I think it was kind of strange that the Soviet Union didn't have any set amount of time someone could lead the country. If you look at the chart, some of the leaders lead for many years, and two only for a little over a year.

If I didn't know any better, I would assume the two leaders who ruled for about a year were assassinated. However, they both died of natural causes!

That is true. Gorbachev did win a Nobel price in 1991 (I think) He ruined a great state and was rewarded for it. So nice.

@sunnySkys - Gorbachev did indeed win a Nobel Prize. He was responsible for a lot of reforms within the Soviet Union (probably more than any of the other Russian leaders), as well as dissolving the Soviet Union, like you said.

Anyway, I think a lot of people think of Joseph Stalin when they think of Soviet Union leaders. He did rule the longest, and he was definitely the most brutal. He had thousands of people executed while he was in power, and he was instrumental in getting the Soviet Union nuclear program going!

I had no idea there were so many Soviet Union leaders. I tend to associate Lenin, Stalin and Gorbachev with the Soviet Union, and forget about all the rest of them. I suppose that is because Lenin was first, and Stalin ruled the longest.

And of course Mikhail Gorbachev was the last leader of the Soviet Union, and the only one that was in power when I was alive! If I remember correctly, Gorbachev played a big role in ending the Soviet Union. He even won a Nobel Prize for it, I think.

@Trogjoe19: Where does it say anything that Lenin regretted making him the leader? No place. Therefore, it's not even evidence.

Lenin died from of a series of heart attacks.

What Comrade Stalin accomplished in the Soviet Union was great!

The paranoia of Stalin caused him to trust no one. The one man who won over Stalin into his trust was the pathological and demonically manipulative Hitler. This was the only man that Stalin seems to have trusted, but the one man he truly shouldn't have trusted. Hitler lied to everyone, and somehow Stalin thought that Hitler was a follower of him. Stalin recognized that he and Hitler had a lot in common, and may have felt that he was taking the younger Hitler under his wing. What a shock, then, when he realized that the Germans were at his doorstep looking for his head.

Stalin came to power with help from Lenin, but when Lenin realized how bad Stalin's psychological problems were and what a paranoid leader he was, he regretted his decision and counseled against allowing Stalin into power. This happened shortly before Lenin's death, and it is rumored that Stalin killed him indirectly via a stooge, as he tended to do. Stalin's reign of terror makes all the other Soviet leader's periods seem like a pax.

The Soviet Union has many names...it's also known as the USSR, CCCP and the SSSR. USSR is the acronym for Soviet Union's full name in English: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The country's real name was in Cyrillic: Союз Советских Социалистических Республик and the English acronym for that is CCCP. But, the conversion (or transliteration) of its Cyrillic name into Roman characters was Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik which turned into SSSR in its acronym form.