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Joseph Stalin was a revolutionary activist turned dictator of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR). He ruled USSR from 1929 to 1953. During WWII, Stalin cooperated with the Allied Powers after a failed negotiation with Nazi Germany. It was also during his last years when the Cold War started.

See the fact file below for more Joseph Stalin facts or alternatively, you can download our comprehensive worksheet pack to utilize within the classroom or home environment.

EARLY AND PERSONAL LIFE

  • Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, later known as Joseph Stalin, was born on December 18, 1878, in Gori, Georgia. He was the son of Besarion Jughashvili, a shoemaker, and Ketevan Geladze, a washerwoman.
  • In 1888, Joseph was enrolled in a church school in Gori because his mother was a devout Russian Orthodox Christian. As a result of his efforts, Joseph gained a scholarship to the Tiflis Theological Seminary.
  • In August 1894, Stalin attended the Orthodox Spiritual Seminary in Tiflis. Stalin wrote several poems, mainly about nature and patriotism, as a trainee priest. He used the pseudonym “Soselo” in the newspaper Iveria.
  • In 1898, Joseph joined the Messame Dassy. It was a secret organization pushing for the independence of Russia following the writings of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and Nikolay Chernyshevsky.
  • Joseph left the seminary school a year later and stayed in Tiflis to support the revolutionary movement against Tsar Nicholas II. By 1901, he became a Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) member. After a year, he experienced his first arrest because of coordinating labor strikes and was exiled to Siberia. During this time, Joseph adopted “Stalin,” which means “steel” in Russian.
  • During his exile, the RSDLP split between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, and Stalin aligned himself with Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks. 
  • While a revolution spread in St. Petersburg in early 1905, Stalin formed a Bolshevik Battle Squad in Baku. Stalin’s squad raided government arsenals and raised funds by robbing the local businesses. 
  • In November 1906, he was elected by the Georgian Bolsheviks to a conference in St. Petersburg. At the conference, Stalin met Lenin. In April 1906, he was present at the RSDLP Fourth Congress in Stockholm. 
  • In the same year, she married Kato Svanidze. They had a son named Yakov. 
  • In 1907, Stalin attended the Fifth RSDLP Congress in London. In the same year, Stalin organized a heist of the Imperial Bank. Around 40 people were killed in the encounter in Yerevan Square. His robbery was reprimanded by the dominant Mensheviks, who expelled Stalin from the RSDLP. 
  • In Baku, Stalin reassembled his gang and continued to raise funds through racketeering, counterfeiting, and kidnapping. In March 1908, he was arrested and imprisoned in Bailov, Baku, and later exiled to Solvychegodsk, Vologda Province. In June 1909, he escaped and fled to Kotlas and St. Petersburg. 
  • In September 1911, Stalin was arrested again and sent to Vologda. While in exile, the first Bolshevik Central Committee was elected. He was co-opted into the committee by Lenin and Gregory Zinoviev. 
  • In February 1912, he escaped again to St. Petersburg. As a secret editor, he converted the weekly newspaper Zvezda, a Bolshevik newspaper, into the daily Pravda. In May, Stalin was arrested again and exiled to Siberia. After two months, he escaped to St. Petersburg with Yakov Sverdlov. 
  • After the October 1912 Duma elections, Lenin criticized Stalin for attempting to reconcile the Bolshevik and the Menshevik factions. Despite the misunderstanding, Lenin was pleased with Stalin’s article Marxism and the National Question, published in March 1913. 
  • When Russia entered the First World War, Stalin was in exile. By 1916, exiled Bolsheviks were conscripted into the army. However, upon arriving in Krasnoyarsk, Stalin was ruled unfit to serve in the Russian military due to his crippled arm. 

