What was stalins real name

As a youth, he was struck down and almost killed by a runaway carriage. The accident left him with a stiff left shoulder and for the rest of his life he was unable to use his left arm. He suffered recurrent bouts of smallpox as a child, which badly disfigured his face as he grew older. He despised his son Yakov Dzhugashvili so much that when Yakov attempted suicide, Stalin was reported to have said: "Ha!

He couldn't even shoot straight! During their historic meeting he asked Winston Churchill if he ever had any of his subordinates shot. President Franklin D. Roosevelt thought it was a joke and went along with the "gag", but the question terrified Churchill so much that he allegedly never openly spoke to Stalin again.

His body was moved from the Lenin Mausoleum to the Kremlin Wall in So much was the disbelief at his death that his coffin had a bubble top over his head so that passersby could see it was actually him. Was referred to as "Uncle Joe" by U. Stalin was not ethnically Russian. Stalin was bilingual and spoke Russian fluently, but had a heavy Georgian accent. Early in his life, Stalin had entered an Orthodox seminary to study for the priesthood.

He left, partly because the priests discovered his dabbling in communist and anarchist thought, as well as his growing resentment towards authority. Raised money for the Communist Party by committing several armed robberies. Called "Old Whiskers" behind his back, usually by prisoners in the gulags he sent them to. Staunchly believed Adolf Hitler would honor the Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact. When Hitler's forces attacked, Stalin locked himself in his rooms and refused to believe it for several days; his denial caused unnecessarily huge numbers of MIAs and millions of Soviet civilians to be taken into Nazi concentration camps.

Stalin had broken the pact by invading Bukovina in June Stalin did not wish to share a historic legacy with anyone, so he ordered the creation of revisionist history which wiped out all mention of Leon Trotsky and actually removed him from existing photographs.

Ordered the assassination of Leon Trotsky. Somewhat ironically, he was a huge fan of movies starring John Wayne , Hollywood's most vocal anti-Communist and a rabid supporter of blacklisting and the McCarthy witch hunts. Even after Stalin's rise to power, his mother refused to leave her home in the Caucasus.

When Stalin would enter the Soviet Politburo people would applaud him, sometimes for hours. The reason the clapping went on so long was because everybody was afraid to be the first one to stop. In a testament written just before his death, Lenin denounced Stalin's ambitions and tried to warn the other Soviet leaders about them. Unfortunately, Stalin managed to blunt the effect of the testament and still seized power after Lenin's death anyway.

Was known for completely erasing any and all record of a person's existence as punishment and ascribing Their accomplishments to others or himself.

In an ironic turn of events, this also happened to Stalin himself after Khrushchev's secret speech to a certain extent in Yugoslavia this happened to Stalin even earlier, due to the Tito-Stalin split.

While he was never completely written out of history, he was marginalized and became a scapegoat for most problems in the USSR, while his positive achievements were ascribed to Lenin instead. In addition, most of his statues were torn down, and streets and towns named for him were re-named. Finally, his body was removed from Lenin's mausoleum. It is believed by some historians that Stalin's lust for power and the reasons behind many of his decisions and actions were the result of a tendency as a child to slip into fantasies about what he would have done if he were in charge of the country as a means of escaping his abusive father.

Was a voracious reader and had a personal library of 20, academic books including a handful of basic German texts , and checked out an annual average of books from state libraries. He personally annotated many drafts of Russian-language texts with 'suggestions', and supported Mikhail Sholokhov and Mikhail Bulgakov, authors of the some of the best Russian-language literature ever produced.

Although known for his stoic, reserved and unemotional demeanor, he was far less reserved in private and noted by his closest underlings and his enemies as being given to explosive rages and crushing depressions. He could be quite kind to people whom he only met in passing. There is one account of him making sure a man was set free from the Gulag after receiving a letter from the man's young daughter.

Another instance was when he and some of his staff had to stay at a old lady's cottage for the night while traveling between Moscow and a military headquarters during the war, he ensured the woman was compensated for the trouble despite the lady declaring that she was happy to provide the service for free.

