Joseph Stalin
- turned the Soviet Union from a backward country into a world superpower
- In 1922, he was appointed to the General Secretary of Communist Party's Central Committee
- Stalin pursued an economic policy of mobilizing the entire country to achieve the goal of rapid industrialization, so that it could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Capitalist powers
- After Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin destroyed all the old leaders of the Party
- At first, these people were removed from their posts and exiled
- Stalin switched tactics, resulting in a vast reign of terror
- The purges, or "repressions" extended to every local Party
- anyone with a higher education was suspected of being a potential counterrevolutionary.
- This deprived the Soviet Union of its brainpower
- left Stalin as the sole intellectual force in the country