Download or read book Stalin as Warlord written by Alfred J. Rieber and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2022-10-11 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An authoritative account of Stalin as a wartime leader—showing how his paradoxical policies of mass mobilization and repression affected all aspects of Soviet society The Second World War was the defining moment in the history of the Soviet Union. With Stalin at the helm, it emerged victorious at a huge economic and human cost. But even before the fighting had ended, Stalin began to turn against the architects of success. In this original and comprehensive study, Alfred J. Rieber examines Stalin as a wartime leader, arguing that his policies were profoundly paradoxical. In preparation for the war, Stalin mobilized the whole of Soviet society in pursuit of his military goals and intensified the centralization of his power. Yet at the same time, his use of terror weakened the forces vital to the defense of the country. In his efforts to rebuild the country after the devastating losses and destruction, he suppressed groups that had contributed immeasurably to victory. His steady, ruthless leadership cultivated a legacy that was to burden the Soviet Union and Russia to the present day.

Download or read book Stalin s Curse written by Robert Gellately and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-03-05 with total page 505 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A chilling, riveting account based on newly released Russian documentation that reveals Joseph Stalin’s true motives—and the extent of his enduring commitment to expanding the Soviet empire—during the years in which he seemingly collaborated with Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and the capitalist West. At the Big Three conferences of World War II, Joseph Stalin persuasively played the role of a great world leader, whose primary concerns lay in international strategy and power politics, and not communist ideology. Now, using recently uncovered documents, Robert Gellately conclusively shows that, in fact, the dictator was biding his time, determined to establish Communist regimes across Europe and beyond. His actions during those years—and the poorly calculated responses to them from the West—set in motion what would eventually become the Cold War. Exciting, deeply engaging, and shrewdly perceptive, Stalin’s Curse is an unprecedented revelation of the sinister machinations of Stalin’s Kremlin.

Download or read book Stalin s Wars written by Geoffrey Roberts and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This breakthrough book provides a detailed reconstruction of Stalin’s leadership from the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 to his death in 1953. Making use of a wealth of new material from Russian archives, Geoffrey Roberts challenges a long list of standard perceptions of Stalin: his qualities as a leader; his relationships with his own generals and with other great world leaders; his foreign policy; and his role in instigating the Cold War. While frankly exploring the full extent of Stalin’s brutalities and their impact on the Soviet people, Roberts also uncovers evidence leading to the stunning conclusion that Stalin was both the greatest military leader of the twentieth century and a remarkable politician who sought to avoid the Cold War and establish a long-term detente with the capitalist world. By means of an integrated military, political, and diplomatic narrative, the author draws a sustained and compelling personal portrait of the Soviet leader. The resulting picture is fascinating and contradictory, and it will inevitably change the way we understand Stalin and his place in history. Roberts depicts a despot who helped save the world for democracy, a personal charmer who disciplined mercilessly, a utopian ideologue who could be a practical realist, and a warlord who undertook the role of architect of post-war peace.

Download or read book Stalin and War 1918 1953 written by David R. Shearer and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-09-11 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stalin and War, 1918-1953 is the first book to examine the patterns of radicalized internal violence that characterized the Stalinist regime across the whole of the dictator’s rule, and it is one of the only works to connect patterns of internal violence to the dictator’s perceptions of war and foreign threat. Discussion focuses on the crisis years 1928-1932, 1936-1939, the Great Fatherland War, and the last war crisis period, 1947-1953. Violent repressions under Stalin were cyclical. They peaked and ebbed but, in each case, they were linked to Stalin’s expectation of war and invasion, to his perceived need for urgent internal mobilization, and to intense foreign policy activity. Stalin’s behavior in each of these perceived war crises followed a pattern established during the dictator's experience as a military commander in the Russian revolutionary wars, and especially during the Polish war in 1919 and 1920. Together, these chapters trace a consistent and interconnected logic of war and repression throughout Stalin’s political life. This book will be of interest to professional scholars of Soviet history, twentieth-century history, and World War II history, and it is approachable enough to be appreciated by general readers.

