Read the passage from "Stalin: A Brutal Legacy Uncovered,” which is an informational text about Stalin’s atrocities and how he u
sed ambition and fear to rule over people of the Soviet Union. Stalin's genocidal record was the product of a ruthless, steely personality hardened by searing hardships in his youth: first, brutal beatings by his alcoholic, dirt-poor father; and later, several rounds of imprisonment and exile—from which he often escaped—following his expulsion from a Russian Orthodox seminary for fomenting a strike of railroad workers. For the 20-year-old Stalin, an outstanding student with top marks in Bible and Church studies, the strike was the first step on a new road—a career of rebellion, crime, and radical politics that eventually made him the unquestioned boss of the Communist Party and of 140 million people in the Soviet Union.
