Top 10 Most Evil Soviet Leaders

Just like the National Socialist butchers, the international socialist butchers killed millions of innocents, including men, women, and little children.

This list contains the top ten Soviet leaders who caused the most damage to Mother Russia.

The Top Ten

Joseph Stalin

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was a Georgian revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death on March 5, 1953. He held the title of General Secretary of the Communist Party's Central Committee, which gave him effective control over the Soviet state. His rule was marked by rapid... read more

Stalin was a paranoid successor of Lenin and later became a ruthless dictator. Under his leadership, Ukraine suffered from a famine (Holodomor) so severe that many consider it an act of genocide perpetrated by Stalin's government.
In addition to the famine, Stalin ordered purges within the Soviet Union. Anyone deemed an enemy of the state was either executed by the secret police or sent to the gulag, where they eventually died. Stalin is responsible for the deaths of approximately 42 million people, including men, women, and children. In all of history, only Mao may have killed more.

Stalin hijacked the Soviet project and turned it into his own personalist regime. Soviet politics was scarred by authoritarianism, corruption, and crimes against humanity.
Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (April 22, 1870 - January 21, 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1924 and of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1924. Under his leadership, Russia... read more

Lenin is responsible for the deaths of 4 million people, including men, women, and children. He is often ranked as the 5th greatest murderer of the 20th century, following Stalin, Mao, Hitler, and Chiang Kai-shek. Lenin, driven by rage against society, killed and destroyed everything that generations of hard-working and tolerant people had built.
His barbarism set the tone for every communist regime that followed worldwide.
Lavrentiy Beria

Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (29 March 1899-23 December 1953) was a Georgian Bolshevik and Soviet politician, Marshal of the Soviet Union, state security administrator, and chief of the Soviet security apparatus. He served as head of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) under Joseph Stalin... read more

Lavrenti Beria, a notorious figure in Communist Russia, was one of Stalin's closest and most sinister allies. Stalin referred to him as the Russian Himmler, a title that fit his role perfectly. Just as Himmler was to Hitler, Beria was to Stalin. He was involved in various massacres, including the Katyn massacre, and was in charge of the gulags.
Beria tortured and murdered for the state with impunity and was as egotistical and sadistic as he was temperamental. He was also known for his predatory behavior, including the rape of innocent Soviet girls in his chambers.
Genrikh Yagoda

Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda was born Yenokh Gershevich Iyeguda. He was a Soviet secret police official who served as head of the NKVD from 1934 to 1936.
Yagoda supervised the arrest and prosecution of Old Bolsheviks Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev, who were convicted and executed following the... read more
Leon Trotsky

Leon Trotsky was a Russian revolutionary, Marxist theorist, and Soviet politician whose strain of Marxist thought is known as Trotskyism. He played a leading role in the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War. Trotsky was later exiled and assassinated in Mexico in 1940.

Between 1917 and 1924, as the leader of the Red Army during Lenin's war on the peasants, Trotsky was a mass murderer. He was Lenin's chief enforcer in the killing of 4 million innocent people, including men, women, and children. Trotsky supported the killing of all political opponents of the regime, including campaigners for liberal Western democracy. He also supported the extermination of the bourgeoisie.
Vasily Blokhin

Though he did not kill millions, Vasily Blokhin holds the title of "Most Prolific Executioner" of all time, according to the Guinness World Records. He personally executed tens of thousands of prisoners, including approximately 7,000 Polish prisoners of war during the Katyn massacre in the spring of 1940.
Blokhin also carried out executions during the Great Purge, with a total number of victims reaching about 22,000 people.
Lazar Kaganovich

Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich (November 22, 1893 - July 25, 1991) was a Soviet politician and administrator who was one of Joseph Stalin's closest associates. He played a prominent role in Stalin's rise to power and was instrumental in implementing many of Stalin's policies. Kaganovich is particularly... read more

Kaganovich, who was Jewish, is often considered one of the most evil figures in Soviet history. As Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party, he orchestrated the Holodomor. Peasants were banned from entering cities, and Ukrainian villages that did not meet grain quotas were blacklisted and denied food.

He participated in the Holodomor famine and crushed the Ukrainian resistance. Kaganovich was virtually the Soviet Union's Adolf Eichmann, setting a quota of 10,000 executions a week. Eighty percent of Ukrainian intellectuals were shot.
Nikita Khrushchev

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was a Soviet politician who led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party from 1953 to 1964 and as Premier from 1958 to 1964. Khrushchev is known for initiating the process of de-Stalinization and for his role in events... read more

Although he aided Fidel Castro against the USA and supported smaller communist countries, Khrushchev criticized Stalin and spread what some claim were lies to the world. This led to an increase in anti-communist propaganda from Western media and damaged the Soviet Union's reputation. His secret speech is considered by many to be one of the most untruthful things he ever said.

Though he was against Stalin's policy and liberated thousands of Gulag prisoners, he was a monster during the Hungarian Revolution by crushing thousands of civilians.
Leonid Brezhnev

Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev (December 19, 1906 - November 10, 1982) was a Soviet politician who served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1964 until his death in 1982. He also served as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (head of state) from 1960 to 1964 and... read more

He was the Butcher of the Prague Spring in 1968 and also responsible for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which still has effects today.
Felix Dzerzhinsky

Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky, born on September 11, 1877, and died on July 20, 1926, was a Bolshevik revolutionary and Soviet official. Known by the nickname "Iron Felix," he was born into Polish nobility and became a key figure in Soviet state security.... read more

Head of Cheka and carried out various executions during the Red Terror.

The Newcomers

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Lev Mekhlis
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Oleg Baklanov

The Contenders

Boris Yeltsin

A drunk maniac. He destroyed the greatest country and made it dissolve.
Nikolai Yezhov

Nicknamed "The Bloody Dwarf," Nikolai Yezhov succeeded Yagoda as head of the NKVD. He oversaw the Great Terror, during which hundreds of thousands of intellectuals, Trotskyists, national minority leaders, and other "enemies of the state" were arrested, sent to the Gulag, or executed. He was eventually replaced by Beria and executed in 1940.
Georgy Malenkov

He helped Stalin carry out purges.
Mikhail Gorbachev

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (March 2, 1931 - August 30, 2022) was a Russian politician and statesman who served as the last leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 until its dissolution in 1991. Before his death at age 91, he received the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in ending the Cold War. His policies... read more

Not evil at all. He gave democracy to nearly all of Eastern Europe and improved life for millions, ending the Cold War. Yes, he didn't plan on making the Soviet Union collapse (that's actually his biggest regret), but the idea of improving life lived on.

He just wanted greater freedom in the Soviet Union.

He destroyed the socialist motherland.
Eduard Berzin

Eduard Berzin was the first administrator of Dalstroy, the organization responsible for overseeing the forced labor camps in the Kolyma region in the far east. His legacy remains controversial. While conditions in the camps were relatively reasonable during his administration, tens of thousands still died.
Regardless, Berzin played a role in setting up these camps during their formative years. In 1938, he was recalled to the mainland, where he was consumed by the Great Terror and executed. After his death, conditions in Kolyma became much more brutal.
Konstantin Chernenko
Yuri Andropov

He suppressed dissidents, conducted mass arrests, and sent people to mental institutions for going against the state.
Vyacheslav Molotov
Yekaterina Furtseva