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Joseph Stalin (a code name meaning "Man of Steel") was born Iosif (Joseph) Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili in 1878 in Gori, Georgia, the Transcaucasian part of the Russian Empire. His father was a cobbler named Vissarion Dzhugashvili, a drunkard who beat him badly and frequently and left the family when Joseph was young. His mother, Ekaterina Gheladze, supported herself and her son (her other three children died young and Jopseph was effectively an only child) by taking in washing. She managed, despite great hardship, to send Joseph to school and then on to Tiflis Orthodox Theological Seminary in Tbilisi, hoping he would become a priest. However, after three years of studies he was expelled in 1899, for not attending an exam and for propagating communist ideas and the books of Karl Marx.
Since 1898, Stalin became active in the Communist underground as the organizer of a powerful gang involved in a series of armed robberies. After robbing several banks in southern Russia, Stalin delivered the stolen money to Vladimir Lenin to finance the Communist Party. Stalin's gang was also involved in the murders of its political opponents; Stalin himself was arrested seven times, repeatedly imprisoned, and twice exiled to Siberia between 1902 and 1913. During those years he changed his name twice and became more closely identified with revolutionary Marxism. He escaped many times from prison and was shuttling money between Lenin and other communists in hiding, where his intimacy with Lenin and Bukharin grew, as did his dissatisfaction with fellow Communist leader Lev Trotskiy. In 1912 he was co-opted on to the illegal Communist Central Committee. At that time he wrote propaganda articles, and later edited the Communist paper, "Pravda" (Truth). As Lenin's apprentice he joined the Communist majority (Bolsheviks), and was responsible for the consolidation of several secret communist cells into a larger ring. Stalin's Communist ring in St. Petersburg and across Russia played the leading role in the Russian Revolution of 1917. After the revolution the Bolsheviks Communists grabbed the power, then Communists murdered the Tsar and the Russian royal family. Stalin and Lenin took over the Tsar's palaces and used the main one in Kremlin as their private residence.
Lenin appointed Stalin the People's Commissar for Nationalities in the first Soviet government and a member of the Communist Politburo, thus giving him unlimited power. Stalin led the "Reds" against anti-Communist forces known as the "Whites" and also in the war with Poland. He also organized "Red Terror" in Tsaritsin (later renamed Stalingrad). With his appointment as General Secretary to the Party Central Committee in 1922, a post he held for the next 30 years, until his death, he consolidated the power that would ensure his control of the country after Lenin's death in 1924. He also took, or gave himself, other key positions that enabled him to amass total power in the Party and Soviet government.
Stalin was known for his piercing eyes and terrifying stare, which he used to cow his opponents into submission during private discussions. In 1927 Stalin requested medical help for his insomnia, anger and severe anxiety disorder. His doctors diagnosed him as having "typical clinical paranoia" and recommended medical treatment. Instead, Stalin became angry and summoned his secret service agents. The next day the chief psychiatrist, Dr. Bekhterev, and his assistants died of poisoning. In addition, before the doctors' diagnosis about Stalin's mental condition could become known, he ordered the executions of intellectuals, resulting in the murders of hundreds of thousands of doctors, professors, writers, and others.
Stalin's policy of amassing dictatorial power under the guise of building "socialism in the country" resulted in brutal extermination of all real and perceived anti-Communist opposition. His purges of the Soviet military brought about the execution of tens of thousands of army officers, many of them experienced combat veterans of the Revolution, the Civil War, the Polish campaigns and other military operations (this decimation of the Russian officer corps would result in the Soviet Union's initial defeats at the hands of Nazi invaders at the beginning of World War II). He also isolated and disgraced his political rivals, notably Trotsky. Stalin's economic policies of strict centralized planning (i.e., the "five-year plans") resulted in the near ruination of the Soviet economy and mass famines in many areas of the Soviet Union, notably in Central Russia and the Ukraine. Popular resistance to Stalin's policies, such as nationalization of private lands and collective farming, by independent farmers ("kulaks"), brought about brutal retaliation, in which millions of kulaks were either forced off their land or executed outright. Altogether Stalin's economic and political policies resulted in the deaths of up to 10 million peasants during 1926-1934. Between 1934 and 1939 he organized and led massive purge (known as "The Great Terror") of the party, government, armed forces and intelligentsia, in which millions of so-called "enemies of the Soviet people" were imprisoned, exiled or executed. In the late 1930s, Stalin sent some Red Army forces and material to support the Spanish Republican government in its fight against the rebels led by Gen. Francisco Franco and aided by troops and material from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.
