Russia & Former Soviet Union - Political Biography, Stalinist Era (1928-1953), Russian Revolution - 1917-1921, Communism by Region, Dictators & Fascists - Political Biography, Communists - Biography, 1917 - 1991 (Soviet Union) - History, Soviet Union - Bi
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Overview
In 1929 Stalin plunged Soviet Russia into a coercive revolution from above, a decade-long effort to amass military-industrial power in preparation for a new war. Later in the 1930s Stalin transformed the Communist Party into a servile instrument of his personal dictatorship. In 1939 he concluded a pact with Hitler that enabled him to impose his revolution on parts of Eastern Europe while Hitler made war on the West. With the publication of 'Stalin In Power', this pivotal sequence of events at last acquires a its interpretive history.A professor of politics emeritus at Princeton University explains at last in authoritative detail the motivations, personality, and actions of the brutal ruler whose years in power still cast a dark shadow on the world stage. A dramatic narrative interweaving newly documented information, political analysis, and psychological insight. Photographs.
Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
Many Western historians portray Stalin as a pragmatic, if disastrously blundering revolutionary who had no overarching vision of where Russia was heading under his leadership. Not so, argues Tucker in this massive, provocative history; Stalin acted with forethought. Driven by a need to prove himself ``a second and greater Lenin,'' he boldly and confidently implemented his collectivist schemes, backed by a policy of terror and accomplished through the seizure of peasant lands and households, mass murder, forced resettlement and prison camps. His state-directed, state-enforced ``revolution from above,'' in Tucker's ( Stalin as Revolutionary ) view, was a throwback to the state-building of the earliest Muscovite grand princes. The author illumines the ``Stalinist culture'' the dictator promoted in everything from movies to ``folk'' songs, with its master themes of heroism and communal uplift. This gripping history is crucial reading for anyone seeking to understand Stalin or contemporary Soviet affairs. Photos. (Nov.)Library Journal
This remarkable sequel to Stalin As Revolutionary, 1879-1929 ( LJ 9/1/73) is at once the best of Tucker's many books and arguably the finest work in the burgeoning field of Stalin studies. The author's achievement synthesizes recent Soviet revelations, better-known sources on Stalin, and personal interviews into a major work of biography. Tucker's Stalin is neither simply mad nor opportunistic, but the methodical ``Iosif Grozny,'' an idealized Ivan the Terrible, and, tragically for millions, one whose terror far surpassed that of any czar. Tucker's depiction of Stalin and the terror machine is persuasive; but more controversial is the assertion that the purges served a ``cathartic function'' of exculpating Stalin for his own conspiracy against the revolution. The psychological dimension coexists with the political. Thus, Stalin's decimation of foreign Communists is both an expression of xenophobia and preparation for the 1939 Hitler-Stalin Pact. Whatever one's judgment of author or subject, this book can be safely recommended for all academic and public libraries.-- Zachary T. Irwin, Penn State - Behrend Coll. , ErieBook Details
Published
March 20, 1991
Publisher
W. W. Norton & Co.
Pages
1
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780393028812