Many debate whether the dictator of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, was influential based on the impact he left on his country and other countries around the world before, after, and during WWII. Author Michael Hart ranks the political leader Joseph Stalin sixty-sixth out of the one hundred most influential people. Hart conveys his strong feelings about how Joseph Stalin was not only a “power-mad dictator”, but he also states how he dominates history by introducing the Cold War. Hart says that “Stalin had more power---more actual effect on the world---than any living political figure” (Hart 334).
From a young age, the young and impressionable Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili was submerged into the world of communism. He learned about the teachings of Karl Marx, called
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Out of his entire family, he was the only child who did not die as a baby. Ever since Stalin was a young boy, he had been alone except for the help and support of his mother. His father, the foil of his mother, struggled against the battle of alcoholism and beat his only son Joseph profusely, leaving only his mother to support him after his father died in a bar fight (Howes 245-246). From a very young age, Stalin’s father’s actions told him that violence was okay. Stalin later won a scholarship to a theological school in Georgia, where Stalin first learns about Marxism. He was soon expelled and joined a group called the Social Democrats, a group based on the foundations of communism (Howes 246). Ever since Stalin was in grade school, and even after he was expelled from that same school, he quickly sought out more knowledge about Marxism and Communism. Right from the start, these ideas captivated and influenced him quickly. Later in 1902, Stalin was arrested for his revolutionary activities and sent to Siberia but was quickly exonerated. Then in 1905,