In the Mind of Stalin

James Greensmith

• Editore: Pen and Sword History
• Anno: 2023
• ISBN:
  9781399063593
• Argomento: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Categoria: Biografías políticas

On 1 October 1939, Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty and soon to be the UK's wartime leader, described Russia as 'a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma'. The same can certainly be said of Stalin. How can this paradox of a man, who on the one hand had once exhibited great tenderness and kindness to his daughter Svetlana, and on the other sent millions – including members of his own family - to their deaths, be explained? It is impossible to quantify the total number of deaths attributable to the policies of Stalin, but the 'Excess Mortality' (i.e., deaths over and above what would normally have been expected during the period in question) gives an approximate figure in excess of 40 million. However, this is only part of the story of the amount of misery inflicted by the Stalin regime through torture, deliberate starvation, neglect, separation from loved ones, cold and hypothermia (e.g. in the prisons of Siberia), which is unquantifiable and unimaginable. Svetlana confessed that she 'would never undertake to "explain" what motivated all my father's actions, simply because I do not possess the psychological genius of [Russian novelist] Dostoevsky, who knew how to "penetrate" into another man's soul and "examine it from within"'.

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Author’s Note
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Joseph Stalin (Born 18 December 1878): The Early Years: A Cherished Child
• Chapter 2 How Stalin Became a Battered Child
• Chapter 3 Was Besarion Stalin’s Real Father?
• Chapter 4 Dr John Bowlby: The Importance of a Loving Childhood
• Chapter 5 The Tiflis Seminary (1894–99)
• Chapter 6 Stalin the Revolutionary: Exile
• Chapter 7 Lenin and his Wife, Nadezhda
• Chapter 8 ‘Tishka’: Stalin’s Beloved Companion in Siberia
• Chapter 9 Stalin’s Marriage to Ekaterina Svanidze (15 July 1906)
• Chapter 10 For Stalin the Work Goes On
• Chapter 11 The Revolution is Successful: Stalin’s Dream Comes True!
• Chapter 12 Civil War
• Chapter 13 Stalin and the Alliluyev Family
• Chapter 14 Stalin’s Writings
• Chapter 15 Stalin’s Marriage to Nadezhda Alliluyeva (24 March 1919)
• Chapter 16 Leon Trotsky: His Banishment (1928)
• Chapter 17 Nadezhda’s Disillusionment with her Husband Stalin
• Chapter 18 The Death of Nadezhda (9 November 1932)
• Chapter 19 Nadezhda’s Death: The Truth at Last!
• Chapter 20 Nadezhda’s Death: The Aftermath
• Chapter 21 Stalin’s Early Kindness to his Daughter, Svetlana
• Chapter 22 Stalin’s Unbelievable Cruelty to his Relatives
• Chapter 23 Others Known to Svetlana who ‘Disappeared’
• Chapter 24 Stalin’s Sons, Yakov and Vasily
• Chapter 25 Empathy: Simon Baron-Cohen
• Chapter 26 For Svetlana the World Closes in
• Chapter 27 For Svetlana the Light Dawns
• Chapter 28 Professor Vladimir Bekhterev and Stalin’s Paranoia
• Chapter 29 Suppression of the Kulaks (1929–32)
• Chapter 30 A Purge of Politicians (1936–38)
• Chapter 31 Alexander Solzhenitsyn: The Inhumanity of the Gulag System
• Chapter 32 Stalin and his Mother Ekaterina: His ‘Rock’
• Chapter 33 Elections to the Supreme Soviet (December 1937)
• Chapter 34 Stalin’s Purges of the Red Army (1937–39 and 1940–42)
• Chapter 35 Lavrenti Beria
• Chapter 36 The Second World War: Stalin as a Wartime Leader
• Chapter 37 The Katyn Atrocity
• Chapter 38 Stalin’s Unashamedly Violent Tendencies
• Chapter 39 From Battered Child to Angry and Violent Adult
• Chapter 40 Stalin’s Anti-Semitism
• Chapter 41 Trotsky’s Criticisms of Stalin Stalin’s Persecution of Trotsky
• Chapter 42 Stalin’s Persecution of Trotsky
• Chapter 43 Stalin Versus Trotsky
• Chapter 44 Did Stalin Ever Show Remorse or Insight into his Condition?
• Chapter 45 Stalin and his Paranoia
• Chapter 46 Stalin’s Jealousy: Georgy Zhukov
• Chapter 47 A Purge of Doctors
• Chapter 48 Stalin is Rewarded
• Chapter 49 Stalin’s Final Years
• Chapter 50 Stalin’s Death (5 March 1953): Aftermath
• Chapter 51 February 1956: Khrushchev Acknowledges Stalin’s Crimes
• Chapter 52 Excess Mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin
• Chapter 53 Was Stalin the Twentieth Century’s Bloodiest Dictator?
• Chapter 54 Was Communism a Greater or Lesser Evil than Tsarism?
• Chapter 55 The Fate of Svetlana
• Chapter 56 Stalin: An Explanation
• Chapter 57 Russia Today
• Chapter 58 Putin and Stalin: Two of a Kind!
• Chapter 59 Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Notes
• Plate Section