When Lenin died in 1924, a bitter struggle for Soviet leadership raged between Leon Trotsky and the ambitious Joseph Stalin. By 1927 Stalin was the unrivaled dictator. He was determined to transform the Soviet Union, as it was then called, into an industrial nation so it could compete with the capitalist countries.
Stalin proved, if anything, even more ruthless than Hitler. He used secret police terror and labor camps to suppress even the slightest dissent and to eliminate all potential rivals.
[tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, history, Joseph-Stalin, Lenin[/tags]