Autumn of the Patriarch: The Soviet State in 1945–1953

Language Russian

Author Evgeny Spitsyn

Narrator Vladimir Bakleychev

Description

The work by E.Yu. Spitsyn, devoted to the history of the Soviet state in the final years of the leader’s life, offers an opportunity to look anew at many events of those years and to become more closely acquainted with the controversial pages of the grand history of the country-victor, which all those years was guided by a man of “inexhaustible courage and willpower,” distinguished by “cool-headed wisdom and a complete lack of illusions.” Despite the contradictory nature of Joseph Stalin’s personality and the diversity of opinions, the author found the only correct way to assess what was happening—by discarding all kinds of speculations, tall tales, and false facts, and by seeing, in the sequence of events, the great deeds and actions of a man whom he had every right to call the leader of all times and peoples. We learn about his merits, wise decisions, and miscalculations—about his astonishing gift of foresight, his plans for real resistance to the ideas of globalism, the first attempts to create a different economic space and a fair world order under the conditions of “atomic diplomacy” and the Cold War between two superpowers—the USSR and the USA. How did the Soviet Union rebuild itself? What should be done with defeated Germany? Is it possible to build communism in the context of a new confrontation with the collective West? What is the Soviet economic miracle? What was Stalin’s plan for creating a dollar-free market? It was under Stalin that cybernetics and atomic physics developed powerfully; he saved Soviet linguistics and defined the economic laws of socialism. He pointed out what “threatens us with degradation” and “even with death.” Many historical documents and testimonies presented in this book’s pages will tell about the history of the leader’s illness and his last days before meeting eternity.