He was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 20 million people during his brutal rule, but on March 5, 1953, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin died and so did his dictatorship. Look back at the dictator's life and evil reign that lasted two decades.
Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin, who was regarded as one of the evilest men in history, died on March 5, 1953, and so did his dictatorship. Under his rule, the Soviet Union was transformed from a peasant society into an industrial and military superpower. In the process, Stalin caused a widespread famine, instituted the Great Purge in a bid to rid the Communist Party of subversive and foreign agents and claimed the lives of more than 20 million people.
Born Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvili, Stalin grew up in a poor small rural town of Gori, Georgia, then part of the Russian Empire. The dictator had a rough childhood, his father was a shoemaker and an alcoholic who regularly beat him while his mother was a laundress. Stalin wasn’t happy with the cards he was dealt in life, so he developed a strong romanticized desire for respect and power.
When Stalin was a teenager, he was awarded a scholarship to attend a seminary in the city of Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, to become a priest. He was sent by his mother, but Stalin never completed his education as he was instead interested in the revolutionary movement against the Russian monarchy. Here, Stalin is pictured at the age of 18.
Stalin joined the militant wing of the Marxist Social democratic movement, the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, and became involved in a number of criminal activities, including bank heists to help the Bolshevik Party’s cause. As a result, he was arrested a number of times and subjected to imprisonment and exile in Siberia. Lenin valued Stalin’s loyalty and appointed him after the Revolution to low-priority leadership positions in the new Soviet government. Stalin continued to climb up the party ladder and in 1922 became the secretary general of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.
After Vladimir Lenin died on Jan. 21, 1924, Stalin strategically outmaneuvered his rivals and gained control of the Communist Party. By the late 1920s, Stalin became the dictator of the Soviet Union. Here, Stalin is pictured at left, carrying Vladimir Lenin’s casket into the crypt near the Kremlin Wall in Red Square, Moscow.
Stalin married his second wife Nadezhda Alliluyeva, pictured here with their daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva, in 1919. Alliluyev’s death in 1932 was officially attributed to appendicitis, but it is generally accepted that she committed suicide.
Under Stalin’s rule of terror, he killed anyone who might oppose him, encouraged citizens to spy on each other and sent millions of people to Gulags (prison camps) to perform forced labor, pictured here in 1930. Kulaks (Russian peasants) resisted Stalin’s forced collectivization, but millions were arrested, exiled, or killed.
It’s hard to see the evil dictator as a family man, but here Stalin is pictured holding his only daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva adoringly at the height of his evil dictatorship in 1933. Stalin also fathered three sons, Vasily, Yakov and Artem.
On the eve of World War II in 1939, Stalin and German dictator Adolf Hitler signed the non-aggression pact. With Stalin present, Russian Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov can be seen signing the agreement negotiated between Soviet Russia and Germany at the Kremlin in Moscow. Standing behind him is his German counterpart Joachim von Ribbentrop (left). Stalin invaded parts of Poland and Romania, as well as the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Finland.
In June 1941, Germany broke off the Nazi-Soviet pact and invaded the USSR. Stalin had ignored alerts from the United States, Britain and even his own intelligence agents about the invasion so the Soviets were not prepared for war. The tide eventually turned during the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943, when the Red Army eventually defeated the Germans and forced them out of Russia.
Among the many atrocities committed by Stalin during his dictatorship, the Katyn Forest Massacre in Poland was a criminal act of historic proportions. Carried out under Stalin, a total of 4,443 Polish officers were found dead in a mass grave, thought to be the largest execution of this type.
Here, Stalin is pictured shaking hands with Harry Truman and Winston Churchill at the Potsdam Conference in 1945 to negotiate the end of World War II in Potsdam, Germany.
After suffering a stroke, Stalin died on March 5, 1953, at the age of 73. His body was embalmed and preserved in Lenin’s mausoleum in Moscow’s Red Square until 1961, when it was removed and buried near the Kremlin walls.
From left to right, Commissioner Monaghan, News lawyer J. Howard Carter, District Attorney D. A. Hogan, Mayor Impellitteri, Ivan Annenberg and News lawyer Stuart Updike read the Daily News coverage of Stalin’s death on March 5, 1953.
