{"product_id":"stalins-curse-battling-for-communism-in-war-and-cold-war-9780199668052","title":"Stalins Curse Battling for Communism in War and","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe 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\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003ean impressive piece of scholarship ... This paperback edition is to be welcomed * Evan Mawdsley, BBC History *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePART I: THE STALINIST REVOLUTION; PART II: SHADOWS OF THE COLD WAR; PART III: STALINS' COLD WAR","brand":"Oxford University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49881548456279,"sku":"9780199668052","price":13.49,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780199668052.jpg?v=1737826606","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/stalins-curse-battling-for-communism-in-war-and-cold-war-9780199668052","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}