Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin

What do we know about Stalin? • he was born in 1879 • he came from a poor background; his father was a cobbler and his mother was a peasant • his real surname was Djugasvili • he did well at school and won a scholarship to go to a seminary where priests were trained • it was at this seminary that Stalin turned to Marxism • he became a follower of Lenin and went to secret meetings and distributed leaflets • between 1902 and 1913 he was arrested 8 times and exiled to Siberia. He escaped 7 times! • in prison he adopted the name Stalin which translated as "Man of Steel". He felt that it would be good for his image • he was a very good organiser and the part he played in the November 1917 Revolution was probably small. But the skills he gained while helping to organise the Bolshevik Party were to prove invaluable • after 1917, he was rewarded with a number of seemingly unimportant party positions which nobody else wanted. But they gave Stalin a perfect insight into who could be trusted to support him and who could not • Stalin was seen as dull by the intellectual elite of the Bolshevik Party. They all made a fatal mistake in assuming that he was stupid. When Stalin became the undisputed leader of Russia in 1929, he realised that Russia was far behind the west and that she would have to modernise her economy very quickly if she was to survive. Also a strong economy would lead to a strong military if Russia was going to survive threats from external forces. A modernised Russia would also provide the farmers with the machinery they needed if they were going to modernise their farms - such as tractors.