Episode
Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin – Part Three – Terror
- Podcast
- Origin Story
- Published
- Oct 29, 2025
- Duration seconds
- 5767
- Processing state
not_requested
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/origin-story-5452720/episodes/lenin-trotsky-stalin-part-three-terror/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/origin-story-5452720/lenin-trotsky-stalin-part-three-terror.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
• See Origin Story LIVE at The Tabernacle on Thur Nov 13. Buy tickets here. Welcome to the third and final part of the story of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin: Terror. It’s 1929 and the age of Stalin has begun. His mission to revolutionise the Soviet economy succeeds at the price of millions of lives: kulaks are murdered en masse while Ukrainians starve in the man-made famine known as the Holodomor. In 1936 he commences the purge known as the Great Terror, which radiates out from the highest levels of the Communist Party to ravage the entire country. Nobody is safe in Stalin’s nightmare state. While communists abroad excuse or actively endorse Stalin’s atrocities, some socialists and ex-communists recognise that this is the antithesis of what socialism should be and sound the alarm. Stalin has no fiercer critic than Trotsky, but his former rival flounders in exile and meets a sticky end. The USSR’s international reputation is complicated by the rise of Nazi Germany and the Spanish Civil War. Is Stalin Hitler’s worst enemy, his gullible enabler or his unlikely friend? Turns out it’s all three. Stalin’s murderous paranoia fails him just once: he ignores warnings that Hitler will break the Nazi-Soviet Pact and launch an invasion in 1941. The war claims as many as 27 million Soviet lives. Victorious, Stalin sets about strangling hopes of post-war liberalisation and taking control of Eastern Europe — the Cold War begins. Trapped in his cult of personality and endless suspicions, he seems set to launch a new, antisemitic purge in 1953 until death mercifully intervenes. He leaves behind a powerful but traumatised country, a very long way from the hopes of 1917. How much of what the USSR became can be pinned on Stalin’s disastrous personality? What was it like to live and die unde…