60 Fun Facts About Joseph Stalin

In which country of the Russian Empire was Stalin born?

He grew up speaking Georgian and did not start learning Russian until he was eight or nine; he kept the accent all his life.

What was Stalin's birth surname?

He was born Ioseb Jughashvili in Gori in December 1878, Dzhugashvili being the Russified form; he was his parents' third child and the only one to survive infancy.

What was the trade of Stalin's father, Besarion?

Stalin's father Besarion was a shoemaker who once ran his own workshop in Gori; as the business failed he became a violent alcoholic, and mother and son had left him by 1883.

What childhood accident left Stalin with a lifelong disability in his left arm?

At twelve he was struck by a phaeton carriage, leaving his left arm permanently impaired; an earlier bout of smallpox had already scarred his face, which official photographs later airbrushed.

What was Stalin training to become when he enrolled in Tiflis in 1894?

He entered the Tiflis Spiritual Seminary in 1894 to train as a Russian Orthodox priest; there he read Marx, and he left in 1899 without sitting his final exams.

Stalin's early nickname 'Koba' came from the bandit hero of which Georgian novel?

Koba is the outlaw hero of Alexander Kazbegi's 1882 novel The Patricide; Stalin adopted the name as a youth and old comrades went on using it for decades.

What was Stalin's job at the Tiflis observatory in October 1899?

He worked as a meteorologist at the Tiflis observatory, recording readings, and used the light duties to agitate among workers and help organise a May Day gathering in 1900.

In which Georgian port did Stalin organise strikes at the Rothschild refinery before his first arrest in 1902?

In Batumi on the Black Sea he organised strikes at the Rothschild oil refinery; after a March 1902 demonstration in which troops shot strikers dead, he was arrested in April.

How did Stalin first meet Lenin?

They first met at a Bolshevik conference in Tampere, Finland, in 1905, held that December; Stalin, who had expected a giant, was struck by how ordinary Lenin looked.

About how many people died in the 1907 Tiflis bank robbery Stalin organised for the Bolsheviks?

The June 1907 raid on a stagecoach in Tiflis's Erivansky Square, with bombs and gunfire, killed about 40 people and seized some 341,000 rubles; Kamo led the attackers.

How did Stalin's first wife, Kato Svanidze, die in November 1907?

Kato Svanidze died of typhus in Tiflis in November 1907, aged 22, leaving an infant son, Yakov; at the funeral Stalin reportedly said his last warm feelings for humanity had died with her.

Which Bolshevik newspaper did Stalin launch as a daily in April 1912?

Pravda ('Truth') first appeared in St Petersburg on 22 April 1912 Old Style; Stalin helped launch it and served as an editor, though his role was not made public.

Under what false name did Stalin travel to Vienna in January 1913?

Travelling on papers in the name Stavros Papadopoulos, he spent about a month in Vienna early in 1913, lodging with the Troyanovsky family and meeting Bukharin.

The name Stalin is derived from the Russian word for what?

Stalin comes from stal', the Russian word for steel, giving 'man of steel'; he first used the name in 1912 and signed an article as K. Stalin in 1913.

Why was Stalin ruled unfit for army service when conscripted in February 1917?

Called up from Siberian exile, he was examined at Krasnoyarsk in February 1917 and rejected because of his crippled arm, the legacy of a childhood injury.

After the July Days of 1917, what did Stalin do for Lenin?

Stalin hid Lenin in the Alliluyev flat, shaved off his beard, and smuggled him out of Petrograd to safe houses beyond the city; he then ran the party paper and the Sixth Congress in Lenin's absence.

What government post did Stalin hold in Lenin's first cabinet from 1917?

As People's Commissar for Nationalities from November 1917 he ran the Narkomnats, the body charged with the non-Russian peoples of the former empire, a post he held until 1923.

To which Volga city, later renamed after him, was Stalin sent in May 1918 to organise food procurement?

He befriended Voroshilov and Budyonny there and ordered executions on a scale that alarmed Lenin.

Which city was Stalin determined to capture in 1920, disobeying orders to help at Warsaw?

Stalin, political commissar of the South-Western Front, kept Budyonny's cavalry pushing at Lvov rather than releasing it north to Warsaw; Lenin recalled him and Tukhachevsky blamed him for the defeat.

In what year did Lenin nominate Stalin as the party's General Secretary?

Stalin became General Secretary in April 1922, on Lenin's recommendation, a post seen as administrative drudgery; it gave him control over appointments throughout the party.

What did Lenin's Testament, circulated by Krupskaya, suggest about Stalin?

Lenin's postscript of January 1923 called Stalin too rude and suggested he should be removed as General Secretary in favour of someone more tolerant; read to delegates in May 1924, it led Stalin to offer a resignation that was refused.

With which two Bolsheviks did Stalin form an unofficial troika against Trotsky during Lenin's illness?

