e most brilliant men of the time. It was just that his love of power and his political intolerance led to his hypocrisy. He began the Bolshevik tradition of waging war on intellectual dissidents - free thinkers. Some would say this was clever for suppressing those who would overthrow a government while others would say this to be a mistake by stifling the evolvers of society. Lenin would not have much time to care because he died after a series of strokes in 1924. Two years before Lenin's death, a man was perhaps more ruthless than Lenin was made leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic. That man was Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili or Joseph Stalin. He adopted the pseudonym Stalin, meaning "man of steel", about 1910. Stalin like his predecessor was a very pedantic man. It was because of that that he earned a full scholarship to the Tbilisi Theological Seminary. It was while studying for his priesthood that he read the forbidden literature of Karl Marx. He quit seminary to become a full time revolutionary. Stalin was opposed much by the authorities and was considered to be an up-and-coming follower of the Socialist-Democratic Party. It was because of his actions against the Czar and support of the party that Lenin helped him rise to power in the party. In 1922, Stalin was proclaimed secretary-general of the Soviet Union. During the late 1920s, the U.S.S.R. suffered a lag in agricultural production. Stalin reacted by beginning a nationwide offensive against the peasantry. Unknown millions died as a result. However, his industrial campaigns of the late 1930s enabled the Soviet Union to rise to the foremost rank of industrial powers. It was also during this time that Stalin enacted the "Great Terror" which killed millions. Millions more were sent to concentration camps. The fear of Stalin was carried out by his secret police called Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti or KGB.Then an event happened that forever change the world's v...
