Stalin

Начало книги

For more than two decades, I have been studying this man and the causes and logic underlying his actions, which upended or utterly destroyed millions upon millions of lives. This work has been stressful and emotionally draining, but it is my vocation. Lately, the paradoxical turns of recent Russian history, the large-scale poisoning of minds with myths of an “alternative” Stalin—one whose effective stewardship is held up as a model worthy of emulation—have given my research more than scholarly relevance.

The literature on Stalin and his era is impossibly vast. Even scholars of Stalinism freely admit to not having seen the half of it. Within this vastness, serious, meticulously documented research coexists with slapdash pen-pushing carelessly cobbled together out of anecdotes, rumors, and fabrications. The two camps—historical scholarship and lowbrow (usually pro-Stalin) ramblings—rarely cross paths and have long since given up the idea of reconciling.

Читать дальше →