STALIN’S RISE TO POWER

  • In February 1917, the Russian Revolution began, and Nicholas II was put under house arrest by the following month after he abdicated the throne. In March, Stalin returned to Petrograd and assumed control of Pravda with Lev Kamenev. He was also appointed to the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet.
  • In April, the Bolsheviks elected Lenin, Zinoviev, and Stalin to the party’s Central Committee. Stalin helped organize the July Days uprisings and continued the editing of the Pravda amidst the Provisional Government’s suppression of the Bolsheviks. 
  • In October, Stalin and Leon Trotsky supported Lenin’s coup plan against the Provisional Government. In the Smolny Institute, Stalin was present in planning the October Revolution. 
  • On October 26, 1917, Lenin succeeded in toppling the Provil Government. As chairman, he established a new government, the Sovnarkom of the Council of People’s Commissars. Stalin was one of the closest Bolshevik leaders to Lenin aside from Trotsky, and he supported the formation of the Cheka. 
  • Lenin appointed Stalin the People’s Commissar for Nationalities. In November 1917, Stalin signed the Decree on Nationality, which allowed the right of minorities to self-determination. 
  • Stalin supported Lenin’s armistice and Russia’s exit from WWI. In March 1918, Russia withdrew from the war through the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. 
  • During the Russian Civil War, Stalin was sent to Tsaritsyn and secured food procurement and control of regional military operations. In Tsaritsyn, Stalin oversaw the functions of the Cheka in executing counter-revolutionaries. 
  • Following the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War, Stalin was appointed head of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate. 
  • In 1922, Stalin was nominated as the first Secretary-General of the Communist Party during the 11th Party Congress. He gained significant influence by appointing members under his command.

STALIN SUCCEEDING LENIN

  • In 1924, Lenin died, and Stalin took charge of the funeral. In May 1924, “Lenin’s Testament” was exposed during the 13th Party Congress, and the testament favored Trotsky to succeed Lenin as leader of the party. Lenin’s death resulted in a power struggle between Stalin and Trotsky, and Stalin forged an anti-Trotsky alliance with Zinoviev and Kamenev. 
  • A supporter of the New Economic, Stalin was criticized by the Left Opposition. Stalin, now supported by Bukharin, moved against Kamenev and Zinoviev. At the 14th Party Congress, the Left Opposition was accused by Stalin of reintroducing factionalism in the party. 
  • In October 1927, Zinoviev and Trotsky were excluded from the Central Committee, while other opposition members who retracted were rehabilitated. Stalin became the party’s supreme leader, while Vyacheslav Molotov became the head of government.  
  • In 1928, Stalin began dekulakization, or the liquidation of the kulak class. The kulaks were affluent peasants who were accused of hoarding their grain. Stalin ordered the arrest of kulaks and confiscation of their grains, and many were sent to concentration camps. 
  • As part of Stalin’s programs, he reversed the land given to peasants and formed collective farms beginning in 1929. Kolkhozy (collective farms) and sovkhoz (state farms) were established. The kulaks were prohibited from collectivization. He pushed for industrialization, which gained success but damaged the environment and killed many poor people due to famine. Any resistance meant exile or death. From 62% in 1932, the households affected by collectivization increased to 90% in 1936. 
  • Primarily constructed using forced labor, Stalin completed the White Sea-Baltic Canal and the Moscow Metro. To reinforce labor, Stalin’s government introduced the Stakhanovite Movement.
  • In 1928, show trials were conducted to intimidate the opposition and suppress industrial specialists. These trials included the Industrial Party Trial, Metro-Vickers Trial, and the Menshevik Trial. 
  • Culturally, Stalin promoted ethnic Russians in the government. The use of the Russian language was made compulsory in schools and offices. Homosexuality was recriminalized, while abortion and divorce were made almost impossible due to added restrictions. Moreover, the Zhenotdel women’s department was abolished. 
  • Stalin supported literacy and numeracy. In arts, Socialist Realism was promoted. Furthermore, he supported scholars who had the same idea of Marxism as his, such as Trofim Lysenko.
  • Anti-religious campaigns against Muslims, Christians, and Buddhists proliferated while he increased the funding to the League of Militant Atheists. 
  • In May 1933, the Great Terror or the Great Purge began. He employed a reign of terror to remove loyalists from the old regime. Lenin’s presumed successor, Leon Trotsky, was sent into exile. Local officials and party elites were suspected of counterrevolutionary activity. 
  • When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, Stalin initiated a secret correspondence. In 1934, Stalin expanded the Soviet foreign policy by joining the League of Nations. While improving the Soviet’s relations with the West, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact in 1936. 
  • In 1938, Stalin released the “central text of Stalinism,” The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union or the Short Course.

