Stalin

        Of all the dictators the world endured in the twentieth century, Joseph Stalin was unquestionably the mightiest. His image acquired superhuman proportions, and any serious study of Soviet history must take full account of his personality, his personal attitudes and his personal involvement in all spheres of activity during the period of his rule. 

        Succeeding Lenin in 1924, Stalin took over a state that was still recovering from the ravages of the First World War, three years of civil war and six of communist depredations. In a country populated overwhelmingly by peasants, the Soviet leaders saw the future in terms of a state founded on industrial power. But they also had to find a way to feed the expanding workforce and to do it with the help of a resentful agrarian population. Yet by the late 1930s, only some 15 years after Stalin had become the new leader, the Soviet Union was an industrial power on an international scale. On vast construction sites, armies of workers had been mobilized to fulfil Stalin’s ambitious Five- Year Plans, straining every sinew to build and set in motion giant steel works, power stations, arms and ammunition plants, aircraft and tank factories. Schools and universities had multiplied, and a large technical and cultural intelligentsia had been created. Science and technology had made great strides, and Soviet military and strategic science was highly regarded in the West. By the time Stalin died in 1953, he could claim that within one generation he had overseen the development of the USSR from a backward state into nuclear ‘superpower’ status.