Joseph stalin3

Joseph Stalin's Rise to Power

By Jake11111

  • Earlier Years

    Earlier Years
    Born in a part of the Russian empire called Georgia in 1879, Joseph Dzhugashvili was the son of a shoemaker. Dzhugashvili attended a seminary, but was expelled in 1899 for activities against the Czar’s government. In 1903 he joined Lenin’s Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party and began to serve in a variety of party posts. By 1917, when the Russian Revolution swept the Bolsheviks into power, Dzhugashvili was using a new last name—Stalin—the Russian word for steel.

  • Stalin Takes Over the Soviet Union

    Stalin Takes Over the Soviet Union
    After Lenin died in 1924, Joseph Stalin came to power. By 1926, Stalin was the new Soviet dictator. He began a massive effort to industrialize his country using Five-Year Plans. Steel production increased, but industrial wages declined by 43 percent from 1928 to 1940. Family farms were combined and turned into collectives, or government-owned farms. Peasants who resisted by killing livestock or hoarding crops faced show trials or death from starvation.

  • Stalin's Failed Dictatorship

    Stalin's Failed Dictatorship
    During the 1930s, Stalin ruthlessly ordered the murder or expulsion of anyone he perceived as a threat. When World War II began, Stalin signed a nonaggression pact with Hitler. He then took the opportunity to annex large parts of Eastern Europe to the Soviet Union. When Germany invaded Russia in 1941, Stalin formed an alliance with the United States and Britain. At the end of the war, Stalin continued to use terror and repression to build the Soviet Union into an industrial and military power.

  • Stalin's Failed Dictatorship (Cont.)

    Stalin's Failed Dictatorship (Cont.)
    Stalin tolerated no opposition, targeting political enemies along with artists and intellectuals. He used concentration camps, which held nearly 2 million people by 1935. Prisoners were used as slave labor. Between 15 and 20 million people died under Stalin’s rule, which lasted until his death in 1953.

  • Joseph Stalin's Death

    Joseph Stalin's Death
    Stalin's health deteriorated towards the end of World War II. He suffered from atherosclerosis from his heavy smoking. He was 74 years old when he died.