Russia

Leaders

• Joseph Stalin

Motherland

• Starts the game knowing Hunting.
• +1 on Forest tiles
• +50% toward Settlers

Joseph Stalin

• Farms can be built on Tundra tiles

Each copy you ship them, by caravan or trade deal, raises their mood towards you by 2 (up to 6).

Biography

Joseph Stalin (c Dec 18, 1878 - Mar 5, 1953) was a Georgian-born revolutionary and the politician who led the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death. Born to a working-class household, Stalin joined the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, where he worked as an underground organizer, fundraiser and propagandist. Despite facing multiple arrests, prison stints and even exile, Stalin’s efforts led to the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, which overthrew the despotic czar and instated a new Communist state. In 1922, Stalin was appointed General Secretary to the Communist Party and became Chairman of the USSR after Lenin’s death in 1924. Through a series of radical economic policies, Stalin transformed Russia and the satellite states of the USSR from agrarian serfdom to a modern, mechanized agricultural and manufacturing powerhouse. However, Stalin also maintained strict ideological conformity by purging party rolls of dissidents, often sentencing former members to forced labor or even death.

During the outbreak of the Second World War, Stalin initially signed a non-aggression pact with Germany’s Hitler, but when Germany violated the treaty, Stalin allied with the Allied powers. Despite suffering massive casualties, the Soviet Red Army repelled the German invasion and marched on Berlin in 1945, liberating many concentration camps and defeating Hitler’s Third Reich. After the war, the capitalist powers, primarily Britain and the United States, reversed their affiliation with the USSR and attempted to stem the rising tide of global communism via the Cold War. Stalin died following a stroke in 1953 at the age of 74. His body still lies in state in Red Square, Moscow.