December 18th 1879: Joseph Stalin born
On this day in 1879, the future leader of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, was born in Georgia. In his youth, Stalin read the works of Karl Marx - the intellectual founder of communism - and became active in the incipient revolutionary movement against Tsar Nicholas II, who had proved unresponsive to calls for reform and was repressive of dissidents. After the 1917 revolution, orchestrated by the communist Bolshevik Party, Stalin quickly rose through the party ranks, becoming general secretary in 1922. Following the death of head of government Vladimir Lenin in 1924, Stalin established himself as leader of the Soviet Union, and assumed near complee power over the communist nation. Stalin’s dictatorial rule ushered in a highly repressive era of Russian history, as millions died due to his forced collectivisation policies, and his ‘purges’ of his political rivals doomed thousands to gruelling, and often fatal, work in the gulags. The Soviet Union established itself, alongside the United States and Great Britain, as one of the ‘Big Three’ world powers who led the Allied cause to victory over the Axis powers during the Second World War. Stalin died of a stroke in 1953, aged 74, and his death was followed by a turn away from the ‘cult of personality’ which had surrounded his autocratic rule, with his successor Nikita Khrushchev initiating a programme of ‘de-Stalinisaton’.
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