Stalin's Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939-1953This 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. |
From inside the book
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... Harriman, Stalin and Molotov at the Kremlin during Churchill's visit in August 1942. Corbis. Victorious Soviet soldiers marching through the ruins of Stalingrad. Interfoto. Ruins of the factory district in besieged Stalingrad. Interfoto ...
... Harriman, David Holloway, Caroline KennedyPipe, Jochen Laufer, Mel Leffler, Eduard Mark, Evan Mawdsley, Vladimir Nevezhin, Alexander Orlov, Vladimir Pechatnov, Silvio Pons, Alexander Pozdeev, Vladimir Poznyakov, Robert Service, Teddy ...
... calculations.31 But we now know a considerable amount about Stalin's detailed conduct of the Soviet war effort and about the context in which he formulated and took his military and political decisions. Averell Harriman, the.
... Harriman presented a fascinating sketch of the qualities that, in his eyes, made Stalin such an effective war leader. In Harriman's view Stalin was a man of keen intelligence, by no means an intellectual, but a smart operator, a ...
... Harriman in September 1941, 'we know that the people won't fight for world revolution and they won't fight for Soviet power, but perhaps they will fight for Russia'.77 In a war as closely fought as the Soviet–German one, Stalin's ...
Contents
Stalin and his Generals | |
Stalin Churchill and Roosevelt | |
Stalins Year of Victories | |
Stalins Aims in Germany and Eastern Europe | |
Stalin Truman and the End of the Second World | |
Stalin and the Origins of the Cold | |
The Domestic Context of Stalins Postwar Foreign Policy | |
Stalin Embattled | |
Stalin in the Court of History | |
Select Bibliography | 1957 |
Index | 1975 |