Stalin

1924 The Russian Civil War is over The Communist Red Army won. Russia has changed its name to the Soviet Union and is now a communist one-party state. Lenin, who has been the country's leader since the revolution, is seriously ill. On January 21st, he dies. After Lenin's death, Joseph Stalin succeeds in becoming the leader of the Soviet Union.

Stalin has held many important positions in the Communist Party and now wants more power. But many in the Communist Party are unsure whether Stalin is a good leader. One of them is Lev Trotsky, one of Lenin's closest men. Stalin wants two things in particular: Retain power and modernise the Soviet Union. To retain power, he starts a hunt for people who could become a threat to him.

Many are party comrades and former friends. For several years, Stalin's security police imprison, torture and execute hundreds of thousands of people. This period gets a name: The Great Purge. Stalin appoints loyal people to all positions. Soon he has total power.

But he sees enemies - everywhere. No one is safe from his suspicions. Out of fear, people turn each other in. In Moscow, Stalin holds trials, the Moscow trials, but everything is set up. Stalin invents crime and everyone is convicted.

In the end, almost everyone who was involved in planning the 1917 revolution is imprisoned or executed. One of the few who escapes is Trotsky, who flees abroad. Stalin wants to modernise the Soviet Union and produce more oil, steel, coal, and machinery. Everything shall go fast. For that, natural resources are needed; metals and timber.

There is plenty of that in the Soviet Union. Goods such as clothes, shoes and soap are not as important, Stalin believes. And soon it will be harder to find them in shops. Stalin bases his policy on an economic system in which the state plans how everything should be, in five-year plans. The system is therefore called a planned economy.

The five-year plans state how much each factory and farm will produce of each product. Those who fail are punished. Stalin needs workers and money to build new factories. He forces the farmers to merge their smaller farms into huge farms, kolkhozes. According to the five-year plan, they must be more efficient and produce more food than before.

But, the kolkhozes do not require as many farmers. Farmers who are now out of work are forced to work in factories. Many farmers protest. They do not want to work in kolkhozes or factories. So they burn their farms and slaughter their animals.

Stalin imprisons or executes the protesters. Stalin sells most of the food that the kolkhozes produce abroad ... ... And for the money, he builds new factories - the Russian people are starving. That - does not bother Stalin. Those whom Stalin does not execute end up in large labor camps - gulags.

The gulags are located where there are natural resources needed for the factories - or where the state is building something, perhaps a railway. Many of the gulags are located in a cold and desolate area of the eastern Soviet Union, Siberia. Peasants protesting against the kolkhozes and others whom Stalin sees as his enemies, are sent here. The prisoners work as slaves in mines and industries. Many die.

In Stalin's Soviet Union, millions of people die of starvation, in the purges, and in gulags. The Soviet Union has become a reign of terror and Stalin a dictator. In other countries, many fear that communism will spread, and that there will be revolutions there as well. What about Trotsky then? Well, in May 1940, Stalin's agents find him in Mexico.

They kill him, with an ice pick. Avoiding Stalin’s power is difficult!