Of Stalin, the poet Osip Mandelstam wrote:

His fingers are fat as grubs
And the words, final as lead weights, fall from his lips,
His cockroach whiskers leer
And his boot tops gleam.
Around him a rabble of thin-necked leaders--
Fawning half men for him to play with.
They whinny, purr or whine,
As he prates and points a finger,
One by one forging his laws, to be flung
Like horseshoes at the head, the eye or the groin.
And every killing is a treat.

For this he lost his life.