Joseph Stalin (document en anglais)

Joseph Stalin

-Biography

Stalin, Robert Service portrays the Russian leader Joseph Stalin as one of the notorious figures in history. In his years of power and pomp, from the late 1920’s until his death in 1953, he personified the soviet communist order. Stalin rose from extreme poverty to become the supreme ruler of the Soviet Union for a quarter of a century. Joseph Stalin was a ruthless man with a heart of steel. He overcame some of the worst conditions possible only to end up stronger than before. Stalin accomplished the feat of industrialization in a country, which was far behind the other leading industrialized nations, with his Five Year Plan and Collective Farming. He was a man of great power who ruled with an iron fist which he was name after, Stalin meaning ‘the man of Steel’ is Russian. But the fear he struck into others would ultimately lead to his demise.

Joseph Stalin was to become known as one of the two most brutal people of the twentieth century, along with Hitler.

Joseph Stalin’s real name was Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili and he was born in Georgia. He had a tough child hood that made him the leader that he would be someday. As a child, Ioseb was plagued with numerous health issues. He was born with two adjoined toes on his left foot. His face was left permanently scarred after he contracted smallpox at the age of 7. Later, at age 12, he injured his left arm in an accident involving a horse-drawn carriage, rendering it shorter and stiffer than its counterpart.

His mother was a serf and his father, Vissarion, was a bankrupt cobbler. Stalin’s mother was a prostitute and Joseph would always make fun of it.

Vissarion was an alcoholic and a violent man. He would often beat his wife and young Stalin for no reason at all.

One of Stalin's friends from childhood wrote, "Those undeserved and fearful beatings made the boy as hard and heartless as his father." The same friend also wrote that he never saw him cry. In his contention, Vissarion, his father, taught him to hate people.

We can say this is the main reason for what he became and did in his future, he was being as hard and heartless over innocent people just as his father was. The only difference is that his father made two persons suffer, his mother and himself, whereas Stalin killed between 20-40 millions people.

He was expelled in 1899 after missing his final exams. The seminary's records also suggest that he was unable to pay his tuition fees.

The official Soviet version states that he was expelled for reading illegal literature and for forming a Social Democratic study circle. Around this time, Stalin discovered the writings of Vladimir Lenin and decided to become a Marxist revolutionary, eventually joining the Bolsheviks in 1903 and becoming one of their chief operatives in the Caucasus.

Another activity of Stalin and the other Bolshevik organizers was to spread propaganda.

As a young man he trained to be a priest, but his career came to a halt when he joined a forerunner of the Bolsheviks, and he took part in fund-raising activities for them. Maybe he considered holding jumble sales, or a sponsored bouncy castle

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