Daily Quiz for February 15, 2009

Joseph Stalin. Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili was born in 1879 and took the name Stalin, meaning “man of steel,&rdquo about the time he helped found the Russian Communist newspaper Pravda in 1912. Stalin specialized in writing about national minorities in Russia and went on to become editor of Pravda. After the Bolshevik revolution of November 1917, Lenin named Stalin commissar of nationalities. In 1922 Stalin became general secretary of the Communist Party. After Lenin’s death in 1924, a power struggle between Stalin and Leon Trotsky, head of the Soviet army, ensued. By 1928, Stalin had assumed absolute power, ruling as an often brutal dictator until his death in 1953 of a brain hemorrhage.