Short answers, pulled from the story.
Joseph Stalin was born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili on the 5th of March 1878 in the small town of Gori, then part of the Russian Empire. His early life was marked by poverty and violence, as his father Besarion was an alcoholic shoemaker who frequently beat his wife and son.
Joseph Stalin used his position as General Secretary to appoint loyalists to key posts and gradually marginalize his rivals. He formed an unofficial triumvirate with Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev to isolate Leon Trotsky before turning on his former allies and executing them.
Joseph Stalin's First Five-Year Plan launched in 1928 resulted in a famine from 1932 to 1933 that killed an estimated 5 to 7 million people. The resulting Holodomor in Ukraine and the expansion of the Gulag system meant that an estimated 18 million people passed through forced labor camps.
Joseph Stalin died after a stroke on the 5th of March 1953. He was succeeded as leader by Georgy Malenkov and eventually Nikita Khrushchev, who in 1956 denounced Stalin's rule and began a campaign of de-Stalinisation.
The Battle of Stalingrad became the bloodiest and fiercest battle of the entire war and marked a major turning point. Joseph Stalin ordered the Red Army to hold the city at all costs, and the German forces attacking Stalingrad surrendered in February 1943.
Joseph Stalin's regime deported entire ethnic groups such as the Kalmyks, Chechens, and Crimean Tatars who were accused of having collaborated with the Germans. By January 1953, three percent of the Soviet population was imprisoned or in internal exile within the expanded Gulag system.