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This book concludes The Industrialisation of Soviet Russia, an
authoritative account of the Soviet Union's industrial
transformation between 1929 and 1939. The volume before this one
covered the 'good years' (in economic terms) of 1934 to 1936. The
present volume has a darker tone: beginning from the Great Terror,
it ends with the Hitler-Stalin pact and the outbreak of World War
II in Europe. During that time, Soviet society was repeatedly
mobilised against internal and external enemies, and the economy
provided one of the main arenas for the struggle. This was
expressed in waves of repression, intensive rearmament, the
increased regimentation of the workforce and the widespread use of
forced labour.
The most authoritative and engrossing biography of the notorious
dictator ever written, winner of the 2016 PROSE Award for Biography
& Autobiography "Enthralling, brilliant, and groundbreaking,
this book confirms Khlevniuk as probably the greatest living expert
on Stalin. Essential reading."-Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of
Stalin: the Court of the Red Tsar Josef Stalin exercised supreme
power in the Soviet Union from 1929 until his death in 1953. During
that quarter-century, by Oleg Khlevniuk's estimate, he caused the
imprisonment and execution of no fewer than a million Soviet
citizens per year. Millions more were victims of famine directly
resulting from Stalin's policies. What drove him toward such
ruthlessness? This essential biography, by the author most deeply
familiar with the vast archives of the Soviet era, offers an
unprecedented, fine-grained portrait of Stalin the man and
dictator. Without mythologizing Stalin as either benevolent or an
evil genius, Khlevniuk resolves numerous controversies about
specific events in the dictator's life while assembling many
hundreds of previously unknown letters, memos, reports, and diaries
into a comprehensive, compelling narrative of a life that altered
the course of world history. In brief, revealing prologues to each
chapter, Khlevniuk takes his reader into Stalin's favorite dacha,
where the innermost circle of Soviet leadership gathered as their
vozhd lay dying. Chronological chapters then illuminate major
themes: Stalin's childhood, his involvement in the Revolution and
the early Bolshevik government under Lenin, his assumption of
undivided power and mandate for industrialization and
collectivization, the Terror, World War II, and the postwar period.
At the book's conclusion, the author presents a cogent warning
against nostalgia for the Stalinist era.
In the Great Terror of 1937 38 more than a million Soviet citizens
were arrested or killed for political crimes they didn't commit.
What kind of people carried out this violent purge, and what
motivated them? This book opens up the world of the Soviet
perpetrator for the first time. Focusing on Kuntsevo, the Moscow
suburb where Stalin had a dacha, Alexander Vatlin shows how
Stalinism rewarded local officials for inventing enemies. Agents of
Terror reveals stunning, detailed evidence from archives available
for a limited time in the 1990s. Going beyond the central figures
of the terror, Vatlin takes readers into the offices and
interrogation rooms of secret police at the district level. Spurred
at times by ambition, and at times by fear for their own lives,
agents rushed to fulfill quotas for arresting ""enemies of the
people"" even when it meant fabricating the evidence. Vatlin pulls
back the curtain on a Kafkaesque system, forcing readers to
reassess notions of historical agency and moral responsibility in
Stalin-era crimes.
An essential exploration of how authoritarian regimes operate at
the local level How do local leaders govern in a large
dictatorship? What resources do they draw on? Yoram Gorlizki and
Oleg Khlevniuk examine these questions by looking at one of the
most important authoritarian regimes of the twentieth century.
Starting in the early years after the Second World War and taking
the story through to the 1970s, they chart the strategies of Soviet
regional leaders, paying particular attention to the forging and
evolution of local trust networks.
"What a long, extraordinary process digging into the deepest
secrets of the Gulag has been. Now, here is its history, fully,
factually, and humanly effected for the present day by Oleg
Khlevniuk."- Robert Conquest, from the forward The human cost of
the Gulag, the Soviet labor camp system in which millions of people
were imprisoned between 1920 and 1956, was staggering. Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn and others after him have written movingly about the
Gulag, yet never has there been a thorough historical study of this
unique and tragic episode in Soviet history. This groundbreaking
book presents the first comprehensive, historically accurate
account of the camp system. Russian historian Oleg Khlevniuk has
mined the contents of extensive archives, including long-suppressed
state and Communist Party documents, to uncover the secrets of the
Gulag and how it became a central component of Soviet ideology and
social policy. Khlevniuk argues persuasively that the Stalinist
penal camps created in the 1930s were essentially different from
previous camps. He shows that political motivations and paranoia
about potential enemies contributed no more to the expansion of the
Gulag than the economic incentive of slave labor did. And he offers
powerful evidence that the Great Terror was planned centrally and
targeted against particular categories of the population. Khlevniuk
makes a signal contribution to Soviet history with this
exceptionally informed and balanced view of the Gulag.
Based on meticulous research in previously unavailable documents in
the Soviet archives, this compelling book illuminates the secret
inner mechanisms of power in the Soviet Union during the years when
Stalin established his notorious dictatorship. Oleg V. Khlevniuk
focuses on the top organ in Soviet Russia's political hierarchy of
the 1930s--the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party--and on the political and interpersonal dynamics
that weakened its collective leadership and enabled Stalin's rise.
Khlevniuk's unparalleled research challenges existing theories of
the workings of the Politburo and uncovers many new findings
regarding the nature of alliances among Politburo members, Sergei
Kirov's murder, the implementation of the Great Terror, and much
more. The author analyzes Stalin's mechanisms of generating and
retaining power and presents a new understanding, unmatched in
texture and depth, of the highest tiers of the Communist Party in a
crucial era of Soviet history.
