Just read a very large biography on the man and thought it was very interesting. I decided to crop it and edit a bit and share it with you lot. Bare with me tho it won't be upto Mr. MYB's standard 
If you aren't TOO interested don't bother cos it is a BIG read.
Joseph Stalin
AKA 'Man of Steel', AKA 'Koba'.
Country: Former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR - Soviet Union).
Kill tally: 10-11 million needlessly starved to death. At least one million executed for political "offences".
Background: The vast Russian Empire is thrown into turmoil in March 1917 when Tsar Nicholas II abdicates and the imperial government is replaced by a left coalition. The Bolshevik faction, a network of communists headed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and inspired by the writings of Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels, splits from the coalition then seizes government in a coup d'état staged on 7 November, the so-called 'Bolshevik Revolution'. Civil war follows as the anticommunist 'White Army' forces battle the communist 'Red Army'. The communists finally secure government in 1921. The USSR, a union of the Russian, Belorussian, Ukrainian, and Transcaucasian republics, is established in December 1922. When Lenin dies in 1924, Communist Party leaders begin to jostle for the top position.
Mini biography: Born Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili on 21 December 1879 in Gori, Georgia, in the then Russian Empire. He is the only child of a poor and struggling family.
1894 - Following the death of his father, Stalin and his mother move to Tiflis, where Stalin enrols at the Tiflis Theological Seminary and joins the Marxist underground in an empire racked by dissent and heading closer to revolution. Stalin becomes a leader of a clandestine Marxist group at the seminary, however when his revolutionary activities are discovered he is expelled.
He takes up work as first a tutor then a clerk, devoting his nights to revolutionary pursuits. In 1898 he joins the Russian Social Democratic Party.
1900 - Stalin organises labour demonstrations and strikes in the main industrial centres of the Caucasus (the region comprising Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia).
1903 - He joins the Bolsheviks and is repeatedly arrested and exiled for his revolutionary activities. In 1905 he serves as party organiser in Tiflis and as coeditor of the Tiflis-based 'Caucasian Workers' Newssheet'.
1905 - In December he acts as the delegate from the Caucasus to the first national conference of the Russian Social Democrats, in Tammerfors, Finland, where he meets Lenin for the first time. Stalin attends subsequent assemblies of the party at Stockholm in 1906 and London in 1907.
1912 - Lenin appoints him to the first central committee of the Bolshevik Party and as one of the leaders of the Bolshevik underground. Later, Lenin places him on the editorial board of 'Pravda', the Bolshevik's newspaper.
1913 - Stalin is arrested and exiled to Siberia until March 1917, when a general amnesty is proclaimed following the abdication of the Tsar.
1917 - On his return from exile he rejoins the editorial board of 'Pravda' and is elected to the party's central committee. Following the 'Bolshevik Revolution' of 7 November, Stalin is made commissar (minister) of nationalities in the new communist administration. In 1919 he is elected as a member of the Politburo, the inner circle of the central committee and foremost policy-making body in the Soviet Union.
1922 - Stalin takes charge of the whole party administration when he is given the newly created post of general secretary of the central committee, a position that gives him control over party appointments and allows him to develop his power base. When Lenin suffers a stroke in May, a troika (triumvirate) composed of Stalin, Lev B. Kamenev, and Grigorii V. Zinov'ev assumes leadership of the party.
Lenin recovers late in year and reasserts control. He criticises the troika and Stalin in particular, accusing him of using coercion to force non-Russian republics to join the Soviet Union and saying he is "crude" and is accumulating too much power through his office of general secretary. Though Lenin recommends that Stalin be removed from the position, the party takes no action. Stalin remains as general secretary when Lenin dies on 21 January 1924.
1925 - Following Lenin's death the Kamenev-Zinov'ev-Stalin troika again comes to prominence. Stalin consolidates his power base until he is able to break with Kamenev and Zinov'ev. He has the city of Tsaritsin renamed Stalingrad (now Volgograd) and allows the development of a Stalin personality cult and propaganda campaign.
