Book Description
This breakthrough book provides a detailed reconstruction of Stalin’s leadership from the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 to his death in 1953. Making use of a wealth of new material from Russian archives, Geoffrey Roberts challenges a long list of standard perceptions of Stalin: his qualities as a leader; his relationships with his own generals and with other great world leaders; his foreign policy; and his role in instigating the Cold War. While frankly exploring the full extent of Stalin’s brutalities and their impact on the Soviet people, Roberts also uncovers evidence leading to the stunning conclusion that Stalin was both the greatest military leader of the twentieth century and a remarkable politician who sought to avoid the Cold War and establish a long-term detente with the capitalist world.
By means of an integrated military, political, and diplomatic narrative, the author draws a sustained and compelling personal portrait of the Soviet leader. The resulting picture is fascinating and contradictory, and it will inevitably change the way we understand Stalin and his place in history. Roberts depicts a despot who helped save the world for democracy, a personal charmer who disciplined mercilessly, a utopian ideologue who could be a practical realist, and a warlord who undertook the role of architect of post-war peace.
Customer Reviews:
Warm and fuzzy Uncle Joe.......2007-09-12
Mr. Podmore has it all wrong. He makes it seem that the West started the cold war- PLEASE!
The U.S. knew what Soviet "liberation" was all about and wanted Western Europe not to fall under the yolk of nightmarish communism. If you really understood what the "benevolent" Red Army and NKVD butchers did to Poland and the Baltic states 1939/40 and at the end of the war (not to mention the rest of Eastern Europe -mass arrests, mass deportations, death by bullet or labor), then you'd probably have a different opinion of ole Uncle Joe.
A REMARKABLE ACHIEVEMENT.......2007-06-19
Little by little we learn more about the war in the East in WWII. Until the Russians opened their archives to Western historians, most of the events were described through the eyes of German generals who had their own axes to grind. This remarkable volume by an Irish scholar attempts to see the victory through the mind of Stalin. If there are any diaries or other personal memoirs by Stalin, they are still closed to the West. What the author gives us is Stalin's thinking through examination of his daily calender, review of what he said to his colleagues and others such as ambassadors, etc as they reported it, and an analysis of his messages and letters.
He also introduces another aspect of the early defeat of the Soviet forces. He states the Soviet thinking was confined to offense, and it was unprepared to take on major defense as a strategy in the initial stages. There is support for this analysis in Fugate & Dovoretsky's volume, Thunder on the Dnepr. They mention a top secret war game (the third) whose documentation is still closed to the West which gave the Soviets confidence they could defeat the Germans through defense in depth.
Despite his claims, Mannstein was not the originator of the tactical implementation of this strategy.
Citino's book, the German Way of War, reinforces the knowledge that the superiority of German general officers lay in their unquestioned competence in operational matters. Their great wealmess was the inability to grasp the strategic implications of their operations. Here, the author points out was one of Stalin's great strengths. Even in 1943, before the great battle of Kursk, he was already thinking about post war implications.
Perrett' book, Knights of the Black Cross, describes how the Germans stripped a regiment out of each panzer division to build enough divisions for the attack on Russia. It built a fundamental weakness into the plan. Now we have Tooze's new book describing, among other things, the inherent industrial weakness of Germany fortelling the ultimate failure of the attack. Thomas Childer's Teaching Company lectures, WWII: A Military and Social History, describes how the German infantry officers encountered a different war than the panzer divisions. Overcoming Russian resistance in the encirlced forces was far more difficult than contemplated.
Roberts doesn't blink at the odious consequences of Stalin's torment of the Soviet people, nor does he attempt to coat over it. It's not the purpose of his volume to go over ground that is well-known. He gives the reader insight into how the man managed the Soviet victory. He joins in creating a useable picture for students of WWII of what the man was like in conducting his affairs. His discussion of Stalin's remarkable intelligence supports the narration in Hasegawa's Racing the Enemy. Stalin's grasp of Russian history, his understanding of his armed forces and the thrust of how to conduct the war are awesome. The author points out Stalin's mistakes as well as his success. Regardless of the other sides of the man, as one reviewer emphasized, his place in this area of WWII history continues to grow.
I recommend this volume to any serious student of WWII as well as those curious about how Stalin operated on a day-to-day basis during this slice of his life. The Cold War Years portion of the book were not as interesting to me. Perhaps that era needs more time for history to digest it as well as there may be more archival releases on both sides to give us a balanced view.
This volume belongs in any library that claims to have a military history section as well as the libraries of those who wish to have a better understanding of the events of WWII or how Soviet leadership operated. It will be an important reference work for many years to come.
Stalin was Stalin, Still .......2007-03-26
This treatise comes as close as I ever want to see to an apology for its cruel and vicious subject. The author claims he wants to balance the view we have of Stalin, but "balance" is not to be found here.
If Stalin was a good wartime and political leader, then what does that make Churchill or FDR?
This book is not worth reading.
Brilliant study of the Second World War and the Cold War.......2007-03-21
This book is a very useful corrective to myths about the Second World War and the Cold War. It shows how the Soviet Union played a key role in winning the World War, defeating more than 75% of Hitler's divisions. As President Roosevelt said, "The Russian armies are killing more Axis personnel and destroying more Axis material than all the other twenty-five United Nations put together."
Roberts concludes, "Stalin was a very effective and highly successful war leader ... [who] was indispensable to the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany." Churchill continually promised to help the Soviet war effort. For example, in August 1942, he told Stalin that by spring 1943 a million British and US troops would have opened a second front in Western Europe. But Churchill delayed the second front until June 1944.
Roberts argues, "Stalin worked hard to make the Grand Alliance a success and wanted to see it continue after the war." The postwar Attlee government, on the other hand, worked hard to break up the Alliance, being more concerned to save the Empire than to keep the peace. Stalin said the Labour government was more conservative than the Conservatives in their defence of the British ruling class's imperial interests.
In 1947, President Truman adopted Labour's hostility to the Soviet Union and peaceful coexistence and launched the Marshall Plan. "For Stalin the Marshall Plan was the breaking point in postwar relations with the United States." The Plan put Western European countries under US control, enabling the US state to interfere in their internal affairs. It led straight to the formation of the anti-Soviet Western bloc, which started the Cold War and split the world into two camps.
Stalin's policy of peaceful coexistence did not mean accepting whatever the imperialists did. Two years after US forces intervened in Korea, he said, "One must be firm when dealing with America ... It's been already two years. And the USA has still not subdued little Korea. ... They want to subjugate the whole world, yet they cannot subdue little Korea."
