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Josef Stalin: Difference between revisions
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[[File:joseph_stalin.jpg|frame|[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWTFG3J1CP8 Long live Stalin, he loves you; sing these words, or you know what he'll do!]]]
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Popularly considered to be [[Overly Narrow Superlative|the most evil Georgian (not the US state) in human history]], Josef Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili) ruled the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953.
Before [[Red October]], he had an interesting and colorful early life. After dropping out of an Orthodox seminary, he helped the Bolsheviks by robbing banks (for which he did time in jail) [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|and writing poetry]]. His role in [[Red October]] wasn't large at all - at least, according to [[Leon Trotsky|Trotsky.]] He was put in charge of the Bolshevik Party's newspaper and organizational matters, which were background but fairly important jobs. He may have been late for the Revolution, but it didn't end in one night.
After coming to power, Stalin changed his "official" birthday to 21st December 1879 (Old Russian- December 9th). He was actually born on 18th December 1878 (Old Russian- December 6th), and there are extensive records to prove it, including in his own hand. To date, nobody can agree on exactly why he decided to change it, but that was when his birthday was celebrated (at least in public) from then on.
[[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]] was incapacitated by a series of strokes in the early 1920s, and this allowed Stalin to begin a slow and methodical rise to power (the sort of rise to power that makes for a very boring story, which is probably why it has never been depicted in a major work of fiction). First, Stalin managed to get himself elected to the position of General Secretary (in those days, an actual secretarial position, although one with a great deal of power due to its control over the rank-and-file membership; Trotsky referred to him as "Comrade Card-Index"), which made him powerful but not ''that'' powerful. Shortly before his death, Lenin wrote a testament which said that Stalin should be removed as G-S, though also recognized both he and Trotsky as the two most capable candidates for leadership- Stalin suppressed this in later years, but the testament was discussed in the Central Committee before he secured his power base; ironically, this was probably the first time Lenin or any senior Party member had seriously considered Stalin as having that kind of potential, and it might have backfired on Lenin (who was seriously ill and temperamental at the time- the Party even thought about giving him a phony copy of the Party newspaper so as to calm him down and stop him pestering them) by drawing attention to Stalin's talents, giving him a boost of respect and reputation <ref> For the record, Lenin evaluated 6 candidates in that testament, including Trostky, and criticized them all; Stalin just came in for it worst</ref>. Stalin began promoting his supporters to key positions, and he deftly navigated the complex world of Soviet politics, switching sides on the debate between developing Soviet communism or promoting world revolution '''twice''' to remove his rivals.
After he got all the power he wanted (sometime around 1930), Stalin initiated a huge industrialization and collectivization scheme in the USSR, overseeing an astonishing period of economic growth and initiating programs that would bring mass literacy and a greatly increased life expectancy to what had been an impoverished, rural populace -- at massive human cost, especially in Ukraine.
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Most of what we know about Stalin originates from the works of exiled political rival [[Leon Trotsky]] (who was eventually assassinated by Stalin's agents) and, later, from Khrushchev-era revelations - though these ended with his successors and were strictly controlled regardless. Trotsky portrays Stalin as a virtual non-entity before his rise to power, and a man of average intelligence, limited vision, and a false Marxist. Other historians, however, suggest that this was politically motivated smear, and that the real Stalin was highly intelligent and extremely charismatic, and fanatically devoted to his cause. Whether Stalin did or did not follow Marxism is a topic of huge controversy (with 3 or 4 different sides, and debates that can go on forever). What is clear is that Trotsky and Stalin really, ''really'' hated each other, and the USSR would have been a different place with Trotsky in charge. Trotsky's supporters argue that it would have been a much more democratic place, closer to the communist ideal. Stalin's supporters argue that it would have quickly turned into a German-speaking place, due to Trotsky not being [[The Determinator|ruthless enough]] to win the war with Germany. Many modern historians think it would not have been much different at all, as Trotsky was almost as ruthless, violent and fanatical as his rival.