Download or read book The Soviet High Command written by John Erickson and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 934 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study documents the history of the Workers-Peasants Red Army from its origins in the post-revolutionary Civil War to the battle for Moscow in December 1941. Drawing from Soviet military histories, specialist monographs, Red Army publications, memoirs, and documentary collections on Soviet military organization and Army-Party relations, Erickson (emeritus, defense studies, U. or Edinburgh) considers such events as the secret collaboration with the Reichswehr, the military build-up in the Far East, the Tukhachevsky affair, Stalinist purges, and the Winter War in Finland. This edition features a new preface by the author. c. Book News Inc.

Download or read book Stalin as Warlord written by Albert Seaton and published by B.T. Batsford. This book was released on 1976 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The 1929 Sino Soviet War written by Michael Walker and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2021-02-01 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For seven weeks in 1929, the Republic of China and the Soviet Union battled in Manchuria over control of the Chinese Eastern Railroad. It was the largest military clash between China and a Western power ever fought on Chinese soil, involving more that a quarter million combatants. Michael M. Walker's The 1929 Sino-Soviet War is the first full account of what UPI's Moscow correspondent called "the war nobody knew"—a "limited modern war" that destabilized the region's balance of power, altered East Asian history, and sent grim reverberations through a global community giving lip service to demilitarizing in the wake of World War I. Walker locates the roots of the conflict in miscalculations by Chiang Kai-shek and Chang Hsueh-liang about the Soviets' political and military power—flawed assessments that prompted China's attempt to reassert full authority over the CER. The Soviets, on the other hand, were dominated by a Stalin eager to flex some military muscle and thoroughly convinced that war would win much more than petty negotiations. This was in fact, Walker shows, a watershed moment for Stalin, his regime, and his still young and untested military, disproving the assumption that the Red Army was incapable of fighting a modern war. By contrast, the outcome revealed how unprepared the Chinese military forces were to fight either the Red Army or the Imperial Japanese Army, their other primary regional competitor. And yet, while the Chinese commanders proved weak, Walker sees in the toughness of the overmatched infantry a hint of the rising nationalism that would transform China's troops from a mercenary army into a formidable professional force, with powerful implications for an overconfident Japanese Imperial Army in 1937. Using Russian, Chinese, and Japanese sources, as well as declassified US military reports, Walker deftly details the war from its onset through major military operations to its aftermath, giving the first clear and complete account of a little known but profoundly consequential clash of great powers between the World Wars.

Download or read book Stalin s Library written by Geoffrey Roberts and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2022-02-08 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling intellectual biography of Stalin told through his personal library In this engaging life of the twentieth century’s most self-consciously learned dictator, Geoffrey Roberts explores the books Stalin read, how he read them, and what they taught him. Stalin firmly believed in the transformative potential of words and his voracious appetite for reading guided him throughout his years. A biography as well as an intellectual portrait, this book explores all aspects of Stalin’s tumultuous life and politics. Stalin, an avid reader from an early age, amassed a surprisingly diverse personal collection of thousands of books, many of which he marked and annotated revealing his intimate thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. Based on his wide-ranging research in Russian archives, Roberts tells the story of the creation, fragmentation, and resurrection of Stalin’s personal library. As a true believer in communist ideology, Stalin was a fanatical idealist who hated his enemies—the bourgeoisie, kulaks, capitalists, imperialists, reactionaries, counter-revolutionaries, traitors—but detested their ideas even more.

