Joseph Stalin
Childhood
Joseph Stalin was born in Gori, Georgia. His parents were poor and illiterate. His harsh and ruthless nature has been blamed on beatings that his father use to give him. These beatings also inspired vengeful feelings toward anyone that has power over him. His mother wanted young Joseph to become a priest. He studied Russian Orthodox Christianity until he was twenty. He became involved in the socialist movement when he was expelled from seminary school in 1899. He then worked in the political underground of Caucasus for a decade; he particularly began to follow some of Vladimir Lenin's ideas. This included Vladimir's ideas about centralism and a strong party of professional revolutionaries.
Rise to power
After the revolution, Stalin spent his time building his as a general secretary secretly into the most powerful one in the Communist Party. After Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin joined with Bukharin, and together they fought a new opposition of Trotsky, Kamenev, and Zinoviev. Stalin's supremacy was complete by 1928. From now on, he would have total control over the country and party. But to complete his rise to power, he ordered the assassination of Trotsky in Mexico in 1940. After the death of Trotsky, only two members of the "Old Bolsheviks" remained, Stalin and his foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov.
Purges and mass murders
Stalin concentrated his power base with the Great Purges against his ideological and political opponents, most notably the old cadres and the rank and file of the Bolshevik Party. Stalin would imprison them into work camps or even assassinate them. He would even hold several show trials in Moscow, to show how local courts should carry out these issues elsewhere in the country. Stalin would also terrorize large segments of the Soviet population. He once orchestrated a massive famine in Ukraine in which about five million people died. It is estimated that forty million people died from Stalin's purges, forced famines, state terrorism, labor camps, and forced migrations.
World War II
In 1939, Stalin divided East Germany between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. He did this by making the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany. In 1941, Hitler broke the pact by invading the Soviet Union. Under Stalin's leadership, the Soviet Union put up a fierce resistance against the Germans, but they were ultimately ineffective against the advancing Nazi force. Stalin was hoping that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany would buy him time to modernize and strengthen his military. By December, the Germans reached the outskirts of Moscow. But the Germans were stopped by an early winter and a Soviet counter-offensive. The Red Army regained the initiative of the war after the battle of Stalingrad in 1942-1943. But the Red Army did take about one million casualties. Ultimately on May 2, 1945, the capital city of Berlin was taken by Stalin led forces. It is estimated that one quarter of the Russian population died as a result of World War II.
Post-war era
After World War II concluded, Joseph Stalin continued his genocidal policies while exerting ruthless control over the Soviet Union and its satellite states until he died in 1953. Over fifteen million Germans were removed from eastern Germany and pushed into central Germany. Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, Czech, etc. were moved back onto German land. Other ethnic groups like the Crimerian Tartars and Volga Germans, were moved to the Asian part of the Soviet Union. Millions of Soviet ex-POWs and German POWs were sent to the Gulags. The eastern European states occupied by the Red Army were established as communist Satellite states. Shorty before his death on March 5, 1953, Stalin accused nine doctors of planning to poison and kill the Soviet leadership. At Stalin's instruction, the innocent men were arrested and tortured to obtain confessions. Joseph Stalin was ruthless until the day that he died.