Likewise, some historians also argue that Stalin was more important to the pre-Revolution Bolshevik party than Trotsky gave him. He single-handedly designed Bolshevik policies concerning ethnic minorities who'd been living under the Russian Empire (being a member of such a minority himself), and likely had a hand in other official policy. Lenin did have a falling out with Stalin and recommended Stalin's removal from the General Secretary position in his last testament, but Stalin would have retained his seat in the Politburo and would have been quite influential even were he not the G-S. The fall out, as it happens, was that Stalin had insulted Lenin's wife, which is not exactly the same as fearing he'd end up a despot.
In other words, [[History Marches On]], perhaps subverting many of the tropes listed below - specifically [[Almighty Janitor]], [[Foreshadowing]], [[From Nobody to Nightmare]], and [[Kicked Upstairs]] (subversions are noted).
{{tropelist}}
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* [[A Father to His Men]] - Even though Stalin is widely known today as an evil mass murderer, he was loved by the common peoples of Russia up until the 80's (when Gorbachev released a whole bunch of secret documents on him). Simply put, everyone thought Stalin was the savior against [[Adolf Hitler]] and protector of the people. Any other trouble (like people vanishing without a trace) was supposed to be due to lower-level officers, not Stalin. In addition, for all his villainy, the fact that he fought [[Adolf Hitler]] in [[World War II]], who openly declared that the Russian Campaign was to be a war of annihilation, makes him tolerable enough to most people during that specific period.
** This is subverted by the rural portion of his population, who hated him with a vengeance at least until WWII.
** Like Hitler, also, most of his Inner Circle consisted of men at least 10 years younger than him, which likely helped create this image even at the highest levels. Almost all of his contemporaries had been purged. He probably was planning to purge that lot too and make way for the next generation to keep everyone on their toes, and he may have done this earlier had not the war got in the way of things.
* [[Affably Evil]] - Possibly more so to foreign leaders and ministers such as Churchill and Joachim von Ribbentrop than his henchmen. Then again, diplomacy usually works that way, and it would be used to his advantage on what side it was better to wage war with. On the other hand, he was usually crude, cruel and sadistic with his lesser minions.
* [[Almighty Janitor]] - He actually held the position of ''General Secretary'', and was even nicknamed "Comrade Card-Index". However, Stalin, being the [[Genre Savvy]] [[The Chessmaster|Chessmaster]] that he is, worked his way up to be the most powerful position...and ''then'' became Premier of the Soviet Union. [[Who's Laughing Now?]], indeed.
** After Stalin, the General Secretary office became the office with real power, not the Premier. Everyone you may possibly know as a "Premier" was in fact a General Secretary and may or may not be also a Premier.
** The short [[Alternate History]] story "The Wheels of If" by [[L. Sprague de Camp|L Sprague De Camp]] (written in 1940) mentions Stalin's brilliance at realising 'the man who writes the minutes of the meeting determines the reality of what happened there', and the main character is able to use the same tactic when plunged into another world - as no-one there had thought of it yet.
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** Subverted. Whatever the power of the General Secretary, Stalin was on the Politburo from 1917 virtually until his death. From the beginning he was one of the 7 most powerful men in the Party, and therefore in the entire USSR.
*** Still, you can always get outvoted 6-1 in the Politburo, if the other guys are ''not'' your cronies...
* [[Arch Enemy]]: Leon Trotsky, who was Stalin's main rival for control of the USSR after Lenin's death.
** Later, [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]]; and at an even later date, the [[Eagle Land|United States.]]
* [[Awesome McCoolname]]/[[Names to Run Away From Really Fast]] - His name can be translated as "[[Superman|Man of Steel]]".
** Following in Lenin's footsteps, there. Lenin took a pseudonym when he entered revolutionary activism and Stalin ("Man of Steel") was directly made to liken himself to the father of the USSR. Contrary to popular belief, however, Lenin doesn't mean "Man of Iron" but "Man from (the river) Lena". This was because Lenin's opponent was nicknamed "Volgin", "The man From the Volga" (The Lena river is larger and flows to the opposite direction from the Volga. i.e. "I'm better than you, Volgin").
