Emmy Awards nominee for "Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft: Research: Multi-faceted portrait of the man who succeeded Lenin as the head of the Soviet Union. With a captivating blend of period documents, newly-released information, newsreel and archival footage and interviews with experts, the program examines his rise to power, deconstructs the cult of personality that helped him maintain an iron grip over his vast empire, and analyzes the policies he introduced, including the deadly expansion of the notorious gulags where he banished so many of his countrymen to certain death.

Edward Herrmann
as Narrator (voice)

Joseph Stalin
as Self (archive footage)

Vladimir Lenin
as Self (archive footage)

Lev Kopelev
as Self

Dodo Chichinadze
as Self

Lev Razgon
as Self

Leonid Zamyatin
as Self

Edvard Radzinsky
as Self

Alexander Burdonsky
as Self

Dmitry Likhachev
as Self