Russia & Former Soviet Union - Political Biography, Stalinist Era (1928-1953), Russian Revolution - 1917-1921, Dictators & Fascists - Political Biography, Communists - Biography, 1917 - 1991 (Soviet Union) - History, Soviet Union - Biography
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Overview
Granted privileged access to Russia's secret archives, Edvard Radzinsky has broken down the iron curtain of myth, secrecy, and lies that has surrounded Stalin's life and career, painting a picture of the Soviet strongman as more calculating, ruthless, and blood-crazed than has ever been described or imagined. Stalin was a man for whom power was all, terror a useful weapon, and deceit a constant companion. Even the very first thing we know about Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, a.k.a. Stalin ("the man of steel"), is, Radzinsky shows, false: he was not born on December 21, 1879, as officially maintained, but a full year earlier. As Radzinsky narrates the high drama of Stalin's epic quest for domination - first within the Communist Party, then over the Soviet Union and the world - he uncovers the startling truth about this most enigmatic of historical figures. Only now, in the post-Soviet era, can what was long suppressed be told: Stalin's long-denied involvement with terrorism as a young revolutionary; the real story of how he mangled his left arm; the crucial importance of his misunderstood, behind-the-scenes role during the October Revolution; his often hostile relationship with Lenin, who used but never fully trusted him; the details of his organization of terror, culminating in the infamous show trials of the 1930s; his secret dealings with Hitler, and how they backfired; and the horrifying plans he was making before his death to send the Soviet Union's Jews to concentration camps - tantamount to a potential second Holocaust. Radzinsky also takes an intimate look at Stalin's private life, marked by his turbulent relationship with his wife Nadezhda, and re-creates the circumstances that led to her suicide. Finally, Radzinsky discovers one of Stalin's elite bodyguards, who breaks forty years of silence to give the strongest evidence yet of the conspiracy behind Stalin's death.Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
Russian historian and playwright Radzinsky, whose bestselling The Last Tsar chronicled the assassination of the Romanov royal family, has produced a vivid, astonishingly intimate biography of Joseph Stalin. By drawing heavily on previously unavailable primary-source documents in recently opened party, state and KGB archives, he portrays the Soviet dictator as even more sadistic and methodically demoniacal than Western historians had supposed. Pointing to the young revolutionary's repeated escapes and trips abroad, Radzinsky builds an intriguing circumstantial case that Stalin was a double agent working for both the Bolshevik cause and the czarist secret police. He documents how Lenin recruited Stalin into terrorist violence and used him to tame and crush dissidence within the party ranks. Through interviews with Stalin's granddaughter and with the niece of Nadezhda Alliluyeva, the dictator's wife, Radzinsky pieces together the violent quarrel between Stalin and his wife that led to her suicide weeks before she was to have major surgery. Using oral testimonies, the author deduces that Stalin's murderous anti-Semitic campaign of 1953-whose goal was the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Jews to Siberia and Kazakhstan-was a prelude to his plan to launch a third world war. Radzinsky also tracked down one of Stalin's bodyguards, Peter Lozgachev, whose testimony that Stalin's guards deliberately denied him medical attention and left him to die adds weight to the author's hypothesis that Stalin was eliminated by close aide Lavrenti Beria (who reportedly boasted, 'I took him out') as part of a conspiracy to avert nuclear Armageddon. Stalin died in 1953, aged 74 by standard sources, although Radzinsky maintains he was a year older. Photos.Publishers Weekly -
Russian historian and playwright Radzinsky, whose bestselling The Last Tsar chronicled the assassination of the Romanov royal family, has produced a vivid, astonishingly intimate biography of Joseph Stalin. By drawing heavily on previously unavailable primary-source documents in recently opened party, state and KGB archives, he portrays the Soviet dictator as even more sadistic and methodically demoniacal than Western historians had supposed. Pointing to the young revolutionary's repeated escapes and trips abroad, Radzinsky builds an intriguing circumstantial case that Stalin was a double agent working for both the Bolshevik cause and the czarist secret police. He documents how Lenin recruited Stalin into terrorist violence and used him to tame and crush dissidence within the party ranks. Through interviews with Stalin's granddaughter and with the niece of Nadezhda Alliluyeva, the dictator's wife, Radzinsky pieces together the violent quarrel between Stalin and his wife that led to her suicide weeks before she was to have major surgery. Using oral testimonies, the author deduces that Stalin's murderous anti-Semitic campaign of 1953-whose goal was the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Jews to Siberia and Kazakhstan-was a prelude to his plan to launch a third world war. Radzinsky also tracked down one of Stalin's bodyguards, Peter Lozgachev, whose testimony that Stalin's guards deliberately denied him medical attention and left him to die adds weight to the author's hypothesis that Stalin was eliminated by close aide Lavrenti Beria (who reportedly boasted, "I took him out") as part of a conspiracy to avert nuclear Armageddon. Stalin died in 1953, aged 74 by standard sources, although Radzinsky maintains he was a year older. Photos. 50,000 first printing; major ad/promo; author tour. (Apr.)Library Journal
A well-known Russian playwright and historian, Radzinsky (The Last Tsar: The Life and Death of Nicholas II, LJ 7/92) has examined mountains of rare archival sources and interviewed many who lived through decades of Stalinist (mis)rule. The result is the best general biography of Stalin to date. Radzinsky strips away layer after layer of myth, falsehood, and enigma to produce a riveting portrait of a man whose primary role model was Ivan the Terrible. Stalin's motives and actions are presented as part of a consistent pattern. The forced collectivization of the kulaks, the Great Terror, and Cold War barbarisms represent not motiveless malignity but malignity with a coherent purpose. Rich in anecdotes and dramatic events, Radzinsky's volume is more important than his previous work and clearly superior to Gen. Dmitri Volkogonov's Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy (LJ 9/15/91), also based on newly available sources. A mandatory purchase.-Mark R. Yerburgh, Fern Ridge Community Lib., Veneta, Ore.Book Details
Published
April 1, 1996
Publisher
Doubleday
Pages
608
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780385473972