Stalin, Kamenev and Zinoviev formed the troika during Lenin's final illness to sideline Trotsky; Stalin broke with them in 1925, and both were shot in August 1936 after the first Moscow show trial.

Which doctrine did Stalin defend in his 1926 work On Questions of Leninism?

'Socialism in one country', the claim that the USSR could build socialism without revolutions abroad, was defended in Stalin's 1926 On Questions of Leninism and became party dogma against Trotsky's internationalism.

In what year was Trotsky deported from the Soviet Union?

Trotsky was expelled from the USSR in February 1929, shipped from Odessa to Turkey; he had been exiled to Alma-Ata in 1928 and was murdered in Mexico by an NKVD agent in 1940.

Which city in the Donbas was renamed Stalino in 1924?

Yuzovka, the Donbas mining town founded by the Welshman John Hughes, became Stalino in 1924 and was renamed Donetsk in 1961 as part of de-Stalinisation.

When was the first five-year plan, launched in 1928, declared complete?

Stalin declared the plan fulfilled at the end of 1932, ahead of schedule, in four years and three months; it built Magnitogorsk and the White Sea–Baltic Canal, much of it with forced labour.

By 1936, roughly what share of Soviet farming households had been collectivised?

By 1936 roughly 90% of peasant households were in collective farms; joining was nominally voluntary, but fear of being branded a kulak and deported drove the peasants in.

Stalin's March 1930 newspaper article blaming local officials for collectivisation excesses bore what title?

'Dizzy with Success', published on 2 March 1930, blamed over-zealous local officials for forcing peasants into collectives; millions promptly left the farms before the pressure resumed.

How did Stalin's second wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, die in November 1932?

After a row with Stalin at a Kremlin dinner on the evening of 8 November, she shot herself with a pistol in her room that night; officially the cause was given as appendicitis.

Whose murder in December 1934 triggered the repression that became the Great Purge?

Sergei Kirov, the Leningrad party boss, was shot at the Smolny Institute on 1 December 1934; that day Stalin signed a decree allowing terrorism cases to be tried and executed without appeal.

Which agrobiologist did Stalin champion despite most scientists dismissing his work as pseudo-science?

Trofim Lysenko's rejection of Mendelian genetics won Stalin's backing; in 1948 genetics was formally outlawed, and rival geneticists such as Vavilov had already been arrested.

Which Moscow church was demolished in 1931 to make way for a never-built Palace of the Soviets?

The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour was dynamited on 5 December 1931; the Palace of the Soviets planned for the site was never finished, and the cathedral was rebuilt in the 1990s.

Who headed the NKVD from 1936 during the worst of the Great Purge, before being executed himself in 1940?

Nikolai Yezhov ran the NKVD from September 1936 to November 1938, the period Russians call the Yezhovshchina; he was arrested in 1939 and shot in February 1940.

Roughly how many people were shot during the Great Purge of 1937–38?

Official NKVD figures record 681,692 executions in 1937–38, close to 700,000, out of more than 1.5 million arrests; many more died in the camps or under interrogation.

Which German foreign minister co-signed the August 1939 non-aggression pact with Molotov?

Joachim von Ribbentrop flew to Moscow and signed the pact with Molotov on 23 August 1939, with Stalin looking on; a secret protocol divided Poland and the Baltic states between the two powers.

Which country's Winter War stand in 1939–40 got the USSR expelled from the League of Nations?

Finland's resistance in the Winter War, from November 1939 to March 1940, cost the Red Army dearly; the League of Nations expelled the USSR in December 1939 for the invasion.

About how many Poles were executed by the NKVD in the 1940 Katyn massacre?

About 22,000 Polish officers, police and intellectuals were shot by the NKVD in April–May 1940, at Katyn and other sites; the USSR blamed the Germans until Gorbachev admitted Soviet guilt in 1990.

Where was the Soviet government prepared to evacuate to in 1941, though Stalin stayed in Moscow?

Kuibyshev, now Samara, on the Volga was designated the reserve capital in October 1941; ministries and diplomats moved there, but Stalin chose to stay in Moscow and parade troops on 7 November.

Which German field marshal did Stalin refuse to exchange for his captured son Yakov?

After Stalingrad the Germans reportedly offered to swap Friedrich Paulus for Yakov; Stalin refused, saying he would not trade a field marshal for a lieutenant, and Yakov died at Sachsenhausen in April 1943.

What did Stalin's Order No. 227 of July 1942 do with soldiers who retreated without authorisation?

Order No. 227, 'Not one step back!', dealt with unauthorised retreaters by ordering commanders to put them in penal battalions used as cannon fodder on the most dangerous sectors, with blocking detachments posted behind the lines.

What rank did Stalin award himself in March 1943 to mark the victory at Stalingrad?

Stalin was made a Marshal of the Soviet Union on 6 March 1943, a month after the German surrender at Stalingrad, and began wearing the uniform in public.

