While studying for the priesthood at a seminary in the Russian province of Georgia, Vissarionovich Dzhugashvilli began reading a book that was forbidden in Russia — Karl Marx's Das Kapital. He soon converted to a different religion — Marxism. Renaming himself Stalin, "a man of steel," this son of a shoemaker would rule Soviet Russia with a steel fist after Lenin died in 1924. His policies resulted in the rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union. But they also led to the killing of millions of Russian people as he built his totalitarian state.

Stalin began to follow Lenin's cause in 1903, earning himself several periods of exile in Siberia for his anti-tsarist activities. During the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, he was named party secretary, a post he held until Lenin's death. Stalin then waged a four-year struggle for the leadership of the Communist party, ultimately wresting power from Leon Trotsky, who had led the Red Army during the Russian civil war.

Stalin inherited Lenin's New Economic Policy (NEP). Begun in 1921, the NEP had stabilized a Russian economy that was devastated by World War I and the civil war. The Communist party controlled heavy industry, banking, and foreign trade, but farmers could sell their produce and businessmen could control factories while keeping any profits. Such a decentralized system of private enterprise troubled communist leaders like Stalin. In 1928, he initiated the first Five Year Plan, which gave communist bureaucrats in Moscow complete control over the economy. The plan brought to an end any avenues of private enterprise, especially in farming.

Agricultural collectivization seized the land holdings of kulaks, a large class of successful market farmers. Claiming that kulaks "exploited" peasants, Stalin announced in 1929, "We must smash the kulaks, eliminate them as a class." The new policy led to the deaths and imprisonment of tens of thousands of kulaks, but also to the deaths of an estimated ten million peasants, from mass shootings, life in concentration camps, and a famine that developed in 1932. Peasants rebelled against collectivization, burning their grain or killing their livestock rather than subjecting themselves to a new serf-like existence.

Opponents to Stalin's regime often found themselves in forced labor camps known as "gulags." The menial labor performed in these camps was grueling and living conditions were abhorrent. It is estimated that nearly two million died in the gulags.

The Five Year Plan devastated rural Russia, but its focus on industrialization helped to invigorate other economic sectors. Russia was rich in natural and human resources, and Russian industrialization, fueled by communist ideology, advanced rapidly in the 1930s. The production of heavy machinery, trucks, and tractors increased dramatically. A modern infrastructure of mines, canals, steel mills, railways, airports and dams was quickly constructed. Social reforms were instituted. "Stalin's Constitution" for the Soviet Union promised equality for women and minorities, and emphasized improving family life, adult literacy, and access to technical schools or universities for all citizens.

Leon Trotsky led the Red Army during the Russian Civil War. After the war, Stalin began what would become a four-year struggle to gain control of the Communist Party. Trotsky was later tried, convicted, and eventually assassinated.

But under Stalin the Soviet Union became a totalitarian state, one that controlled nearly every aspect of society. Religion was restricted, and many places of worship were converted into temples for the state. The Communist party controlled the press and the schools. A secret police was established with a network of informants who turned in names of any citizens who spoke critically against the state. Propaganda methods similar to those of the Nazis were enacted to promote loyalty. Although the fascists and communists despised each other, their patterns of rule looked remarkably similar.

Yet, even Stalin admitted that his plans represented a form of warfare on the working class. Slave labor was used to build the Soviet infrastructure. Suspected dissidents were imprisoned in concentration camps. In private, Stalin was gripping the reins of power even harder.

In 1936, Stalin began to purge the Communist party of suspected traitors in a series of predetermined "show trials." Enemies of the state were given what might have appeared to be a fair trail, but the outcome was a predetermined. Former associates of Stalin were executed. Trotsky was tried, convicted, and eventually hunted down in Mexico City and killed. Not even the military was safe. The leadership ranks of the army and the navy were decimated, leaving military forces in a weakened and depressed state.