Download or read book Cold Peace Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle 1945 1953 written by Yoram Gorlizki and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2004-01-15 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following his country's victory over Nazi Germany, Joseph Stalin was widely hailed as a great wartime leader and international statesman. Unchallenged on the domestic front, he headed one of the most powerful nations in the world. Yet, in the period from the end of World War II until his death, Stalin remained a man possessed by his fears. In order to reinforce his despotic rule in the face of old age and uncertain health, he habitually humiliated and terrorized members of his inner circle. He had their telephones bugged and even forced his deputy, Viacheslav Molotov, to betray his own spouse as a token of his allegiance.Often dismissed as paranoid and irrational, Stalin's behavior followed a clear political logic, contend Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk. Stalin's consistent and overriding goal after the war was to consolidate the Soviet Union's status as a superpower and, in the face of growing decrepitude, to maintain his own hold as leader of that power. To that end, he fashioned a system of leadership that was at once patrimonial-repressive and quite modern. While maintaining informal relations based on personal loyalty at the apex of the system, in the postwar period Stalin also vested authority in committees, elevated younger specialists, and initiated key institutional innovations with lasting consequences.Close scrutiny of Stalin's relationships with his most intimate colleagues also shows how, in the teeth of periodic persecution, Stalin's deputies cultivated informal norms and mutual understandings which provided the foundations for collective rule after his death. Based on newly released archival documents, including personal correspondence, drafts of Central Committee paperwork, new memoirs, and interviews with former functionaries and the families of Politburo members, this book will appeal to all those interested in Soviet history, political history, and the lives of dictators.
Download or read book Cold Peace written by and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Printbegrænsninger: Der kan printes 1 kapitel eller op til 5% af teksten
Download or read book Cold Peace written by Yoram Gorlizki and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the period from the end of World War II until his death, Stalin became an increasingly distrustful despot. This book argues that Stalin's behaviour was not entirely paranoid and erratic but followed a clear political logic.
Download or read book Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars written by Ethan Pollock and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1945 and 1953, while the Soviet Union confronted postwar reconstruction and Cold War crises, its unchallenged leader Joseph Stalin carved out time to study scientific disputes and dictate academic solutions. He spearheaded a discussion of "scientific" Marxist-Leninist philosophy, edited reports on genetics and physiology, adjudicated controversies about modern physics, and wrote essays on linguistics and political economy. Historians have been tempted to dismiss all this as the megalomaniacal ravings of a dying dictator. But in Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars, Ethan Pollock draws on thousands of previously unexplored archival documents to demonstrate that Stalin was in fact determined to show how scientific truth and Party doctrine reinforced one another. Socialism was supposed to be scientific, and science ideologically correct, and Stalin ostensibly embodied the perfect symbiosis between power and knowledge. Focusing on six major postwar debates in the Soviet scientific community, this elegantly written book shows that Stalin's forays into scholarship can be understood only within the context of international tensions, institutional conflicts, and the growing uncertainty about the proper relationship between scientific knowledge and Party-dictated truths. The nature of Stalin's interventions makes clear that more was at stake than high politics: these science wars were about asserting that the Party was rational and modern, and about codifying the Soviet worldview in a battle for the hearts and minds of people around the globe during the early Cold War. Ultimately, however, the effort to develop a scientific basis for Soviet ideology undermined the system's legitimacy.
Download or read book The Cold War at Home written by Philip Jenkins and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 1999 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most significant industrial states in the country, with a powerful radical tradition, Pennsylvania was, by the early 1950s, the scene of some of the fiercest anti-Communist activism in the United States. Philip Jenkins examines the political an
Download or read book Kingship and Politics in the Late Ninth Century written by Simon MacLean and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-09-25 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a major study of the collapse of the pan-European Carolingian empire and the reign of its last ruler, Charles III 'the Fat' (876–888). The later decades of the empire are conventionally seen as a dismal period of decline and fall, scarred by internal feuding, unfettered aristocratic ambition and Viking onslaught. This book offers an alternative interpretation, arguing that previous generations of historians misunderstood the nature and causes of the end of the empire, and neglected many of the relatively numerous sources for this period. Topics covered include the significance of aristocratic power; political structures; the possibilities and limits of kingship; developments in royal ideology; the struggle with the Vikings and the nature of regional political identities. In proposing these explanations for the empire's disintegration, the book has broader implications for our understanding of this formative period of European history more generally.
