Warlords
Under scrutiny
Political leadership
Stalin |
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No leader of the 20th century had more people murdered for political offences than Stalin. By the beginning of the Second World War, almost every leading Bolshevik from the 1917 revolution had been killed in Stalin's Great Purge. In all, around one million people were executed – in just 1937/8, Stalin personally signed execution lists comprising 681,692 names. It was political leadership by extermination, but it didn't stop him being hailed by the world Communist movement as a 'great teacher and friend' and the 'hope of the future'. By the time of his death, one third of the world was under Communist rule.
