During World War II alone, Joseph Stalin killed 20 to 60 million people. Born in the late 1870s, Stalin began his rise to power at 43, and at 45 he betrayed Vladimar Lenin to eventually become the leader of the Soviet Union. Stalin was a cruel man, he even killed an artist for not portraying him as he wanted to be. He also made considerable use of the Communist International movement to keep the other communist parties pro-Stalin and pro-Soviet. Stalin, today, is seen as one of the most sadistic leaders of the last century, even surpassing Adolf Hitler for some. Joseph Stalin is the man who transformed the Soviet Union from a backward country into a world superpower at an unimaginable human cost. Joseph Stalin was one of the cruelest leaders in all of history, along with figures such as Genghis Khan and Napoleon Bonaparte. He destroyed anyone and anything in his path. When Lenin died, Stalin had to compete with Leon Trotsky. "Stalin's victory was slow and hard-fought, but in 1927 he succeeded in getting Trostky expelled from the party and, in 1929, from the country (Trotsky was tracked down and killed by Stalin's agents in Mexico City in 1940)" (Unknown). Although Trotsky's personal authority was unchallenged, Stalin managed to convince the Russian people to go with him, and not Trotsky. With his five-year plan, Stalin intended to create a collective agricultural system and make the USSR powerful and industrial. Both of these goals would require massive amounts of killing, especially among the Ukrainian people. Stalin created a famine from 1932 to 1933 killing approximately six to seven million people and causing the fall of Ukraine. A combination of Stalin's drive for absolute power and his paranoia brought milli...... middle of paper ......talin, the Nazis most likely would not have lost to the Allied Powers. Even though Stalin is seen by many people today as one of the most evil people in all of history, he changed Russia for the better. After overpowering Lenin and Trotsky to become the leader of the USSR, they took their ideas and used them to create one of the most powerful countries to date. While his methods may have been useless, they are what shaped the world into what it is today. Works Cited http://necrometrics.com/20c5m.htm http://www.gendercide.org/case_stalin.html http://www. marxist.com/1927-expulsion-leon-trotsky.htmhttp://history1900s.about.com/od/people/ss/Stalin_2.htmhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/weisbord/Stalinism.htmhttp:// www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/communismhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/01/joseph-stalin-more-popular-in-russia-now_n_2791776.html