STALIN AND THE SECOND WORLD WAR

  • In 1939, Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany and Joseph Stalin agreed in a non-aggression pact. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact aimed to divide Eastern Europe between the USSR and Germany. A week after the pact’s signing, Germany invaded Poland, which led to the British and French declaration of war.
  • Stalin continued to annex parts of Poland, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Finland. In 1940, Stalin proposed the USSR’s membership in the Tripartite Pact. In the same year, Stalin replaced Molotov as Premier of the USSR. 
  • In June 1941, Hitler broke the pact and invaded parts of the USSR. In response, Stalin formed and commanded the State Defense Committee. Soon, Hitler occupied Ukraine, Belorussia, and the Baltic states. The following month, the Luftwaffe bombed Moscow. Instead of evacuating Moscow, Stalin ordered a scorched earth policy. Under Order No. 270, Stalin ordered the Red Army to fight to the death. By this time, Stalin had allied with Great Britain and the US.  
  • In June 1942, Hitler focused on accessing the oil fields in the southern Soviet Union. In February 1943, the Battle of Stalingrad ended with an unexpected Soviet victory. Despite the heavy casualty, it was a turning point of the war on the Eastern Front and Soviet nationalism. Stalin moved Soviet industrial factories to the east to protect them from the German threat. 
  • Due to his war efforts, Stalin was named “Man of the Year” by Time magazine in 1942. 
  • In November 1943, Stalin met British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Franklin Roosevelt in Tehran. Two more conferences followed the meeting in Yalta and Potsdam.
  • In April 1945, the Red Army occupied Berlin, and by May, Germany surrendered. After the death of Hitler and the occupation of Berlin, Stalin moved his troops to the Far East. On August 8, 1945, the Red Army invaded Manchuria. 
  • Stalin was the original member of the Big Three. He first met Churchill and Roosevelt, followed by Clement Atlee and Harry Truman. At Potsdam, Stalin promised the Allies that he would not pursue Sovietization of Eastern Europe in replacement of German reparations. Germany was divided into four zones under the occupation of the USSR, Great Britain, France, and the US. 
  • After the war, Stalin was glorified in the Soviet Union and established his position in world politics. He was regarded as the embodiment of Soviet victory. 

LATER YEARS AND DEATH

  • Since the latter part of 1945, Stalin’s health was deteriorating. His paranoia that his political rivals might oust him led to the demotion of Molotov and the promotion of Lavrentiy Beria and Georgy Malenkov. 
  • In 1949, Stalin brought Nikita Khrushchev to Moscow and appointed him Committee secretary of the city’s party branch. 
  • Between 1947 and 1950, the relationship between the US and the USSR deteriorated. Stalin believed that Great Britain and the US were aggressive. In 1949, Stalin sponsored the development of the Soviet atomic bomb and the expansion of the military. 
  • After WWII, Stalin expanded its communist influence in Eastern Europe. In his speech, Winston Churchill described Soviet aggression as an “Iron Curtain.”
  • In addition to Eastern Europe, Marxism penetrated China when Mao Zedong rose to power in October 1949. In December, Mao visited Stalin in Moscow. In March 1950, North Korean leader Kim Il-sung met Stalin for the second time. 
  • On March 5, 1953, Stalin died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Malenkov, Beria, and Khrushchev emerged as the party’s prominent figures on the same day. 
  • When Khrushchev assumed power, he proposed the policy of de-Stalinization. 

Joseph Stalin Worksheets

This bundle contains 11 ready-to-use Joseph Stalin Worksheets that are perfect for students who want to learn more about Joseph Stalin who was a revolutionary activist turned dictator of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR). He ruled USSR from 1929 to 1953. During WWII, Stalin cooperated with the Allied Powers after a failed negotiation with Nazi Germany. It was also during his last years when the Cold War started.

Download includes the following worksheets:

  • Joseph Stalin Facts
  • The Russian Steel
  • Mapping USSR
  • WWII Leaders
  • That’s Stalin!
  • Dictators in History
  • USSR in WWII
  • Bolshevik Revolution 
  • Communist Party
  • Under Stalin’s Name
  • Cartoon Analysis

Frequently Ask Questions

What is Joseph Stalin most known for?

Joseph Stalin was the leader of the USSR from 1929 to 1953. 

What are 3 facts about Joseph Stalin?

At the age of 15, Stalin identified himself as a Marxist. He succeeded Vladimir Lenin as leader of the USSR. Stalin was one of the Big Three during WWII, and he was the Soviet leader when the Cold War began. 

Why is Joseph Stalin remembered?

Many Soviets remembered Stalin as the leader who defended the USSR from the Nazis. Others viewed him as a ruthless dictator, and Stalin was widely associated with his collectivization and dekulakization policies. 

When did communism end in Russia?

Communism in the Soviet Union ended in 1991, and the USSR’s collapsed. 

Who took over after Stalin’s death?

Nikita Khrushchev succeeded Stalin. 

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