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Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (1878–1953) was the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee from 1922 until his death in 1953. While formally the office of the General Secretary was elective and was not initially regarded as top position in the Soviet state, after Vladimir Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin managed to consolidate more and more power in his hands, gradually putting down all opposition groups within the party.<br/><br/> Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (1868-1936), primarily known as Maxim (Maksim) Gorky, was a Russian and Soviet writer, a founder of the Socialist realism literary method and a political activist.