Stalin (an adopted name meaning "Man of Steel') was born Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili in Gori, Georgia. His father was a cobbler, a drunkard who beat him badly and frequently left the family when Joseph was young. His mother supported herself and her son (her other three children died young and Joseph 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 books of Karl Marx. Joining a Georgian Social Democratic organisation in 1898, he became active in the revolutionary underground as organiser of armed robberies, and was seven times arrested, repeatedly imprisoned, and twice exiled to Siberia between 1902 and 1913. During those years he changed his name and became more closely identified with revolutionary Marxism. At this time his intimacy with Vladimir Lenin and Bukharin grew. In 1912, he was co-opted on to the Communist Central Committee. Later he also edited the new Communist paper, "Pravda". As a leading Bolshevik, he played an active role in the Russian Revolution of 1917. Stalin became People's Commissar for Nationalities in the first Soviet government, and a member of the Communist Party Politburo, although his activities throughout the counter-revolution and the war with Poland were confined to organising a "Red Terror" in Tsaritsin (later renamed Stalingrad). With his appointment as General Secretary to the Party Central Committee in 1922, a post he held until his death, he began to build up the power that would ensure his control of the situation after Lenin's death in 1924. He also occupied other key positions that enabled him to build up total personal power in the Party and Soviet government. Stalin was known for his piercing eyes and intimidating manners that he used to defeat opponents into submissive retreat during private discussions. In 1927 Stalin was diagnosed with "Typical clinical paranoia" by the leading psychiatrist I. Sechenov and his assistant doctors.Stalin pursued a policy of building "socialism in one country", and gradually isolated and disgraced his political rivals, notably Trotsky. He stopped any economic freedoms and nationalised all of the Soviet Union's economic resources. The measures he took to eliminate those who opposed his will involved the death by execution or famine of up to 10 million peasants. Between 1934 and 1938 he inaugurated a massive purge (Great Terror) of the party, government, armed forces and intelligentsia, in which millions of "enemies of the people" were imprisoned, exiled or executed. In 1936, Red Army forces and material went to the support of the Spanish Communist government. After the Munich crisis Stalin signed the Non-Aggression Pact with Adolf Hitler (1939), which bought the Soviet Union two years' respite from involvement in the impending war. After the German invasion (1941), the USSR became a member of the Grand Alliance, and Stalin, as war leader, assumed the title of Generalissimus. Later in WWII Stalin took part in the conferences of Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam, where his talks with Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Harry S. Truman resulted in Soviet military and political control over the liberated countries of post-war eastern and central Europe. From 1945 until his death Stalin resumed his repressive measures at home, and 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. His first wife (Ekaterina Svanidze, married 1904) died three years after their marriage, and left a son, Jacob (also known as Yacov), who died in a Nazi camp. His second wife (Nadezhda Alliluyeva, married 1919) attempted to moderate his politics, but she died by suicide, leaving a daughter, Svetlana, and an alcoholic son, Vasili Stalin, who died in exile in 1962.Stalin died suddenly on March 5th, 1953, in somewhat mysterious circumstances, after announcing his intention of arresting Jewish doctors in the Kremlin, whom he believed were plotting to kill him. The cause of death announced was brain haemorrhage. . .