Joseph Stalin died of a brain hemorrhage at 74-years-old on this day. He ruled the Soviet Union for 30-years. He’s well knock for imprisonment in forced labour camps (Gulags), manufactured famines, torture, acts of mass murder and massacres.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the literary giant who wrote extensively about the Gulag, said the true number of Stalin’s victims might have been as high as 60 million people. Historians say he had absolutely no regard for the sanctity of human life.
In 1912, Lenin appointed Stalin to serve on the first Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party. Three years later, in November 1917, the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia.
The Soviet Union was founded in 1922, with Lenin as its first leader.
In 1922 Stalin became secretary general of the Central Committee of the Communist Party – a role which enabled him to appoint his allies to government jobs and develop a base of political support.
Lenin died in 1924, when Stalin took advantage and eventually won the power struggle for control of the Communist Party. By the late 1920s, he had become dictator of the Soviet Union.
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