joseph stalin
Stalin (1879-1953) Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili was born on December 21, 1879, in the village of Gori, Georgia. ... Frantic to catch up with the West in 1928, Stalin and his men launched a set of policies known as the five-year plans, designed to turn backward Russia into an industrial and military world power, which he accomplished in only one decade. ... Those that survived were killed off in Stalin’s purges to rid him of opposition. ... Stalin (1879-1953) Table of Contents This is divided into sections based on each significant period of Stalins life. ... · Stalin was born on December 21, 1879, in Gori, a village in Transcaucasian Georgia, a province of the Russian Empire within the Caucasus mountains. · Note: Stalin was not a Russian, contrary to popular belief--Georgians are a distinct minority within the former Soviet Union. Stalin did not even speak Russian especially well; he never was quite able to get rid of his accent. · Stalin was the only one of four children to survive infancy. ... · Stalin was rather sickly as a child; he was badly scarred by smallpox, and septicemia crippled his left arm. Stalin reportedly had an exceptional singing voice and sung in his school choir. ... · Stalin was enrolled in a local Orthodox parochial school in Gori in 1888 at the age of 9. ... Stalin won a free scholarship in 1894 to the Orthodox Russian theological seminary at Tiflis to be educated for priesthood. ... Back to Top Stalins Early Career: (1897-1917) · Stalin was expelled from the seminary in 1899, when he was about to graduate. · Stalin first tried tutoring and then clerical work at the Tiflis Observatory, but he abandoned his clerical job in May 1901, when he was about to be arrested. · Stalin then became a paid agitator, trying to incite a revolt against the czar. ... Later he changed his name to David, Soso, Chiijikov, Nijeradze, and finally, Stalin. · Stalin was arrested for the first time on April 18, 1902 and imprisoned for eighteen months in Batum; after this incarceration ended Stalin was exiled to Siberia in 1903 for three years. Stalin escaped from this exile in 1904 and reappeared in Tiflis--a pattern that he experiences many times prior to 1917. · Stalin and Lenin met for the first time in December of 1905, at a Bolshevik conference in Finland. Stalin was reportedly highly unimpressed by Lenin at their first meeting--Stalin was expecting him to be a sort of superhero.