Rank the Russian Governments in the past 300 years

[HisGrace]

Lenin founded the NKVD and Cheka and had huge numbers of people executed. The "Red Terror" (his name for it) started with him, not Stalin. USSR under Lenin and Stalin are clearly the worst, everything else is debatable.

[Karpatsky]

Lenin founded the NKVD and Cheka and had huge numbers of people executed. The "Red Terror" (his name for it) started with him, not Stalin. USSR under Lenin and Stalin are clearly the worst, everything else is debatable.

The Cheka is essentially the same body as the Tsarist Okhrana - it even had much of the same personnel. Add on to that the absolute disregard for human development and I find it very hard to justify putting the Tsarist government above pre-1928 USSR.