Moving toward a better understanding of Stalin.......2007-01-19
This is one of the few books that takes a more objective view of Stalin. Taken is the fact that the man was responsible for many deaths throughout his tenure as leader of the Soviet Union. But at the same time it is presented that there was much more to him than simply being labeled a 'killer.' Starting from the beginning of the Second World War the reader is presented with the activities within the Soviet Union to first avert the war, that is make an alliance with England and France against Germany, and then to create the best possible position for the USSR to be in, that is to make a pact with Nazi Germany. Some might think this a betrayal of some sort but the fact remains that Stalin and the USSR were the first to propose an alliance against Hitler, when the Munich conference went through without Stalin even being invited this in essence showed what the west thought of him. Up until 1941 the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany had trade relations from which both benefited and Stalin was trying his best to avert war even when told that it was imminent. While he made mistakes in this instance it is also true that he authorized troop movements, the calling up of reserves, etc that were meant to help the Red Army combat any enemy activity. Sadly, this proved to have been unable to stem the tide of the German advance into the Soviet Union. Throughout the beginning period of war, that is up until the battle of Stalingrad, Stalin was responsible for some of the mistakes which cost the Red Army hundreds of thousands of casualties. But it should be kept in mind that Stalin never took a decision on his own. There were also those that choose to side with a certain action and those who wanted to go against it, at times Stalin would choose the worse action but he was never a sole figure advocating for it. While this doesn't excuse him it sheds light on the fact that he was not the only one making mistakes at this point in time. Eventually he would relegate more control to his generals and Marshals with the outcome being greater and better organized operations like Uranus, Bagration, etc. While the military takes up a large chunk of the book it should also be noted that this is also a political history. Mainly looking at the activities of Stalin and his wartime allies, the US and England. Various meetings were held throughout the war; Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam which made arrangements for what relations would be like after the war was over. The Polish question was on everyone's mind as well as the question of what would happen to Germany and of course the USSR and her entry into the war against Japan was always a main point for Roosevelt. One of the interesting aspects of this book are the ideas behind Stalin's insistence that Eastern Europe should be a Soviet sphere of influence. What's interesting is that when asked to leave Greece to England, he agreed. He took little interest in the developments in Norway, Holland, and a number of other territories freed by the western allies and established once more as independent states and within the US and England's sphere of influence. Yet when it came to Poland or Hungary and Bulgaria there were the allies having to voice their opinions about what should be going on there. Stalin's thinking was that it took Germany 20 years to get into another war, it could take another 20 for WWIII to begin so why shouldn't the USSR do the most to protect itself? These Eastern European states would become the buffer zone for her to protect her from future German aggression, especially since Germany wasn't going to be broken up as he had proposed again and again. Of course I am only presenting details from here and there in the book, there is much more useful information to be found in this work about Stalin's thinking and actions and how they fit into the grand scheme of things. Many archival sources are used which adds a lot of interesting information as well as recent works on the Soviet Union which can't be tainted, as is sometimes done by some, as 'propaganda.' In my opinion an excellent addition to literature on this time period and especially on Stalin.
Book Description
A distinguished authority tells the spellbinding story of the people and politics behind the development of the Soviet atom bomb. Based on interviews with participants and research in newly opened archives, the book reveals how the American atomic monopoly affected Stalin`s foreign policy, the role of espionage in the evolution of the Soviet bomb, and the relationship between Soviet nuclear scientists and the country`s political leaders.
Customer Reviews:
An island of intellectual autonomy in a totalitarian state.......2004-09-09
D. Holloway tells us outstandingly and very detailed the gripping story of the development of nuclear weapons in the Soviet Union. He shows us that the SU success was the result of the effort of Russian scientists with I.V. Kurchatov in a crucial role, although some data were obtained via spying (Klaus Fuchs).
The nuclear weapons building combined the best (scientists, engineers) and the worst of the SU, with prisoners working in appalling conditions (no protection) and real nuclear exercises with soldiers as guinea pigs.
D. Holloway analyzes also pregnantly the hostile ideological environment for scientists. The regime's fundamental logic remained political. The politicians had the right to define what was science and pseudoscience. In the name of dialectical materialism whole scientific disciplines (e.g. genetics) were destroyed (the Lyssenko case).
Physics also came under attack. Beria asked Kurchatov if it was true that quantum mechanics and relativity theory were idealist, antimaterialist. Kurchatov replied that if relativity theory and qm were rejected, the bomb would be rejected too. Stalin's ultimate answer was:' Leave them in peace, we can shoot them later!' (p. 204)
This 'pseudoscientific' debate was held within a bureaucratic framework. Scientists were well paid and the party bureaucrats and ideologues were jealous and wanted to take their place, even if they were incompetent. Beria left physics unhampered because he needed the bomb. In that sense, physics remained a small element of civil society in a totalitarian state. But if the scientists had failed, they would certainly have received a neckshot.
The impact of nuclear weapons on international political relations is also outstandingly explained.
After WW II the Soviet leaders assumed rightly that the US was seeking world dominance and that the SU was the main impediment. The scientific planners in the US discussed seriously a preemptive (!) strike against the US.
Stalin was not impressed by the US nuclear power. He continued tot think that conventional weapons and troops had still the upper hand. As an example, he took the risk of the Berlin crisis in 1948. But he grasped that the SU also needed the bomb.
The physicists knew that an international balance of power was needed. They understood the effects of a nuclear war and explained to the politicians that the survival of the human race was at stake.
After Stalin, Khrushev renounced Lenin's thesis that war was inevitable between capitalist states. As the nuclear stockpile grew, he admitted that a peaceful coexistence of capitalism and socialism was preferable.
D. Holloway wrote a magisterial analysis of an essential part of mankind's history. A fascinating read.
An Excellent Overview of the Entire Period.......2004-02-28
Stalin and the Bomb is an excellent overview not only of the Soviet atomic project but of the entire Stalin period. Holloway discusses some of the disastorous policies Stalin pursued in the scientific arena (for example, when it came to biology) and shows how Stalin was able to control his ideological impulses when it came to a project that would net him real power.
Stalin and the Bomb is extremely readable and provides some nice detail on Kurchatov, the father of the Soviet A-bomb. A little more on Sakharov and the H-bomb project would have been nice, but was not central to the thrust of the book. Significantly, this book delves into significant technical detail about the research and construction of nuclear weapons, but the author does a superb job of making the science accessable to people without PhDs in physics.
Plenty of characters, with just a few plots........2002-03-18
I was most interested in who had the first hydrogen bomb (the first real plan, the ideal materials, a way to make it, and a test device) and I didn't mind reading about "some radioactive indicator which is formed with the participation of fast deuterons" (p. 304) to find out. Sorting out the physics, which can be revealed to those who care to know, with a comparison of alternate paths to the same result, reveals something far more substantial than the usual plot, based on the politics of world domination, the main concern of Stalin and the author of this book. Stalin gets some sympathy for facing a stark post-war reality, based on his comparison of what World War II did to Russia and Germany, compared to the damage which the few atomic bombs which existed in his lifetime could produce, and it might be said that he acted accordingly in attempting to maintain countervailing threats whenever he was pressured. Any notion of absolute justice, or even feasible military advantage, seems to be as elusive for the superpowers (and one still exists today) as for the petty despots and warlords that often become characters in this book about how such weapons came to be. I didn't mind the revelations about certain events: a war in Korea at a critical point in this book even makes the question of when Mao ordered the Chinese divisions into Korea an interesting question to be considered. In most of these books, I like the events which influenced Sakharov most, the best. The description of the shock wave from the November 1955 test on pages 316-7 includes, "All of this triggers an irrational yet very strong emotional impact."
Intriguing Analysis of a Hidden Episode.......2000-06-03
David Holloway, a professor at Stanford, has published an intriguing history of Soviet nuclear weapons development in _Stalin_and_the_Bomb_. This volume interweaves two main themes--the technical difficulties in designing and fabricating nuclear weapons, and the political motivations commanding these efforts along with their strategic implications.
Many of the major participants are familiar to readers of Soviet history, such as Stalin, Beria, Molotov and Khrushchev. However, the important actors in this drama were the technical experts who created these engines of destruction on behalf of their masters. Many prominent scientists labored to provide the theoretical and experimental support demanded by Stalin for rapid industrialization, laying the groundwork for the tremendous infrastructure needed to duplicate the achievements of the Manhattan Project years later. Research in radioactivity eventually led to the first spontaneous fission experiment in 1940, but this did not attract attention in the West, where restrictions began for publication on nuclear physics.
