The Soviet Union's position on the death of Stalin

• When Stalin became leader in 1929, the Soviet Union was an isolated country, slowly recovering from defeat in WW1.

  By Stalin's death in 1953, just 24 years later, it had become an economic and military superpower.
• • The Soviet union was one of the five permanent members on the United Nations security council, along with the USA, Britain, France and China.
  • The Soviet Union maintained the world's second largest army of around 2.5 million ground troops. Only China had a larger army.
  • The first Soviet atomic bomb was tested in a remote area of Kazakhstan in 1949 and by 1953, the Soviet Union had developed the hydrogen bomb, which was 10X more powerful
• The Soviet Union led the worldwide communist movement, in 1947, it set up the Cominform (Communist information bureau) to co-ordinate with different Communist parties around the world.

  From 1950, Stalin provided support to the communist North Korea, when they invaded the non-communist South Korea