Josef Stalin died 60 years ago. Few people marked the passing of one of history's greatest mass murderers.
Stalin was born in 1878 in Georgia, a province of Imperial Russia. Although he attended Orthodox seminary he did not inherit his mother's religious faith. By his early 20s he was a Bolshevik agitator.
In 1922 he was chosen party General Secretary, originally a position of little power. Vladimir Lenin's death in 1924 triggered a complicated power struggle. Stalin demonstrated political genius and by 1928 was in full control.