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Despite being a grumpy little man, Stalin was also the man behind the most wicked practical joke ever played. Being a very private man he gave the order that no person should enter his bed chambers on pain of death. Later, while in his chambers he decided to test whether his guards had listened to this instruction. Pretending to scream in pain he called for the guards stationed outside the door. Fearing that their leader was in trouble the guards burst into the room. Stalin had them executed for failing to follow his standing orders. This little prank soon backfired, however, when Stalin suffered a seizure while alone in his bedroom. The guards were too afraid to enter, finding him hours later laid in a puddle of stale urine. He died three days later.

Fun Facts About Dictators

Russian State Prize winner in literature and art Rinat Voligamsi (Ufa, Bashkiria) published his version of Lenin's life, reports Interfax.

"The song inspired me to dream on the theme "Lenin is alive, he is more alive than all the living" 15 years ago," Voligamsi has told Interfax on Thursday.

The artist imagines the leader of the world revolution didn't die in 1924, but abandoned politics and started living as a good Muslim because his relatives were of Bashkir origin. Then "renovated Lenin" begins associating with his fictitious twin-brother Sergey and goes on Hajj to Mecca and even writes a work entitled “Islam as the last hope of revolution”.

"I imagine Lenin as an ordinary villager sitting near his peasant's house and smoking tobacco he grew with his own hands in the garden or married to three women or going to Mecca late in life because I think that every atheist has his way to God and Lenin could have found this path," the artist says.

The author's fantasy goes on: Lenin is hiding away in Latin America during World War II where he consults Castro and Trotsky on various questions and he spends the last days of his life with his family in Zurich, where they have an antiques boutique.

The artist realized his unusual project in 2005 when he made 21 photo collages. He used hundreds of authentic old pictures in his work and turned them to "real fantasy" with Photoshop.

"No one saw any mockery in such a creative presentation and vision of Lenin's life. He was an ordinary man and could have lived the way represented by the artist," the Bashkir Union of Artists told Interfax.

AN UNOFFICIAL ALBUM

Vladimir Ulianov (Lenin) and his less known twin brother Sergey. Ufa, 1874


Little Lenin goes to the river to drown a cat with kittens, 1880