Description
Book SynopsisUnderstand Stalin''s Russia is a compelling introduction to a man and a nation long enveloped in mystery. It covers all aspects of this fascinating history, from the shadows of Tsarism and the legacy of Lenin, to the implications of Stalin''s rule - including the horrific effects of the five-year plans, and the heroic but costly triumph in the Great Patriotic War.
Table of Contents
- : Introduction
- : 1. Russia at the time of Stalin's birth
- : 2. Towards revolution
- : The Russia into which Stalin was born
- : The condition of Russia in 1879 (the year of Stalin's birth)
- : 3. Civil war, the death of Lenin and the power struggle
- : 4. The collectivization of agriculture
- : The church, class structure and the autocratic rule of the Romanovs
- : The condition of the Russian people
- : 5. The Five-Year Plans
- : 6. From Marxism-Leninism to Stalinism
- : The development of a revolutionary tradition
- : Towards revolution and civil war
- : 7. Stalin's terror
- : 8. Everyday life in Stalin's Russia
- : Political parties and revolutionary groups
- : Tsarism under threat: The reasons for its survival and recovery
- : 9. Soviet foreign policy, 1918-40
- : 10. The Great Patriotic War, 1941-5
- : The age of the dumas
- : Russia's involvement in the First World War and its consequences
- : 11. Soviet foreign policy after 1945 - The Cold War
- : 12. The final years of Stalin's rule
- : Background to the revolutions of 1917
- : The failure of the Provisional Government and the coming of civil war
- : 13. Stalinist Russia - a postscript
- : The end of the Romanovs
- : The death of Lenin and the power struggle
- : The significance and aftermath of Lenin's death
- : The power struggle - Stalin versus Trotsky
- : The stages of the power stuggle
- : The reasons for Stalin's success
- : Collectivization and Five Year Plans - Stalin's economic policies
- : Lenin's new economic policy abandoned
- : The process of the collectivization of agriculture
- : The fate of the kulaks
- : Collectivization - success or failure?
- : The industrialization of Russia - Five Year Plans
- : Five Year Planning - success or failure?
- : The impact of Stalin's economic policies on the Russian people
- : Stalin's Russia
- : The meaning of Stalinism
- : The new constitution of 1936
- : The education system and youth movements
- : Zhenotdel and the role of women in Soviet society
- : Stalin's policy regarding the Church and religion
- : The arts and a cultural revolution
- : The terror and the purges
- : Various episodes - the Shakhty trials, the Riutin affair and the assassination of Sergei Kirov
- : Purges, show trials and their victims
- : The roles of Vyshinsky and Beria
- : The assassination of Trotsky
- : Stalin's foreign policy
- : Attitudes to Russia after the First World War
- : The Third International and the Communist International - Comintern
- : Soviet diplomacy in the 1920s
- : Relations with other world powers and involvement in the Far East
- : The Anti-Comintern Pact and Stalin's search for collective security
- : Involvement in the Spansih Civil War
- : Soviet attitude to the Czech crisis of 1938
- : The Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, 1939 and its purpose
- : 'The Winter War' against Finland
- : 'The Great Patriotic War' - the Soviet Union and the Second World War
- : 'Operation Barbarossa'
- : Reasons for Hitler's decision to invade the Soviet Union in 1941
- : The treatment of the Soviet people during the years of German occupation
- : Collaboration and resistance
- : The course of the war
- : The significant battles and turning points of the war
- : An estimate of Stalin as a wartime leader
- : The Soviet contribution to the final Allied victory
- : Soviet foreign policy and the coming of the Cold War
- : Post-war conferences, Yalta and Potsdam
- : The division of German and the Soviet Union's territorial gains
- : The collapse of the wartime alliance
- : The imposition of Communist rule over Eastern Europe
- : The 'iron curtain' and the impact of the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan
- : Berlin (1948) and other crises in East-West relations
- : The Soviet Union becomes a nuclear power
- : The final years of Stalin's rule
- : Post-war reconstruction in the Soviet Union
- : Stalinist tyranny intensifies
- : Zhdanovism and the purge of Soviet culture
- : Stalin's 'cult of personality'
- : Anti-Semitism and the 'Doctor's Plot'
- : An end of an era - the death of Josef Stalin
