Stalin: Breaker of Nations - Softcover

Conquest, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140169539 ISBN 13: 9780140169539

Publisher: Penguin Books, 1992

Synopsis

Of all the despots of our time, Joseph Stalin lasted the longest and wielded the greatest power, and his secrets have been the most jealously guarded—even after his death.

In this book, the first to draw from recently released archives, Robert Conquest gives us Stalin as a child and student; as a revolutionary and communist theoretician; as a political animal skilled in amassing power and absolutely ruthless in maintaining it. He presents the landmarks of Stalin’s rule: the class with Lenin; collectivization; the Great Terror; the Nazi-Soviet pact and the Nazi-Soviet war; the anti-Semitic campaign that preceded his death; and the legacy he left behind.

Distilling a lifetime’s study, weaving detail, analysis, and research, Conquest has given us an extraordinarily powerful narrative of this incredible figure.

“Thoughtful and thorough and shot through with insight.”—The Washington Post Book World

“Definitive . . . a magnificent, even poetic, act of historical retribution.”—The New Leader

“Brilliant . . . this book probably is the most cogent and readable account of Stalin’s life yet published.”—The San Diego Union

About this title

About the Author:

Robert Conquest was one of Britain’s most respected historians and was an acclaimed novelist, poet, critic, and reviewer. He was the author of such works as the bestselling The Harvest of Sorrow and Stalin and the Kirov Murder.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Blending impeccable scholarship and deeply revealing anecdotes, noted Soviet scholar Conquest (Stalin and the Kirov Murder, 1989, etc.) illuminates Stalin's role in history as well as his private character. ``Overall he gives the impression of a large and crude claylike figure, a golem, into which a demonic spark has been instilled,'' writes Conquest of ``a man who perhaps more than any other determined the course of the twentieth century.'' Conquest sifts through post-glasnost material to pursue the truth about the author of the Big Lie, who ``ruled not only by terror but also by falsification'' (the emblem of which was, Conquest notes, torture to extract false confessions). In revisiting the stages of Stalin's upbringing, rise to power, and despotism, Conquest excels at finding the telling detail to reveal the man: Stalin's claim to party leaders that Lenin had asked Stalin to procure poison for him; Stalin's telephone call to Pasternak inviting him to plea for the poet Mandelstam's life; his praise of Hitler for murdering much of the Sturmabteilung--the Nazi storm troopers--one night. At the height of the 1932 famine in which millions were dying (and which the Soviet government made a state secret and simply denied worldwide), Stalin's second wife, Nadezhda, told him of the famine, which resulted in a fight and may have led a few days later to a public scene of brutality--after which Nadezhda shot herself. In the larger historical events (collectivization, the purges, the Great Patriotic War, the show trials), Conquest shows a masterful grasp, quickly and lucidly drawing fresh assessments without getting mired in the nonessential. Said to be the first post-glasnost Stalin bio by a Westerner, this is a must for anyone interested in the dictator, and helps to illumine the recent, denser study by Soviet military man Dmitri Volkogonov (Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, p. 921). (Eight pages of photographs--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0140169539
• ISBN 13: 9780140169539
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384