What was joseph stalins title

In office April 3, — March 5, In office May 6, — March 5, December 18, Gori, Georgia , Russian Empire. All practical work in connection with the organisation of the uprising was done under the immediate direction of Comrade Trotsky, the President of the Petrograd Soviet. It can be stated with certainty that the Party is indebted primarily and principally to Comrade Trotsky for the rapid going over of the garrison to the side of the Soviet and the efficient manner in which the work of the Military Revolutionary Committee was organised.

Stalin was keenly focused on the expansion of Soviet ideals around the world. He envisioned a Soviet Union that had the military capability to expand far beyond Russia. As such, he was eager to pursue any possible military development that could give the USSR an edge over other world powers.

Through these channels, Stalin became aware of the beginnings of a bomb program in Britain by , with knowledge of the upcoming American program soon to follow. After receiving notices from Soviet spies and Soviet physicists who were cognizant of the direction of their field, Stalin began taking steps to creating a Soviet nuclear program. Despite this, he was still skeptical of much of the intelligence he was receiving that directed him to that conclusion, particularly that which would lead him to pricey investments in nuclear physics.

As a result, the initial Soviet nuclear program was quite small. It was not until after the first atomic weapon was used at Hiroshima that Stalin fully realized the potential impact that developing nuclear weapons for the Soviet Union could have on international politics.

After the war, Stalin spared no expense on the immediate development of the Soviet nuclear program, even though the country was facing massive amounts of war-related death and destruction.

The aim of the postwar Soviet nuclear program was to undermine American nuclear hegemony, and that began with ending the American nuclear monopoly. Raised money for the Communist Party by committing several armed robberies. Called "Old Whiskers" behind his back, usually by prisoners in the gulags he sent them to. Staunchly believed Adolf Hitler would honor the Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact. When Hitler's forces attacked, Stalin locked himself in his rooms and refused to believe it for several days; his denial caused unnecessarily huge numbers of MIAs and millions of Soviet civilians to be taken into Nazi concentration camps.

Stalin had broken the pact by invading Bukovina in June Stalin did not wish to share a historic legacy with anyone, so he ordered the creation of revisionist history which wiped out all mention of Leon Trotsky and actually removed him from existing photographs. Ordered the assassination of Leon Trotsky. Somewhat ironically, he was a huge fan of movies starring John Wayne , Hollywood's most vocal anti-Communist and a rabid supporter of blacklisting and the McCarthy witch hunts.

Even after Stalin's rise to power, his mother refused to leave her home in the Caucasus. When Stalin would enter the Soviet Politburo people would applaud him, sometimes for hours. The reason the clapping went on so long was because everybody was afraid to be the first one to stop. In a testament written just before his death, Lenin denounced Stalin's ambitions and tried to warn the other Soviet leaders about them.

Unfortunately, Stalin managed to blunt the effect of the testament and still seized power after Lenin's death anyway. Was known for completely erasing any and all record of a person's existence as punishment and ascribing Their accomplishments to others or himself. In an ironic turn of events, this also happened to Stalin himself after Khrushchev's secret speech to a certain extent in Yugoslavia this happened to Stalin even earlier, due to the Tito-Stalin split.

While he was never completely written out of history, he was marginalized and became a scapegoat for most problems in the USSR, while his positive achievements were ascribed to Lenin instead.

In addition, most of his statues were torn down, and streets and towns named for him were re-named. Finally, his body was removed from Lenin's mausoleum.

It is believed by some historians that Stalin's lust for power and the reasons behind many of his decisions and actions were the result of a tendency as a child to slip into fantasies about what he would have done if he were in charge of the country as a means of escaping his abusive father. Was a voracious reader and had a personal library of 20, academic books including a handful of basic German texts , and checked out an annual average of books from state libraries. He personally annotated many drafts of Russian-language texts with 'suggestions', and supported Mikhail Sholokhov and Mikhail Bulgakov, authors of the some of the best Russian-language literature ever produced.

Although known for his stoic, reserved and unemotional demeanor, he was far less reserved in private and noted by his closest underlings and his enemies as being given to explosive rages and crushing depressions. He could be quite kind to people whom he only met in passing. There is one account of him making sure a man was set free from the Gulag after receiving a letter from the man's young daughter.

