Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili

Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili: "

Joseph Stalin, born Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, was the second communist leader of the Soviet Union. Originally educated to become a priest, Stalin (he adopted the name in 1913) became involved with the socialist and Marxist parties while at seminary school. He spent many years throughout this period campaigning for the Communist party, being jailed for his beliefs and even exiled to Siberia. Stalin and Communism are two terms that go hand in hand, as his rise to power in the party cemented Communism as the political system for the Soviet Union.

Stalin started his Communist rise to power in the year 1912. At this time, he was brought into the Bolshevik’s Central Committee at the Prague Party Conference. Stalin was already the editor of the Communist newspaper ‘Pravda’, and used his influence with the paper to push against the agenda of Vladimir Lenin. After the February Revolution, in April 1917, Joseph Stalin was elected to the Central Committee, and by May was also elected to the Politburo of the Central Committee, a position that he held onto for the rest of his life.

Most accounts state that Stalin did not actually play a major role in the November 7 revolution, although later books written by him and his staff state that he was in fact a huge part of the revolution. He created a fictional ‘Party Centre’ where he and his staff were controlling all that went on during this time. On April 3, 1922, Joseph Stalin was elected to the position of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party. From this vantage point, he managed to build up the position to the most powerful one in the country.

Stalin surprised his fellow party members by the way he was filling the major party offices with his allies, and he even took the dying Lenin by surprise. Lenin proposed that the ‘rude’ Stalin should be removed from his office, but upon a vote from congress, this was denied – Lenin was deemed to be too ill to know what he was writing. Upon Lenin’s death, Stalin and Communism took a sharp turn. Stalin knew that he had to appear loyal to Lenin in order to be seen as the next Communist leader, so he made sure to arrange Lenin’s funeral and profess his loyalty. He undermined his biggest opponent, Trotsky, so that he could usurp the position.

Stalin gained his supreme rulership in 1928, after expelling much of his opposition from the party. He gained the trust and adoration of the people at first by proclaiming himself ‘a man of the people’. By this time, however, Stalin made it so no one could oppose him even if they wanted to, he had supreme power.

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(Via bag_talk.)