The first time Lenin mentioned Stalin in a memo he forgot his name, made a guess at it, then scribbled it out and just called him 'that Georgian guy'. Stalin's health deteriorated towards the end of World War II. He suffered from atherosclerosis from his heavy smoking. He had a mild stroke around the time of the Victory Parade, and a severe heart attack in October However he did not think Adolf Hitler would invade the Soviet Union until the war in the West had ended.

However this may have been a delaying tactic as he prepared for war with the European Axis Powers. Violated the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact by annexing Bukovina in Supplied all the fuel the German Luftwaffe used to blitz the UK in These invasions brought him into conflict with the Axis Powers in the Balkans.

Deliberately waited until 17 September before launching his invasion of Poland, knowing that the UK and France would be unable to declare war on both Germany and the Soviet Union. Although at war with the European Axis Powers from 22 June , Stalin deliberately did not declare war on the Empire of Japan until 9 August when his forces simultaneously invaded Manchuria.

Initially supported the creation of Israel in , as he felt this would weaken the British Empire. However Stalin soon turned against the new country and publicly denounced it. Held secret talks with the UK and France in on the possibility of forming an anti-German alliance. However Stalin's demands, which included full Soviet control of eastern Europe and the Baltic States, were considered excessive and no agreement was reached, especially after the Polish government refused to allow Soviet forces to be stationed on its territory.

During World War II he refused to use his huge air force to bomb the death camps. At the end of World War II he wanted to invade Spain, due to the considerable help the Franco regime had given to the Axis from to The British and Americans persuaded Stalin to settle for an economic blockade of Spain instead.

Publicly denounced the British and French declarations of war against Germany as imperialist actions designed to preserve their colonial empires. He maintained this stance until the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June He was shocked by Winston Churchill 's landslide defeat in the General Election. Stalin had privately predicted that Churchill would win the election with a large majority of about During the Warsaw Uprising in he refused to airdrop weapons or provide air cover.

He actively prevented Polish and American airplanes from doing that, while arresting Polish underground fighters. Stalin was accused of deliberately halting his forces so the uprising could be crushed. Supplied all the fuel the Germans used to invade France and the Low Countries in Admitted deliberately sacrificing , Soviet troops in order to delay a possible Axis attack on Moscow in the summer of Vladimir Putin has made unlawful all published mention of the cruelties Stalin's regime inflicted on its own citizens - including executing an estimated , soldiers for alleged desertion or cowardice - in order to prevail during World War II.

Ironically the supplies of oil, rubber and grain from to made possible the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union. Stalin did well in school, and his efforts gained him a scholarship to Tiflis Theological Seminary in A year later, Stalin came in contact with Messame Dassy, a secret organization that supported Georgian independence from Russia. Some of the members were socialists who introduced him to the writings of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin.

Stalin joined the group in Though he excelled in seminary school, Stalin left in Accounts differ as to the reason; official school records state he was unable to pay the tuition and withdrew. It's also speculated he was asked to leave due to his political views challenging the tsarist regime of Nicholas II. Stalin chose not to return home, but stayed in Tiflis, devoting his time to the revolutionary movement. For a time, he found work as a tutor and later as a clerk at the Tiflis Observatory.

In , he joined the Social Democratic Labor Party and worked full-time for the revolutionary movement. In , he was arrested for coordinating a labor strike and exiled to Siberia, the first of his many arrests and exiles in the fledgling years of the Russian Revolution. It was during this time that he adopted the name Stalin, meaning "steel" in Russian. Though never a strong orator like Vladimir Lenin or an intellectual like Leon Trotsky , Stalin excelled in the mundane operations of the revolution, calling meetings, publishing leaflets and organizing strikes and demonstrations.

After escaping from exile, he was marked by the Okhranka, the tsar's secret police as an outlaw and continued his work in hiding, raising money through robberies, kidnappings and extortion.

In February , the Russian Revolution began. By March, the tsar had abdicated the throne and was placed under house arrest. For a time, the revolutionaries supported a provisional government, believing a smooth transition of power was possible.

But in April , Bolshevik leader Lenin denounced the provisional government, arguing that the people should rise up and take control by seizing land from the rich and factories from the industrialists. By October, the revolution was complete and the Bolsheviks were in control. The fledgling Soviet government went through a violent period after the revolution as various individuals vied for position and control. In , Stalin was appointed to the newly created office of general secretary of the Communist Party.

