The Essentials of Life

Part 1

Joseph Stalin was a political leader born in 1879 in Russia. He was the leader of the U.S.S.R from 1928 until 1953. He obtained power of the Soviet Union after the Death of Lenin. As a member of the Bolshevik party, Stalin was active in the October Revolution 1n 1917. Being so active there, he was able to make his way up the communist party totem pole and was named General Secretary of the Central Committee. By the end of the 1920s Stalin had taken power from his opponent, Leon Trotsky and became the dictator of the Soviet Union. In the 1930s Stalin becoming more and more paranoid executing anyone who opposed him and started industrial and agricultural programs that left many peasants dead. He died in 1953 of natural causes.

Part 2

Saddam Hussein was born April 28th, 1937 to an Arab family in Tikrit, Iraq, on the. His father apparently died before Saddam's birth. Saddam's stepfather would not allow him to go to school so he ran away to his mother's brother's home. It was his maternal uncle who raised him all through adolescence. He's uncle was an ex-army man and was an Arab nationalist. In 1956 Saddam moved to Baghdad and joined the Arab Socialist party, Ba'ath. In 1959 Saddam was part of the Ba'ath team who tried to assassinate Iraqi president and dictator at the time, Abd al-Karim Qasim however they failed and Saddam fled to Egypt. Quasim's regime was eventually overthrown by nationalist though in 1963. Quasim was killed and Saddam returned to Iraq with other exiled Iraqis.

In1963, General Abd al-Salam Arif successfully overthrew the anti-Ba'athist party and Saddam went back underground. In 1963, he began to doing secret party activities. In 1964 he was captured and imprisoned, but managed to escape. In 1966, while underground, Saddam became a member of the regional command of the Iraqi branch of the Ba'ath Party and helped organize the Ba'ath's second attempt to seize power. Saddam was known to be a tough, political enforcer, willing to stop enemies of the party at all costs. In 1968 the Ba'ath party regained power after a coup that overthrew Abdul Rahman Arif. Al-Bakr was named president and Saddam was named vice president of the Revolutionary Command Council after eliminating rivals competing for the position.