Download or read book Stalin written by Oleg V. Khlevniuk and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-05-19 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An engrossing biography of the notorious Russian dictator by an author whose knowledge of Soviet-era archives far surpasses all others. Josef Stalin exercised supreme power in the Soviet Union from 1929 until his death in 1953. During that quarter-century, by Oleg Khlevniuk’s estimate, he caused the imprisonment and execution of no fewer than a million Soviet citizens per year. Millions more were victims of famine directly resulting from Stalin’s policies. What drove him toward such ruthlessness? This essential biography offers an unprecedented, fine-grained portrait of Stalin the man and dictator. Without mythologizing Stalin as either benevolent or an evil genius, Khlevniuk resolves numerous controversies about specific events in the dictator’s life while assembling many hundreds of previously unknown letters, memos, reports, and diaries into a comprehensive, compelling narrative of a life that altered the course of world history. In brief, revealing prologues to each chapter, Khlevniuk takes his reader into Stalin’s favorite dacha, where the innermost circle of Soviet leadership gathered as their vozhd lay dying. Chronological chapters then illuminate major themes: Stalin’s childhood, his involvement in the Revolution and the early Bolshevik government under Lenin, his assumption of undivided power and mandate for industrialization and collectivization, the Terror, World War II, and the postwar period. At the book’s conclusion, the author presents a cogent warning against nostalgia for the Stalinist era. “This brilliant, authoritative, opinionated biography ranks as the best on Stalin in any language.”—Martin McCauley East-West Review “A historiographical and literary masterpiece.”—Mark Edele, Australian Book Review “A very digestible biography, yet one packed with revelations.”—Paul E. Richardson, Russian Life Magazine
Download or read book Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars written by Ethan Pollock and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction: Stalin, science, and politics after the Second World War -- "A Marxist should not write like that": the crisis on the "philosophical front" -- "The future belongs to Michurin": the agricultural academy session of 1948 -- "We can always shoot them later": physics, politics, and the atomic bomb -- "Battles of opinions and open criticism": Stalin intervenes in linguistics -- "Attack the detractors with certainty of total success": the Pavlov session of 1950 -- "Everyone is waiting": Stalin and the economic problems of communism -- Conclusion: science and the fate of the Stalinist system.
Download or read book Cold War Cold Peace written by Bernard A. Weisberger and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides accounts of the major confrontations of the Cold War since 1945.
Download or read book Stalin written by Simon Sebag Montefiore and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 850 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • This widely acclaimed biography of a Soviet dictator and his entourage during the terrifying decades of his supreme power transforms our understanding of the Marxist leader and Russian tsar. • From the bestselling author of The Romanovs. “The first intimate portrait of a man who had more lives on his conscience than Hitler.... Disturbing and perplexing.” —The New York Times Book Review Based on groundbreaking research, Simon Sebag Montefiore reveals the fear and betrayal, privilege and debauchery, family life and murderous cruelty of this secret world. Written with bracing narrative verve, this feat of scholarly research has become a classic of modern history writing. Showing how Stalin's triumphs and crimes were the product of his fanatical Marxism and his gifted but flawed character, this is an intimate portrait of a man as complicated and human as he was brutal and chilling.
Download or read book Iron Curtain written by Anne Applebaum and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2012-10-30 with total page 803 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the long-awaited follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag, acclaimed journalist Anne Applebaum delivers a groundbreaking history of how Communism took over Eastern Europe after World War II and transformed in frightening fashion the individuals who came under its sway. At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union to its surprise and delight found itself in control of a huge swath of territory in Eastern Europe. Stalin and his secret police set out to convert a dozen radically different countries to Communism, a completely new political and moral system. In Iron Curtain, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anne Applebaum describes how the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were created and what daily life was like once they were complete. She draws on newly opened East European archives, interviews, and personal accounts translated for the first time to portray in devastating detail the dilemmas faced by millions of individuals trying to adjust to a way of life that challenged their every belief and took away everything they had accumulated. Today the Soviet Bloc is a lost civilization, one whose cruelty, paranoia, bizarre morality, and strange aesthetics Applebaum captures in the electrifying pages of Iron Curtain.
Download or read book Stalin and the Scientists written by Simon Ings and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2017-02-21 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “One of the finest, most gripping surveys of the history of Russian science in the twentieth century.” —Douglas Smith, author of Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy Stalin and the Scientists tells the story of the many gifted scientists who worked in Russia from the years leading up to the revolution through the death of the “Great Scientist” himself, Joseph Stalin. It weaves together the stories of scientists, politicians, and ideologues into an intimate and sometimes horrifying portrait of a state determined to remake the world. They often wreaked great harm. Stalin was himself an amateur botanist, and by falling under the sway of dangerous charlatans like Trofim Lysenko (who denied the existence of genes), and by relying on antiquated ideas of biology, he not only destroyed the lives of hundreds of brilliant scientists, he caused the death of millions through famine. But from atomic physics to management theory, and from radiation biology to neuroscience and psychology, these Soviet experts also made breakthroughs that forever changed agriculture, education, and medicine. A masterful book that deepens our understanding of Russian history, Stalin and the Scientists is a great achievement of research and storytelling, and a gripping look at what happens when science falls prey to politics. Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction in 2016 A New York Times Book Review “Paperback Row” selection “Ings’s research is impressive and his exposition of the science is lucid . . . Filled with priceless nuggets and a cast of frauds, crackpots and tyrants, this is a lively and interesting book, and utterly relevant today.” —The New York Times Book Review “A must read for understanding how the ideas of scientific knowledge and technology were distorted and subverted for decades across the Soviet Union.” —The Washington Post
Download or read book Identities and Representations in Georgia from the 19th Century to the Present written by Hubertus Jahn and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-12-07 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This interdisciplinary volume explores various identities and their expressions in Georgia from the early 19th century to the present. It focuses on memory culture, the politics of history, and the relations between imperial and national traditions. It also addresses political, social, cultural, personal, religious, and gender identities. Individual contributions address the imperial scenarios of Russia’s tsars visiting the Caucasus, Georgian political romanticism, specific aspects of the feminist movement and of pedagogical reform projects before 1917. Others discuss the personality cult of Stalin, the role of the museum built for the Soviet dictator in his hometown Gori, and Georgian nationalism in the uprising of 1956. Essays about the Abkhaz independence movement, the political role of national saints, post-Soviet identity crises, atheist sub-cultures, and current perceptions of citizenship take the volume into the contemporary period.