Stalin made the Non-Aggression Pact with Adolf Hitler in 1939, which bought the Soviet Union two years' respite from involvement in World War 2. After the German invasion in 1941, the USSR became a member of the Grand Alliance and Stalin, as war leader, assumed the title of Generalissimus. He had no formal military training and scorned the advice of his senior officers, due to suspicion and his rising paranoia, actions that resulted in horrific losses to the Russian military in both men and material (not to mention civilian losses). He rejected military plans made by such experienced officers as Marshal Georgi Zhukov, and insisted they be replaced by his own plans, which led to even more horrific losses. Towards the end of WWII he took part in the conferences of Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam with Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Harry S. Truman and Clement Attlee. The agreements reached in those conferences resulted in Soviet military and political control over the liberated countries of postwar Castern and Central Europe.
From 1945 until his death Stalin resumed his repressive measures at home, resulting in censorship of the arts, literature and cinema, forced exiles of hundreds of thousands and the executions of intellectuals and other potential "enemies of the state". At that time he conducted foreign policies that contributed to the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West. Stalin had little interest in family life, although he was married twice and had several mistresses. His first wife (Ekaterina Svanidze, married c. 1904) died three years after their marriage and left a son, Jacob (also known as Yacov), an officer in the Russian army during World War II who was captured by the Nazis and died in a POW camp (his father refused German offers to exchange him for captured German officers). His second wife (Nadezhda Alliluyeva, married 1919) attempted to moderate his politics, but she died by suicide, leaving a daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, and an alcoholic son, Vasili Stalin, who later died in exile. Increasingly paranoid, Stalin launched attacks on such intellectuals as Osip Mandelstam, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Anna Akhmatova, Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev, Boris Pasternak, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and many other cultural luminaries. Stalin personally intervened in the fate of "counterrevolutionary" Yiddish writers and changed their sentences from exile to execution. Thirteen of them were executed by the Soviet secret police; their leader, Perets Markish, was executed in the typical KGB manner by a single gunshot to the head on August 12, 1952, in Moscow.
Stalin died suddenly on March 5, 1953, under somewhat mysterious circumstances, after announcing his intention to arrest Jewish doctors, whom he believed were plotting to kill him. The "official" cause of death was announced as brain hemorrhage. Stalin's apprentice, Georgi Malenkov, took the power, but was soon ousted by Nikita Khrushchev. Three years after death, Stalin was posthumously denounced by Nikita Khrushchev at the 20th Party Congress in 1956 for crimes against the Party and for building a "cult of personality." In 1961 Stalin's body was removed from Lenin's Mausoleum, where it had been displayed since his death, and buried near the Kremlin wall. In 1964 Leonid Brezhnev dismissed Khrushchev and brought back some of Stalin's hard-line policies. After 1986 Mikhail Gorbachev initiated a series of liberal political reforms known as "glasnost" and "perstroika", and many of Stalin's victims were posthumously rehabilitated, and the whole phenomenon of "Stalinism" was officially condemned by the Russian authorities.- Monika Fronczek was born on 25 June 1980 in Tarnowskie Góry, Slaskie, Poland. She is an actress, known for Zero (2009), BrzydUla (2008) and Fala zbrodni (2003).
- Eryk Lubos was born on 6 September 1974 in Tarnowskie Góry, Slaskie, Poland. He is an actor, known for To Kill a Beaver (2012), Moja krew (2009) and The Offsiders (2008).
- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Piotr Trojan was born on 6 June 1986 in Tarnowskie Góry, Slaskie, Poland. He is an actor and director, known for Synthol (2021), 25 Years of Innocence (2020) and Johnny (2022).- Krzysztof Respondek was born on 17 July 1969 in Tarnowskie Góry, Slaskie, Poland. He was an actor, known for Magneto (1998), Na dobre i na zle (1999) and Odwróceni (2007). He died on 22 December 2023 in Zabrze, Slaskie, Poland.
