{"product_id":"stalin","title":"Stalin","description":"\u003cb\u003eThe most authoritative and engrossing biography of the notorious dictator ever written, w\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003einner of the 2016 PROSE Award for Biography \u0026amp; Autobiography\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"Enthralling, brilliant, and groundbreaking, this book confirms Khlevniuk as probably the greatest living expert on Stalin. Essential reading.\"—Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eStalin: the Court of the Red Tsar\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 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 \u003ci\u003eper year\u003c\/i\u003e. Millions more were victims of famine directly resulting from Stalin's policies. What drove him toward such ruthlessness? This essential biography, by the author most deeply familiar with the vast archives of the Soviet era, 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.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e 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 \u003ci\u003evozhd\u003c\/i\u003e 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.","brand":"Nora Seligman Favorov","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42849127039037,"sku":"9780300219784","price":31.46,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0597\/7689\/2989\/files\/9780300219784_68619a80-8054-4d44-bdf5-e3ec6c098938.jpg?v=1766994722","url":"https:\/\/www.palmleaf.com.au\/products\/stalin","provider":"Palmleaf","version":"1.0","type":"link"}