Stalin And His Hangmen
Download Stalin And His Hangmen full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online free Stalin And His Hangmen ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!
Stalin and His Hangmen
Author | : Donald Rayfield |
Publsiher | : Random House |
Total Pages | : 592 |
Release | : 2007-12-18 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 9780307431837 |
Download Stalin and His Hangmen Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle
Stalin did not act alone. The mass executions, the mock trials, the betrayals and purges, the jailings and secret torture that ravaged the Soviet Union during the three decades of Stalin’s dictatorship, were the result of a tight network of trusted henchmen (and women), spies, psychopaths, and thugs. At the top of this pyramid of terror sat five indispensable hangmen who presided over the various incarnations of Stalin’s secret police. Now, in his harrowing new book, Donald Rayfield probes the lives, the minds, the twisted careers, and the unpunished crimes of Stalin’s loyal assassins. Founded by Feliks Dzierzynski, the Cheka–the Extraordinary Commission–came to life in the first years of the Russian Revolution. Spreading fear in a time of chaos, the Cheka proved a perfect instrument for Stalin’s ruthless consolidation of power. But brutal as it was, the Cheka under Dzierzynski was amateurish compared to the well-oiled killing machines that succeeded it. Genrikh Iagoda’s OGPU specialized in political assassination, propaganda, and the manipulation of foreign intellectuals. Later, the NKVD recruited a new generation of torturers. Starting in 1938, terror mastermind Lavrenti Beria brought violent repression to a new height of ingenuity and sadism. As Rayfield shows, Stalin and his henchmen worked relentlessly to coerce and suborn leading Soviet intellectuals, artists, writers, lawyers, and scientists. Maxim Gorky, Aleksandr Fadeev, Alexei Tolstoi, Isaak Babel, and Osip Mandelstam were all caught in Stalin’s web–courted, toyed with, betrayed, and then ruthlessly destroyed. In bringing to light the careers, personalities, relationships, and “accomplishments” of Stalin’s key henchmen and their most prominent victims, Rayfield creates a chilling drama of the intersection of political fanaticism, personal vulnerability, and blind lust for power spanning half a century. Though Beria lost his power–and his life–after Stalin’s death in 1953, the fundamental methods of the hangmen maintained their grip into the second half of the twentieth century. Indeed, Rayfield argues, the tradition of terror, far from disappearing, has emerged with renewed vitality under Vladimir Putin. Written with grace, passion, and a dazzling command of the intricacies of Soviet politics and society, Stalin and the Hangmen is a devastating indictment of the individuals and ideology that kept Stalin in power.
Stalin and His Hangmen
Author | : Donald Rayfield |
Publsiher | : Unknown |
Total Pages | : 528 |
Release | : 2005 |
Genre | : Electronic Book |
ISBN | : OCLC:231985983 |
Download Stalin and His Hangmen Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle
Stalin s Library
Author | : Geoffrey Roberts |
Publsiher | : Yale University Press |
Total Pages | : 277 |
Release | : 2022 |
Genre | : Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN | : 9780300179040 |
Download Stalin s Library Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle
A biography as well as an intellectual portrait, this book explores all aspects of Stalin's tumultuous life and politics, told through his personal library. Stalin, an avid reader from an early age, amassed a surprisingly diverse personal collection of thousands of books, many of which he marked and annotated revealing his intimate thoughts, feelings, and beliefs
Master of the House
Author | : Oleg V. Khlevniuk |
Publsiher | : Yale University Press |
Total Pages | : 344 |
Release | : 2008-12-30 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 9780300161281 |
Download Master of the House Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle
Based on meticulous research in previously unavailable documents in the Soviet archives, this compelling book illuminates the secret inner mechanisms of power in the Soviet Union during the years when Stalin established his notorious dictatorship. Oleg V. Khlevniuk focuses on the top organ in Soviet Russia's political hierarchy of the 1930s--the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party--and on the political and interpersonal dynamics that weakened its collective leadership and enabled Stalin's rise. Khlevniuk's unparalleled research challenges existing theories of the workings of the Politburo and uncovers many new findings regarding the nature of alliances among Politburo members, Sergei Kirov's murder, the implementation of the Great Terror, and much more. The author analyzes Stalin's mechanisms of generating and retaining power and presents a new understanding, unmatched in texture and depth, of the highest tiers of the Communist Party in a crucial era of Soviet history.
Stalin s Loyal Executioner
Author | : Marc Jansen,Nikita Vasilʹevich Petrov |
Publsiher | : Hoover Institution Press |
Total Pages | : 289 |
Release | : 2002-04-01 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 9780817929022 |
Download Stalin s Loyal Executioner Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle
Stalin's Loyal Executioner, drawn from still-classified Soviet archives, chronicles the meteoric and bloody career of Nikolai Ezhov, NKVD leader and security chief, revealing the tragic scope of communist terrorism under Joseph Stalin.
On Stalin s Team
Author | : Sheila Fitzpatrick |
Publsiher | : Princeton University Press |
Total Pages | : 379 |
Release | : 2015-09-15 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 9781400874217 |
Download On Stalin s Team Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle
The first chronicle of Stalin's inner political and social circle—from a leading Soviet historian Stalin was the unchallenged dictator of the Soviet Union for so long that most historians have dismissed the officials surrounding him as mere yes-men and political window dressing. On Stalin's Team overturns this view, revealing that behind Stalin was a group of loyal men who formed a remarkably effective team with him from the late 1920s until his death in 1953. Drawing on extensive original research, Sheila Fitzpatrick provides the first in-depth account of this inner circle and their families. She vividly describes how these dedicated comrades-in-arms not only worked closely with Stalin, but also constituted his social circle. Stalin's team included the wily security chief Beria; Andreev, who traveled to provincial purges while listening to Beethoven on a portable gramophone; and Khrushchev, who finally disbanded the team four years after Stalin's death. Taking readers from the cataclysms of the Great Purges and World War II to the paranoia of Stalin's final years, On Stalin's Team paints an entirely new picture of Stalin within his milieu—one that transforms our understanding of how the Soviet Union was ruled during much of its existence.
The Last Days of Stalin
Author | : Joshua Rubenstein |
Publsiher | : Yale University Press |
Total Pages | : 299 |
Release | : 2016-01-01 |
Genre | : Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN | : 9780300192223 |
Download The Last Days of Stalin Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle
Monografie over de laatste maanden in het leven van Stalin en de periode daarna.
Beria
Author | : Amy Knight |
Publsiher | : Princeton University Press |
Total Pages | : 344 |
Release | : 1993 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 0691010935 |
Download Beria Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle
This is the biography of Lavrentii Beria, Stalin's notorious police chief and for many years his most powerful lieutenant. Beria has long symbolized the evils of Stalinism, yet because his political opponents removed his name from public memory after his execution in 1953, little is known of him.