Welcome to the fourth episode in our series on Joseph Stalin.

We left Stalin as the hero of the great patriotic war, the architect of the victory against Nazi Germany.

Soviet control now extends well across eastern and central Europe.

China has also become an obedient ally, and the Soviets have the bomb.

The USSR is a superpower, with Stalin, the Superman, at its head.

After the huge sacrifices of the war,

the people of the Soviet Union hope for better times. But Stalin has other ideas. He's ruled by fear for over 20 years. Why change now?

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From Wondery and Gollhanger, I'm Peter Frankopern.

I'm Afour-Hash.

And this is Legacy, the show that tells the lives of the most extraordinary men and women ever to have lived, and asks if they have the reputation that they deserve.

This is episode four, the stain of Stalin.

Let's take a tour of life under Stalin, Peter, as the 1940s turn into the 1950s. The few cultural freedoms that he was flexible enough to allow during the war are locked back up.

And to make it worse, as he ages, Stalin is only becoming more paranoid than ever.

At the end of the Second World War, you know, there's elation at the defeat of Hitler and the fall of the Nazis.

You know, the world is going to be a better place. But in the Soviet Union, things are never quite so simple.

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