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History, Reference, Research, and GrogTalk => Military (and other) History => Topic started by: besilarius on October 19, 2017, 06:36:49 PM

Title: Death of Stalin
Post by: besilarius on October 19, 2017, 06:36:49 PM
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/true-story-death-stalin-180965119/
Title: Re: Death of Stalin
Post by: Cheimison on October 23, 2017, 02:05:28 PM
Quote from: besilarius on October 19, 2017, 06:36:49 PM
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/true-story-death-stalin-180965119/
I read a few biographies of Uncle Joe, probably the best were Edvard Radzinsky's "Stalin" based on the Soviet secret archives, and the more recent "Young Stalin" by Simon Sebag Montefiore. The former goes into quite a bit of detail with regard to Stalin's relationships and strange midnight movie meetings, or getting everyone drunk at his dacha and trying to goad them into saying something incriminating.

A lot of people say he was 'paranoid', but in a Bolshevik dictatorship you're paranoid or dead. It was literally impossible to have anyone who wasn't some kind of sociopath in power, in that kind of environment. And, contrary to totally bizarre theories cooked up by Trotskyites, Stalin was indeed a communist.