Joseph Stalin was born on December 21, 1879, and grew up in poverty. He was the only child in his family to grow to adulthood. Joseph was born to Catherine and Vissarion Djugashvili. Joseph's father was a drunk and beat his son and wife unmercifully. His father was a cobbler by trade and wanted his son to pick up the profession. His mother was withdrawn, deeply religious, proud, kept her suffering to herself, and all she wanted for Joseph was to become a priest. Joseph's father died when he was eleven years of age.
             It is said that Stalin was the man that turned the Soviet Union from nothing, into a world superpower but with an incredible number of human lives lost. Due to his childhood, Joseph was permanently scarred. Due to his smallpox, his slightly deformed arm, and the abuse from his father, he always felt unfairly treated by life, thereby developing a strong, fantasized desire for greatness and respect. Joseph particularly distrusted educated intellectuals due to feeling inferior around them. Stalin was sent to the seminary in Tbilisi to become a priest. Stalin never completed his studies. Instead, he was drawn more and more to the city's revolutionary circles. Stalin was much different from Linen. Stalin was more involved in the revolutionary activities, risking arrest every day, while Lenin lived safely abroad, writing about the plight of the Russian working class. Lenin valued Stalin's loyalty and appointed him to various low-priority positions in the new government.
             Stalin was appointed as General Secretary of the Communist Party's Central Committee in 1922. Stalin Knew, 'if you control the personnel, you control the organization,' and he used that knowledge. He controlled all staff, agendas, and appointments and ended up being responsible for everyone around him. By the time anyone realized what had happened, Stalin had everything he had needed in place. With Lenin's death, there was really no one else with the moral...