- Make-Up Department
Dorka Nieradzik was born on 5 March 1949 in Tarnowskie Góry, Silesia, Poland. She is known for Children of Men (2006), Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) and Shoot 'Em Up (2007). She died on 12 February 2018 in the UK.- Sylwia Gliwa was born on 7 June 1978 in Tarnowskie Góry, Slaskie, Poland. She is an actress, known for Pierwsza milosc (2004), Na Wspólnej (2003) and Powiedz tak (2015).
- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Additional Crew
Wit Dabal was born on 26 September 1955 in Tarnowskie Góry, Slaskie, Poland. He is a cinematographer, known for Kartka z podrózy (1984), I See (1988) and Medium (1985).- Barbara Lubos-Swies was born on 11 December 1971 in Tarnowskie Góry, Slaskie, Poland. She is an actress, known for Skóra (2019), Ewa (2011) and Zgorszenie publiczne (2010). She is married to Artur Swies. They have one child.
- Actor
- Sound Department
Zbigniew Dziduch was born on 27 December 1972 in Tarnowskie Góry, Slaskie, Poland. He is an actor, known for The Pianist (2002), Hans Kloss: More Than Death at Stake (2012) and Haker (2002).- Cinematographer
- Director
- Writer
Jerzy Kotowski was born on 23 July 1925 in Tarnowskie Góry, Slaskie, Poland. Jerzy was a cinematographer and director, known for Wystawa Abstrakcjonistów (1958), Gapiszon na stacji (1968) and Czarny król (1961). Jerzy died on 17 May 1979 in Kraków, Malopolskie, Poland.- Grzegorz Kwas was born on 4 April 1973 in Tarnowskie Góry, Slaskie, Poland. He is an actor, known for Schindler's List (1993), The Hexer (2001) and Zgorszenie publiczne (2010).
- Sulkhan Tsintsadze was born on 23 August 1925 in Gori, Georgian SSR, Transcaucasian SFSR, USSR [now Republic of Georgia]. Sulkhan was a composer, known for Maia Tskneteli (1959), Tojinebi itsinian (1963) and Bashi-Achuki (1956). Sulkhan died on 15 September 1991 in Tbilisi, USSR [now Republic of Georgia].
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Actor
Mariusz Michalik was born on 18 December 1962 in Tarnowskie Góry, Slaskie, Poland. He is an assistant director and actor, known for Trójkat bermudzki (1988), Gwiazda Piolun (1988) and Television Theater (1953).- Mariusz Zalejski was born in 1959 in Tarnowskie Góry, Slaskie, Poland. He is an actor, known for Na dobre i na zle (1999), Swiat wedlug Kiepskich (1999) and The Foreigner (2003).
- Jolanta Wilk was born on 11 September 1961 in Tarnowskie Góry, Slaskie, Poland. She is an actress, known for Pajeczarki (1993), Meskie sprawy (1989) and Zywot czlowieka rozbrojonego (1994).
- Mariam Romelashvili was born on 8 June 1994 in Gori, Georgia.
- Additional Crew
- Script and Continuity Department
- Writer
Michal Oleszczyk was born on 31 May 1982 in Tarnowskie Góry, Slaskie, Poland. He is a writer, known for All Our Fears (2021), Strange Angels and Pisarze. Serial na krótko (2019).- Tomasz Owczarek was born on 14 May 1987 in Tarnowskie Góry, Slaskie, Poland. He is an actor, known for I Am Lying Now (2019), M jak milosc (2000) and Pierwsza milosc (2004).
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Cinematographer
Krzysztof Miller was born on 1 May 1953 in Tarnowskie Góry, Slaskie, Poland. Krzysztof is a cinematographer, known for Budniokowie i inni (1986), Szesc milionów sekund (1984) and What the Sun Has Seen (2006).- Aksel Bakunts was born on 13 June 1889 in Goris, Armenia. He was a writer, known for Sev tevi tak (1930), Arevi zavaky (1933) and Zangezur (1938). He died on 8 July 1937 in Armenia.
