Joseph Stalin is one of the most successful men in his, yet one of the most murderous doing almost ten-fold what Hitler did during WWII. Joseph Stalin was actually born Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili to his parents Besarion Jughashvili and his mother Ketevan Geladze. When Stalin was 7 he contracted smallpox leaving his face scared and his left arm slightly deformed. In 1898, he joined a group(Messame Dassy) who introduced him to the writings of Karl Marx, and Vladimir Lenin. In 1901, he joined the Social Democratic Labor Party and worked full-time for the revolutionary movement. In 1902, he was arrested for coordinating a labor strike and exiled to Siberia, the first of his many arrests and exiles in the fledgling years of the Russian Revolution. It was during this time that Joseph adopted the name "Stalin," meaning steel in Russian(biography.com). Stalin, who had been named a criminal by the tsars secret police, gained infamy being associated with the 1907 Tiflis bank robbery, which resulted in several deaths and 250,000 rubles stolen (approximately $3.4 million in U.S. dollars). When the Russian Revolution was over, and the Bolsheviks had won, Vladimir Lenin took control of office naming Stalin as secretary. This is when Stalin started building his political career by manipulating the other people in offices in or around his and in 1924 when Lenin died Stalin took this chance to become the leader. With the non-aggression pact Stalin signed in 1939, he was in full shock when Hitler used his blitzkrieg tactic on him and he even hid in his office for two days over whelmed by this action. It wasn't until 1943 when the red army won at Stalingrad. His army now was able to have several victories all the way to Berlin when Hitler killed himself. Stalin left a legacy of death and terror as he turned a backward Russia into a world superpower.