The Life Of Joseph Stalin Essay Research

The Life Of Joseph Stalin Essay, Research Paper Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili was an unknown man in the small town of Gori, Georgia. After years of revolutionary activity and many times exiled to Siberia, he changed his name. A name that would threaten the Germans, ally with the Americans, and help the North Koreans. A name that came from the Russian word for steel, Joseph Stalin . Joseph Stalin was born on 21 December 1877 to Ekaterina Georgievna and Vissarion Ivanovitch Dzhugashvili .Vissarion, Stalin s father, was a drunkard and very cruel to his young son. Ekaterina, Stalin s mother, was a washer women to support the family. The first three of Vissarion and Ekaterina s kids had died shortly after their birth, so Stalin grew up as an only child. When Stalin was still a

young boy he got small pox, which left his face scared forever. His first school was a little church school in Gori . Gori was full of socialist movements and the Czarist government wanted to educate priests to fight the revolutionary ideas. Stalin s mother, therefore, a dedicated member of the Orthodox Church, entered her son into the Seminary at Tifilis . He entered the school in 1894 for the study of priesthood in the Georgian Orthodox Church and on the birthday of Czar Alexander III, Stalin sung a solo in an Orthodox Church . Soon Marxist ideas reached him. He knew little about Marx s theories and the revolution, but never the less it amazed him. He soon started to get involved. He joined the forbidden revolutionary moment when he was fifteen and three years later he was

secretly leading a Marxist circle. In May of 1899, he was expelled from the school for missing an examination but Official Communist literature says that he was expelled for political balance . He soon joined the Tiflis branch of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers Party and it was not long before he was a professional agitator. In 1900 and 1901 he led strikes and demonstrations in Tifilis and Batum. In 1901 the Czar s secret police searched Stalin s room but he had gone and joined the underground movement that was springing up throughout Russia. He worked for a number of newspapers and on September of 1901 he officially became accepted into the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. Stalin was arrested and exiled to Eastern Siberia, seven times between April 1902 and March

1913, for revolutionary activity. He escaped numerous times to come back and wreak havoc upon the Czarist government. In late 1905, he traveled as a Caucasian delegate to the secret Bolshevik conference in Finland. It was there that he first met Lenin, later on he started to carry out orders for Lenin. Stalin soon became Lenin s most trusted lieutenants, he also became good at raising money for the Party. He supposedly helped with the successful attack on the Tifilis bank convoy. He wrote articles for newspapers such as the Zvesda (The Star) and Pravada (The Truth). Some say it was about this time when he started calling himself Joseph Stalin. In 1914 Germany declared war on Russia and France. World War I had erupted. Stalin was in exile were he stayed until 1917. Russia was

suffering badly and many people were starving. Riots and demonstrations broke out through the cities and on March 15, 1917 Czar Nicholas III gave up his throne to a provisional government mostly lead by Mensheviks. The provisional government freed all political prisoners. Stalin returned to Petrograd to help direct the Bolsheviks before Lenin s return from Switzerland. When Lenin returned he opposed the new government and again began to lead a revolution with Stalin supporting him the whole way. While Lenin and other revolutionaries were forced to live underground, Stalin stayed in Petrograd. Where he helped organize a coup which would take place on October 25, 1917 . Lenin then launched a radical program to overthrow the Provisional Government. Then on the month of October, on