Description
| Summary: | Joseph Stalin exercised supreme power in the Soviet Union from 1929 until his death in 1953. During that quarter-century, by Oleg Khlevniuk's estimate, he caused the imprisonment and execution of no fewer than a million Soviet citizens per year. Millions more were victims of famine directly resulting from Stalin's policies. What drove him toward such ruthlessness? This essential biography, by the author most deeply familiar with the vast archives of the Soviet era, offers an unprecedented, fine-grained portrait of Stalin the man and dictator. Without mythologizing Stalin as either benevolent or an evil genius, Khlevniuk resolves numerous controversies about specific events in the dictator's life while assembling hundreds of previously unknown letters, memos, reports, and diaries into a comprehensive, compelling narrative of a life that left long-lasting scars on the peoples over which he ruled and altered the course of world history.--Adapted from book jacket.
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| Item Description: | Published simultaneously in Russia and the United States under titles: Stalin : zhiznʹ odnogo vozhdi︠a︡, and Stalin : new biography of a dictator (Yale University Press, 2015). |
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| Physical Description: | xvi, 392 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, portraits ; 25 cm |
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| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
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| ISBN: | 9780300163889
0300163886
9780300219784
0300219784
9780300166941
030016694X |
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| Language: | Translated from the Russian. |
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