From 1926 to 1930, he progressively ousts his opponents on the left and right of the party, silencing debate about options for the development of communism and the USSR. By the end of the decade Stalin has emerged as the supreme leader of the Soviet Union. He is hailed by cultists as a "shining sun", "the staff of life", a "great teacher and friend", and the "hope of the future for the workers and peasants of the world".
1928 - Stalin introduces the first five year plan, the "revolution from above", to develop the USSR. "We are 50 to 100 years behind the advanced countries," he says in 1931. "We must cover this distance in 10 years. Either we do this or they will crush us."
The state takes control of the economy, introducing a program of rapid industrialisation and agrarian consolidation and setting unrealistic goals for development.
Industry and commerce are nationalised. All social, political and regulatory power is centred on the state. Twenty five million peasant farmers are forced to collectivise their property and then work on the new state-controlled farms. Wealthy peasants (kulaks) and the uncooperative are arrested and either executed or deported to work camps in Siberia.
The collectivised farms are required to meet ever increasing production quotas, even if this results in starvation on the farm. In the Ukrainian Republic millions of peasants starve to death when the state refuses to divert food supplies allocated to industrial and military needs. By 1933, the social upheaval caused by the "revolution from above" has resulted in the deaths of 10-11 million Soviet peasants.
1932 - Although industry has failed to meet its production targets and agricultural output has dropped in comparison with 1928 yields, Stalin announces that the first five year plan has successfully met its goals in only four years. The second five year plan is introduced in 1933 and third in 1938.
1934 - Stalin's purges of party members suspected of disloyalty begin in December after a Leningrad party chief is assassinated. Thousands from the Leningrad party office are deported to work camps in Siberia. At show trials held in Moscow between 1936 and 1938 dozens of former party leaders are forced to confess to crimes against the Soviet state before being executed. Among those executed are Kamenev and Zinov'ev, the former members of the troika that included Stalin.
The campaign of terror, flamed by the secret police, extends throughout the party and into the general community, including the military high command. Between 1.5 and seven million are imprisoned, deported or executed.
1937 - The purge of the Red Army begins. The purge results in the execution, imprisonment or dismissal of 36,671 officers, including about half of the 706 officers with the rank of brigade commander or higher.
1939 - On 23 August Stalin signs a nonaggression pact with Germany's Nazi dictator, Adolf Hitler, carving up Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence, with the USSR claiming Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, part of the Balkans and half of Poland. German troops invade Poland on 1 September. Britain and France declare war on Germany two days later. The Second World War has begun.
Stalin acts to secure the USSR's western frontier without antagonising Hitler. Soviet forces seize eastern Poland in September, enter Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in October, and take territory in Romania in June 1940. Territory in Finland is incorporated in March 1940.
Stalin is named Time magazine's man of the year for 1939 for switching the balance of power in Europe by signing the nonaggression pact with Hitler, a decision that is described as "world-shattering". "Without the Russian pact," the magazine says, "German generals would certainly have been loath to go into military action. With it, World War II began."
In December 1939, to celebrate his sixtieth birthday, he is awarded the Order of Lenin and given the title 'Hero of Socialist Labour'.
1941 - Sensing that Germany will soon attack the USSR, Stalin appoints himself as head of the government. Japan and the Soviet Union sign the 'Japanese-Soviet Neutrality Pact' in April, removing the threat to the Soviets of invasion by Japan and allowing the Soviet military to concentrate on the German forces mounting in the west.
When Germany invades on 22 June, Stalin takes command of the Soviet forces, appointing himself commissar of defence and supreme commander of the Soviet Armed Forces. The Germans advance swiftly but are halted on 6 December by a Russian counteroffensive just short of Moscow, where Stalin directs the Soviet campaign from his rooms in the Kremlin. His armies fight under the slogan 'Die, But Do Not Retreat'.
1942 - In 'The Declaration of the United Nations' of 1 January the Allies agree not to make a separate peace with the enemy and pledge themselves to the formation of a peacekeeping organisation (now the United Nations - UN) on victory. An accord between the British and the Soviets is accepted in May. British prime minister Winston Churchill's plan for a "grand alliance" between his country, the USSR and the United States is now a reality. Stalin is again named Time magazine's man of the year, this time for stopping Hitler and opening the possibility of an Allied victory in Europe.
