941, although in haste many of its officers were poorly trained. Between 1940 and 1941, Stalin purged the military, leaving it with a severe shortage of trained officers when war eventually broke out.

As Britain and France seemed unwilling to commit to an alliance with the Soviet Union, Stalin saw a better deal with the Germans. On 3 May 1939, he replaced his Western-oriented foreign minister Maxim Litvinov with Vyacheslav Molotov. Germany began negotiations with the Soviets, proposing that Eastern Europe be divided between the two powers. In August 1939, the Soviet Union signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Germany, a non-aggression pact negotiated by Molotov and German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop with a secret protocol dividing Eastern Europe. On 1 September, Germany invaded Poland, leading the UK and France to declare war on Germany. On 17 September, the Red Army entered eastern Poland, officially to restore order. On 28 September, Germany and the Soviet Union exchanged some of their conquered territories, and a German–Soviet Frontier Treaty was signed shortly after in Stalin's presence. The two states continued trading, undermining the British blockade of Germany.

The Soviets further demanded parts of eastern Finland, but the Finnish government refused. The Soviets invaded Finland in November 1939, starting the Winter War; despite numerical inferiority, the Finns kept the Red Army at bay. International opinion backed Finland, with the Soviet Union being expelled from the League of Nations. Embarrassed by their inability to defeat the Finns, the Soviets signed an interim peace treaty, in which they received territorial concessions. …

Ethnically Georgian, Stalin grew up speaking the Georgian language, and did not begin learning Russian until age eight or nine. It has been argued that his ancestry was genetically Ossetian, but he never acknowledged an Ossetian identity. He remained proud of his Georgian identity, and throughout his life retained a heavy Georgian accent when speaking Russian. Some colleagues described him as "Asiatic", and he supposedly said that "I am not a European man, but an Asian, a Russified Georgian".

Described as soft-spoken and a poor orator, Stalin's style was "simple and clear, without flights of fancy, catchy phrases or platform histrionics". He rarely spoke before large audiences and preferred to express himself in writing. In adulthood, Stalin measured 1.70 m (5 feet 7 inches) in height. His moustached face was pock-marked from smallpox during childhood; this was airbrushed from published photographs. His left arm had been injured in childhood leaving it shorter than his right and lacking in flexibility. Stalin was a lifelong smoker, who smoked both a pipe and cigarettes. Publicly, he lived relatively plainly, with simple and inexpensive clothing and furniture. As leader, Stalin rarely left Moscow unless for holiday; he disliked travel, and refused to travel by plane. In 1934, his Kuntsevo Dacha was built 9 km (5.6 mi) from the Kremlin and became his primary residence. He holidayed in the south USSR every year from 1925 to 1936 and 1945 to 1951, often in Abkhazia, being a friend of its leader, Nestor Lakoba.

Trotsky and several other Soviet figures promoted the idea that Stalin was a mediocrity, a characterisation which gained widespread acceptance outside of the Soviet Union during his lifetime. However, historians have described him as having a complex mind, remarkable self-control, and strong memory. Stalin was a diligent worker and an effective and strategic organiser, with a keen interest in learning. As a leader, he meticulously scrutinised details, from film scripts to military plans, and judged others by their inner strength and cleverness. He was skilled at playing different roles depending on the audience, as well as in deception. Although he could be rude, Stalin rarely raised his voice; however, as his health deteriorated, he became unpredictable and bad-tempered. He could be charming and enjoyed cracking jokes when relaxed. …