Who was stalin?
Hi Chris! He was Russian dictator from the 1920s to 1953, including the Second World War years. Although a Georgian by birth (his real last name was Djugashvili), he succeeded the Communist founder, Lenin, by the trick of joining forces with all the jealous mid-level members of the leadership against the man who seemed to be the top dog. One by one, all the top men in the Communist regime were brought down and executed by Stalin until he ended up the ruler with absolute power. Because of his incompetence and zest for killing anyone whom he imagined might someday be a rival, he wiped out all of the country’s best military officers, with the result that Hitler came within a hair of conquering the entire Communist empire. Uncounted millions died becase of Stalin, shot by firing squads, worked to death in concentration camps, starved in man-made famines and left to die at the hands of Hitler’s invading forces. Nothing pleased Stalin more than a “show trial,” where a fellow comrade of Lenin
