from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik
revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution
and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee
from 1922 until his death in 1953. While formally the office of the General Secretary was elective and was not initially regarded as the top position in the Soviet state, after Vladimir Lenin
's death in 1924, Stalin managed to consolidate more and more power in his hands, gradually putting down all opposition groups within the party.
1917 The People's Commissars give authority to Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Joseph Stalin.
1917 Joseph Stalin enters the provisional government of Bolshevik Russia.
1922 Joseph Stalin becomes the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
1927 Leon Trotsky is expelled from the Soviet Communist Party, leaving Joseph Stalin in undisputed control of the Soviet Union.
1928 Boris Bazhanov defects through Iran. He is the only assistant of Joseph Stalin's secretariat to have defected from the Eastern Bloc.
1937 In Moscow, 17 leading Communists go on trial accused of participating in a plot led by Leon Trotsky to overthrow Joseph Stalin's regime and assassinate its leaders.
1937 Great Purge: The Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin executes eight army leaders.
1941 Soviet leader Joseph Stalin consolidates the Commissariats of Home Affairs and National Security to form the NKVD and names Lavrenti Beria its chief.
1941 World War II: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin addresses the Soviet Union for only the second time during his three-decade rule. He states that even though 350,000 troops were killed in German attacks so far, the Germans had lost 4.5 million soldiers and that Soviet victory was near.
1942 World War II: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin issues Order No. 227 in response to alarming German advances into the Soviet Union. Under the order all those who retreat or otherwise leave their positions without orders to do so were to be immediately executed.
We think that a powerful and vigorous movement is impossible without differences — "true conformity" is possible only in the cemetery.
Anti-Semitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism.