ASIN -0192158422 Anybody can receive this book within a week or two. On Stalin and Stalinism is a book that I strongly recommend for anyone that is interested about the Russian Revolution and the conflicts it brought over who would have the most power between the key leaders including Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin. Medvedev examined first-hand stories from survivers of the Stalin Era, secret letters sent amongst government officials, and personal quotations that provided an insight to who these Soviet leaders were really like. The majority of the book was spent on the reasons why Stalin inflicted torture on innocent people. Their was never a boring part in the book but instead it kept me wanting to read more. Anybody who reads this book will gain an enormous amount of information about behind the scenes of the Communist Party. Instead of having his own opinion throughout the book, Medvedev was able to have a range of materials at his disposal since he is a Soviet author. If any student has to do a report on Stalin or is just in a mood to read a remarkable book then On Stalin and Stalinism is they novel for you.

Anybody can receive this book within a week or two. On Stalin and Stalinism is a book that I strongly recommend for anyone that is interested about the Russian Revolution and the conflicts it brought over who would have the most power between the key leaders including Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin. Medvedev examined first-hand stories from survivers of the Stalin Era, secret letters sent amongst government officials, and personal quotations that provided an insight to who these Soviet leaders were really like. The majority of the book was spent on the reasons why Stalin inflicted torture on innocent people. Their was never a boring part in the book but instead it kept me wanting to read more. Anybody who reads this book will gain an enormous amount of information about behind the scenes of the Communist Party. Instead of having his own opinion throughout the book, Medvedev was able to have a range of materials at his disposal since he is a Soviet author. If any student has to do a report on Stalin or is just in a mood to read a remarkable book then On Stalin and Stalinism is they novel for you.

On Stalin and Stalinism is a book that I strongly recommend for anyone that is interested about the Russian Revolution and the conflicts it brought over who would have the most power between the key leaders including Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin. Medvedev examined first-hand stories from survivers of the Stalin Era, secret letters sent amongst government officials, and personal quotations that provided an insight to who these Soviet leaders were really like. The majority of the book was spent on the reasons why Stalin inflicted torture on innocent people. Their was never a boring part in the book but instead it kept me wanting to read more. Anybody who reads this book will gain an enormous amount of information about behind the scenes of the Communist Party. Instead of having his own opinion throughout the book, Medvedev was able to have a range of materials at his disposal since he is a Soviet author. If any student has to do a report on Stalin or is just in a mood to read a remarkable book then On Stalin and Stalinism is they novel for you.

This book was the first in the Soviet Union to treat Stalin in an objective way. Prior to its release Stalin had been the great hero of the patriotic war the father of the country and so forth. Whilst the secret speech by Krushev had distanced the country from his system scholarship had not taken the step of subjecting his rule to objective analysis.

The author was a person who was an opponent of Stalin and prior to the fall of the regime was active in its criticism. The book goes through the issues associated with Stalin such as the decision to collectivize agriculture, the forced industrialization, the terror and the handling of the war. The author forms the view that Stalin was an unmitigated disaster. That is the country would have progressed economically better without him, and his handling of the war was catastrophic.

It is a good book to read with other western accounts such as Bullocks.

The late 1990's saw the publication of numerous scatterbrained, and ill-intentioned, attempts to descredit Vladimir Lenin, Nikolai Bukharin, Leon Trotsky, and Karl Marx, by associating their actions, and ideas, with those of Joseph Stalin. One must ask, "were these attempts in any way successful?" Luckily, the answer is an emphatic, no. The individuals who bought into the "Marx and Lenin created Stalinism" theory, alluded to in works such as 'The Black Book of Communism', by Mister Courtois (or Miss), 'The Passing of an Illusion', by Mister Furet, and 'The Soviet Tragedy', by Mister Malia, already harbored such fantastic illusions. Most of the population has no interest in Sovietology, so attempts at descrediting Lenin, Marx, Bukharin, and Trotsky, were, and are, virtually fruitless (I took a Public Speaking course at a local community college, and most of the students hadn't even heard of Lenin, Marx, or Trotsky!.)