Work on fission continued during the war, but the lack of uranium prevented much advancement. Holloway, in examining the directives during this period, found priorities unchanged following the Potsdam meeting, in contrast to the subsequent demand for uranium production after Hiroshima. He attributes Stalin's casual reaction to Truman's mention of a new weapon to skepticism regarding its importance. But the bomb as a colossal reality, not merely as an intelligence phantom, presented Stalin with a new strategic contention. His response was to show resolve in the face of anticipated intimidation coupled with orders to develop this technology independently. However, he only recognized the bomb as an instrument of Anglo-American policy, and refused to consider it militarily decisive in any potential conflict. When challenging US policy over Berlin, for example, Stalin carefully applied pressure while keeping his options open and took care not to escalate tensions beyond retraction.
The achievement of creating an atomic bomb, given the devastating post-war depravation of the Soviet Union can be credited primarily to Igor Kurchatov, the scientific director of the nuclear project from 1942 until his death in 1960. Kurchatov was a well respected figure in Soviet physics, but he also provided a methodical and systematic orchestration to a project with many difficult sundry en-gineering obstacles to overcome, not to mention the menacing oversight by Beria, head of the NKVD. Although awarded privileged status in the post-war Soviet Union, the scientists recognized their position as predicated on successful completion of this task.
The primary obstacle remained the inadequate supply of uranium metal until 1948 when the first production reactor was built. Uranium isotope separation and plutonium precipitation were tackled with indus-trial vigor. The gaseous diffusion facility, modeled on the Oak Ridge plant involved particular engineering difficulties to be solved before uranium enrichment could proceed. Yulii Khariton, director of the secret nu-clear research laboratory Arzamas-16, led the study on the physics of detonation. Implosion was needed to compress the plutonium a few microseconds in order to start the chain reaction. Their first atom bomb was exploded August 1949 at Semipalatinsk with a yield of 20 kilotons of TNT. Thus the Soviet Union joined the nuclear club.
While espionage yielded useful information at the West's expense, Holloway argues that Klaus Fuchs saved the Soviets only about a year or two by giving dimensions of the plutonium implosion design. He compares the first Soviet atom bomb explosion in 1949 with the first British demonstration in 1952 despite much closer collaboration with the Americans than anything obtained clandestinely by their Soviet counterparts. Holloway also contends that the contribution by captured Germans was comparatively minor and sped the project by only a few weeks or months--principally in the area of processing uranium.
While the bomb was being developed, Stalin initiated orders on delivery systems--bombers by Vladimir Myasishchev and rockets by Sergei Korolev. In Stalin's view, another war was inevitable within two decades, and the atomic bomb would serve as merely another policy instrument. After he died in March 1953, his successors embarked on a less confrontational rapproachement with the West.
After the Soviets demonstrated their ability to create weapons based on nuclear fission, Truman decided to pursue the hydrogen bomb, because there was no indication that Stalin would reciprocate a policy of restraint. After some false starts, a method to use X-ray compression from fission to implode the thermonuclear charge was discovered, enabling a yield limited only by the quantity of nuclear fuel. The Mike test in November 1952 verified this concept with an ungainly 60-ton refrigerated assembly. Meanwhile, the Russians embarked on fusion independently. A young physicist, Andrei Sakarov began work in 1948 and joined the Arzamas-16 facility, developing the "Layer Cake" which resembled the boosted fission weapon, before advancing on the two-stage Super. The first thermonuclear bomb was exploded in August 1953, and apparently alarmed Kurchatov, being 20 times more power-ful than the first Soviet fission bomb four years earlier. In November 1955, the first two-stage thermonuclear bomb with a yield of 1.6 megatons was exploded.
The first Soviet fusion explosion produced a profound change in the attitudes of politburo members about the same time that Americans realized that this new weapon represented a far more potent destructive force than the fission variety. In the aftermath of this revelation, a more conciliatory "peaceful coexistence" doctrine began to develop. Khrushchev's increased dialog with western leaders also facilitated long dormant communication between Soviet physicists and their colleagues beyond the Iron Curtain. Kurchatov's visit in 1956 was well received at Harwell, the British power station. From this small privileged enclave, a civilizing influence was nurtured within a totalitarian society. Eventually, Sakarov went beyond the usual misgivings of Soviet society to become a dissident and human rights advocate.
_Stalin_ concludes that the arms race between the two blocks was contingent solely on Stalin's intentions. Holloway believes that in the post-war years the bomb probably restrained the use of force but also made Stalin less cooperative to avoid seeming weak.
The book is not without flaws--some identifications to the KGB presumably belong to NKVD, the American arsenal in June 1946 lists a grossly exces-sive nine atom bombs taken from the _Bulletin of_Atomic_Scientists_ compared to _The Winning_Weapon_ by Gregg Herken which identified a single partially disassembled weapon in the inventory in January 1947, and an annoying transliteration of two Cyrillic characters as "ia" and "iu" instead of "ya" and "yu" as more conventionally employed. Otherwise, _Stalin_ is a tremendous addition to our knowledge of Russian capabilities in physics instigated by a repressive regime at the dawn of the nuclear age.
Book Description
This widely acclaimed biography provides a vivid and riveting account of Stalin and his courtiers—killers, fanatics, women, and children—during the terrifying decades of his supreme power. In a seamless meshing of exhaustive research and narrative ?lan, Simon Sebag Montefiore gives us the everyday details of a monstrous life.
We see Stalin playing his deadly game of power and paranoia at debauched dinners at Black Sea villas and in the apartments of the Kremlin. We witness first-hand how the dictator and his magnates carried out the Great Terror and the war against the Nazis, and how their families lived in this secret world of fear, betrayal, murder, and sexual degeneracy. Montefiore gives an unprecedented understanding of Stalin’s dictatorship, and a Stalin as human and complicated as he is brutal.
Customer Reviews:
Deep Inside Stalinism.......2007-10-14
Montefiore's creativity in writing this epic-like non-fiction novel is astonishing. Not only does he enlighten us about how Stalin's life looked from the inside (away from all the public idolization - or later on damnation), but he does it in a way that makes it look like a novel. Even though the events are tragic since they are a true story, it's written as a thriller, displaying a giant phase in the twentieth century in a way never shown before. Unlike many historians, Montefiore's book actually has the distinction of giving all the views available objectively and letting the reader judge accordingly.
This book, however, is exactly what it was written for: showing Stalin's court. You'll not find here any historical analysis outside Stalin's court, nor will you find a lot of information about WW II (even though it's covered in great detail).
Bringing Stalin's Russia To Life.......2007-08-23
Montefiore brings to light an astounding amount of new information from various archives and recent interviews and combines this with a very humorous readable style. Highly recommend his "Young Stalin" as well!
Makes Stalin as human as an inhuman can Be.......2007-07-25
This is a fascinating look at Stalin from the perpective of those around him. Giving a diffrent view than any other book so far. Remember this is the man who said "One death is a tradgedy, a million dealths is a statistic."
Stalin the Book Editor.......2007-06-30
What an utterly fascinating portrait the author draws of this monster. I used to think Hitler was interesting, but this blood-thirsty maniac is the one. Talk about fascinating fascism. Stalin, we are told by our communist friends, was the illiterate boob who stole the revolution from the bright and interesting Trotsky and Lenin. Here he is shown to have been every bit as bright as any other mass killers, but in this biography we are shown stages of rage, as it were, whereby Stalin developed finally into the yellow-eyed, paranoid fanatic left-wing academics love to defend. What is so interesting is his intellectual pretensions. His close involvement with authors and composers is fascinating, especially when one considers that his displeasure meant certain death for the discredited. Now there's an editorial policy! At the same time one has to take seriously the author's persuasive claim that it was Stalin's wife's suicide that finally brought an end to any restraint to the Kremlin's killing machine. One is even touched by the descriptions of the informality of the pre-suicide Kremlin, with an old-fashioned style of communal living. They had all lived like wolves in a pack for a while, and then like jackels.
