When Joseph Stalin became the leader of the Soviet Union, he also became a dictator. A dictator is a ruler with total power or is someone who rules by force regardless of what others want or need (Networks). Stain ruled the people of the Soviet Union with force and complete control over their lives. He did not allow people to gather in groups or worship. He even destroyed …show more content…
During the revolt, Stalin stripped all of the food from Ukraine, which resulted in the starvation death of 7 million people from 1932-1933 (Italia). Then in 1933, Stalin began receiving reports from the NKVD about his unpopularity with the people of the Soviet Union. Being a man of action, Stalin decided to do something about his unpopularity. From 1934-1939, the Great Purge, also known as the Great Terror, occurred throughout the Soviet Union (Hoobler and Hoobler). The purge was Stalin’s order to get rid of all people who knew anything about his past that could be used against him or who hated him. He even purged 35,000 of his best officers of the Red Army and about 300,000 members of the Communist Party (Hoobler and Hoobler). In all, Joseph Stalin had about 1 million people executed and 7 to 23 million sent to labor camps, where most of them also died (Hoobler and …show more content…
This caused the beginning of the Cold War in 1945 with the United States (Britannica). The United States took a hard position that Communism would not expand anywhere else in the world. In 1948, Stalin challenged the United States, Great Britain and France to take control of all of Berlin, which was divided between the four countries after World War II. Stalin closed all roads and railroads into Berlin to force the other countries out of the capital city. However, the United States would not give in to the power of Joseph Stalin and they started to airlift supplies into Berlin, which continued for nearly a year. Stalin realized that the blockade was not effective, so he ended the blockade on May 12, 1949 (Hoobler and Hoobler). Then Joseph Stalin shocked the United States on August 29, 1949, when the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb in Kazakhstan (Networks). The United States were unaware that the Soviet Union had the knowledge and capability of developing an atomic bomb. This caused the United States and other countries to fear for their safety. The Berlin blockade and the atomic bomb were the last major conflicts between Stalin and the United States (Hoobler and Hoobler). Joseph Stalin died on March 5, 1953 due to a stroke (Italia). However, the Cold War continued until