Georgia, sweet Georgia

Explanation: After Lenin’s death, Trotsky, the prominent revolutionary and theorist, was (theoretically, ha) well-placed to take Lenin’s place as the unofficial strongman of the Soviet Union. He was, however, outpolitiked by a middling figure from Georgia (the country, not the US state) by the name of Joseph Stalin. Trotsky was stripped of power, driven into exile, and eventually assassinated.

Now, Trotsky was far from fucking perfect. Like Lenin, he signed off on the initial creation of the single-party totalitarian Soviet state and the suppression of democracy, under the excuse of ‘crisis’. But he, at least, recognized that the situation was toxic and could not be extended any longer, and agitated (along with both the Right Opposition faction and Trotsky’s own Left Opposition faction) for the extension of greater political pluralism, including multiparty and multi-candidate elections.

Stalin used both the Left and Right Opposition, pretending to favor one or the other to shore up his own power, to ensure a ‘comfortable’ position of total autocracy for himself, and then, once so-established, would dissolve both factions by force. Stalin would go on to perform atrocities, genocides, and totalitarian repression on the Soviet workers and peasantry, as well as much of Eastern Europe.