Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (18 December 1878 – 5 March 1953) was a Soviet revolutionary and politician of Georgian nationality. Governing the Soviet Union from the mid- 1920s until his death in 1953, he served as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1952 and as the nation's Premier from 1941 to 1953. Initially the head of a collective party elite that governed by consensus, he ultimately removed his rivals and accumulated power to become the Soviet Union 's de facto dictator by the late 1930s. Ideologically a Marxist and a Leninist, Stalin helped to formalise these ideas as Marxism–Leninism while his own policies became known as Stalinism.
Born to a poor family in Gori, Russian Empire, Stalin began his revolutionary career in his youth by joining the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. There, he edited the party 's newspaper, Pravda, and raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction via robberies, kidnappings, and protection rackets. Repeatedly arrested, he underwent several internal exiles. After the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia during the 1917 October Revolution, Stalin joined the party 's governing Politburo where he was instrumental in overseeing the Soviet Union 's establishment in 1922. Despite Lenin's opposition, he assumed leadership over the country shortly after the former's death in 1924. During Stalin's rule, "Socialism in One Country " became a central tenet of the party 's dogma, and Lenin's New Economic Policy was abandoned in favour of a centralized command economy.
