Josef Stalin
December 18, 1878 -- March 5, 1953
Who: The absolute ruler of the Soviet Union after Lenin's death in 1924. He was a bloodthirsty tyrant for whom human life had no value.
His Great Purge of the 1930s -- a system of political repression and killing -- was no less than a genocide in which millions of Russians were killed, many in the Gulag slave camps.
Paradoxically, it was Stalin -- or, rather, Soviet Russia, under him -- who defeated Hitler's army, turning the tide in World War II.
How he died: Suffered a stroke at night.
Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
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