Communism, Russian & Soviet History, 1917-1991 (Soviet Union) - History, Political Biography, Europe - Political Biography, Historical Biography - Russia & Soviet Union, Asia - Political Biography

Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy

Name: Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy
Author: Dmitri Volkogonov
ISBN: 9780761507185

by Dmitri Volkogonov

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Overview

Joseph Stalin plunged Russia into a barbarous nightmare the likes of which the world has never seen, leaving behind a ravaged nation and a legacy of grief, but no answers. Until now. As propaganda chief of the Soviet Red Army and later chairman of the Russian Archives Declassifying Commision, General Dmitri Volkogonov enjoyed unparalleled access to the vast secret archives of the former Soviet Union.

"The first massive indictment in Russia of the dictator's entire record. . . . Volkogonov deserves a place of honor in the ranks of Russian historians."
— Wall Street Journal

For ten years Volkogonov studied military records, party archives, trial documents, and other long-suppressed evidence from the era of the purges. He scoured Stalin's personal records and interviewed members of Stalin's Kremlin staff as well as high-ranking party officials, top army brass, and others who knew the ruthless leader. Offering the first true glimpse of Stalin in action, this is the definitive account of the man, the time, and the tragedy.

About the Author, Dmitri Volkogonov

Dmitri Volkogonov was a career officer in the Soviet Red Army who, until his death in 1995, played an integral role in the demilitarization of Russia as Boris Yeltsin's most senior military advisor and as a deputy in the Russian parliament. The other books in his groundbreaking trilogy are Lenin: A New Biography and Trotsky: The Eternal Revolutionary.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The most candid and fullest reappraisal of Stalin to date by a Soviet source, this chilling, remarkably intimate, gripping biography marks an historical as well as scholarly event. How was it possible for an inconspicuous Party functionary, with only a modest role in the October Revolution, to become messianic arbiter of the fate of millions via terror, mass murder, exile and deportation? Drawing on hitherto untapped major archives as well as on interviews, Soviet historian Volkogonov shows how Stalin built an omnipotent bureaucracy to serve his cruelest whims and abetted the slide toward one-man dictatorship. We see a ``great actor'' conning the populace into worshiping him as ``good tsar'' even as he liquidated imagined enemies and turned rural workers into mindless cogs in a collectivized agrarian machine. The author, a deputy in the Russian parliament, lost his father to Stalin's executioners. With great narrative skill, he dramatically documents Stalin's paranoia and hunger for power, his purge of the officer corps, his secret diplomacy with Nazi Germany and massive, bloody bungling during WW II. Photos. (Sept.)

Booknews

A revelatory account, researched from myriad archives and interviews never previously available. Volkogonov apparently led for many years a kind of dual life: outwardly a hard-line political instructor of the armed forces; inwardly planning, researching, and writing this biography, which glasnost finally allowed him to bring to fruition. Includes 24 pages of b&w photographs. Translated from the two-volume Russian edition of 1989 (Novosti, Moscow). Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)