Joseph Stalin was a Soviet revolutionary and politician who led the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953. He oversaw rapid industrialization and collectivization but also caused mass casualties through forced collectivization, famine, and establishing a totalitarian regime. Nadezhda Alliluyeva was Stalin's second wife and the daughter of a Bolshevik revolutionary. She committed suicide in 1932 after an argument with Stalin. Leon Trotsky was also a Bolshevik revolutionary who played a leading role in the Russian Revolution but later criticized Stalin's regime and was exiled. Maxim Gorky was a famous Russian writer who was initially skeptical of the revolution but later supported Stalin and the Soviet government.

1. Stalin: The Court Of The Red Tsar Joseph Stalin and three significant figures in his life by Yana Ivanenko

2. Joseph Stalin Joseph Stalin was Russian revolutionary and Soviet politician, statesman, military and party activist, figure of the international communist and labor movement, the theorist and propagandist of Marxism-Leninism. Stalin was in charge of a great number of major events in Soviet history and world history: the rapid industrialization of the USSR, the creation of large-scale mechanized agriculture in the USSR, the main contribution of the USSR in the defeat of Nazism in World War II, front and mass labor heroism, the transformation of the USSR into a superpower with significant scientific, military and industrial potential, the occurrence of the USSR in the world club of nuclear powers, increasing geopolitical influence of the Soviet Union in the world as well as forced collectivization, famine in 1932-1933, the establishment of a dictatorial totalitarian regime, mass casualties, the establishment of the socialist system in Eastern Europe and East Asia, and the beginning of the Cold War.

3. Nadezhda Alliluyeva Nadezhda Alliluyeva was the second wife of Joseph Stalin. She was the youngest daughter of a revolutionary "old Bolshevik" Sergei Alliluyev. There is a mythical story (unverified) that in 1903 she fell into the river and was saved by Stalin. In 1918 Nadezhda was hired as a confidential code clerk in Lenin's office. In 1919 she married Stalin who was more than 20 years older than her. In 1926 she entered the Moscow Industrial Academy. According to the memoirs of contemporaries, Nadya was kind but mentally unstable woman. In 1932 she was found in her bedroom with a revolver by her side. The cause of her suicide was an argument with her husband at the party dinner. Joseph and Nadya had two children Vasily (1921) and Svetlana (1926).

4. Leon Trotsky Leon Trotsky was a Russian and international political activist, writer, and thinker. Since 1904 acted to unite the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions. In 1905, Trotsky had mostly worked on a theory of "permanent" revolution; he believed proletariat in Russia will start a socialist phase of the revolution and will win only with the help of the world proletariat. During the Revolution of 1905-1907, Leon Trotsky proved himself as an outstanding organizer, speaker, and columnist. A sharp struggle between Trotsky and Stalin for leadership ended with the defeat of Trotsky. He Criticized the Stalinist regime as bureaucratic degeneration of the proletarian power.

5. Maxim Gorky Maxim Gorky was a famous Russian writer, novelist, and dramatist. One of the most popular writers of the XIX and XX centuries, famous for depicting romanticized declassed character ("tramp"); the author of the works with the revolutionary trend; he was personally close to the Social Democrats and was in opposition to the tsarist regime. Originally Gorky was skeptical about the October Revolution. However, after several years of cultural work in Soviet Russia and life abroad in the 1920s he returned to the USSR, where in the last years of his life he was surrounded by formal recognition as a "petrel of revolution" and "the great proletarian writer," the founder of socialist realism. Maxim Gorky and Joseph Stalin were very close partners.