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One death is a tragedy.

A million is a statistic.

That line is attributed to Joseph Stalin, the dictator of the

Soviet Union from 1927 until his death in 1953, and perfectly describes his worldview.

Consider this. Directly or indirectly, he was responsible for the suffering and death of more

human beings than any person in history.

He starved to death more than 5 million Ukrainians in 1932 and 1933.

He signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany in 1939,

freeing Adolf Hitler to attack Poland and thus commence World War II.

At least 40 million dead in Europe alone.

Without Stalin's support, it's unlikely Mao Zedong could have taken over China in 1949.

At least another 50 million dead. Throw in his support for the Kim dynasty in North Korea,

his brutal takeover of Eastern Europe following World War II, and the millions

who perish in the infamous gulags inside the Soviet Union, and the numbers are beyond comprehension.

They became, as Stalin put it, a statistic. These were the dead. The living suffered decades of

pointless misery, never knowing from one day to the next whether

Stalin's secret police would show up and take them away.

The man behind all of this terror was born Joseph Zhugashvili on December 18, 1878 in Gory,

then part of the Russian Empire.

...