How did Stalin react on learning that Westerners affectionately called him 'Uncle Joe'?

When Stalin learned that Westerners called him 'Uncle Joe', he was initially offended, finding it undignified; the nickname, used privately by Roosevelt and Churchill, nevertheless stuck in the Allied press.

Where did the Big Three first meet in November 1943, at a location of Stalin's choosing?

The Big Three met at Tehran from 28 November to 1 December 1943; Stalin refused to travel farther from the front, and Roosevelt stayed at the Soviet embassy during the talks.

What total German reparations figure did the Yalta conference accept as a basis for discussion?

The Yalta protocol took the Soviet proposal of 20 billion dollars in total German reparations, half of it for the USSR, as the basis for discussion; Britain declined to endorse the figure.

Which Soviet commander took Germany's surrender at Karlshorst on Stalin's behalf on 8 May 1945?

Georgy Zhukov signed for the USSR at the Karlshorst ceremony on the night of 8–9 May 1945 and went on to ride a white horse at the Moscow victory parade that June.

Which physicist directed the Soviet atomic bomb project that produced the 1949 test?

Igor Kurchatov directed the Soviet bomb programme from 1943; the first device, RDS-1, a copy of the American Fat Man plutonium design, was detonated on 29 August 1949.

Where was the first Soviet atomic bomb tested in August 1949?

Beria watched the 29 August 1949 test of the first Soviet bomb at the polygon near Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan; the site hosted hundreds of tests before it closed in 1991.

Which communist leader did Stalin denounce in 1948, target for assassination and consider invading?

Josip Broz Tito's independent line, including plans for a Balkan federation and aid to the Greek communists, led to Yugoslavia's expulsion from the Cominform in June 1948; Stalin's assassination plots failed.

How long did Stalin's blockade of Berlin last before he ended it in May 1949?

The blockade ran about eleven months, from 24 June 1948 to 12 May 1949; the Western airlift flew in some 2.3 million tons of supplies and Stalin lifted it without concessions.

The 1952 'doctors' plot' accused Kremlin physicians, most of them Jewish, of what?

The doctors were accused of plotting to kill senior politicians, including having caused the deaths of Zhdanov and Shcherbakov, on orders from foreign intelligence; they were freed and rehabilitated in April 1953.

How long did Stalin lie on a couch at his dacha, hand-fed with a spoon, before dying on 5 March 1953?

Found semi-conscious on the floor of his Kuntsevo dacha on 1 March 1953, Stalin was laid on a couch, hand-fed with a spoon, and lingered three days before dying of a cerebral haemorrhage on 5 March.

Who delivered the 1956 'Secret Speech' denouncing Stalin's cult of personality?

Nikita Khrushchev delivered 'On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences' to a closed session of the 20th Party Congress on 25 February 1956, stunning the delegates.

What happened to Stalin's body in October 1961?

On the night of 31 October 1961, after the 22nd Party Congress voted for it, it was moved from the Mausoleum to the Kremlin Wall and buried there under a plain slab.

Which brand of cigarettes did Stalin habitually crumble into his pipe?

Stalin packed his pipe with tobacco from Herzegovina Flor cigarettes, a Moscow brand; the pipe-smoking image was carefully cultivated, though he also smoked cigarettes directly.

Which daughter of Stalin defected to the United States after his death?

Svetlana, Stalin's daughter by Nadezhda Alliluyeva, walked into the US embassy in New Delhi in March 1967 and was granted asylum; she later wrote Twenty Letters to a Friend.

Which magazine named Stalin its 'Man of the Year' in 1942?

Time magazine made Stalin its Man of the Year for 1942, as it had for 1939, citing the Red Army's resistance to the German invasion.

What was the name of the son Stalin and Nadezhda Alliluyeva adopted in 1921?

Artyom Sergeev, born in 1921, was taken in by Stalin after his father, the Bolshevik Fyodor Sergeev ('Comrade Artyom'), died in a rail-car crash that year; he rose to general in the artillery.

Which Israeli ambassador's warm welcome by Jewish crowds in Moscow angered Stalin in 1948?

Golda Meir, Israel's first envoy to Moscow, was mobbed by thousands of Jews outside the Choral Synagogue at Rosh Hashanah in 1948, a display of loyalty that helped trigger Stalin's anti-Jewish campaign.

What title did Stalin adopt in June 1945 as he watched the victory parade from Lenin's Mausoleum?

Stalin was proclaimed Generalissimo of the Soviet Union on 27 June 1945, days after the Red Square victory parade; he was the only person to hold the rank.

The 1928 prosecution of 'industrial specialists', the first major Soviet show trial, is named for which town?

The Shakhty Trial of May–July 1928 charged 53 mining engineers from the Donbas town of Shakhty with sabotage for foreign powers; five were shot and Stalin used the case to justify a hunt for 'wreckers'.