Stalin: Breaker of Nations

This book covers the life of Joseph Stalin, from his childhood in Gori to his death at his Nearer dacha (Kuntsevo) near Moscow on March 5, 1953. This book is 346 pages, including Bibliographical Notes an Index. The book is easy to read, well-organized, and ideal for the beginning student of Soviet history and Stalinism. It contains two sets of photographs that puts faces on the victims of Stalin, adding tangible personification to the almost surreal sense of totalitarian horror. Consider the photograph in the book of the seven Bolsheviks elected to the Politburo in 1924 after Lenin's death; six -- i.e., Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin, Trotsky (killed with pick axe), Rykov, and Tomsky (possible suicide) would be killed (four shot) by the remaining one, the strongest hyena of them all, Stalin.Through the sequential Congresses of the Party, we can follow Stalin's career as he ascend the levels of power with words and deeds, until he reaches the zenith of despotic, autocratic, and absolute power, and then the Congresses cease convening. Stalin rules with his inner circle, his minions who cajoled but also feared him. After the Party Congress of 1934, "the Congress of Victors," his triumph was complete. He then used the assassination of Georgi Kirov in Leningrad as an excuse to launch the Great Terror of 1936-1938, despite the fact his power was now unchallenged. Millions perished, starved to death in government planned famines, shot, or worked to death in the gulag labor camps.Conquest writes, " In the early summer of 1918, the Bolsheviks moved into a 'socialist phase,' with nationalization, food requisitioning and all the other dictatorial measures later described as "War Communism" -- though at the time clearly presented as the fulfillment of the party's long term aims." Only popular opposition and peasant rebellions forced Lenin to temporarily change course with the New Economic Policy. Without exception all of the Bolsheviks -- i.e., Lenin himself, Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin, Sverdlov, Ordzhonikidze, etc., had condone violence and terror against the enemies of the Revolution, real or imagined. What separated Stalin from the rest was that Stalin would use terror indiscriminately, as a matter of course, against the population, not sparing the families of his political opponents (not even his own), but most ominously against his former comrades without flinching.Joseph Conrad's observation is valid: "Hopes grotesquely betrayed, ideals caricatured -- that is the definition of revolutionary success," for all of Soviet history: Stalinism was only worse. And yet, there were other examples of socialist and communist horrors -- e.g., , Red China under Mao Zedong and Cambodia under Pol Pot, and there were others.But the caricature worsens, and desolation, cruelty, and death follow in the path of "building socialism," a path that began, not with Stalin but with Lenin, and was asserted at various points of the revolution by Trotsky (who crushed the Kronstadt rebellion without mercy) and most of the other Bolsheviks, including "the darling of the party," Nikolai Bukharin.A very critical stage for Stalin's career, even his political survival, took place in the years 1922 to 1924, when Lenin very ill and partially incapacitated finally recognized Stalin's boundless cruelty and unquenchable thirst for personal, political power. Stalin had even insulted Nadezdha Krupskaya, Lenin's devoted wife, but it was too late. After Lenin's stroke of March 7, 1923 until his death in January 21, 1924, Stalin's career was in the balance, but his political opponents, like Lenin, had underestimated him.After the Party Congress of 1924, and despite the implied suggestion of what Bukharin called "the theory of sweet revenge, " as we have seen, Stalin did not relax. He admitted to his Cheka Chief, Feliks Dzerzhinsky, and Politburo member, Lev Kamenev, " To choose one's victims, to prepare one's plans minutely, to slake an implacable vengeance, and then go to bed...there is nothing sweeter in the world." And he was able to do this repeatedly and with tremendous precision, through to his anti-semitic campaign against alleged "Cosmopolitanism," and the Doctors' Plot Affair, two decades later up to the eve of his death in 1953. This book tells you all about it.Miguel A. Faria Jr., M.D. is the author of Cuba in Revolution - Escape from a Lost Paradise (2002) and the essays, "Stalin's Mysterious Death" (2011) and "Stalin, Communists and Fatal Statistics (2011)

It has been more than two decades since the breakup of the Soviet Union, yet the West in general (and the United States in particular) is still loathe to confront the horrors of communism. Robert Conquest's book is a small yet important step in a long-overdue shaking off of moral cobwebs and seeing history as it really happened.In clear, precise language Conquest documents the rise of Stalin from obscure party functionary to perhaps history's most prolific mass-murderer. Conquest also details how Stalin's political enemies in the Soviet Union, and Western leaders such as Roosevelt, failed to truly understand what a paranoid monster Stalin was.Revisionist historians - those who believe that America is the Evil Empire and that Stalin is a tragic, misunderstood figure - will detest this book. Those who care about the truth will feel otherwise.

This is a very interesting book about Stalin's private life, his relations with his wives and his rise to power. It describes how he played off his former comrades against each other until he finally destroyed them all. Stalin was merciless in the style of Ivan the Terrible. In all but name, he was a Tsar. One thing that I have never read in other books about Stalin is that his first language was Georgian and that he didn't learn Russian until he was 8 or 9 years old. This book states that Stalin always spoke with a strong Georgian accent and that in public he "always spoke Russian slowly, in measured and carefully developed phrasing." This is a very readable book.

There have been many biographies written about Josef Stalin. Many recent biographies of Stalin such as "Stalin: The Court of the Red Czar" by Montefiore and "Stalin and his Hangmen: The Tyrant and those who killed for him" by Rayfield focus only on the sexual depravity and crimes of Stalin's followers respectively. A person should only read those biographies only after they have read an introductory biography of Stalin and have therefore come away with an understanding of Stalin as whole. Robert Conquest's "Stalin: Breaker of Nations" provides such a biography with the vital information for one to build a basic stable foundation of the life of this twentieth century tyrant. In the introduction Conquest modestly says, "This book is not a dissection of Stalin's character, but a sketch". It is important to keep this quote in mind as one reads Conquest's book. Many reviewers unfortunately are hasty in criticizing "Stalin: Breaker of Nations" for its lack of length (a mere 330 pages or so). Nonetheless, Conquest's "sketch" proves to be more thorough than many of the "dissections" of Stalin available. Indeed Robert Conquest's work on Stalin has been so extensive that he was chosen to be the main history consultant for the 1992 movie "Stalin", starring Robert Duvall.Robert Conquest writes his book for the common reader who only has a minimal knowledge of Stalin and Stalinism. The book is nonetheless engaging enough for the serious Russian history buff. Anyone who reads "Stalin: Breaker of Nations" will at least come away with the conclusion that Stalin was the most prolific mass murderer in history (yes even more than Hitler). The purpose of the book is ultimately to stimulate enough interest for the reader to do some further research and reading. If one wants further information on Stalin's crimes, one can pick up Robert Conquest's book entitled "The Great Terror: A Reassessment".I strongly recommend "Stalin: Breaker of Nations" to anyone who wishes to have a firm grasp on the essentials of the early Soviet era. I especially wish to highlight Chapter 12 (entitled " War") of the book, which points how the Allies (Roosevelt in particular) were incompetent when it came to standing up to Stalin.If you want some further readings on Russian History, just remember that the best Russian historians start with the letter "R" (Robert Conquest, Richard Pipes, Robert Service, Richard Overy, Robert Leckie, and Robert Payne).

Stalin dies at the end.

This is for the serious student of Stalin's life. There is a lot of fine detail of the political and economic arguments and how Stalin worked his way to absolute power. A fine addition to the library.