From 1931 to 1936, Stalin vacationed at his Black Sea residence for
two to three months each year. While away from Moscow, he relied on
correspondence with his subordinates to receive information, watch
over the work of the Politburo and the government, give orders, and
express his opinions. This book publishes for the first time
translations of 177 handwritten letters and coded telegrams
exchanged during this period between Stalin and his most highly
trusted deputy, Lazar Kaganovich. The unique and revealing
collection of letters--all previously classified top
secret--provides a dramatic account of the mainsprings of Soviet
policy while Stalin was consolidating his position as personal
dictator. The correspondence records his positions on major
internal and foreign affairs decisions and reveals his opinions
about fellow members of the Politburo and other senior figures.
Written during the years of agricultural collectivization, forced
industrialization, famine, repression, and Soviet rearmament in the
face of threats from Germany and Japan, these letters constitute an
unsurpassed historical resource for all students of the Stalin
regime and Soviet history.
"It is thus important to a) fundamentally purge the Finance and
Gosbank bureaucracy, despite the wails of dubious Communists like
Briukhanov-Piatakov; b) definitely shoot two or three dozen
wreckers from these apparaty, including several dozen common
cashiers."-- J. Stalin, no earlier than 6 August 1930
"Today I read the section on international affairs. It came out
well. The confident, contemptuous tone with respect to the great
powers, the belief in our own strength, the delicate but plain
spitting in the pot of the swaggering great powers--very good. Let
them eat it."--J. Stalin, January 1933
Between 1925 and 1936, a dramatic period of transformation within
the Soviet Union, Josef Stalin wrote frequently to his trusted
friend and political colleague Viacheslav Molotov, Politburo
member, chairman of the USSR Council of Commissars, and minister of
foreign affairs. In these letters, Stalin mused on political
events, argued with fellow Politburo members, and issued orders.
The more than 85 letters collected in this volume constitute a
unique historical record of Stalin's thinking--both personal and
political--and throw valuable light on the way he controlled the
government, plotted the overthrow of his enemies, and imagined the
future. This formerly top secret correspondence, once housed in
Soviet archives, is now published for the first time.
The letters reveal Stalin in many different and dramatic
situations: fighting against party rivals like Trotsky and
Bukharin, trying to maneuver in the rapids of the Chinese
revolution, negotiating with the West, insisting on the completion
of all-out collectivization, and ordering the execution of
scapegoats for economic failures. And they provide important and
fascinating information about the Soviet Union's party-state
leadership, about party politics, and about Stalin himself--as an
administrator, as a Bolshevik, and as an individual.
The book includes much supplementary material that places the
letters in context. Russian editor Oleg V. Naumov and his
associates have annotated the letters, introduced each
chronological section, and added other archival documents that help
explain the correspondence. American editor Lars T. Lih has
provided a lengthy introduction identifying what is new in the
letters and using them to draw a portrait of Stalin as leader. Lih
points out how the letters help us grasp Stalin's unique blend of
cynicism and belief, manipulation and sincerity--a combination of
qualities with catastrophic consequences for Soviet Russia and the
world.
Following his country's victory over Nazi Germany, Joseph Stalin
was widely hailed as a great wartime leader and international
statesman. Unchallenged on the domestic front, he headed one of the
most powerful nations in the world. Yet, in the period from the end
of World War II until his death, Stalin remained a man possessed by
his fears. In order to reinforce his despotic rule in the face of
old age and uncertain health, he habitually humiliated and
terrorized members of his inner circle. He had their telephones
bugged and even forced his deputy, Viacheslav Molotov, to betray
his own spouse as a token of his allegiance.
Often dismissed as paranoid and irrational, Stalin's behavior
followed a clear political logic, contend Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg
Khlevniuk. Stalin's consistent and overriding goal after the war
was to consolidate the Soviet Union's status as a superpower and,
in the face of growing decrepitude, to maintain his own hold as
leader of that power. To that end, he fashioned a system of
leadership that was at once patrimonial-repressive and quite
modern. While maintaining informal relations based on personal
loyalty at the apex of the system, in the postwar period Stalin
also vested authority in committees, elevated younger specialists,
and initiated key institutional innovations with lasting
consequences.
Close scrutiny of Stalin's relationships with his most intimate
colleagues also shows how, in the teeth of periodic persecution,
Stalin's deputies cultivated informal norms and mutual
understandings which provided the foundations for collective rule
after his death. Based on newly released archival documents,
including personal correspondence, drafts of CentralCommittee
paperwork, new memoirs, and interviews with former functionaries
and the families of Politburo members, this book will appeal to all
those interested in Soviet history, political history, and the
lives of dictators.
Cold Peace was a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title for 2005.
In the Great Terror of 1937-38 more than a million Soviet citizens
were arrested or killed for political crimes they didn't commit.
What kind of people carried out this violent purge, and what
motivated them? This book opens up the world of the Soviet
perpetrator for the first time. Focusing on Kuntsevo, the Moscow
suburb where Stalin had a dacha, Alexander Vatlin shows how
Stalinism rewarded local officials for inventing enemies. Agents of
Terror reveals stunning, detailed evidence from archives available
for a limited time in the 1990s. Going beyond the central figures
of the terror, Vatlin takes readers into the offices and
interrogation rooms of secret police at the district level. Spurred
at times by ambition, and at times by fear for their own lives,
agents rushed to fulfill quotas for arresting "enemies of the
people" -even when it meant fabricating the evidence. Vatlin pulls
back the curtain on a Kafkaesque system, forcing readers to
reassess notions of historical agency and moral responsibility in
Stalin-era crimes.
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