Description
Book SynopsisThe Second World War almost destroyed Stalin''s Soviet Union. But victory over Nazi Germany provided the dictator with his great opportunity: to expand Soviet power way beyond the borders of the Soviet state. Well before the shooting stopped in 1945, the Soviet leader methodically set about the unprecedented task of creating a Red Empire that would soon stretch into the heart of Europe and Asia, displaying a supreme realism and ruthlessness that Machiavelli would surely have envied. By the time of his death in 1953, his new imperium was firmly in place, defining the contours of a Cold War world that was seemingly permanent and indestructible - and would last until the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. But what were Stalin''s motives in this spectacular power grab? Was he no more than a latter-day Russian tsar, for whom Communist ideology was little more than a smoke-screen? Or was he simply a psychopathic killer? In Stalin''s Curse, best-selling historian Robert Gellately firmly rej
Trade Reviewan impressive piece of scholarship ... This paperback edition is to be welcomed * Evan Mawdsley, BBC History *
Table of ContentsPART I: THE STALINIST REVOLUTION; PART II: SHADOWS OF THE COLD WAR; PART III: STALINS' COLD WAR
