Travelsmartplanet

By the age of 21, Iosif Dzhugashvili (Stalin) was a revolutionary and proved adept at raising funds through robbery, as well as smuggling guns and explosives. In 1902 he was arrested for the first time and later exiled, beginning a cycle of arrest, exile, escape, revolutionary activity and arrest again which would continue til the 1917 revolution. In 1913 he chose the name Stalin as it meant, ‘man of steel’, and became editor of party newspaper Pravda.

He was a very astute man within bureaucracy so by the late 1920’s he wound up a feared dictator of Russia. He started the process of collective ownership and also the process of not allowing people to speak their minds – they were sent to the Gulag if they did. Conservative estimates of population he had killed is from 10- 20 million people.

Stalin was so feared that when he suffered a stroke in 1953, everyone was afraid to go to him. As usual at night, he had given order not to be disturbed, so they didn’t go in fearing they would be “purged” if he recovered – or  – were accused of killing him. The best doctors who had been treating him were now in prison as he had purged them.

So Stalin was left rolling on the floor in his urine, partially paralyzed, breathing with difficulty and vomiting blood. He lay there for 5 days until he died on March 5th.