Long before it became an Olympic host city, Sochi was a favorite getaway for one of history's most ruthless dictators: Josef Stalin.
The Soviet leader had a villa built in the hills overlooking the Black Sea, and he visited it during some of the most tumultuous years of his reign.
The villa, known as Stalin's dacha, or summer house, was built in 1934, and he used it until the end of World War II in 1945.