To find true objectivity, on the subject of Sovietology, one must reach back into the distant past, and read Roy Medvedev's incredible, 'Let History Judge'. One could refer to Medvedev's writings, as "Solzhenitsyn, without the racism and bitterness"(a spew of biographies show that Solzhenitsyn is without question anti-semitic; however, this fact doesn't mean he's no longer one of the elite writers of the twentieth century). 'Let History Judge', is not so much a history of Stalin, but a history of Russia from 1917-1953. Described, with minute detail, is Lenin's seizure of power, Lenin's benevolent feelings toward Stalin (which ended effectively after the Eleventh All-Congress of the Bolsheviks), Trotsky's role as leader of the Red Army, Trotsky's complete ineptness in regard to the left-opposition, and Stalin's remarkable, almost super-human, political abilites. In addition, one will never discover a finer description of collectivization anywhere (although I must admit Conquest's 'Harvest of Sorrow', is pretty excellent). Russia's grain production in 1930-1933, were almost certainly below pre-WWI levels, apparently, but Stalin wanted Russia to appear forceful, so he sold grain internationally, as if it were "business as usual", which resulted in the death of millions of non-guilty peasants (however, one can not deny George Carlin's classic quote, "there are no innocent people, once you're born, you're guilty as charged").The description of the horrible Gulag system is not quite as great as Solzhenitsyn's, but it's pretty darn close. Unlike Solzhenitsyn, Medvedev doesn't slander the dead, or embark on anti-semitic diatribes (thankfully, for the population at large, Medvedev critiques much of what Solzhenitsyn wrote in the 'Gulag Archipelago' with absolute clarity).

The price is pretty high, but at 800+ pages, the person isn't really buying just one book, they are buying a multitude of books, which cover a variety of subjects. In addition to, 'Let History Judge', I would also strongly recommend you read Edvard Radzinsky's 'Stalin', Volkogonov's 'Autopsy of an Empire' (being a Yeltsin staffer, Volkogonov is biased, but there is some interesting anecdotes!), and Robert Tucker's magnificent two-volume biograpy of Stalin. Unlike other works on the subject of the Russian Revolution, these works actually take a "scholarly" approach!

This book is a very thorough and well-written biography of Josef Stalin. It was one of the few books I read in college that I didn't mind reading. The information on Stalin's political and personal life gives the reader an opportunity to make informed judgements about Stalin's actions.

Roy Medvedev has proven himself a stubbornly independent observer of soviet, now Russian, policy for the past several decades. Given the extremes of Western anti-communism and anti-sovietism, I wanted a book without inbuilt bias, one that could take a level-headed look at the tumultuous events in Russia over the last fifteen years, particularly as they affected the average Russian who was the supposed beneficiary of these epochal changes. By and large, the book doesn't disappoint. Medvedev follows a rough timeline beginning in 1990 with a soviet regime in the throes of collapse and ending with Putin's unexpected ascension in 2000 to head of state and an uncertain future. The ten year interval can only be characterized as a series of incompetent failures, akin to comic opera were the consequences not so tragic for the average citizen. Medvedev does a good job of tracing the events and personalities involved in bringing about collapse of the nation's economy, particularly its financial arm. Perhaps the book's centerpiece, however, is an extended discussion of why Western style capitalism was doomed from the start as communism's successor. Here many factors, cultural, political, economic, come into play, creating an effective block to the one-style-fits-all prescriptions of Western shock therapists. All in all, it's a stimulating discussion with many insights into the country's current mess. I would have liked more attention to the pernicious role Russia's oligarchs played in beggaring the economy, and to the views of the average citizen on what was happening, but each remains a shadowy presence on a stage monopolized by politicians and economists. Still, Medvedev's amounts to an excellent reference for the serious reader looking to get past the headlines of the day.