If you're still not convinced that Saddam was himself, a "Weapon Of Mass Destruction....."

December 21st is the the birthday of Joseph Stalin, born in the Russian colony of Georgia (1879). He ruled over communist Russia through World War II, and it was his decision to take control of most of the countries in Eastern Europe at the end of the war that turned Russia into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

In the last twenty-five years of his life, he held absolute power over more people than anyone in history, before or since.

He may also have been responsible for more human deaths than anyone in history. Historians aren't sure how many people he ordered to be executed in his many political purges, but some estimate about 20 million.

When he had someone arrested and executed for treason, he also arrested and executed all of their family members. When he felt that the people in general were growing disloyal, he ordered his underlings in each major city to round up and execute a few thousand people at random. But he also killed people he knew very well. Of the hundred or so people who belonged to his ruling inner circle, he eventually had more than half of them murdered.

But even though he was such a brutal murderer, he was also deeply interested in the arts. He personally oversaw and approved all the works of art, fiction, music, theater, and cinema produced in the Soviet Union. He loved theater so much that he often contributed to the scripts and even wrote lyrics for songs in several musicals. He loved to sing, and he sang well enough that he could have been a professional performer.

Stalin also read books all the time, and he was a fan of great literature. His favorite writers were Balzac and Zola, Hemingway, and James Fenimore Cooper. He loved Last of the Mohicans so much that he sometimes dressed up as an Indian to entertain guests.

But even though he loved great literature himself, he didn't want his own people to read it. He said, "Nobody understands human psychology like Dostoyevsky, and that's why I've banned him." He told the writers under his power that they should write about how life should be and not how life was. He said, "The writer is the engineer of the human soul," and he wanted to make sure he had control of that engineering operation.

Joseph Stalin also said, "Ideas are far more powerful than guns. We don't allow our enemies to have guns, why should we allow them to have ideas?"

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This article is from The Writer's Almanac, published daily on the web by Garrison Kellior, and Minnesoto Public Radio. As an AD member, you may enjoy reading or listening to this high quality offering.