STALIN, JOSEPH,

born Dec. 21 [Dec. 9, Old Style], 1879, Gori, Georgia, Russian Empire died March 5, 1953, Moscow, Russia, U.S.S.R. Russian in full Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin, original name (Georgian) Ioseb Dzhugashvili secretary-general of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (192253) and premier of the Soviet state (194153), who for a quarter of a century dictatorially ruled the Soviet Union and transformed it into a major world power. Though originally trained for the priesthood, Stalin joined an underground Georgian revolutionary organization in 1900 and the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democrats in 1903. A relatively minor figure in the party before the Bolshevik Revolution, he served as commissar for nationalities (191723) and for state control (191923) in the Soviet government; in 1922 he also became secretary-general of the party's Central Committee, a post that later provided the power base for his dictatorship. After Vladimir Lenin died (1924), Stalin successfully overcame his rivals in the party power struggles and became the dominant figure in Soviet politics. In 1928 he launched an intensive industrialization program that forced collectivization of agriculture and sweeping, often brutal social reorganization. During the 1930s he also supervised massive purges of the Communist Party and of Soviet population in general. Although he concluded a nonaggression pact with Adolf Hitler (1939), the German invasion of the Soviet Union (1941) drew him into World War II as an ally of Great Britain and, later, the United States. Having assumed the posts of head of the Soviet government and supreme commander in chief (1941), he directed the Soviet armies as they repulsed the German invaders and occupied the eastern European lands. After the war, Stalin was a key figure of the Cold War era, establishing Soviet hegemony in eastern Europe and rivaling the United States for world leadership. At home, he continued his repressive measures to control dissent. He remained the Soviet Union's leader until his death in 1953.