Joseph Stalin: A Brief Biography

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Born Josef Vissarionovich Jughashvili (which he would later change to Stalin, Russian for “man of steel”) to Besarion Jughashvili, a shoemaker with a penchant for insobriety and general debauchery, and Ekaterina Georgievna, a laundress, Joseph Stalin grew up in poverty. Stalin was born in the village of Gori, in the Russian province of Georgia, then part of the Russian Empire, on December 18, 1878, or December 6, 1878, according to the Old Style Julian calendar, however, he would later invent a new birthdate for himself: December 21, 1879. Stalin was brought up in a dysfunctional and poverty stricken family; he would rise from this and become the one of the most influential and hated dictators of the 20th century.
Suffering from a traumatic childhood due to a mildly malformed arm, contraction of smallpox, and a brutish and abusive father, Stalin constantly felt unfairly treated. This developed a strong desire for power and respect. When he was nothing more than a young boy, Stalin’s father, Besarion Jughashvili, left the small town of Gori to seek employment in Tiflis. Due to this his father’s leave, his mother, Ekaterina Georgievna, had a more profound influence on Stalin — it was she who administered his education; he first attended the Gori Church School and earned a scholarship at the Tiflis Theological Seminary, where her mother hoped for young Stalin to become a clergyman. While studying at the seminary, Stalin began to covertly read Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto; Stalin eventually became indulged in the revolutionary movement against the Russian Monarchs. His mother’s hopes would be crushed as her son was expelled from the seminary in 1899 and becomes a staunch advocate for a Marxist revolution.
Subsequent to his leave f...

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...those who lived during his reign, however, Hitler was not the most fearsome and deluded person during World War II, or quite possibly history. Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin can be easily the most dysfunctional human being to exist. He executed at least twenty-million of his own people without remorse. According to Stalin, “The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic. ”

Works Cited

"Joseph Stalin." BBC News. BBC, n.d. Web. 05 Apr. 2014.
"Joseph Stalin." History.com. A&E Television Networks, n.d. Web. 06 Apr. 2014.
"Joseph Stalin." Joseph Stalin. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Apr. 2014.
"Joseph Stalin." PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 06 Apr. 2014.
"Joseph Stalin Quotes." BrainyQuote. Xplore, n.d. Web. 04 Apr. 2014.
"Joseph Stalin." SparkNotes. SparkNotes, n.d. Web. 06 Apr. 2014.
"Joseph Stalin." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 04 Mar. 2014. Web. 04 Apr. 2014.

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