The Soviet government signs the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

The Bolshevik daily Pravda began publication in St Petersburg. Stalin contributed to its editorial work; the paper became a channel for political education and agitation among urban workers, under...

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 Bolshevik leadership sent Stalin to help organize defense against White forces around Tsaritsyn. The Civil War brought mass violence, requisitioning, famine, and competing claims to political...

The Red Army defeated the Georgian Democratic Republic and established Soviet rule. Stalin, a Georgian Bolshevik, supported incorporation into the Soviet system; the event exposes tensions between...

The Central Committee elected Stalin General Secretary of the Communist Party. The office gave him influence over appointments and party administration, which he used to build a durable political...

Stalin and Sergo Ordzhonikidze pressed to place Georgia inside a Transcaucasian federation and a centralized Soviet union. Georgian Bolsheviks resisted the arrangement and reported coercion. Lenin’s...

The USSR was constituted as a union of republics after revolution and civil war. Stalin had argued for a more centralized arrangement; the final federal structure preserved republic institutions while...