Stalin did not demonstrate truly wise and honourable leadership of his country, and it was only because of the unstable nature of Europe at this time that the people of Russia trusted and put their faith in him. Stalin was the son of an alcoholic cobbler and a washerwoman, and was all too aware of the privileges of class. He came to loathe anyone wealthier than himself (he even annihilated the Kulaks, a wealthy peasant class) and was obsessed with a vision of 'liberating' his native Georgia from the rule of the Tsars. Trotsky wrote that Stalin's hatred of the oppressors was much stronger than his love of the oppressed, and even Lenin did not want Stalin to succeed him.
Stalin's has often been compared with Hitler, but while Hitler only left graves, devastation and degradation in Germany, Stalin turned a starving, destitute land into a powerful industrial state. However, this gain, and Russia's increase in territory in Eastern Europe, came at enormous cost to the Russian people.
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