Red army our great party, Lenin-Stalin

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870 - 1924), born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanovand commonly known by the pseudonyms V. L. Lenin, was a Russianrevolutionary, Bolshevik communist politician, principal leader of theOctober Revolution and the first head of the Union of Soviet SocialistRepublics. Lenin was one of the leading political figures andrevolutionary thinkers of the 20th century, who masterminded theBolshevik take - over of power in Russia in 1917 and was the architectand first head of the Soviet state.

His corpse was embalmed and placed in a mausoleum on Moscow's Red Square.

Joseph Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili - 18 December1878 - 5 March 1953) was the General Secretary of the Communist Partyof the Soviet Union's Central Commitee from 1922 until his death in1953. In the years following Lenin's death in 1924, he rose to becomethe leader of the Soviet Union.

During the late 1930s, Stalin launched the Great Purge (GreatTerror), a campaign to purge the Communist Party of people accused ofcorruption or treachery; he extended it to the military and othersectors of Soviet society. Targets were often executed, imprisoned inGulag labor camps or exiled. In the years following , millions ofethnic minorities were also deported.

Estimates of the number of deaths associated with the Great Purge run from the official figure of 681, 692 to nearly 2,000,000.