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Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN? You've done it repeatedly already, and we're trying for something a little better.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Well, while he was writing poems,

1) the European colonial powers were losing their empires,

2) the EU wouldn't exist in any form until several years after he died,

3) USSR (in which he was in command for a good chunk of time) was propelled from a rural provincial power into one of the two global superpowers (who, among other things, was crucial in defeating the Nazi Germany)

4) he had an iron rule in said USSR, and managed to secure half of Europe (and half of what is now EU, including half of Germany) for his extended empire

Plus a lot of murders and political power plays...

So, yeah, he was hardly just someone "writing poems" and losing time...

Stalin stopped writing his poems years before the USSR even existed at all. Before that latter date he had already spent several years as a professional revolutionary (and in prison camps).

He was off murdering people and the EU didn’t exist then anyway.