Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (December 18, 1878 - March 5, 1953) was the Premier of the USSR from 1941-53. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution in Russia in 1917. In 1928, he launched a period of industrialization and collectivization in the countryside, rapidly transforming the USSR from an agrarian society into an industrial power. In 1937-38, a campaign against alleged enemies of the Stalinist regime culminated in the Great Purge, in which hundreds of thousands of people were executed. Having played a decisive role in the Allied victory against Germany, the USSR emerged as a recognized superpower after the war. He led the USSR during the period of post-war reconstruction and launched the Great Construction Projects of Communism and the Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature. He died in1953, at the age of 74. Modern views of Stalin in the Russian Federation and the world remain mixed, with some viewing him as a tyrant and mass murderer, others as a capable and necessary leader for the time. (collapse)