** This was actually the premise of an alternate history work by Harriet Turtledove in which "Joe Steele" becomes the president of America during the Depression instead of [[Franklin Delano Roosevelt]].
* [[Ax Crazy]]: Anyone who doesn't view Stalin as [[In It For The Money]] typically views him as being this instead.
* [[Badass Bookworm]]: According to one biographer, he was the best read Russian leader since [[Catherine the Great]], including Lenin. He was far more learned than he is often remembered.
* [[Badass Bureaucrat]]|[[Obstructive Bureaucrat]] - Whatever else you might think of him, he was a bank robber and a revolutionary, and a far more charismatic and intelligent one than his most famous sources portray him as. He used bureaucracy as a springboard to establishing a personal dictatorship and in turn to annexing most of Eastern Europe and turned Russia from the least of the Great Powers into one of Earth's only two superpowers.
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* [[Enemy Mine]]: His alliance with Churchill and Roosevelt against Hitler. During the war, he also stopped the persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church to intensify patriotic support for the war effort.
* [[Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas]] and [[Momma's Boy]] - Was rather fond of his mother, being that she was the only person he spoke Georgian to (something he ''hated'') after becoming ruler of the Soviet Union, since she couldn't speak Russian. She was even placed in a room inside a palace during Stalin's reign.
** Other sources claim that Stalin also spoke Georgian with Beria, the Georgian head of the secret police, just to keep the conversations private, no other Georgian-speakers being present in the top clique.
** Stalin was not only fond of his mother, he was also kind of scared of her too; he supposedly left the Georgian Orthodox Church relatively untouched mostly because he was afraid of the tongue-lashing he'd get from Mom (she was a devout Georgian Orthodox Christian and had, after all, wanted him to be a priest).
* [[Evil Overlord]] - One of the [[Trope Codifier|TropeCodifiers]], especially for Western audiences.
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* [[From Nobody to Nightmare]]: Who would've thought a cobbler-in-training/priest-in-training would become one of the world's worst dictators?
* [[Gasshole]]: Inverted. Stalin had no real gastrointestinal problems, yet had a phobia of farting in public. When attending meetings, he would always have two water glasses in front of him, that he would clink together to mask the sound.
** Though he did once take a crap in the middle of the road towards the end of [[WW 2]]. He and some of his ''posse'' drove out to examine operations were proceeding, and while in the country the ''Vozhd'' had a call of nature, much to the (silent) embarrassment of his entourage. No toilets in the countryside, and no shame either. Hey, nobody else saw it.
* [[Good Scars, Evil Scars]]: He had scars on his face from contracting smallpox when he was 6 (which he hid by having photos of himself retouched), a malformed arm from a childhood accident which, due to not having money to treat it, caused the arm to become septic and fail to heal correctly (which he hid by always having his arm bent in photos which camouflaged the deformity, or otherwise obscuring it), and webbed toes on his left foot. These no doubt contributed to his aggressive personality (kids called him "Pocky" because of his face, etc) and his efforts to conceal them typified his pride.
* [[Historical Villain Downgrade]]: If you visit the Stalin museum in his hometown of Gori, Georgia, be prepared to hear a lot about how excellent a poet and political leader he was, and check out the supercool train he had shipped from Russia because he refused to fly. There will be ''no'' mention of the millions of people who died either directly or indirectly from his "reforms". [[Sarcasm Mode|But hey, his swag from the Chinese delegation to Moscow is sure cool!]]
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** For that matter, he'd just accused [[wikipedia:Doctors plot|a conspiracy of doctors]] of plotting to kill him. The life expectancy of any doctor who treated the dying "Koba" would not have been high.
* [[I Did What I Had to Do]]: This was Stalin's justification for his actions. Along with the general claim that he was creating a new socialist utopia, Stalin also specifically said that the USSR had to industrialize, and quickly, or else it would be overwhelmed by the rest of the world.
