(December 18, 1878 - March 5, 1953) 

Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvili, later to rename himself “Stalin” or “Man of Steel”, was born to a poor family in Georgia, an Imperial Russian colony.  While his family had aspirations for him to become a priest and he attended a seminary, a religious school, he secretly began reading Karl Marx’ Communist Manifesto and he started to form his Communist beliefs.  In 1903, Stalin joined the Bolshevik Party, Social Communists, and became a disciple of leader Vladimir Lenin.  In 1917, the Bolshevik Party overthrew Tsar Nicolas II and became the ruling party of the Soviet Union. After Lenin’s death, Stalin became the leader of the Soviet Union until his death in 1953.  

During the 1920s, Stalin began to change the predominantly peasant society into an industrial and agricultural superpower, which became very important during the Second World War, but came at a cost to the people in the Soviet Union.  Anyone who opposed Stalin was sent to “gulags” (a forced labour camp) or killed. During the “Great Purge” in the 1930s, all opposing military, political or cultural figures were sent to the gulags to prevent any opposition to what Stalin wanted to accomplish.  On the eve of the Second World War, Stalin and Hitler signed a non-aggression pact to avoid conflict between the two countries. In 1941, the pact was broken, much to Stalin’s surprise (despite warnings from British and American military leaders), when Germany employed Operation Barbarossa, and attacked along an 1,800 mile front on Soviet held land.  During the Second World War, Stalin was in constant communication with the other Allied leaders, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt. After the Second World War was over, rather than maintain a positive relationship with Allied nations, Stalin considered them arch rivals, which led to the Cold War with the United States.