Joseph Stalin took over leadership after Lenin. His rise was of terror and brutality since he was right under Lenin when he took over. For twenty years he continued a dictatorial leadership.He was not interested in ideological debates since he wanted to establish his own power within the Soviet system. Stalin had Trotsky expelled and ousted Bukharin in order for this to occur. Because of his torture technique for people to confess their crimes, about 10 million Russians were arrested in the late 1930s. Stalin even sent an assassin to kill Trotsky in 1940. In 1928, Stalin implemented the Five-Year Plan to expand Russia into an industrial nation. In order to find money for this, Stalin forced the kulaks, or wealthy peasants to work on the farms. He had people executed, exiled, or sent to kulaks. Gulags were almost exclusively political prisoners. All of this brought the Soviet Union to a major industrial power in the end of the 1930s, while all other nations were in a devastating economic depression. Stalin created some positive reforms in Russia. He influenced a strong growth in industry and promoted Russian language, history and its culture. Propaganda and art were his means of support. Communism, under his control, was supposed to be a classless society but it was not. Stalin’s reign was for the most part under the Five Year Plan. In excess of five million people died in a short amount of time.
Benito Mussolini took over Italy’s government in 1922. Fascism had much in common with Communism since it was a brutal totalitarian