Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; 18 December 1878-5 March 1953) was a Soviet revolutionary and politician of Georgian ethnicity. He ruled the Soviet Union from the mid–1920s until his death in 1953, holding the posts of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–1952) and Premier (1941–1953). A communist ideologically committed to the Leninist interpretation of Marxism, Stalin helped to formalise these ideas as Marxism-Leninism, while his own policies became known as Stalinism.
