Childhood to young adulthood: 1878–1899
Stalin's birth name was Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili. He was born in the Georgian town of Gori, then part of the Tiflis Governorate of the Russian Empire and home to a mix of

Succeeding Lenin: 1924–1927
Lenin died in January 1924. Stalin took charge of the funeral and was one of its pallbearers; against the wishes of Lenin's widow, the Politburo embalmed his corpse and placed it within a mausoleum in Moscow's

Stalin claimed to have embraced Marxism at the age of fifteen, and it served as the guiding philosophy throughout his adult life; according to Kotkin, Stalin held "zealous Marxist convictions", while Montefiore suggested that Marxism held a "quasi-religious" value for

Consolidating power: 1917–1918
On 26 October 1917, Lenin declared himself chairman of a new government, the Council of People's Commissars ("Sovnarkom"). Stalin backed Lenin's decision not to form a coalition with the Mensheviks and

Pact with Nazi Germany: 1939–1941
As a Marxist–Leninist, Stalin expected an inevitable conflict between competing capitalist powers; after

Post-war reconstruction and famine: 1945–1947
After the war, Stalin was—according to Service—at the "apex of

Ethnically Georgian, Stalin grew up speaking the Georgian language, and did not begin learning Russian until the age of eight or nine. He remained proud of his Georgian identity, and