Download or read book Cold Peace written by Yoram Gorlizki and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-01-15 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following his country's victory over Nazi Germany, Joseph Stalin was widely hailed as a great wartime leader and international statesman. Unchallenged on the domestic front, he headed one of the most powerful nations in the world. Yet, in the period from the end of World War II until his death, Stalin remained a man possessed by his fears. In order to reinforce his despotic rule in the face of old age and uncertain health, he habitually humiliated and terrorized members of his inner circle. He had their telephones bugged and even forced his deputy, Viacheslav Molotov, to betray his own spouse as a token of his allegiance. Often dismissed as paranoid and irrational, Stalin's behavior followed a clear political logic, contend Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk. Stalin's consistent and overriding goal after the war was to consolidate the Soviet Union's status as a superpower and, in the face of growing decrepitude, to maintain his own hold as leader of that power. To that end, he fashioned a system of leadership that was at once patrimonial-repressive and quite modern. While maintaining informal relations based on personal loyalty at the apex of the system, in the postwar period Stalin also vested authority in committees, elevated younger specialists, and initiated key institutional innovations with lasting consequences. Close scrutiny of Stalin's relationships with his most intimate colleagues also shows how, in the teeth of periodic persecution, Stalin's deputies cultivated informal norms and mutual understandings which provided the foundations for collective rule after his death. Based on newly released archival documents, including personal correspondence, drafts of Central Committee paperwork, new memoirs, and interviews with former functionaries and the families of Politburo members, this book will appeal to all those interested in Soviet history, political history, and the lives of dictators. Cold Peace was a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title for 2005.
Download or read book Stalin s Letters to Molotov written by Josef Stalin and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1995-01-01 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1925 and 1936, Josef Stalin wrote frequently to his trusted friend and political colleague Viacheslav Molotov. The more than 85 letters collected in this volume constitute a unique historical record of Stalin's thinking--both personal and political--and throw valuable light on the way he controlled the government, plotted the overthrow of his enemies, and imagined the future. Illustrations.
Download or read book Inside the Kremlin s Cold War written by Vladislav Martinovich Zubok and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using recently uncovered archival materials, personal interviews, and a broad familiarity with Russian history and culture, two young Russian historians have written a major interpretation of the Cold War as seen from the Soviet shore. Covering the volatile period from 1945 to 1962, Zubok and Pleshakov explore the personalities and motivations of the key people who directed Soviet political life and shaped Soviet foreign policy. They begin with the fearsome figure of Joseph Stalin, who was driven by the dual dream of a Communist revolution and a global empire. They reveal the scope and limits of Stalin's ambitions by taking us into the world of his closest subordinates, the ruthless and unimaginative foreign minister Molotov and the Party's chief propagandist, Zhdanov, a man brimming with hubris and missionary zeal. The authors expose the machinations of the much-feared secret police chief Beria and the party cadre manager Malenkov, who tried but failed to set Soviet policies on a different course after Stalin's death. Finally, they document the motives and actions of the self-made and self-confident Nikita Khrushchev, full of Russian pride and party dogma, who overturned many of Stalin's policies with bold strategizing on a global scale. The authors show how, despite such attempts to change Soviet diplomacy, Stalin's legacy continued to divide Germany and Europe, and led the Soviets to the split with Maoist China and to the Cuban missile crisis. Zubok and Pleshakov's groundbreaking work reveals how Soviet statesmen conceived and conducted their rivalry with the West within the context of their own domestic and global concerns and aspirations. The authors persuasively demonstrate thatthe Soviet leaders did not seek a conflict with the United States, yet failed to prevent it or bring it to conclusion. They also document why and how Kremlin policy-makers, cautious and scheming as they were, triggered the gravest crises of the Cold War in Korea, Berlin, and Cuba.
Download or read book The History of the Gulag written by Oleg V. Khlevniuk and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The human cost of the Gulag, the Soviet labor camp system in which millions of people were imprisoned between 1920 and 1956, was staggering. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and others after him have written movingly about the Gulag, yet never has there been a thorough historical study of this unique and tragic episode in Soviet history. This groundbreaking book presents the first comprehensive, historically accurate account of the camp system. Russian historian Oleg Khlevniuk has mined the contents of extensive archives, including long-suppressed state and Communist Party documents, to uncover the secrets of the Gulag and how it became a central component of Soviet ideology and social policy.