The military turning point of the war in Europe comes with the Soviet victory at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43. Soviet troops are ordered to take "not one step backwards". Front line forces are flanked by second lines tasked with shooting down any soldier who tries to flee. When the German forces laying siege to the city are encircled and trapped by a Soviet counteroffensive Hitler refuses to allow them to attempt an escape. They surrender on 2 February 1943.
Almost 500,000 Red Army troops have died during the Stalingrad campaign. A further 600,000 have been wounded. The German Sixth Army has been effectively destroyed in what is at the time the most catastrophic military defeat in German history. Over 500,000 of the German-led troops are dead.
1943 - The Western Allies take Africa at the start of the year, land in Sicily and Italy, and prepare for the 'D-Day' landings on the Normandy beaches in France on 6 June 1944 and the invasion of Germany six months later.
Stalin meets with Churchill and US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Tehran, the capital of Iran, from 28 November to 1 December. The three leaders discuss the details of their joint campaign against Hitler.
By the end of the year, the Red Army has broken through the
German siege of Leningrad and recaptured much of the Ukrainian Republic. By the middle of 1944 the Red Army is approaching Warsaw, the capital of Poland, but stop short when noncommunist resistance forces launch a rebellion against the German garrisons in the city.
The ensuing route of the resistance forces by the Germans clears the path for the ascendancy of the Soviet-sponsored Polish Committee of National Liberation ('Lublin Committee'). The decision to halt the Soviet forces outside of Warsaw is seen as a deliberate tactic by Stalin to smash the noncommunist Poles. The Lublin Committee is recognised by the Soviets as the government of Poland in January 1945, beginning 48-year period of communist rule.
1945 - From February 4-11, Stalin again meets with Churchill and Roosevelt. The conference, held near Yalta in the Crimea, in Ukraine, concludes with the issuing of the 'Yalta Declaration' committing the Allies to the destruction of German militarism and Nazism. A conquered Germany will be divided into three zones of occupation and eastern Poland will be ceded to the Soviets. The declaration also announces that a "conference of United Nations" will be held in San Francisco in April.
In March, as the Western forces reach the Rhine River, Soviet armies overrun most of Czechoslovakia and press on toward Berlin. The Soviets march under the slogan, "There will be no pity. They have sown the wind and now they are harvesting the whirlwind."
By April an Allied victory in Europe is certain. Berlin falls to the Soviet forces on 2 May. On 7 May Germany surrenders unconditionally.
About 51 million people have died in Europe during the war, including over 26 million Soviets, about seven million Germans, almost seven million Poles, nearly two million Yugoslavs, a million Romanians, 810,000 French, 750,000 Hungarians, 525,000 Austrians, 520,000 Greeks, 410,000 Italians, 400,000 Czechs, 390,000 British, and 250,000 Dutch. Nearly 18 million of the 26 million Soviets killed are civilians.
Following the war Stalin tightens the reins of power. Soviet citizens repatriated from wartime detention in foreign prisons and work camps are deemed by Stalin to be traitors and are executed or deported to Soviet prison camps. Stalin even disowns his own son, who had been captured towards the end of the war.
Freedoms granted during the war to the church and collective farmers are revoked. The Communist Party tightens its admission standards and purges many who had joined during the war. Eastern European countries occupied by the Soviets are turned into "satellite states" governed by "puppet" communist regimes. The 'Iron Curtain' falls across Europe and a 'Cold War' develops between the USSR and the West.
1948 - The Soviets cut off land access to Allied-occupied West Berlin in June. After the blockade is lifted in May 1949, Germany is partitioned.
1949 - Another wave of Stalinist purges sweeps the Soviet Union.
1953 - Stalin dies from a stroke in Moscow on 5 March.
1956 - Stalin and his policies are denounced by Nikita Khrushchev, first secretary of the Communist Party, in a "secret speech" at the twentieth party congress in February.
Present day - According to Memorial, Russia's leading human rights organisation, official records prove that during Stalin's reign at least one million people were executed for political offences, and at least 9½ million more were deported, exiled or imprisoned in work camps.
