Joseph Stalin maintained power through a combination of fear and massive propaganda.
The Great Terror is also known as the Great Purge. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin led this brutal political campaign in order to eliminate dissenting members of the Communist Party and anyone else he considered a threat.
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet politician who ruled the Soviet Union from the mid–1920s until 1953 as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–1953). Besides, he served as Premier (1941–1953).