He was one of the most cruel men to ever set foot on planet Earth. From murder to brutal torture, the worst thing that can be done to one person, he has done it.
Mass arrests, tortures and executions are commonplace.
He personally signed the execution lists, often with hundreds of names at once. In the fields of the documents, he leaves ominous notes such as “beat” or “eliminate”.
Data on the exact date of birth of one of the most monstrous figures of the 20th century differ. Some sources indicate December 18, while others indicate December 21.
Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, known as Stalin, was born in 1878 in the Georgian city of Gori. In his youth, he was called Koba, after the hero of a Georgian novel, reflecting his early revolutionary ambitions.
After studying at the Orthodox seminary in Tbilisi, he joined the Bolshevik movement, where he gradually worked his way up to the top of the party hierarchy. Although Lenin initially supported him, their relationship deteriorated over time.
Joseph Stalin the Young
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In his “political testament,” Lenin warned the party of Stalin’s cruelty and proposed his removal from the post of General Secretary. However, Stalin managed to hide this document from the public and consolidate his power. Through brutal purges, forced labor, and mass killings, the Soviet dictator became responsible for the deaths of between 6 and 20 million people during his rule from 1920 to 1953.
Stalin’s terror began gradually after Lenin’s death in 1924.As General Secretary of the Communist Party, he first eliminated his political opponents in the party. His main rivals: Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev, were the first victims.
Trotsky was expelled from the country, while the others were executed after a staged trial. One of the most terrible crimes of the Stalinist regime was the Holodomor, a deliberately induced famine in Ukraine from 1932 to 1933.
Portrait of Stalin
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Stalin ordered the forced collectivization of agriculture and the confiscation of grain from Ukrainian peasants, resulting in the deaths of between 3.5 and 7 million people. Peasants are forbidden to leave their villages in search of food, and those who try to hide grain are brutally punished.
The famine was used as a weapon to suppress the Ukrainian national movement and resistance to collectivization. Witnesses describe how people were forced to eat whatever they could find, including tree bark, grass, insects, even pets, often risking poisoning or illness.
Families were torn apart under the weight of hunger, while parents made unimaginable decisions about distributing scarce food among their children, sometimes choosing which child would survive. Villages became ominous places, with empty houses and silence interrupted from time to time by the cries of the hungry and dying. In extreme cases, cases of cannibalism have also been recorded.
Joseph Stalin Profile
Photo: Profimedia
The true scale of Stalin’s terror was revealed during the Great Purge (1936–1938). During this period, the NKVD (secret police) carried out mass arrests, tortures and executions. Stalin personally signed the execution lists, often with hundreds of names. In the margins of the documents, he leaves ominous notes such as “beat” or “eliminate”. According to archival data, at least 681,692 people were executed in 1937 and 1938 alone.
His treatment of certain ethnic groups is particularly brutal. Poles, who made up only 0.4% of the USSR’s population, accounted for as much as 12.5% of the victims of the Great Purge. Stalin ordered the deportation of entire peoples, including Chechens, Crimean Tatars and Volga Germans. Many of them died during transportation or in exile.
The Gulag, the Soviet system of labor camps, became synonymous with Stalin’s terror. Millions of people are sent to these camps, where they work in inhumane conditions.
Stalin’s history
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Prisoners receive minimal food, often only 300 to 400 grams of black bread per day and rare soup. They work at temperatures below freezing and often die of exhaustion. The working day lasted up to 2 p.m., and prisoners had to meet impossible working standards in mines, forests, and construction projects.
They sleep in overcrowded shacks on wooden beds, often without heating in the middle of the Siberian winter. Sanitary conditions are terrible, leading to the spread of diseases such as typhus and dysentery. According to official figures, more than 116,000 people have died in the camps, although the actual figures are supposed to be much higher.
Stalin’s paranoia did not spare even his closest collaborators. He ordered the execution of many high-ranking military officers, including Marshal Tukachevsky.
Joseph Stalin Uniform
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Even the head of the NKVD, Yagoda, who carried out the first purges, later became a victim of the same terror and was executed. His successor Yezhov had the same fate. Stalin’s methods involved a complex system of denunciations.
Citizens are encouraged to report “enemies of the people,” which often means neighbors reporting neighbors and children reporting on their own parents. The NKVD used brutal interrogation methods, including torture, threats against family members, and psychological violence, to extract confessions.
Stalin died on March 5, 1953, after a stroke at his dacha near Moscow. He was found lying on the floor in his room, long after one of the staff dared to enter and check what was happening.
Stalin’s life
Photo: Profimedia
Although doctors were called out for fear of his reaction in case of survival, they did not dare to intervene immediately. After a few days of agony, he died at 9:50 p.m. Stalin left behind a deeply traumatized society and a system of terror that continued to affect the lives of millions of people for years.
Stalin’s terror left an indelible imprint on culture as well. Artists, writers and intellectuals are under constant surveillance and pressure to create works glorifying the regime. Many ended up in the Gulag or were executed for “anti-revolutionary activity.”
According to estimates, more than 2,000 artists and writers disappeared during his reign. Censorship was ubiquitous, and artistic freedom was virtually non-existent.
Books were altered to erase traces of “inappropriate” personalities, and photographs were retouched to remove political opponents who had lost the dictator’s favor. This systematic manipulation of history and culture created an atmosphere of fear and mistrust that characterized an entire generation of Soviet citizens.
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