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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... defeating the Nazis' attempt to impose their racist empire on Russia and Europe. By the early twenty-first century, with the former KGB officer Vladimir Putin in power, Stalin was more alive in Russia than at any time since his death ...
... defeats was that the Red Army was deployed for attack, not defence. The Soviet military were not so much caught napping as caught in the middle of preparations for their own attack on Germany. The novelty of this interpretation was its ...
... defeat and near catastrophe in 1919–1920. At the height of the civil war the Bolsheviks were besieged by counter-revolutionary White Armies attacking from every direction and were barely able to hang on to the territory they controlled ...
... defeated Hitler – who saw Soviet expansionism in the Black Sea, the Mediterranean and the Pacific as a threat to their own national strategic and political interests. In December 1945 Stalin complained to Ernest Bevin, the British ...
... defeated not only the Finns but their 'European teachers': 'We beat not only the Finns – that was not such a big task. The main thing about our victory was that we beat the techniques, tactics and strategies of the leading states of ...
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 |