Stalinism

Stalinism is the system of rule and the policies associated with Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union from the late 1920s until 1953. It combined a one-party state and a personality cult with forced collectivisation of agriculture, rapid industrialisation through central planning, and mass terror by the secret police, including show trials and the Gulag labour camps. The term is also used for regimes elsewhere, such as Albania under Enver Hoxha, that copied the model.