Stalin was the absolute ruler of the Soviet Union for a quarter of a century. His reign of terror caused the death and suffering of tens of millions. He also oversaw the war machine that played a key role in the defeat of Nazism. A politician who walked over the dead bodies of both his associates and rivals on his way to power, Joseph Stalin was also a ruler who achieved an almost unprecedented economic miracle of modern times, having made a great industrial and military power out of a ruined and mostly cultivated country. Sir Winston Churchill is believed to have said about him. It was under Stalin that the Soviet Union won the Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany in 1945, thus making USSR’s contribution to defeating the Axis in World War Two hard to overestimate. And it was under Stalin, as well, that the Soviet’s people suffered the hardly bearable strains of collectivization and industrialization, the mass famine of the 30s, the notorious Huntings and the creation of the labor camps that, according to different estimates, from fourteen to forty million Soviet citizens went through – with many
Stalin was the absolute ruler of the Soviet Union for a quarter of a century. His reign of terror caused the death and suffering of tens of millions. He also oversaw the war machine that played a key role in the defeat of Nazism. A politician who walked over the dead bodies of both his associates and rivals on his way to power, Joseph Stalin was also a ruler who achieved an almost unprecedented economic miracle of modern times, having made a great industrial and military power out of a ruined and mostly cultivated country. Sir Winston Churchill is believed to have said about him. It was under Stalin that the Soviet Union won the Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany in 1945, thus making USSR’s contribution to defeating the Axis in World War Two hard to overestimate. And it was under Stalin, as well, that the Soviet’s people suffered the hardly bearable strains of collectivization and industrialization, the mass famine of the 30s, the notorious Huntings and the creation of the labor camps that, according to different estimates, from fourteen to forty million Soviet citizens went through – with many