Download or read book History s Greatest Heist written by Sean McMeekin and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-12-17 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How Lenin’s regime turned Russia’s priceless cultural patrimony into armored cars, trains, planes, and machine guns Historians have never resolved a central mystery of the Russian Revolution: How did the Bolsheviks, despite facing a world of enemies and leaving nothing but economic ruin in their path, manage to stay in power through five long years of civil war? In this penetrating book, Sean McMeekin draws on previously undiscovered materials from the Soviet Ministry of Finance and other European and American archives to expose some of the darkest secrets of Russia’s early days of communism. Building on one archival revelation after another, the author reveals how the Bolsheviks financed their aggression through astonishingly extensive thievery. Their looting included everything from the cash savings of private citizens to gold, silver, diamonds, jewelry, icons, antiques, and artwork. By tracking illicit Soviet financial transactions across Europe, McMeekin shows how Lenin’s regime accomplished history’s greatest heist between 1917 and 1922 and turned centuries of accumulated wealth into the sinews of class war. McMeekin also names names, introducing for the first time the compliant bankers, lawyers, and middlemen who, for a price, helped the Bolsheviks launder their loot, impoverish Russia, and impose their brutal will on millions.

Download or read book The Art of the Bribe written by James Heinzen and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-29 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first archive-based study of official corruption under Stalin and a compelling new look at the textures of everyday Soviet life after World War II In the Soviet Union, bribery was a skill with its own practices and culture. James Heinzen’s innovative and compelling study examines corruption under Stalin’s dictatorship in the wake of World War II, focusing on bribery as an enduring and important presence in many areas of Soviet life. Based on extensive research in recently declassified Soviet archives, The Art of the Bribe offers revealing insights into the Soviet state, its system of law and repression, and everyday life during the years of postwar Stalinism.

Download or read book Warlord Survival written by Romain Malejacq and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-15 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do warlords survive and even thrive in contexts that are explicitly set up to undermine them? How do they rise after each fall? Warlord Survival answers these questions. Drawing on hundreds of in-depth interviews in Afghanistan between 2007 and 2018, with ministers, governors, a former vice-president, warlords and their entourages, opposition leaders, diplomats, NGO workers, and local journalists and researchers, Romain Malejacq provides a full investigation of how warlords adapt and explains why weak states like Afghanistan allow it to happen. Malejacq follows the careers of four warlords in Herat, Sheberghan, and Panjshir—Ismail Khan, Abdul Rashid Dostum, Ahmad Shah Massoud, and Mohammad Qasim Fahim). He shows how they have successfully negotiated complicated political environments to survive ever since the beginning of the Soviet-Afghan war. The picture he paints in Warlord Survival is one of astute political entrepreneurs with a proven ability to organize violence. Warlords exert authority through a process in which they combine, instrumentalize, and convert different forms of power to prevent the emergence of a strong, centralized state. But, as Malejacq shows, the personal relationships and networks fundamental to the authority of Ismail Khan, Dostum, Massoud, and Fahim are not necessarily contrary to bureaucratic state authority. In fact, these four warlords, and others like them, offer durable and flexible forms of power in unstable, violent countries.

Download or read book Bolt Action Armies of the Soviet Union written by Warlord Games and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-05-20 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides Bolt Action players with all of the information they need to field the military forces of the Soviet Union. From the bitter urban warfare of Stalingrad, through the Winter War against Finland and the final drive to Berlin, the detailed army lists provided in this supplement allow players to construct Soviet armies for any theatre and any year of the war.

Download or read book Stalin s Master Narrative written by David Brandenberger and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-01 with total page 759 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A critical edition of the text that defined communist party ideology in Stalin's Soviet Union The Short Course on the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) defined Stalinist ideology both at home and abroad. It was quite literally the the master narrative of the USSR--a hegemonic statement on history, politics, and Marxism-Leninism that scripted Soviet society for a generation. This study exposes the enormous role that Stalin played in the development of this all-important text, as well as the unparalleled influence that he wielded over the Soviet historical imagination.

Download or read book Stalin s War with Germany The road to Berlin written by John Erickson and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 896 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Completing the most comprehensive and authoritative study ever written of the Soviet-German war, Erickson presents the vivid and compelling story of the Red Army's epic struggle to drive the Germans from Russian soil.

