For almost a century, Joseph Stalin’s dictatorial regime appeared as the long shadow of the Russian revolution. But, contrary to both Stalinist and liberal accounts, he was not the inheritor of 1917. The regime he built represented and executed a complete counter-revolution against the upsurge of radical democracy and popular agency in 1917. This was not due to some internal fault of the revolution, but a product of the defeat of the world revolutionary wave that followed in Russia’s wake. It went about spreading this reactionary role across every continent, restraining workers’ uprisings from Asia to Europe to the Americas over the following decades. Understanding Stalin’s rise is important for recovering the real legacy of 1917, and reclaiming the vision of human liberation at the heart of Marxism.