Background for Stalin video:
•	Vladimir Ilyich-Lenin (1879-1924) was the founder of the Bolshevik Party later called the Communist Party, and leader of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. He founded the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R). Lenin applied Communist theory to Russia’s undeveloped economy. Before his death, Lenin warned against Stalin's growing power but Stalin was able to suppress this warning. 
•	Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) was one of Lenin's chief lieutenants and led the Bolshevik seizure of power in the October 1917 Russian Revolution. He organized the Red Army into an effective army. After Lenin's death he was forced to leave Russian by Stalin. Exiled in Mexico, he continued to attack Stalinism, but was murdered in 1940 in Mexico City by a Stalinist agent. 
•	Joseph Stalin (1879-1953) was the dictator of the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death. He was born a village shoemaker's son and studied for the priesthood. He joined the Bolshevik party in 1912 and was elected to the Communist Party Central Committee in 1917. In 1922 he was elected general secretary of the Russian Communist Party and used this position to gain power. After Lenin's death, through intrigue and murder, Stalin eliminated any threat to his rule. In 1928, he began an industrialization program and collectivized agriculture. He also sought to "Russianize" the Soviet Union, eradicating by force separate minority identities. Any dissent was crushed by powerful secret police using informers, mass deportations, show trials, and summary executions. In 1935 Stalin began a "purge" of the army and the party. The purges continued through Stalin's death. Tens of millions of Soviet citizens died as a result of Stalin's policies. For example, in the Ukraine, the "breadbasket" of the Soviet Union, he starved millions of peasants to death by taking all of their grain and selling it to buy foreign machinery with which to launch the industrialization campaign. Stalin ordered the deaths of more people than Adolf Hitler. 
•	In foreign affairs, Stalin, through the Hitler-Stalin Pact, partitioned Poland between Russia and Germany. He ordered the invasion of Finland in 1939 and imposed Communist Rule on the Baltic States of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania in 1940. Stalin was unprepared for Hitler's invasion of Russia in 1941. The Russian will to resist, including the use of scorched earth tactics, one of the most bitter winters in history, and massive aid from the United States allowed the Russians to defeat the Germans on the Eastern Front. After WW II the Russians controlled Eastern Europe and imposed Communist rule. Stalin pursued a cold war policy that fostered rapid industrial recovery at home. 
•	Shortly after his death a process of "de-Stalinization" began culminating in Nikita Khrushchev's ascension to power. In 1956 Khrushchev launched a "de- Stalinization" program attacking Stalinist terror, the Stalinist personality cult and exposing Stalin's crimes. 
•	This movie shows Stalin as disliking Jews. There is a tradition of anti-Semitism among Russian rulers and among its people. Given Stalin's bloody history, the Jews were fortunate that Stalin did not engage in wholesale genocide as did Hitler.