Monarchs of Russia (idea)

Since using a positivist Communist philosophy to justify totalitarian rule is pretty much the same as justifying that rule by Divine Right, we might as well list the strongmen of the Soviet Union in this node. Although paramount power passed through various offices during the Soviet Union's existence, the top man was usually "General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union".

• 1917-1924 Vladimir Ulianov, aka "Lenin"
• 1924-1926 Troika of
• Grigory Yevseyevich Zinovyev,
• Lev Borisovich Rosenfeld, aka "Lev Kamenev", and
• Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili (aka Joseph Stalin).
• 1926-1953 Stalin
• 1953 Georgy Maximilianovich Malenkov.
• 1953-1964 Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (with his pawn, Mikhail Bulganin, as premier).
• 1964-1982 Leonid Ilich Brezhnev (although Mikhail Suslov was often the power behind the throne).
• 1983-1984 Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov.
• 1984-1985 Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko.
• 1985-1991 Mikhail Gorbachev.

On December 25, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as General Secretary and President, and the Soviet Union ceased to exist.  Power devolved onto the (somewhat) democratically elected presidents of the Russian Federation.

• 1991-1999 Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin
• 2000-? Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin

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Thanks to www.brittanica.com for the patronymics and dates, and the knowledge about Bulganin (I had thought he had been General Secretary for a while).