Joseph Stalin: Man Of Steel

Did you know that Joseph Stalin's last name is a title meaning "Man of Steel" (Probst)? Joseph Stalin was the dictator of the Soviet Union from 1929 to 1953 (“Joseph Stalin"). Stalin promoted autocracy by using death and terror, using propaganda to gain control and by his actions in World War 2.

Joseph Stalin was born with the name of Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili on December 6th, 1878 ("Stalin, Joseph"). Joseph was the only kid. Joseph's family was very poor and had very little. Stalin's experience at home made him determined to punish the others who had a better life than he did (Archer). Joseph's father was an alcoholic. When Stalin was young, he got the illness called smallpox, which caused him to have facial scars for the remainder

Stalin wanted people to know that he was the man in charge so he proved it to them. The majority of Stalin's control was reached with death and terror. By the start of the early 1940s there were over three million Soviet Union citizens under arrest of the secret police, and of those three million, over one million were in labor camps. To show that Stalin promoted autocracy and was totally in control, he personally made the arrests and went to the trials just to make sure that the lieutenant signed off on the executions. During the Great Purges there were close to almost seven hundred thousand people killed by demand of Stalin, and around a million where dead, in labor camps, or in jail. Some of these people that Stalin used terror and or death on include thousands of people who didn’t believe the same things he did and Lenin's closest and favorite workers and or helpers ("Stalin, Joseph (Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili; 1878–1953)"). There were many major leaders that knew Stalin would have you killed or put in jail without even thinking about it. In the book "Stalin's ism" the author Gary Saul Morson explains how Stalin would have his own soldiers and officers killed if the crosses him wrong. The author Morson says this quote about Stalin, "“was the relative ease with which Stalin could foist the bloodbath upon the political police, army, party-state, cultural elites, and indeed the entire country” (Morson). Joseph Stalin gained control over the people of the Soviet Union by showing extreme discipline through terror and death and promoted