Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

Introduction

Unfortunately for the world Joseph Stalin was the one child out of the four in his family that survived past his childhood. Joseph Stalin was born on December 21, 1879, in Gori, Russia. Joseph Stalin's father died when he was just eleven years of age, so his mother took complete responsibility of taking care of the boy. Joseph Stalin's mother was a very religious woman and she also made sure that her son was educated. Joseph Stalin attended an elementary school in which was under the administration of the Orthodox church. In 1894 Joseph Stalin received a scholarship to the Orthodox Theological Seminary in Tbilisi. Nothing out of the ordinary occurred in Joseph Stalin's childhood that you would expect to see in a man that would later become one of the world's most brutal leaders. As a result of his use of fear, intimidation, and his successful plan to oust his main rival, Leon Trotsky, Joseph Stalin was able to seize power in Russia (James, 2007).

Discussion

In a country full of chaos, a great leader is needed to restore order. In Russia's case, that leader was Joseph Stalin. After Lenin's death, Stalin controlled the communist party in 1927. He believed in socialism in one country. After Stalin came into power, his goal was to make Russia a powerful communist country. To achieve this goal, he felt that Russia needed to rapidly industrialize, since they were behind advanced countries. Through modernization, Joseph Stalin was able to restore order by industrializing the country, collectivizing the farms and making the Soviet Union more active in international affairs (James, 2007).

From the beginning of Joseph Stalin's college career he was seen as a leader. He started a committee in his college because he did not like the school's curriculum. He recruited members so that they could study the Russian Tsanst government as apposed to the Orthodox school's curriculum. Joseph Stalin's first role in the government came in 1898 when he united with a secret Marxist revolutionary committee. He then also worked for a writing company where he had articles published over time. After this in 1901 he was accepted into the Russian Social Democratic Labor party. Between the years of 1902 and 1913 Joseph Stalin was arrested numerous times for several different crimes. Luckily he was able to escape quite often and by the end of his sentence of being exiled in Siberia Joseph Stalin had been appointed by Lenin to the Bolshevik Central Committee. Joseph Stalin was able to take charge of the Bolsheviks when Lenin went into hiding, fearing arrest. When Lenin came back he had decided that he would have Stalin whom he trusted be one of his high in power lieutenants (Westwood, 2003).

Stalin seized power in Russia when Lenin died although Lenin had warned everyone that Stalin was dangerous and that he should be gotten rid of. Lenin also took a stern disliking of Stalin because of incidents that they had previously run into. One being that Stalin contacted Lenin's ...