Stalin Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928

The product of a decade of intrepid research, Stalin is a landmark achievement. Stephen Kotkin offers a biography that, at long last, is equal to this shrewd, sociopathic, charismatic dictator in all his dimensions. We see a man inclined to despotism who could be utterly charming; a pragmatic ideologue; a leader who obsessed over slights yet was a precocious geostrategic thinker-unique among Bolsheviks-and yet who made egregious strategic blunders. Through it all, we see Stalin's unflinching persistence, his sheer force of will-perhaps the ultimate key to understanding his indelible mark on history. Drawing on Kotkin's exhaustive study of Soviet archival materials as well as vast scholarly literature,
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