Joseph Stalin (In power: 1929 – 1953)
Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvili on December 18, 1878. But he would become better known as Joseph Stalin. He took the name “Stalin,” which in Russian means “Man of steel,” some time in his 30s. After the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924, this “man of steel” would become the leader of the world’s first communist country. But what came with his rise to power was an almost pathological suspicion of others and a ruthless determination to hold power at any costs. This paranoia would hurt and almost destroy the country during the Second World War. He would survive the war and continue his murderous regime until his death in 1953.
When Stalin came to power, he instituted several aggressive five-year plans that were based on meeting high benchmarks for agricultural production. Farms were collectivized and millions of people were forced to work on these farms. However, many resisted these moves and paid for it with their lives. In addition, potential opposition members and high ranking military officers were deemed enemies of the state and either imprisoned or executed. When war came to the Soviet Union in 1941, the military and society were ill prepared to meet the German military onslaught. Fortunately, the sheer size of the Soviet Union probably saved the country – as was the case during Napoleon’s failed invasion over a century earlier.
Following the war, Stalin was the main instrument in installing puppet governments in Eastern Europe and other countries in order to create a counter balance to western countries that he now deemed to be enemies. Churchill would describe this as an “iron curtain” being laid across Europe. In the meantime, Stalin’s paranoia continued as he initiated further murderous purges and exiles. There is no exact tally for the numbers of people killed under his rule, but it believed that up to 20 million people may have perished either directly or indirectly under his orders.