“It’s not the people who vote that count, it’s the people who count the votes.” – Joseph Stalin

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (18 December 1878 – 5 March 1953)
was a Soviet revolutionary and politician of Georgian nationality. Ruling the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953, he served as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Unionfrom 1922 to 1952 and as the nation’s Premier from 1941 to 1953. Despite initially presiding over a collective party elite that governed by consensus, he ultimately removed his rivals and accumulated power to become the Soviet Union’s de facto dictator by the late 1930s. Ideologically a Marxist and a Leninist, Stalin helped to formalise these ideas as Marxism–Leninism while his own policies became known as Stalinism.