Communism in Power: From Stalin to Mao

Trace the rise of Joseph Stalin after the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924. As the second leader of the new Soviet state, Stalin fulfilled Lenin’s goal of transforming the economy and culture of the old Russian empire, bringing communism to the country at a cost of millions of lives. Learn how Stalin emerged from obscurity to outwit his rivals, including the renowned revolutionary Leon Trotsky.

Stalin’s rule descended into mass terror, culminating in the Great Purge. At its height from 1936 to 1938, this campaign of political repression saw an estimated 600,000 executed and millions more deported to brutal labor camps known as gulags. No one was exempt from possible denunciation and conviction. Hear some of the dark jokes that ordinary people told to cope with the uncertainty.

“I have seen the future and it works,” declared American journalist Lincoln Steffens after visiting Soviet Russia in 1919. Many notables from the West traveled to the new communist state and came away impressed—or rather deluded by Soviet propaganda. Lenin called these credulous foreigners “useful idiots.” Also learn about those who immigrated to the Soviet Union only to discover the truth.

Chart Stalin’s plan for world domination in light of international politics in the 1930s. Then, see how his strategy was upended by Nazi Germany’s surprise attack on the Soviet Union in 1941—the most devastating campaign of World War II. Near defeat, Stalin appealed to Allied help and Russian nationalism to turn the tide, ending with Germany’s surrender in 1945.

Track the growth of communism in the United States, where the Great Depression was a golden age for recruitment, especially since the party treated all workers as equal victims of capitalism. Note how espionage often went hand in hand with party membership, and survey successive “red scares” such as the McCarthy period, and the punitive response of US authorities.

The Soviet Union’s role in defeating Nazism gave the communist movement enormous prestige. See how this ambition started to unravel through brewing discontent, spurred by Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin in 1956, three years after the dictator’s death. Disillusioned intellectuals further opened the eyes of the world to communism’s flaws.