FACTS ABOUT JOSEF STALIN

1. He was born on Dec. 18, 1878. His name was Joseb Besarionis dze Jugashvili.  He changed this to Josef Stalin which means “man of the steel hand”.  His father was an alcoholic cobbler and his mother was a washerwoman.
2. At age 7, he contracted smallpox which left him with pockmarks on his face that he was self-conscious about. At age 12, he was run over by a carriage and was left with a slightly shorter left arm.  This may have saved his life as he was ineligible for military service and thus avoided likely death fighting in WWI.
3. He was bullied as a child and often beaten by his father.
4. His devout mother insisted he attend the seminary at age 17 to become an Eastern Orthodox priest. Instead of becoming priestly, he started reading Marx and joined a socialist group.  He became an atheist and obviously was not interested in his religious studies.  He was expelled after two years due to failure to show up for exams.
5. After leaving the seminary, he became a revolutionary. In 1903, he chose the Bolsheviks over the more moderate Mensheviks.  In the next ten years, he was arrested seven times and imprisoned or exiled.  He found it easy to escape each time.  He became a disciple of Lenin and rose through the Party mainly because he was underestimated by the intellectuals.
6. After the revolution, he lived with Lenin and Trotsky for a while at the Kremlin. Trotsky looked down on him and referred to him as “Comrade Index Card” to mock his role as General Secretary of the Communist Party as being a glorified filing clerk.
7. It is believed Lenin wanted Trotsky to succeed him. Technically, Alexei Rykov was the next leader since he was Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars.  Stalin was still General Secretary, but he outmaneuvered his opposition.  He had Trotsky exiled to Kazakhstan and then deported.  Eleven years later, an assassin tracked Trotsky down in Mexico and put an ice pick in his head.
8. During WWII, his son Yakov (by his first marriage) was captured early in the war. Stalin refused to exchange a German general for his son.  He despised his son and treated him with contempt after he failed at suicide in the 1920s.  Yakov died in a concentration camp in 1943. 
9. His second wife committed suicide after 13 years of marriage. His son became an undeserved officer in the air force, but died from alcoholism.  His daughter was whiplashed between love and intimidation.  She emigrated after his death and wrote about him.
10. He wrote poetry under the pseudonym os Soselo. Some it was published.  Whatever pieces he wanted.  Here is one:

The pinkish bud has opened,
Rushing to the pale-blue violet
And, stirred by a light breeze,
The lily of the valley has bent over the grass.

11. He loved American Western novels and movies. He was a John Wayne fan.
12. He made the short list for the Nobel Peace Prize twice – 1945 and 1948.
13. He may the greatest mass murderer in history. His collectivization efforts caused many peasant farmers (kulaks) to rebel and most were executed.  The resulting famine killed millions.  He executed over a million political opponents.  His purge of most of the officer corps of the armed forces resulted in poor leadership at the time of the German invasion and the subsequent heavy casualties.  He could be held responsible for the very high death rate of German prisoners in the war.  He gave the orders to kill 22,000 Polish officers in the Katyn Forest after the Soviet Union took eastern Poland.

https://www.historyhit.com/facts-about-joseph-stalin/

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/featured/little-known-facts-about-joseph-stalin.html

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joseph-Stalin/Lenins-successor