This account of Stalin's life begins with his early years, the family breakup, the abuse by his father and the growth of the traumatized boy into criminal, spy, and finally one of the 20th century's political monsters. The book explores why Stalin was not exposed after the collapse of the Tsarist regime. It gives an account of the discoveries in the odl archives of Stalin's Okhrana files after his rise to power. It came to light in 1926 and there were several attempts to use the file to depose and execute Stalin as an Okhrana provocateur. Soviet officials of Polish and Jewish ethnic origin played a part in the story of this file, and Brackman argues that this inspired Stalin's hatred for these two groups, igniting the irrational urge to destroy them that led to his alliance with Hitler and the partitioning of Poland, which started World War II.
Following his country's victory over Nazi Germany, Joseph Stalin was widely hailed as a great wartime leader and international statesman. Unchallenged on the domestic front, he headed one of the most powerful nations in the world. Yet, in the period from the end of World War II until his death, Stalin remained a man possessed by his fears. In order to reinforce his despotic rule in the face of old age and uncertain health, he habitually humiliated and terrorized members of his inner circle.
This book provides a wide-ranging history of every aspect of Stalin's dictatorship over the peoples of the Soviet Union. Drawing on a huge array of primary and secondary sources, The Stalin Era is a first-hand account of Stalinist thought, policy, and the effects of both of these. The book places the man and his ideology into context both within pre-Revolutionary Russia, Lenin's Soviet Union, and post-Stalinist Russia. The Stalin Era examines collectivization; industrialization; terror; government; the cult of Stalin; education and science; family; religion and the Russian Orthodox Church; and art and the state.
There are a number of publications which describe the experiences of deportees in the Soviet Union, and a number which consider the culture and role of refugees from the Nazis in this country. There are none which connect the two. None, that is to say, which examine the experiences of the victims of Stalin and Hitler from the onset of the Second World War, when their countries were occupied, until the building of their communities in Britain after the war.
Simon Montefiore - Young Stalin
read by James Adams
What makes a Stalin? Was he illegitimate? Was his mother whore or saint? Was Stalin a Tsarist agent or Lenin's chief gangster? Was his most notorious heist planned during his stay in London? Was he to blame for his wife's death? If he really missed the 1917 Revolution, how did he emerge so powerful?
Born in poverty, scarred by his upbringing, exceptional in his studies, this charismatic but dangerous boy was hailed as a romantic poet and trained as a priest but found his mission as fanatical revolutionary. He became the mastermind of bank-robberies, protection-rackets, arson, piracy and murder yet he was, uniquely, part-intellectual, part-brigand. Surprisingly, he is also revealed as a scandalously prolific lover, leaving a trail of mistresses (varying from schoolgirls to noblewomen) and illegitimate children.
