Stalin
Season 1Episode 1
Revolutionary
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Episode Overview
He was hailed as "teacher, leader, favorite friend" and given flowers by adoring children on his 70th birthday in 1949. A former prisoner recalls that upon his death in 1953, "Even in the prison camp they wept." Another man defends his actions as an informer for Stalin. This hour traces Stalin's ascent in Lenin's shadow and his accumulation of power at the expense of his Bolshevik comrades and rivals, whom he outmaneuvered and then consigned to their deaths. The account of how he managed to create a Lenin-Stalin cult despite the famous testament of Lenin that warned against him and recommended his removal as General Secretary of the Communist Party is fascinating for its display of hypocrisy, audacity and ruthlessness.