* [[I Have Many Names]]: Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili (Russian- Iosef Vissavorovich Dzhugashvili); aka Koba, aka Soso, aka Joseph Stalin ("Stalin"= "Man of Steel"). "Koba" is the name of a (much more violent) ''[[Robin Hood]]''-esque figure from the Georgian novel ''The Patricide''; "Soso" is a Geogrian diminutive of his first name, Iosef/ Josef. Both were originally childhood nicknames (he insisted on the former). Stalin is also reported to have used at least a dozen other nicknames, pseudonyms and aliases such as "Josef Besoshvili"; "Ivanov"; "A. Ivanovich"; "Soselo" (a youthful nickname), "K. Kato"; "G. Nizheradze"; "Chizhikov" or "Chizhnikov"; "Petrov"; "Vissarionovich"; "Vassilyi". Directly following World War II, as the Soviets were negotiating with the Allies, Stalin often sent directions to Molotov as "Druzhkov". He is only remembered as "Stalin" because that happened to be the name he was using at the time of the October Revolution (the same is true for Lenin and Trotsky).
* [[I Have No Son]]: [[Double Subversion|Doubly Subverted]]. When the Germans captured his son while serving in the artillery, they offered to trade him for captured Field Marshall Friedrich Paulus. Stalin did not deny he was his son, but said "You have in your hands not only my son Yakov but millions of my sons. Either you free them all or my son will share their fate" and "A Field Marshall is not worth a lieutenant". Cold, but the right thing to do. The [[Double Subversion]] is that poor Yakov was in fact [[The Unfavorite]] and Stalin just didn't like him. When Yakov tried to commit suicide, Stalin commented that "he can't even shoot straight." Still, some accounts say that the death did seem to genuinely upset him. [[Lost|Come to think of it...]]
* [[I Have Your Wife]]: He did this even to some of his closest associates, such as Molotov.
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* [[I Was Quite a Looker]]: [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/books/review/Lourie-t.html?_r=1 Apparently so,] as a young man.
* [[Just the First Citizen]]: Stalin [[Zig Zagged Trope|zig-zags]] this by playing it straight and averting it at the same time. For all his power, all the control, all the spy networks and the state he built, he was simply the General Secretary of the Communist Party<ref>Because of Stalin's use of this trope the de facto leader during the history of the U.S.S.R. was always the person filling this post, regardless of whether or not that person was also the Premier.</ref>. Someone stated that a title that would reflect his ''real'' power would have to be something like "Pope of the Communist church; Czar of Russia; CEO of Soviet inc." In addition he also allowed himself to be called simply "Vozhd" (leader/boss) after his fiftieth birthday celebration in 1929, and was given the title "Generalissimus" (the highest possible military rank), although he never wore the insignia. On the other hand, years before becoming General Secretary he did change his birth name from Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili to the Russian equivalent of [[Awesome McCoolname|Joe Steel]]. During his personality cult he also accepted an immense number of grandiose titles, including "Coryphaeus of Science", "Father of Nations", "Brilliant Genius of Humanity", "Great Architect of Communism", "Gardener of Human Happiness", and many more.
* [[Karmic Death]]: Stalin had put so much fear into his minions that when he went to bed and ordered them not to disturb him, they didn't dare to do so. Unfortunately, he then had a stroke and was left lying on the ground for a whole day. If his goons hadn't been so scared of his wrath, they might have gone in to check on him when he didn't come out at his usual time, and then gotten the doctors in to save him.
* [[Kicked Upstairs]]: Debate rages as to whether he won his job through actual talent and hard work or by being [[Kicked Upstairs]] by officials who were just trying to reward a loyal, unintelligent subordinate.
** As mentioned above he was on the Politburo from the beginning to his death, and outlasted every other member (albeit by his own design). The former is more likely.
* [[Kill'Em All]]: Punished the Old Bolsheviks, the Left Deviation, the Right Deviation, the speculators, the NEP men, the old military officers, the dissidents, the Jews, the ethnic Germans, the seditious, the saboteurs, and anyone speculated of belonging to the above. Over twenty million people went through in the Gulags, a full ''tenth'' of the Soviet population. More than a million died.
