The Death of Stalin

In this masterful story about the death of the “father of the peoples,” the details of personal life and the mechanics of high politics are inseparably intertwined. By March 1953, when Joseph Stalin died, he had already ruled the Soviet Union single-handedly for more than two decades. In those years, the country endured a ruthless surge of economic modernization that began in the early 1930s, then saw the launching and completion of the Great Terror; it moved from the failure of the first months of the Great Patriotic War to unconditional victory and emerged as a superpower.

Around Stalin, a cult had formed—almost deifying him and ruling out the emergence of an obvious successor—so the death of the leader could not but become a profound shock for both the USSR and the entire world. Relying on exceptional knowledge of Stalin’s inner circle and Soviet society as a whole, Sheila Fitzpatrick constructs a narrative in which details worthy of black comedy sit side by side with drama on a world scale. She closely examines the problems and opportunities—often overlooked—that became apparent after the leader’s death.

The final chapter of the audiobook is devoted to the turbulent afterlife of Stalin’s image, including changes in attitudes toward him that are taking place in Russia before our eyes.