Stalin: Remembering Together

There is no person as widely known in modern Russian history as Joseph Stalin. There are endless debates around him, and assessments of his actions are diametrically opposed. There is no politician to whom so many words and phrases—never spoken by him—would be attributed. There is no statesman accused of so many crimes that he did not commit. How can you make sense of this controversial figure? The best way is to turn to documents and to the recollections of those who knew him personally.

This book by Nikolay Starikov (author of bestsellers “Nationalizing the Ruble,” “Crisis: How It’s Done,” “Who Made Hitler Attack Stalin,” and others), based on the memories of Stalin’s contemporaries and associates, on documents, and on historical facts, will help you find answers to the most urgent questions:

• Was Stalin a despot in his relations with his colleagues and subordinates?

• Did Stalin, with his incompetent leadership, really prevent our army from fighting?

• What were the pre-war repressions caused by?

• Why do Stalin’s speeches about geopolitics sound so relevant today?

• Why did contemporaries consider Stalin extremely witty?

• Why are today’s falsifiers of history taking up the memoirs of Stalin’s associates?

• Why did Stalin love the writer Mikhail Bulgakov and dislike the poet Demyan Bedny?

• For what did Nikita Khrushchev hate Stalin so much?

• Why, in the first months of the war, did the “allies” send condolences to the USSR instead of tanks and airplanes?

This book will help you understand a complex historical era and an equally complex person, I. V. Stalin. His biography, set in the context of real historical events, helps you grasp the motives behind his actions. And after all, facts drawn from the memories of real people are the history itself. Why has Stalin’s figure—long and firmly forgotten—acquired such a vivid, many-sided shape today? What do some of our contemporaries search for in it with nostalgia, and what do others denounce so fiercely?

Whatever the contradictions, one thing is clear: with the price of unimaginable efforts, Stalin managed to preserve and strengthen a giant country, making it one of the superpowers of the 20th century.

At the Kremlin wall there are many graves. One of them is the grave of the Unknown Soldier. Another is the grave of the Unknown Commander-in-Chief…