Absolute power. Absolute paranoia. Absolute corruption........2007-03-30
Montefiore's impressing book presents the story about Joseph Stalin and all his subordinates in the circles of Soviet power between 1932 and Stalin's death in 1953. It is a story of power, red, ruthless, total power.
Montefiore has gone to a wide range of new sources. He has searched far in the newly opened KGB-archives in Russia, and interviewed some of the men in power, and a lot of their descendants, first class observers during two decades of terror and tyrrany.
Stalin managed to stay in the top position for so long by distributing the power between his cronies. He frequently moved them around, both positionally and geographically. Stalin constantly collected "evidence" of contra-revolutionary activity by every member of the Politburo, of the Central Committee, in the Army Command and in the secret police. After a few years in power, most of the magnates ended up accused of sabotage against bolshevism, found guilty (pleading guilty after torture, often by their earlier comrades), and killed. This hindered a build-up of an oppositional coalition.
The role of chief killer was initially held by Yagoda, who was killed by his successor Nikolai Yezhov, killed by his successor Berija. Berija outlived Stalin, but was on the verge of being killed himself. Instead, Berija was executed at the orders of Khrushchev shortly after Stalin's own, natural, death.
According to Montefiore, Stalin started to believe all the accusations that was made up. When he died, he was busy planning a purge against doctors and jews.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. May Stalinism rest, but not in peace. Thank capitalism and liberalism for this excellent book.
Book Description
In 1945, Josef Stalin, who had never been able to shake off the nightmare of Adolf Hitler, refused to believe that the dictator had committed suicide. He ordered his secret police, the NKVD, to explore Hitler's private life, and to clarify the circumstances of his death. For months the NKVD interrogated Hitler's two closest assistants, Otto Guensche and Heinz Linge. The resulting first-hand narrative of a decade of service in Hitler's headquarters was presented to Stalin in a limited edition of one, and for over fifty years was hidden in a Russian archive. Never before published in its entirety, it is "[a] notable historical document" (Wall Street Journal) that "gives an absorbing, truly disturbing account of Hitler and his demonic court" (PublishersWeekly)
Customer Reviews:
Hitler's Aggression, Genocidal Actions against Slavs, and Details of His Doom.......2007-05-03
This dossier is the result of the interrogation, by the Soviet NKVD, of two SS officials who knew Hitler very well--Heinz Linge and Otto Gunsche. It offers a comprehensive history of WWII, with much attention devoted to the closing stages of the European war on the eastern front. There is discussion of the Hitlerjugend sacrificed against the Soviets, the suicides of Goebbels and his family, and the self-destruction of the Fuhrer and burning of his body. (Hitler feared that the Soviets would turn him or his body into a public spectacle). The editors use numerous footnotes that clarify and correct the issues raised by the NKVD. The Editors' Afterword section provides extensive commentary, and the Notes include comprehensive biographical information on many Nazis (including dates of birth and death, and relevant postwar activities).
This dossier begins with a short, prewar history of Nazism: "The official version of the story was that Rohm had been executed for homosexuality, but Hitler concealed from the German people the fact that homosexuality was widely practiced and tolerated in the higher echelons of the National Socialist Party and the Hitler Youth." (p. 6).
Hitler is quoted, on April 17, 1943, of saying that Jews must either be annihilated of thrown into a concentration camp (p. 114). If correct, this itself suggests that, even at this late date, Hitler wasn't irrevocably committed to the extermination of every possible Jew within his reach. Interestingly, Hitler had a purely utilitarian view of Slavs that matched that of his view of Jews, as illustrated by the Nazis' use of both Slavic and Jewish forced laborers. Consider the former: "Filled with loathing Hitler remarked, `It is quite right to make Slavs do this, these robots! Otherwise they would have no right to their share of the sun!'" (p. 102).
The following was Hitler's reaction to Britain's declaration of war against Germany following the Nazi attack on Poland: "It is disgraceful to present Czechs and Poles as sovereign states when this rabble is not a jot better than the Sudanese or the Indians..." (pp. 47-48). At the start of Operation Barbarossa, the Germans fought under the slogan: "Bash the Russians' brains in...We need the Russian expanses without Russians!" (p. 76).
The editors cite an eventual figure of 11.27 million Soviet military deaths, but add: "On the other hand, it is mentioned only in a few places that the campaign against the Soviet Union was also a racially motivated war of annihilation, which claimed the lives of 18.4 million civilians. This war of annihilation was carried out above all by the SS, but a politically-indoctrinated Wehrmacht played its part." (p. 300). Combining these figures with others (e. g., the 2-3 million murdered Polish gentiles), it is obvious that the Germans' genocide of Slavs was greater than that of Jews (5-6 million). Considering this metric, the reader realizes that Jews and Slavs were indeed unequal victims--with Slavs the greater victims.
Some proponents of Holocaust uniqueness have claimed that the Nazis' disrespect and exploitation of the dead, as exemplified by the removal of tooth fillings, was done only to Jews. We learn instead that it was also done to Slavs--including living ones. Blaschke, Hitler's personal dentist, obtained crowns, bridges, and gold teeth that had been extracted from Soviet POWs (pp. 164-165).
Certain revisionists (e. g., Alfred Maurice de Zayas) have repeated the canard that the Soviets and Poles killed over 2 million German civilians during the final offensives and early postwar period. However heavy the loss of German civilian life actually was, it was clearly the fault of the Germans, not the Russians or Poles: "When the German troops fled in chaos, the population panicked and ran with their soldiers. A mass migration towards the German heartlands began. The roads and paths of East Prussia were thick with old men, women and children who had turned and run, only to become jammed in the numerous tank traps that offered only a torturously narrow path. Many--the children in particular--froze to death in the intense cold." (p. 180).
The Churchill-Roosevelt betrayal of Poland to the Soviet Union, culminating at Yalta, is often rationalized by the specter of a German-Soviet separate peace. However, Stalin ALSO feared a separate peace--a German-western one. For example, the Battle of the Bulge was framed as an attempt by the Germans to so bloody and dishearten the western Allies that they would unilaterally sue for peace (p. 170).
Somewhat interesting but hardly a "must-read".......2007-04-16
"The Hitler Book", a posthumous biography of Hitler personally prepared for Stalin, is of interest only as a historical curiosity and for the insight it provides into the strange political dynamics of postwar Stalinist Russia. Interestingly enough, and contrary to press reports and the claims of the researchers in question, this book was not recently "discovered" by a couple of German scholars digging around the Russian archives. David Irving used this dossier in the 1960s when writing his magnificent "Hitler's War", which is_the_book I would recommend for those interested in a life of Hitler, particularly his years in power.
Based on the interrogations of Otto Guensche and Heinz Linge (Hitler's SS adjutant and manservant respectively), this book covers most of the major events of Hitler's life more or less accurately, but should not be taken as an authoritative work of history. It's a gossipy, biographical caricature based on both public knowledge and the torture-induced testimonies of a butler and an aide. That's not to say that Guensche's and Linge's testimony shouldn't be trusted, but two low-level witnesses do not a biography make and, in any case, their information should be compared with what they freely told Western authors, like David Irving and James O'Donnell, after their decade in Soviet captivity. This book reveals no new information, and is also marred by the fact that it shamelessly panders to the prejudices and paranoia of its very important audience of one: Josef Stalin. It obviously makes no mention of the Ribbentrop/Molotov Pact and subsequent Soviet expansion into Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic states, and certainly doesn't deal with Soviet agressive intentions toward Germany or the reasons for the disasters of 1941. Its portrait of Hitler sticks to the wartime propaganda line, showing him as a feral, rug-chewing, cowardly maniac. And while the Soviet Union did indeed bear the brunt of the fighting against Nazi Germany, this book seriously downplays the Anglo-American contribution, deprecates the bravery and effectiveness of their troops and even accuses the Western Allies of trying to negotiate a separate peace with Hitler and of not bombing armaments factories whose weapons they knew would be used exclusively against the Soviets. It's an interesting look into the dark maze of Stalinist psychology, but is not the source to consult for a legitimate Hitler biography.
