The Man, the Myth & Legend Of Joseph Stalin with Grover Furr

Perhaps no one in history has been as maligned in the Western Press as Joseph Stalin. <br/><br/>On December 18, 1878, Yosif Djugashvili was born in what is now the country of Georgia. He was born to a very poor family. His father was a shoemaker.<br/><br/>This is Stalin at age 16, when he started studying seminary studies at the University<br/><br/>He had to drop out of seminary university because his parents could not afford the fees. This made Stalin very conscious of how income inequality is oppressive. He started his own Marxist study circle.<br/><br/>In 1902, Stalin worked at a warehouse that caught fire. He began his activism there. He called for strikes to demand increase in pay, workplace safety measures. Soon enough, the Tsar learned that Stalin was organizing these strikes, so they arrested him. This is his mugshot<br/><br/>While he was in prison, he continued to agitate for workers&#8217; rights. He organized a protest against a religious cleric&#8217;s visit. He also demanded that those in jail for political activities would live together. They put him in solitary confinement for this. However, his term in prison didn&#8217;t last long. He escaped and returned back to Georgia. <br/><br/> In 1912, he started using the moniker "Stalin" which means "Man of Steel" in Russian because marxism and socialism was illegal under the Tsar. After the Bolshevik Revolution, he was appointed by the new government as People's Commissar for Nationalities' Affairs. His job was to establish liaisons and win over non-Russian citizens of the former Russian empire, and he was able to unite people of many factions and religions to join the Bolsheviks during the Russian civil war. <br/><br/>In 1922, he was elected as the General Secretary for the Party. He was very shy and not a very good orator. However, he was elected to be the leader of the USSR once Lenin died in 1924. At first, he didn&#8217;t want the position, but the people wanted him to be the Leader. Journalist Anna Louise Strong, who was in Rus