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
Results 1-5 of 85
... illuminated my path.5 In Moscow the two main archives I worked in were those of the Foreign Ministry and the Russian State Archive of Social-Political History, where the communist party archives for the Stalin era are housed. I.
... party meeting at his publishing house where the 'secret speech' was read out. He often recalled the dismay, disbelief, shock and silence of those attending the meeting. When I met him in the 1970s he was in the vanguard of the critical ...
... party but within a few months a resolution of the party's central committee 'On Overcoming the Cult of Personality and its Consequences' gave many of the critical themes a public airing.5 At the 22nd party congress in 1961 Khrushchev ...
... party and state archives which revealed for the first time the details of the means and mechanisms of his dictatorial rule. It might have been expected that the 1990s would see Stalin's reputation in Russia reduced to the same level as ...
... party congress remained unpublished in the Soviet Union until the Gorbachev era, a copy was leaked to the west14 and soon became one of the key texts of western historiography of the Stalin era. But many western historians were ...
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 |