Download or read book Russia s War written by Richard Overy and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1998-08-01 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A penetrating and compassionate book on the most gigantic military struggle in world history."--The New York Times Book Review "An extraordinary tale... Overy's engrossing book provides extensive details of teh slaughter, brutality, bitterness and destruction on the massive front from the White Sea to the flank of Asia."--Chicago Tribune The Russian war effort to defeat invading Axis powers, an effort that assembled the largest military force in recorded history and that cost the lives of more than 25 million Soviet soldiers and civilians, was the decisive factor for securing an Allied victory. Now with access to the wealth of film archives and interview material from Russia used to produce the ten-hour television documentary Russia's War, Richard Overy tackles the many persuasive questions surrounding this conflict. Was Stalin a military genius? Was the defense of Mother Russia a product of something greater than numbers of tanks and planes--of something deep within the Russian soul?

Download or read book Warlords written by Simon Berthon and published by Thistle Publishing. This book was released on 2013-08-01 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WARLORDS recreates in forensic and gripping detail the extraordinary mind games between Churchill, Hitler, Stalin and Roosevelt as World War Two unfolded day by day. Why did Hitler make a deal in August 1939 with his sworn enemy Stalin? Was it always his intention to double-cross the Russian? Or was Operation Barbarossa forced on Hitler because he'd failed to bring Churchill to heel? What was going on in Roosevelt's mind as Churchill stood alone against Hitler? Did he always intend to bring America into the war, as Churchill pleaded with him to do? Or was his real plan for Britain to do the fighting, backed by American money - a plan that was disrupted only by Pearl Harbour? And in the war's endgame, did the two great leaders of the West failed to understand Stalin's intentions; or did they have no choice but to concede half of Europe to him? "Gripping, innovative and perceptive... It reads like a thriller but it is also a scholarly, impeccably researched piece of work... superlative." - Tribune "Fascinating insights into the minds of these titans." - Daily Mail

Download or read book When Titans Clashed written by David M. Glantz and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2015-10-16 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On first publication, this uncommonly concise and readable account of Soviet Russia's clash with Nazi Germany utterly changed our understanding of World War II on Germany’s Eastern Front, immediately earning its place among top-shelf histories of the world war. Revised and updated to reflect recent Russian and Western scholarship on the subject, much of it the authors' own work, this new edition maintains the 1995 original's distinction as a crucial volume in the history of World War II and of the Soviet Union and the most informed and compelling perspective on one of the greatest military confrontations of all time. In 1941, when Pearl Harbor shattered America's peacetime pretensions, the German blitzkrieg had already blasted the Red Army back to Moscow. Yet, less than four years later, the Soviet hammer-and-sickle flew above the ruins of Berlin, stark symbol of a miraculous comeback that destroyed the Germany Army and put an end to Hitler's imperial designs. In swift and stirring prose, When Titans Clash provides the clearest, most complete account of this epic struggle, especially from the Soviet perspective. Drawing on the massive and unprecedented release of Soviet archival documents in recent decades, David Glantz, one of the world's foremost authorities on the Soviet military, and noted military historian Jonathan House expand and elaborate our picture of the Soviet war effort—a picture sharply different from accounts that emphasize Hitler's failed leadership over Soviet strategy and might. Rafts of newly available official directives, orders, and reports reveal the true nature and extraordinary scale of Soviet military operations as they swept across the one thousand miles from Moscow to Berlin, featuring stubborn defenses and monumental offensives and counteroffensives and ultimately costing the two sides combined a staggering twenty million casualties. Placing the war within its wider context, the authors also make use of recent revelations to clarify further the political, economic, and social issues that influenced and reflected what happened on the battlefield. Their work gives us new insight into Stalin's political motivation and Adolf Hitler’s role as warlord, as well as a better understanding of the human and economic costs of the war—for both the Soviet Union and Germany. While incorporating a wealth of new information, When Titans Clashed remains remarkably compact, a tribute to the authors' determination to make this critical chapter in world history as accessible as it is essential.