The Hitler Book: The Secret Dossier Prepared for Stalin from the Interrogations of Hitler's Personal Aides.......2007-04-16
Clearly one of the most informative books written about the life of Adolf Hitler. The account of the last days in the Fuhrer bunker is not only spellbinding, but probably the most accurate. A "must read" for the WW2 history enthusiast.
A Fascinating Read.......2007-04-11
I couldn't put this book down and was disappointed when I finished it!It's mandatory reading for all WW2 buffs as the insight it provides into the personal lives of Hitler and other top Nazis in the Third Reich is invaluable. I found it riveting as it described Hitler's personal foibles,his descent into paranoia and detachment from reality while his lackeys around him continued to pander to his gigantic ego and self-delusion.It depicts a world gone mad and rampant evil. Hitler's callous diregard for the lives of his soldiers and those of German civilians caught up in the horror that was 1945 Berlin stuns the imagination. Equally disturbing is Stalin's prurient fascination with his Fascist counterpart.
This is a superb book and of great value to the keen historian who wants more than just facts and dates.
"Must Read" Book.......2007-03-21
This is a "must read" book on the subject of Hitler and the last days in Berlin. It is a jewel from the Soviet archives.
Having said that, great caution must be used in accepting what is written in the book as the truth. Only by comparison with other accounts can the facts be sifted out from the propaganda. Read all the front and back material as well to get a better understanding of what is in this report.
The report on which the book is based was written for Stalin's consumption and therefore there are distinct biases and distortions in what information is reported and how it is presented. It is almost comical in places how the Soviet writers attempted to twist things. Almost comical - but not actually, because the intended audience of this book, Stalin was as diabolical and hideous, if not more, than the subject of the report.
The fact that it is a Soviet report is not really a flaw since it gives us insight into the Soviet mind and their use of history to indoctrinate rather than enlighten.
The true flaw in the book is that the English translation has abridged the German editor's notes and inserted additional footnotes that are often just plain wrong. The English translator also lacks any understanding of WW2 German military terminology, for example, translating "Minenwerfer" as "mine thrower" instead of "mortar". Very childish, but fortunately there are not too many of these screwups.
I still give it 5 stars because it is a priceless document. I might suggest getting the German edition for better supporting material.
Average customer rating:
- Powerful, definitive account of Soviet anti-semitism
- Important documentation of Soviet horror under Stalin
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Stalin's Secret Pogrom: The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (Annals of Communism)
Laura E. Wolfson
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
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ASIN: 0300084862 |
Book Description
In the spring and summer of 1952, fifteen Soviet Jews, including five prominent Yiddish writers and poets, were secretly tried and convicted; multiple executions soon followed in the basement of Moscow's Lubyanka prison. The defendants were falsely charged with treason and espionage because of their involvement in the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, and because of their heartfelt response as Jews to Nazi atrocities on occupied Soviet territory. Stalin had created the committee to rally support for the Soviet Union during World War II, but he then disbanded it after the war as his paranoia mounted about Soviet Jews.
For many years, a host of myths surrounded the case against the committee. Now this book, which presents an abridged version of the long-suppressed transcript of the trial, reveals the Kremlin's machinery of destruction. Joshua Rubenstein provides annotations about the players and events surrounding the case. In a long introduction, drawing on newly released documents in Moscow archives and on interviews with relatives of the defendants in Israel, Russia, and the United States, Rubenstein also sets the trial in historical and political context and offers a vivid account of Stalin's anti-Semitic campaign.
Customer Reviews:
Powerful, definitive account of Soviet anti-semitism.......2004-03-15
Mr. Rubenstein has done an outstanding job as a researcher and writer in giving us this gripping record of Stalin's purge in 1950-52 of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. The JAC had been active during WWII in organizing international aid to the besieged Soviets. Despite their vigorous efforts in the struggle against the Nazis, some of the most respected Russian Jewish poets, writers, and cultural figures associated with the JAC were eventually imprisoned on blatantly fabricated charges of espionage, then executed in 1952. Using recently-opened soviet files, he and Mr. Vladimir Naumov have carefully and authoritatively documented this sordid chapter in recent Soviet history.
Important documentation of Soviet horror under Stalin.......2003-11-15
This book documents just one of the horrors of the Soviet regime. While Stalin murdered millions of innocent people who were unlucky enough to have been citizens under his rule, this book tells of the way this evil regime turned on fifteen people whose crime was being Jewish and wanting to examine the Nazi atrocities in the portions of the USSR they occupied.
It is a particularly poignant telling because the authors provide us with excerpts from the transcripts of the trial so you hear the victims and their accusers in their own words. These people were destroyed by the system they tried to serve and help largely because Stalin decided to use the Jews and the fear of paranoid Zionist conspiracies as the Nazis had done.
This is a very valuable book and I am glad it is in print. As part of the Annals of Communism series it provides important and permanent testimony of the criminality of the USSR that had been lied about and hidden for too long.
Thanks to the authors.
Book Description
This gripping book assembles and translates into English for the first time top secret Soviet documents from 1932 to 1939, the era of Stalin`s purges. The nearly 200 documents-dossiers, police reports, private letters, secret transcripts, and more-expose the hidden inner workings of the Communist Party and the dark inhumanity of the purge process.
Customer Reviews:
A Paper Trail Of Arbitrary Terror And Murder!.......2006-12-19
This review refers to the hardcover edition of the book. I have always been one of those who prefer primary source material, as opposed to second hand material. Not that the latter is without merit, however, with the primary documents one gets a better look into history. And without a doubt the history of Soviet Russia under Stalin was truly a road to terror. The books material has been culled and translated from primary source documents from the archives of the former Soviet regime. These documents were preserved at three major archives in Moscow, and provide invaluable primary source material for those wishing to delve into the mindset of the criminals whose actions against the Russian people are there for all to see.
The purges by Stalin in the 1930s have been well documented, however, these latest documents add further to those whose research into Stalin's crimes, also implicate many of his cronies, who without their support, Stalin would not have been able to carry out his heinous crimes. The documents in the book are also accompanied by commentary by the authors. I remember talking with Dr. Arch Getty many years ago at UCLA, and was fascinated when he discussed how he had always been more interested in those in lower positions of power who carry out the crimes of their leaders, than by those that are in positions of power. For without the willing executioners, those in power cannot carry out their twisted and appalling crimes.
Dr. Getty's discussion was very enlightening. [As were his seminars and lectures]. The fact that the terror was not planned in the begining, but consisted of haphazard steps until Stalin took charge in 1937, leading to his crushing of ALL resistance in the Communist Party is a very fascinating look into Stalin's reign of terror. And as one of the other reviewers noted, until a diary is discovered with Stalin's own reasons for his actions, we will never know fully why Stalin did what he did. However, these docuements are insightful into the terror of the purges which took place under Stalin in the 1930s, and in a sense act as a sort of diary. The book is highly recommended as a supplement to your history library.
be careful.......2005-09-05
before buy it, use amazon.com look inside at In Denial: Historians, Communism, & Espionage - John Earl Haynes; Hardcover
Brilliant.......2003-03-12
Dr Getty's study of the Terror is among the most groundbreaking and insightful of the last decade. I believe it is the best book on the Terror yet written. What began as a moderate attempt to clean up the Party in 1933 through controled means turned into violent chaos in mid-1937. The Yezhov years are covered deeply with a great reliance on archives avalible. For the first time the documents themselves can be viewed by the reader. Getty clearly defines the periods of the Terror according to their severity. In 1933 people were purged from the Party but it only ment dismissal and a chance for readdmition. In 1936 things began to get bloody but it was still controled by the elites. The explosion of 1937 with the liquidation of top Soviet Marshals signaled the coming of a full blown bloodbath. This period lasted from the last half of 1937 to the first half of 1938. This was largely directed by the NKVD under Yezhov but Getty stresses Yezhov was ordered by Stalin and the Politburo to conduct arrest and executions of party elites in both the Center and provinces along with mass shootings of social marginals. The Terror was horrible yet more conservative numbers of deaths are given. Elites were the primary victims. Getty's statistics appear to be correct. Millions were not executed but social trama of the Terror was horrid. This work shreds Robert Conquest to pieces...
