In 1953, as Joseph Stalin lay dying, doctors were afraid to even examine him. This harsh leader of the Soviet Union was known to turn on even his closest advisors, sending them to prison to be tried as enemies of the state. Stalin came to power by joining a group of revolutionaries that in 1917 overthrew the Russian Czar, or emperor. They created a Communist government, in which the state controlled all parts of peoples lives. The first leader of the Soviet Union, as it was now called, was Vladimir Lenin. Stalin became one of his aides. When Lenin died in 1924, Stalin took control and ruled the Soviet Union with an iron hand for almost thirty years. In the end an unbelievable twenty million people died from starvation or executions under Stalins rule.