Though not a significant post at the time, it gave Stalin control over all party member appointments, which allowed him to build his base. He made shrewd appointments and consolidated his power so that eventually nearly all members of the central command owed their position to him. By the time anyone realized what he had done, it was too late. Even Lenin, who was gravely ill, was helpless to regain control from Stalin. After Lenin's death, in , Stalin set out to destroy the old party leadership and take total control.

At first, he had people removed from power through bureaucratic shuffling and denunciations. However, further paranoia set in and Stalin soon conducted a vast reign of terror, having people arrested in the night and put before spectacular show trials. Potential rivals were accused of aligning with capitalist nations, convicted of being "enemies of the people" and summarily executed.

The period known as the Great Purge eventually extended beyond the party elite to local officials suspected of counter-revolutionary activities. In the late s and early s, Stalin reversed the Bolshevik agrarian policy by seizing land given earlier to the peasants and organizing collective farms. This essentially reduced the peasants back to serfs, as they had been during the monarchy. Stalin believed that collectivism would accelerate food production, but the peasants resented losing their land and working for the state.

Millions were killed in forced labor or starved during the ensuing famine. Stalin also set in motion rapid industrialization that initially achieved huge successes, but over time cost millions of lives and vast damage to the environment.

Any resistance was met with swift and lethal response; millions of people were exiled to the labor camps of the Gulag or were executed. Three years later, in November , the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia. The Soviet Union was founded in , with Lenin as its first leader. During these years, Stalin had continued to move up the party ladder, and in he became secretary general of the Central Committee of the Communist Party , a role that enabled him to appoint his allies to government jobs and grow a base of political support.

After Lenin died in , Stalin eventually outmaneuvered his rivals and won the power struggle for control of the Communist Party. By the late s, he had become dictator of the Soviet Union. Starting in the late s, Joseph Stalin launched a series of five-year plans intended to transform the Soviet Union from a peasant society into an industrial superpower.

His development plan was centered on government control of the economy and included the forced collectivization of Soviet agriculture, in which the government took control of farms.

The forced collectivization also led to widespread famine across the Soviet Union that killed millions. Stalin ruled by terror and with a totalitarian grip in order to eliminate anyone who might oppose him. He expanded the powers of the secret police, encouraged citizens to spy on one another and had millions of people killed or sent to the Gulag system of forced labor camps. During the second half of the s, Stalin instituted the Great Purge , a series of campaigns designed to rid the Communist Party, the military and other parts of Soviet society from those he considered a threat.

Additionally, Stalin built a cult of personality around himself in the Soviet Union. Cities were renamed in his honor. Soviet history books were rewritten to give him a more prominent role in the revolution and mythologize other aspects of his life. He was the subject of flattering artwork, literature and music, and his name became part of the Soviet national anthem. He censored photographs in an attempt to rewrite history, removing former associates executed during his many purges.

His government also controlled the Soviet media. Stalin then proceeded to annex parts of Poland and Romania, as well as the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

He also launched an invasion of Finland. Stalin had ignored warnings from the Americans and the British, as well as his own intelligence agents, about a potential invasion, and the Soviets were not prepared for war.

As German troops approached the Soviet capital of Moscow, Stalin remained there and directed a scorched earth defensive policy, destroying any supplies or infrastructure that might benefit the enemy.

The tide turned for the Soviets with the Battle of Stalingrad from August to February , during which the Red Army defeated the Germans and eventually drove them from Russia. As the war progressed, Stalin participated in the major Allied conferences, including those in Tehran and Yalta His iron will and deft political skills enabled him to play the loyal ally while never abandoning his vision of an expanded postwar Soviet empire. Joseph Stalin did not mellow with age: He prosecuted a reign of terror, purges, executions, exiles to labor camps and persecution in the postwar USSR, suppressing all dissent and anything that smacked of foreign—especially Western—influence.

He established communist governments throughout Eastern Europe, and in led the Soviets into the nuclear age by exploding an atomic bomb.