Joseph Stalin
politician and leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics from 1924 to 1953
Joseph Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; 18 December 1878 – 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who ruled the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death in 1953, holding the titles of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1952 and the nation's Premier from 1941 to 1953. Initially presiding over an oligarchic one-party system that governed by plurality, he became the de facto dictator of the Soviet Union by the 1930s. Ideologically committed to the Leninist interpretation of Marxism, Stalin helped to formalise these ideas as Marxism–Leninism, while his own policies became known as Stalinism.
Born into a poor Georgian family in Gori, Russian Empire, Stalin began his revolutionary career by joining the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party as a youth. There, he edited the party's newspaper, Pravda, and raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction via robberies, kidnappings, and protection rackets. Repeatedly arrested, he underwent several internal exiles. After the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia during the 1917 October Revolution, Stalin joined the party's governing Politburo, where he was instrumental in overseeing the Soviet Union's establishment in 1922. After Lenin fell ill and then died in 1924, Stalin assumed leadership over the country. During Stalin's rule, "Socialism in One Country" became a central tenet of the party's dogma, and Lenin's New Economic Policy was replaced with a centralized command economy. Under the Five-Year Plan system, the country underwent collectivisation and rapid industrialization but experienced significant disruptions in food production that contributed to the famine of 1932–33.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Joseph Stalin” is politician and leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics from 1924 to 1953. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Joseph, Stalin and politician, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “politician and leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics from 1924 to 1953” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q855. VIAF identifies the subject as 101787139. The Library of Congress control number is n80044789. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1878, 1953, 1922 and 1952.
A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Joseph Stalin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.