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Joseph Stalin
Иосиф Сталин (Russian)
იოსებ სტალინი (Georgian)
Stalin
1947 portrait
4th President of Russia
In office
26 May 1927 – 5 March 1953
Preceded byLev Bronstein
Succeeded byGeorgy Malenkov
3rd Vice President of Russia
In office
27 January 1924 – 26 May 1925
PresidentLev Bronstein
Preceded byLev Bronstein
Succeeded byVyacheslav Molotov
Minister of Agriculture
In office
26 May 1919 – 27 January 1924
PresidentVladimir Ulyanov
Lev Bronstein
Chairman of the State Duma
In office
13 May 1913 – 13 May 1919
Preceded byJulius Martov
Succeeded byAlexei Rykov
1st Chairman of the Russian Republican Party
In office
7 November 1932 – 26 May 1951
Preceded byPosition established
Succeeded byNikita Khrushchev
General Secretary of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party
In office
26 May 1925 – 7 November 1932
Preceded byLev Bronstein
Succeeded byPosition abolished
Personal details
Born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili
18 December 1878
Gori, Tiflis Governorate,
Russian Empire
Died 5 March 1953 (aged 74)
Kuntsevo Dacha, Kuntsevo,
Russia
Political party Republican
Other political
affiliations
RSDLP (until 1932)
Spouse(s) Ekaterina Svanidze (1906–07)
Nadezhda Alliluyeva (1919–32)
Children Yakov Dzhugashvili
Vasily Dzhugashvili
Svetlana Dzhugashvili
Parent(s) Besarion Jughashvili and Ketevan Geladze


Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili (Russian: Иосиф Виссарионович Джугашвили, trans. Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, 18 December 1878 – 5 March 1953), more commonly known by his pseudonym Joseph Stalin (Russian: Иосиф Сталин, trans. Iosif Stalin), was a Russian politician who served as the 4th President of the Russian Democratic Federative Republic from 1927 to 1951.

Stalin was one of the earliest members of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, and actively participated in the 1905 Russian Revolution. After the establishment of the Republic in 1906, Stalin was appointed to lead the RSDLP's parliamentary group in the Russian Constituent Assembly by Vladimir Ulyanov. He was thereafter elected to the State Duma, becoming its Chairman in 1913. Following the death of Ulyanov in 1921 and the succession of then-Vice President Lev Bronstein to the Presidency, Stalin was selected by the party and confirmed by the State Duma as Bronstein's successor. In 1927, Bronstein attempted to seek election in his own right, but was outmanoeuvred by Stalin, who gained the RSDLP's endorsement for the 1927 presidential election. Stalin subsequently won, and was inaugurated on 26 May 1927.

Under Stalin's administration, Russia entered a period of industrialisation that resulted in the rapid transformation of Russia from an agrarian society into an industrial power. However, he was also responsible for the attempt to collectivise farming, a policy which contributed to disruption in food production and the subsequent Russian famine of 1932–33.

Stalin's tenure also saw a consolidation of power in the already-dominant RSDLP. He pressured competing parties into dissolving or merging with the RSDLP, and in 1932 the Socialist-Revolutionary, Constitutional Democratic and Progressive parties all merged with the RSDLP to form the All-Russian Republican Party, effectively transforming Russia into a one-party state. Stalin cultivated an ideology centred on an irredentist and expansionist pan-Slavic nationalism.

In order to fulfil this vision, Stalin's government in August 1938 signed the Molotov-Nicolson Pact with the Fascist government of Oswald Mosley in Britain, forming the Axis alliance. Pursuant to the pact's Secret Protocol, Russia and Britain simultaneously launched invasions of Poland and France respectively on 1 October 1938, igniting World War III. Despite significant successes in the first years of the war, Russian armies were ultimately routed by the Allies—Germany and Cygnia—who went on to invade Russia in 1944. By the war's end, Russia had lost millions of soldiers, as well as all of its occupied territories in Eastern Europe and its Baltic, Belarusian and Ukrainian republics. However, the Allies failed to achieve total victory due to Stalin's scorched earth policy, and the Eastern Front entered a stalemate until negotiations between the Allies and Russia concluded the Treaty of Warsaw in April 1946.

Though far from victorious in the war, Russia emerged as one of the world's great powers, and aligned itself with Nationalist China against Germany and Cygnia in the Cold War. Following Russia's withdrawal from the war and concession of its western territories, he presided over its post-war reconstruction and its development of an atomic bomb in 1949. During these years, Stalin sought to improve his weakened position by cracking down harshly on his political enemies, initiating a purge of the Republican Party. He also violently crushed growing unrest in the borderlands with the newly independent Baltic states, Ukraine and Belarus. After his death in 1953, he was succeeded by his Vice President, Georgy Malenkov, but Malenkov was ultimately overshadowed and replaced by Nikita Khrushchev, who denounced Stalin's rule and began the de-Stalinisation of Russian society.

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