Product Description

For ten years General Dmitri Volkogonov studied military records, party archives, trial documents, and other long-suppressed evidence from the era of the purges- one of the most painful and turbulent periods in Russian history. This is the definitive account of the man, the time, and the tragedy. The author had an incredible access to secret KGB files in his role as historian for the Soviet Army, and he pieces together the story of the man who for thirty years controlled the minds and bodies of the hundreds and millions of people of the Soviet Union. This book, the first of a trilogy written by Volkogonov on Stalin, Lenin, and Trotsky, takes advantage of the author's discoveries to reveal much heretofore unknown knowledge about Stalin's reign of terror in the early days of the Soviet Union.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #330843 in Books
• Published on: 2000-06-01
• Original language: Russian
• Binding: Paperback
• 672 pages

About the Author
Born in 1928, Dmitri Volkogonov was the official Historian of the Soviet Army, and so had access to sensitive archival material. He died in 1995.

Customer Reviews

A biography more suited to historians than to casual readers
Gen. Volkogonov is not a professional historian, and certainly not a great writer. His work his well researched and meticolous, but is fails to either capture the general reader or to impress the reader looking for a clear analysis of causes and consequences. The book is very long, the style of prose quite boring and at times repetitive. The author very often has a moralistic tone ("How could Stalin posssibly be so cruel? Look how corrupt his cronies were...") that bothers those who would like a more detached approach. I guess one has to remember that once he believed in Communism and cannot have helped being shocked by what he found in the state's archives (where he ventured with the original purpose of writing an orthodox biography of the Great Leader); this might explain his being upset at Stalin, but does not make the book more appealing. In the end, Gen. Volgokonov's main merit is exactly this: to have been able to access, thanks to his position in the Red Army, the USSR's impenetrable archives, and to have revealed to the world a deluge of details and documents. Some of them are immensely controversial in their potential consequences (eg the statements made by Stalin before the German attack that war was inevitable; or Zukov's plan for a preventive strike against Germany). Indeed, this book deservedly appears in most bibliographies on the USSR and the Russo-German war, and has provided the academic community with valuable insights for further analysis on Stalin and Stalinism. But it is probably more suited for an historian than for a general reader.

A Note to Will Podmore, previous reviewer of this book
Im not sure if you will read this, but i trust it will be useful for any other poor and unsuspecting soul who happens to take the content of your review as anything other that vastly misguided, or at least immensly controversial....

Firstly, rather than review the text you seem to have produced your own personal take on its content, one that i have to say is fascinating, at least in its absurdity. For the most part i am sure that you are factually accurate, however, if you know anything at all about Stalin and Stalininsm, or the scholarship that has surrounded this topic, you would be aware that you seem to have produced an interpretation that is most bizarre. Indeed, estimates such as those produced by early totalitarian historians such as Conquest have been discredited. However, it seems that although you have referred to the emergence of more accurate statistics sourced from previously closed NKVD archives, you have decided to ignore their content and perhaps pretty much every specialist on the matter. That only three thousand died is a utter absurdity, and i am intrigued as to where you obtained this figure. With the number of excess deaths in the 1930s, (taking into account the increasing influx of new evidence) still sitting at around 10 million including famine and victims of mass repression, i feel you may need to reconsider your declaration of Stalin's resounding and commendable achievments as a 'great revolutionary patriot'. It is plain fact that he was personally involved in the murder of hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Incidently, that the 'enemies' of the state represented such an exaggerated threat to justify the liquidation of the political, economic and military elites is simply untrue. The very same archives that you have cited also reveal the extent to which accusations were routinely made without any basis in truth whatsoever. The days of monolithic causation are most certaintly over; that the Terror was single handedly orchestrated by an inherently evil demi god is an interpretation that is much, and rightly contested. However, to deny the misdeeds of the Stalinist government completely in grossly misleading. If this was your true purpose I must admit that i am most intrigued as to what skewed perspective could prompt such an unsettling interpretaion of events, in an indiviual as apparently educated and well read as yourself. Stalin's economic achievements were undoubtedly immense. It just depends on whether you believe that such achievements justified the adandonemt of democratic values and adoption of mass murder, enabled by the use of repression and the emergence of a police state. Please feel free to justify your motivations...

Perfect starting point for learning about Stalin
Anyone wishing to learn about the Soviet Union under the rule of one of the most important leaders of the Twentieth Century should look no further.

This is not an in-depth book, it is not a ground breaking scholarly work. It is instead, as it says on the cover, a pocket history. I used this book as the starting point for my research on Stalin, it took only an hour or so to read, but provided me with a basic understanding of the Stalin era. It is well written, informative, and provides the reader with a wealth of knowledge in an accessible manner and should encourage most people to delve further into this fascinating era of history that influenced the rest of the twentieth century.

Shukman is a well-regarded author on Stalin and the only area where this book is let down is in its bibliography and recommendations for further reading. Shukman has missed some key texts on Stalin, however this is not the point of a pocket history and is only a minor fault for a text of this type. The majority of books on Stalin are huge tomes, which for the average reader are a daunting prospect. Harold Shukman has successfully condensed the life of Stalin and as a starting point I have seen no better alternative.