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Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; 18 December [O.S. 6 December] 1878 – 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who was the longest-serving leader of the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as the General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1922 to 1952, and as the Chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1941 until his death. Initially governing the country as part of a collective leadership, Stalin consolidated power to become a dictator by the 1930s. Ideologically, he formalised his Leninist interpretation of Marxism as Marxism–Leninism, while the political and economic system he implemented is known as Stalinism. Born into a poor ethnic Georgian family in Gori in what was then the Russian Empire, Stalin attended the Tiflis Theological Seminary before joining the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction via robberies, ransom kidnappings and protection rackets, and edited the party's newspaper, Pravda. He was repeatedly arrested and internally exiled to Siberia. After the Bolsheviks seized power in the October Revolution of 1917 and established a one-party state under the Communist Party, Stalin joined its governing Politburo. Serving in the Russian Civil War before overseeing the Soviet Union's establishment in 1922, he assumed leadership over the country following Lenin's death in 1924. Under Stalin, "socialism in one country" became a central tenet of the party's ideology. As a result of his Five-Year Plans, from 1928 the country underwent agricultural collectivisation and rapid industrialisation, creating a centralised command economy. Severe disruptions to food production contributed to a major famine in 1930–33, including the Holodomor in Ukraine and the Asharshylyk in Kazakhstan. To eradicate those he declared "enemies of the working class", between 1936 and 1938 Stalin orchestrated the Great Purge, in which over a million people were imprisoned, largely in the Gulag system of forced labour camps, and at least 700,000 were executed. By 1937, Stalin had absolute control over the party and government. Stalin promoted Marxism–Leninism abroad through the Communist International and supported European anti-fascist movements during the 1930s, particularly in the Spanish Civil War. In 1939, his regime signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, enabling the Soviet invasion of Poland. Germany ended the pact by invading the Soviet Union in 1941, after which Stalin joined the Allies as one of the "Big Three". Despite huge losses, the Soviet Red Army repelled the German invasion and captured Berlin in 1945, ending World War II in Europe. The Soviet Union, which had annexed the Baltic states and territories from Finland and Romania amid the war, established Soviet-aligned governments in Central and Eastern Europe. The Soviet Union and the United States emerged as global superpowers and entered a period of tension known as the Cold War. Stalin presided over the country's post-war reconstruction and its first test of an atomic bomb in 1949. During these years, the country experienced another major famine and an antisemitic campaign which culminated in the alleged "doctors' plot". After Stalin's death in 1953, he was eventually succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev, who in 1956 denounced his rule and initiated "de-Stalinisation" of Soviet society. Widely considered one of the 20th century's most significant figures, Stalin was the subject of a pervasive personality cult within the international Marxist–Leninist movement, which revered him as a champion of the working class and socialism. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Stalin has retained a degree of popularity in Russia and Georgia as an economic moderniser and wartime leader who cemented the Soviet Union's status as a leading world power. Conversely, his regime has been widely described as totalitarian and condemned for overseeing mass political repression and detention, extensive exploitation of forced labour, deportations of entire classes (dekulakisation) and nationalities (characterised as ethnic cleansing or genocide), hundreds of thousands of executions, and catastrophic famines that killed millions. Early life 1878–1899: Childhood to young adulthood Stalin was born in Georgia in the town of Gori, then part of the Tiflis Governorate of the Russian Empire and home to a mix of Georgians, Azerbaijanis, Armenians, Russians, and Jews. He was born on 18 December [O.S. 6 December] 1878 and baptised on 29 December. His birth name was Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, and he was nicknamed "Soso", a diminutive of "Ioseb". His parents were Besarion Jughashvili and Ekaterine Geladze. He was their only child to survive past infancy. Besarion was a cobbler who was employed in a workshop owned by another man; it was initially a financial success but fell into decline, and the family found itself living in poverty. Besarion became an alcoholic and beat his wife and son. Ekaterine and Stalin left the home by 1883 and began wandering, moving through nine different rented rooms over the next decade. In 1886, they moved into the house of a family friend, Father Christopher Charkviani. Ekaterine worked as a cleaner and launderer and was determined to send her son to school. In September 1888, Stalin enrolled at the Orthodox Gori Church School, a place secured by Charkviani. Although he got into many fights, Stalin excelled academically, displaying talent in painting and drama classes, writing his own poetry, and singing as a choirboy. Stalin faced severe health problems: An 1884 smallpox infection left him with facial scars; and aged 12 he was seriously injured when hit by a phaeton, probably the cause of a lifelong disability in his left arm. In 1894, Stalin enrolled in the Russian Orthodox Theological Seminary in Tiflis, enabled by a scholarship. He joined 600 trainee priests who boarded, and he achieved high grades. He continued writing poetry; five of his poems, on themes such as nature, land and patriotism, were published under the pseudonym of "Soselo" in Ilia Chavchavadze's newspaper Iveria (Georgia). They became "minor Georgian classics" and were included in anthologies of Georgian poetry. Stalin lost interest in priestly studies, his grades dropped, and he was repeatedly confined to a cell for rebellious behaviour. The seminary's journal noted that he declared himself an atheist, stalked out of prayers and refused to doff his hat to monks. Stalin joined a forbidden book club at the school; he was influenced by Nikolay Chernyshevsky's 1863 pro-revolutionary novel What Is To Be Done? Another influential text was Alexander Kazbegi's The Patricide, with Stalin adopting the nickname "Koba" from the book's bandit protagonist. The pseudonym may have been a tribute to his wealthy benefactor, Yakobi "Koba" Egnatashvili, who paid for his schooling at the Tiflis semina.... Discover the J V Stalin popular books. Find the top 100 most popular J V Stalin books.