If you aren't TOO interested don't bother cos it is a BIG read.Joseph Stalin
AKA 'Man of Steel', AKA 'Koba'.
Country: Former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR - Soviet Union).
Kill tally: 10-11 million needlessly starved to death. At least one million executed for political "offences".
Background: The vast Russian Empire is thrown into turmoil in March 1917 when Tsar Nicholas II abdicates and the imperial government is replaced by a left coalition. The Bolshevik faction, a network of communists headed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and inspired by the writings of Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels, splits from the coalition then seizes government in a coup d'état staged on 7 November, the so-called 'Bolshevik Revolution'. Civil war follows as the anticommunist 'White Army' forces battle the communist 'Red Army'. The communists finally secure government in 1921. The USSR, a union of the Russian, Belorussian, Ukrainian, and Transcaucasian republics, is established in December 1922. When Lenin dies in 1924, Communist Party leaders begin to jostle for the top position.
Mini biography: Born Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili on 21 December 1879 in Gori, Georgia, in the then Russian Empire. He is the only child of a poor and struggling family.
1894 - Following the death of his father, Stalin and his mother move to Tiflis, where Stalin enrols at the Tiflis Theological Seminary and joins the Marxist underground in an empire racked by dissent and heading closer to revolution. Stalin becomes a leader of a clandestine Marxist group at the seminary, however when his revolutionary activities are discovered he is expelled.
He takes up work as first a tutor then a clerk, devoting his nights to revolutionary pursuits. In 1898 he joins the Russian Social Democratic Party.
1900 - Stalin organises labour demonstrations and strikes in the main industrial centres of the Caucasus (the region comprising Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia).
1903 - He joins the Bolsheviks and is repeatedly arrested and exiled for his revolutionary activities. In 1905 he serves as party organiser in Tiflis and as coeditor of the Tiflis-based 'Caucasian Workers' Newssheet'.
1905 - In December he acts as the delegate from the Caucasus to the first national conference of the Russian Social Democrats, in Tammerfors, Finland, where he meets Lenin for the first time. Stalin attends subsequent assemblies of the party at Stockholm in 1906 and London in 1907.
1912 - Lenin appoints him to the first central committee of the Bolshevik Party and as one of the leaders of the Bolshevik underground. Later, Lenin places him on the editorial board of 'Pravda', the Bolshevik's newspaper.
1913 - Stalin is arrested and exiled to Siberia until March 1917, when a general amnesty is proclaimed following the abdication of the Tsar.
1917 - On his return from exile he rejoins the editorial board of 'Pravda' and is elected to the party's central committee. Following the 'Bolshevik Revolution' of 7 November, Stalin is made commissar (minister) of nationalities in the new communist administration. In 1919 he is elected as a member of the Politburo, the inner circle of the central committee and foremost policy-making body in the Soviet Union.
1922 - Stalin takes charge of the whole party administration when he is given the newly created post of general secretary of the central committee, a position that gives him control over party appointments and allows him to develop his power base. When Lenin suffers a stroke in May, a troika (triumvirate) composed of Stalin, Lev B. Kamenev, and Grigorii V. Zinov'ev assumes leadership of the party.
Lenin recovers late in year and reasserts control. He criticises the troika and Stalin in particular, accusing him of using coercion to force non-Russian republics to join the Soviet Union and saying he is "crude" and is accumulating too much power through his office of general secretary. Though Lenin recommends that Stalin be removed from the position, the party takes no action. Stalin remains as general secretary when Lenin dies on 21 January 1924.
1925 - Following Lenin's death the Kamenev-Zinov'ev-Stalin troika again comes to prominence. Stalin consolidates his power base until he is able to break with Kamenev and Zinov'ev. He has the city of Tsaritsin renamed Stalingrad (now Volgograd) and allows the development of a Stalin personality cult and propaganda campaign.
From 1926 to 1930, he progressively ousts his opponents on the left and right of the party, silencing debate about options for the development of communism and the USSR. By the end of the decade Stalin has emerged as the supreme leader of the Soviet Union. He is hailed by cultists as a "shining sun", "the staff of life", a "great teacher and friend", and the "hope of the future for the workers and peasants of the world".
