GREAT
LEADERS?

Stalin’s historical reputation has waxed and waned perhaps more than anyone else’s. In the West he has been a foe in the 1930s, a friend and ally in the 1940s, and a foe again at the end of World War Two. At home he has been seen as both a tyrant and a national saviour; a tyrant in terms of how he repressed political dissent of any kind by imprisoning millions, and a national saviour in terms of defeating the Nazis and establish the USSR as a superpower.

Stalin: Week

Stalin

Here are some further reading suggestions, covering a range of interpretations:

 

Robert Tucker, Stalin in Power (1990)

Isaac Deutscher, Stalin: A Political Biography (1949)

O Figes, The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia (2007)

S S Montefiore Stalin, The Court of the Red Tsar (2003)

Sheila Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants (1994)

Sheila Fitzpatrick, Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union 1921-1934 (1979)

D. Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization (1986)

Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain (1995)

 

You can also read our blog posts offering a range of perspectives on Stalin, here and here.

 

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