Lenin
Soon after his death, Lenin's body was embalmed and placed in Moscow's Red Square. His supporters, attempting to develop a personality cult, gave exaggerated accounts of his leadership, many of which have been refuted by historians.
Although Lenin can be fondly referred to as the father of Soviet Russia, he is often accused of setting the scene for Stalin's campaigns of forced labour and mass murder. During the revolution, Lenin imprisoned and exiled his opponents, caused large-scale famine with his agricultural policies, and forced thousand of peasant farmers, amongst others, into forced labour camps.
Lenin's ideas of equality cannot outweigh his despotic behaviour.
Stalin
Shortly before his death, Lenin called for Stalin's removal from office due to growing popularity, both within the communist party and amongst the Russian public.
Stalin managed to maintain his position as party secretary and ascended to autocratic leadership with Lenin's death.
Stalin's regime is recorded as one of the bloodiest in history. Millions were killed through the purges, through famine, and through forced labour. Stalin's actions have often been referred to as genocide/crimes against humanity. It has even been suggested that deaths at the hands of Stalin's regime outweigh those caused by the brutality of the Nazi regime.
Political Importance: Russia and the subsequent challenge to capitalism
The West was nervous about the new developments in the Soviet Union, the largest country in the world. This is because the Soviets' ideology of communism posed a direct threat to Western democracy and capitalism.
Stalin was viewed as a despot intent on achieving world power and ideological domination. Despite this hostility, in the Second World War the Soviets were forced to fight with the Allies, led by Britain and later the United States of America (USA), against their common enemy, the Germans. During this War, the Soviets and the Americans took over the reigns from Britain and Western Europe as world leaders and developed into superpowers.
When the War ended and their common enemies were defeated, the two strongest nations in the world became embroiled in a bitter power struggle that would last for more than 40 years, and threatened to destroy the whole planet. It was known as the Cold War, and between 1947 and 1990 countries all over the world got involved in some way or another, as governments were forced to choose sides either for or against communism and the Soviet Union.
Internally, the Soviet Union was an oppressive state that had not fulfilled its promise of being governed by the masses. In reality, the Bolshevik or Russian Communist Party was a totalitarian regime that wished to control the public and private lives of all its subjects.
In 1990, communism in Russia fell and the Soviet Union disintegrated. Today, the states of the former Soviet Union are independent, but form part of a Commonwealth of Independent States. States that are still communist today are China, Cuba and North Korea.