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He joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party soon after it was formed. Stalin was elected to the Tiflis Social Democratic Comittee
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Following the split in the party in 1903, Stalin became a Bolshevik. For the following decade and a half, he was involved in a variety of revolutionary activities, including the publication of illegal materials, organizational work among workers and within the party, and bank raids to garner funds to sustain party work.
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He met Vladimir Lenin in 1905, and briefly traveled abroad on party business to Stockholm, London, Kracow, and Vienna
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He was elected in his absence onto the party Central Committee and became an editor of the party newspaper, Pravda.
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Stalin wrote his most important early work, Marxism and The National Question.
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Stalin had been arrested in 1902, 1909, 1912 and 1913. He escaped from the first three.
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Stalin was arrested in 1913 and came back to Petrograd when the tsar fell in February of 1917. He was one of the leading Bolshiveks in the city.
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He was elected to the newly established Russian bureau of the party and to the editorial board of Pravda. Stalin championed the policy of support for the Provisional Government and a defensist position on the war, until Vladimir Lenin returned in April and overturned these in favor of a more revolutionary stance. Stalin went along with Lenin's views.
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Moisei Uritsky, chief of the Petrograd Secret Police was assassinated. Two weeks later Dora Kaplan shot and severely wounded Lenin. Stalin, who was in Tsaritsyn at the time, sent a telegram advocating an "open and systematic mass terror" against those responsible.
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When the Politburo, Orgburo, and Secretariat of the Central Committee were established in March 1919, Stalin became a member of all three.
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Stalin became people's commissar for nationalities, a position that from April 1919 he held jointly with the post of people's commissar of state control
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Lenin wrote to Leon Trotsky asking for his support. At the next Central Committee meeting Trotsky suggested that in the future, Stalin, should not be in power. Lenin aggreed with him
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Stalins wife at the time worked in Lenin's private office. After Lenin sent the letter to Trotsky, Stalin's wife found out and notified him. He knew that if Lenin and Trotsky came together, his political carrer would be over.
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At the Party Conference Lenin suggested that a new post of General Secretary should be created, Lenin picked Stalin for the job.
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Valdimir Lenin died! Everybody thought that the leader of the Red Army, Trotsky, would come into power. In Lenin's last will and testament, he specifically said that Stalin should not come into power. But that didnt stop him. IN 1924 WHEN LENIN DIED, JOSEF STALIN CAME TO BE THE RULER OF THE SOVIET UNION!!