- Sergei Filatov was born on 25 September 1926 in Lysyye Gory, Tambov Governorate, RSFSR, USSR [now Tambov Oblast, Russia]. He died on 3 April 1997 in Moscow, Russia.
- Composer
- Music Department
Edward M. Mirzoyan was born in May 1921 in Georgia. In 1936 he became a student of Yerevan State Conservatory, where he graduated in five years. In 1942, he served in the Soviet Army. During the Second World War, wrote many songs with a patriotic military sense. In 1946 he started working in the Russian capital in the music studio at the House of Culture. Created a lot of music, including the famous "Quartet." In 1948 he arrived in Yerevan. This period is known as the most productive and creative in the composer's life. During this time he wrote a symphony for strings and a sonata for piano and cello. Yerevan Mirzoyan taught composition class at a local conservatory. The graduates of his class - known musical figures of the like: Avet Terterian, Constantine Orbelian, Robert Amirkhanian. In Evarda Mirzoyan many titles and regalia. He honored the Armenian SSR, People's Artist of the USSR and Armenian SSR. Composer was awarded the Order of Lenin, the Emblem of Honor. Declared the winner of the State Prize of the Soviet Union. He also as the father of Armenian classical music. He made an enormous contribution to the art of his country and the world.- Andrzej Lipski was born on 22 September 1950 in Tarnowskie Góry, Slaskie, Poland. He was an actor, known for The Mole (2011), Television Theater (1953) and Benek (2007). He died on 29 March 2013.
- Aleksi Machavariani was born on 23 September 1913 in Gori, Tiflis Governorate, Russian Empire [now Republic of Georgia]. Aleksi was a composer, known for The Ballet of Othello (1960), Akakis akvani (1947) and Ori okeanis saidumloeba (1957). Aleksi died on 31 December 1995 in Tbilisi, Georgia.
- Zbigniew Kaczmarek was born on 31 July 1946 in Tarnowskie Góry, Poland. He was married to ???. He died on 15 May 2023 in Hannover, Lower Saxony, Germany.
- Composer
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Vano Muradeli was born on 6 April 1908 in Gori, Tiflis Governorate, Russian Empire [now Shida Kartli, Republic of Georgia]. He was a composer and actor, known for Gibel Orla (1941), Mechte navstrechu (1963) and Sluchay s yefreytorom Kochetkovym (1955). He died on 14 August 1970 in Tomsk, Tomsk Oblast, RSFSR, USSR [now Russia].- Camera and Electrical Department
- Cinematographer
Józef Szymura was born on 26 July 1961 in Tarnowskie Góry, Slaskie, Poland. Józef is a cinematographer, known for Droga Wilka (2005), Pensjonat Pod Róza (2004) and Slaski Teksas (2000).- Lado Kavsadze was born on 26 December 1886 in Khovle, Gori uyezd, Tiflis Governorate, Russian Empire. He is known for Qarishkhlis tsin (1924), Khanuma (1926) and Ibrahimi da Goderdzi (1927).
- Boleslaw Gromnicki was born on 11 May 1935 in Tarnowskie Góry, Slaskie, Poland. He was an actor, known for Kochajmy syrenki (1967) and Odwet (1983). He died on 4 April 2017 in Wroclaw, Dolnoslaskie, Poland.
- Rolf Lunden was born on 15 June 1902 in Tarnowskie Gory. He was an actor, known for God kak zhizn (1966) and Harras, der Polizeihund (1967). He was married to Ingeborg Julia Josefa Hedwig Nowak. He died on 8 April 1968 in Wittenberg, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany.
- Production Designer
Irakli Gamrekeli was born on 17 May 1894 in Gori, Tiflis Governorate, Russian Empire [now Republic of Georgia]. He was a production designer, known for Arsena (1937) and My Grandmother (1929). He died on 10 May 1943 in Tbilisi, USSR [now Republic of Georgia].- Marcin Tyrol was born on 2 April 1979 in Tarnowskie Góry, Slaskie, Poland. He is an actor, known for The White Ribbon (2009), Londynczycy (2008) and 80 Millions (2011).