Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin. . , Joseph Stalin , 21 December 1879 - 5 March 1953 , General Secretary of the Communist Party, In 1922, Joseph Stalin became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and spent the next seven years eliminating fellow revolutionaries. He next eliminated prosperous peasant farmers (Kulaks) as a class by displacing them to proto-gulags, thus precipitating famines that killed untold millions. , , Stalin's "Great Terror" (1934-38) tried 50 million Soviet citizens; some 20 million were sent to gulags or executed. He also dispatched police (NKVD) to Mongolia, where tens of thousands died as "Japanese spies." After entering a non-aggression pact with Hitler in 1939, Stalin invaded Poland, Finland, the Baltics, Bessarabia, and northern Bukovina. Between 1939 and 1949, he deported millions of Ukrainians, Poles, Koreans, Volga Germans, Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Karachays, Meskhetian Turks, Finns, Bulgarians, Greeks, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, and Jews. , , When Hitler invaded Russia on 21 June 1941, Stalin turned West for help. To keep Hitler busy in the East, Churchill and Roosevelt gave it. An epigram penned by a wag in Britain's Crown Film Unit exudes grim irony: "Once the Kremlin / Set us tremlin: / Now we've a pal in / Stalin." Stalin repulsed Hitler at the Battle of Stalingrad then went on the offensive. At the Tehran Conference (November 1943), he influenced D-Day's date and place, reset the borders of Poland, secured a carte blanche at home, and arranged to set up communist governments in Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Baltics, and Romania. , In memory of the tens of millions who died under Stalin’s rule and in tribute to all whose valor, Fidelity, and sacrifice denied him and his successors victory in the Cold War.