1928 - Stalin introduces the first five year plan, the "revolution from above", to develop the USSR. "We are 50 to 100 years behind the advanced countries," he says in 1931. "We must cover this distance in 10 years. Either we do this or they will crush us."
The state takes control of the economy, introducing a program of rapid industrialisation and agrarian consolidation and setting unrealistic goals for development.
Industry and commerce are nationalised. All social, political and regulatory power is centred on the state. Twenty five million peasant farmers are forced to collectivise their property and then work on the new state-controlled farms. Wealthy peasants (kulaks) and the uncooperative are arrested and either executed or deported to work camps in Siberia.
The collectivised farms are required to meet ever increasing production quotas, even if this results in starvation on the farm. In the Ukrainian Republic millions of peasants starve to death when the state refuses to divert food supplies allocated to industrial and military needs. By 1933, the social upheaval caused by the "revolution from above" has resulted in the deaths of 10-11 million Soviet peasants.
1932 - Although industry has failed to meet its production targets and agricultural output has dropped in comparison with 1928 yields, Stalin announces that the first five year plan has successfully met its goals in only four years. The second five year plan is introduced in 1933 and third in 1938.
1934 - Stalin's purges of party members suspected of disloyalty begin in December after a Leningrad party chief is assassinated. Thousands from the Leningrad party office are deported to work camps in Siberia. At show trials held in Moscow between 1936 and 1938 dozens of former party leaders are forced to confess to crimes against the Soviet state before being executed. Among those executed are Kamenev and Zinov'ev, the former members of the troika that included Stalin.
The campaign of terror, flamed by the secret police, extends throughout the party and into the general community, including the military high command. Between 1.5 and seven million are imprisoned, deported or executed.
1937 - The purge of the Red Army begins. The purge results in the execution, imprisonment or dismissal of 36,671 officers, including about half of the 706 officers with the rank of brigade commander or higher.
1939 - On 23 August Stalin signs a nonaggression pact with Germany's Nazi dictator, Adolf Hitler, carving up Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence, with the USSR claiming Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, part of the Balkans and half of Poland. German troops invade Poland on 1 September. Britain and France declare war on Germany two days later. The Second World War has begun.
Stalin acts to secure the USSR's western frontier without antagonising Hitler. Soviet forces seize eastern Poland in September, enter Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in October, and take territory in Romania in June 1940. Territory in Finland is incorporated in March 1940.
Stalin is named Time magazine's man of the year for 1939 for switching the balance of power in Europe by signing the nonaggression pact with Hitler, a decision that is described as "world-shattering". "Without the Russian pact," the magazine says, "German generals would certainly have been loath to go into military action. With it, World War II began."
In December 1939, to celebrate his sixtieth birthday, he is awarded the Order of Lenin and given the title 'Hero of Socialist Labour'.
1941 - Sensing that Germany will soon attack the USSR, Stalin appoints himself as head of the government. Japan and the Soviet Union sign the 'Japanese-Soviet Neutrality Pact' in April, removing the threat to the Soviets of invasion by Japan and allowing the Soviet military to concentrate on the German forces mounting in the west.
When Germany invades on 22 June, Stalin takes command of the Soviet forces, appointing himself commissar of defence and supreme commander of the Soviet Armed Forces. The Germans advance swiftly but are halted on 6 December by a Russian counteroffensive just short of Moscow, where Stalin directs the Soviet campaign from his rooms in the Kremlin. His armies fight under the slogan 'Die, But Do Not Retreat'.
1942 - In 'The Declaration of the United Nations' of 1 January the Allies agree not to make a separate peace with the enemy and pledge themselves to the formation of a peacekeeping organisation (now the United Nations - UN) on victory. An accord between the British and the Soviets is accepted in May. British prime minister Winston Churchill's plan for a "grand alliance" between his country, the USSR and the United States is now a reality. Stalin is again named Time magazine's man of the year, this time for stopping Hitler and opening the possibility of an Allied victory in Europe.
