6 Photos Taken Moments Before Everything Went Horribly Wrong

Lenin With Stalin – The Smile That Sealed The Soviet Union’s Fate

This 1922 photo shows Vladimir Lenin and a young Joseph Stalin together in Gorki. They’re smiling, relaxed, seemingly united. What Lenin didn’t know—what nobody knew—was that Stalin would soon rise to absolute power, betray Lenin’s legacy, and become one of the most brutal dictators in human history. Lenin had his doubts about Stalin, famously writing a “testament” warning against him, but it was too late. The photo shows the two men who would shape the Soviet Union—one just before his death, the other just before his rise to terror.