Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili better known by his adopted name, Joseph Stalin was General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee from 1922 until his death in 1953. During that time, he established the eponymous regime, Stalinism. Although Stalin's formal position originally had little significant influence, his office being nominally but one of several Central Committee Secretariats, Stalin's increasing control of the Party from 1928 onwards led to his becoming the de facto party leader and the dictator of his country, in full control of the Soviet Union and its people. His crash programs of industrialization and collectivization in the 1930s and his campaigns of political repression cost the lives of millions of people. However it helped industrialize...more >> the Soviet Union making a Great power by 1931. By 1937 the Soviet Union had become the second largest industrial nation in the world. Under Stalin's tutelage, the Soviet Union played the decisive role in the defeat of Nazi Germany in the Second World War (1939-45) more commonly known as The Great Patriotic War in Russia and post-Soviet republics and went on to achieve the status of superpower, expanding its territory to a size similar to that of the former Russian Empire excluding most of Finland, Poland and Alaska.