Stalin's Curse - Battling for Communism in War and Cold War (2013) by Robert Gellately.pdf

Author of several histories of German and Russian totalitarianism, Gellately here indicts Stalin as the primary instigator of the Cold War, marshaling evidence from Communist archives that undermines the revisionist case for Western responsibility for starting the confrontation. Arguing that Stalin was a hands-on director of expanding the Communist domain from 1939 to 1953, Gellately points to Stalin’s ideological convictions as the driving motive in his political decisions, contrasting them with his mollifying arguments to Western diplomats about Russia’s reasonable needs for security. The ground-level ramifications were, as Gellately recounts, police-state suppression of freedom and abolition of capitalism through executions, deportations, and gulags, which claimed victims by the millions. Amid his inventory of countries subjected to Stalin’s rule, Gellately credits the Red dictator with political acumen in deceiving Western leaders about his true objective of imposing one-party states. Stalin’s Communist associates and acolytes knew better, and the archives preserve their orders from Stalin about local tactics for eradicating non-Communist opposition and, in Korea, starting a war. Thoroughly researched, Gellately’s fine contribution to Cold War studies will engage readers with its inside-the-Kremlin detail. -

496 pages
Publisher: Knopf (March 5, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0307269159
ISBN-13: 978-0307269157