Russia. Moscow. A group of elderly people, all communists, protest close to the Red Square. People hold in their hands the State Flag of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, a portrait of Lenin and of Stalin. The State Flag of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (commonly known as the Soviet flag), was the official state flag of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) from 1922 to 1991. The flag's design and symbolism are derived from several sources, but emerged during the Russian Revolution. The flag is also an international symbol of the communist movement as a whole. The nicknames for the flag were the Hammer and Sickle and the Red Banner. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (1870 –1924), better known by his alias Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1924 and of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1924. Under his administration, Russia, and later the Soviet Union, became a one-party socialist state governed by the Soviet Communist Party. A Marxist, he developed a variant of this communist ideology known as Leninism. Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dzе Jughashvili; 1878 -1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and political leader who governed the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He served as both General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–1952) and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (1941–1953). Despite initially governing the country as part of a collective leadership, he ultimately consolidated power to become the Soviet Union's dictator by the 1930s. A communist ideologically committed to the Leninist interpretation of Marxism, Stalin formalised these ideas as Marxism–Leninism while his own policies are known as Stalinism. Moscow is the capital and largest city of Russia. 14.09.1993 © 1993 Didier Ruef