Synopses & Reviews
Review
A needed, well-written and compact reminder that Russia is still struggling to reconcile the conflicting narratives of the great crimes in its past
Cohen helps us better understand Russias enigmatic present, and better appreciate what to look for as it lurches into the future.”
The New York Times Book ReviewA needed, well-written and compact reminder that Russia is still struggling to reconcile the conflicting narratives of the great crimes in its past.”
The New York Times Book Review
Russians today are inheritors of an unspeakably immense crime, and Cohen engages fullyand personallywith the debate on the way they continue to grapple with their Stalinist legacy.”
The New Yorker
Stephen Cohen is far and away the most original, creative, informed, and insightful observer writing on Russian affairs today. . . Cohen writes with clarity, elegance, and power.”
Alexander Rabinowitch, author of The Bolsheviks Come to Power
Stephen Cohen brings to life the horror, shock, and despair of Stalins gulags . . . While many nonfiction books of this genre remain locked on Stalin, his mind, and temperament, Cohen shows us Stalins national horror from the viewpoint of victims family members.”
New York Journal of Books
An authoritative, engrossing account.”
E. L. Doctorow
Synopsis
A social history of the re-integration of Gulag survivors
Synopsis
Joseph Stalin's reign of terror in the Soviet Union has been called "the other holocaust." Over the course of 24 years, more innocent men, women, and children perished than died in Hitler's murder of European Jews. This book originated 30 years ago when Stephen F. Cohen, a professor of Russian studies and history at New York University, first began researching the lives of those victims released after Stalin's death. There was precious little information available, and many of the victims were still afraid, but Cohen persisted, and through the years accumulated the remarkable stories of their return to society.