Synopses & Reviews
"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 powersvery 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 thinkingboth personal and politicaland 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 himselfas 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 sinceritya combination of qualities with catastrophic consequences for Soviet Russia and the world.
Review
andldquo;No one in the world knows the inner workings of Soviet power in Stalinandrsquo;s time better than Oleg Khlevniuk. Beautifully and artfully composed, deeply moral, and supremely readable, Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator will become the benchmark against which all future biographies of Stalin will be measured. A masterpiece.andrdquo;andmdash;Jan Plamper, author of The Stalin Cult: A Study in the Alchemy of Power
Review
andldquo;Oleg Khlevniuk is incontestably the best Russian student of Soviet history.andnbsp; In this biography, he uses his experience and talents to give us an innovative and convincing portrait of the Soviet andldquo;micromanagingandrdquo; despot.andnbsp; The chapters dealing with the Terror, war, victory and the tragic postwar years break new ground.andnbsp; Stalinandrsquo;s political and private life, his relationships with his immediate circle, his family and the andldquo;Soviet people,andrdquo; his intellectual capacities and his way of leading the country, as well as his cruelty and the system of power he built, come vividly to life, and one leaves the book with a much more profound understanding of some of Europeandrsquo;s darkest decades.andrdquo;andmdash;Andrea Graziosi, author of the Histoire de land#39;URSS
Review
andquot;Oleg Khlevniuk, master of the Russian archives, provides a fresh and acute analysis of Stalin the destroyer to confound revisionists who portray him as a state builder and modernizer.andquot;andmdash;Alfred J. Rieber, author ofandnbsp;Stalin and the Struggle for Eurasia
Review
andquot;Khlevniuk is one of the most knowledgeable historians of Stalin and hisandnbsp;era. This excellent biography of Stalin represents the current state
of scholarship, and should be read widely.andquot;andmdash;Hiroaki Kuromiya, author of Stalin: Profiles in Power
Review
andnbsp;andquot;A superb account by the eminent scholar who pioneered the opening of the Soviet archives. Oleg Khlevniuk summarizes a lifetime of research, eschewing unsubstantiated anecdotes and tales and sticking to the documentary record, to produce an authoritative narrative of Stalinandrsquo;s life and times.andquot;andmdash;Paul Gregory, Hoover Institution
Review
andquot;Enthralling,andnbsp;brilliant, and groundbreaking, this bookandnbsp;confirms Khlevniuk as probably the greatest living expert on Stalin. The culmination of hisandnbsp;revelatoryandnbsp;archivally-researched worksandnbsp;that were the first toandnbsp;understand Stalin as a politician, the book reveals him as a fanatical Marxist and Russian statesmanandnbsp;ofandnbsp;exceptional but flawed complexityandnbsp;formed above all by his political life and the idiosyncratic realities of Soviet power. Essential reading.andquot;andmdash;Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Stalin: theandnbsp;Court of the Red Tsar
Review
andquot;Oleg Khlevniuk makes the modest claim that this is a biography of Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union for thirty years. In fact, Khlevniuk has given us not just a biography of Stalin, but a history of the ruling system that Stalin created, and he does so in six concise chapters. Khlevniuk writes with clarity and insight, following the evolution of Stalin from young revolutionary, to undisputed dictator, and finally to ruthless despot, alone and dying as his subordinates cower and hope for the end. The translation by Nora Favorov is excellent, and makes the book easily accessible to English reading audiences. Khlevniukand#39;s biography of Stalin is a deft achievement.andquot;andmdash;David Shearer, author of Policing Stalinandrsquo;s Socialism: Social Order and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union, 1924-1953
Review
andldquo;Oleg Khlevniukandrsquo;s biography adds greatly to our understanding of Stalin by making extensive and careful use of newly available archives to throw new light on Stalinandrsquo;s rule. His clear-eyed analysis draws a sharp distinction between what we know from serious research and what we should discard as mere speculation. The result is an unvarnished account that warns against nostalgia for Stalinandrsquo;s rule.andrdquo;andmdash;David Holloway, author of Stalin and the Bomb
Review
andquot;In this excellent book, Oleg Khlevniuk answers questions that have engaged historians, puzzled political scientists, and fascinated casual observers for decades. How did Stalin rise from a minor revolutionary to one of the most powerful men in history? How did he manage to first defeat contenders within the Soviet leadership, then to subordinate the Communist Party and the Red Army to his personal authority, to eventually build an empire whose specter haunts Eastern Europe to the present day? And crucially, why didnandrsquo;t anyone stop him before it was too late?andrdquo;andmdash;Milan Svolik, author of The Politics of Authoritarian Rule
Review
andldquo;Khlevniuk manages to take us into the inner sanctum of the dictatorand#39;s power and show how he ruled his subordinatesandmdash;indeed the whole countryandmdash;through the knout and the ginger cookie, the Russian version of carrot and stick. A masterly portrait drawn by a master historian.andrdquo;andmdash;Ronald Grigor Suny, author ofandnbsp;The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the USSR, and the Successor States
Review
andldquo;A very digestible biography, yet one packed with revelations. . . . If you read just one biography this year, make it this one.andrdquo;andmdash;Paul E. Richardson, Russian Life magazine
Review
andldquo;Authoritative, fluently written. . . . The pinnacle of current scholarship on its subject.andrdquo;andmdash;Charlotte Hobson, Spectator
Synopsis
The most authoritative and engrossing biography of the notorious dictator ever written
Synopsis
Josef Stalin exercised supreme power in the Soviet Union from 1929 until his death in 1953. During that quarter-century, by Oleg Khlevniukandrsquo;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 Stalinand#39;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 dictatorandrsquo;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.
and#160;
In brief, revealing prologues to each chapter, Khlevniuk takes his reader into Stalinandrsquo;s favorite dacha, where the innermost circle of Soviet leadership gathered as their vozhd lay dying. Chronological chapters then illuminate major themes: Stalinandrsquo;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 bookandrsquo;s conclusion, the author presents a cogent warning against nostalgia for the Stalinist era.and#160;
About the Author
Why do we need another biography of Stalin?
Rarely have so many new sources of information become available within a short period as with the opening of the Stalin-era Soviet archives. I saw it as my task to weave the most salient new information into a narrative that rests entirely on what we know for certain about Stalin and his time.
and#160;
Was Stalin necessary?
Decades ago the British historian Alec Nove asked, andquot;Was Stalin really necessary?andquot; Everyone knows what a brutal murderer Stalin was, but many believe that andquot;the trains ran on time.andquot; The evidence, however, points to catastrophic mismanagement. Nothing in Stalinand#39;s background qualified him to take dictatorial control of a vast country, reorganize its agriculture, or serve as its chief military strategist. To the end, he remained willfully blind to the fact that he had built an unworkable system.
and#160;
You have been among the first to explore Stalinand#39;s personal archive. What discovery from this collection most surprised you?and#160;
It is interesting that Stalin kept the coerced confessions of the Old Bolsheviks whom he condemned to death. He, of course, knew they were innocent, but for some reason he needed these confessions. Maybe he felt they would justify his actions to posterity?
and#160;
Beside the lost lives, what, for you, is the greatest tragedy of the Stalinist legacy?
I am frightened that so many of our fellow Russians proclaim the Stalinist period to represent the pinnacle of the countryand#39;s achievement and that we should use Stalinist methods to return Russia to glory. They refuse to see the horrible price paid. Stalinand#39;s admirers regard human life as expendableandmdash;the needs of the state come firstandmdash;and are eager to hunt down twenty-first century andquot;enemies.andquot; This totalitarian mindset is Stalinand#39;s most terrifying legacy.