The Tooth Puller Painting by Caravaggio

Stalin was known as the “Iron Man” of the former USSR and the epithet fitted him like a glove. His real name was Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili and he was known as ruthless administrator who brooked no opposition. Born in Georgia in shoemaker’s family, Stalin imbibed revolutionary ideas from an early age. He was arrested many times for his revolutionary activities by the Czar of Russia and was exiled to Siberia. He studied the thoughts of KarlMarx and set about to overturn the rule of the Czars. He took part in the Russian revolution of 1917. He was neither a big leader at that time, nor a forceful speaker, but possessed exceptional organizing capacities. By 1922, he became general secretary of the Communist Party. Trotsky was working as right hand of Lenin in establishing the communist rule in Russia and it was generally presumed that he would be a successor to Lenin. Stalin was a clever politician and he raced ahead and Trotsky was exiled and killed. Stalin thereafter ruled Russia with an iron hand as had Lenin, from about 1929 to the day of his death in 1953. It was a period of prolonged terror, but also of achievements.