15 Facts about Dictator Stalin

Fact # 1
 Joseph Stalin, whose real name was Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, was born in the city of Gori, Georgia in December 1879.

Fact # 2
 As a young rebel, Ioseb Jughashvili, received the nickname Koba, the name of a famous Georgian bandit and rebel, before taking the name Stalin.

Fact # 3
 The Russian word stalin means 'man of steel'.

Fact # 4
 The Russian city of Volgograd, changed its name to Stalingrad during the tyranny of Stalin, city that returned to its original name in 1961.

Fact # 5
 As a young man Stalin studied to become a priest, but was expelled from the seminary along with 20 of his comrades for "revolutionary activities".

Fact # 6
 In 1903 Stalin joined the militant of the Bolshevik faction, Vladimir Lenin (the Bolsheviks would later call themselves Communists).

Fact # 7
 The titles Stalin acquired during the years of his dictatorship were "Father of the Nations," "Brilliant Genius of Humanity," "Great Architect of Communism," and "Gardener of Human Happiness.

Fact # 8
 The Soviet Union suffered more loss of life (20 million) during World War II than any other nation.

Fact # 9
 But it lost more people due to political purges, hunger and disappearances (estimated between 30 and 35 million deaths during Stalin's reign of terror). The population of the former Soviet Union is now smaller than when Stalin began to rule.

Fact # 10
 There has not been a dictator in the history of humanity who has caused so much suffering to his own people as is the case with Stalin.

Fact # 11
 From 7 to 10 million people died from famine in Ukraine, intentionally provoked after 1932. This event is now known as the "Holodomor.

Fact # 12
 Approximately 20 million people died in the Gulag prison camps.

Fact # 13
 The average survival in the prison camps was one winter.

Fact # 14
 Entire families were sent to prison camps (including babies and other small children).

Fact # 15
 In Stalin's time it was a motive for arrest to refuse to become a spy against your friends and family.

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Facts about Lenin

• Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov, or Lenin (1870 - 1924), was the first president of the Soviet Union.
• In 1898, Lenin married Nadezhda Krupskaya in Siberia where both had been exiled. They never had children.
• After exile in Siberia adopted the pseudonym "Lenin. The word Lenin is believed to derive from the Russian river Lena.
• Although Lenin and Stalin were political enemies already at the end of Lenin's life, Stalin created a cult around Lenin after his death to glorify the history of the revolution.
• St. Petersburg was known as Leningrad from 1924 to 1991, when it returned to its original name after the collapse of the communist regime.
• Alexander, Lenin's older brother, was arrested and executed in 1887 for his involvement in a plan to assassinate Emperor Alexander III.
• Lenin's grandfather on his mother's side, Srul Moishevich Blank, was a Jew, who changed his name to "Aleksandr Dmitrievich" when he abandoned Judaism for Christianity and thus pursued his medical career unimpeded.
• At his death, Lenin's brain was extracted before embalming his body. The Soviet rulers hired a well-known German neuroscientist, Oskar Vogt, to study Lenin's brain and locate the brain cells responsible for his genius.
• Lenin was characterized by his emotionless rationality.
• Lenin survived an assassination attempt in August 1918. In April 1922 one of the bullets of that attack was finally extracted from his neck.
• Before dying, Lenin noted the need for profound changes within the government. He also criticized several of the governing members, Stalin in particular.