The military turning point of the war in Europe comes with the Soviet victory at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43. Soviet troops are ordered to take "not one step backwards". Front line forces are flanked by second lines tasked with shooting down any soldier who tries to flee. When the German forces laying siege to the city are encircled and trapped by a Soviet counteroffensive Hitler refuses to allow them to attempt an escape. They surrender on 2 February 1943.
Almost 500,000 Red Army troops have died during the Stalingrad campaign. A further 600,000 have been wounded. The German Sixth Army has been effectively destroyed in what is at the time the most catastrophic military defeat in German history. Over 500,000 of the German-led troops are dead.
1943 - The Western Allies take Africa at the start of the year, land in Sicily and Italy, and prepare for the 'D-Day' landings on the Normandy beaches in France on 6 June 1944 and the invasion of Germany six months later.
Stalin meets with Churchill and US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Tehran, the capital of Iran, from 28 November to 1 December. The three leaders discuss the details of their joint campaign against Hitler.
By the end of the year, the Red Army has broken through the
German siege of Leningrad and recaptured much of the Ukrainian Republic. By the middle of 1944 the Red Army is approaching Warsaw, the capital of Poland, but stop short when noncommunist resistance forces launch a rebellion against the German garrisons in the city.
The ensuing route of the resistance forces by the Germans clears the path for the ascendancy of the Soviet-sponsored Polish Committee of National Liberation ('Lublin Committee'). The decision to halt the Soviet forces outside of Warsaw is seen as a deliberate tactic by Stalin to smash the noncommunist Poles. The Lublin Committee is recognised by the Soviets as the government of Poland in January 1945, beginning 48-year period of communist rule.
1945 - From February 4-11, Stalin again meets with Churchill and Roosevelt. The conference, held near Yalta in the Crimea, in Ukraine, concludes with the issuing of the 'Yalta Declaration' committing the Allies to the destruction of German militarism and Nazism. A conquered Germany will be divided into three zones of occupation and eastern Poland will be ceded to the Soviets. The declaration also announces that a "conference of United Nations" will be held in San Francisco in April.
In March, as the Western forces reach the Rhine River, Soviet armies overrun most of Czechoslovakia and press on toward Berlin. The Soviets march under the slogan, "There will be no pity. They have sown the wind and now they are harvesting the whirlwind."
By April an Allied victory in Europe is certain. Berlin falls to the Soviet forces on 2 May. On 7 May Germany surrenders unconditionally.
About 51 million people have died in Europe during the war, including over 26 million Soviets, about seven million Germans, almost seven million Poles, nearly two million Yugoslavs, a million Romanians, 810,000 French, 750,000 Hungarians, 525,000 Austrians, 520,000 Greeks, 410,000 Italians, 400,000 Czechs, 390,000 British, and 250,000 Dutch. Nearly 18 million of the 26 million Soviets killed are civilians.
Following the war Stalin tightens the reins of power. Soviet citizens repatriated from wartime detention in foreign prisons and work camps are deemed by Stalin to be traitors and are executed or deported to Soviet prison camps. Stalin even disowns his own son, who had been captured towards the end of the war.
Freedoms granted during the war to the church and collective farmers are revoked. The Communist Party tightens its admission standards and purges many who had joined during the war. Eastern European countries occupied by the Soviets are turned into "satellite states" governed by "puppet" communist regimes. The 'Iron Curtain' falls across Europe and a 'Cold War' develops between the USSR and the West.
1948 - The Soviets cut off land access to Allied-occupied West Berlin in June. After the blockade is lifted in May 1949, Germany is partitioned.
1949 - Another wave of Stalinist purges sweeps the Soviet Union.
1953 - Stalin dies from a stroke in Moscow on 5 March.
1956 - Stalin and his policies are denounced by Nikita Khrushchev, first secretary of the Communist Party, in a "secret speech" at the twentieth party congress in February.
Present day - According to Memorial, Russia's leading human rights organisation, official records prove that during Stalin's reign at least one million people were executed for political offences, and at least 9½ million more were deported, exiled or imprisoned in work camps.
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ppy Harry says: