He steered the Soviet Union to victory in 1945. In the West, he was known by a deceptively friendly nickname: ‘Uncle Joe’. But Joseph Stalin was an unscrupulous dictator, a despot who exerted a malign influence over Russia. Stalin’s ascent to supreme power was a remarkable testament to his ruthlessness. In the 1930s, his obsession with eliminating potential threats and extinguishing the influence of rivals such as Trotsky would lead to countless deaths. And with the onset of the Cold War, his mounting paranoia fuelled official Soviet policy.
Drawing upon a wealth of new material, absorbing documentary STALIN: INSIDE THE TERROR (Friday 24th, 8.50pm) offers an intimate portrait of the Georgian revolutionary who, in an ostensibly collectivist state, would become a ‘Red Tsar’.