In the nearly 70 years since its founding, the Soviet Union has had fewer leaders than any other major power in the twentieth century. Until the present decade only four men had reached the pinnacle of power in the Soviet Union, including its founder, Vladimir I. Lenin himself, and Nikita Khrushchev, whose tenure, important as it was, in retrospect stands as a period of transition between the long Stalinist era and the ascension of Leonid Brezhnev. Between them, Stalin and Brezhnev ruled for a total of 47 years - two-thirds of the history of the Soviet state.