* [[Lack of Empathy]]
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* [[A Million Is a Statistic]] - [[Trope Namer]], though it's a [[Beam Me Up, Scotty]] moment.
** Specifically, his biographer made it up because it, more or less, "sounded like something he could've said".
* [[Modern Major-General]]: Stalin was a hopelessly inept military leader. His bungling played a large part in the Soviets getting their asses kicked in the invasion of Finland, and he completely dropped the ball when [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]] played him for an [[Unwitting Pawn]] and invaded. It was only after he turned control of the war over to his generals that the Russians started winning battles.
** He also surrounded himself with woefully inept military advisors. For example, his Artillery Commissar once angrily asked a subordinate [[Too Dumb to Live|what would they need artillery for]]. To be fair though, Stalin really did know that Hitler was going to invade sooner or later- his mistake was thinking it was going to be later.
*** However, he also surrounded himself [[Death World|with Russia.]] Do ''not'' invade Russia.
* [[Nietzsche Wannabe]]: If any dictator could be described as this, it was Stalin. Hitler had a vision for what he wanted the world be to like, albeit an evil one. Stalin was largely apathetic to all the millions of people he killed, his goals were gain as much power as he could and make others suffer as he did. He would've never been content, as he became very nihilistic and apathetic after his wife's death. See [[A Million Is a Statistic]].
* [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|Nice Job Breaking It Villain]] - Sending so many people to the Gulag camps ultimately worked against the Soviet Union. During WWII he killed off a lot of his experienced military officers, which was part of the reason that Germany was able to get so far.
** Also, Stalin's divisions of the boundaries in the Caucasus region (like giving the Armenian-populated enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan) caused several wars after the Soviet Union collapsed, and even today the conflicts haven't been settled.
* [[Not So Different]]: His rule and the tsar's rule. He even [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] it when, in a conversation with his mom, he was asked what he was like now. He replied that he was like the tsar.
* [[Over and Under the Top]] - Of the world's leading mustachioed dueling dictators, [[Adolf Hitler]] was under with that little toothbrush thing, but Stalin was waaaay over with his.
* [[Pet the Dog]] - Joseph Stalin, in addition to defeating the Nazis, also briefly ended the persecution of Christianity in Soviet Russia.
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* [[Removed From the Picture]]: Stalin had a tendency to erase his political rivals from photographs taken before he had them killed. The best example is [[media:soviet_censorship_8273.jpg|this photograph]], which was edited ''three times'' until Stalin was the only one left. And if you look closely, his face seems to get a little lonelier each time.
* [[The Spock]] - Played the cold, unbending, calculating card, what with [[Winston Churchill]]'s downright [[The McCoy|McCoy]]-like bouts of gentlemanly fervor and [[Franklin D. Roosevelt|FDR]]'s [[The Kirk|constant need to find a happy medium]].
* [[The Starscream]] - In a testament written just before his death, Lenin denounced Stalin's ambitions and tried to warn the other Soviet leaders about them. Unfortunately, Stalin managed to blunt the effect of the testament and still seized power after Lenin's death anyway.
** Also, much of the Politburo--and particularly Beria--during his reign.
** And [[Mao Zedong]]'s China tried to oust the Soviet Union as the most powerful Communist country during the [[Cold War]].
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** Which isn't to say that America and Britain didn't do evil things as well, just that they weren't as bad Stalin's Soviet Union.
* [[The Unfettered]]
* [[Unperson]] - the [[Trope Namer]]. This is a particularly cruel punishment to give to anyone. Imagine that the [[Secret Police]] have arrested you for offending Stalin. Now imagine that not only will you be shot, but all information about you being erased from all records in the nation. [[Fate Worse Than Death|As if you never existed, and therefore you will never be remembered]]...
* [[Unwitting Pawn]]: As noted above, Western luminaries like H.G. Wells and Beatrice Webb gushed about the Soviet Union. Needless to say, Stalin played each and every one of them like a fiddle.
* [[Vampire Tropes]] : There are no mirrors in Stalin's palace. Make of that what you will.
