Stalin in March 1935 - A man sitting at a desk with a pipe in his mouth

Joseph Stalin (1878–1953) was responsible for transforming the Soviet Union from an agricultural nation into a global superpower and did not see the elimination of millions of lives as an impediment to the achievement of this goal. Many intellectuals, dissidents, and even many allies were put to death under Stalin. Stalin's expansionism after World War II resulted in the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) by the West. In turn, Stalin gathered the Eastern European nations that were absorbed into the Soviet sphere after the Second World War under the umbrella of the Warsaw Pact. This, in turn, led to the Cold War and the periodic international crises, and the endless exchanges of hostile rhetoric in United Nations leadership circles until the final years of the Soviet Union.