REVOLUTIONARY : He ruled an empire stretching nearly halfway around the world. He was loved and revered as a wise, god-like father fiture. He signed a peace treaty with Hitler but we world have lost the war without him. He had tens of millions of innocent people murdered or sent to forced labour camps.
He was Joseph Stalin, perhaps the most feared dictator the world has ever seen.
The makers of this documentary series have travelled from the Stalin death camps on the Arctic Circle to his birthplace in Georgia. They have spoken to Stalin’s relatives, to his admirers and to his victims. They have had access to unique Soviet archive film. In this first programme we discover where Stalin came from and how he manged to seize almost limitless power.
TYRANT: During the Thirties, Joseph Stalin turned the soviet Union into a world industrial power. In the same decade, Stalin’s terror system killed over 20 million innocent Soviet people.
The second film in the STALIN series travels to Stalin’s death camps for the daughter Svetlana. Their stories are of great achievement dashed hopes, and bitter suffering which will live with them forever.
GENERALISSIMO : In his last decade Stalin had absolute power, and he established in Eastern Europe as well as the Soviet Union that system of controlled terror which still bears his name.
Yet he also received adulation as a war leader, the Generalissimo who took the credit for the Red Army’s leading role in smashing Hitler. He was hailed as scientist, thinker, fighter for peace, while he lived in paranoia and isolation.
This programme follows the final years and mysterious death of the man who told Khrushchev, “I trust no one. Not even myself”.