Another instance was when he and some of his staff had to stay at a old lady's cottage for the night while traveling between Moscow and a military headquarters during the war, he ensured the woman was compensated for the trouble despite the lady declaring that she was happy to provide the service for free. The first time Lenin mentioned Stalin in a memo he forgot his name, made a guess at it, then scribbled it out and just called him 'that Georgian guy'.

Stalin's health deteriorated towards the end of World War II. He suffered from atherosclerosis from his heavy smoking. He had a mild stroke around the time of the Victory Parade, and a severe heart attack in October However he did not think Adolf Hitler would invade the Soviet Union until the war in the West had ended.

However this may have been a delaying tactic as he prepared for war with the European Axis Powers. Violated the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact by annexing Bukovina in Supplied all the fuel the German Luftwaffe used to blitz the UK in These invasions brought him into conflict with the Axis Powers in the Balkans.

Deliberately waited until 17 September before launching his invasion of Poland, knowing that the UK and France would be unable to declare war on both Germany and the Soviet Union. Although at war with the European Axis Powers from 22 June , Stalin deliberately did not declare war on the Empire of Japan until 9 August when his forces simultaneously invaded Manchuria.

Initially supported the creation of Israel in , as he felt this would weaken the British Empire. However Stalin soon turned against the new country and publicly denounced it. Held secret talks with the UK and France in on the possibility of forming an anti-German alliance. However Stalin's demands, which included full Soviet control of eastern Europe and the Baltic States, were considered excessive and no agreement was reached, especially after the Polish government refused to allow Soviet forces to be stationed on its territory.

During World War II he refused to use his huge air force to bomb the death camps. At the end of World War II he wanted to invade Spain, due to the considerable help the Franco regime had given to the Axis from to The British and Americans persuaded Stalin to settle for an economic blockade of Spain instead. Publicly denounced the British and French declarations of war against Germany as imperialist actions designed to preserve their colonial empires.

He maintained this stance until the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June He was shocked by Winston Churchill 's landslide defeat in the General Election. Stalin had privately predicted that Churchill would win the election with a large majority of about During the Warsaw Uprising in he refused to airdrop weapons or provide air cover. He actively prevented Polish and American airplanes from doing that, while arresting Polish underground fighters.

Stalin was accused of deliberately halting his forces so the uprising could be crushed. Supplied all the fuel the Germans used to invade France and the Low Countries in Admitted deliberately sacrificing , Soviet troops in order to delay a possible Axis attack on Moscow in the summer of Vladimir Putin has made unlawful all published mention of the cruelties Stalin's regime inflicted on its own citizens - including executing an estimated , soldiers for alleged desertion or cowardice - in order to prevail during World War II.

Ironically the supplies of oil, rubber and grain from to made possible the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union. Without those supplies the European Axis Powers would not have had the resources needed for the invasion.

Sought a closer relationship with Germany after Britain and France rejected a joint German-Soviet peace proposal on 28 September In Stalin added Article to the entire Soviet Union criminal code, which made homosexuality a crime punishable by up to five years in prison with hard labor. The law was finally repealed in Russia in Stalin did not officially build extermination camps, although the gulags have been called death camps as prisoners were sent there to be worked to death.

His hopes that the western capitalist powers would destroy themselves in a long war were ended by the Fall of France in June Had his former deputy Solomon Lozovsky executed on 12 August , together with thirteen other members of Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, an event known as the Night of the Murdered Poets. He was accused of having Jewish revolutionary Maxim Litvinov murdered by the Ministry of Internal Affairs MVD in , although Litvinov's widow and daughter maintained he had still been on good terms with Stalin.

His refusal to allow the Red Army to retreat has been described as the main reason for the extremely high casualties suffered by the Soviets on the Eastern Front, particularly in He became virtual dictator of the Soviet Union by the s, remaining in that position until his death.

Under his leadership the Soviet Union was officially opposed to imperialism and colonialism. However Stalin was accused of trying to recreate the Russian Empire by invading Poland and Finland in , followed by the invasions of the Baltic States in Gradually repealed the laws Lenin had passed to end discrimination against Jews and homosexuals. He suffered a series of minor strokes in , and his health was never the same thereafter.

Although ordered to work less Stalin refused to do so, and even had his doctor arrested on the charge of being a British spy. The base was part of a partnership that developed between Germany and the Soviet Union following the German-Soviet Non-Aggression treaty of , along with a broad economic agreement of