Joseph Stalin: A Biographical Companion

Not another book on Stalin and the Soviet Union, you might reasonably object. After all, since the political and economic breakdown of the Soviet Union and its subsequent disintegration, all the world’s leading experts on Soviet studies have descended on Moscow, demanding their slice of access time to the Soviet archives. As a result, we have witnessed an avalanche of revolutionary studies, Soviet studies, and post‐Soviet studies, an array almost as formidable as the sight of the Red Army advancing to the Elbe. So, what sort of chance has this new work of endearing itself? Not a bad one, actually....