Bolshevik Crimes Exposed.......2000-07-19
Unlike other mass murderers, the Bolsheviks left a paper trail detailing their horrific criminal deeds. Naturally, dictator Josef Stalin is prominently cited in the formerly top secret transcripts of the Soviet's Central Committee. Others, however, like his nomenklatura henchmen; Lazar Kaganovich, a Jew and rabid Christian hater; Vyacheslav Molotov; Lavrenti Beria; and Genrikh Yagoda, were just as complicit as him. The historian, H. R. Trevor-Roper put it well, "Great massacres may be commanded by tyrants, but they are imposed by people." The authors conservatively estimate that "1.5 million" Communist Party members were killed during the "Great Terror" purges of the 1930s. The majority were shot to death, others died in the GULAG camps, originally established by the fanatical Bolshevik thug, Vladimir I. Lenin. This riveting story opens by telling the sad tale of one Alexander Yulevich Tivel. It is typical of what happened to many of Marxism's true believers. A hack propagandist for Pravda, Tivel was shot as an "enemy of the people" on March 7, 1937, in Moscow, after a perfunctory trial. He was also a Zionist, who had made the fatal mistake of knowing Grigory Zinoviev and Karl Radek. Like Tivel, they were all Jews, who were suspected by the Kremlin elite of plotting with its arch rival, the exiled zealot, Lew Davinovich Bronstein, a/k/a Leon Trotsky. The Tivel drama didn't end there. His wife was sent to Siberia and she wasn't freed until 1953. Their young son was placed in an orphanage for being a "member of the family of a traitor of the Motherland." In this book, too, surprisedly, you will find the modern seeds of the dubious "Hate Crime" concept, championed by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY). Stalin, in a rant about the putative enemies of his Communist hell hole, is quoted in October, 1937, as saying, "Anyone who by his actions and thoughts-yes, his thoughts-encroaches on the unity of the socialist state, we will destroy them and their kin." I'm sure Schumer, a pompous windbag, will deny the alien-based connection to his legislative scheme. This is an authoritative book that exposes the unspeakable crimes of Stalin's Bolshevik gang against its own party faithful. It should be a sobering lesson to anyone who tends to believe in extremist solutions.
William Hughes, J.D. Baltimore, MD. (Published in the journal of the Social Justice Review, July-August, 2000 issue.)
Gives an exceptionally valuable insight into Stalin's purges.......2000-07-11
This book is tremendously useful because it gives a hitherto unknown insight into exactly how Stalin and his closest cronies set in motion the purges of the 1930s. The heart of the book consists of around 200 secret Communist Party documents interspersed with commentary from the authors. The archival material suggests very strongly that the path to the terror was not planned meticulously from the start but consisted of a series of false starts and zigzags until Stalin decided in 1937 to crush all resistance to the party's rule. Of particular interest are a couple of documents which show how many members of the inner Politburo demanded stricter punishments for alleged wrong-doers than Stalin did himself. Barring the discovery of Stalin's diary many of the dictator's motives will remain unknown forever but the documents in this book do paint a largely convincing portrait of an unpopular regime in Moscow lurching from crisis to crisis, trying both to stablise the internal situation and also to eliminate the possibility of serious internal resistance. What does come through very clearly is how arbitrary the terror was and how many of those charged with repressing alleged foreign spies and saboteurs were almost guaranteed to be shot themselves. First the Politburo lashed out at the secret police for not doing enough to stamp out centres of Trotskyite resistance and then issued orders demanding the execution and arrest of millions of people across the country. Later the secret police came under fire for allegedly indulging in indiscriminate terror and repressing too many people. I can understand the point of the Kirkus Reviews contributor who doubted the authors' explanation that the Politburo pushed ahead with the purges because they were indeed convinced enemies lay behind every corner and a coup was always possible. A sense of self-preservation and the need to show Stalin they were onside surely did partly explain their enthusiasm for spilling blood. But this is a minor quibble about an otherwise excellent book.
Amazon.com
The Haunted Wood fills in a valuable part of cold war history: the Soviet Union's attempts to spy on the United States from the time of FDR's New Deal, through the Second World War, and into the 1950s. Allen Weinstein (author of a highly regarded history of the Hiss-Chambers case, Perjury) and Alexander Vassiliev (a KGB agent turned journalist) show that among the Americans caught in the Soviet orbit were many top government officials, including a Congressman from New York and a close advisor to President Roosevelt, as well as an American ambassador's daughter. Most of these early spies were leftists driven by ideology--as opposed to money, which seems to have motivated many of the later cold war traitors, such as Aldrich Ames. (The Congressman, interestingly, is an exception--he demanded so much compensation that the Soviets gave him the code name "Crook.") The greatest windfall for the U.S.S.R. during this period was the acquisition of atomic secrets, with contributions from agents like Ted Hall, Klaus Fuchs, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (the authors do not believe, however, that the scientist Robert Oppenheimer was a Soviet spook). Yet there were also notable failures, many brought on by Stalin's insatiable appetite for purges; defections by Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley also dealt several mortal blows. By the end of the 1940s, the Soviet spy ring in the United States was in serious breakdown. Weinstein and Vassiliev make use of both American sources and Soviet archives to deliver what will surely be an authoritative account for many years--or at least until more top-secret archives on both sides of the Atlantic become declassified. And don't expect that to happen anytime soon. --John J. Miller
Book Description
Drawing upon previously secret KGB records released exclusively to Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood reveals for the first time the riveting story of Soviet espionage's "golden age" in the United States, from the 1930s through the early cold war.
Customer Reviews:
The Soviet Penetration of the Roosevelt Administration.......2006-11-27
Authors Weinstein and Vassiliev were in the relatively unique position, in writing "The Haunted Wood", of having access to the Soviet as well as the American side of the story. They took advantage of a brief period of access to Soviet espionage achives after the breakup of the Soviet Union. What emerges is an exhaustive study of the penetration by Soviet spies of the U.S. government in the 1930's and 1940's.
The Soviets were materially aided in their espionage efforts by an admiration of Soviet communism shared by some Americans. This admiration looks badly misguided in retrospect, but apparently seemed very rational in the context of the 1929 Stock Market Crash and the subsequent Great Depression and rise of Fascism. This admiration produced a generation of American (and British) traitors who gave away information on American foreign policy, military and industrial secrets.
Some of the names are familiar: Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs, among others. Less familiar may be the names and operating methods of their Soviet handlers, who worked not just against American counterintelligence but also against the increasing paranoia of the Soviet Government they served. Despite the continuing delivery of invaluable information, Josef Stalin repeatedly purged Soviet intelligence. The disruption caused by the purges almost certainly kept the Soviets from acquiring even more information than they did.
