Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin[g] (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili;[d] 18

December [O.S. 6 December] 1878[1] – 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician,

political theorist and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his
death in 1953. He held power as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union (1922–1952) and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet
Union (1941–1953). Initially governing the country as part of a collective
leadership, he consolidated power to become a dictator by 1928. Ideologically
adhering to the Leninist interpretation of Marxism, he formalised these ideas as
Marxism–Leninism, while his own policies are called Stalinism.

Born to a poor ethnic Georgian family in the town of Gori in the Tiflis Governorate
of the Russian Empire (now part of Georgia), Stalin joined the Marxist Russian
Social Democratic Labour Party in 1901. He edited the party's newspaper, Pravda,
and raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction via robberies, kidnappings
and protection rackets. Repeatedly arrested, he underwent several internal exiles
to Siberia. After the Bolsheviks seized power in the October Revolution and created
a one-party state under the new Communist Party in 1917, Stalin joined its
governing Politburo. Serving in the Russian Civil War before overseeing the Soviet
Union's establishment in 1922, Stalin 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, the country
underwent agricultural collectivisation and rapid industrialisation, creating a
centralised command economy. Severe disruptions to food production contributed to
the famine of 1930–1933 that killed millions. To eradicate "enemies of the working
class", Stalin instituted the Great Purge, in which over a million were imprisoned,
largely in the Gulag system of forced labour camps, and at least 700,000 executed
by government agents between 1936 and 1938.