Joseph Stalin: Man and Legend

Fülszöveg

MANLEGEND
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RONALD HINGLEY has taught Russian Language and Literature at Oxford University. He has also taught at the University of Prague and has lectured at Yale, Harvard, Moscow, and elsew^here. Mr. Hingley has written extensively on a variety of aspects of Russian culture. Among his books are Nihilists: The Tsars: Russian Autocrats, 1533-1917; A People in Turmoil: Revolutions in Russia; The Russian Secret Police; and A Concise History of Russia.

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A vital addition to the burgeoning literature on Stalin, this major new biography encompasses more than the life of one man. It is an equally compelling study of political process, an anatomy of power, and an examination of the tactics of rule by subtle manipulations as well as by conscious tyranny.
Ronald Hingley believes that if most politicians do harm, the most intelligent politicians do most harm. And Stalin was the most intelligent... Tovább

Fülszöveg

MANLEGEND
RonaldiiQleu
RONALD HINGLEY has taught Russian Language and Literature at Oxford University. He has also taught at the University of Prague and has lectured at Yale, Harvard, Moscow, and elsew^here. Mr. Hingley has written extensively on a variety of aspects of Russian culture. Among his books are Nihilists: The Tsars: Russian Autocrats, 1533-1917; A People in Turmoil: Revolutions in Russia; The Russian Secret Police; and A Concise History of Russia.

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A vital addition to the burgeoning literature on Stalin, this major new biography encompasses more than the life of one man. It is an equally compelling study of political process, an anatomy of power, and an examination of the tactics of rule by subtle manipulations as well as by conscious tyranny.
Ronald Hingley believes that if most politicians do harm, the most intelligent politicians do most harm. And Stalin was the most intelligent politician of all.
Stalin presents thorny problems to the biographer. The man who rose from humble origins to Supreme Ruler of Eastern Europe, on a scale never dreamed of by ardent Pan-Slavicists, killed virtually everyone who had furthered his rise to power. Among his victims were his contemporary Soviet biographers, slaughtered as part of a campaign to destroy the truth and to substitute a glossy pseudo-biography: the Stalin Legend.
The Stalin who emerges here is more, then, the usual pedestrian bureaucrat who glumly perverted the Russian revolution from the course destined by Lenin, but who instead "improved" on Lenin's methods to institutionalize the power Lenin had seized. The disasters provoked by Stalin are not allowed to obscure his genius in imposing so vast a burden of inhumanity on man.
(continued on back flap)
(continuedfrom front flap)
Stalin, a fascinating mixture of paradoxes, is superbly portrayed: ruthlessly cruel yet personally likable; a modest man who arranged for himself to be worshiped as a god; a strong man who seized his chances and could exploit even his own colossal blunders; by turns gangster, theoretician, ladies' man, arch-intriguer, militant peacemonger, skillful cold warrior.
This highly readable and original biography makes clear that neither Stalin's evil nor achievements can be interred with his bones. It puts into perspective his legacy to the Soviet Union and contributes to our understanding of the uses and abuses of power as chillingly and artfully practiced by the master politician and unparalleled totalitarian ruler of our times. Vissza