"The Haunted Wood" is written primarily for an audience already fascinated by the topic of espionage. The average reader may find long stretches of dry and sometimes repetitive reading. This book is highly recommended for those studying the history of espionage.
partially an advertisement for two Soviet Agent's talent.......2005-01-02
This book was written with the help of several present and former Soviet Intelligence officers. Be aware that that colored the book with favorable views of these people's talent level and Soviet Intelligence in general. The book does contain valuable information along with important omission and advertising style hot air. I would suggest that you consider Venona by John Earl Haynes or The Venona Secrets: Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitors by Herbert Romerstein. The former is an academic description of the 450+ Soviet agents disclosed by the US breaking Soviet codes used during the war. The latter is an inside story by two US espionage agents and experts. One of the gems it reveals is that President FDR was gullible and had several advisors who were Soviet agents. Stalin was afraid of a two front war in Europe and with Japan in the Pacific. He composed an insulting message for his agents to present to FDR who sent as is it to the Japanese government. This provoked the war in the Pacific. Had this not been done, The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor would have been done much later or not at all.
Second thoughts.......2002-06-27
I reviewed this book in 1999, and gave it three stars. Over time, I've decided it was better than I first thought, and came back here to up it to four...
A Critical View of "The Haunted Wood".......2002-06-04
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A Critical View of "The Haunted Wood"
The thesis of this book is that KGB documents prove many New Deal and other US government officials were spies for the Soviet Union. The documentation in the book, however, does not support the thesis, in my opinion.
The co-authors state that one of them, a former KGB agent named Alexander Vassiliev, saw the KGB documents in Moscow on an exclusive basis, in exchange for payments by the publisher, Random House, to an association of former KGB agents. There is no way to verify the authenticity of the KGB documents; no way to check the accuracy of the excerpts and paraphrases printed in the book; no way to study their context, such as the rest of the file from which a particular document came, which every historian and student knows can be crucial to a correct reading and interpretation. We do not even know whether the documents Vassiliev saw are in the Russian language and, if they are, who translated them and how accurately.
The book contains 1099 numbered footnotes, of which 1049 are citations to those off-limits KGB documents. Readers may well ask why those footnotes are there at all. Another frustrating puzzle for readers is the way the co-authors purport to quote KGB documents that contain code names (which the Soviet intelligence agencies routinely assigned to spies and occasionally to non-spies such as Roosevelt, Truman, Churchill, and lesser figures): the co-authors delete the code names and replace them with real names in square brackets -- but often without disclosing what code names they have deleted, and without citing any KGB document or otherwise explaining how or where they got the real names. Compounding the confusion, they state that the Soviets sometimes assigned the same code name to more than one person and sometimes assigned two or three code names to the same person. For instance, the co-authors assert that the American diplomat Alger Hiss had two code names, "Ales" and "Lawyer", while the US Treasury official Harry Dexter White had three code names, "Lawyer", "Richard", and "Reed".
In The Haunted Wood, the co-authors do not explain why they cite no authority or source for ascribing "Lawyer" as a code name for Hiss. For their assertion that "Ales" was another code name for Hiss, they do not cite any KGB documentary source, but they reproduce (and misquote) a so-called "Venona" document, released in 1996 by the US National Security Agency and said to bear a translation of a partially decrypted 1945 KGB cablegram about "Ales". In 1950, an FBI agent tentatively identified Ales as Hiss and said the FBI would attempt to verify the identification; but it never did so, nor could it have done so.
The Venona-KGB cablegram itself, reproduced with the photographs in the book, shows that Ales could not have been Hiss. Ales was a military intelligence (GRU) agent who obtained only military information. Hiss, however, was charged with obtaining only non-military State Department materials; the papers that were used to convict him were copies of State Department documents. Ales was the leader of a group of GRU agents, whereas Hiss was accused of acting alone (except for his wife and his accuser, Whittaker Chambers). Ales conducted espionage throughout the eleven years 1935-45, whereas Hiss was accused of having conducted espionage not later than 1938, etc. etc. But The Haunted Wood does not mention, let alone attempt to explain away, any of those discrepancies that preclude Ales as having been Hiss.
Furthermore, there is an earlier Venona document that tends to exonerate Hiss, but I can not find any mention of it in the book. It contains a fragment of a GRU message that, in the original, included the name "Hiss" spelled out in the Latin alphabet, rather than the Cyrillic. For the GRU to use the Latin alphabet just for the name strongly suggests that the GRU had never before heard of Hiss and wanted to be sure to get the name right. (No first name is given, so we can not tell whether "Hiss" was Alger or his brother Donald, who was also in the State Department.) Moreover, for the GRU to use Hiss's real name suggests that he had no code name and was not an espionage agent, because Soviet intelligence agencies, for reasons of security, normally assigned code names to their agents and referred to them only by their code names. Given the many pages that The Haunted Wood devotes to Hiss, Ales, the GRU, and Venona, it is a serious lapse, in my view, for the co-authors not to tell their readers about this GRU message and not to discuss its implications.
The lack of verifiable documentation in The Haunted Wood, its plethora of errors, and its strategic omissions leave it demonstrably untrustworthy. In my opinion, the book falls too far below minimal standards of scholarly or journalistic rigor for any serious consideration.
Very informative. One of the best. But it is a boring read.......2000-11-25
I have read many books on the issue of intelligence. The insight provided by this book is excellent. In particular, the nature and history of America's volunteer ideological spies is the very best I have ever read. But I have found it a hard read. It is possible to be too through. Honest, it is. I had an easier time with Mitrokhin.
Customer Reviews:
Offers great early insight into recent Russian developments.......1999-10-11
In the tradition of Lewin, Jowitt and Lane Von Laue offers insight where others have failed
Book Description
Thank you, our Stalin, for a happy childhood." "Thank you, dear Marshal [Stalin], for our freedom, for our children's happiness, for life." Between the Russian Revolution and the Cold War, Soviet public culture was so dominated by the power of the state that slogans like these appeared routinely in newspapers, on posters, and in government proclamations. In this penetrating historical study, Jeffrey Brooks draws on years of research into the most influential and widely circulated Russian newspapers--including Pravda, Isvestiia, and the army paper Red Star--to explain the origins, the nature, and the effects of this unrelenting idealization of the state, the Communist Party, and the leader.
Brooks shows how, beginning with Lenin, the Communists established a state monopoly of the media that absorbed literature, art, and science into a stylized and ritualistic public culture--a form of political performance that became its own reality and excluded other forms of public reflection. He presents and explains scores of self-congratulatory newspaper articles, including tales of Stalin's supposed achievements and virtue, accounts of the country's allegedly dynamic economy, and warnings about the decadence and cruelty of the capitalist West. Brooks pays particular attention to the role of the press in the reconstruction of the Soviet cultural system to meet the Nazi threat during World War II and in the transformation of national identity from its early revolutionary internationalism to the ideology of the Cold War. He concludes that the country's one-sided public discourse and the pervasive idea that citizens owed the leader gratitude for the "gifts" of goods and services led ultimately to the inability of late Soviet Communism to diagnose its own ills, prepare alternative policies, and adjust to new realities.
The first historical work to explore the close relationship between language and the implementation of the Stalinist-Leninist program, Thank You, Comrade Stalin! is a compelling account of Soviet public culture as reflected through the country's press.
Customer Reviews:
Soviet culture and Pravda.......2005-12-04
Though by reading his title one may think that this book is a history of public culture in all its manifestations, Brooks' monograph focuses on the press. While taking into account many of the newspapers available in the Soviet Union, his focus is on Pravda, since `it was the center of the informational system.' (xix) Not having a sound methodology of choosing which articles to include in his survey, he instead chooses a random sample based on three criteria; one, every tenth editorial in Pravda from 1917 to Stalin's death, two, articles published on important holidays, three, reports on domestic affairs in a random sample of Pravda issues. With these articles as his guide, he seeks to investigate public culture.
