Joseph Stalin,: A short biography, Review
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
My Struggle with Joseph Stalin: The Siege of Berlin, 1948-9
My Struggle with Joseph Stalin: The Siege of Berlin, 1948-9 Review
My Struggle with Joseph Stalin: The Siege of Berlin, 1948-9 Feature
This is a first-hand account of the Berlin Airlift written by someone whose period of national service coincided with this extraordinary historical event. After initial training in Britain C A Latimer was sent to Berlin in 1948, just as the airlift operation was entering its critical phase.
He describes the momentous efforts of the following winter and spring through his own experiences of working alongside army colleagues and ordinary Berliners engaged in the Herculean task of bringing enough food and fuel to keep the city functioning under the extreme duress of the Soviet blockade.
The people he met are lovingly recalled, with even the tiniest incidents being portrayed in vivid detail after almost sixty years. Latimer combines his memories with reflection on the political events of the time, which put into context the underlying story of a young man's dawning political awareness.
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Monday, March 28, 2011
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin Review
Joseph Stalin Feature
A portrait of the tyrannical Soviet leader describes Stalin's life and career, his role in the rise and fall of Soviet communism, his treatment of the Soviet people, and his impact on twentieth-century history.
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Sunday, March 27, 2011
Joseph Stalin (20th Century Leaders)
Joseph Stalin (20th Century Leaders) Review
Joseph Stalin (20th Century Leaders) Feature
This book gives a compelling account of Stalin's life, from his youth in Georgia to his suspicious death in Moscow. It explains how he rose to power to eventually control his country with a "fist of steel" and propell it into the Cold War. Fascinating quotations and archive photographs bring his personality to life, while authoritative texts analyse his place in history.
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Saturday, March 26, 2011
Joseph Stalin (Impact Biographies Ser.)
Joseph Stalin (Impact Biographies Ser.) Review
Joseph Stalin (Impact Biographies Ser.) Feature
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Friday, March 25, 2011
Joseph Stalin: From Peasant to Premier (People in Focus)
Joseph Stalin: From Peasant to Premier (People in Focus) Review
Joseph Stalin: From Peasant to Premier (People in Focus) Feature
Examines the life and times of Joseph Stalin, the dictatorial leader of the Soviet Union from 1925 to 1953.
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Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Joseph Stalin (Heroes & Villains)
Joseph Stalin (Heroes & Villains) Review
Joseph Stalin (Heroes & Villains) Feature
To this day, the name Stalin conjures an image of a frightening shadowy figure who was, by all respected accounts, the worst killer in history. This book hopes to answer some pivotal questions about the man. Who was Stalin? Where did he and his ideas come from? How did he wield his power and why? And what is the scale of the horrors Stalin inflicted?
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Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Stalin: A Biography
Stalin: A Biography Review
Stalin: A Biography Feature
Overthrowing the conventional image of Stalin as an uneducated political administrator inexplicably transformed into a pathological killer, Robert Service reveals a more complex and fascinating story behind this notorious twentieth-century figure. Drawing on unexplored archives and personal testimonies gathered from across Russia and Georgia, this is the first full-scale biography of the Soviet dictator in twenty years.
Service describes in unprecedented detail the first half of Stalin's life--his childhood in Georgia as the son of a violent, drunkard father and a devoted mother; his education and religious training; and his political activity as a young revolutionary. No mere messenger for Lenin, Stalin was a prominent activist long before the Russian Revolution. Equally compelling is the depiction of Stalin as Soviet leader. Service recasts the image of Stalin as unimpeded despot; his control was not limitless. And his conviction that enemies surrounded him was not entirely unfounded.
Stalin was not just a vengeful dictator but also a man fascinated by ideas and a voracious reader of Marxist doctrine and Russian and Georgian literature as well as an internationalist committed to seeing Russia assume a powerful role on the world stage. In examining the multidimensional legacy of Stalin, Service helps explain why later would-be reformers--such as Khrushchev and Gorbachev--found the Stalinist legacy surprisingly hard to dislodge.
Rather than diminishing the horrors of Stalinism, this is an account all the more disturbing for presenting a believable human portrait. Service's lifetime engagement with Soviet Russia has resulted in the most comprehensive and compelling portrayal of Stalin to date.
(20050221)
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Monday, March 21, 2011
Stalin: A New History
Stalin: A New History Review
Stalin: A New History Feature
The recent declassification of a substantial portion of Stalin's archive has made possible this fundamental new assessment of the controversial Soviet leader. Leading international experts accordingly challenge many assumptions about Stalin from his early life in Georgia to the Cold War years--with contributions ranging across the political, economic, social, cultural, ideological and international history of the Stalin era. The volume provides a more profound understanding of Stalin's power and one of the most important leaders of the twentieth century.
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Sunday, March 20, 2011
Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928-1941
Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928-1941 Review
Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928-1941 Feature
"To my mind, the most significant single scholarly contribution made to date, anywhere, to the history of Soviet power."—George F. Kennan
This book forms the second volume of Tucker's biography of Stalin, the first volume of which was "Stalin as Revolutionary". The author shows that Stalin was a Bolshevik of the radical right whose revolution cast the country deep into its imperial, autocratic past. In 1929 Stalin plunged Soviet Russia into a coercive "revolution from above", a decade-long effort to amass military-industrial power for a new war. He forced 25 million peasant families into state-run collectives and transformed the Communist Party into a servile instrument. In 1939, he concluded the pact with Hitler that enabled him to grasp at Eastern Europe while Hitler made war in the West. Tucker brings a fresh analysis to these events and to the Terror of the 1930s, revealing the motives and methods of what he calls the greatest murder mystery of this century.
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