During his leadership, Stalin oversaw the establishment of socialism in one country as a central tenet of the Communist Party’s ideology. He implemented Five-Year Plans that resulted in agricultural collectivization and rapid industrialization, creating a centralized command economy. However, severe disruptions to food production contributed to a famine in 1930-33 that killed millions of people. To eliminate those accused of being “enemies of the working class,” Stalin instituted the Great Purge, imprisoning over a million people in the Gulag system of forced labor camps and executing at least 700,000 between 1934 and 1939. By 1937, he had absolute control over the party and government. Stalin also promoted Marxism-Leninism abroad through the Communist International and supported European anti-fascist movements during the 1930s, particularly in the Spanish Civil War. In 1939, his regime signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, resulting in the Soviet invasion of Poland. Germany ended the pact by invading the Soviet Union in 1941. Despite initial setbacks, the Soviet Red Army repelled the German invasion and captured Berlin in 1945. During this time, the Soviets annexed the Baltic states and Bessarabia and North Bukovina, subsequently establishing Soviet-aligned governments throughout Central and Eastern Europe and parts of East Asia. After Stalin’s death in 1953, he was succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev, who denounced his rule and initiated the de-Stalinization of Soviet society. Stalin has been widely condemned for overseeing mass repression, ethnic cleansing, wide-scale deportation, hundreds of thousands of executions, and famines that killed millions. However, he has retained popularity in Russia and Georgia as a victorious wartime leader who cemented the Soviet Union’s status as a leading world power. Soldiers around Stalin were often apprehensive when he emerged from his room, where he spent approximately an hour every morning. A question for our mainstream media colleagues: why did Stalin habitually seclude himself in his room for an hour every morning? If you don’t know, perhaps it’s time to investigate and uncover the answer.