Brooks calls Soviet public culture, as he defines it, as a performance. `Political activity has always been akin to drama', he writes, and `Stalin and others employed rituals of theater to draw citizens into public displays of support.' (xvi) While the image newspapers sought to create of the regime more often than naught conflicted with reality, `Soviet people could not take the public culture as a fairy tale because it infiltrated every aspect of their lives.' (xvii)
On November 9, 1917, the day after they seized power, the Bolsheviks nationalized the publishing industry. Initially, the Bolsheviks sought to use the press to persuade the population to their revolutionary cause; however, the language of the new authorities was often not understood by the masses. Further consolidation of the press into a state monopoly increased this inability to communicate. This brought upon a `shift from persuasion to compulsion in the late 1920's.' (18)
A new political class and a new social structure arose during the first decade of Soviet rule for whom `socialist building' had great appeal. The expansion of the state meant upward mobility and jobs in the public sector. Stories in the press of mobility and service legitimated the new hierarchy. In the 30s, `Stalin became the living protagonist of an almost sacred cult.' (60) And it was to him, and to a lesser extent the party, that all Soviet citizens owed a great debt to for the reported great gains of the turbulent period.
Until the completion of the first five-year plan in 1932, the press had emphasized self-sacrifice. This changed after 1932, when the plan was hailed as a success. `The ethos of self-denial for a cause ... gave way to perpetual indebtedness.' (83) Following this `great break' (author's words), the so-called `economy of the gift' became prevalent. There developed a society in which public allocation of resources `were officially presented as moral transactions, and performers who publicly thanked Stalin validated personal ties to the leader.' (84) Even having a normal job was seen as a gift, thus indebting the entire nation to the regime. Hence comes the quote which graces the title, `Thank You, Comrade Stalin, for a Happy Childhood'.
With the advent of World War Two, the press abandoned its effort to center all Soviet identity on Stalin. `Within months of the invasion', Brooks write, `the war spawned a plurality of intertwined narratives and a range of perspectives.' (160) As the war turned for the worse, the cult of Stalin waned. It was during the war when journalists were allowed a `breath of fresh air', and some journalists `tentatively displayed aspects of a civil society.' (175) This is a very strong statement, one that Brooks really doesn't seem to follow up on, or perhaps address effectively. Nevertheless, once `the tide of battle turned from defeat to victory, Stalin reasserted his public persona, and another narrative of the war arose.' (185) Stalin resumed his place at the top of the hierarchy, `the font of recognition and honor.' (186) Following the war, the population's presumed indebtedness to Stalin increased. Victory in the war became attributed to Stalin, and Stalin alone.
To sum up, I'm going to cop out and just toss in this paragraph from the epilogue:
Through his charisma, Stalin established the `otherness of the Soviet experience, its exceptionalism and independence from strictures that governed other societies. By accepting him as leader and prophet, participants in the performative culture were able to enhance their own power, justify the rightness of their cause, and deny the applicability of all other standards of behavior and morality ... The gratitude they expressed in what I have called the moral economy of the gift can be understood as a personal expression of gratefulness to Stalin and of the bond between them. The officials, activists, and enthusiasts who enjoyed this bond with Stalin were the government's link to the general populace ... This is why the pedagogical function of the performance was so important. Participants who comprised the "link" rehearsed the routines of the social order and so communicated their understanding of "the facts of life" to others.
Turgid writing style mars what should have been great book.......2000-07-05
Although this book provides a valuable insight into the dark heart of Stalinism it is marred by an exceedingly odd mixture of writing styles. In part it feels like a turgid academic thesis packed with sentences so convoluted that they don't make sense however many times you read them. But elsewhere Brooks shakes off the leaden prose and delivers just what I expected from the blurb -- an incise study of how Stalinism developed through the eyes of the media. There is a great deal of interesting material here and Brooks has obviously done a huge amount of research. He shows how Stalin gradually throttled the life out of the media and turned newspapers and magazines into codebooks for the Soviet elite, packed with dead language and curious ideas which were of crucial importance to those jostling madly for influence and of no interest or value to the general population. But every time I felt like giving the book the five stars it should have merited, I came across a passage like the following: "In a play, actors and audience briefly leave the quotidian world to enter a special arena of time and space. To describe this realm of the 'betwixt and between' in which wishes or dreams hold sway, one can employ the concept of 'liminal', that is, a threshold between sacred and profane, a transitional zone that participants in a ritual must enter in order to leave the everyday world. Arnold van Gennep, who introduced the notion in his classic 1908 study, The Rites of Passage, postulated three phrases of ritual drama..." I shall spare you the no less impenetrable thoughts of van Gennep. Brooks also has a weakness for the word 'Manicheanism' which appears far too often in this text. I write these words of criticism with a heavy heart, because inside the verbiage there is a very good book waiting to break out. Brooks has done enough to ensure that every half-serious student of Stalinism will have to buy this book, but I only wish he had found an editor able to strip away the excess words.
Book Description
On June 22, 1941, Hitler launched a massive three-pronged attack on the Soviet Union, and in days his troops were within reach of Moscow. The attack was stunning, but Stalin's response was even more astonishing. During the invasion, the mighty Soviet military stood in place while its soldiers were slaughtered by the hundreds of thousands. Drawing on a wealth of newly available documents, from classified Politburo papers and diaries of key generals to diplomatic cables and secret police memos, the Russian historian Constantine Pleshakov paints a startling portrait of Stalin, one of history's most feared despots, as a vulnerable and paralyzed leader. Refusing to believe that the Germans would strike first, despite repeated warnings, he continued to supply them with war materials in the days before the attack, then tied his generals" hands in the crucial first hours of the invasion. For more than a week, while Hitler rolled over Soviet territory, Stalin cowered in his dacha, leaving the country rudderless and as Pleshakov reveals here nearly losing power. The Red Army's effort to regain the territory lost in those first ten days cost more than 10 million Soviet lives. Stalin's Folly is a dramatic hour-by-hour account that sheds light on an enigmatic and ruthless figure while providing a new and far deeper understanding of Russian history.
Customer Reviews:
A good but not flawless account of those first ten days.......2007-06-13
Pleshakov has written a very detailed and lively account of those tragic first ten days, and the events leading up to them. His style is easy to enjoy, while his knowledge of the topic is extensive.
I only have two complaints:
(1) I think the endnotes should have been flagged by numbers so that it would have been easier to follow them.
(2) His theory that Stalin wanted to attack Germany by early July 1941 is not widely accepted, and there is no hard evidence whatsoever supporting it. It is just one possible explanation of Stalin's actions (or the lack of them) before Barbarossa, and (in my point of view) not even the most likely. Still Pleshakov regards it to be fact, and although he admits the lack of evidence, some readers may believe that what they're reading is the only (or at least by far the most likely) explanation of the known facts. Well, it is not.
Still, I recommend this book for anyone who's interested in the history (and the Soviet side) of the German Eastern Front.
Stalin's Folly.......2007-03-06
Just finished reading this book, interesting theory, that Stalin was going to preempt Hitler's attack on the USSR. What does Pleshakov think?, that Stalin is George Bush Jr? Clearly this theory is part of the revisionist interpretation of the facts. Stalin was a basket case and not a cunning foe of Hitler as being depicted. His commentary on the situation in Ukraine,the Ukrainian people and their representatives, the OUN, was stupid. Let me explain when the Nazis turned on the Ukrainians he called the OUN terrorists and then when the OUN fought the Soviets at the same time as they were fighting the Nazis-lo and behold-he also called them terrorists again. What?? Get
Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War, 1941-1945
Khrushchev's Cold War: The Inside Story of an American Adversary
The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy
Moscow 1941: A City and Its People at War (Vintage)
From Roosevelt to Truman: Potsdam, Hiroshima, and the Cold War