** Well, paranoid as he was he didn't want to be literally backstabbed, but it isn't as fun as suggesting he was a vampire. [[Blood Plus|Incidently...]]
* [[Vetinari Job Security]]: More recent analysis by Russian playwright and historian Edvard Radzinski suggests that Stalin did this at the start of [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler's]] invasion, to see what his minions would do without him as a means of testing their loyalty. The results were fairly predictable, namely that they all came grovelling to him and asking him to lead them.
* [[Villain Ball]] - The mass purges he ordered made little political or even economical sense, as at that point it had become practically impossible to oppose the government anyway. For the most part, exterminating a large percentage of the country's population [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|merely caused the national economy to break down.]]
* [[Villain with Good Publicity]]- he still enjoys huge support in the former USSR. In a "Greatest Russian" poll in 2008, he came second. In another, he came third.
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*** That's not entirely true... HG Wells, for example, was much more critical of Stalin and The USSR than most people give him credit for.
*** Another thing to keep in mind that the USSR under Stalin was by far the best potential source of funds and support for Western communists. Stalin had factories, tanks, money, materials etc. The exiled Trotsky (just to take an example), could offer them little other than his moral support. So it's pretty much evident why most Western communist parties praised Stalin.
** According to many memoirs, the mourning for his death in 1953 was widespread and sincere. His pompous funeral was attended by hundreds of thousands of grief-stricken citizens with very little state pressure involved.
*** Many of his supporters in his native country of Georgia still display pictures of him.
** It was a common lament in Soviet Russia that the gulags would be shut down "If only Comrade Stalin knew!"
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** Do bear in mind that Red Army operational art was very different to that of the Western Allies. The Red Army could be and certainly was sloppy and brutal with regards to casualties, but it is a vast [[Flanderisation]] to accuse it of simply drowning its opponents in blood.
** "The violent death of a large number of people was necessary before the Communist state could be established"
* [["Well Done, Son" Guy]] - Not with his own father, but with Lenin and Karl Marx. Some historians allege Stalin frequently wondered what Marx and Lenin would think of him and his efforts to live up to their legacy.
* [[Wicked Cultured]]: He styled himself a patron of the arts and, while purging many intellectuals and artists, he elevated others (like [[Sergei Eisenstein]], who was a court filmmaker in all but name). Stalin's rule is the Golden Age of [[Socialist Realism]], particularly in architecture and cinema.
** He was fond of [[The Master and Margarita|Mikhail Bulgakov]], even though the latter was hardly a Socialist (or any other kind of) Realist. Critics often suspect that the character of Pilate in the [[Story Within a Story]] of ''The Master and Margarita'' is based on Stalin, particularly the scene where Pilate orders an execution without ever quite admitting that is what he is doing.
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* In the ''[[Wild Cards]]'' superhero setting, Stalin's death is shrouded in mystery; there's a rumour that he was done in by one of his aides after turning into a vampire.
* Also in the game [[Stalin VS Martians]].
* In Adam Robert's novel Yellow Blue Tibia, in 1946 he commissions a group of young Soviet science fiction writers to devise a fake propaganda story about an invasion of the Soviet Union by radiation aliens in order to unite the Soviet people in opposing them. Forty years later, one of the authors,Konstantin Sckvorecky, believes that the story is becoming reality when the events of Chernobyl and the Challenger disaster mirror the ones in the story. He dreams that Stalin appears to him and informs him that he (Stalin) is an alien himself and knew the invasion would come, although the book is vague as to whether this was a dream or not.
* ''[[Assassin's Creed II]]'' lists him as one of four [[Knights Templar]] who orchestrated [[World War II]] (the other three being FDR, Churchill and Hitler), and who controlled his subjects using an artifact that granted mind control over the populace. He was eventually killed by one of the eponymous assassins.
* In the ''[[Percy Jackson and The Olympians]]'' series, it's implied Stalin is actually a son of Hades. In fact, its Wiki outright states it.
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Politicians]]
[[Category:Historical Domain Character]]
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