Editing Joseph Stalin (section)

===As Leader of the Soviet Union===
Lenin was hesitant to the idea that Stalin would succeed him, and wrote sometime before his death "Comrade Stalin is unfit for leadership, he is too rude and under-educated." Lenin preferred Leon Trotsky to succeed him. It is unknown if the letter is legitimate or not. Stalin's leadership however lead to a much more efficient military service; Stalin said "In the USSR Military it takes more courage to retreat than it does to advance."

Famously, Lenin had ordered for both homosexuality, divorce and abortion to be decriminalized once his grip on power was absolute. Stalin however re-criminalized homosexuality in 1933, as well as abortion. This was possibly due to him wanting a larger population of the Soviet Union. However, lesbian activity was still legal throughout his period.

Stalin's regime partly to blame for [[The Holodomor]], a natural famine in Ukraine. Around 8 million people died in the famine, which is considered an act of [[Genocide]] by 16 countries.
[[File:Trotsky.jpg|left|thumb|[[Leon Trotsky|Trotsky]]'s corpse after being killed by Stalin.]]
In 1944, he ordered the deportations of Chechens, Ingush, and Tartars, all of whom are majority Muslim, from their homelands to Central Asia after accusing them of collaborating with Nazi Germany. Over 400,000 people were killed during these deportations. They were not allowed to return to their homelands until 1957.

A large number of Stalin's allies throughout his tenure as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union were killed. Most notably, many of his opponents were killed during the [[Great Purge]] of the late 30's. Stalin died in 1953. His successor, [[Nikita Khrushchev]], then began the capitalistic Soviet policy that continued into the 1980s and led to its collapse.