Hi everyone, welcome to Dance No S History. Today I'm talking to one of the world's most fluent and brilliant historians, Simon C. Bagd Montefiori, about a man who is one of history's true monsters, a man who may well be responsible for the death of more of his fellow human beings than anyone who has ever lived quite the record.

I'm of course talking about Joseph Bessieronis, Gugachevili, that's Georgian seal, forgive my pronunciation. He's better known to history of course as Joseph Vissaromovic, Stalin.

Stalin would climb the greasy pole or hack his way up the bloody ladder of Soviet politics to emerge as Lenin's heir in the 1920s. He'd given himself the name, the pseudonym, Stalin.

When he published an article in 1913 before the First World War, it's derived from the Russian for steel and sort of translates as man of steel.

And it seems like he probably intended it to mimic Lenin's pseudonym and he would go on to lay claim to Lenin's legacy as his successor.

His fortunes were transformed by the First World War as the Russian Empire came crashing down and he was able to take the fight to the streets to shape what would replace it.

He effectively ruled the Soviet Union that he helped to bring into being from 1927 until he died in 1953.

His vicious repression, his destruction of entire classes of people within the Soviet Union, whether it's Ukrainians or land-holding Kulak peasants, are infamous, are legendary, leading to the loss of millions of lives.

His extreme insecurity in paranoia led him to initiate a series of purges that led to torture, exile, misery, and murder of a titanic scale.

Initially, when the Second World War broke out in 1939, he was, of course, on Hitler's side, they invaded Poland together.

But 80 years ago this year, Hitler turned on his erstwhile ally and Stalin became something of a hero in the West as Winston Churchill and others embraced him as a fellow traveler in the battle against Nazis.

In this podcast, we're actually not going to talk about his wartime leadership so much to discuss with Simon.

It's great to have him back on the podcast. His episode on Jerusalem is one of the most successful podcast episodes of all time.

So it's a huge treat having him back on. But we're mainly going to talk about the rise of Stalin. His background and how he came to dominate the Soviet Union.

Over the next few months, you will be hearing more about Stalin's leadership during the Second World War, the decisions he made, and how much the Soviet survival and the victory in the war against Germany owed to the Soviet Union to be a part of the Soviet Union.

He owed to Stalin or how much of that was achieved in spite of Stalin. So fascinating tale.

This was films. We're going to put this out on History Hit TV. Eventually, when the time comes, we are making a series of films of the rise of dictators. This is going to be one of them.

And you can already see we've got our Hitler one up there already with some fantastic historians. So if you're going to History Hit.TV, History Hit.TV, sign up to World's Best History Channel.

It's growing at a terrifying pace. We are commissioning lots of new programs all the time. And you can also listen to all these episodes of the podcast without the ads on them.

So you just go to History Hit.TV and listen to the episodes without any interference at all. But in the meantime, folks, here is Simon Subeg Montevere talking about the rise of Stalin.

Simon, thanks very much for coming on the show. If we're looking at Stalin and your books, and I'm just seeing Stalin's name on these bookshelves, where do we start?

Where's the starting point for his rise to supreme power? I mean, Stalin was formed by a series of events. I mean, first of all, he was formed by his education. As a priest, he learnt Russian in the seminary.

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