Josef Stalin

In the pantheon of 20th-century dictators Josef Stalin’s reputation for brutality and criminality is second only to Adolf Hitler’s. Yet when Stalin died in 1953 his demise was widely mourned. In the Soviet Union itself Stalin was a cult figure and his death provoked a massive outpouring of popular grief. Elsewhere in the world emotions were more mixed, but most people still saw him as a relatively benign dictator and, above all, remembered him as ‘Uncle Joe’ – the great war leader who had led his people to victory over Hitler and had saved Europe from Nazi barbarism.