The first issue of Pravda appears

Dzhugashvili moved to Tiflis (now Tbilisi) for seminary education. There he encountered social inequality, censorship, and Marxist ideas circulating among students and workers.

After years of study and political activity, he left the seminary and turned toward revolutionary organizing. Accounts differ on the immediate circumstances; his transition reflects both personal...

Police arrested the labor organizer during a period of strikes and political agitation in the industrial port. His arrest began repeated cycles of imprisonment, internal exile, and escape.

A group of militants attacked an imperial bank carriage in Tiflis to obtain funds for the revolutionary movement. Stalin’s precise operational role remains disputed; the episode illustrates the...

At the Prague Party Conference, Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders co-opted Stalin to the Central Committee while he was in exile. (The conference date is often given as 17 January Old Style; this...

After returning to underground work, Stalin was arrested again and banished to the Turukhansk region. He remained in remote exile until the overthrow of the tsar in 1917.

The fall of the tsarist monarchy enabled Stalin and other exiles to return. He joined the Bolshevik leadership in Petrograd during a rapidly changing struggle over war, land, workers’ power, and the...

The October Revolution (25 October Old Style; 7 November Gregorian) overthrew the Provisional Government. Stalin was a party organizer, though not the central military leader of the uprising; the...

The new Soviet government assigned Stalin responsibility for nationalities. His office addressed the future of peoples and territories formerly ruled by the empire; later policy combined formal...

The treaty ended Russia’s participation in the First World War at the cost of extensive territory and population. Stalin supported the Bolshevik government as it faced military intervention, civil...