Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin
What do we know about Stalin? • he was born in 1879 • he came from a poor background; his father was a cobbler and his mother was a peasant • his real surname was Djugasvili • he did well at school and won a scholarship to go to a seminary where priests were trained • it was at this seminary that Stalin turned to Marxism • he became a follower of Lenin and went to secret meetings and distributed leaflets • between 1902 and 1913 he was arrested 8 times and exiled to Siberia. He escaped 7 times! • in prison he adopted the name Stalin which translated as "Man of Steel". He felt that it would be good for his image • he was a very good organiser and the part he played in the November 1917 Revolution was probably small. But the skills he gained while helping to organise the Bolshevik Party were to prove invaluable • after 1917, he was rewarded with a number of seemingly unimportant party positions which nobody else wanted. But they gave Stalin a perfect insight into who could be trusted to support him and who could not • Stalin was seen as dull by the intellectual elite of the Bolshevik Party. They all made a fatal mistake in assuming that he was stupid. When Stalin became the undisputed leader of Russia in 1929, he realised that Russia was far behind the west and that she would have to modernise her economy very quickly if she was to survive. Also a strong economy would lead to a strong military if Russia was going to survive threats from external forces. A modernised Russia would also provide the farmers with the machinery they needed if they were going to modernise their farms - such as tractors. 
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev(19 December 1906) was the General Secretary of the Central Committee (CC) of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), presiding over the country from 1964 until his death in 1982. His eighteen-year term as General Secretary was second only to that of Joseph Stalin in length.
Brezhnev was born in Kamenskoe into a Russian workers' family. After graduating from the Dniprodzerzhynsk Metallurgical Technicum, he became a metallurgical engineer in the iron and steel industry, in Ukraine. He joined Komsomol in 1923 and, in 1929, became a member of the Communist Party, playing an active role in the party's affairs. He was drafted into immediate military service during World War II; he left the army in 1946 with the rank of Major General. In 1952 Brezhnev became a member of the Central Committee, and in 1964, Brezhnev succeeded Nikita Khrushchev as First Secretary; Alexei Kosygin succeeded Khrushchev in his post as Chairman of the Council of Ministers.
As a leader, Brezhnev took care to consult his colleagues before acting, but his attempt to govern without meaningful economic reforms led to a national decline by the mid-1970s, a period referred to as the Era of Stagnation. A significant increase in military expenditures which by the time of Brezhnev's death stood at approximately 15% of the country's GNP, and an increasingly elderly and ineffective leadership set the stage for a dwindling GNP compared to Western nations. While at the helm of the USSR, Brezhnev pushed for détente between the Eastern and Western countries. His last major decision in power was to send the Soviet military to Afghanistan in an attempt to save the fragile regime which fought a war against the mujahideen.
As a leader, Brezhnev took care to consult his colleagues before acting, but his attempt to govern without meaningful economic reforms led to a national decline by the mid-1970s, a period referred to as the Era of Stagnation. A significant increase in military expenditures which by the time of Brezhnev's death stood at approximately 15% of the country's GNP, and an increasingly elderly and ineffective leadership set the stage for a dwindling GNP compared to Western nations. While at the helm of the USSR, Brezhnev pushed for détente between the Eastern and Western countries. His last major decision in power was to send the Soviet military to Afghanistan in an attempt to save the fragile regime which fought a war against the mujahideen.
Brezhnev died on 10 November 1982 and was quickly succeeded in his post as General Secretary by Yuri Andropov. Brezhnev had fostered a cult of personality, although not on the same level seen under Stalin. Mikhail Gorbachev, who would lead the USSR from 1985 to 1991, denounced his legacy and drove the process of liberalisation of the Soviet Union.
