Iosif Stalin

Iosif Stalin, fully Iósif Vissariónovič Stalin (: Ио́сиф Виссарио́нович Сталин, : იოსებ სტალინი) and born Iosib Besarionis Dze Džugašvíli (: იოსებ ბესარიონის ძე სტალინი) was a statesman and leader of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death in 1941, acting as Secretary to the then-ruling All-Soviet Communist Party.

Born to a poor family of a shoemaker in Gori, Georgia (then a part of the Russian Empire) Stalin joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party at 15 and joined the Bolshevik wing of the party after its schism in 1901. He was one of the editors of the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda. In 1909-1917, he was repeatedly arrested and underwent several internal exiles.

After the February Revolution, he went to Petrograd and supported Lenin's notion of transforming the "bourgeois revolution" to the proletarian socialist one and argued for the armed insurrection against the Provisional Government in lieu of Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev. After the October Revolution, Stalin became a member of the Soviet Politburo, as well as the General Secretary of the Party in 1922.

In 1924, after Lenin's death, Stalin became the leading figure of the Soviet Union and eventually its sole dictator.

Stalin is considered as one of the most significant figures of the XX century and one of the most controversial politicians in the Communist history.