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Stalin launched a command economy [stimulus--see strings attached], replacing the New Economic Policy of the 1920s with Five-Year Plans and launching a period of rapid industrialization and economic collectivization.[refers to his quote about children not going into finance, but becoming engineers, and teachers & people who build things] The upheaval in the agricultural sector disrupted food production, resulting in widespread famine, such as the Soviet famine of 1932-1933, known in Ukraine as the Holodomor.[2]

During the late 1930s, Stalin launched the Great Purge (also known as the "Great Terror"), a campaign to purge the Communist Party of people accused of corruption or treachery [see Gov. Sanford excerpt below]; he extended it to the military and other sectors of Soviet society. Targets were often executed, imprisoned in Gulag labor camps or exiled. In the years following, millions of ethnic minorities were also deported.[3][4]
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Stalin's careful control of the media helped him to foster a cult of personality. [no explanation necessary]However, after his death his successor, Nikita Khrushchev, denounced his legacy, initiating the period known as de-Stalinization.